All language subtitles for John.Wayne.Gacy.Devil.in.Disguise.S01E05.1080p.HDTV-SICKCHILL.en

I was 19 when I ran away,
and that was in ’80.

Not ’80, ’61.

I went to Las Vegas
for 3 months.

Mm-hmm.

Took off,
took my car and left.

Yeah.

I walked for Palm Mortuary
being the night man

picking up bodies at the
hospitals and stuff for them.

I worked as night man only.

I didn’t have nothing to do
with the bodies,

all this talk that I slept
with the dead ones

or had sex with dead bodies,
there’s no truth to any of that.

You did in the mortuary,
didn’t you?

I lived in the mortuary, yes,
but not in the embalming room.

I mean, they make it sounds like
I slept in the crypts with them,

and I never climbed into
a coffin or anything like that.

That is so damn ridiculous.
It’s the same thing.

The contention is that I slept
all night with Robert Piest.

If you want to say I slept in
the same house with a dead body,

okay, fine. I’ll buy that,
but in the same room,

no, and besides,
the dead won’t bother you.

It’s the living
you’ve got to worry about.

The case, which some thought
would never be tried

in the courts,

is now winding down
to the last few days.

Gacy’s attorney, Sam Amirante,

told the jury what he had been
trying to prove all along:

that John Gacy is insane
and has been for a long time.

Amirante appealed to the jury,

saying that this is
the only country

in which John Gacy
could get a fair trial.

The defense says Gacy wasn’t
responsible for his actions.

The prosecution wants
the death penalty.

The prosecution
gets the last say

because it was
our burden of proof,

and Bill Kunkle, my partner,
was dynamite on that.

I looked over to where Gacy
was sitting at counsel table.

I said, "If you want to show
this man, this killer mercy,"

and I just stopped,
walked over to the victim board,

which was right behind
the crawl-space opening

directly in front of the jury,

and without saying anything,
began to rip each photo

out of the frame
with a loud noise

and walked over in front of
the crawl-space opening,

directly in front of the jury
and eyeballed the jury,

and said, "If you want to show
this killer mercy,

you show him the same mercy
he showed

when he took these 22 lives off
the face of the Earth

and put them here."

And I threw the victim photos
into the crawl-space opening.

They hit the front
of the jury box

and splashed
all over the tile floor

and spread all over
the well of the court.

Absolute pin-drop silence.

I didn’t move
for about 3 minutes,

and Sullivan actually had
to almost lead me to my chair.

I was done. I was spent.

It is indeed possible
that if John Wayne Gacy

is not guilty
by reason of insanity,

he could be out of
a mental institution

within a matter of years.

After the jury went out,
there was a little bar

about a block away
from the courthouse

where we all went called Gene’s.
It was such a lowlife place,

you entered
through the back door,

but state’s attorneys
went there, public defenders,

cops, everybody.
And then when juries came back,

the courthouse
would call down there,

somebody from the courtroom
and say, "The jury is in."

It wasn’t but about 2 hours.

You could barely have finished
a drink or two,

and the phone rings.

The jury has now reached
a decision in the trial

of John Wayne Gacy,

accused of killing
33 young men and boys.

Now, we do not know
what that verdict is

because they are calling

both sides
back into the courtroom now.

We’d been at trial
and jury selection for 7 weeks,

6 weeks of trial,
so 2 hours was pretty quick.

When a jury comes back fast,
the rule of thumb

is that it’s a not guilty,

so I was pretty terrified when
we walked back to the courtroom.

And of course, when they
actually read the verdict,

that’s just the best.

It took the jury of seven men
and five women less than 2 hours

to find John Wayne Gacy guilty
of murdering 33 young men.

Gacy was convicted
of murdering more people

than anyone else in US history.

In the end, the prosecutors
managed to prove

that Gacy did so many things
to try and cover up what he did,

that he was so careful

and so calculating about it
that he was absolutely sane.

It what an emotional time
for relatives of the victims,

and many, like Ken Piest,
whose brother was killed,

want revenge.

There’s only one solution
now.

What is that?

I want to see him
go to the chair.

And Eugenia Godzik,

mother of another victim,
tearfully agreed.

I hope he does get
the electric chair.

Then that’ll make
everybody feel better.

I’m sure it’ll make the
other mothers feel better, too.

I remember saying,
"Thank God,"

and, "It’s not over yet."

There will now be
another hearing,

and the same jury will begin
deliberating once again.

This time, they will deliberate
on whether John Wayne Gacy

should be put to death
in the electric chair.

Throughout the trial,

there had been
constant references

to a Jekyll-and-Hyde
kind of syndrome

where because of pills
or alcohol,

Gacy became this brutal killer,

much like the kindly Dr. Jekyll
became the brutal Mr. Hyde.

So I actually got
the Robert Louis Stevenson book,

and I read it again.

And so one of the things I did
in the argument is I said,

"They keep talking about
Jekyll and Hyde."

