The Man Who Killed Boys

by Clifford L. Lindecker

  The article added that Gacy was an officer of the Holy Name Society, served for three years as commanding captain for the Chicago Civil Defense, and was a member of the federal Civil Defense for Illinois. The introductory spiel concluded by saying that Gacy was living in Springfield's Sherwood subdivision with an uncle and an aunt.

  Springfield was good to the young shoe salesman. He worked there only a few months before he had met, courted, charmed and—in September 1964—married a pretty co-worker, Marlynn Myers, in a Catholic Church ceremony. Short, stocky, and pudgy-faced, Gacy was nothing special to look at. He made up for what he lacked in good looks with personality and generosity. The young woman whom he married was an only child and was impressed by the big spender from the city who talked of being so amazingly well traveled and accomplished, despite his tender years.

  Marlynn felt a personal pride when she watched him charm customers. He sold shoes as spiritedly as he sold himself. It was important to him and he applied himself to the task with the same charm, persistence, and roguish bluster that he had brought to his romance.

  Fortune smiled on the young couple when Marlynn's parents purchased a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Waterloo, Iowa, and moved there. The family home was left for the newly weds.

  Springfield offered more than a bride to the dynamic young Chicago native. It was in Springfield that he discovered the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and joined the local group of energetic young business and professional men working to make their community a better place to live in by carrying out a never-ending series of activities.

  As devoted to improving their communities as Jaycees may be, they also believe in publicizing their accomplishments. Jaycees are not known for their modesty, and for every public-spirited project they are involved in, it seems that there is also a dinner or awards banquet where members are publicly and profusely thanked, recognized, and rewarded for their various achievements.

  The Jaycees was the kind of organization that Gacy could relate to. By dedicating himself to club activities, he found that he could win recognition and acclaim as one of the up-and-coming bright young men in the state capital and manufacturing center of ninety-six thousand. Instead of being a faceless shoe salesman in Chicago, through commitment and strict attention to club politics he could acquire the recognition as a Jaycee that was so important to him. He worked hard, and the recognition came to him. Only weeks after his arrival in Springfield, he was chosen as the Jaycee Key Man for April for helping plan the annual boss's night banquet and in recognition of his work on a project promoting purchase of U.S. savings bonds.

  In 1965, only a year after arriving in Springfield, he was elected first vice-president and the chapter's outstanding man of the year. Jim Selinger, chapter president in 1965, considered Gacy to be a devoted Roman Catholic who took his marriage vows seriously, and the most energetic, ambitious, and outgoing of the three vice-presidents then serving.

  Sometimes it appeared that the ambitious shoe salesman worked almost too hard. Friends kidded that he was becoming a borderline workaholic. The jokes were not considered so funny when he was hospitalized for three days with nerve problems.

  Years later, Ed McCreight, one of Gacy's fellow Springfield Jaycees, recalled that he was bright, a rapid talker, and a good family man with a firm handshake. They were all qualities valued by Jaycees. McCreight thought that Gacy looked so much like Eddie Bracken that he could have been the actor's double.

  The only incident involving Gacy that McCreight could recall as being at all unusual occurred when the former Chicagoan put a flashing red light on the dashboard of his car while they were working on a parade route. McCreight asked him why he was installing the light. Gacy replied that he had a card authorizing him to use the device, which is normally reserved for police agencies, the military, or emergency vehicles. McCreight told him to take it off. He might be entitled to use it in Chicago, McCreight said, but that didn't mean it could be used in Springfield.

  The red light on his car, like the Jaycees, helped set him apart from other people, marking him, if ever so slightly, as someone different. He was someone who was going places.

  Gacy liked the limelight. He liked to be seen with important people, doing important things, and he insisted on being noticed. His driving reflected his need for attention, and although he was presumably a responsible married man, he drove like he was a teenager. He liked to burn rubber. He wanted other drivers to notice him, and he could be impatient when he had to stop at intersections or was caught behind slow-moving vehicles.

