John Wayne Gacy (46 page)

As he continued, Bill shifted his focus from the psychiatrists and the physiologists and on to some of my specific arguments.

“Counsel talked about the Des Plaines police investigation. How can the defendant eat in the dining room with a body under the floor? Well, how do the guys at the morgue have lunch every day? One of the psychiatrists told you, how do the medical students chew on a sandwich that came out of the refrigerator with a cadaver? They get used to it. John Gacy got used to bodies. He was used to killing. He was comfortable with both.

“Why would he invite the cops in without a warrant? He knew they didn’t have a warrant. He knew they weren’t going to go down into the basement and start digging, or go up in the attic and start chopping. The same bravado, the same con man that he was always. ‘Come on in the kitchen, let’s talk.’ That’s not out of character for John Gacy in the least. The concern for the uncle … his program wasn’t working. He was being his charming self, and they were still hanging around, they weren’t leaving. ‘Let’s get them out of here, get this over with. I have played enough, now let’s go on to something else.’ That is not inconsistent with his character. Remember that sociopath, that narcissist that is worried about his own hurts. He was worried about his own hurts, like in the comic record
The 2000 Year Old Man
, he was asked—a two-thousand-year-old man was asked to define tragedy and comedy. He said, ‘Tragedy is when I cut my finger, and comedy is when you fall in a manhole and die.’

“Well, that’s the way a narcissist thinks. That’s the way John Gacy thought. When it is his relative that is dead, when it is his wife that is involved in sexual problems, then it matters.”

Kunkle continued to attempt to refute specific aspects of my closing argument. He was standing directly in front of the jury, making his claims, selling his side of the story. It was when he moved toward the easel with the pictures, the gallery of grief, that the courtroom and everybody in it found out what his plan was with reference to that little piece of demonstrative evidence.

Bill began to speak specifically about individual victims. He proceeded to give his theory of the case with reference to how he and the rest of the prosecution viewed the evidence, specifically as it pertained to how each victim died and in what order. He used a map of Gacy’s property to show where and when bodies were found by police investigators.

“The defendant,” Kunkle asserted, “tells us that on January 3, 1972, he picked up a young man in a Greyhound bus station and took him home. And through guile and cunning and talking about sexual acts and ‘Let’s have a good time and let’s party.’

“And he remembers all of these conversations with details. He takes the young man back to his house on Summerdale, and they perform different homosexual acts. His recollection is that in the morning the young man comes at him with a knife as he is waking up. He takes the knife away from him and stabs him to death. Now, body no. 9, stab wounds of the ribs, verified by the radiologist. That’s the first victim. He tells us he buried him under the house. Remember the testimony of his wife Carol? Carol said when she moved in, there was an odor in the house. It came from the sub part of the house, this area.”

Bill Kunkle was pointing his finger and speaking his words with great emphasis. His passion was welling up.

“She complained about it. She kept complaining about it. There was some lime mentioned. And then she said, ‘I want you to take care of it. I want something to be done!’

“And while she was away—I believe she was in Minneapolis—the defendant poured some concrete in the crawl space. He puts the concrete over body no. 9 to get rid of the smell, the only body in the crawl space with concrete over it. That confirms or corroborates his statement that the killing was on or about January 3, 1972, before Carol moved into the house.”

He began to become more and more animated. He was speaking faster, moving back and forth between the map and the easel, that
easel baring all those pictures. As he finished speaking about a particular victim, he would remove their picture from the easel.

“Later, at her request, he pours the concrete, and for a while the smell gets better. In his statements, he talked about a second victim before John Butkovitch, the next known victim. He said that he had that victim standing up on his head in the closet, and the blood drained out and got on his carpet. And he didn’t make that mistake again. And that’s when he started stuffing rags in their throats because he didn’t want to mess up his carpets. At one time, in one of his statements, he referred to one of the small maps that the police officers had and said he thought the second one was no. 8.

