The Last Victim (20 page)

Was he saying I should be grateful? I wondered. Was this a threat to cooperate or he’d cut me off? I thought about confronting
him but decided it was best to just play along.

“Did you talk to Jarrod about anything?” Gacy asked in a tone that suggested he was winking on the other end of the line.

“No, I really haven’t seen him much lately.”

“Well,” he persisted, “have you talked to him about the experiment we discussed?”

Knowing that the only way to avoid this conversational direction was to hang up, I tried to be firm: “No, John, I haven’t.”

“Jason,” he prodded, “we’ve gone over this before. You need to slowly bring him into our way of thinking. You still haven’t
sent me any photographs of him.”

“I know,” I apologized, “I’m trying to get some. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Don’t worry,” he joked, “he’s not going to replace you as my number one bitch. You know I like to be able to visualize who
I am dealing with. I’m an artist, remember.”

So irritated was I with having to keep up this charade that I said nothing. Gacy, of course, didn’t slow down for a second.

“And if you don’t hurry with those pictures,” he said with a laugh, “I’m going to make you suck on my stick for a while.”

After that remark, I ended the phone call immediately. I tried everything I could to change the subject, yet he still wouldn’t
drop the topic of my brother. It was apparent that if I wanted to maintain a relationship with Gacy, I’d have to make something
up that would sound realistic enough to keep him happy.

A few days later I received a letter that contained a hypothetical scenario that was a thinly disguised blueprint for what
he wanted me to act out with my brother. Every detail of this fantasy corresponded exactly to the layout of my house as I’d
described it. As spooked as I was by how authentically he’d set the scene, I was actually grateful that, in a narrative sense,
he provided me with enough of a start that I could follow his lead. Gacy’s imaginary scenario between Jarrod and me went like
this:

Late in the evening around 11:00, everyone had gone to their own rooms since each had a T.V. But we would tell the other to
meet when the coast was clear. Both only dressed in a bathrobe, sometimes not even underwear as the robe covers it all.

One went to the other room and then they both descended the stairs down to the kitchen with no lights on and went into the
garage where one would do the other. It would take 15 to 20 minutes or so, half hour if we both did something. And its wild
fucking standing up, as all one has to do is lean over the car while the other raises the robe, spits in the hand and strokes
the muscle then another handful of spit to the back side, and in it went.

I put the letter aside for a moment, not only to purge the sickening image Gacy was creating but also to quiet the eerie sensation
that he’d invaded my house. The remaining pages read like what I imagine the
Blue Boy
equivalent of
Penthouse Letters
is. It was tough—
real
tough—to get through.

Gacy projected that my brother and I would eventually have sex three or four times a day. His own sex drive was so strong
that this was perfectly normal to him. Of course, not in a thousand lifetimes would I even think, for an instant, of initiating
anything like what Gacy proposed. But I had to “feed the beast,” as it were. So in my next letter— fiction at its most blatant—I
let on that Jarrod and I had begun to “experiment.”

Once Gacy read
that,
a barrage of questions followed. He used disguised terms and code words referring to us so that he could deny any responsibility
or involvement if we ever got caught.

His numerous queries actually provided me with the guidance I needed to create scenes that were sufficiently realistic and
detailed.

“In your first encounter,” Gacy wrote in his quirky, ambiguous language, “this took place with you being dominated by the
other factor, and once the project was joined. What were your first feelings of what was happening? And as it picked up and
discharged within, what feeling did you have for a first time? Thoughts of who it was and knowing this what were your feelings
too?”

When I tried to field these questions, I discovered to my horror that I had to actually visualize the events as he described
them. Mentally, the cumulative effect was something like sexual abuse. He was actually making me
think
of the most horrid, revolting sexual scenes I could ever imagine. And, in fact, for several months afterward I was totally
asexual. I stopped having sexual fantasies and didn’t think about sex whatsoever. This seemed to be the only way I could enter
Gacy’s world, or rather, allow him entrance into mine, without completely breaking down.