  He once cut into a funeral procession and joined the mourners as he was driving to work. Police gave him a ticket. He was ticketed for speeding the same year. Prior to that he had picked up a pair of tickets in Chicago for ignoring stop signs. His wife said later that he had a habit of doing "crazy things" every once in a while.

  The troubles with traffic violations were only minor missteps, and they went virtually unnoticed among the more rewarding fruits of his labor with Nunn-Bush and the Jaycees. He had a job he was good at, and he was earning recognition in his community. It looked like John Gacy was building a good future for himself in Springfield.

  Then his father-in-law, Fred W. Myers, offered him a job with the fried-chicken franchise in Waterloo. John and Marlynn Gacy packed up and moved to Iowa.

  Footnotes

  1 Playboy's Illustrated History of Organized Crime by Richard Hammer, Playboy Press, 1975, p. 56.

  2 Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 10, 1979.

  2...

  Waterloo

  The early months in Waterloo added further luster to the promising life of John Wayne Gacy, Jr..

  The young couple settled into a pleasant bungalow on Fairlane Street in a newer, middle-class area of the west side. It was quiet and there was ample room for Gacy to putter with his hobbies of woodworking and gardening in the spare moments he could sneak from other activities.

  From all appearances, the Gacys were developing into a perfect nuclear family. Marlynn Gacy had presented her husband with first a son, then a daughter. The boy's middle name was the same as his father's and grandfather's first names, John. The girl's middle name was the same as that of her father's beloved mother, Elaine.3

  The life of the Gacys was almost storybook idyllic. Gacy appeared to be happy with his marriage, his work, and his social activities. Even his health was good. There was no more serious trouble with his heart, and no blackouts such as those he had told Marlynn about. Marlynn too was happy. She had two healthy children she loved, a pleasant home, and an industrious husband who was good to her. They fought no more than any other married couple, and he had never hit her.

  John and Marlynn Gacy quickly found that Waterloo was a nice place to live. Situated along the Cedar River in the middle of flat Iowa corn country 108 miles northeast of the state capital of Des Moines, it is the governmental seat of Black Hawk County, a mere seven miles from Cedar Falls, the home of the University of Northern Iowa.

  The people of Black Hawk County are midwestern friendly, helpful to newcomers, and hard workers. Like other Americans, they are good customers for the people who make it their business to sell fast food, such as Colonel Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  Being married to the boss's daughter may have helped Gacy obtain his job with the fried-chicken outlets in Waterloo and Cedar Falls, but it didn't mean that he would step immediately into a management position that would permit him to loaf while others did the work. He began learning the business from the ground up, sweeping floors, cleaning machinery, and cooking and packaging the fried chicken. The young man became an efficient manager, working on salary and commission. Twelve-to fourteen-hour days were not uncommon for him. Yet he still found time to join the Jaycees again, and quickly plunged headlong into club activities.

  His fellow Jaycees in Waterloo, like those in Springfield, were impressed by his enthusiasm and tireless energy. The new Waterloo Jaycee sent buckets of fried chicken to the local bo
ys' club. He built sandboxes to raise money for the Jaycees. He was one of the first to volunteer to shop for Christmas presents for underprivileged children. And he hosted big parties at home for his Jaycee friends.

  Spending as much time with the club as he did, most of his close friendships were formed from among its members. Gacy didn't believe in waiting months to gradually insinuate himself into the confidence and companionship of others. He attacked head-on, with florid compliments, gifts, and invitations to parties. In the Jaycees, where work went hand in hand with recognition and where almost everyone could win an award of some kind, he glowed. He reveled in the comradeship and excitement the club brought to him.

  "He was always working on some project and he was devoted to the Jaycees. The club was his whole life," fellow Jaycee Charlie Hill later recalled. "He wanted to be very successful and he wanted to be recognized by his peers. But that never bothered me. We all wanted to be successful."

