John Wayne Gacy (33 page)

In what seemed like seconds, Bob was approaching a full jury box. The throngs had returned from lunch and reassembled, filling the courtroom beyond its true capacity once again. All the jury members and their alternates were seated in their assigned seats
with what Bob perceived to be openly skeptical, hostile faces. Many seemed to be unconcerned or uninterested. It was Bob’s unenviable task to attempt to begin to pull together what would prove to be weeks of varied and confusing testimony and make it all understandable in a cohesive way that supported our theory of the case.

No place on earth is quieter than the quiet in a courtroom just before a lawyer begins an address to the jury. Whether it is opening statements or closing arguments, everyone in the room seems to be on the edge of their seats. An innocent cough from the gallery sounds like an echoing gunshot. Nobody breathes.

Such was the case when Bob Motta stepped forward to begin his opening statement for our case. This would be the first glimpse into the inner workings of the mind of the man who was accused of being the nation’s most prolific serial killer. The waiting masses would finally have the opportunity to hear what kind of defense this monster would put forth.

Bob began by asserting that something had gone sadly wrong during the development of John Gacy’s mind. He was controlled by an insidious, rapacious illness. He told John to stand.

“I will show you this man,” Motta asserted, pointing at his client. “He is a human being. He was born, held in his mother’s arms, nurtured, loved. Now he is the most despised man in the world. ‘Every man’s death diminishes me,’ he said, quoting John Donne, the man who famously said, ‘No man is an island.’” Bob felt very much like an island.

He named each of the twenty-two identified victims.

“The lives of those young men,” he said, pointing to the State’s gallery of grief, “cannot be replaced—the pain of the families cannot be measured or abated.” Bob was gripping the railing of the jury box, leaning in, a couple of feet away from the jurors in the front row. “Nothing is more precious than human life,” he pleaded, “but hatred and sympathy cannot play a part in the decision you must
make. Only clear, rational thought and the strictest objectivity can guide you—a very difficult task.”

Bob retreated a bit from the jury box. He began to pace and stalk the area in front of the bench in the well of the courtroom.

“Incomprehensible illness compelled him to the most horrible ends.” Motta’s voice bounced off the intricate crown molding high above his head in the ornate old courtroom and reverberated throughout its confines. “He understood, he planned, and he routinely killed, again and again and again.” These words hung in the room like a dense fog.

“Free will is of what I speak! Something was missing in Gacy, missing from his heart or his mind, some vitally important element that provides the ability to make choices: of right over wrong, morality over immorality, life over death.”

All eyes were on Bob. He knew that this concept, which was at the root, at the very core of our case, which he expertly espoused, was all too tough to accept for many people. In some cases, it was simply beyond them. It is so much easier, more comfortable to understand human nature in simple terms, biblical terms, the struggle between good and evil, the devil and the angels. Unfortunately, this sadly uninformed approach leaves out an explanation for so many of life’s common conditions: the unfortunate sufferer of cerebral palsy or Tourette’s syndrome, the epileptic, the stroke victim. The brain controls our every action. We know that. Even unconscious activities like the pumping of the heart, like breathing, would not occur without the steady support from the computer in our head. When the brain is broken, when the connection between our bodies and our brain fails, we no longer have the choice to do that which we so deeply wish we could.

The stroke victim would love nothing more than to get up and walk—hell, many would be content just to stop drooling, but they can’t, because their brain is broken. An epileptic would rather not pitch a fit on the floor of a downtown department store at noon on
a Saturday in front of a hundred shoppers. It’s embarrassing. But no matter how hard they wish it wasn’t so, or try to pray it away or valiantly attempt to fight against it, the inevitable happens, because their brain is broken. These people do not choose to do what they do. They do not choose to have their debilitating malady. They are just plain stuck with it, because their brain is broken.

Motta just hoped that his understanding of the natural order of things, the physiological truths, the psychological facts that exist whether we as a species like it or not could be transmitted to the twelve good men and women sitting, fidgeting, in front of him. He could not have cared less about what another person in that courtroom thought—just those twelve, but that was Bob.

Gacy didn’t choose to kill, he told them. “He was unable to choose. There was no choice to be made,” Bob said, adding that the choice had been made years ago.

“We have doctors, they will tell you in medical terms that Gacy is crazy and that he is controlled by the darker side of human nature, the basest part of man—that in normal people either never surfaces or is entirely absent. They will tell you of disease that causes the vilest of human behavior, uncontrollable and savage. Men of common decency fear to admit it can exist in the human heart. Men fear such horrors; they have been warned not to look into the abyss where they may themselves … become what they see!

“You must not succumb to fear! You will not be condemned for saying the truth—and if you believe Gacy is crazy, then say so. Fear will be a powerful force dictating that this man be excised from humanity, cut out like a cancer.”

Motta pointed at our client as he strode closer to the jury box. He approached the railing between him and those twelve, grasped the rail, and leaned in.

“Use all your strength to fight the fear!” he screamed a soft whisper. He looked at the strange little man that we were both representing; he stole a glance at me and then returned his gaze to the jury.

“I ask you to look into the abyss. If Gacy acted out of chronic mental illness, then under our law he is not responsible for his acts. If the disease stripped him of free will and he killed, he must not be destroyed. Is there not one among you that can see past this shroud of death and come to grips with what you must do? You won’t like it. The darker side of you will demand revenge despite his illness. You must not allow this to happen.”

He closed by saying, “Don’t see through anger. See clearly. Use cool, sound judgment, because if you decide that he must be punished rather than treated, that will be far more irrational than any act he has committed or could commit. I thank you.”

As Bob Motta took his seat next to me, I realized that he had failed to elaborately thank the jury for their attention, a common courtesy that lawyers usually extend. Instead, just the simple “thank you.” Lawyers will usually go on and on about how much they appreciate the jury’s service, et cetera, et cetera, as they probably should.

