All language subtitles for The.Clown.and.the.Candyman.S01.E02.The.Apex.Predator.2020.720p.WEBRip.x264-KOMPOST

[narrator] They were more
than 1000 miles apart.

Yet two of America's most notorious
serial killers had a lot in common.

[man on TV] The most
shocking and horrifying result

of older men having sex
with young boys

is the story of Dean Corll
in Houston, Texas,

and, more recently,
John Gacy in Chicago.

These handcuffs were found in his
residence during the search warrant.

Gacy later admitted that he
got the handcuff trick from Corll,

and he also bragged that he
got more kids than Corll did.

Not 28 like Corll, but 33.

He was... a pedophilia copycat.

[narrator] This series investigates
evidence they were connected

to a secret nationwide network
in the 1970s.

They probably considered
John David Norman

the kingpin of all
of porno operations.

We searched the apartment
and found over 2000 file cards

with the names of over 2000
boys, ranging in age from 14 to 20.

He couldn't stop.

This was a guy that
just could not stop.

[narrator] It was a wide and
deep hidden web of pedophiles

preying on young men.

Doctors, lawyers
all the way down.

Police departments.

Some of them were
Boy Scout leaders

in Boy Scout Troop 137.

These people with power,
especially political power,

they can get
a lot of things erased.

[narrator] And in
never heard before tapes,

the killer clown tells
a different tale of murder.

[record playing]

[narrator] And two investigators
race against time to close the case

on two of America's
most notorious serial killers.

We know that time is not
necessarily on our side.

As long as I'm here, I will not
stop until I can't work it any longer.

[man] Sitting on death row, John
Wayne Gacy has been hugely successful

with his artwork, cashing in
on his notoriety as a serial killer.

Gacy's crude paintings are
on exhibit around the country.

Elvis, Jesus, the seven dwarves,
and a self portrait has "Pogo the Clown".

Collectors have paid him
more than $100,000.

[narrator] Since his
conviction in 1980,

the killer clown has been
appealing his death sentence,

using the money from his
artwork to pay his legal bills,

and basking in his notoriety
as a serial killer.

[siren wailing]

[Skip] The reason we're
sometimes drawn to serial killers

is not because of their victims, but
because of the serial killers themselves.

Here is the personification
of evil.

And we want to sort
of read about that.

We want to explore it. We
want to see what that looks like.

[narrator] In 1989, Randy White
began talking to John Wayne Gacy

while he sat on death row.

Randy, a Canadian who calls
himself an amateur researcher,

says it started with a book
a friend suggested he read.

[Randy] It was Buried Dreams, and he
told me about this book and about Gacy.

And he told me, well, uh, you
know, he killed all these kids.

And I saw it's interesting,
and you could write to him,

there was his prison number
on the back of the book.

You know, I read the book and

I thought it was just...
It was curiosity... sake...

...to write to him.

[narrator] White is not a
journalist or an investigator,

but he was fascinated
with Gacy and the case.

Some people just are.

He was a smooth talker.

It was a very charming...

Um, you know, you wouldn't
dream that he was a killer.

[narrator] It started with a letter
and then became phone calls.

At first, it was mostly about his
family, about his... his paintings

that we talked about.

[narrator] Until now, these calls
have never been made public,

[Randy] Eventually, he said, you know,
like all the books you read about me,

it's all trash garbage.

[narrator] The more Randy
looks into news articles

and the books written about
the case, the more he wonders.

Is there something
to what Gacy is telling him?

I knew that he killed.

But maybe he wasn't involved
in all these murders.

Others could have been involved
with him or did it on their own.

[narrator] It's a far stretch
from back in 1978,

where Gacy confessed to the
police to murdering more than 30 boys.

He even drew them a sketch
of where the bodies were buried.

Yet Gacey was desperate
to fight off his death sentence.

So Randy begins digging up
what he can about the victims

and some of the men
who worked for Gacy.

[narrator] Randy doesn't know it at the
time, but John David Norman of Texas

is at the center of the story of
John Wayne Gacy and Dean Corll.

It started with a raid in 1973
on Norman's apartment in Dallas.

[telecaster] Police in Dallas
think they've uncovered

a nationwide procurement ring
for homosexuals.

They raided an apartment
and found hundreds of booklets

with the names
and pictures of young men.

[RC Nelson] I was a detective
in Dallas Police Department,

when we busted this guy.

And as I recall,
Norman was sitting

at a kitchen table,

and a couple of kids
sitting around.

Underage teenage boys,
and on the table,

various cards
and brochures on display.

[RC Nelson] Norman
was recruiting teenage kids

to go around the country
for prostitution.

[narrator] Through his newsletter,
The Odyssey Foundation,

Norman disguised the scheme
as providing self help

for young people
through travel programs.

It was anything but that.

[RC Nelson]
It was kids for rent.

Christ, just... makes you sick
to think about it.

[female reporter] Police are still
trying to compile enough evidence

to file a charge of conspiracy
to commit a felony,

namely sodomy, against
45-year-old John Paul Norman,

the alleged head of that homosexual
procurement operation in Dallas.

[RC Nelson] We interviewed
him, you know, all he had was a nod

or, I don't know,
or, I'm innocent.

He didn't have anything to say.

[narrator] Police compile the
names of 30 juveniles from 13 states,

who were allegedly procured as
companions for older men known as sponsors.

There were over 100 cards.

[narrator] It was a nationwide
child trafficking ring,

discovered one week after the Dean Corll
mass murders in Houston made headlines.

[male reporter] So far,
24 bodies have been recovered.

They're all teenage boys
who were tortured,

sexually abused
and then brutally killed.

34-year-old Dean Corll sexually
assaulted all of the victims.

Then they were tortured by
17-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley.

Henley was charged
with four counts of murder.

There were all these rumors that
Corll was part of an organization

where he was paid to send
teenage boys to California

to be part of this
homosexual teenage ring.

[narrator] In fact, Elmer Wayne
Henley had said in his confession,

that Corll said he belonged to a group
out of Dallas that bought and sold boys.

Now Hamleys words make sense.

Police believe some of
the boys killed by Dean Corll

may have been among
those pictures.

Today, this would be an enormous
scandal with every name investigated.

But in the 1970s,
only Norman was charged.

Less than a month after the
raid, Norman was released

on a $7000 bond.

There's no national tracking
system, no sex offender registry.

Dallas police had to let him go.

Unfortunately, we never
brought him to trial

in Dallas,
just because he's gone.

Gone, but not long before
he's back in business.

Less than a month
after the Dallas bust,

Norman changes his name
to Steven Gerwel,

and surfaces 1000 miles north.

[RC Nelson] I got a call from
Illinois from a Detective Flannery.

Norman was there,
doing the same thing

that we had got
him for in Dallas.

It didn't take him...

Probably two or three days, he
was back in business in Illinois.

[narrator] It was true.

Detective Sergeant, Frank
Flannery of Homewood Police

had received an anonymous call
from a concerned neighbor.

[Frank] And this woman said,
Mr. Flannery, you don't know me,

but I'm telling you that there
is a man in an apartment.

He is luring young boys, and
performing sexual acts on them.

