John Wayne Gacy (34 page)

Q. Don?

A. Yes.

It actually took several seconds for the inhabitants of the courtroom to absorb what they were hearing. Suddenly, it seemed to communally sink in. The beautiful woman that everyone in the room had been openly ogling … was a man! A he-she, as Gacy had eloquently called Donita. There was a collective silent gasp.

Q. What was your name when you met Timothy O’Rourke?

A. He started knowing me as Donita.

Q. He knew you as Donita.

A. Yes.

Q. You say Don. Is the long name of that Don or Donald? What name did you have, Don or Donald?

A. Don

Q. Don?

A. Yes.

Q. When did you meet Timothy O’Rourke?

A. May 1977.

Q. How long have you been a female?

Egan shot to his feet once again. “I don’t see the relevancy here, I will object.”

Garippo had on a look of total fascination. He waved his hand, as if to sweep Egan aside, without even looking at him, and said, “Overruled.” I could tell he wanted to hear the answer. He was riveted on the witness, as was everyone else in the room. I asked the question again.

Q. How long have you been a female?

A. I am in the process of [becoming] a woman.

Q. So when you met Timothy, you were not a female, were you?

A. That is right.

Q. Where did you meet him?

A. I met him at a party.

Q. Where was the party?

A. The party was on Broadway and Surf Street.

I went on to ask questions about their meeting, general background questions. The jury and the gallery were paying attention now, if they weren’t before. Everyone in the room had realized that
it was true: Black could be white, up could be down, an original perception could be just plain flat wrong. That was my purpose. I wasn’t interested in embarrassing this poor little woman, or man, or whatever. For obvious reasons, I needed to show how wrong an original perception could be.

“Where was he the last time you saw him?” I asked.

“He was in front of our house on Dover and Lawrence.” Ms. Gannon was angry with me by now. Her eyes shot poison.

“You were living with him?” I continued.

“Yes,” she spat.

“Did you plan to marry him?”

“He was just a friend,” she stated with emphasis.

“So, you were not in love with him?”

Egan had had enough. He wanted this to stop. He jumped up. “Objection, how is that relevant?”

Garippo agreed. “Sustained,” he said, with a look that told me to move on.

“Were you in love with him?” I persisted.

Egan raised his voice. “Objection!”

Garippo glared at me. “Sustained,” he said again.

I began walking toward the bench. Egan was right behind me. “May I approach the bench?” I said quickly

While Egan, the judge, and I were having words, Ms. Gannon answered the question, ending our discussion.

“I was not in love with him,” she exclaimed.

I continued to ask questions pertaining to a statement Ms. Gannon had made to some investigators. No new or significant information came to light. I was wrapping up my cross.

“Have you had the sex-change operation yet?” I wanted to ask if she still had a dick under that pretty little black dress, but I thought better of it.

“Objection!” Egan was standing.

“Sustained,” ruled the judge.

“No, I haven’t,” Donita Gannon, or Don Ganzon, again volunteered.

“That means you are still a man?” I shot back.

“Objection, again!” Egan was apoplectic.

“Sustained,” Garippo stated. “You don’t have to answer.”

“Say that again,” the witness was saying.

“You don’t have to answer the question,” Garippo reiterated, with a sharp look in my direction.

I felt that it might be time to change the subject.

“Did you ever hear of a bar called Blinkers?”

Ms. Gannon had calmed down some. “Yes,” she answered.

“What kind of bar is Blinkers?” I asked.

Again Egan was on his feet. He was not going to allow me any slack. “Objection to the form of the question,” he said.

“She may answer,” the judge ruled.

“What kind of bar?” I prompted. I was almost done.

“It is predominantly a gay bar,” she responded.

“No further questions.” I hoped I had made my point.

“Nothing further.” Egan had no redirect. He then said, “Thank you, Ms. Ganzon.” He called her Ganzon, her old name, her man’s name. I thought that was funny.

“You may step down,” the judge said without expression.