  Steve Pottinger was to remember his onetime fellow Jaycee as having "a hell of a big man complex."4 Even in a community as friendly as Waterloo, the obsession turned some of his associates against him. But those Jaycees who didn't particularly like Gacy respected him, Pottinger insisted. "John worked his brains out, working for his father-in-law at those chicken places from early in the morning until ten or eleven at night," he said.5

  Another Jaycee, attorney Peter Burk, considered Gacy's obsession with braggadocio and lying to be disturbing. It irritated him when Gacy bragged of having been influential politically or of having been appointed to important committees by the governor of Illinois. It was obvious that many, perhaps most of the stories told by the fried-chicken entrepreneur were lies.

  Most upsetting of all to Gacy's comrades in the Jaycees was the fact that it didn't appear to bother him when he was caught in a lie. He just manufactured another. Even his wife Marlynn had realized that her husband constantly stretched the truth.

  Nevertheless, Gacy continued to do his best to ingratiate himself with almost everyone he met. When Jaycees were working into the night on a project, he frequently nudged open a door with his knee at ten or eleven o'clock, announced that "Colonel John Gacy" was there, and walked in with his arms loaded with fried chicken. As the others dug into the chicken, Gacy dug into the work, even though he may have already put in nearly two normal workdays. Most of the young men appreciated the late-night snacks, but others were suspicious of his continuous attempts to buy friends.

  They also bristled at the price they had to pay—listening to his stories of the years he had spent as a Marine, and of his experiences driving an ambulance in Las Vegas. They would have been especially dubious of his claims to having been a professional driver if they had known of his local driving record. He never had a reputation for patience behind the wheel, and picked up a handful of citations in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area for speeding and other traffic violations.

  A look at his powerful five-foot eight-inch, 210-pound frame helped make his claims to having been a Marine somewhat more believable. He was strong, full of energy, and a man who was fascinated with the paramilitary trappings of police work. The flashing red lights and siren on his station wagon were instruments that helped satisfy that fascination, and they also helped him to stand out among his peers. They demanded notice.

  Some of his Jaycee acquaintances were repelled at the policeman playacting, however, and remembered that he always became extremely upset whenever one of his fried-chicken outlets was robbed. Gacy considered it to be a personal insult that a bandit would be crass and reckless enough to rob a business he was involved in.

  When the Jaycees weren't busy on projects, Gacy and one or two of his other club brothers frequently dropped in after work at the Clayton House Motel where Charlie Hill was manager; there they could relax and smoke a good cigar and share a few drinks. For Gacy, that meant a couple of shots of J&B Scotch, on the rocks or with a splash of water. He rarely had more than three or four.

  These were good times for Gacy, and the only indication of unpleasantness in his life surfaced with occasional grousing about his father-in-law making him work too hard. He was also treated at a local hospital a few times, once for the flu, and twice after being involved in auto accidents—one seven-day period with whiplash and as an outpatient for bruised ribs.

  Sometimes when Gacy dropped in early enough to see his friend at the motel, he brought his children with him. He was an attentive father and never stayed too long if the preschoolers were along. At other times, when Gacy parked his station wagon or later his new Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser in the motel lot, Hill noticed that a teenage boy was waiting inside the car. That wasn't surprising because the fried-chicken outlets employed many teenage boys and girls, and it seemed natural that Gacy would occasionally give one of the youngsters a ride home.

  Some of the young employees were beginning to find it unusual, however. The best-looking boys most often got the offers of rides. And not all the boys would accept.

  Fast-food outlets are traditionally planned to make the most efficient use of the smallest amount of space possible, and those that Gacy was helping to manage in Waterloo and nearby Cedar Falls were no exception. It was unavoidable that while working around stoves and hot grease employees would occasionally suffer a minor burn.

  Employees soon began to notice that boys who turned down rides with Gacy walked especially careful around him when he was cooking chicken or fries. Somehow they, more than other employees, were likely to be splattered with hot grease.