[narrator] The caller
identifies one of the boys,

as 13-year-old Kenny Hellstrom.

[Frank] I almost fell
out of the chair.

I knew the Hellstroms since
grade school, this is their son.

"I called Kenny Hellstrom's father,
and I said, "You better come in here

"and you better bring that boy
with you," I said he's involved

in some very, very terrible
activities that are going on.

[narrator] The story Kenny
Hellstrom tells Detective Flannery

is why parents tell their
kids, "Beware of strangers."

[Frank] He told me that
he had first met this person

in a restaurant in Homewood,

and the man asked him
if he wanted a ride home,

and he said, sure. So he put him in
the car and instead of taking him home,

he brought him to his apartment
and asked him if he wanted some beer.

He brought him in there
and he gave him beer.

And that's the way
that this thing got started.

[narrator] 13-year-old Kenny lives
down the street from John David Norman.

So do lots of his friends.

Soon they're all gathering after school
to meet the man with the free beer.

This John David Norman
showed them pornographic films.

Then he would show
them pornographic films

where it was just males having
sexual acts with one another,

and the boys,
they went along with it.

He would pull the boy's pants
down and perform oral sex on them.

Sometimes one at a time,
sometimes five in a row.

These are the testimonies that
we have from the boys themselves.

Uh, you're talking
about one evil... evil...

I can't use that kind
of language on television.

But, uh, I've got
a few more words

that could describe this man
and as far as I'm concerned,

there is a special place
in hell for that bastard.

[narrator] When Detective
Flannery raids the apartment,

no one is home,
but there's plenty to see.

[Frank] We went into every drawer,
uh, and in an upstairs bedroom

that was not being used, this
is where we found the camera,

the filming
and these index cards.

I said to my partner, I said,
"What... What in the world is this?"

White three by five index cards in
file boxes. Just like in a recipe box.

All right, this is for tacos. This
is for corn, beef and cabbage,

If you're Irish like I am.

[narrator] Norman has
started a new list of boys,

and the men who wanted them.

Over 2000 names on them. The
names of children ranging in age

from 14 to 20, uh, from
all over the United States.

Most of them
were from out of state.

Dallas, Texas, San Diego,
Maryland, Connecticut,

New York State, Florida,
all over the place.

I had never seen anything
like that in my life, no.

[narrator] John Norman
isn't just a local nuisance.

He runs a national pedophile ring,
and the index cards are his database.

Everything police needed to make
their case was on those index cards.

We gave everything that we had,
the cards, all the files, everything

to the Chicago Police
Department,

and they started their
prosecution with him as well.

[narrator] Chicago police would
prosecute John Norman, all right,

but that's where it ended.

Where those cards were
at today, I have no idea.

[narrator] When the police find
John David Norman, they charged him

with three counts of contributing
to the sexual delinquency

of a child, and five counts of
indecent liberties with a child.

He's sent to Chicago's Cook
County Jail with bail set at $325,000.

[Frank] I wish I was the one to
put the cuffs on him to tell the truth.

He was nervous.
There's no two ways about it.

I mean, I spoke to my partner
the very next day.

He said he was shaking so bad he
could barely sign his his rights waiver.

[narrator] Detective Sergeant
Flannery turned over the index cards

to the Chicago Police.
A detailed catalog of names,

[Frank] Power.
People know judges.

People know other people
in power themselves.

People like you and I would
have been in jail a long time ago,

but these people, they do it
and they get away with it.

[narrator] 13-year-old Kenny
Hellstrom was one of Norman's victims,

and he testified against Norman.

One year later, Kenny was found stabbed
to death on his way home from work.

Somebody stabbed him
six times in his back

and he made his way home
and was scratching at the door,

and he died
in his mother's arms.

We never did figure out 100
percent why the person stabbed him.

[narrator] $250 was in his
pocket, making robbery unlikely.

But the police were never
able to rule out retaliation

for his testimony
against Norman.

In the Cook County Jail, while
awaiting trial on his sodomy charges,

Norman meets 22-year-old
Phillip Paske.

Paske is awaiting trial on
attempted murder in a robbery.

Using the jail's printing press,
Norman with Paske's help

gets his Boys for Rent
newsletter back into print.

In early 1976,
Phillip Paske was paroled

and ran Norman's Boys for
Rent newsletter from the outside.

A year later, Norman is
paroled, moves in with Paske,

and they continue
the mail order sex business.

One reporter is about to blow the cover
on an underground pedophile network.

[woman] I was a reporter for
The Chicago Tribune in 1977.

I think I was all
of 33 years old,

and it was my first
sort of major investigation.

[narrator] Michael Sneed is one of
Chicago's most powerful journalists.

Back then, her career
was about to take off.

A brochure about underage boys for
rent arrives mysteriously on her desk.

Somebody sent me
a flyer in the mail

and the flyer said,
"The Delta Project".

And it had to do
with boy love stuff.

We had no idea where
it was coming from.

So I called the police department
and I asked for the juvenile division.

And as soon as I said I'm curious about
something called "The Delta Project."

Have you heard
anything about it?

Total silence.

The end result was, he hung up.

[phone disconnects]

I went to my editor,
George Bliss, and I said,

I don't know how much further
we can go with this.

[narrator] Bliss is a Pulitzer
Prize winning investigative reporter

with an established relationship
with the Chicago police.

The police agreed to let Sneed and
Bliss join in their undercover operation.

And it was sort of during a
time when reporters and police

worked together
a little differently.

We really worked together.

So every night
we were on stakeouts.

We were in cars with cops.

We were watching
what was going on.

And we'd go
to the Chicken Hawk area.

The boys
were considered chickens,

thought chicken hawks were
considered the guys that went after them.

[narrator] Embedded with the cops night
after night, for weeks and months on end,

a dark web of child pornography

and prostitution emerges
on the streets of Chicago.

[Sneed] Men were paying
underage boys to have sex with them.

Which was an outrage.

Even I thought that men were
only interested in the little girl's.

It didn't even occur to me that it
was little boys that they were after.

[Sneed] Prostitution was not
unknown, but we did not know

that there was an area in
Chicago where this was going on

and that children were
involved in these things.

[narrator] The brochure Michael
Sneed received in the mail,

The Delta Project, was part
of this so called boy love world

and went far beyond the
streets of the windy city.

This was the 70s.

There was no Internet,
no social media.

It was newsletter,
after newsletter,

promoting pedophilia
as an unabashed lifestyle

from coast to coast
and around the world.

[Sneed] They would send around
these brochures.

Somehow they went
through the mails,

and through word of mouth, people
would know this is what this meant.

This periodical was just a way of
summoning you to these places.

It was print, it was paper.

This was a pond of perversity.

[narrator] And the ringleader
was headquartered in Chicago.

[Sneed] John Norman was the guy.

He was the big guy.

He was the guy
that produced all this stuff.

His arrest record dates back
to May 20th, 1954,

when he was arrested for
molesting a minor in Houston.

After that,
he was arrested in Sacramento,

Santa Ana, Los Angeles,
Santa Monica,

Dallas, Chicago and Homewood

for various
sex related offenses.