As Donita Gannon walked back down the aisle and out through those huge swinging oak doors, she seemed to have lost a bit of the swing in her step. Once again, every eye in the courtroom was glued on her, but I am not so sure it felt as good as it did during her grand entrance. If she was embarrassed, I’m sorry. But like I said before, this was hardball. That woman had stood there at the outset of her testimony with her hand on a Bible and sworn to God that she would tell the truth, when, in fact, she was living a lie. Although it was not her fault—it was probably just a cruel trick of nature, like hurricanes, tornados, pestilence, or the like—her life was one confusing, tragic, incomprehensible lie, just like my client.

I hoped someone on the jury got that.

29

T
ESTING IN THE
trial continued. One after another crying, devastated witnesses testified on the stand; a couple of them became so emotional that the judge had to momentarily stop the proceedings for fear that they might collapse. Those fears were all at once realized when a woman named Bessie Stapleton, the mother of fourteen-year-old victim Samuel Stapleton, fainted dead away upon being shown a bracelet that had belonged to her son by Mr. Egan. She uttered the words “God, why,” exhaled loudly, and slid like a piece of wet spaghetti toward the floor of the witness stand. The woman was helped from the courtroom by the sheriff’s deputies, and order was restored, but not before the incredible heartbreak and grief of this aspect of the proceedings had been amply demonstrated.

Many of the witnesses’ names were the same as those represented on the State’s gallery of grief—fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers of the deceased. Some, however, were close friends. Often, it was a close friend that was the last person to see the deceased. There was a reason for this. The largely unspoken truth that hung in the air like a thick, silent haze was this: Many of the victims had long ago left their homes or, in some cases, were kicked out of their homes due to conflicts with their families over their perceived lifestyle choices. The majority of the victims were homosexual. Not all,
but most of them were male prostitutes, and the others clung precariously from the fringes of society. The incredibly enormous and truly tragic elephant in the room were the eleven nagging question marks posted as victims on the gallery of grief. There they sat, below the pictures of the identified victims, from time to time throughout the entire trial—eleven unidentified victims.

One can’t help but wonder why. There was not a nook or a crevasse or an isolated burg or tumbleweed-swept town at the very end of a long lonely road in the farthest reaches of this nation that had been immune to the relentless press coverage that was attendant on this case. For month after month, every newspaper, radio, and television outlet across this land and abroad reported the horrendous events that took place in the obscure, unincorporated Chicago suburb. They couldn’t help themselves. The story was captivating. Twenty-nine young bodies in a crawl space; a strange, gregarious minor politician, contractor, and part-time clown the suspect; pictures of him and the First Lady; male prostitutes as victims; killings that took place over a span of two years; thirty-three victims in all—how the hell could they possibly resist?

Motta and I were interviewed almost nightly, the prosecution team as well, the police, the mayor, the neighbors, former coworkers, prison mates, fellow Jaycees, girlfriends, wives, friends, foes, you name it—the press considered it an angle on the story. You could not hide from this news story if you actively tried to do so.

On top of all that, forensic pathologists and scientists had actually reconstructed the skeletal remains of the unidentified victims in such a way as to recreate their facial structure, and through computerized technology, they created computer-generated likenesses of these victims. You could see what these kids had looked like. These images were broadcast night after night on national television networks and reprinted in newspapers from sea to shining sea.

So the nagging question remained, unspoken and unexplained. Was there not another set of parents out there that looked up from
their morning paper or their evening news broadcast and asked each other, “I wonder if one of those kids is our Johnny?”

That question remained unanswered, and remains unanswered still.

This sad fact led Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner, to state publicly that these unidentified kids “were not runaways … they were throwaways.”

This whole unspeakable facet of the case served to further muddy up and complicate the issues. We couldn’t touch this at trial because we felt it would look as though we were trying to imply that the victims in general did not warrant the attention they were getting, that they were all just society’s outcasts. Of course, nothing could have been farther from the truth. We believed that every human life was sacred and had merit, including our client’s life. We were fighting for that life with everything we had. That was the truth. Yet we had to sit and watch the prosecution drag in every available tearful face to yank on the heartstrings of every member of that jury, and we really couldn’t do very much about it.