I said, "I don’t know
if you read it,

but what you learned is,

that the goodly, kind Dr. Jekyll
wanted to study evil,

and so he invented a potion
that he could take

that would expose that evil,
and he became the evil Mr. Hyde

and committed
these horrible crimes.

He took the potion on purpose

because he wanted to know what
he was doing when he did it,

and he remembered
what he did after he did it.

And guess what, folks?

He enjoyed it,
and he did it again,

and he did it again,
and he did it again,

and all he cared about
was the godlike decision

of who would live
and who would die,

and John Gacy made
that same decision.

Robert Louis Stevenson
always had a moral

at the end of the story,

and the villain in Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde paid

for his crimes with his life."

John Gacy will be put
to death in the electric chair.

Judge Garippo sat back
in his chair

as relatives and friends of the
victims applauded and cheered.

The convicted murderer
showed no emotion at all

as he walked up
to the judge’s bench.

He simply nodded
as Judge Garippo

set the date for execution.

I thought Gacy was the poster
child for the death penalty,

and, frankly, if Gacy hadn’t
received the death penalty,

my position would’ve been,

nobody should receive
the death penalty.

I’m relieved, and the sooner
they get rid of him,

the better for all
what he’s done to every family

and caused everybody unhappiness
and something

that can’t be repaid.

My mother assumed that,
"Okay, it’s over.

Next week, he’s going to be
put to death,"

not realizing it takes
umpteen years.

They have appeals and all that.

His adaptable life in prison
seems unreal.

It’s like he’s home, conducting
business from him living room.

He was writing letters.
He got a pen-pal club

going and getting his word
out there of his innocence.

I’m sure there was a lot
of people that believed

some of the stuff
that he told them.

I felt things were going to
work out

because I knew
I didn’t do the killing,

and I thought it would come out
in the trial, but Amirante,

with this insanity defense,
what I ...

And again, you can call it
my ignorance of the law,

it’s like I explained

in a letter
to Chief Justice William Clark,

the evidence based in
on the theory

that the more sensational
the case it,

the more crazier it sounds,
the insanity defense would work,

and I still think it was stupid.

How about ...

I think they did a disservice
to me

and they did a disservice
to the victims.

You know what people
don’t understand is,

I feel I was wrongfully
convicted for 33 murders,

and it was only because
of sensationalism and ego.

The Des Plaines police
did a sloppy investigation.

This is ... It may not be
the correct way of wording it,

but the thing of it is is that,
they had other suspects,

and they had tunnel vision
into say,

"It’s Gacy’s house. It’s easier
to put everything on Gacy."

How are you?
I’m doing fine. How are you?

Good, good.

Liz gave me a call last night
and said that you tried to call.

Oh, yeah.

I just didn’t
get home in time.

By the time I met John,

he definitely was not happy
with his defense attorneys.

It was really like,
"Why I got railroaded.

They shouldn’t have joined all
the murder charges together."

There’s only one pathology
report,

and it’s on Robert Piest.
You mean to tell me

there’s no other medical reports
on this case?

There’s 33 victims
and one medical report.

You see, there is enough grounds
to get a new trial,

but it slowly is slipping away,

and people
don’t understand that.

We’re 10 years down the line
on this appeal shit.

My relationship with Gacy
became much more familiar

over the years.
There were allotted time slots

of how much phone time
you could get,

and John seemed to always
get whatever he wanted.

See, it’s a domino effect.

Once you overturn it,
you know ...

but right now they’re giving
credibility to Amirante.

And until I can take
that credibility away from him,

I don’t stand a chance.

John never seemed
to get cut off.

If he wanted to talk
for an hour, he could.

That’s ineffective
assistance of counsel.

And so that’s going to be
part of that issue? Okay.

Okay.
Yeah.

John obviously thought I was
on his side in his appeals,

and I would talk with
his various lawyers at the time.

Honestly, I think I was just
somebody who could help him.

He had so many people
that he used to do this or that.

I cared about him in many ways.
I also hated him in many ways.

John, towards the end,
basically just was lashing out.

All the appeals, they’re just
feeding the machine,

more paper, more motions.

He was using anything he could
to come up with an appeal,

but he was basically the poster
child for the death penalty.

In fall of 1993,
I remember being in the car

with my partner, Greg,
and we heard a radio broadcast

saying that John Wayne Gacy
had a date set for death,

and then at the same time,
we both came up

with kind of this idea of,
"Wow, wouldn’t

that be interesting
to represent John Wayne Gacy?"

And then we laughed it off,
thinking,

"Why would we ever be chosen
to represent him?"

Then we got a call
that John Gacy might want

to interview us,
but interestingly,

it was not about representing
him in the death-penalty matter.

He had a civil matter
that was going on at the time.

When he was in prison,
he started painting,

and he sold his paintings.

People wanted to buy his stuff
because of his notoriety.

He was making money,
and the state of Illinois

was suing him
to try to take away his money

that he was earning
on death row.

