by Bill Wallace
For a time it appeared as if the Gomez murder case was going to be closed without resolution. That changed on 1 March 1985, however. Ruben Cantu was shooting pool for 35 cents a game at the Scabaroo Lounge, not far from where he lived. Playing on another pool table was an off-duty police officer, Joe De La Luz. As usual, De La Luz was wearing two revolvers under his civilian clothes. Tragically, Ruben Cantu was also armed and both men had had a few drinks.
Their versions of events differed. Officer De La Luz maintained that there was a dispute and Cantu shot him four times, completely unprovoked. ‘I remember a person standing in front of me firing an unknown calibre weapon at me,’ he later said. Ruben Cantu, on the other hand, stated that the two had argued over a game of pool they were playing and that he had only pulled his weapon after De La Luz had shown him the gun he was wearing in his waistband. He said he had no idea that De La Luz was a police officer but never denied shooting him.
Yet, he was never charged with the shooting, even though he had admitted it and had done it in front of a poolroom full of witnesses. The fact that police officers carried out an illegal search of Cantu’s home on the night of the shooting was going to make it difficult for them to bring a successful prosecution. Instead, they reopened the Briggs Street murder case which Cantu had not been connected with. It seemed that as they were unable to nail him for the shooting of a police officer, they were going to get him for another murder, even though he had not even been there.
On 2 March, a detective turned up at Juan Moreno’s brother’s house where Moreno was recovering from his injuries. Again, he showed him a picture of Ruben Cantu and again he failed to identify him as the killer of Pedro Gomez. During their conversation, however, the officer let slip that Cantu had shot a police officer. The next day, a second detective was sent to show Moreno a set of photographs. This time Moreno picked Cantu out of the four pictures he was shown, although he said in a later interview that ‘They told me they were certain it was him, and that’s why I testified…That was bad to blame someone that was not there.’
There were no fingerprints, no murder weapon and no confessions and fifteen-year-old David Garza, arrested as Cantu’s accomplice that night, refused to name Cantu as being involved, even when told it would help his case. At the trial, Moreno refused to budge on his implication that his friend had been shot by Cantu. He was asked to point him out in court and had no hesitation in doing so. He provided an emotional testimony that swayed the jury and they found Ruben Cantu guilty of murder in the first degree.
When it came to the sentencing phase of the trial, Officer De La Luz was introduced as a witness. Cantu’s gang activities, an impending charge for the possession of marijuana and De La Luz’s testimony condemned him. De La Luz testified that Cantu had fired his weapon at him completely without provocation. It came as no surprise when Ruben Cantu, silent as usual throughout the trial, was sentenced to death. He wrote to the people of San Antonio days after his sentence, saying, ‘My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only eighteen years old. I got to the ninth grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case.’
It was to no avail, even though the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found the identification process improperly suggestive. Significantly, however, not one of Cantu’s appeal lawyers attempted to bring Juan Moreno back from Mexico, to where they assumed he had returned, to confirm his identification. Ironically, he was in San Antonio all the time.
Moreno has said that he knew what he was doing was wrong, that he was only giving the police officers what they wanted. District Attorney Sam Millsap has since said, ‘It is troubling to me personally. No decision is more frightening than seeking the death penalty. We owe ourselves certainty on it.’ Unfortunately, he says, Ruben Cantu was very likely innocent. Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu has said, ‘We did the best we could with the information we had, but with a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we’d have gotten the right information. The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that.’
At the time of Ruben Cantu’s execution in 1993, Juan Moreno has said, someone from Cantu’s family tried to phone him, but he was not at home.
John Wayne Gacy
As a child, John Wayne Gacy Jr seemed happy enough. Born in 1942 in Chicago, the second of three children, he grew up in a middle class area, a normal kid with a newspaper round as well as some weekend work in a local grocery store. The only cloud on the horizon was his relationship with his father, John Wayne Gacy Sr. The problems with his father arose from John Sr’s alcoholism and his antipathy to the boy whom he frequently called a ‘sissy’. He would beat his wife and verbally abused all of his children.
John Jr was also victim of a serious accident when he was hit on the head by a swing when he was eleven years old. A blood clot on the brain caused by this accident was not discovered until he was sixteen, but at last the worrying blackouts from which he had suffered for five years were treated.
Gacy attended four different high schools before eventually dropping out and leaving for Las Vegas to start a new life. The new life was not really as he had hoped, however, and he ended up working as a janitor in a funeral parlour. It took him three months to earn enough money to be able to buy a ticket back to Chicago.
Enrolling at a business college shortly after his return, he at last found his purpose in life; he was a born salesman. He put his new-found talent to work in his first proper job, working for a shoe company. Starting as a management trainee, he was soon fast-tracked into managing a men’s clothing outlet in Springfield, Illinois. In Springfield, Gacy became involved in a number of community and civic organisations, rising to senior positions in several. He was obsessively committed to them and the Jaycees, for instance, named him as their ‘Man of the Year’. He gave so much of his spare time to these activities that at one time was hospitalised for nervous exhaustion. His health was not great anyway. He had gained a good deal of weight and his heart which would give him problems throughout his life was troubling him.
