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In 1968, Gacy was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage boy and attempting to assault another. He vehemently denied these accusations, and some community members believed him over the victim. He persuaded one of his employees to assault the victim in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him from testifying, according to Killer Clown. Gacy was convicted and received a 10-year prison sentence, after which his wife divorced him and received full custody of their children. Bettiker recalls being given the responsibility of going over an endless number of missing persons reports from agencies across the state. Gacy killed 33 young men and boys; nearly all of them were buried underneath his house or on his property. Once he ran out of room to bury them, he began dumping bodies in a river. Gacy became more careless toward the end of his killing spree and, in a drunken state, admitted to a lawyer what he had done. The book initially attempts to grab readers by telling an imagined version of the murder of Gacy's final victim. I was interested in the case and tried to force myself through this book, but I had to give before I was even 60% through. While there were NO NEW bombshells revealed in this docu-series it definitely held our interest for the entire 6 episodes, so much so we binge watched over two nights.
Amirante, a former assistant public defender who represented Gacy as his first private client, agreed that the secret to Gacy’s success lay largely in his unctuous charm developed over years as the son of a harsh, verbally abusive father and later refined as a successful shoe salesman. He looked at his victims like he was taking out the trash. He had no feelings about them,” Amirante said, sitting in a private office at his Barrington home nearly 40 years after hearing the famous confession. “He could talk about a child who's dying of cancer and cry like a baby about this child he didn't even know or never met and feel authentically sad about this child. Then he'd talk about another child that he murdered and have no feelings whatsoever.” For much of the book, Amirante writes in a "you are there" narrative, even describing the thoughts and feelings of Gacy and his victims. Supposedly this is based on copious notes from interviews with Gacy, but some of it (like when Amirante writes parts of the opening chapter from the POV of Robert Piest) seemed a bit embellished. Bloodworth's voices and accents allow the listener to distinguish between the characters. The voice of "Gacy" is chilling. This was Bloodworth's first performance in my library, it most certainly will not be the last. Incredible. Police departments and schools nationwide joined forces for massive public service campaigns tasked with teaching parents and children about “stranger danger.”An inconsistent book mostly about what it was like to be John Wayne Gacy's lawyer. I was immediately swept into the book by the opening, which recounts a fateful visit by Gacy to a pharmacy for a small contracting job. We get the fictionalized perspective of a boy who works at the pharmacy, Gacy, and others and I hoped it would continue like this, but unfortunately most of the book simply recounts the experiences of the lawyer and not necessarily even about his extensive interaction with Gacy the year before the trial. No, no one can ever get into the head of Gacy and none of the psychiatrists and psychologists could agree what was wrong with him, though something certainly was off, but more of an attempt to flesh out his role as clown, brother, boss, community volunteer, husband and father would have illuminated his identity. I felt the reader doesn't spend enough time with Gacy in the book. The book tells us more than it shows about his "good" side and, in scenes meant to capture how unpredictable Gacy is, the book is so poorly written, the awkwardness obscures any insight the episodes might provide. And the exclamation points! Where was the editor?