One technique I came up with that actually yielded a fair amount of insight into Gacy’s habits was sending him two sets of
letters, one supposedly from me, the other supposedly from Jarrod—both describing the same acts of “experimentation” from
differing points of view. To carry off the deception, I used different levels of diction and different typefaces. Result:
Gacy actually believed he was getting the stereo version of a brother-to-brother sexual relationship.

He reacted predictably—by writing to my brother in the most seductive way possible, feeding him graphic sexual fantasies in
an attempt to bring him under his control. Of course, I intercepted all of Gacy’s correspondence, whether it was addressed
to my brother or me, so, thankfully, Jarrod never had to slog through Gacy’s mental cesspool.

At the time, as stressed as I was by the burden of keeping up this increasingly sick deception, I felt a certain excitement
that my efforts had served to cement our relationship. After hearing about my brother’s and my “activity,” he finally embraced
me as his servant. He now believed I was completely under his control.

And in a sense, I was.

I
often wondered why Gacy, one of the most cynical and suspicious individuals I’ve ever known, so easily believed the stories
I spun for him. While I’d like to claim credit for being a master storyteller, the truth is that Gacy
needed
my tales to be true. At this point in his life, he had nothing else but his fantasies—the letters I was sending him were
his only reality. Later I learned from one of his acquaintances that he did in fact believe that everything I’d told him was
on the level.

As far as he was concerned, he’d stumbled across an ideal situation, one in which he could relive some of his most deviant
desires. He was writing the script, and Jarrod and I were supposedly playing the parts.

The one fly in the ointment was that his two leads were proving a bit difficult to direct. My character, in particular, kept
balking at the idea of providing him with sufficient details of what we’d been up to. I realized that I’d made a mistake by
giving him too much information too soon; now he was expecting kinky stories in every letter.

Since I was supposedly the inhibited one, Jarrod’s letters—or more precisely, the letters I’d concocted on his behalf—tended
to be more vivid, and hence, exciting to Gacy. But inevitably I hit a wall of self-disgust as I offered up yet another dollop
of titillation for Gacy’s benefit, and at that point I realized I had to change the focus of our correspondence.

From that point forward, the tone of Jarrod’s letters became dry and tedious, mostly consisting of tales in which he described
encounters with his girlfriend rather than with me. I didn’t anticipate how frustrated and angry Gacy would become. In his
next letter, he railed at Jarrod for regressing to heterosexual activity and pleaded with me to bring my brother back into
line:

Regarding J, I see his last letter was nothing again. Hey, if he is serious, then tell him to describe what he has been into
or let me know when the best time to call where I can talk to him. But hey, he has to come out of his shell and tell me his
thoughts, and what he likes. But this B.S. about sex with his girlfriend. Fuck that B.S. Thats for people who don’t know better.
He has got to know that I know all of his private instructions and I agree. But because you are not doing [it all] as often
as you should, this is going to be a slow learning project.

After this initial scolding, Gacy sent along a typically graphic and detailed sexual fantasy that he wanted us to act out.
The letter went on for pages, laying down a scenario that resembled some of his classic killings. He wanted Jarrod to sit
on my chest. He described exact positions he wanted us to try. It was Gacy the porno writer at his most creative.

I could only shake my head in wonderment. From my research, I knew that he enjoyed sitting on the chest of his victims, forcing
them to perform oral sex from that position, often while he had a rope around their necks, tightening it according to his
whims. Although he was a sadist, with young children he preferred to ruin their innocence first. Then, after they were “dirty
hustlers,” he’d begin inflicting the pain they deserved.

