The Man Who Killed Boys

by Clifford L. Lindecker

  But Stein had chosen his career. He was so enthusiastic that, between school terms, he voluntarily washed down the tables at the morgue. He graduated from medical school at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in 1952, and did his graduate work in pathology. At professional meetings, through correspondence and other means, he developed friendships with other pathologists, including Dr. Lester Mooto of Guyana. Mooto was in charge of the investigation of the mass murders and suicides in Jonestown, and shortly after they occurred, he contacted Stein, who offered his assistance. The Cook County Medical Examiner had no way of knowing then that in a matter of a few weeks, he would be deeply involved in an investigation of a mass murder within his own jurisdiction that would rival the tragedy at Jonestown—if not in numbers, in savagery.

  More bodies were carried from the house on Saturday and as the toll mounted, Gacy's ghastly count began to take on shocking credibility. Already sixty years old when he became Cook County's first medical examiner two years earlier, Stein was on the scene every day wearing fireman's boots, disposable coveralls, and gloves, using his fingers to help dig bodies from the foul mud and fetid odors of the crawl space with men thirty years younger than he.

  Every so often one or more of the workers would stagger from the house into the fresh, frigid air outside for a brief respite away from the brooding, dark place of death. Removing the bodies from the enclosed spaces posed a tremendous health hazard. Danger from methane, hydrogen sulfide, and other noxious gases released by the decomposing bodies was great. And the protective clothing was mandatory. Even a scratch on the hand could lead to serious infection.

  When the search was suspended on December 24 and 25 for the Christmas holidays, an around-the-clock guard was posted to keep the curious away and to preserve evidence.

  Gacy had strung colored Christmas lights days before and they winked incongruously from across the front of the grim charnel house throughout the holidays. Lights were strung at most of the houses in the neighborhood and Christmas trees were visible through many of the windows. But the holiday was subdued and bleak. Few could forget or ignore the menacing little brick home in their midst where an unknown number of hideous murders had taken place.

  Christmas was also bleak for the family of Johnny Butkovich. Mrs. Butkovich was in the bathroom when her husband cried out to her as he heard a radio report about Gacy's arrest. They had always believed that John Gacy was closely tied to the disappearance of their son, but they had held out hope that the handsome blond boy was somehow still alive. Now, there was nothing to do but wait in despair and fear for the call from police they had always hoped would not come. A few days later, they were notified that their boy's remains had been positively identified after exhumation from Gacy's garage.

  The night of Gacy's arrest, someone broke into the Godzik home and stole money, leaving the entire family upset. The next day, Mrs. Godzik was sitting with her twenty-five-year-old daughter, Eugenia, when they heard on the radio that bodies had been found in the Gacy house.

  In Des Plaines, Mr. and Mrs. John Szyc were disheartened when they learned that a Maine West High School ring with their son's initials had been found among the souvenirs in Gacy's home. Until that time, they had never permitted themselves to consider that he might have been the victim of violence.

  James Mazzara's family became increasingly concerned as the Christmas holiday arrived and passed without word from him. They knew something was terribly wrong, and the uneasiness that his sister Annette had previously felt for him returned as dread.

  A frosting of powdery new Christmas snow sparkled like fine crystal under the late December sun, contrasting with the depressed mood of the men who toiled inside when the search resumed. Before the day was over the numbing count of bodies attributed to Gacy had reached six, five taken from the house and garage and one from the river. The scene inside the house was almost indescribable in its horror. "It's like a battlefield," Dr. Stein exclaimed. "People are digging trenches, filling trenches—As they work, their faces have such a look of despair." The bodies were so decomposed, most without any flesh at all, that he realized the job ahead would be as difficult as identifying victims of an air-crash disaster.

  Three of the bodies were found so close together that investigators theorized the victims may have been killed, or at least buried, on the same day. The location of two other bodies in a common grave led to similar speculation.

  Gacy's map was incredibly accurate. Most of the remains were arranged in long rows lining three of the foundation walls, and others were placed diagonally inside the pattern of bodies and pointed toward the center of the crawl space. They were arranged like the spokes of a wheel. Placement in the makeshift graveyard was obviously "something that was orderly, something well thought out," Stein mused.

  Several of the bodies brought from the house were wrapped in black material like tarpaper, similar to that used in roofing or other construction work. Some still had pieces of cloth caught in their mouths and throats. It appeared they had died, as Landingin had, strangled by their own underwear. The bodies were lifted carefully and an effort was made to take a bit of dirt with each one. Nevertheless, some bones snapped off fragile skeletons when they were lifted from their damp graves. One of the bodies in the crawl space was covered by cement.

  Ten bodies were removed from the lime-laced tomb on the second day after Christmas and six the next day. The number of white plastic body bags was building up at the Fishbein Institute of Forensic Medicine where Dr. Stein worked. The dapper physician with the neatly trimmed mustache and gray hair objects when people refer to his office near the Cook County Hospital as "the morgue." The morgue is merely one component of the Institute. And the Medical Examiner is sincere when he insists that his office is for the living, not for the dead. He considers his work to be the labor of a specialist, trained to investigate the causes of death so that the information may be used for the preservation of life.

