John Wayne Gacy (8 page)

I finally called assistant state’s attorney Terry Sullivan. Terry was the supervisor of the Office of the State’s Attorney in the Third District. Essentially, he was my counterpart; he was the chief prosecutor in that district, I was the chief public defender. We had worked on several cases together and had become friends.

Terry’s a great guy, a big tall lanky guy with a head of thick, wavy reddish blonde hair, a great smile, very disarming, lots of Irish charm. However, if you made the mistake of underestimating Terry in a courtroom, he would crush you like a bug. I had seen him do it.
It was fun to watch some hotshot defense attorney who thought his shit didn’t stink get his hat handed to him by Terry. He was a tough prosecutor and a good lawyer.

After making a few preliminary calls, I heard that Sullivan was becoming involved with the
Gacy
case and was conversant with the facts. I figured he could help me.

At first, we exchanged small talk. He asked me how I liked private practice so far, general chitchat. He immediately clammed up, however, the moment he knew that I was calling about the Gacy matter.

“Your guy is dirty, Sam. We are on him for this, and he is going down.” Terry was not kidding around.

“Terry, this guy is involved in democratic politics—he’s a damn precinct captain in Norwood Park, for chrissakes. He is a successful businessman. Everybody knows this guy. You are making him out to be some sort of hide-in-the-shadows kind of pedophile creep.”

“That’s exactly what I am making him out to be, Sam. He’s a bad guy, a real bad guy. I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you that.” Sullivan was adamant.

“Look, if it turns out that you guys are right, it will all come out. But in the meantime, you guys are ruining his reputation. You are ruining his business. And all of this is based upon mere suspicion, because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. All we are asking is that you back off on the surveillance a bit, at least until you know more.”

“We know plenty now, Sam.”

“But you can’t tell me what it is, right?” I was quite sure that Terry was using an old prosecution trick: Pretend that you know more than you do, and perhaps your opponent will let his guard down and give up information by accident.

“That’s right. You know how this shit works, Sam. I can’t jeopardize my investigation. It’s nothing personal.”

We volleyed back and forth without any kind of progress. Now I was truly curious and determined to figure out what was going on.

“You do realize that you are probably forcing me to file a lawsuit against Des Plaines and all of the coppers involved. This is harassment, Terry, plain and simple. We will get a TRO. I cannot speak for my client without discussing it with him first. But I can tell you that I will be recommending it. I have no choice, Terry. You are leaving me no choice.”

“You do what you have to, Sam.”

Terry Sullivan knew that I would not make such a claim unless I meant it. Still, he was not talking. We were running out of things to say to each other. I had determined one thing for sure. Something serious was brewing concerning my new client, Mr. Gacy.

“Keep me in the loop as much as you can, OK, Terry? I’ll send you a courtesy copy of the lawsuit if and when we file it. ”

“You know I will, Sam.”

Herb Volberding was the mayor of Des Plaines. I knew him through my work with the Democratic Party in the northwest suburbs. He took my call. When I was done talking with the mayor, one thing was clear: Gacy needed a lawyer. For whatever reason, there were forces that were targeting him for the disappearance of this teenager, and they were quite unmoved by arguments to the contrary.

When I spoke to him by phone, Mr. Gacy was very upset. He told me that his house had been searched, that he had been kept in the Des Plaines police station for a period of time, very much against his will, and that the police had seized two of his vehicles. Funny, Sullivan must have forgotten to mention all of that. I told Mr. Gacy to come into my new office at 222 S. Prospect in Park Ridge.

When he walked into my office on Friday, December 15, 1978, at 11:30 a.m., Gacy was no longer just the political wannabe that told his tall tales and hung around the fringes of the Democratic Party in Cook County; he wasn’t just the semisuccessful contractor
and founder of PDM Contractors; he wasn’t just the precinct captain that had brought in more votes for the Democratic Party organization of Norwood Park Township than any other precinct captain; he wasn’t just the registered clown, Pogo, that marched in parades and made little sick children laugh; and he wasn’t just the primary suspect in the disappearance of a local teenager, one Rob Piest, who, for the record, I still believed was a victim of circumstances. Now he was something very different. Now he was only one thing to me: Now he was my client, my first.

