by David Nelson
To defend John Wayne Gacy, his lawyers brought out a long stream of boyhood friends and family members. However, to begin, they first brought Jeffrey Rignall, one of his many “living” victims to testify about a night in March 1978.
With his psychiatrist in the courtroom, Rignall testified about waking up at the foot of the Alexander Hamilton statue half-dressed and his face burning. Rignall was not far from his apartment on Wellington Avenue, where he arrived not long after with some help from concerned passersby, to the shock of his roommate.
She helped him to bed, where he slept for the better part of the next day, until she returned to phone the police to report a rape.
When police arrived, they initially thought his roommate had been the victim. “They took me to St. Joseph’s Hospital, joking and laughing all the way,” Rignall stated.
Rignall detailed his own investigation, how he staked out the ramp at Cumberland until he saw a car resembling the one owned by the man who’d attacked him. He followed it to Summerdale Avenue and eventually took his information back to the police.
“At that time, they asked me if I was gay,” Rignall testified. “I was honest with them. I said yes. From that point on, I got no cooperation at all.”
Despite that, the police eventually sent away for a copy of Gacy’s mugshot from Iowa, which arrived at the station several weeks later. Among hundreds of photos, Rignall picked out his attacker. “I will never forget his face,” Rignall said, adding later, “That was John Wayne Gacy.”
His frustration with the investigation continued, even as police had a potential suspect. “They began to make me believe I was the crazy one,” he said, “that [Gacy] was a quote-unquote model citizen.”
After the investigation went nowhere, Rignall wrote a letter to Gacy. He even went so far as to knock on the door to confront him.
Instead, Gacy’s mother answered. She said her son was out, getting the dog “clipped.” She asked if he was coming to a party that evening.
“Are you kidding me?” Rignall replied.
Although it seemed Rignall’s testimony was damning for Gacy, the prosecution had decided against calling him as a witness due to a book account of Rignall’s attack, 29 Below. The defense instead chose to put him on the stand, where he could attest to Gacy’s behavior as “beastly” and “animalistic,” in an effort to steer the jury toward insanity.
Throughout his testimony, Rignall showed visible signs of discomfort, sometimes bordering on tears, shaking as he recounted his attack. Describing the scene of the event, he began to call out for his psychiatrist, sitting in the audience. Rignall suddenly vomited, and court was recessed.
“That’s John over there smiling at me,” Marion Gacy said, identifying her son, now a defendant in a murder trial. She was seventy-one and had arrived at court with the aid of a walker.
Now, she walked through her son’s life up until that time, detailing the health problems he’d had almost from birth, including fainting spells and a heart condition. “I was told by the doctor,” she said, “[he] didn’t expect him to live.”
Looming large in Gacy’s life was his father, John Sr., whose abuse targeted everyone in the family, but especially Marion and John Jr. After work each day, John Sr. would go down into the basement where he would talk to himself and drink heavily until dinnertime. In fear, his family would wait for him to come upstairs and join them at the table, where a minor infraction could turn into a blowout.
The police came one evening when the violence inside the Gacy home grew loud enough to attract the attention of neighbors. Rather than offer help, police told Marion to take the kids somewhere safe. She stayed briefly with her brother for a few days, until he told her, “I can’t afford to keep two families.”
She remained with her husband, John Sr., until his death in 1969, an event which haunted their son, John Jr., imprisoned in Iowa at that time.
Of her son, the prosecution asked, “Would you characterize him as an honest young man?”
“Yes, I would.”
Before his mother stepped down from the stand, Gacy was permitted to embrace her. During the trial, this was the only moment he revealed any emotion.
His sister, friends, neighbors, all of them came forward—though not without hesitation—to discuss their interactions with Gacy. Lillian Grexa, who lived next door, spoke about a Christmas Eve delivery of a basket of fruit to her home. Carole Lofgren, his second wife, recalled how her daughters referred to Gacy, their stepfather, as “Daddy.”