  Nevertheless, it was his job to work with the dead, and after a week of digging in the ghastly ossuary under the Gacy house, nearly thirty body pouches were stacked on metal trays in a frigid room referred to as "Crypt 1" in the Fishbein Institute. A refrigeration unit constantly pumped in cold air, cooling the bodies in the bags and shutting out the stringent odor of chemicals from outside. Numbers were jotted on the bags with black ink, indicating the order in which the corpses were recovered. Separate case numbers were on attached tags.

  The men and women who share Stein's profession as forensic pathologists are members of a small sophisticated profession. There are fewer than three hundred forensic pathologists in the country. They routinely exchange advice and other assistance, conferring often at professional meetings and on other occasions. Early in his investigation of the Gacy case, Stein disclosed plans to confer with the medical examiner and other authorities in Houston to compare notes on the similar instances of mass murder.

  Stein wasn't thinking of himself as a member of a select profession when he emerged from Gacy's house on Friday night, December 28. "Gentlemen, I have horrible news," he announced to waiting newsmen. "Six more bodies were exhumed today." He grimly added that there was "some evidence of still other remains in the trenches along the south wall" in an area not yet excavated. The south wall was where Rossi and Cram had dug what they were told were trenches for drainage tile to solve flooding problems. No tile could be immediately observed and the ditches were filled in with soft earth. Both young men reportedly took and passed lie detector tests corroborating their statements.

  The medical examiner's announcement brought the number of known dead to twenty-eight, one more than the twenty-seven boys attributed to the homosexual murder ring in Houston more than five years earlier. John Gacy had now been linked to more murders than any other individual in the history of the United States.

  Parents across the country as well as in some foreign nations worried about missing sons were aware by that time that their boys might be among the bodies under the modest bung
alow in Norwood Park township. Lawmen had realized early in the probe that some of the victims were likely to have been plucked from among the thousands of youthful transients drifting along the highways of America or heading for the action in Chicago and other large cities.

  The telephone numbers of Operation Peace of Mind and of the National Runaway Switchboard and its Chicago affiliate, Metro-Help, were disseminated so runaways could notify their relatives that they were alive and not among the murder victims.

  Sergeant Howard Anderson was supervisor of the Sheriff's Investigations North unit in Niles, and was coordinating police work in the case. His officers had begun files on fifty missing persons. Inquiries were received from parents or police agencies as distant as London, England, and Sydney, Australia. But most of the descriptions of missing youths had come from other police departments in the United States, in cities such as Pueblo, Colorado; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Whitewater, Wisconsin. A mother from Massillon, Ohio, personally brought complete medical records of her son to Anderson. The boy had been missing two years.

  Detectives from the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department in Wisconsin were among the first out-of-town investigators to show up in Des Plaines in hopes of questioning Gacy about an unsolved homicide in their home area.

  Carl Gailbraith, the thirteen-year-old victim, had been found brutally stabbed to death in December, 1977, a few miles due west of the city of Kenosha and just north of the Illinois-Wisconsin state line. The 100-pound, five-foot junior high school student and newspaper carrier boy was last seen alive as he walked along Illinois Route 173, a highway leading out of Antioch, Illinois.

  An autopsy disclosed that an artery in his neck had been severed and he had bled to death. His neck was mutilated with six deep slashes and there were thirteen stab wounds in his back. He and his sister had been sent from their home in Chicago to live with relatives in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, because his mother thought they would be safer there.

  Detectives became suspicious of a possible tie-in with the Chicago area slayings when they learned that Gacy told detectives he had stabbed his first victim to death, and after further investigation disclosed that the contractor had visited and worked in the Paddock Lake area of Kenosha County. Unfortunately, the Kenosha County detectives were unable to talk with the suspect and left Chicago after trading information and asking local investigators to be alert for Gailbraith's name or for some other clue that might link him to the mass murders.

  Police from Sangamon County, Illinois, also asked the Chicago area investigation team to query Gacy about the murder of a thirteen-year-old boy from Riverton. Robert Mann had been missing thirteen days when his body was found on July 24, a few miles east of Springfield in the backwater of the Sangamon River. He was clad only in underwear and identification was made with dental charts. His body was so badly decomposed that it was impossible to determine the cause of death.

  Curiosity about a possible tie-in with Gacy was piqued when a map was found in the glove compartment of his car with the names of both Springfield and Riverton circled in red pencil. It was easily understandable why he might have circled Springfield where he worked on various jobs, but it seemed strange that he should have circled the smaller farming community of 2,100.

  Near Weeki Wachee, Florida, Hernando County Sheriff's police dug up part of a vacant lot after Cook County authorities notified them that the property was owned by Gacy. Nothing suspicious was turned up by the search.

  Authorities checked out other reports in Chicago of suspicious odors and strange cavities in basement floors or walls where Gacy had worked with his young construction crews on the north side, also without turning up additional bodies. The suburban contractor who had sent young men to Gacy for jobs provided a list of their names to police and they were all found to be alive. The nine-year-old prostitute whose disappearance had sparked surveillance of Gacy by police three years earlier was also scratched from the list of potential victims when he was discovered alive in California.