Right now, Gacy paintings are
a big business, big commodity.

There’s a large call for them.
In fact, I think Gacy right now

is one of the hottest
convict painters,

I guess,
or the death row artists.

Hey, your painting
have improved over the years.

I think we’ve seen some ...

I think I’ve learned
from each one of them.

Yeah.

I guess it’s the same reason
why I relate to Michelangelo

because he was a workaholic
and Leonardo da Vinci.

People always ask me who
my favorite artists are and why,

and I did not know that
Michelangelo was homosexual,

and it doesn’t make
no difference to me.

He was a workaholic.
He was a sculptor.

He was a painter
and did a lot of other things.

da Vinci was an inventor
and that.

And of course, in my life,
I’ve done painting,

decorating, wallpapering.

I’ve done mural work,
you name it.

The prison system did not
like the fact

that John Gacy was making money.
He also had 900 number

where people could call in
and listen to his voice,

and he would tell them
that he was actually innocent

and that they were going
to execute an innocent man,

but he made money on that,
as well,

and the law in Illinois says

that if an inmate can pay
for his incarceration,

the inmate has to pay it,
so they were suing Gacy

for basically
his room and board.

So that’s how we got
the call originally.

Gacy denies that he’s reaping
big profits

from sales of his artwork.

Some of his old paintings
are selling for thousands,

but Gacy told me that money
is going to dealers and lawyers.

At first, my partner,
Greg, said,

"Why would we do this?

We’re not going
to represent him."

And I said, "Don’t you want
to meet this guy?

Don’t you want to look evil
in the eye?"

The prison is an old place.
It’s kind of a gothic,

strange kind of
eery-looking place

that sits
on the Mississippi river,

and I remember going in there,

and it was kind of
a freaky experience.

You were actually put into a
little room with your prisoner,

who was handcuffed, but there
was nothing between you,

and we kind of said to him,
"John, is this civil case

really the most important thing
going on right now

when you have a death date
in about 7 months?"

Later, when we walked out
of the prison, I said to Greg,

"Why don’t we represent him
in the death-row case?"

If you’re a runner,
you want to run the marathon.

If you’re a mountain climber,
you want to climb Mt. Everest.

This was the ultimate
challenge, right?

Our plan was, we would represent
John Gacy in his civil case

but only if we were able
to represent him

in the death-row appeals,
as well.

All of his traditional appeals
had been exhausted,

and that is why
the death date was set,

so we had to come up
with some creative arguments

to make to get him off
the death penalty.

It might be further appeals.
It might be actual innocence.

It might be ineffective
assistance of counsel,

saying that lawyers
were not doing

the right thing in the past,
so you’re basically coming up

with anything
you possibly can at this point

just to get that execution date
off the calendar.

Gacy did not get the death
penalty for all 33 boys,

so we thought that if we
could prove actual innocence

for those boys where
they had the death penalty,

the death penalty
would be withdrawn,

and we’d just have him
living out a life sentence,

so we went to the warehouse
where John Gacy’s evidence was,

all of the things
that were taken from the home

and the various business records
that were in the Gacy home.

John Gacy’s records
were meticulous.

They had his car and his gas
and his motel bills

and those types of things,
and we determined that John Gacy

was actually documented
out of the state

at a time where several
of these young men and boys

were deemed to be gone missing.

As you know, I’m a bug
about record keeping.

Mm-hmm.

All of my business records
confirmed where I was,

who I was with,
what hotel I stayed at,

what meals I ate.
Everything was in the files,

and all of those files
on December 29th of 1978

were confiscated by the
Des Plaines Police Department.

Mm-hmm.
And those files there alone

could have proven
that I wasn't in Illinois

when 16 of these murders ...
when they finally set the dates

as to when
these murders occurred.

Mm-hmm.

The fact that we found
that Gacy

was probably out of town
during at least a few

of the boys’ deaths
led us to believe

that there were other boys and
men involved in these crimes,

and that was consistent
with a lot of the things

that we had heard
over the years.

And listen, the dates that were
set for the death of these boys

was somewhat arbitrary

because it was a date
they may have been last seen

and then they were found,
but I think it’s possible

that John Gacy
didn’t kill all those victims.

I believe that there
may have been other people

who helped him or were in on it.

His whole thing
what that his appeal

was going to vindicate him

and he was going
to be found innocent,

and how can you be innocent?

You can say
you didn’t kill 33 people,

that maybe you’ve killed
10 of them.

It doesn’t matter.
You killed somebody.

You’re not going
to be vindicated,

and he would always try
to change the subject.

"Let’s get off that subject.

I don’t want to talk
about that anymore."

You did say that you never
painted yourself

as an innocent babe
in the woods, that you ...

We’re going over
the same thing.

Yeah.

We’re not going
to go into that.

Basically.
No, but the point is,

if you feel that you’re not
covering up

your part of the crimes
but at the same time

you open the thought
that others were involved,

would you be willing
to cooperate

with law-enforcement
people today to avail, say,

the materials that you have
amassed to more or less pursue

if, in fact, there are others
that are on the streets

that have been involved
in these murders?