___________________

G
ACY
A
PPEARED IN
my office with that ear-to-ear smile of his as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was upset and indignant that he had been subjected to what he considered mistreatment by the Des Plaines police, but he seemed unconcerned about the potential consequences of these activities, what all this might ultimately mean to him, not unlike what one might expect from an innocent man.

We quickly caught up regarding mutual acquaintances and routine jibber-jabber concerning local politics and politicians. This part of the conversation, the small-talk part, was over very quickly because we both knew why he was there. I got the impression that he knew this matter was serious, even though he was trying his best not to act like it.

“So, John, I don’t know of a more pleasant way to put this. I am not going to try to sugarcoat what I am about to tell you. It is clear, after having talked to several people regarding your concerns about being followed, that you are, without a doubt, a target … let me rephrase that—you are
the
target of an investigation being conducted by the Des Plaines police regarding the disappearance of a local teenager, Rob Piest. Now, why don’t we start by you telling me why they might think that you have something to do with this?”

“This is bullshit, Sam.”

“I know, John. I know it is bullshit. But there has to be a reason why these coppers, and at least one very persistent, very capable assistant state’s attorney, have locked on to you the way they have, and I need to know what that is. Why don’t you just start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened?”

Gacy muttered and grumbled something about how he was an important man and this was a travesty, an outrage. He wasn’t talking to me. He wasn’t talking to anyone. He was simply bitching out loud. He couldn’t sit still, he was so angry. Finally, he began …

“Well, on Monday, last Monday, I had an appointment at Nisson Pharmacy to bid a job …”

Gacy calmed down as he continued to tell his story. We stayed in my office for six hours. I happened to have the time available. I also felt that under the circumstances, it was important to learn everything there was to know about Mr. John Wayne Gacy.

4

P
ROCUREMENT OF A
search warrant is not a simple matter. The Constitution of the United States requires that a showing of probable cause must come first. This is not always easy. The citizens of the United States do not take kindly to persons coming onto their property without a good reason. They sure as hell do not want police officers looking through their underwear drawers or the secret compartments and hiding places in their homes, reading their mail, and invading their space, unless they have a pretty goddamn good reason.

A search warrant allows the police to do just that, by the way. They may search anywhere that the delineated items in the warrant might be found. So if the police officers are looking for something small, which could be hidden in any small place within the home, a warrant allows them to literally look anywhere they damn well please during the search. Therefore, a showing of probable cause can be quite a high bar. Even the most state-minded of judges takes this requirement seriously. For this reason, the drafting of a complaint for warrant has become a bit of an art form.

For example, if the police are looking for a stolen car, and they have reason, or probable cause, to suspect that the said car is in a particular garage attached to a particular house, they couldn’t very well justify the search of the house, or certainly not the drawers in
that house, if they are looking for a car. However, if the keys to the car or the registration documentation are included in the items delineated as targets of the search, they can search anywhere that a set of keys or a set of documents might be hidden. Which, of course, means that they can turn the whole damn house upside down. Then, if they happen to stumble across a pound of marijuana or a bag of illegal pills while carrying out a legal search for the keys, well, so be it. Therefore, the officers investigating a crime and the prosecuting attorneys assigned to a case take great care in the preparation of a complaint for search warrant.

When Lieutenant Kozenczak approached Terry Sullivan with a request that a warrant granting permission to search John Gacy’s home be issued, of course, Terry agreed. Kozenczak did not have a good feeling upon leaving Gacy’s house, and he was not shy in sharing his thoughts on the matter. By now, all the police officers working on the case and the assistant state’s attorney were on the same page. They all believed that Gacy was involved with the disappearance of Rob Piest and that either he was holding Rob against his will or, and this was the nagging fear that concerned each and every investigator working the case, he had done something much worse to him.

