The Man Who Killed Boys

by Clifford L. Lindecker

  Czarna was one of the first of Gacy's associates to become aware that his friend was in trouble when Gacy drove to his house in a rented car to complain that police were persecuting him and trying to tie him to a drug offense. Police even parked a few yards away and watched as Gacy sold Christmas trees near an area shopping center, an enterprise he had undertaken for two or three years. The Czarnas believed him when he said he was innocent, and they sympathetically agreed that the around-the-clock surveillance would be nerve-wracking. They were his friends and they listened as he talked of his troubles and joked sarcastically about his police "bodyguard." He was worried that police would get another search warrant and "break in" his house again, and feared that they might be inside even then or have already been inside and left. Czarna couldn't understand Gacy's distress about a search. There should be nothing to worry about if there was nothing to hide, he reasoned.

  Nevertheless, Gacy continued to fuss and worry until Czarna finally agreed to drive to the house and check inside just to put his friend's mind at ease. Gacy handed him the keys to the rental car and prepared to wait for his friend's return. A police car slid from its parking place and followed the cement contractor as he drove the half dozen blocks to Summerdale, pulled the vehicle into the rear driveway, and parked. The police car stopped in front. The house hadn't been searched again.

  The next day, Gacy knocked at the Grexa's back door. He had some specifications to drop off for a job involving marble installation that Ed Grexa's boss had bid on. Lillie answered the door. Her neighbor was hollow-eyed and drooping.

  "I should have been here earlier with these, but I've been kind of busy," he apologized, as he handed the plans to her.

  "Yeah, what's going on?" the woman agreed, nodding her head in knowledgeable assent.

  "Well . . .I got company wherever I go. I even had to hire bodyguards," he joked.

  When Lillie asked him why he was being followed, he replied that the police were trying to tie him to a murder. It took a moment for the remark to sink in. Then she remembered hearing that one of the boys who worked on her neighbor's construction jobs for a while had disappeared. "Is it that kid that used to work for you?"

  "Oh, no. Not him," Gacy said. "He's in another state." Gacy indicated that the trouble was drug-oriented, but emphatically denied that he had anything to do with drugs and said the whole incident was a misunderstanding. He knew how strongly she was opposed to drug abuse. Then he apologized because he had to leave, but before turning to go, he told her, "If anyone comes and asks any questions, just refer them to my lawyer." He gave her his attorney's name and office numbers, and told her not to worry because the trouble would all be over soon.

  The search for the missing boy was taking other avenues as well as the surveillance of Gacy. Dogs and a Coast Guard helicopter were called out to comb portions of the forest preserve and along the banks of the Des Plaines river in the northwest suburban area. Robert's family and friends circulated flyers with pictures of him throughout Des Plaines. Some were left near the cash register at the Nisson Pharmacy. He was described as having medium-length brown hair and wearing a tan T-shirt, tan Levi pants, and the blue jacket. Several people responded with information that they hoped would be helpful, and policemen were assigned to check out the data for workable leads.

  Gacy, meanwhile, took the offensive against the people he claimed were tormenting him, by filing a $750,000 civil-rights suit in U.S. District Court in Chicago against the city of Des Plaines. He asked for an injunction to halt all investigations and sought damages for mental anguish, loss of reputation in the community, deprivation of liberty, and loss of personal property. Specifically naming Chief Alfano and other officers, he claimed that he was being harassed by Des Plaines police and accused the Illinois Bureau of Investigation of participating in the abuse. He and his attorneys were apparently unaware that the state agency had been defunct since 1977, when its functions were assumed by the Division of Criminal Investigations in the State Department of Law Enforcement. The name of Sam Amirante, Gacy's acquaintance from the Norwood Park Township Lighting Commission, appeared on the suit with that of Stevens. It was also Amirante whose name Gacy had given to Lillie Grexa.

  The contractor complained that his right to privacy had been violated and he had been exposed to illegal searches and seizures during the investigation. His vehicles were improperly seized and held and he, himself, was detained on December 13 from 1:30 to 9:45 P.M. Police were additionally accused of harassing his friends, employees, and associates by detaining and questioning them.