[narrator] Norman was a big
player, but not the only one.

Sneed discovers child
pornography and prostitution

operating across the country.

It was organized, profitable,
and much of it was on film.

[Sneed] People then
were filming children,

and sending this film overseas

or nationwide
for people to view.

We were watching
what was going on every night

trying to identify
some of these men.

[narrator] The customers
were often the very people

who had volunteered
to help children.

Trafficking in those days
was done,

I think an awful lot
through foster care.

These children
would be taken in,

somehow they would either
leave foster care,

or their foster parent
would be involved in this filth.

[narrator] It's a ghastly
reality Sneed sees for herself

on her last late night stakeout.

[Sneed] It was
in a cheesy-sleazy motel

on Sheridan Road.

The guy who was the
foster father of this foster kid,

and he was filming him,

having sex with another boy
that was much younger.

The guy who was
the foster father,

I remember them
putting him on the floor.

His hands behind his back.

And while they were
handcuffing them,

one police officer threw me
his gun and said,

"Hold it on him,
will you please?"

I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"

[narrator] After months
of crisscrossing the country,

talking to police, pornographers
and some of their victims,

the Chicago Tribune
publishes the series

exposing the pedophile ring in
America and the story explodes.

Here's the first one.

[narrator] It was a massive moment
for Sneed and for the country.

[Sneed] I had no idea
that it would be this big.

I knew it was gonna be
a big crime story.

It's just unbelievable.

[narrator] The story went
beyond Norman's operation

to the tragedy of missing kids,

especially boys in the 70s.

I remember, um,
a police officer saying to me

after we did the child
porn series, he said,

"So you've taken on
the one taboo. Finally."

'Cause it's been taboo forever.

Nobody really wanted
to talk about it.

Nobody really did
anything about it.

Because a lot of it involved
members of families.

There were no real
child obscenity laws.

That's why this story
became so big.

[narrator] The series
paves the way for new laws

protecting children
from being trafficked

and made creating and
distributing child pornography illegal.

But for some,
the law came too late.

[narrator] Since 2011, Lieutenant
Jason Moran has been trying to identify

the last eight victims
of John Wayne Gacy.

I don't wanna bring
attention to the killer.

This isn't about him.

This is about victims of murder.

It's about missing persons.

Unidentified deceased persons.

Families, providing answers.

Not knowing the fate
of your missing loved one

is worse than hearing
what happened?

There wasn't a person
in the United States

that didn't hear
of the Gacy serial killings.

The media stories went on
for months and months.

So if you had
a missing person in your life,

a missing young man,

you would've had to have
heard the message.

[reporter] When police uncovered
the bodies of 27 young men

buried at Gacy's home,

they assumed they'd be deluged
with phone calls.

The parents of teenage boys who had
disappeared the past few years would call,

and that would help in the
identification of the victims.

But it hasn't happened.

[narrator] Former Des
Plaines detective Rafael Tovar

was on the Gacy case
from day one.

[Rafael] We didn't have as much
a response as we had hoped,

and my thought is that

1978, homosexuality
was not as acceptable.

It was hard to get people to come
forth because of stigma attached to it.

And I think some people probably just
said, you know, I don't wanna go there.

If he's dead, he's dead.

[narrator] But in 2011, when the
Cook County sheriff reopened the case,

attitudes about
homosexuality were changing.

The taboo of being gay
was lifting.

[Thomas] It was really
incredible the first couple of days.

Tip after tip was coming in

of people
who had always wondered

and harbored some notion
that maybe my son, my uncle,

my cousin, my brother
was a victim of Gacy,

but really didn't know
what they could do about it.

[narrator]
Thanks to DNA technology,

two of Gacy's victims
were identified.

Six remain nameless.

[Willa] I called up, and I said,

"I'm calling in response
to the Gacy investigation

and I think my brother
may be one of the victims."

[narrator] For more than
half of her life,

Dr. Willa Wertheimer wondered
what happened to her half-brother.

[Willa]
Is he out there somewhere?

Incapacitated or suffering or...

on drugs
or living under a bridge.

Or, you know, what happened,
and where is he,

and is he okay?

I wanted so much to find him.

[narrator] Fifteen-year-old
Andy Drath of Chicago

disappeared in late 1977.

Andy was, um,
almost two years older than I.

We were, you know,
always together.

We fought sometimes like
siblings do, but yeah, we were close

When our mother died, I was five
and a half, he was a little over seven.

And I think
the whole house fell apart.

My father, his stepfather, he would
sort of keep tabs on the situation,

but they didn't have
a good relationship, so...

[sighs] I wouldn't know
how to describe it.

When you're labeled
a bad kinda kid

who is hyper, can't focus,
grieving,

you know, and, um, he
couldn't find a place to fit.

He started leaving home
at around 10:00.

He was very young.

He was very traumatized,
very unhappy.

And it just kept escalating
and getting worse.

He'd come home, he'd go to a
special school, he'd run away again.

No matter
what the ups and downs,

even when he was off the grid,
so to speak, he would call me

and we would
catch up a little bit.

I was about 13 and we
met up in the neighborhood

and I noticed his voice was
changing and getting deeper.

And I had no idea that would
be the last time I'd see him.

[Jason]
Missing person Andy Drath.

He was lean number 49,
and he was the right age.

He was from the north side of
Chicago where Gacy operated mainly

He had a weak family bond.

And was passed from placement
to placement,

to foster parent to placement.

For a young man, uh,
just had a hard time in life.

He just really couldn't win.

He further explained
that Andy's Foster parent

would victimize him sexually.

He would put him in videos of
him having sex with other men.

He would push him out on
the street to be a prostitute.

This is a young man, white, operating as
a prostitute on the north side of Chicago.

There's no one
looking for this young man.

He's a perfect victim
for John Gacy.

[narrator] For 32 years,
Willia Wertheimer of Chicago

wondered if her half-brother,
Andy Drath, was a Gacy victim.

After submitting her DNA,

to the Cook County Sheriff's
Office, all she could do is wait.

[Willia] The day Detective
Moran was ready to make

a positive identification,
he drove out to me.

We went over things that
we're connecting and lining up.

And then he sort of
drew himself up a little bit

and... and said quite formally,
that he regretted to inform me

and, you know, told me.

I would've bet a week's salary that Andy
was one of Gacy's unidentified victims.

I was wrong. My guess was wrong.

But Andy was still missing.

So now Willia's DNA profile
gets uploaded

into the Federal DNA Database.

A database that we use to identify missing
persons or unidentified deceased persons.

[narrator] Four years later
and 2,000 miles away,

Willia's wait comes to an end.

[Jason] Willia's DNA profile

was similar to an unidentified
homicide victim from San Francisco.

A young man
that was found murdered

and concealed in the beach
off of the ocean.

The genetic association between
Willia and this unidentified murder victim,

and the circumstances
surrounding Andy's disappearance,

and him traveling to San
Francisco, we were able to say

that that unidentified
murder victim was Andy Drath.

He was shot

and buried in the sand
at San Francisco Beach.

I don't want to talk
about the specific details,

but I could tell that
he knew it was coming.

And he must have
surely been terrified.