Bill Kunkle had had plenty of experience pulling apart insanity defenses. In preparation for the parade of psychiatrists and psychologists that came forward for the defense, Kunkle continued brushing up. “I had copies made of every article written by any of the defense witnesses, as well as ours,” Kunkle noted. “We kept a data bank in the state’s attorney’s office at the time of all psychiatric testimonies and transcripts.”
Dr. James Cavanaugh, the founder of the Illinois Forensic Psychiatry Association, and a witness for the prosecution, provided textbooks to Kunkle and the team. “You have to keep the jury awake,” Kunkle said. “You wait for that moment in the courtroom when a witness says something that no one’s expecting that’s totally absurd and you hear either dead silence or that ‘Uh!’ in the courtroom. By that point you’re hoping that the eyes of the jury … all go to you.”
Kunkle and his team made sure they kept their rebuttal or questioning of some witnesses short in order to keep the jury engaged, although that was not always easy with complex mental health diagnoses like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia being bandied about. Nevertheless, Kunkle found the jury fully engaged throughout all testimonies.
As part of their rebuttal, the prosecution brought in another of Gacy’s “living victims.”
Donald Voorhees, now twenty-seven, had been attacked by Gacy when he was only fifteen back in Waterloo, Iowa. The defense protested, stating that Voorhees had “ditched” them when they’d sent investigators to Iowa to speak with him.
Judge Garippo agreed to let them speak with him for a few minutes while the court recessed. When they reemerged, however, the defense indicated Voorhees had admitted to hardly remembering the attack, and that he did not feel competent enough to testify.
The judge agreed to a questioning outside the presence of the jury. Much like Rignall, Voorhees’s stress was immediately apparent. Both Judge Garippo and Egan encouraged him to speak up at times.
“I am totally bent out of shape, you know—”
“Do you mean you are nervous at the idea of testifying in this case?” Egan asked.
“Yes.”
Egan quickly wrapped up at that point, though the defense swooped in.
“Are you seeing a psychiatrist or anything like that?” Motta asked.
“Yes, sir,” Voorhees stated. “I am.”
When Motta asked for details, Voorhees shut down. Twice, he did not reply.
“Did you have any medication today?”
“No,” Voorhees answered, “I drank one beer for breakfast.”
In a sidebar, the defense team urged for a psychiatric evaluation of Voorhees. Sullivan conceded that Voorhees was “slow” and “affected by this,” but he could still testify competently.
In the presence of the jury, the prosecution made another attempt. They went through Voorhees’ employment with Gacy leading up to a moment when Gacy asked him if he wanted to watch pornography in his basement over a glass of bourbon. “What did he tell you?”
“He commented on the antiquated sex laws of Illinois and that he was doing a study to repeal those laws or to—I’m sorry, I need a drink of water.”
Egan continued. “What took place?”
“He came onto me sexually,” Voorhees explained.
But Voorhees’s testimony continued falling apart, and the jury again was removed. Egan tried once more in their absence.
“What did Gacy do to you that day?”
Voorhees did not reply.
“Do you remember?”
“Not specifically,” Voorhees said, “no, I do not.”
Voorhees was eventually withdrawn, his testimony stricken from the record. But the prosecution had other victims.*
Edward Lynch, now twenty-eight, recalled his 1967 attack. “He grabbed me by the neck and shoved me on a mattress,” stated Lynch, who, much like Voorhees, had been shown pornographic films by Gacy when he was only sixteen.
Robert Donnelly, who’d been attacked only days after David Talsma had been murdered, testified how Gacy had picked him up at gunpoint on Lawrence Avenue in Uptown. With handcuffs around his wrists, Donnelly arrived at the Summerdale house, where he would soon undergo a horrific night of torture.*
Donnelly stammered through his testimony, admitting to talking “slow” at times. When shown a photograph of Gacy’s recreation room, he muttered, “Please, please, please, please …”
Judge Garippo called for a recess.
“This is hell,” Donnelly said, “this is hell.”