Assistant state’s attorney Terry Sullivan had assigned most of his day-to-day responsibilities to members of his very competent staff and had literally moved into the offices of the Des Plaines Police Department, lock, stock, and coffeepot, in order to devote his full attention to the Piest/Gacy matter; and he brought with him one of his lead investigators, Greg Bedoe, of the Cook County sheriff’s police. Bedoe was immediately accepted to the team of Des Plaines police officers that were assigned to the case. Sullivan told Kozenczak to draft up a complaint for search warrant and submit it to him for approval. Kozenczak had to admit that he had never had occasion to draft one before. That is when Bedoe was dispatched by Sullivan to help out.

As the days progressed, a cohesive team began to emerge out of the rather random group of investigating officers, many of whom had never worked together before, never even met. Of course, there were the standard clashes of egos and interdepartmental squabbles. These were tough cops from different divisions and different departments. That is to be expected. Standard pecking orders were being disrupted. Who outranked whom was sometimes in question. However, there seemed to be a higher purpose at stake that transcended the normal boundaries between individuals, the different divisions of the department, and between those various divisions and the outside help that was occasionally required. A unity of purpose began to overshadow all other elements.

The City also had a group of young undercover investigators, known as the Delta Unit, that drove old beater cars, allowed their hair to grow out, wore mustaches and grungy facial hair and jeans and ratty T-shirts, all in an effort to infiltrate the drug scene in that suburb, what the kids called “narcs.” This unit, made up of three officers—Ron Robinson, Bob Schultz, and Dave Hachmeister, together with their sergeant, Wally Lang—volunteered and was ultimately assigned to the twenty-four-hour surveillance of Mr. Gacy and his associates. Mike Albrecht, who had previous dealings with Mr. Gacy and had been involved with the investigation from the beginning, soon joined them in their efforts.

The help of Delta Unit was enlisted following the first visit to Gacy’s house by Kozenczak, Pickell, Olsen, and Sommerschield. Those men left that house with the nagging belief that something was wrong there. Something was very wrong.

Therefore, a team was forming, a dedicated team with a single purpose—get Gacy.

When Bedoe and Kozenczak put their heads together to draft the complaint for search warrant, they paid particular attention to the evidence that existed at the time. They called on the others for help. They wanted to include everything they had on this guy.

They wanted to have the leeway to search every square inch of that house.

They had a report about Gacy’s arrest in Waterloo, Iowa, but they did not have the specifics. They wanted to know more. Let’s face it … sodomy? They had to know more. This was a case about a missing kid. What they, together with the other members of the team, unearthed was not good news …

Sodomy has always been a catchall charge. It could denote any number of lewd offenses—things that lawmakers just didn’t want people to do, plain and simple.

In Gacy’s case, however, it was quite specific.

It seems that upon moving to Waterloo, Iowa, Gacy joined the local chapter of the Jaycees. He thought of himself as civic minded and had been a member of the Jaycees in every town that he had ever lived. He met a man named Donald Voorhees, a state senator and local businessman. Mr. Voorhees had a fifteen-year-old son, Donald Jr. Gacy heard that Donald the younger was known around town to be homosexual. Gacy approached this youngster and offered to pay him for sex. An unusual relationship grew between the boy and Mr. Gacy, which resulted in threats of blackmail and potential violence. Ultimately, it ended with charges being filed against Gacy—ten counts ranging from sodomy to unlawful restraint and extortion. In spite of a presentence investigation and report that recommended probation, Judge Peter Van Metre in Black Hawk County, Iowa, sentenced Mr. Gacy to the maximum sentence of ten years at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison—a sentence that was converted to ten years at the Iowa Reformatory for Men in Anamosa, which he didn’t fully serve because, as started prior, he was paroled to Chicago in June 1970.

That was enough for Kozenczak and Bedoe. Gacy had an unsavory history with young boys. He had been to prison for committing sodomy on a young boy! Their missing person was a young boy! They scribbled up a complaint for search warrant and brought
it to Sullivan. They took great care to make the delineated search items vague and generic so that they could search with abandon. They now knew, at least for their purposes, that they had the right guy. Gacy was a predator, a creep that had targeted victims just like the Piest boy in the past. He fit a profile. He was the guy.