I cannot answer that question just relief there was no question on whether this guy was indeed guilty, that made it easier knowing he wouldn't walk away from the carnage he left behind. A grim but fascinating story with real insight into the crimes, the US legal system and Gacy himself. Not a fan of the way the author describes people's bodies (large bodies, ladies' bodies, trans bodies). He doesn't describe thin bodies at all, but feels the need to describe every lump or roll of a fat person's. A trans witness is on the stand and he calls her a he/she and aggressively deadnames her. Plus, he was on the Norwood Park Township Street Lighting District as a trustee, the secretary-treasurer, and I did some volunteer work on the side for the district. I was their lawyer. So I knew him. I thought this would go into more detail about the legal process, but it kind of skimmed over the trial. The book mainly talked about JWG's quirks and personality problems, which was interesting enough. It didn't get too much into the gory details, which I appreciated.On December 11, 1978, 15-year-old Robert Piest went missing after telling his mother he was going to meet Gacy to discuss a potential construction job. Piest’s family filed a missing person report with the police, which led to a search of Gacy’s house in Norwood Park. Authorities discovered several suspicious items there, including police badges, a pistol, hypodermic needles, pornographic films, and items that they later learned belonged to some of Gacy’s victims. And what better present could you give to your mom on her birthday than to make her happy? Isn't that the purpose of a present?" You will when we finish filling out those forms. We have to comply with all of the legal stuff, after all, right? No employer can afford to play fast and loose with the goddamn IRS." A model prisoner, Gacy was released on parole in the summer of 1970 after serving 18 months of his sentence. However, Gacy was arrested again the following year after another teen claimed he lured him into his car and drove him to his house, where Gacy tried to force him into sex, according to John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster. The charges were dropped when the boy didn’t appear during the trial. With financial assistance from his mother, Gacy bought a house on 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park, Illinois, where all of his future murders would take place, according to Buried Dreams. Sadly what could have been an engrossing true crime book turned out to be a below average attempt on the part of the author. I was immediately annoyed with the insertion of what Gacy's last victim was thinking minutes before he was murdered... really? How did the author come up with the thoughts of the poor victim? I thought this was a true crime book, not historical fiction. I was also put off by the amount of bleeding heart preaching done on the part of the author (Gacy's attorney). What more can be expected from a Chicago trial lawyer? Though there was some new light shed in this book, the overall performance left much to be desired.
John Wayne Gacy covers his face as he is led to a courtroom on December 22, 1978. Bettmann // Getty Images this was actually a very entertaining unique perspective to one of the most notorious and famous serial killers of all time. Appeals to the state Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court fail, and at 12:58 a.m. May 10, 1994, Gacy is put to death by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet. But gone are the lines of gawking bystanders, desperate families of missing young men and carloads of curiosity-seekers who choked the streets in the days before that long-ago Christmas, trying to catch a glimpse of the murder house.
Gacy’s psychosexual history began between the ages of 6 and 10, when a teenage daughter of one of his mother’s friends reportedly undressed and played with him, according to Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders by Terry Sullivan. Gacy was molested at a young age by a family friend and contractor, and between ages 10 and 12, Gacy and a friend were accused of sexually fondling a young girl, according to Sullivan. The other portion of this book that deeply bothered me was the intense transphobia that transpires during a cross examination of one of the witnesses, Donita. He spends ample time describing how she is a stunning woman, gorgeous and holding the eye of every person in the courtroom. The author even says at one point “I had to expose the fact that she’s living a lie” when that’s obviously not the truth. I understand it’s a “sign of the times” or what have you, but it had zero place in this book and the book would have been fine without this chapter.
He’d have parties at his residence where he’d invite maybe 200 people. He’d be the center of attraction,” he recalled. "One-on-one, or in a group setting, he would be the last person that you’d think was a serial killer and is as devious as he was.” A photo used as evidence in the 1980 trial shows the excavation in Gacy's crawl space. (Cook County Circuit Court)I really enjoyed the legal sides of the arguments and how it affected Amarante's family being Gacy's lawyer. Both lawyers had independent psychological profiles done claiming opposing viewpoints. It definitely makes you wonder if Gacy was truly evil or desperately unwell. Amirante defended Gacy on the premise that Gacy was criminally insane, and Amirante stands by this defense. He believes that as time went on, Gacy’s evil side overtook him to a point of no return. This is why Gacy’s final abduction was extremely sloppy and poorly executed — Amirante believes Gacy wanted to get caught. Other than a parent making a missing person report on a juvenile or another person, (we’d take) as much information as we could and we’d put it out to other departments,” Bettiker said. “But as far as an active pursuit of trying to locate them, there wasn’t that much done, unless they were a fragile youth or something like that. But for the ages of most of the Gacy victims, if they’re runaways, they’re runaways. We try to locate them … but there wasn’t an awful lot we could do.” Gacy, shown in front of his home in unincorporated Norwood Park Township in 1976, entertained children as a clown named Pogo. (Martin Zielinski photo)
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