He continued speaking minutes later after the recess ended. He discussed candidly the rape and torture Gacy inflicted upon him, passing out periodically as Gacy choked or dunked him in a tub full of water. At times, Gacy put a loaded pistol to his head, pulling the trigger to the sound of an empty click. When the gun did finally go off, Donnelly realized it had been loaded with blanks.
“Aren’t we having fun tonight?” Gacy asked at one point.
“Why don’t you just kill me?” Donnelly begged.
“I’m getting around to it,” Gacy replied.
For whatever reason, Gacy decided not to kill Donnelly. Instead, he drove Donnelly back to the city, dropping him off downtown. Although Donnelly went to the police, Gacy claimed the problem had arisen after he’d neglected to pay for the consensual sex. The police took Gacy’s word over Donnelly’s, leaving him to wander among countless others whom Gacy had tortured and left alive for reasons only known to him, all of them powerless to bring their attacker to justice.
For a little over a month, the trial continued. Many of the families attended every day, listening to the sometimes mundane tidbits of Gacy’s life juxtaposed against the sinister details that no doubt left them wondering what exactly their loved ones had experienced at 8213 Summerdale Avenue.
As the trial moved toward a conclusion, Gacy himself declined to take the stand. “I don’t feel I could add anything to something that I don’t understand myself,” he stated.
On March 11, 1980, Terry Sullivan began the prosecution’s closing argument by telling the jury, “On Thursday, March 13, two days from now, John Mowery would have been twenty-three years old.… On Sunday, March 16, Robert Piest would have celebrated his seventeenth birthday.”
The prosecution team closed their case by highlighting Gacy’s past and underscoring the futility of the insanity defense. “He knew what he was doing was wrong,” Sullivan said, “and he nevertheless did it and then, furthermore, covered it up.”
After four hours, Sullivan finally neared the end. That morning, Kunkle instructed Sullivan to put the photos back up in the gallery of grief. Sullivan proceeded, “If you find him not guilty, then do so … in spite of Body No. 2, Medical Examiner No. 1065, found with a clothlike material in his throat. Male, white, five-nine, 150 pounds. Last seen July 29, 1975, Chicago, Illinois. Identified December 29, 1978, as John Butkovich.” Sullivan did this for each victim one at a time, until the gallery was again complete—from Darrell Samson to Robert Piest.
For the defense team, Amirante implored the jury not to base their verdict on emotion and instead, think of Gacy not as an evil man, but as someone manipulated by his own past. He acknowledged Gacy’s crimes, but stated they’d clearly been the work of a madman.
“You should not consider sympathy,” Kunkle countered, as he began the prosecution’s final statement. Instead, he asked them to look the facts presented once more. He reiterated that Gacy had planned and covered up the crimes—why did he not just run over John Butkovich with his car, or kill Piest in the middle of Nisson’s Pharmacy?
By then, the statement had begun to crescendo. “We are not asking you to show sympathy,” Kunkle said. “No matter what you do, you can’t bring back these lives.…”
At this point, Kunkle walked over to the gallery of grief, and over several minutes of silence, ripped each photograph from its place.
“Don’t show sympathy,” he yelled into the courtroom. “Show justice!” With the photographs now in hand, Kunkle rounded upon the jury once more. “Show him the same sympathy and pity this man showed when he took these lives and put them there—”
Kunkle threw the photos straight for the crawl space hatch, yawning open on the evidence table near the jury. Some of the pictures went flying, some scattered to the floor with their young faces staring upward, landing at the feet of the jury who would decide their killer’s fate.
“There was a big gasp,” Kunkle recalled. “Then absolute pin-drop silent.”
He concluded, “If you allow this evil man, to walk this earth, this man, then indeed God help us all.”
With that, the trial of John Wayne Gacy went into deliberations.
“You’re always nervous,” Kunkle said. “Juries can do a number of things. They can do the wrong thing, they can do the right thing, they can do the right thing for the right reasons, they can do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.”