By late February and early March, Gacy had been denied access to Jarrod and his letters for several weeks. Finally, I sent
another Jarrod letter just to calm him down. He responded immediately with this:

Hi Ho Bro,

Or should that be Lil’ bro? Ha ha. Yes I know about your baseball as its your first love next to SEX. Please don’t assume
that I get mad at you as thats silly. Maybe Buddy says things too strong. And yes I would appreciate it if when you read my
letters that you get back to me in a reasonable amount of time. Of course we could get over a lot of the letters by talking
on the phone but you denied me that twice. What you have to understand in talking to me is its like talking to buddy. We three
share a common bond and just like I have become Jason’s big brother, he knows he can count on me not to laugh or make fun
of what he tells me nor am I ever judgmental of what he says. And thats the way you should feel as well since I know just
as much about you. . . .

There were a couple of things that struck me immediately about this letter. First, it seemed clear he was trying to join my
family, to become the older brother who’d guide and mentor us. Although in this particular letter he posed as an equal to
my brother and me, later he tried to exclude me from the “bond” we all shared. To him this was necessary because Jarrod required
more specialized tutoring in the art of sadistic seduction. Gacy realized by now that the character of Jarrod was a far more
willing pupil than the more reticent and timid Jason.

The second notable aspect of this letter was Gacy’s apparent desire to train a successor to carry on his “work.” If I was
a potential victim—perhaps the last one he’d get his hands on—then Jarrod was a potential surrogate who could act out the
things he wanted to do. The rub was, he couldn’t bring Jarrod fully under his control.

When pleading and threatening didn’t work with Jarrod—or rather, the Jarrod character I’d created—Gacy tried bribing him.
As mentioned previously, this was one of Gacy’s favorite tactics when he ran into trouble, and he favored the move even after
he was locked up. In this case, he promised Jarrod one of his paintings if he’d be more compliant. By this time, he’d already
sent
two
paintings to me, which I kept in my safe; a third soon followed that was intended for Jarrod.

It said something about Gacy’s inflated opinion of himself that he considered the gift of a simple drawing sufficient to turn
an intractable student into a worshipful disciple.

A
s a way to encourage Jarrod and me to supply more details regarding our supposedly ongoing sexual experimentation, Gacy sent
along vivid descriptions of various escapades he’d had with hitchhikers over the years. Many of these boys he eventually tortured
and murdered, although the versions he sent me featured a lot of consensual sex. Tucked into each of these tales was a lesson
concerning how to break down a victim’s resistance.

The whole time Gacy was teaching Jarrod his tricks to dominate and abuse me, he was tutoring me as well—in the art of being
a victim. In response to his insistent urgings, I’d begun reporting stories of hustling on the street—all, of course, spun
out of whole cloth. He was very explicit in the acts he wanted me to perform, and what I should charge for these services.
For example: for a “golden shower,” in which I was supposed to allow a man to urinate on my face, I should demand fifty dollars.
He also advised that, during sadomasochistic sex, if the guy started to beat me up, I’d be better off if I just went along
with it.

I told Gacy I’d try some of this stuff—yeah,
right
—but only if he’d agree to answer some questions he’d been putting off. I told him I was under a lot of pressure to finish
a school paper I was doing on him and that I really needed his cooperation. Drawing on a number of sources, including the
“fact sheet” he’d sent with his very first letter, I peppered him with a long list of discrepancies between his original confession,
his eventual testimony, and the later explanations he offered to account for the presence of so many bodies beneath his home.

In two different letters written to me during the middle of February, he took the time to address each of the questions. In
his introductory remarks, he seemed quite put out that I’d even consider the possibility of his guilt. He portrayed me as
obtuse and ill informed, but decided to humor me anyway.

His ability to deny the most overwhelming evidence against him is evident in what follows:

It is the totality of the facts on the fact sheet which gives doubt to my conviction, not just one thing. Thats why it was
done that way. Thats why it is not me saying it but eight years of investigation proving all the points listed. Under our
system of Justice a man is not guilty if the facts don’t match the state theory of the crime or truth. Thats why the doubt
is listed not with the major things but all the things which point to showing that this was a poor investigation of the facts
in this case.