John Wayne Gacy (6 page)

The black 1979 Oldsmobile that John Gacy drove, bearing license plate number PDM 42, was registered to PDM Contractors Corporation, as was the Chevrolet pickup with the snowplow attached.

Not a single friend or relative of Robert Jerome Piest had seen or heard from him since nine o’clock the previous evening.

Not a single friend or relative of Robert Jerome Piest considered him a likely candidate to run away from home. He had no recent troubles, no problems at school, no fights with girlfriends, friends,
or family. He was a good student, an athlete, a hard worker, and a responsible young adult.

Linda Mertes confirmed that she had spoken to Robert Jerome Piest about the fact that John Wayne Gacy said that he hired his new employees at a starting pay of $5 per hour. She had specifically, although jokingly, mentioned that Rob should get a job with Gacy.

Kim Byers confirmed that Robert Jerome Piest had told her that he was going to talk to some contractor about a job just before he left Nisson Pharmacy at approximately nine o’clock the previous evening.

Elizabeth Piest confirmed that Robert Jerome Piest had told her that he was going to talk to a contractor about a new job just before he left Nisson Pharmacy at approximately nine o’clock the previous evening.

John Wayne Gacy had been arrested and convicted for the crime of sodomy in Waterloo, Iowa, and had been sentenced to ten years in the Iowa Men’s Reformatory at Anamosa on May 20, 1968. He had been granted early release and had been paroled to Chicago, Illinois, on June 19, 1970.

John Wayne Gacy had been arrested and charged with aggravated battery and reckless conduct on June 22, 1972, in Northbrook, Illinois. This case had been dismissed.

John Wayne Gacy had been arrested and charged with battery on July 15, 1978, in Chicago, Illinois, Sixteenth District, and said charge was pending and unresolved.

Needless to say, John Wayne Gacy became the primary suspect in the disappearance of Robert Jerome Piest. There was evidence of both deviant and violent behavior in his past. As far as anyone knew, Gacy was the last person to see Rob. It was time to pay this guy a visit. It was time for Mr. Gacy to go on the record.

After a twelve-hour day, Officer Adams had family matters to attend to at home; however, he was replaced by Detective David
Sommerschield, who was brought up to speed by the other officers. Somebody said it. No one remembers who, but it got said; and unfortunately, all agreed:

“We have to get this motherfucker. This son of a bitch is either holding … or, more likely, has done something much worse to Rob Piest, no fucking question about it.”

Sometime around 9:00 p.m., exactly twenty-four hours since the last time anyone had seen Rob Piest, the four police officers piled into two unmarked squads—Kozenczak and Pickell in one, Olsen and Sommerschield in the other—and screeched out of the dark garage of the Des Plaines police headquarters, headed for the home of John Wayne Gacy. They had no clue what to expect when they arrived.

Rob Piest’s body remained resting silently in the attic above the hallway in Gacy’s house.

_______________________

M
ICHAEL
R
OSSI HAD
worked for PDM Contractors for about two years and, along with David Cram, had become a trusted and essential member of John Gacy’s contracting business and one of Gacy’s best friends, in spite of the nearly twenty years that separated their ages. Rossi had learned enough about the business to run jobs on his own, thereby freeing Gacy to take in more work. He had begun his employment as a green sixteen-year-old kid but had matured into an integral cog in the success of PDM Contractors.

As one of the perks of his job, Rossi was also allowed to use the company van, with the name of the company painted on the doors, as one of his personal vehicles. Rossi also drove a white 1971 Plymouth Satellite, which he had purchased from John. It was in the PDM van, however, with tunes cranked up and cigarette smoke billowing from the slightly open driver’s window, that Rossi arrived at Gacy’s house at about 9:20 p.m. as planned.

When he bounced into the circular drive in front of the house and the headlights of the van swept across the front yard, he noticed
two men standing at the front door of the house. One of the men had his hands cupped on the sides of his face and was looking in the small diamond-shaped window in the otherwise-solid front-entrance door. He also saw two matching unmarked Ford sedans parked in front on the narrow city street lined on both sides with parked cars. The two cars stood out.