[narrator] If Andy wasn't a Gacy
victim, then who killed him and why?

My case really could have stopped
them, but I had to follow up on it.

I couldn't leave Willa
with those questions.

Then my role kinda shifted

to assisting the San
Francisco Police Department

with their open murder case.

So I began looking
for reasons why someone

would want to kill Andy,
who seemingly hurt no one.

[narrator] Lieutenant Moran
has stepped into a story

uncovered when Andy
disappeared in 1977,

that spider's web of predators
preying on boys across America.

And I started to look more
into Andy and learned that.

Andy's foster parent, the
one who was victimizing him

by putting on the street to
commit acts of prostitution,

was arrested for these crimes,
eventually, back in the late seventies,

[narrator] The foster father
on reporter Michael Sneed's

last stakeout in May of 1977

was a photographer for one of John
David Norman's newsletters, Hermes.

And the boy in the motel
was Willa's brother Andy Drath.

He was a witness in a trial
against his abusers,

a man who forced him to be
a juvenile male prostitute.

[Jason] The prosecutor
at the time needed Andy

to testify against
his foster parents.

It just seems from what I found,
that this criminal prosecution

was too much for him.

And I started a locate documents

saying that he was going
to move to San Francisco.

[narrator] But Andy couldn't escape
the web, a national ring with tentacles

in cities and towns
across the country.

I began to think
that perhaps Andy's killer

may be followed him
from Chicago to San Francisco.

[narrator] Was Andy one of the
boys on Norman's index cards?

And what secrets
could he have told?

To this day, Andy Drath's
murder remains unsolved

[Willa] For a good while, I kept
reliving what I imagined he would feel,

and I used to have a fantasy of

dying with him so that
he could look at the face

of someone who loved
him, instead of his killer.

[narrator] At the Cook County
Sheriff's Office, Lieutenant Jason Moran

has been working tirelessly
to give the last six

of Gacy's victims
their names back.

He has leads on two more.

Victim number 5 and victim
number 28.

[Jason] Victim number 28 was
found buried in the backyard

underneath the barbecue pit, and
he still has never been identified.

This ring was on
the commitment finger

of the left hand of Victim
number 28,

The reason why this always puzzled
me was because it appears to be like

a wedding ring or
a promise ring,

which means that someone

should have been
looking for this person.

Time is of the essence,
every month that goes by

it's possible that we're
losing individuals

that are related to the victims
and we need their biological sample.

For testing.

As long as there's leads
to follow, as long as

there's people that I could talk to
about their missing family members,

we're going to pursue this.

[Reporter] The dangers confronting
runaways are real in Houston, Texas,

In 1973, Dean Corll
killed 27 young boys,

many of them runaways.

A national runaway hotline
was established to help parents

from all over the country
discover

if their runaway children
were among the murdered.

[Sharon] When you put
that final puzzle piece in,

it's like a light comes on
and you feel like

you've really done something
worthwhile.

And that's why it is so fascinating
to be a forensic anthropologist.

[narrator] Since2006, Dr. Sharon
Derek has been untangling the mystery

of the last unidentified
victims of Dean Corll.

One last boy remains.

If she can identify him,
she can close the case

on the candy man's reign
of terror for good.

This is the reconstruction
of NL 733356.

It is not a picture of the boy
himself, but it is a facial approximation

that using his bone structure
measurements and some of the information

we know about him. ace and
a CT scan, artists put together

what he may have looked like.

We had submitted DNA samples
from almost every bone in his body.

We did a full anthropological
analysis, came up with a profile that says

that he was probably fifteen
to seventeen years old.

He was Caucasian.

We call that European-American
or he may have had some Hispanic.

[narrator] Among his remains
was a pair of boots,

a t shirt and a striped
Catalina swimsuit.

Her best lead so far
comes from a secret source.

[Sharon] I think this kid
is possibly a boy

who I have several pictures
of that were sent to me

by on anonymous individual who
maintained that this boy's name

is Bobby French.

And that he was killed right
after the pictures were taken.

I don't know if that is true,
but I do know that the pictures

of this boy look very much like
the facial structure of ML 733356.

The hair looks good,
the jawline looks good.

And so I'm very interested
to know who that boy is

and why this person thinks
that he was a victim.

Right now, the search
for this boy's identity

is in the hands
of genealogical DNA.

[narrator] Dr. Derrick is no
longer with the Harris County

medical examiner's office, But
some things never leave you.

Whoever sent those photos
remains a mystery,

and the best hope is to
track down Bobby French.

If this production can do that,
can track down family members

of a Bobby French who may either
had be deceased or who is fine now.

It would be very helpful
to the investigation.

[narrator] Every one of Corll's
victims came from the Houston area,

many from the same neighborhood.

If this boy wasn't from Houston,
could he be one of sex trafficker

John David Norman's
boys for rent?

Was Norman's ring bigger and
more dangerous than anyone knew?

Even John Wayne Gacy.

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[narrator] During those first few months,
Randy White delves into the victims.

And the more they talked,
the more Randi wondered

if there was something
to Gacy's claims.

[speaking]

[speaking]

[Randy] In the police reports, yes,
some were involved in prostitution,

and were a homosexual
or hustlers or both.

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[speaking]

[narrator] Since first contacting
John Wayne Gacy in prison,

Randy White has spent countless
hours on the phone with him,

compiling articles,

books and documents

to help in Gacy's appeal.

He even visits
the killer clown in prison.

[Randy] It was Halloween, 1989,

and I've made my first visit
with Casey at Menard.

And I was getting
a little bit nervous

because here I am seeing
a serial killer on death row.

And I'm looking down the hall
while I'm signing in,

and there he is.

I'm thinking to myself,
"He looks like a wimp."

And he was charming,
he was smiling.

And we sat at a table just
as close as you and I are.

All the time, like, I'm thinking,
"Did he kill these kids?

How could somebody like that
kill all these kids?"

He's like your
next door neighbor.

[narrator] The longer they talk,

and the deeper Randy digs into
the victims and the details of the case,

the stronger his suspicion grows

that there's more here
than meets the eye.

[recorded voice] This call
is subject to being recorded.

Hang up to decline the call.

To accept the call, dial three,

or clearly say, "Yes,
I accept," at the tone.

- [beep]
- [man] Yes, I accept.

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[narrator] Phillip Paske
was the young man

who was helping John Norman
run his call-boy service for pedophiles

the Delta Project
from the Cook County Jail.

It's a name Gacy knows.

Phillip Paske
works for John Wayne Gacy.

So he knew about Paske.

Gacy told me that he knew
the Paske worked for him,

and Paske was a good friend of
David Cram, who also worked for Gacy.

[narrator] In early 1976,
Paske was paroled,

but continued to run Norman's
boys-for-rent newsletter.

Norman was paroled in 1977,

and they kept their
mail order sex business going

until Norman was arrested again,

this time for molesting
two foster care boys.

That's when Paske
went to work for Gacy.

And incredibly, Paske had a
key to John Wayne Gacy's house.

Gacy handed out keys
to some of his employees

and let them come and go while
he was out of the house working.

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[Randy] Mmm-hmm.