Would you be willing
to cooperate

and to assist to pursue that

to the ends of bringing others
to justice?

Would you be willing to do that?

I’ve got no qualms
about that,

but what I don’t understand is,

why wasn’t it done
to begin with, Bob?

We tried to get Gacy
to tell us,

if they were other people
involved, who were they?

So was he making it up?
Was he protecting someone?

He speculated who it might be,
but he never gave us anything

that we could go
to the prosecution and say,

"We have this information
that you don’t have,

and it’s going to die with Gacy,
so don’t execute him."

We never had that ability.

In his opening
session Monday,

the Supreme Court rejected

an appeal challenging
the death penalty

for serial killer
John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

The Illinois Supreme Court
is expected to announce

an execution date
within the next 2 weeks.

He didn’t start talking about
the clock ticking until ...

in ’94 when they set the date
for May 10th.

He knew then that the time
was running out,

and he felt more
and more pressure.

The last time I saw John,
which was for his birthday,

March of ’94,
and he said,

"This is the last time
you’re going to see me.

I’m going to be executed
in May."

And I said, "No, you’re not."

He goes, "Yes, I am,"
and I got emotional.

He couldn’t hug me
because he had handcuffs on,

but I could hug him,
and he said, "Hug me."

So as I’m leaving, it’s like ...

I’m just like,
this is going through my head.

I can’t believe that Gacy
was comforting me.

Gacy’s attorneys were on
the phone with their client

putting together still
more last-minute appeals

hoping to beat the clock
and the executioner.

Between the time that Gacy
was convicted

to the time he was executed,

Illinois changed
the form of death

from the electric chair
to lethal injection.

We brought an injunction
saying

that the method of execution
was cruel and unusual

because of the way
it was going to be

implemented by this machine
that was faulty.

We’re getting down
to the very last appeals.

We’re on uncharted grounds here.

When I told him
his last appeal was rejected,

I remember him
kind of waving me away,

saying,
"We’ll talk about it later,"

as if there was going
to be a later.

He may have already
come to grips with it

in his own mind,
that the appeal was done.

On the night of the
execution,

I was on the phone
with him several times,

and at about 11:45,
we’re talking,

and I hear mumbling,
and he goes,

"Okay, my ride is here.
Got to go."

And that was
our last conversation.

Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!

I was there that night.
The clown has got to go!

See you in hell!

It was an event.
Gacy’s execution was an event.

It’s time die. Fourteen years
has been much too long.

He deserves to die!

There were people
from both sides,

pro death penalty,
against death penalty.

There were lines of people,
miles of people protesting

and, "Kill the clown."

The clown goes down!

[Lyrics]

Na, na, na, na

Hey, hey, hey
Goodbye

And frankly, that was
upsetting

because if a government is going
to take the life of somebody

because they’ve committed
a horrendous crime,

then it should be
something of awe.

It should be a calm,
solemn event.

It shouldn’t be a circus.

It shouldn’t be cheering
and drums beating and ...

That’s not appropriate
for the victims.

It’s not appropriate
for anybody.

I was hoping that my mother
would be alive because she said,

"Oh, I want to be there.
I want to be there."

And she couldn’t that was sad.

Both of my parents
had passed away.

My mom did not want him to go
to jail and paint and all that,

and that’s why I felt
I needed to be at the execution,

but the sad thing was that none
of the family of the victims

could be in the auditorium
when he was being put to death.

They put all the victims
in a room in a ...

Dungeon.

... in a building that was
far away from the press,

far away
from the execution itself.

We were watching it on a TV
like the rest of America.

In my opinion,
they had us locked up

so we could only see
what they wanted us to see.

It was like they didn’t
want us there, period.

The first drug
is sodium pentathol,

which puts you to sleep.

If you get enough of that,
it can kill you by itself.

The second drug is a thing
called pancurium bromide,

and that causes
your breathing to stop.

The third drug is the one
that stops your heart.

And it kept getting delayed,
the execution itself.

They kept delaying,
delaying, delaying.

We kept saying,
"Well, what’s going to happen?"

They said, "Oh, they’ll call us
when it’s over."

When Gacy was wheeled
into the area

where he was to be executed,
we left the premises,

and I remember,
we were watching television

and watching what was going on,
and we heard

something malfunctioned.
They closed the curtains.

When the phone rang,
they had some complications,

and then they rang again,
and they said, "Okay.

He is now put to rest,"
and that was it,

and we all just looked
at each other,

and you get up,
and you go out.

It was bizarre.
It was very strange.

John Wayne Gacy was
pronounced dead at 12:58,

2 minutes
before 1 o’clock this morning.

There will be a lot of questions
to be asked yet

about how this system worked.

They began the injections
at 12:40.

He wasn’t pronounced dead
for 18 minutes.