In September 1964, he married a woman he met at work. Marlynn Myers’ parents owned a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Waterloo, Iowa and his new father-in-law offered him a job at one. Gacy and Marlynn moved to Iowa where they began a family, a son being born not long after their arrival. Again, he threw himself into voluntary work, especially with the Jaycees.
But a problem soon began to arise. Nasty rumours spread around town about Gacy. People thought it funny that he was always surrounded by young boys and some said he must be homosexual, especially when stories also emerged of him flirting with some of the kids who worked with him at the restaurant. In May 1968, some substance was added to the rumours when Gacy was arrested for committing sodomy on a teenager named Mark Miller, who claimed that while visiting Gacy’s home Gacy had tied him up and raped him. Gacy denied everything, claiming, somewhat ridiculously, that he was being set up by opponents in the Jaycees who did not want him to be president of a new chapter. However, a boy he paid to beat up his accuser was arrested and confessed that Gacy had paid him to carry out the beating. Gacy was arrested, convicted and sent to the Iowa State Penitentiary for 10 years. Marlynn understandably divorced him not long after and he never saw his children again.
He was paroled for good behaviour on 18 June 1970, after serving just eighteen months, and, his father now dead, moved back home to live with his mother and found work as a chef. Four months later, he and his mother and sisters moved into a house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in the Norwood Park Township, where he lived in one half of the building and they had the other half. The building had a four-foot deep crawl space under the floor that would, in time, become very useful to John Gacy.
Much as his mother was convinced he had learned his lesson and was trying to make a fresh start, he was still into young boys. In February 1971, he was charged with disorderly conduct after a teenage boy claimed that Gacy had tried to force him to have sex wi
th him. The boy failed to turn up for court, however and luckily for Gacy, the Iowa Parole Board was not informed. Eight months later he was discharged from parole. Just as well really, as in June 1972 he was again arrested and charged with battery. He had shown a young man a sheriff’s badge to get him into his car and then forced him to have sex. Again he walked free when the boy dropped the charges.
He remarried in 1972, his new wife, Carole Hoff, a childhood friend who already had two daughters. They moved into his half of the Summerdale house. Three years later, he started his own business, a construction company, PDM Contractors. He hired teenage boys to work for him, claiming that they were cheap. This, of course, was not the only reason.
The marriage, however, was beginning to fall apart. Gacy began to stay out all night and she found wallets with IDs belonging to young men lying around the house. When he began bringing gay pornography home, she divorced him.
By the time Gacy was engaged to Carole Hoff, he had already killed his first victim. He picked up Timothy McCoy at Chicago’s Greyhound Bus terminal and took him home with him. The next morning he stabbed him to death and buried him in the crawl space beneath the house. He later claimed it was an accident; he had thought McCoy was going to attack him with a knife.
In 1975, Gacy had created a clown character he called Pogo the Clown, teaching himself how to apply the make-up and performing at children’s parties. He also continued with his civic duties, becoming active in the Democratic Party in Chicago and serving on the Norwood Park Township Street Lighting Committee. But rumours began to circulate once again about his relationships with young boys. One boy, sixteen-year-old Tony Antoniucci, accused him of making inappropriate advances to him. Next month, at his home, Gacy tricked Antonucci into putting on a pair of handcuffs and began to undress him. The boy fought free of the cuffs and overpowered Gacy, forcing him to the floor and putting the handcuffs on him. Gacy promised to leave him alone and, amazingly, Antonucci carried on working for him.
His second victim, another PDM employee, Johnny Butkovich, loved cars, especially his 1986 Dodge. As he frequently did with his employees, Gacy tried to con him out of a couple of weeks’ pay. Butkovich drove to Gacy’s house with a couple of friends to collect what he was owed, but after an argument Johnny realised he was getting nowhere and drove off. After he had dropped off his friends, he was never seen again.
Another employee, Michael Bonnin disappeared en route to the train station in June 1976. Billy Carroll Jr, a kid with a nose for trouble, vanished on 13 June. Carroll Jr, who at the age of sixteen made money pimping teenage boys to male adults left home and never returned. PDM employee, Gregory Godzik dropped his girlfriend off at her house on 12 December 1976. The next day the seventeen-year-old’s car was found, but he was nowhere to be seen.
They continued to vanish – nineteen-year-old John Szyc on 20 January 1977. Szyc, who did not work for PDM but knew both of Gacy’s last two victims, had driven off in his 1971 Plymouth Satellite and was never seen again. Not long after, however, the Plymouth was stopped leaving a gas station without paying. The young driver said that the man he lived with could explain everything. Police visited Gacy who explained that Szyc had sold the car to him. If police had checked, however, they would have learned that the car was made over to Gacy eighteen days after Szyc’s disappearance. Furthermore, the signature was forged.