  Other, uglier rumors eventually began reaching adults in the community, including some of the Jaycees. A few of the club members, mostly those who were already repelled by his boastfulness, began to make even greater efforts to avoid him.

  Others, like his friend Hill, who had become club president, either didn't hear the rumors or didn't believe them. There was nothing about Gacy's behavior around the Jaycees to indicate that his sexual habits were any different than anyone else's. He was an entertaining companion who enjoyed the company of other men, but if the subject of homosexuals ever came up he was among the first to sneer and belittle them.

  There were enough Jaycees who believed in Gacy to name him both chaplain of the Waterloo chapter and chairman of the group's first city-wide prayer breakfast. He capped his accomplishments with the club that year when he was named outstanding vice-president for 1967, and was honored as the best Jaycee club chaplain in the state of Iowa. He was ready to succeed his friend Charlie Hill as club president.

  He wasn't the only one who had his eye on the job. Peter Burk, who was one of the Jaycees whose suspicions of Gacy bordered on dislike, also aspired to the club leadership. Even Burk was aware, however, that Gacy had a persuasive personality that drew people to him.

  Gacy had meticulously constructed his political fences. He was a member of Hill's executive board, and, buoyed by the close friendship of men like Hill, Pottinger, and several others, he looked like the favorite in the contest. Life was still smiling on him. He had even given notice to his father-in-law that he was going to quit the fried-chicken franchises and go in business for himself.

  So on that spring night in 1968 when he got up from a chair in the front room to answer a knock on the door, neither he nor his wife suspected that their lives were about to be drastically changed. A policeman was waiting on the porch when Gacy opened the door.

  A Black Hawk County grand jury had indicted Gacy on May 10 for allegedly committing sodomy with a teenage boy, the policeman informed him. Producing a search warrant, officers confiscated five rolls of obscene movie film and an envelope containing advertisements for pornographic literature.

  Marlynn Gacy was stunned. There had never been anything in their marriage to indicate that her husband harbored a sexual preference for boys. He had been a good father and a good husband who worked hard and always applied himself wholeheartedly to whatever task he was faced with. If he was guilty of molesting boys, he had fooled his wife.

  Nonetheless,
two boys had told the grand jury that on separate occasions he either lured or attempted to coerce them into sexual encounters with him.

  James Tullery, a student at East High School in Waterloo, told investigators that when he was sixteen and working at one of the fried-chicken outlets in August 1967, Gacy invited him to his home for a drink, to play pool and to watch stag movies. Gacy's wife and the children were visiting in Springfield. According to the story as it was reconstructed by Tullery, the restaurant was closed at about 11 P.M., and he and his boss drove to Gacy's house. Gacy mixed him a drink and they began shooting pool. Just before the last game, Gacy suggested that the loser perform oral sex on the winner. The whiskey had begun to warm the boy's blood, but he wasn't drunk. Win or lose, he told the man he wasn't interested.

  Gacy laughed and treated the incident as a joke. After the game, he invited the boy to fix himself another drink. In the meantime, Gacy set up a screen and loaded a stag film into the projector.

  Sipping at the whiskey, the man and boy stared at the images of men, women, and animals coupling with each other on the screen. There were more drinks, and after a second film was shown, Gacy suggested that the boy walk upstairs. Gacy said he would join him a few minutes later.

  Tullery jerked in a spasm of alarm when Gacy walked into the room and leveled a kitchen knife at him. By that time, the boy was unsteady and sluggish from the effects of the alcohol he had consumed, and the knife was nothing to fool with even if he had been more alert. Slowly he allowed himself to be backed into a bedroom, and stopped only when the back of his legs brushed against the bed.

  Gacy lunged at him and the boy sprawled backward on the bed with Gacy on top of him. Tullery struggled to push the man off and the knife nicked him on the left arm. Blood poured from the cut, spreading over his arm and onto the bedspread. Tullery yelled.