“I think he was wrong in that statement. I think the second one was no. 28. And I will tell you why. Twenty-eight is under the asphalt out in the garage, put in about 1976; 28 also under a couple of layers of concrete; 28 also out in the back, out by John’s private domain, the garage. If no. 28 was killed anytime between the time that Carol moved into the house and the time that she moved out, well before Butkovitch was killed, wouldn’t it be logical for the defendant—at three o’clock in the morning, protected from view by his ten-foot hedges and the neighbors’ garage and so on—to come out here in the back in his private area and bury that body in the yard that he knew was going to be asphalted over? You see, there are only three bodies with concrete over them. As John was learning and as John was practicing, John got rid of the smell here on no. 9 with some concrete, put Butkovitch under concrete. I think it’s likely to assume that the one in between, also under concrete, also in back in his private domain, was no. 28.

“Third, John Butkovitch, July 31, 1975. Keep in mind the defendant has supposedly killed unknown body no. 9, and possibly at that time unknown body no. 28 as a result of this snowballing compulsion, this building terror, this conflict within himself over his homosexuality. Well, that’s back in 1972, before 1975. And then on July 31, 1975, he kills John Butkovitch. And what does he say about
killing John Butkovitch? He wanted to quit. ‘He came over to my house and said I should give him his check. He wanted me to give him the money for the work he did for me. He threatened me, and I threatened to call the police. And he left. Later on, I went cruising. I found Butkovitch and took him back to the house. I managed to get the handcuffs on him. He threatens to kill me if he ever got loose. So I killed him by strangulation. I tied a rope around his neck with two knots, placed a stick as a tourniquet behind his neck; and as he struggled or hyperventilated, he strangled himself.’

“Now, that’s what he said about killing John Butkovitch on July 31, 1975. Does that sound like
a brief psychotic episode to you? Does that sound like an uncontrollable rage attack? He needed a piece of rope in the house. His tools and his other stuff were out in the garage. But he had a two- or three-foot length of rope ready in the house. Butkovitch wanted to quit him. He wanted money. He wasn’t about to give it to him. He went out and found him—remember the testimony of Mr. Butkovitch? When John Butkovitch first went to Gacy’s house to tell him he was quitting and asked for his paycheck, he went with two friends—witnesses, witnesses. He told him at that time he wanted his money, he wanted to quit. Well, Gacy must have had the compulsion. This is what triggered the rage attack, the brief psychotic episode. He must have killed him right there in front of the witnesses. He didn’t do that? No, he went out in the dead of night at two or three in the morning, midnight, whatever, found him, took him back to the house alone.

“‘I got him into the handcuffs.’ He didn’t say he wrestled him down to the ground and put the handcuffs on him. He did it the same way he always did it, the way the living victims on the stand told you he did it, the way that Eddie Lynch told you he did it with the chain all the way back in Iowa in 1967—with talk, with con, with guile, with cunning. Put the cuffs on him. And Butkovitch said, ‘If you let me out of these cuffs, you are a dead man.’ And John Gacy killed him. It’s not a rage attack. It’s not a rage attack. It’s not a brief psychotic episode. It’s not a product of a mental disease or defect. It’s murder. Buried him, no. 2, under concrete out by the shed.”

Kunkle snatched the picture of John Butkovitch off the easel and added it to the others he was holding. He was beginning a pattern, very deliberate. As he finished speaking about a victim, the picture came off.

“Next, April 1976, Sampson, no. 29. Look on the map for 29, under the dining room.”

The skilled prosecutor was leading the jury through the house, “discovering” each and every single body, one at a time. And with each discovery, another picture was added to the stack in his hand.

“After the time Carol was out of the house, the children were out of the house, John was in the house alone. Remember that that dining room and the den, the family room addition, was on the house when John bought it. You remember the testimony of the investigators about recovering that body? Do you realize the work that was required to bury that body under that dining room which was already there? Through the carpet or whatever the top floor surface was, through the flooring, the subfloor, digging in between two floor joists to dig out that grave, put the body into it, cover it up. They told you there was some ceramic tile over the top of the earth when they got to it and it gave way. Well, which one of John’s remodeling projects was that? Was the tile from the kitchen, tile from the bathroom remodeling? Working on the dining room? Do you rip up all those materials and replace them in such a way that no one ever notices anything wrong with the dining room floor? Do you do that while you are having a rage attack? Do you do that while you are having a brief psychotic episode? Do you do that when your underlying paranoid schizophrenia erupts?