It malfunctioned,
like we said

it was going to malfunction,

and he was probably
suffocated to death,

and I think most people
probably would say

that that was a good result.

They said that he probably
felt more pain

than they had planned on,

but I know if my mother
was there,

she would have said,
"That’s not enough."

One little bit of pain
is not enough.

I attended the execution
as an official state witness

and signed the certificate
of execution.

He got a much easier death
than any of his victims.

In my opinion,

he got an easier death
than he deserved.

I spent a couple hours

with him before
they stopped visiting hours.

I hugged him, and I told him.

I said, "May God open his arms
to you if you’re truly sorry.

You need to ask him
for forgiveness,"

and I don’t think
I even said goodbye.

I don’t know why.
It’s just, you hug each other.

You say, "I love you."
"I love you back."

He was crying. I was crying.
It was hard.

It was hard breaking and knowing
I’d not see him again.

I don’t know if it was
because of the love,

knowing him as a child
and an adult

and in a different sense.
But I hadn’t seen the evil,

so it’s like I could dismiss it
because that wasn’t him,

but now I’m just settled
with the fact that he was evil.

So many years have gone by,

and I at least don’t think
about it like it was yesterday,

but it’s still part of my life,

a part that I’d love to be able
to just erase if I could.

I only wish he would’ve
apologized in some way

or said something kind
in the end to those families

to have helped them
to have closure

because I can’t imagine
ever losing a child of mine

and not know that someone
was actually sorry

for doing harm to them.

So many of those people
and families are gone.

Maybe their sisters
and brothers are still alive,

and I hope their lives are
a lot better than all of this.

This case did not die.

The story did not die
with the execution of John Gacy.

I suppose there’s a lot
that’s still unknown.

I came to Chicago in 1994.

I was the news reporter
for the morning show.

I never imagined the twists
and turns of a story like this

that were unresolved
after all these years.

It’s a story that has
50 stories within it

and has all these
different branches,

and surprisingly,
sometimes they end up crossing.

I was about 17
when he was arrested,

and I lived in a Chicago suburb.

Everybody in Chicago
knew about it,

but years later,
when I started looking into it,

the more I learned about
the case,

the more convinced I became
that the thing everybody thought

they knew
wasn’t the whole story.

There was a lot
of speculation at the time,

and there still is
a lot of speculation

that there may have been
others involved

in some of those murders.

Gacy always said
he didn’t kill all the boys,

and he alluded to the idea

that there could’ve been
a bigger picture,

that there may have been
a snuff-film operation

and that some of these young men
and boys

were being killed and videotaped

and the videos sold
on the black market.

He didn’t give me name.
He didn’t say he was involved.

He didn’t tell me
who was involved,

but he alluded to that.

When he first said that to me,
I was thinking,

"This sounds like
a bunch of BS,"

and then I thought about it,

and I thought,
"Well, Gacy liked to make money.

There were probably other people
involved in these crimes.

There was probably a black
market for snuff films back

then if you like
that kind of stuff,

so maybe that did make sense."

The thing of it is,
they want you to believe

that I and I
alone committed these murders,

and I had nothing to do
with the murders of anyone.

If anybody was involved,
then how many people

are we talking
about beside yourself?

We believe there
was four people involved.

Mm-hmm.

And that would be
Michael Rossi, David Cram,

Phillip Paske.

Both Rossi and Cram denied
any knowledge of Gacy’s murders

or of any of their involvement
in anything.

Phil Paske was from Chicago.

He was one of those people
who got into trouble,

did a little drugs,
did a little of this.

And somehow,
John Norman came into his life.

So the story goes like this.
There’s a guy named John Norman.

Norman does some jail time

for assaulting some kids
in Homewood, Illinois.

While he’s in
the Cook County jail

using the jail printing press,

he creates this newsletter,
"The Delta Project,"

this sex-trafficking ring
that’s going to men

who want to have sex with boys.

And while he was
in Cook County jail,

he met Phil Paske,

and when he got out of jail,
Cook County jail,

Paske took over the operation
of ... Norman’s operation.

Here we’ve got
a Phillip Paske,

who had a newsletter going out
of the Cook County jail,

and here he is involved
with a guy named John Norman.

And John Norman
was running boys for hire.

They were making snuff films
with young boys.

They were pimping them off.
They were selling them.

So the connection is this.

John Norman running "The Delta
Project" sex-trafficking ring

has an assistant named
Phil Paske, and guess what?

Phil Paske works for
John Wayne Gacy.

In 1977,

the judiciary committee
of the United States Senate

put together a subcommittee
to investigate the problem

of child sex trafficking.

Their first hearing
was in Chicago.

They called in a hub,
the center

of the country’s business
in child sex trafficking.

And yet, nobody ever thought,
"Hey, maybe we ought to look at

that sex-trafficking ring

that was investigated
by Congress in 1977

when you’re investigating
John Wayne Gacy in 1978."