Young men were disappearing sometimes at the rate of two a month. In 1976, he killed in April, May (twice), June (twice), August, October (twice) and December. In 1977, he killed in January, March, July, September (twice), October, November (twice) and December. The year 1978 saw the crawl space being filled up by teenage boys murdered in February, June, November (twice) and December.
The last boy he killed was Robert Piest, a fifteen-year-old who vanished on 11 December 1978 from outside the pharmacy where he worked. His mother was waiting inside the store for Robert who had said he had to talk to a contractor about some work, but he failed to return. Three hours later, she called the police.
Robert had told her the name of the contractor and within a short space of time, Lieutenant Joseph Kozenak was knocking at John Wayne Gacy’s door. Kozenak asked him to accompany him to the station to answer some questions but Gacy apologised, telling him he was unable to go with him as there had been a death in the family and he had to make some telephone calls to relatives. He finally arrived at the police station a few hours later but told them he knew nothing about Robert Piest’s disappearance.
Kozenak did not end the matter there, however. When he ran a check on Gacy he found his conviction for sodomy on a teenager a number of years previously. He immediately obtained a search warrant and returned to Summerdale. What they found was fascinating. Amongst the items confiscated were drugs, a 6mm Italian pistol, police badges, handcuffs, and hidden in the attic beneath the insulation was an 18-inch rubber dildo. There was a hypodermic syringe and a small brown bottle filled with an unknown liquid, and clothing that was too small for John Gacy’s ample frame.
His three vehicles were confiscated and in one, a 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88, were found strands of hair that matched Robert Piest’s.
Crawling into the space beneath the house, investigators were almost knocked out by the stench. The earth had been sprinkled with lime but appeared untouched. They called him in and read him his rights, but eventually, having nothing to go on, they had to let him go. They decided, however, to charge him with possession of marijuana and Valium. At least they had him for something.
Work on the materials taken from his house continued and at last they came up with something – a ring that belonged to John Szyc who had disappeared a year before. Gradually, they began to assemble the facts that another three employees of PDM had also mysteriously vanished. Critically, a receipt they had taken away turned out to have belonged to a co-worker of Robert Piest who had given it to the missing boy on the day he disappeared. Kozenak began to realise that this was going to be the case of his life.
They returned to Summerdale and Gacy finally cracked, confessing that he did kill someone but that it had been in self-defence. He told them the body was buried beneath the garage. They were more interested in the crawl space, however, and when the County Cook Medical Examiner, Dr Robert Stein had a look, he recognised the unmistakable odour of human decomposition. They started digging.
On 22 December, Gacy confessed to the murders of more than thirty people, tricking them first into putting on handcuffs and then sexually assaulting them, a sock stuffed into their mouth to silence them. He killed his victims by pulling a board against their throats as he raped them. They were then buried in the space under the house.
A total of twenty-seven bodies were removed from beneath the house and another two had been found in the Des Plaines River. The crawl space had been full. Another body was found under the patio while yet another was discovered under his recreation room. Robert Piest was found in the Illinois River. Thirty-two bodies and all but nine of them had been identified by the start of his trial on 6 February 1980.
John Wayne Gacy was found guilty on 13 March and sentenced to death. For the next fourteen years, he studied law in prison and watched as appeal after appeal was rejected.
On 10 May 1994, as Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Centre in Illinois, rowdy crowds outside the prison walls threw execution parties. Merchandise was on sale and when it was announced that Gacy was dead there were loud cheers.
At no point did Gacy express any remorse for his crimes.
His last words were ‘Kiss my ass’.
Timothy McVeigh
It was all so cold and calculated, not unlike Timothy McVeigh.
He had decided he was going to blow up the nine-storey Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Named after a federal judge, the building had been opened in 1977 and housed around five hundred and fifty employees working in the regional offices of the Social Security Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F
BI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (ATF). There was also a day-care centre for children of employees on the building’s ground floor. It was perfect for the kind of hell McVeigh wanted to unleash.
He had bought three 54-gallon drums of nitro-methane in October 1994, dressed as a biker and claiming that he and his friends wanted to use it to race their motorcycles. Gradually, he bought the other components of the huge bomb that he and his associate Terry Nichols planned to explode. Nichols had taught him how to make a bomb out of simple, innocuous household materials and now they rented storage space in which to store it all until the big day. They had stolen blasting caps and other useful equipment from a quarry in Marion, Texas and to reassure themselves that they were on the right track, they built a prototype bomb which they exploded successfully in a remote corner of the desert.
On 14 April, McVeigh checked into a room in the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, before renting a truck from the Ryder Car Rental Company. He signed the name Robert D. Kling, an incongruously humorous reference to the Klingon warriors from his favourite television show Star Trek.
Two days later, with Nichols in the passenger seat, he drove the truck two hundred and forty-seven miles from Junction City to Oklahoma City. They had bought a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis which was to be used as the getaway car and parked it a few blocks away from the Alfred P. Murrah Building, removing the licence plates and taping a note to the windscreen saying it had broken down and requesting that it should not be towed away as it would be moved by 23 April. They drove back to Kansas where they began to assemble the bomb.