[Gacy speaking over phone]

I believe there was a connection
between John Norman and John Gacy

through Phillip Paske, who was
Norman's right-hand man.

[narrator] Gacy floats the idea

this nationwide pedophile ring
could get him off death row.

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[Randy] Yeah.

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[Randy speaking]

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[narrator] That means finding the
ringleader of the sex trafficking network,

Paske's buddy, John Norman.

[Randy] I was trying
to track down Norman,

just see what
I could get out of him

in terms of knowing Gacy
or mis-operations.

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[Randy speaking]

[Gacy speaking over phone]

[narrator] Randy writes to
Norman, and he responds right away,

describing himself as a writer,

former TV producer
and a school teacher.

[Randy] I wrote him
in such a way

that he would think that I was
a follow person of his interests.

My first letter with him.

He was very detailed in stuff that
normally you wouldn't tell a stranger.

[narrator] He brags that his
boys for red business in Dallas

gave those young men a better
life than they've ever known.

He admits to his relationship
with Phillip Paske in Chicago,

and the Delta Project,

the newsletter that launched the Chicago
Tribune expose on child pornography in America.

"Yes, the Delta Project is mine."

It's the operation Phil Paske and I
ran during the months I was out on bail.

The program gave them access to
businessmen and others who could help them.

"And if sex was part of the
deal, it was to their advantage."

[narrator] In 1978, Paske
wasn't just working for Norman,

he was living with him.

But when Norman was busted
for molesting two foster kids,

the Delta Project fizzled out.

[Randy] Paske was there
at the time of the arrest.

Even though he was on parole,

he wasn't arrested
for some reason.

Um, I could never find out why.

[narrator] Shortly
after that bust,

Paske got the job working for
Gacy through his buddy, David Cram.

So who's to say that Paske
wasn't using his crawl space

as a dumping ground for young kids who
won't go along with Norman's operation,

or want to get out
of Norman's operations?

This is huge.

How involved
was Norman with Gacy?

Gacy was a bragger.

He always wanted
to get others involved.

He got me involved.

Gacy couldn't
have done it alone,

just like people like
Dean Corll and Norman.

[narrator] Norman
was a big player

running a giant pool of boys
across the country,

and his network
had tentacles everywhere,

including some of America's
most trusted institutions.

Call it fate or serendipity,

but a broken conveyor belt and
a roll of film exposed one of them.

[Frank] August 23rd, 1976.

We received a phone call

from the regional manager of
Fotomat labs in Dallas, Texas.

The conveyor belt broke down,

and on the conveyor belt
was a series of photographs

that had two adult males
having sex with a young boy.

And he said it came from
Harry O Cramer in New Orleans.

He said, "Are you all interested in
possibly investigating the situation?"

And we said, "Absolutely,
Can you send it to us?"

And that's how the case began.

[Gus] We looked at the photos
for several days

and there was
no identifying information.

No address, the phone number
was disconnected.

But while we were looking,

the lieutenant
walked by and he said,

"There's a Boys' Life magazine
on the coffee table.

You can only get those if you're
Boy Scout, troop leader or member."

We headed immediately over
to the Boy Scout office.

[Frank] They completely
stonewalled us.

In fact, they came out
with one piece of paper

and said, "This is all we have."

[narrator] After months
of DAGA detective work,

they learned
the two men in the photos

were both assistant
scoutmasters in Troop 137,

38-year-old Raymond Woodall,
and 22-year-old Harry Cramer,

the name
on the original film receipt.

[Gus] Harry Cramer, he was
kind of like a minor player.

He just happened
to make a mistake

by dropping that film roll.

[Frank] Woodall,
who in my opinion,

was probably one of the most devious
and probably one of the smartest.

[Gus] He was the organizer.

From talking to different kids,

and we got names
of other individuals

that weren't
Boy Scout leaders or members,

but they were grown-ups
that would associate with them.

[Frank] They had on index file
that was quite voluminous,

hand-written, and it was
all of their contacts.

They had literally business
file cabinets full of information,

and they had this Rolodex
of index cards,

recipe cards, if you would,

that they had
with a lot of names on it.

I mean, we literally had a room full of
evidence as a result of those searches.

[narrator] Troop 137
was a front.

Their leaders recruited boys
from broken homes into the troop,

and sent many of them
around the country

for the pleasure of men
willing to pay for them.

[Frank] I would call it
a pedophile cell,

they would infiltrate
organizations like Big Brothers,

child welfare services,
police departments,

who worked
their way into positions

where they
had access to children.

[Gus] They actually had,
like, a procedure, a guideline

on what type of kid to look for,

and what to do if this happens,

what not to do if this happens.

[narrator] One year
after finding the photos

of Woodall and Cramer
having sex with a young boy,

they, along with
two other Scout leaders,

were convicted
of setting up Troop 137

for the purpose
of molesting boys.

Woodall was handed a 75-year
sentence and died in prison.

Cramer was given 45 years.

This time, some of their
clients were also charged.

Like 54-year-old millionaire
real estate broker,

Hugh Scott Mellor of Boston.

He was sentenced to 5 years.

Forty-one-year-old
industrialist Richard Jacobs,

a one-time part owner
of the New England Patriots,

was charged with 15 counts of
aggravated crimes against nature,

but posted bail and skipped
town before facing trial.

Jacobs was never found.

It wasn't only these people.

It was numerous other people.

[narrator] Woodall admits

that top politicians
from around the US

were some of
the Troops' customers.

Not only national,
but it was international.

I mean, we had pedophiles that
we identified in Bermuda, in the UK,

- in Australia...
- [man] Germany.

Germany, uh, Czechoslovakia.

[narrator] And Woodall's name
was found in none other

than John Norman's address book.

They had a much wider network

and I think John Norman was looking
at this is as an example and said,

"Hey, I can do this."

Mm-hmm.

There were definitely
some characteristics

that pedophile cells have in
common with terrorist cells.

The violence might be different,

but in terms of being
like a sleeper cell,

where they're there and the
general public doesn't know about it,

I think it's probably
an apt comparison.

[Jerome] The Boy Scouts was a very
good hunting ground for these pedophiles.

I mean, it just provides
that cover.

It also helps them
gather prey in one area,

and they can just pick and
choose among they want.

[narrator] Jerome Elam
of Florida isn't just

an observer
of the pedophile ring.

I was sexually exploited by a
pedophile ring from age five to age 12.

[narrator] In these series,

most of the victims
of sex trafficking

have been photos of young men
or names in police and news reports.

Jerome Elam of Florida was a
victim of one of these pedophile rings,

abused and trafficked by his
own family from the age of five.

[Jerome] My mother was
an alcoholic, pregnant at 17,

my parents divorced

and my mother's alcoholism
just spiraled out of control.

She began to date
a series of dirt bags

until one day she brought home a
man we thought would change our lives.

Uh, but this individual, after about
six months, begin to molest me.

He used me to do child pornography,
and then began to track me

through the pedophile ring
he belonged to.

First time
that I was actually sold

was at a truck stop
in a truck stop bathroom,

so I was sold to five individuals,
including it, one woman.