I guess you got to kind of
ask yourself,

what are the odds
that Phil Paske,

who’s John David Norman’s
right-hand man,

is working a day or 2 here
and there for Gacy?

I can’t believe that
there wasn’t some crossover.

Gacy loved pornography.
There’s certainly evidence

that if John wasn’t making
stag films, he was trying to.

After John had been arrested,
the police had gone through.

There was a big dresser
and something else

that we had picked up and taken
that wasn’t ruined or destroyed,

and when we got it home,
underneath the drawers

were some packets
that were taped to the thing.

I would think, if anything,
the police would’ve found those.

It was just kind of weird,

and they were
some pornographic pictures.

It was John.
It was a three-person thing.

I was shocked, and I put them
back in the envelope.

I don’t know if I gave them
to Sam Amirante

or if I gave them to a detective
that came to the house.

I said, "I can’t believe
that these were not found."

Not that John Wayne Gacy
is a credible witness here,

but he says, "They ought to look
into John Norman

and look at his videos to see if
they can identify any victims,"

and sort of implying that
John Norman is involved in this.

There was a crossover
when we checked into

John Norman’s background,

that he goes all the way back to
the early ’70s involved in ...

He ran the Norman Foundation.

He ran Epic International
and the Odyssey Foundation

out of Dallas, Texas,

and these were organizations
were wealthy men

could hire young boys for sexual
weekends, male prostitution.

Have you ever met Norman?

You ever had any contact
with Norman?

I have yet to see a current
picture of him,

and therefore,
I’d have to say no.

Phil Paske may have been
with him at one time or another

because, see, again, I came home
from out of town at times,

and Phil Paske would be
at the house drinking beer

or something like that.

David Cram is the one
that brought Phil Paske in

because Cram,
he didn’t want to do nothing.

He got a hold of this guy.

He said, "Well, this guy
can get you somebody for sex."

Gacy clearly knew
who John Norman was,

and his deflection, his lie was,

"Oh, I don’t think I know him.
Do you have a picture?"

John knows
who his accomplices were,

and somehow he’s protected them,
so the fact

that he kind of threw Paske
out there is suspicious.

That was typical Gacy,
sort like,

"Don’t look over here.
Look over there,"

so you never knew
if he was telling the truth

or he was really leading you
somewhere

that you should be going.
You didn’t know with him.

I think Phil Paske
is the bridge here.

He works for John Wayne Gacy,
and he works with John Norman

of "The Delta Project"
sex-trafficking ring.

Is that a coincidence?

If nothing else,
it’s worth looking into.

I don’t know that they ever
looked into it at all.

I just don’t get that,

so that contributes
to this cloud of suspicion.

You would think that
as the generation passed

that someone would say,

"It’s time. It’s time
to get to the bottom of this,"

and I just don’t
see it happening.

I have thought all along that
we are going

to find more bodies
attributable to John Gacy.

I think the problem is
tying them to him necessarily.

I interviewed
Detective Tovar,

who was on the case and was
riding with John Wayne Gacy,

and he said Gacy said,

"There may be
as many of 45 victims."

He looks at me

with kind of almost
like a twinkle in his eye.

He says, "But 45 sounds
like a good number."

I talked to him enough times
that I was pretty sure

he was being honest.

We’re putting on the dates
of how he was killing people.

Serial killers kill kind of
in some kind of order.

There was that period of time
when he was traveling,

so maybe he killed them
somewhere else.

Two or three of them
were from out of state.

Very first kid was from Iowa,
Minnesota, Michigan,

so could be from other states
that just floated through town.

He killed them.

Maybe he buried them
somewhere else

or maybe threw them
somewhere else.

Just my own opinion,

but I firmly believe
there’s more.

I don’t think John Wayne Gacy
one day just woke up

and started killing people.

What was going on
before that house?

If he was killing people,
where did he put those bodies?

They’re not going to be
in that house,

so where are they?

I had been contacted
by Detective Bill Dorsch,

who had an interesting story.

He had known John Wayne Gacy
before all this happened.

A lot of the branches
of my investigative work

came from Detective Bill Dorsch.

I’m a retired Chicago
homicide detective.

I started my career in 1970
as a patrolman.

Back in 1974,
I did meet John Gacy,

invited to his house
in Summerdale,

and at that time,
I was with my wife and one son.

We had a meeting with his wife
and her two children,

and we had about 4 or 5 hours
of dinner and congenial meeting,

nothing more than that.
From that conversation,

I learned that John
took care of the building

where his mother was living

just right over
my shoulder here.

He was the maintenance man,
and I was living in an apartment

just 50 yards away from it.

Bill Dorsch lived just off
the corner of Miami and Elston,

and on the corner of Miami
and Elston across Miami

was this funny,
triangular property

with a small apartment
building on it.

Gacy’s mother lived there,

and Gacy took care
of the property

and poured concrete
and fixed plumbing or whatever.

So Dorsch was coming home
from work

in the middle of the night
one time in the mid-’70s,

and he sees somebody
in the shadows across the street

in front of this building
at Miami and Elston,

and it’s Gacy carrying a shovel
in the middle of the night.