I looked at him. I knew him. I could see that he wasn’t convinced that these jury members, our jury members, were capable of seeing past a very powerful emotional desire that is in us all—the desire for revenge. He wasn’t concerned about his opening statement. He had covered every base, addressed each and every issue, every point of order. He was concerned about them—that disparate group that had been plucked from their lives in distant Rockford to sit in judgment of our client. What he saw in the faces of that distracted and seemingly disinterested panel worried him. It would be a tragedy if those people had already made up their minds, like much of the rest of the world had.

28

T
HE MORNING OF
February 7 saw the first witness for the prosecution walk to the witness stand, sit, and face the jury. Judge Garippo quite uncharacteristically ended the previous day’s proceedings early, immediately after Bob finished his opening statement. This would not happen often.

The circus atmosphere, the crowds, the unprecedented attention given to this case continued unabated both inside and outside of the courtroom. TV trucks and reporters had taken up residence on every sliver of available real estate and on streets surrounding the outside of the courthouse, and cables connected to men and women with microphones filled the halls inside.

Marko Butkovitch, the father of young John Butkovitch, was the first person to testify in the
Gacy
case. He was also the first person in a long parade of life and death witnesses called by the State. A life and death witness is usually the person who last saw the victim alive. One after another—relative after relative, friend after friend, person after person—walked up to the stand to testify about the last time they saw their lost loved one. As you might imagine, there was a significant amount of tears flowing. This is, of course, perfectly understandable. What else would the family members and survivors of a young boy do? The pain that they must have felt is unimaginable.

Bob and I always considered this as one of the toughest aspects of the case. Nobody wants to cross-examine grieving family members about such a tragic event. It is hard enough to do it just once; imagine doing it over and over again.

However, we had a job to do, and do it we would.

We asked a precious few questions of most of the immediate family members; but other persons, friends for example, were considered more or less fair game. After all, we had offered to stipulate to all of the life and death witnesses and the evidence to which they would testify, but the prosecution team would not agree to the stipulation.

Let me state that in another way. Bob and I, as the attorneys for the defendant, offered to forgo any right to challenge any claim made by the life and death witnesses. We agreed to stipulate to their testimony, thereby alleviating the need for any of the family members to testify at all. That would have saved them from that painful experience. After all, our defense did not hinge on that testimony. We were admitting that the victims were dead and that our client killed them.

The prosecution team would not stipulate, however; they would not agree to any stipulation of any kind regarding this phase of the trial. They insisted on the live testimony of the witnesses. Why? Well, the answer to that question is quite simple. They wanted those poor people to cry on the stand in front of the jury. They wanted the sympathy that would be elicited by their testimony.

Don’t ever let anybody ever tell you that a murder trial isn’t a war, that it isn’t pure unabashed hardball. And don’t let anyone ever tell you that one side is more sensitive to the feelings of human beings than the other. A trial is an all-out battle, no holds barred. Each side fights to win, and each side has its casualties.

That is why I didn’t have a problem with the cross-examination of Donita Gannon.

As a courtroom brawler, I know from experience that if you can bring into question the credibility of any one of the witnesses that
your opponent puts forth, it casts a shadow of doubt on the credibility of all the witnesses that your opponent puts forth. It stands to reason that if your opponent is willing to knowingly put one person on the stand that you can expose as an obvious liar, he or she might be willing to put others up on the stand that are willing to lie as well. Makes perfect sense, right? Let’s face it, I didn’t come up with this theory of trial practice all on my own. It is a time-honored tactic that has been used by trial lawyers for centuries.

So when Donita Gannon sashayed through the huge oak doors at the rear of the courtroom and every head in that courtroom turned to watch this stunningly attractive Asian woman approach the witness stand, I was ready for her.

She was clearly aware of the attention that was being paid to her. You could see it in her walk, in her eyes, in her overall demeanor. Every eye in the room followed her as she strutted her stuff toward the jury box, outfitted in a standard-issue “little black dress” and black patent leather high heels. Her long black hair, with an extra high glossy sheen, bounced behind her. She was a piece of work. She seated herself on the witness stand.

John Gacy nudged me, whispering frantically, “It’s a …,” he started to hiss. I gave him a stern look and a quick “Shhhoushhh!”

After the witness was sworn in, Bob Egan stepped up to conduct the direct examination on behalf of the State. He began, “Would you state your name and spell your last name for the court reporter, ma’am?”

“Donita Gannon, G-a-n-n-o-n.” She smiled demurely.

Egan took her quickly through questions that elicited testimony that she and Timothy O’Rourke, one of the victims, were close friends, that they lived together in an apartment on the North Side of Chicago, and that she had last seen her friend in front of their home on Dover Street and Lawrence Avenue. It was all quite touching. When Bob Egan said, “No further questions,” everyone in the courtroom was left with the impression that they had just
heard the testimony from a grieving girlfriend about her deceased boyfriend.

Judge Garippo turned the witness over to us for cross-examination.

I approached the witness and asked the following questions and received the following answers:

Q. Miss Gannon, is it Miss or Mrs.?

A. Miss Gannon.

Q. How long has your name been Donita?

A. Since—

Bob Egan was immediately on his feet. “Objection, Your Honor, I don’t see how that is relevant.”

I shot back, “That is relevant.” I was glaring at Bob Egan. He knew where I was heading.

Garippo looked down at both of us with a scowl. Lawyers were supposed to know that they were not to address each other; they should address all arguments to the court. They rarely remembered this rule. “The objection is overruled,” the judge said sternly.

I returned to Ms. Gannon.

Q. How long has your name been Donita?

A. Since March … 1977.

Q. What was it before that?

A. Don Ganzon.