Rossi, like everybody else on the planet, had often thought that if the police wanted some of their vehicles to be unmarked, to be “undercover,” they might want to throw a set of hubcaps on them or allow the manufacturer to put a piece of chrome here or there on the damn things. The two vehicles parked in front of Gacy’s house might just as well have had “police vehicle” painted in neon on the side doors. Rossi swallowed hard and wondered why two plainclothes policemen were standing on his boss’s front stoop. Not for any particular reason—he wasn’t doing anything wrong, not just then anyway—but Rossi just didn’t like cops.

A lone old-fashioned decorative streetlight burning on the front lawn of the house cast long shadows across the small yard as Rossi opened the creaking door of the van, exited the vehicle with a jump, crunched through the snow that blanketed the cold ground, and approached the two men. Christmas lights blazed on houses and in yards up and down the block. Gacy had yet to decorate. His house was noticeably dark.

“If you are looking for John, he won’t hear you. He is probably watching TV in the back room.” Puffs of condensing breath accompanied his words like tiny clouds due to the crisp, wet December air.

“Are you friends with Mr. Gacy?” Lieutenant Kozenczak asked.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Lieutenant Kozenczak. This is Officer Pickell from the Des Plaines Police.” Kozenczak showed a badge.

“I work with John, and we’re friends.”

“What is your name, sir?”

“Michael Rossi.”

Just then, Detective Sommerschield appeared. He and Olsen had been checking out the rear of the house. The detective signaled that Gacy was in the rear of the house. He had seen him through a window in the back.

“Mr. Rossi, I am going to ask you to wait here with these officers.” Kozenczak pointed to Olsen and Sommerschield. “Keep him here,” he said to them. “Jim, come with me.”

“Is John in trouble?” Rossi asked.

“We just want to ask him some questions.”

“Do you guys have a warrant?” Rossi sounded a bit like a brat, like he had watched way too many cop shows. This brought light chuckles from the officers. Then he was ignored.

What Mr. Rossi didn’t know or didn’t understand when he asked the question was this: The police can walk up to any person’s door anytime they want to, without a warrant, without probable cause, without an apparent reason of any kind, just like a Jehovah’s Witness or a door-to-door roof repair salesman can. They simply knock on the door and proceed to ask questions as they investigate a case, and they can ask for the citizen’s cooperation in their investigation. Often they are doing this to exclude or eliminate a person from their investigation. Sometimes they are hoping that a suspect will in some way slip up or give himself or herself away. However, when the police do act without a warrant, when they are at the early stages of their investigation, the cooperation by the citizen is voluntary. Therefore, the citizen can refuse to cooperate.

When the two officers identified themselves, Mr. Gacy flashed his patented ear-to-ear smile and invited them in.

“How can I help you guys?” Gacy asked without concern. “I heard you at the front door, but I had to take a piss. What’s up?”

Thus began the first of what would later prove to be many, many face-to-face conversations between officers of the Des Plaines Police Department and John Wayne Gacy. This particular conversation at times got slightly contentious. Mr. Gacy continued to state
with conviction that he had no idea who Rob Piest was, that he had not offered anyone a job, had not spoken to any employee of Nisson Pharmacy about a job, that he had been in the pharmacy on business and when that business was completed, he left, alone. He admitted that he might have asked a male employee if there was more shelving in the back room of the store, but he did not know the name of the employee, nor did he talk to him or anyone else outside the store. He was sorry that he could not be of more help, but that was all he knew. When he arrived home after he left the pharmacy, he was informed by telephone that his uncle was near death; later, his uncle died. That was what his attention was directed to for the remainder of the previous evening, and that was his primary concern at that moment.

Kozenczak and Pickell were not so easily convinced. They had statements from at least two persons indicating that the man sitting in front of them so comfortably in his big black recliner was the last person to talk with their missing kid. They also now knew Gacy’s criminal record. The conversation went around and around until Kozenczak began to suggest that Mr. Gacy accompany them back to the station to make a formal written statement. At this point, Gacy became emphatic.

“I have a goddamn funeral to plan, grieving relatives to attend to. I am waiting for a long-distance call from my mother in Arkansas at this very moment. Arrangements have to be made. I can’t leave.”

“Call her now,” Kozenczak prompted. “Call her right now, we’ll wait.”

Gacy, completely exasperated, feigned a call to his mother, knowing that she would not answer. “I have to wait for her call,” he said. “I’ll come down to give a statement later tonight if it means that much to you.”

“When can we expect you at the station, Mr. Gacy?” Kozenczak was not letting up.

“I don’t know … maybe in about an hour or so.”