They would come
and just rape me.

[lights fluctuating]

When it's your first time,
you're just rolling,

that gear to deal
with what's going on.

They use drugs, cocaine
in my case,

you know, Quaaludes
back in the '70s,

alcohol to make you
more compliant.

And these individuals essentially
pay to do whatever they want.

And there are just these depths of
the pravity that exists in that dark world.

It's just really like
looking into the abyss.

The traffickers would
come in and slap you around

and really just make you
compliant with what's going on.

You know, that was part of
the training process

where they kind of, you know,
they kind of got you to a point

where you are just the object
where they would just kind of come in.

And you are a robot
to do what they want.

If a child lost their life, they
would just move on to another one.

As a child,
I was desperate for affection,

like a drowning
man's desperate for oxygen.

So, part of the grooming process

is that when someone comes along

and pays attention to you,
um, you're immediately hooked.

I mean, these were kids
who have been ground down.

[recording playing]

[Jerome] You look at John
Wayne Gacy and Norman and

Dean Corll, I mean, they
were like kids in a candy shop,

because they just saw opportunity
everywhere they looked in the '70s.

When they chose a victim,

they knew that victim
was theirs to keep.

They could trap them
in this emotional

psychological quicksand
they couldn't escape.

[narrator] When he was
arrested in 1978,

Gacy told the police
in great detail

how he picked up
and murdered his victims.

But by the time he started talking
to Randy White a decade later,

his story changed dramatically.

[recording playing]

[narrator] Since his arrest,
Casey has turned down

every request for an interview from
Truman Capote to Oprah Winfrey.

Finally, in May of 1992, armed
with the information Randy dug up,

he was ready to tell the world a
different story and get off death row.

And he knows exactly
who he wants to talk to.

Currency and our businesses
is the scope.

I, like every other person
was not only interested in Gacy,

but interested in beating
each other to get Gacy

and I started to write letters.

I wrote him a letter a week.

I called Menard State Prison,
where he was on death row,

and ask to speak to him.

This went on
for more than a year.

[recording playing]

[machine whirring, gate opening]

[Walter] I wasn't sure
what I wanted to get from him

because anything he said,
was going to make news.

He said.
"What do you want to know?"

"Whatever you want to tell me."

[narrator]
Despite his confessions,

Gacy now claims
he didn't kill 33 boys

and paints himself as the
misunderstood victim of circumstance.

He starts
with smearing the victims.

[Gacy] And what we did
with each one,

we did profile sheets on them...

We wanted to know what the kid
was into, what his background was

when they paint the image
that I was this monster who...

who picked up like these
altar boys along the street

and swatted 'em like flies,
this is ludicrous.

He really believes it.

He said the only thing I could
be arrested and convicted for

was running a cemetery
at my house.

[narrator] His house did double as
headquarters for his construction company

and a flophouse
for some of his employees.

According to Gacy,

they could have buried
the bodies in the crawl space

while he was out of town.

Michael Rossi, David Cram
and Phillip Paske, all employees

of PDM contractors, all with
keys to the house on Summerdale.

[Walter] He tried to trap me
into giving him a space

to talk to the world
about what he didn't do

and in five minutes he
was telling me how he did it.

Shoelace. You're in trouble now.

[Walter] He asked my cameraman
to give him a piece of string,

and a cameraman undid his shoes,

took a lace out,
handed it to him,

and Gacy started
to wrap it around his wrist.

The only thing I ever learned
from Boy Scouts is a tourniquet knot.

It's hard trying to do this.

And he couldn't get it around because
he had one hand being wrapped

and he couldn't tie
a knot with the other hand.

So he asked me
to give him my arm...

[Gacy] Knot in it.

Then you put
a second knot in it.

Okay?

Then you take a stick
and stick it in here,

and you just turn this

and it causes an tourniquet.

[male voice] Precisely the
kind of knot found on the ropes

wrapped around the necks
of the victims

found under the house
on Summerdale.

He did think that he could
talk himself out of it,

that he could get this
decision reversed,

that he wouldn't have to die.

[recording playing]

[narrator] Gacy's attempt
to rewrite history fails.

The execution date is set for the
10th of May, 26 years to the day

after his first arrest
for sodomy in Waterloo, Iowa.

Before my mother died,
I remember her saying,

I want to be here the day
that they put him to death.

I want to push the button.

[narrator] Eugenia Godzik's
brother, Greg,

worked for Gacy and was
murdered by him in 1976.

[Walter] Gacy was flown
by helicopter

up to the state penitentiary
in Joliet.

[Eugenia] My husband and I
went to the prison.

It's unbelievable.

It's a huge, a huge building,
very ornate.

But it's kind of creepy.

When you walk in,
you're like, "Oh, God."

I thought we were going to be
able to see when they were injecting

whatever solution they use
and they said, "Oh, you can't go."

And I said, "What?"

I said, "I'm doing this for my
mom and I can't be in there?"

They said, "No." The media
could be there, but we could not.

[narrator] Just after midnight,
Gacy, "the killer clown"

was put to death
by lethal injection.

We're sitting there
and you're waiting

and then all of a sudden,
the phone rings.

It's like the Batman phone

and they pick it up
and they go...

[in soft voice]
"He has now passed."

[in normal voice]
And I go, "That's it?"

C'est la vie, it's over.

[narrator] Gacy showed
no remorse.

And took to his grave
clues to the identity

of his last nameless victims
and their possible connection

to John Norman, Dean Corll

and the national pedophile ring.

When they executed him...

I hate to see anybody executed,

but I didn't shed a tear.

No.

Sad to say it like,

but it's hard to have any
feeling for somebody like that.

[narrator] Today, thanks
to DNA technology,

Lieutenant Jason Moran of
Cook County's Cold Case unit,

is optimistic he may be able

to give two more of Gacy's
victims back their names.

[Jason Moran] I've been
assigned to identify these victims.

When I accomplish
the task I've been given,

it causes pain.

It's very hard to hear

that your loved one was

raped and murdered
by an evil serial killer.

The thing that I've learned
over the years

is that not knowing

is worse than knowing
for the families.

Victim number 28, he was buried

in Gacy's backyard,

underneath a barbecue pit.

He was the last victim found

in March of 1979,

when they were destroying
Gacy's house.

A... A family member
recently called.

She had a missing half-brother.

Their in common mother was
a bit of a rolling stone...

...and had multiple husbands
and boyfriends.

Also reported of him
being homosexual.

The circumstances

surrounding his disappearance...

Last seen getting in a car with
an unknown older male white,

fits quite perfectly

with what we know about how

Gacy acquired his victims.

So, I collected a DNA sample,

uh, submitted it to the lab.

[narrator] The tests don't
confirm a match between the sister

and victim number 28,

but the results show
it's a possibility.

[Moran] Victim number 28
cannot be excluded

as a biological relative
of this woman.

So, what that means is I
have to do additional work.

I have to find other relatives

and collect additional samples,

and the lab will look at him,
and they'll start seeing

if there's more
genetic associations

between relatives
of this missing boy

and victim number 28.

[narrator] To identify
earlier victims,

Lieutenant Moran took DNA

from family members
of missing persons

and compared it
with the DNA of the bodies.