And I simply say to John,

"John, it’s 3 o’clock
in the morning.

What the heck are you
doing out here?"

And John sort of laughed,
and maybe I laughed too,

when he threw me his answer,
but he said, "Bill, you know me.

There’s not enough hours
in the day.

I have to get it done
when I can."

Dorsch thought that was odd,
and they made a joke about it,

didn’t think anything of it
until years later

when the story broke
of what had happened,

and Dorsch said, "Boy, maybe
there was more to that."

In 1978, Gacy’s arrested,

and Bill Dorsch
has this horrible a-ha moment.

He called the team
investigating the case and said,

"I just think you ought to know
that I saw Gacy

at a shovel at this property.

You might want to take
a look at it."

He didn’t really think
about it again,

figured that the investigators
had done their due diligence

and found nothing there.

More than 20 years later,

Bill is working on
this murder investigation

as a PI in the Northwest Suburbs
with the Suburban Police

and the Better
Government Association,

which is a local watchdog group,
and they’re trading war stories,

and he tells them this story

about Gacy
that’s always haunted him.

And they contacted me
about a couple days later

and said, "Bill, if you can ever
find a way where you can further

that investigation,
we’d like to know about it."

I went back to my office,
talked to my old homicide boss.

He said to me, "Well, Bill,
you’ve been talking about this

all these years,
about your suspicion,

but we all know you just
can’t dig without more proof."

He says,
"See what you can find out."

So in 1998,

Bill Dorsch interviewed
all these other neighbors.

John Wayne Gacy was
the maintenance man

for the apartment building

located across from the house
that I lived in as a youth.

By the time I was 12 years old,
about,

I had become the lawn-mowing boy
of the neighborhood.

There was one day

I was out mowing a lawn
out on Elston Avenue,

and a gentleman came up to me,
and he called me over and said,

"Son, are you interested
in mowing more lawns?"

All I knew is his name was John.
I knew nothing more about him.

Once I had that down,
he had me starting to haul trash

from the buildings.
The home that I lived in

was directly across
from the corner of the building,

so my windows of where I lived
actually look into the windows

where John’s mother
was residing at the time.

One day, I was taking trash out
from the units,

and I opened up the gate.

John was standing there,
and he just simply looked at me

and said, "Mike," he says,
"We’re doing some digging here.

You’re going to have to go
around the building."

He was leaning against the fence
watching another gentleman

down in a hole
doing all the manual digging.

I would say it had to be 6
to 8 feet in depth.

It was actually pretty much
the entire parking lot.

Suddenly, there were 3-foot,
4-foot-deep trenches

that were 2 feet wide
running along the sidewalks.

I would see those ditches daily,

and I went to school
one morning,

and the ditches were filled.

Now, those ditches were not
filled that evening filled,

so they were filled sometime
between

when I went to bed at night

and when I went to school
at 7 o’clock in the morning.

Why they were filled overnight,
I don’t know.

When they were filled,

they had bushes
that were put in there

about every 4 feet
from each other.

To this day, it questions me.

Why would you dig a trench 3
to 4 feet deep,

about 2 feet wide
to put in a small bush

when you can just dig holes
and put those bushes in there?

Bill Dorsch tried to contact
other people who had lived

around the building
who might remember Gacy there.

And from everything
that the witnesses were saying,

there was some
suspicious activity

going on at that location.

Another neighbor lived
across Elston on the corner

and used to get up
in the middle of the night

to take care of a sick child

and had many memories of
sitting at his kitchen table

in the middle of the night

looking out the window
into the darkness,

seeing John Gacy dragging large
garbage bags across the yard,

large, heavy garbage bags
across the yard

in the middle of the night.

Another neighbor,
Bruno Muzinski,

lived in the basement apartment
of the Miami

and Elston building itself.
He was another police officer.

The first time I met him,
it was good.

He looked like a regular guy,
did his work,

and I had no problems with him.

He was in my apartment.
We had coffee together.

We talked together, but as
the months went by, he changed.

He got different.

He looked different.
His manners were different.

He’d come around.
His hair was all disheveled.

His eyes were all glassy,
and he just wasn’t right.

I could see it in his eyes.
He just wasn’t right.

He looked like he was
in a horror movie.

Come around at night,

and he’d go into the laundry
room across from my apartment,

and I’d hear banging
and digging, the hammer,

with the sledgehammer pounding
the concrete down there.

We couldn’t figure out
what was going on down there,

and it was a big question mark

and waking us up
during the middle of the night.

Years later, when Bruno
Muzinski heard

that Gacy had been arrested,

he called his own police station
and reported,

"I saw some weird stuff at this
building at Miami and Elston.

You should tell the higher ups

they might want
to check it out."

So I called the detective
division up,

and I told him who I was,
and I told him the things

that were going on around
the building and everything,

and he says, "Bruno,
we don’t want any more bodies."