  Gacy's attitude toward the policemen who were trailing him blew hot and cold. He alternately shot photographs of them, led them on long rambling car chases in apparent efforts to lose them, and invited them into his house. In the early evening of the day the suit was filed, Gacy approached two officers parked in a police car near his driveway and invited them into his home. Officer Robert Schultz, an eight-year veteran of the department, recognized the heavy cloying odor pervading the house the moment he stepped through the kitchen door. Temperatures outside were near zero and the furnace was on, emphasizing the stench of putrefied human flesh. It settled over the rooms like an odiferous blanket. It was an odor that Schultz had smelled dozens of times before at the Cook County Morgue and on other occasions when he was near the cadavers of people who had been dead for some time. The odor of human tissue that has putrefied clings to a room or enclosed space like gangrene.

  Czarna was beginning to feel some of the pressure of the intense investigation focusing on his friend. He was interrogated for the first time on the same day that Schultz was invited into Gacy's home. Detectives told him they were investigating the disappearance of the Piest boy and wanted to know if Gacy was a homosexual, if he was known to be violent, and how he treated his employees. The affair was becoming more and more frustrating and difficult for Gacy's friends, and Czarna's irritation was beginning to surface. A police car had been parked outside his own house several times, yet his friend kept assuring him that the investigation was a terrible mistake and that everything would soon be cleared up. Police questioned more than one hundred people during the first four or five days of the investigation.

  The pressure on Gacy was also mounting. When Des Plaines detective David Hachmeister relieved other officers and picked up his shift of surveillance one minute after midnight on December 21, he had been with the department's youth division only three days after serving six months in the department's tactical unit "Delta." Hachmeister took over his shift with a partner outside Amirante's law offices in Park Ridge, across the Des Plaines River, a few miles southeast of the town of the same name. Temperatures were again near zero, and Amirante walked out to the car and invited the policemen inside. He motioned them to chairs and poured hot coffee, explaining that Gacy was asleep on a couch in an inner office.

  By 8 A.M., the plainclothesmen were back in their car when Gacy lurched from the office, apparently highly disturbed and agitated. He climbed into his car and roared out of the driveway, with the officers behind him. The car ripped through speed zones and continued erratically along busy streets until the policemen finally pulled him to the curb and warned him to drive more carefully.

  Gacy nodded his head and drove away again, slower and more carefully, heading southeast to a Park Ridge service station near the Niles town line. As the policemen watched from about six feet away, he stepped out of his car and took a plastic bag of what appeared to be marijuana from his pocket and stuffed it into the pocket of one of the station attendants. The officers did not make an arrest at the time despite the virtual invitation because they were still hopeful that Gacy would somehow lead them to Piest. Gacy walked inside the station to talk to the owner, but left a few moments later and drove the few blocks to his house.

  He stayed only long enough to take his little gray dog across the street and leave him with neighbors, Sam and Jennie De Laurentis. They were curious and asked him why he was being followed by police cars. Ever
yone in the neighborhood was aware that he was involved in something serious.

  "They're trying to pin a murder rap on me," he said.19 Then he joined the couple laughing at the seeming preposterousness of the idea. When he stopped chuckling, he said he would nevertheless appreciate it if they would keep Patches with them until he could get the matter straightened out. It was odd, he said, but the dog was nervous and didn't appear to like being left alone in the house anymore. That night Sam De Laurentis opened the door to talk to a neighbor and Patches scampered outside. He never came back.

  It was a few minutes after 10 A.M., and Czarna was in the washroom when Gacy pounded at the door. Lydia Czarna let him in and was appalled by his haggard appearance. His eyes were sunken deep under his brows and shone wildly from his tired sallow face, which was darkened by at least a day's growth of whiskers. He looked worse than she had ever seen him and he was moaning, "I've been a bad boy." Perplexed, she motioned him to a seat at the kitchen table. He had barely sat down when he asked for a drink of Scotch. That was surprising because lately he had been turning down drinks, explaining that he was trying to lose weight. She had never seen him drink so early on a workday.