There is never any certainty to a verdict. In some instances, it can come the same day, in others, several days.
While they waited that first day, Kunkle and his team headed down for a drink at Jean’s, the popular bar for attorneys to gather as they waited for their clients’ fates. The defense team was present too, and the two sides congratulated each other on the end of the trial.
In less than two hours, the prosecution team had hardly managed to finish a drink or two before they heard a verdict had come in. The team scrambled back into the courtroom, which was now alive with a nervous, hopeful energy.
Judge Garippo urged everyone present to hold any emotional outbursts in check.
The jury returned, and the foreman stood for them. He passed along the verdicts to the bailiff who gave them to the clerk.
Thirty-five indictments. Thirty-three counts of murder. One count of indecent liberties with a child. One count of committing deviant sexual assault. Thirty-five verdicts.
They began where the murders had ended.
“We, the jury, find the defendant, John Wayne Gacy, guilty of the murder of Robert Piest,” the clerk recited.
“I remember after the verdict was guilty,” James Stapleton said, “everyone started cheering. It got really loud and everyone was happy and cheering, and the judge got mad and started hitting the [gavel].”
“We, the jury, find John Gacy guilty of the murder of James Mazzara,” the clerk continued. “We, the jury, find John Gacy guilty of the murder of Frank Landingin.”
Timothy O’Rourke.
William Kindred.
David Talsma.
Tommy Boling.
Robert Winch.
Russell Nelson.
John Mowery.
Robert Gilroy.
Matthew Bowman.
Jon Prestidge.
John Szyc.
“All these people who had been crying for six weeks, started clapping and cheering,” Patti Szyc said about hearing the verdict. She recalled looking at her mom. “That was so not courtroom behavior, that was the first thing that went through my head. The second thing was … [they’re] now happy that somebody else’s brother, somebody else’s son is gonna be killed? I’m not saying he should have been set free.… I’m not saying whether or not he should have died.… I’m just saying nobody had the right to be happy.… I felt terrible.”
The jury continued:
Gregory Godzik.
Rick Johnston.
William Carroll.
Michael Bonnin.
Randall Reffett.
S
amuel Stapleton.
Darrell Samson.
John Butkovich.
The rest too—eleven unidentified victims—were all guilty verdicts. The two sex charges: guilty.
Kunkle later learned that the jury had spent most of those two hours not deliberating but individually signing each of the verdict sheets.
Some family members hurried from the courtroom to get away from reporters. On the front page of the Chicago Tribune, a photograph of Elizabeth Piest rushing out sat below the words GACY FOUND GUILTY.
Others reveled in the verdict.
Only a day later, families and attorneys gathered for sentencing. Although the death penalty in Illinois had been briefly voided from 1975 to July 1, 1977, twelve of Gacy’s thirty-three murders made him eligible.
After two more hours of deliberations, the jury returned again: John Wayne Gacy would die for his crimes.
Again, the families and prosecution team were jubilant. “You took the most precious thing in my life away from me,” Esther Johnston told the Tribune.
“I hope he burns in hell,” Dolores Vance stated.
Bill Kunkle had tried to keep his distance from Gacy throughout the investigations and trial proceedings. “I wanted to be sort of a cipher for him,” he recalled. “He had this belief that he could control everybody and outsmart everybody.… I just wanted to remain a mystery for him.”
But when the bailiff approached him after the sentencing to tell him John Gacy wanted to speak with him, Kunkle agreed.
He found the convicted murderer in back in lock up.
“What’s up, John?” Kunkle asked.
Gacy went into a rant that praised both teams yet cast himself as a victim. He went as far as to say the jury did the right thing finding him guilty but not in giving him the death penalty.
“Really, why not?” Kunkle asked.
“They didn’t hear the whole story,” Gacy said.
“John, I’ve got nothing to do for the next three weeks,” Kunkle told him. “You wanna sit down and tell me the whole story?”
Gacy laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Kunkle said, turning to leave. “I’ll see ya at the execution.”