“May 14, 1976, Samuel Stapleton, no. 6.” Again, Kunkle was pointing, telling a gruesome story, telling his version of the story.
Mr. Kunkle was slowly getting louder and more emphatic. He was on the verge of breaking his promise to the jury that he would not be as loud as I was.

“Almost in the same grave, bones intermingled with each other. Randall Reffett, May 14, 1976; June 3, 1976, Michael Bonnin, no. 18. Right here … June 8, 1976, Michael Johnston—I mean, Rick Johnston, no. 23. Then bear in mind, 23, 24, 26, 22, 21—all in the same trench!”

He ripped picture after picture from the easel. The number of pictures of dead teens and young men was growing in his left hand. He clutched them, waved them around. He moved between exhibits, the members of the jury gawking.

“Bear in mind that the numbering system used by the sheriff indicates the order of recovery, so that a higher-numbered in relation to a lower-numbered body means the higher number was underneath. OK? So, we have Johnston, no. 23. We have 26, 22, 21, and 24. Twenty-two is William Carroll, June 13, 1976 … 24, 26, and no. 21, all in the same grave.”

Picture after picture came down as he spoke their name or, in some cases, their number. Soon he was holding them all in his left hand, waving them as he continued. Now the easel was empty and the victims were all together.

“At the beginning of my remarks, as some of the other attorneys have said before, we are not asking you to show sympathy. You cannot—no matter what you do, you can’t bring back these lives!”

Kunkle raised the stack of victims’ pictures high over his head as he shook them for emphasis. The passion in his voice was apparent. He held them there for a beat … then he held them out and showed them as a group one last time to the transfixed members of his jury.

“Don’t show sympathy,” he bellowed, raising the pictures again. “Don’t show sympathy. Show justice. Show justice!” Bill’s voice
was reaching a crescendo. “Show the same sympathy and pity that this man,” he spat this out his words while pointing at John Gacy, “showed when he took these lives … and put them there!”

While speaking, Kunkle swept his arm and his accusatory finger away from Gacy and across the courtroom. He was pointing directly at the horrific gaping trapdoor to the crawl space with a shaking fat index finger, the pictures of the dead victims raised high over his head. He took two short steps toward the crawl space and unleashed the entire stack of pictures into that dreadful, horrifying, ominous, cavernous black hole.

I gulped. I heard various muted gasps from behind me … then silence. I think I lied before. That expression “You could hear a pin drop” was actually created for this moment in time.

No one talked, or budged.

Kunkle silently repositioned himself back in front of the jury. His voice returned to conversational tones.

“Mr. Egan told you at the close of his remarks, ‘If there walks on this earth a man as evil as John Wayne Gacy, then God help us all.’

“Well, you don’t have the power to change the past … the villains and the fiends that have walked this earth before him. And there is no doubt that there will be some that will walk after. But you can—you can control the future for this fellow. You can affect the present. You can do justice for all the people of the state of Illinois. You are their conscience. You are the People of Illinois now, and you must fulfill the oath that you gave as jurors! You must not allow John Gacy to use you! If you allow this evil man to walk this earth … this man … then indeed—God help us all!”

The silence in the courtroom was fading. People started shifting and whispering. Not a man to stand on ceremony, and in an effort to move things along, Judge Garippo broke the silence and launched into the next order of business.

He explained to the jury that he was about to instruct them as to the law. Without a lunch or a break, Garippo began reading the
jury instructions. He figured that they would all have a nice long lunch while they began their deliberations.

The jury instruction phase of the case was tedious but necessary. The judge read from printed sheets, with one instruction per sheet. It took what seemed like forever, and then as quickly as it began, it was over.

Then the judge simply excused the jury to go deliberate.

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