If no family member

provided a sample,

the victim
couldn't be identified.

A new method has come to light,

and that's forensic genealogy.

The forensic genealogy
hopefully will lead me to a family,

as opposed to
a family reaching out for me.

[narrator] Lieutenant Moran has
turned to Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick,

considered the founder

of modern forensic genealogy.

Forensic genealogy

in an informal sense,

you can say
it's CSI meets Roots.

What they do,
is they take your DNA

and they put it
in a big supercomputer

and they compare it to everyone
else's DNA in their database.

So that if me and another
person share ten percent

of our DNA with each other,

we know we're in the range
of first cousins.

[Moran] And that's when
it starts to get interesting.

And we could say that

this victim

is related in some way
to this individual

in the genealogy database.

How are they related?

Who are their
in common relatives?

And out of any of those
in common relatives,

are any of 'em missing?

And that's where the
conventional detective work starts.

The phone calls,
the in-person meetings.

Who was this relative?

[narrator] Dr. Fitzpatrick has
solved cold cases across the country

by piecing together
genetic fingerprints.

Some, faded with time.

[Fitzpatrick] We found
right at the beginning,

we'd be working
with highly degraded DNA

and very low level DNA,

so that has developed
as our expertise

as we've gotten
better and better at it,

and we made the first
successful identification,

Buckskin Girl, in March of 2018,

and that was several weeks
before the Golden State Killer

was identified using
the same method.

[narrator] Gacy's last
unidentified victims

could be the hardest yet.

[Moran] Gacy's victims
were buried in a crawl space,

where they slowly degraded.

Gacy would put lime and acid

on the graves

to hasten decomposition
and to counteract the odor.

These chemicals don't help.

Then, the remains are removed
to the medical examiner's office

and then cleaned
through a chemical process,

and then, they were
buried in a grave

that has a lot
of water, bacteria.

All these things are not
helpful to the DNA re...

Required for forensic genealogy.

So, all we could do is try.

So, Doc, I was looking
at victim number five has

the most usable DNA,

um, and I was wondering
what you thought about

perhaps using

this victim as our first one

for the genealogy work.

You know, we know
very little about 'em,

because his body was markedly
decomposed, nearly skeletal.

He's estimated being in his 20s.

Like all the Gacy victims,

they identified Gacy victims.

Average height.

So, this individual potentially
could be mixed race.

Between white or Caucasian.

An American Indian.

Okay, that's interesting.

Is he suspected

of being a local, local boy?

We don't know.

All we know is that the
majority of Gacy's victims,

- they were local to the Chicago area.
- Mmm-hmm. Right.

There was out-of-state victims

and this, uh...

- This victim really could have been from anywhere.
- [smacks lips]

This is very promising.

I think that we really
have a good shot at it.

The DNA looks good.

It may take a while.

This is not something
necessarily you can do overnight.

There's right now about 30
million people in those databases.

Case number five, the one with the
most DNA, has below a nanogram,

and let's hope there's not
a whole lot of bacteria.

[narrator] A thousand
miles away in Texas,

Dr. Fitzpatrick is also helping

to identify the victim known

as Swimsuit Boy.

[Fitzpatrick] You know,
we'd really like to

be able to identify
the last remaining victim

of Dean Corll.

That's been kind of
a special case to me

for a long time.

The remains of the boy
was sent to

the International Commission
on Missing Persons,

who did the bone
extraction in The Hague,

and we are now just getting
the DNA into the lab.

[Sharon Derrick] I do believe
that it's a race against the clock

to get this boy identified.

I'm really hoping
that this new methodology

with the forensic genealogist
will bear fruit.

[narrator] While she waits
for science,

Dr. Derrick wonders if this
one distinctive piece of clothing

found on his body
will jog someone's memory.

[Derrick] He had with him

a T-shirt,
that on the back of it,

it had this decal

that had a peace sign

over a United States flag,

and then down underneath that

in handwriting, somebody wrote
with an indelible marker,

"L84MF."

Late for my funeral,

which is sort of
a military slang,

and so we're wondering if maybe

he had a family member,
a father, an uncle,

an older brother
who may have been serving

or had served
in the Vietnam War.

[narrator] She visits Corll's
two accomplices in prison.

David Brooks
and Elmer Wayne Henley

helped Corll abduct, murder

and bury his 29 victims.

According to Brooks
and Henley, Dean Corll

did kill other people,

Uh, and that he was
secretive about that,

and that there were
many times...

Especially Henley

recalled this.

There were many times
that he went out

by himself... Both Henley

and Brooks told me
they felt that

Dean was running some kind
of pornographic ring.

At least Dean told them he was

and he said
that some of these boys

thought they were gonna
go out to Hollywood

and be stars,
that he had agents for them

out in California.

[narrator] Is that what
these photos are?

Photos sent to her anonymously

by someone claiming
this boy named Bobby French

was Corll's last victim.

It is hard to look
at those pictures,

thinking he may have
been tortured

and killed right afterwards.

It's very hard.
He looks like a nice boy.

However, it's also hard,

because the pictures
are somewhat suggestive,

and I don't know if he was
being used for something.

[narrator] Poses, typical
of the boys

found in the pedophile catalogs

of John David Norman
in Texas in 1973.

[Derrick] John Norman
had a business

and he had his catalogs
and he had photos

and he was sort of like
a modeling agency in a way.

So, I would not be surprised
if the photos of Bobby French

might not have been sort of,
uh, head-shots in a way,

and if John Norman had
connections with Corll,

I wouldn't be surprised.

[narrator] Is Bobby
French Swimsuit boy?

And was he one of
Norman's roster of boys?

The answers may lie
back in Dallas in 1973.

At the time of the raid
on Norman's apartment,

Dean Corll's victims
were being unearthed

240 miles south in Houston.

According to former
detective, R.C. Nelson,

who arrested Norman,

he found Norman's client list

and hundreds of photos
of boys in his apartment.

[R.C. Nelson]
Some real prominent people,

phone numbers, addresses,

what kind of kid they like.

Had to be hundreds... of people

all over the country.

[narrator] They came
from all walks of life.

Somewhere federal employees
in Washington

and some were
from the music world.

[Nelson] The head of a...
A big orchestra

was his name printed on a card,

that my mother loved.

His cards said he liked...

...the youngest
that he could get.

Blonde-haired
and fair-skinned kid.

Uh, I'm not sure whatever
wound up with the cards.

It'd be nice to have 'em now,

but... we don't.
Can't find them.

[narrator] After the police confiscated
Norman's files and cards in Dallas in 1973,

they were all sent
to the State Department.

They were destroyed.

Now why they would
destroy those cards?

Who knows if there
were politicians involved?

Who knows what names
were in these cards?

But the preponderance
of the cards were found

in other states.

[narrator] Everywhere Norman
set up shop around the country,

his index cards were there.

Every time he was arrested,

they were confiscated.

Every time they
were confiscated,

they disappeared,

just like in the Homewood,
Illinois, raid in '73.

[Frank Flannery] Gone.

I wish I could help you.

I don't know.