“We will be waiting, sir. We need a statement from you. We have a job to do, Mr. Gacy.”

“Look, you guys can check out everything that I have told you. I was at Northwest Hospital last night, and then I was with my aunt who just lost her husband and her daughter who just lost her goddamn father. Don’t you guys have any respect for the dead?
”

As Officers Kozenczak and Pickell grudgingly left the house, they had absolutely no way of knowing that at times during their short visit to the home of John Wayne Gacy, as they walked around the house, they were standing just two and a half short feet below the body of the very boy that they sought and just two and a half short feet above the most gruesome makeshift graveyard that has ever been recorded in the annals of crime.

__________________

W
HEN ONLY ONE
unmarked squad car slowly pulled away and splashed through melting snow and ice on the unplowed, ice-rutted city street and one repositioned itself and parked on an intersecting side street, headlights off, Michael Rossi went to the back door and confronted his friend. “What the fuck is all this shit about, John? One of those fucking cop cars is still sitting out there.” Rossi had been slightly grilled about John by the two other detectives while they all waited out front on the circular driveway. “What do these son-of-a-bitching cops want? Did you do something?”

“Hell, no. They are just looking for some fucking kid, probably a runaway. I don’t know shit about it. They can’t find the fuckin’ kid, and they were asking for my help. Fuckin’ cops. What do they know?”

“Well, they were asking me a lot of weird-ass questions, John.”

“They’re cops. What the fuck do you expect? Wannabe suburban cops. Don’t pay them any attention. I’m gonna make some calls about this. They are going to hear about this from their superiors … motherfuckers.”

Rossi looked at his boss. He wasn’t sure what to think. Being friends with John Wayne Gacy was never all that easy. He told so many stories; it was always hard to tell the truth from the bullshit. If you believed everything he said, you would have to be an asshole. How could any one person be all of the things that he said he was? One day he was a special auxiliary cop on some secret assignment, the next day a mob guy with ties to the highest levels of “the Family.” It would be impossible. Rossi had learned to take his tall tales with a grain of salt. Rossi decided that he wasn’t going to worry about it at that moment, though. At least for now, it seemed that the commotion was over.

“Well, are we going to look for a tree?” Rossi asked, trying to put the events of the evening behind him.

“It’s too late now, but I’m gonna get the ornaments down from the attic. We’ll go tomorrow.” Then Gacy smiled. “Let’s fuck with them.”

“What do you mean? Fuck with who?”

“You said one of their stupid unmarked squads is still parked out there. Let’s fuck with them.”

Minutes later, as Officers Olsen and Sommerschield looked on, Rossi walked out to his van, got in, fired up the engine, and slowly pulled up along the side of the house, out of their view. Then he slowly backed up again and stopped. The two officers could not see what was happening on the other side of the van. Suddenly, both vehicles, the van and Gacy’s big black Oldsmobile, took off out of the circular drive and tore off heading east down Summerdale, spitting snow and ice and fishtailing as they went. It all happened so fast that the two police officers had no time to follow, and by the time they did shoot down Summerdale in pursuit, both the van and the Oldsmobile had disappeared into traffic on Cumberland Avenue and were gone.

Gacy aimlessly drove through neighborhoods without apparent purpose, and when he was sure that he was not being followed, he
returned home and got started. He had promised to be at the Des Plaines Police Department in about an hour. There was no question that he was going to be late … but how late? That would determine if the sons of bitches would be back sniffing around, being cops, making nuisances out of themselves. John was committed to go and give them their damn written statement, but he had some things to do first.

Once he was alone again, Gacy went out to his garage and picked up an old rolled-up orange rug that he had not thrown away, even though it had not been used for months and was worn and soiled beyond its usefulness. He lugged it into the house and unrolled it out on the floor underneath the attic trapdoor in the hall. He pulled down the trapdoor and climbed the telescoping stairs. He yanked and pulled at the inert object that had once been Rob Piest and positioned the body at the top of the stairs so that he could simply let it slide down by guiding it along on the rails of the ladder. He certainly had no intention of lifting the fucking thing down. That had really been a pain in the ass when he was putting the kid up there. He certainly didn’t look that heavy. He was a wiry little kid, for chrissakes.
I guess muscle really does weigh more than fat,
he thought as he guided the body down to the floor and onto the rug, grunting and groaning, spitting and perspiring as he did it, while his little dog looked on with head cocked, quite perplexed.