  Czarna had walked into the kitchen and was staring at his friend. "John," he finally asked, making no attempt to hide the exasperation in his voice, "what's your problem?"

  Gacy reached for the glass on the table and lifted it to moist lips, his trembling hand causing the ice to clink as he swallowed deeply. He set the glass back down on the table and turned to Czarna. "The end is near," he intoned, his voice cracking.

  "What the hell are you talking about, 'The end is near'?" Czarna exploded.

  "The end is near," Gacy repeated.

  Czarna couldn't figure it out. It sounded like his friend was expecting to die. "What are you gonna do, kill yourself?"

  "No," said Gacy. "They're trying to pin a murder rap on me." He sipped the Scotch again, got up, and began walking toward the door. Czarna asked where he was going and Gacy replied that he had a job to do.

  "I thought you had something you wanted to tell me," Czarna spluttered. Gacy walked outside without answering but immediately turned and walked back in. The words were forced out in a hoarse croak as he approached his friend. "I killed thirty people," he said, "give or take a few."

  Czarna was stunned, but managed to ask who the victims were. "Bad people," Gacy said. "They were blackmailing me. They were baaaad people." Leaning his head on Czarna's shoulder, he began to cry.

  By 10:55 A.M., Gacy had left his bewildered friends and driven again to the service station, where he stayed a few minutes before heading to the home of David Cram. Rossi was also at Cram's house. Both youths had lived with Gacy for a time. As he entered the house, the policemen overheard him tell Rossi, "I'm glad you could make it. Come inside. This is the last time you'll ever see me."

  Rossi left the house alone at about 11:30 A.M. About fifteen minutes later, Cram left with his friend and former boss. Before getting in the car, Gacy approached Schultz, who was tailing him by that time, and announced that Cram was going to chauffeur him "if it's okay with you." Schultz was puzzled that Gacy would ask him but indicated that he had no objections.

  Gacy added that he and the youth were going to a restaurant in northwest Chicago for lunch, and the policemen followed them there. Gacy slid from his seat and began walking to the restaurant, but as he reached the door, he apparently changed his mind and returned to the car. Cram walked to the police car and leaned toward the window to talk to Schultz. The boy appeared to be frightened. "We're going to Maryhill Cemetery," he said. "John wants to say good-bye to the grave of his father."

  Schultz noncommittally nodded his head. "Don't you guys know?" Cram asked. "When John was with his attorney all last night, he admitted to him that he had killed at least thirty people. He's practically suicidal. I hope you stay close to us."

  The man and the boy never reached the cemetery. Unknown to them, Schultz was notified by radio moments after talking to Cram that other officers had been ordered to arrest Gacy for possession of marijuana, a charge stemming from the incident at the service station. Less than five minutes after Cram drove away from the restaurant, officers from the Des Plaines Police Department, Cook County Sheriff's Department and the Illinois State Department of Law Enforcement, Division of Criminal Investigations, stopped the car and took Gacy into custody. A companion charge of possession of a controlled substance (Valium) was later added to the marijuana offense. During arraignment in Circuit Court, bail was set at a total of one thousand dollars on the two counts. Until his arrest on the drug charges, Gacy had still been free on nominal bail awaiting action on the misdemeanor charge filed earlier in the Rignall case.

  In a Chicago restaurant early Thursday evening, December 21, Florence Branson consulted the cards again. Czarna had asked his wife to have a reading on his behalf. He was worried that he would be drawn deeper into the legal problems of his friend, and he wanted to know the true nature of Gacy's troubles. Although the Czarnas were not directly involved, the reader advised, there was serious trouble affecting a person close to them. The problem involved drugs and the disappearance of someone. The advisor warned that their friend was shady, dishonest, and had an obsession that had entangled him in the predicament. His distress would grow still greater.

  At about 7 P.M., the Grexas noticed police cars again collecting in front of the house next door. Another search warrant had been obtained and Des Plaines's and Sheriffs police returned to the house with Gacy. This time, Ed Grexa didn't bother to go next door to ask what was going on, and the family spent most of the evening at the back of their house where they had their family room and television.