These people with power,
especially political power,

they can get
a lot of things erased.

They can get
a lot of stuff deep-sixed.

So, you say,
"Were they deep sixed?"

Maybe. Maybe they were.

[narrator] According to Norman,
there was no maybe about it.

The records were destroyed.

He told Randy White,

if his client list
was ever made public,

it would set off shockwaves.

"What scared the hell
out of everyone,

I think, was my mailing list.

It included the names
of a number of noted judges,

"legislators
and other officials."

[Nelson] There's
no doubt in my mind

there weren't people in there
that would want 'em destroyed.

What happened to the cards
is certainly fishy.

[narrator] Despite the
Boy Scout convictions

in Louisiana in 1977,

federal authorities
turned a blind eye

to what detectives Stansbury
and Wicks uncovered.

Mountains of evidence showing the
extent of the national pedophile ring.

[Gus Stansbury] We had
requested the F.B.I.'s assistance

since it involved

multiple jurisdictions,

and we had one agent show up

and he spent about

four or five hours with us,

taking notes, and he was, like,

"Wow!"

And he said,

- "I'll be back in an hour" -[Frank
Wicks] And we're still waiting.

That's 40 years ago.

[interviewer] Do you think
they could be sitting

- somewhere in a box...
- [Sneed] No.

- ...at the base of the State Department?
- They're gone. They're gone.

If these cards contain names,
they're gone.

[narrator] Not all of them.

Our production unearthed
footage from

a TV news archive from 1973.

It shows Norman's cards with his
list of clients from the Dallas raid.

We tracked down
some of the names.

Most were from Texas,
one was in Hawaii

and one was
a minister in California,

the founder of a church
in Palm Springs.

Many of the men
on those cards are dead.

None were ever charged

so we can't say their names.

As for the victims, like Jerome
Elam, he knew the game all too well,

You know you're given a fake
identity, a fake name to use.

It can't be traced back
to you really are.

And so Colin was one of the
names that I was given, among others.

It was all meant to disguise who I truly was
and keep me below law enforcement's radar.

[narrator] After seven years of fake
names going from one truck stop to another,

Jerome Elam
saw only one way out.

By the age of 12, I was hopeless
and it felt like, um, my life had no value.

I went to my mother's medicine
cabinet, got a bottle of sleeping pills,

and went to the liquor
cabinet, got a bottle of vodka.

I went
to my mother's rose garden,

which she loved her roses

more than she loved me,
obviously.

I took the sleeping pills and
drank the vodka and laid down.

And fell off to sleep.

At that point, you know,
I heard a voice speak to me,

saying that, "Your time
on this earth isn't done yet."

"I want to go back and
work to save other children,"

and I woke up
in the emergency room.

I had been gone
for three minutes.

From that point on, I escaped
the life of being sexually exploited.

[narrator] He rebuilt his
life, finished high school,

joined the Marines, even
married, had children of his own.

He is now an advocate for
the victims of child trafficking.

[Elam] One of the things
I tell victims, survivors,

is that we have to look at
our lives like it is a blank page.

I don't care what happened to
you yesterday or ten years ago.

You have a chance every day
to reinvent yourself.

There's always hope
in your heart.

It may be a pilot light, but I
learned to ignite that flame

and let it drive me
to making a difference

in other children's life
in this world.

[narrator] Dean Corll, killed
by one of his accomplices.

John Wayne Gacy, executed.

The Boy Scout pedophiles,
died in prison or escaped

and never paid for their crimes.

As for the kingpin pedophile,
John Norman,

he hopped from one state
to the next

and was in and out of prison.

In 1987, he was
arrested in Urbana, Illinois,

for stealing
his roommate's computer.

John Norman's mailing list
was about to go digital.

Chicago reporter Michael Sneed

kept tabs on John Norman's
movements over the years.

In 2009, she caught up with
him in prison in California.

[Michael Sneed]
He was about to get out,

but he had been deemed
so dangerous

he was going to go on trial
because there were laws in California

where they could keep somebody
in prison

if they thought they'd be
a danger to society.

These are actual notes
I made longhand

while I was in trial.

"And here was this guy that
I had interviewed in 1977,"

"and now he is a man with
white hair wearing white sacks,"

"large glasses,
big bushy eyebrows."

And I said that he looked
like an Irish priest.

Here's the picture of him.

I remember he had a mole
on his face

and he had this curly hair
and it was white.

He said, "I'd like to think that
I've done no harm in my life,"

because, uh, whatever se he had
done was with a consenting relationship.

Well, to these pedophiles,
consenting means that child says, "OK,"

or a child
will go along with it.

[narrator] John Norman
died in 2011

in a mental hospital
in California.

Whatever secrets he had
died with him,

the apex predator of the 1970s,

his pedophile ring
stretched from coast to coast,

a man who turned his obsession
with young boys into a business

who shipped children to anyone,

judges and politicians,
for a price.

No one on his client list
ever paid for his crimes.

But Norman wasn't the last.

[Elam] With the advent of
the Internet, the dark Web, um,

they've been more prolific and
able to have a bigger outreach.

Things happen much faster that
did in the 1970s with John Norman.

[Sneed] I think the distribution
pipeline has changed,

but I think things are worse.

I think people are more aware,

but technology has become
this tunnel of perversion.

[It. Jason Moran]
A lot of people want to know,

"Are these monsters out there
today?" and really operate in a way

where it's not obvious
that they're your neighbor,

perhaps a coworker,
and you're a fool

just like the people who
knew John Gacy were fooled.

[Sheriff Tom Dart] The Internet
world has taken all of these

different horrible issues
we have

and literally put them
on steroids.

In as far as instant access,

oh, my God,
it's never been so easy.

[Elam] The network right
now, these individuals

typically live in chat rooms
on the dark web.

The price of admission
to these chat rooms

is to send a video of yourself
molesting a child.

It's the dot com
of pedophiles and depravity.

You can find just about
anything you want.

I mean, pedophile networks all over
the world, you could connect with them.

[Dr. Willa Wertheimer] The
perpetrators aren't hunted down.

If you look at the Epstein case,

how many of his accomplices,
his procurers,

how many of them
have been tracked down?

You know, I double dog dare them

to go after
Epstein's accomplices,

[Elam] The ones who have
the wealth and the power

are the ones
that continue to do this

and just have not been
yet brought to justice.

[narrator] Norman and his
nationwide sex trafficking ring

victimized hundreds of boys
across America in the 70s.

And between them, Dean Corll
and John Wayne Gacy

murdered more than 60
young males that we know of.

[Moran] I'd like to believe
that a Gacy case

couldn't happen again,
but I'm constantly reminded

that it's possible.

[Dr. Wertheimer]
There are more Andys.

There's more Andys
that haven't even been born.

[narrator] In September
of 2020, promising news.

DNA from Gacy's
victim number five

produced a family name
in the genealogical database,

a lead to a family line from
another state, not Illinois.

Lieutenant Moran's
detective work begins.

He's now
tracking down the family

to see if they have been
searching for a missing relative.

Victim number 28
remains unidentified.

And for now,
Dean Corll's last victim.

Swimsuit Boy,
is also without a name.