I was sort of shocked. I thought
they’d want to get everything.

They’d want to do everything
in their power

to find out where everybody was
and who was killed

and get closure
for the other families.

But I guess not.

Bill found other neighbors
who, when Gacy was arrested,

had the same reaction he did.
They had seen Gacy

doing something strange
at this property,

and Bruno Muzinski
called the police to say,

"You ought to take a look."

That’s a very big issue
for me.

I always thought that perhaps
I was the only one

that ever called
the police department.

The police knew about all this,

and you would expect that they
would act on this information,

and, in fact, they didn’t,

so that’s when I began
a search for technology

that could be used
that we couldn’t use before,

and that’s when I came upon
the ground-penetrating radar.

When we did
the ground-penetrating radar,

we had a company from out east,
and Ron LaBarca,

who was president
of that company, came out,

and he assisted us
with his expertise.

Ron LaBarca’s survey revealed

what he called
anomalies underground.

He would not go so far himself

as to say whether or not
they would be human remains,

but there were anomalies
in the soil.

Finding an indication
that a body may be buried

through the use of equipment
is not proof enough.

You have to be able to dig
before you know what’s there,

but in law enforcement,

we all know that’s the final
answer to the question.

You have to dig.

As an investigator,
you continue to seek the truth,

and that’s all
I was trying to do.

Never did I suspect
the Chicago Police Department

was not in the same mood
as I was

or didn’t have
the same intention as I did.

Bill Dorsch interviewed
all these other neighbors,

and then the police
interviewed them

before filing
the search warrant.

Just before that investigation
occurred in 1998,

William Dorsch is told by
insiders nothing would be found.

Everything was going well up
until the second meeting

with the state’s
attorneys office,

and my fellow detectives
from area five,

we had a meeting,

and I was ordered from people
that I used to work with that

there was not really
going to be a dig,

that they were not intent
on finding any bodies.

So in 1998, Mike Nelson
drew a diagram of the yard

indicating
where the trenches had been

that he’d had to mow
the grass around.

I recall specifically
one spot of the property

where there was a large bush,

and it would’ve been
on the Elston-Miami intersection

of the grass,
and it was very thorny,

and I recall that it has
a massive root structure

that you can’t really
do anything with,

so when I drew my schematic,

I specifically put on that
corner that that bush was there,

that that bush was there
the whole time I grew up

and that absolutely nothing
could’ve ever been dug there.

I did watch what was going on
through news media

just to see what was happening,

and they squared off the areas
and all the areas

that I basically
had marked on the lawn.

They had put the tent
over a spot in the yard

where there had been
a giant bush in 1978.

They dug where I told them
not to dig,

and that was
specifically one spot.

I said, "Don’t even waste your
time. There’s nothing there."

Police in Chicago said
they have no evidence

that serial killer
John Wayne Gacy

buried bodies of his victims

in the backyard of
his mother’s apartment building.

Holes were dug
in the ground Monday

after a former Chicago
detective said

that he had seen Gacy
near the building with a shovel.

I was told at the beginning
that the Chicago

Police Department
was going to do everything

they could to further
this investigation.

I trusted them.

I learned quickly that that was
not the right thing to do.

So Bill was very upset.
He felt he couldn’t

trust his friends
in the police department.

He didn’t trust the brass
who had authorized the dig.

Dorsch felt really terrible.

I guess the biggest thing is,

I realize
that Bill Dorsch alone,

even as an experienced
investigator,

has very little power.

I now recognize that
if I don’t tell the story now,

it may never get told.

Bill Dorsch told me
about the 1998 dig,

and I obtained the documents
from the radar company,

and then I was able to call
the head of that radar company

to have a conversation with him
to get his thoughts on that,

and he said, "Yeah, we gave them
17 targets to dig

where we found something
that was worth looking at,

and the Chicago
Police Department

would only dig in two spots."

They say all they found
was a glass marble,

a saucepan and some wire.

As far as they were concerned,
the case was closed.

The president
of the US Radar Company writes,

"In a proper investigation,
the authorities would’ve been

more willing to excavate
any possibility."

So I thought that was pretty
interesting

that even the head
of the radar company

thought that the Chicago
Police Department

didn’t do a thorough job
in that 1998 investigation.

I found Detective
Bill Dorsch credible.

He certainly had
all the information.

He was passionate
about what he was doing,

didn’t really have anything
to gain by it.

You would think anybody
would want to know

the answers to the questions
about the Miami Avenue address.

Surely, a police department
would only look good

if they were to find the bodies,

identify the bodies, contact
the families and bring closure.

I can find no other reason
for not doing,

except certain people in power
don’t want it done.

You start to sense that maybe
there’s a cover-up here,

that careers are made
on this case,

and it certainly would not bode
well for the police department

to reveal

that those investigations
were not done very well.

I’m sure there were people
in the police department

and the state’s
attorney’s office that

wanted Bill Dorsch to go away.
But he didn’t.