  Investigators had already looked through all the rooms in the house, including the attic, and they told Gacy that it might be necessary to rip up the flooring in their search for the missing high school student. Obviously alarmed, Gacy blurted out that he had killed a man in self-defense. But it wouldn't be necessary to rip up the floorboards of the house to find him.

  Gacy said he had buried the body under his garage and offered to show detectives the location of the makeshift grave. Flanked by Assistant State's Attorney Lawrence Finder, a half dozen policemen and his own counsel, Gacy led the group to the garage, where he pinpointed the burial site with an "X" drawn on the concrete floor with spray paint.

  Instead of immediately breaking up the concrete, the investigative team returned to the house for a look at the crawl space. A few minutes later, everyone understood why Gacy hadn't been anxious for them to poke around under the flooring.

  Back in Des Plaines, Gacy was complaining of chest pains, and fire department paramedics were called. His blood pressure was checked and was slightly high. He was taken on a stretcher to a local hospital, examined more closely, and returned to the police station the same evening.

  Investigators worked into the night. At 10 P.M., Cook County Medical Examiner, Dr. Robert J. Stein, answered his telephone in north suburban Highland Park. He is traditionally an early riser who plans to be at his office near the Cook County Hospital by 5:30 or 6 A.M. on weekdays, and a few minutes later he would have been in bed. The telephone call changed that.

  "There's a body or something in the crawl space of a ranch house near Norridge," a sheriff's policeman told him.20 Stein telephoned an aide and instructed him to bring disposable coveralls and meet him at the house in Norwood Park township. Almost a dozen law enforcement officers were waiting when he arrived. Sheriff Richard J. Elrod had designated Deputy Chief Richard Quagliano and Lieutenant Frank Braun, head of the Major Investigations Unit, and others, to work with the town policemen because Gacy's house was in an unincorporated area and the investigation was reaching into various jurisdictions within northwest Cook County.

  Officers repeated the information that remains of at least one human body had been found in a crawl space, and led Stein inside the house. He was met by an odor familiar to anyone who has worked with dead bodies. It wa
s a death house. As soon as he had slipped on the coveralls, Stein dropped through the trap door into the dankness below. An evidence technician pointed to material that appeared to be human hair. At the other end of the tunnel, another technician called out that there was a bone for Stein to look at. The yellow beam of a flashlight illuminated skeletal human remains of at least one human being. Bones that had been part of two human arms were uncovered. Other suspicious mounds were crowded elsewhere in the dark space.

  Stein crawled out of the tunnel and sat down at a table for a conference with other law enforcement officials. The medical examiner is in legal charge at the scene of any death he is investigating. It was quickly determined that efforts to recover the remains would be postponed until the following day. At that time, Stein said, the bones would be disinterred as carefully as if the site were an archaeological dig to insure that all possible evidence was preserved. He ordered the house sealed overnight and guards posted.

  While Stein and other investigators were preparing to continue their probe of the nauseating horrors of the thirty-by-forty-foot crawl space, the man police believed to be responsible for the atrocity was still talking at the Des Plaines police station. He had engaged Amirante as the second attorney to represent him, and the thirty-year-old lawyer was present during questioning. Sheriffs department officers were standing by along with Des Plaines police. Assistant State's Attorney, Terry Sullivan, chief of the Northwest Suburban Divison and County Sheriff's Investigator, Greg Bedoe, who was assigned to the State's Attorney's staff, were also helping with the interrogation.

  The tightness had been closing in on Gacy more intensely every day and he appeared to be relieved that the chase had come to an end. Investigators confronted him with evidence they had been collecting, read him his rights, and he made a rambling verbal confession. By early Friday morning, he had confessed that he had murdered at least thirty people. He told of using his experience as a clown, offering to show his victims "a trick" to lure them into permitting themselves to be handcuffed, and after they were helpless, sexually abusing them and forcing them to perform unnatural acts. He killed them by moving behind them and throttling them with a rope or a board that he held at both ends and pulled back against their throats.