However, somewhere toward the end of this heartrending parade of life and death witnesses, the State wheeled in a wheelchair-bound accident victim straight from the hospital. Her name was Mary Jo Paulus. I always thought that they had gone a little too far with her. She was in agonizing pain, both physically and mentally. She cried on cue during her testimony; but on cross, Motta got her to admit that the State had purposely withheld pain medication with some excuse about how she should not be under the influence of drugs on the stand. Bob also pried information out of her that some other person named Weedle was the last to see the deceased victim, William Kindred. So what was she doing there in the first place? Why did she have to be there at all, considering her condition? Where was Mr. Weedle? Wasn’t Mr. Weedle pathetic enough as a witness? I don’t think that played well with the jury.

Like I said, this was hardball. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different.

After the life and death witnesses, the State began to put on persons that were involved in the case at the very beginning. Phil Torf, Kim Barnes, Linda Mertes, and others told the jury about the earliest moments of the story as it unfolded back at Nisson Pharmacy, Gacy’s construction estimate, the forgotten appointment book. Jurors were transported to the night of December 11, 1978, and into that now-infamous drugstore in Des Plaines, Illinois. Linda Mertes spoke about how Rob Piest talked to her regarding his interest in the construction job. Kim Barnes testified about the photo receipt and how she had stuck it into the pocket of the blue down jacket that Rob had let her wear because she was cold at the cash register.

The story progressed as the State began to call to the stand the police officers that had investigated the case, the detectives that had followed John Gacy undaunted for days on end, the men that, through diligent effort and tireless hard work, had brought the defendant down.

Through these witnesses, the jury began to hear the story that they were promised in Egan’s opening statement, only this time they were hearing it from the stand and under oath. The crying seemed to be over, and the actual participants were setting the nuts and bolts of the case forth methodically and dispassionately. As the story progressed through the officers’ testimonies, you could see in certain jurors’ eyes that they were fascinated by tales of how the police had chased Gacy all over the northwest suburbs at high speeds, how Gacy had begun telling the officers in advance when and where he was going, how he would invite them into his home for drinks and food, and, especially, how the police and Mr. Gacy sometimes drank together in bars, with John introducing them as his bodyguards. Mouths dropped when they were told that Lieutenant Kozenczak and Officer Pickell were in Gacy’s house while Rob Piest’s body rested silently in the attic, and many of the jurors
looked upon John with disdain and bewilderment when they heard about his indignant statement to Kozenczak: “Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”

A week of trial had passed in the blink of an eye, with more drama promised in the weeks to come.

30

T
HE JURY CONTINUED
to hear the story unfold during week 2 of the trial. Early Monday morning they were treated to the rather gruesome story of the disposal of young Rob Piest’s body, together with the events that occurred on Gacy’s way back from that bleak, eerie bridge. If they had not decided this already, this morning’s testimony may have informed them to keep their future breakfasts light.

Minor sparks flew when the tow truck operator, Robert Kirkpatrick, recounted the entire incident concerning Gacy having run off the road on Interstate 294; but he could not make an in-court identification of John, who was seated in the defendant’s chair right next to me, as the man that he had seen in the big black Olds 98 that night. The State called witness after witness intended to fill in the blanks for the jury regarding how they saw Gacy. Business associates were called to testify that he ran a successful business. Others testified that he was a competent worker. The State was offering their theory that Gacy was a normal guy without an apparent mental defect.

They also put on some evidence regarding our client’s drinking habits and his drug use. It was their theory that John did not do drugs or drink to excess, and there was some testimony offered to
support that proposition. Various Gacy acquaintances testified that Gacy was not a big drinker, and that, although he smoked pot, took Valium occasionally, and maybe popped a pep pill from time to time, these habits did not interfere with his ability to do his job, pay his bills, or live his life.