  Anderson was disappointed at the lack of response from relatives and theorized that many parents may not have responded because they couldn't imagine their sons involved in a case with homosexual overtones. But many of the victims were snatched off the street, raped, and killed, he pointed out. "The indications are that it could have happened to anyone."

  Both Anderson and Stein were asking police agencies and relatives who contacted them to provide dental X-rays, medical records—especially those showing bone injuries, and descriptions of clothing or jewelry the missing boys may have been wearing.

  On Thursday, one day prior to Stein's disclosure of twenty-eight known dead, Gacy's legal counsel filed a motion in U. S. District Court to withdraw the civil-rights suit charging the Des Plaines Police Department and others with harassment. Gacy's attorneys had agreed that Stevens, with more experience in civil law, would handle noncriminal matters for Gacy. Amirante, who had been joined by co-counsel Robert Motta, would be responsible for Gacy's defense on all criminal charges.

  Chief Deputy State's Attorney William Kunkle and Assistant State's Attorneys Robert Egan and Terry Sullivan, were designated as the team that would oppose Amirante and Motta. Months later, Carey announced that he had decided to head the prosecution team, unless the trial extended into the fall of 1980 when he expected to be campaigning for re-election.

  At the house, hundreds of people continued gathering to watch the grisly parade of victims carried from the crawl space in limp body bags. Some families piled out of their cars and lined children up in the street to shoot photographs with the house in the background.

  Township workers drove stakes and strung cord around Gacy's property and the property of his two immediate neighbors to keep the crowd away. The street was barricaded and additional sawhorses were loaned to other residents on the block to put across their driveways, but still the throng came, drawn by a mixture of horror and macabre curiosity.

  Scores of people crowded in front of the house, staring at television camera crews and watching for signs of new activity. A solidly built woman wearing a bowling shirt with "The Maulers" emblazoned across her ample chest watched with a friend as four officers lugged a body bag to a waiting police van. The house and property should be exorcised, she muttered. "You gotta throw some salt on it and say some words to get the spirits out. My grandmother used to do that in Europe."

  Her companion touched a crucifix held by a tiny gold chain around her neck and crossed herself, whispering a silent prayer.

  "If Satan's among us," said an old man shaking a cane at the house, "that's where he lived."

  One day a group of people climbed over ropes and stood in the Grexa yard cursing and screaming out their hate. "You live next door," one of them yelled. "You had to know what was going on."

  A few days later, Gacy was indicted on seven counts by a Cook County Grand Jury in the suspected kidnapping, sexual molestation, and death of Robert Piest. The indictment charged Gacy with murdering the boy while committing the additional felonies of aggravated kidnap, deviate sexual assault, and taking indecent liberties with a child.

  Curiously, with six bodies of those recovered already identified, Gacy had been charged in the death of a boy whose body had not been found.

  Despite the pathetic proof of so many of Gacy's statements, weary law enforcement officers were beginning to have doubts about the credibility of his claims that he dropped Robert's body into the river.

  Dragging, diving, and visual surface searches of miles of the Des Plaines River near Morris by boat and by helicopter had failed to turn up any trace of the boy's body, and suspicions were growing that he might have been buried. How else could police explain the mud that caked Gacy's clothes when he first walked into the Des Plaines Police Headquarters for questioning? A large amount of mud was also later found on his car. Yet, when lawmen checked the snowbank his car was pulled from there was no mud visible.

  The nearly five hours between the time he was first interviewed in his home an
d the time he finally reported for questioning was much more time than he would have needed to drive to the bridge. It would have been time enough to go to a forest preserve, dig a hole, and bury the body.

  Lawmen were also aware that stopping a car on a narrow, heavily traveled bridge is difficult, especially when there has been a heavy snow. And the high safety guardrails would pose additional problems in lifting a body to roll it over the side and into the river.

  The river search continued but the probe also moved to open spots and areas in the forest preserves surrounding Chicago. Forest sites close to parking areas with the type of mud that had soiled Gacy's clothing and car drew special attention. Some officers made nocturnal visits to areas of the forest that were popular as lovers' lanes, seeking someone who might have seen a body being removed from a car or buried.

  The Piests had asked a New Jersey psychic for help in locating the body of their son. Dorothy Allison, who works with psychometry—touching people's belongings to tune in on their vibrations—was recommended to the family by a Des Plaines policeman because she had been helpful in other police cases. She worked nearly two weeks but was unable to pinpoint the location of the boy's body. After handling his jacket, she developed hives and had to return home.

  A Kenosha woman told her local newspaper of having met Gacy with Robert the previous summer when she was working as a waitress in a Des Plaines snack shop. But others discounted her story, insisting that Robert had never met Gacy prior to the day of his disappearance.

  Chicago police, meanwhile, were interviewing associates and friends of Gacy's and visiting north-side Chicago bars frequented by homosexuals to put together a file on his life and activities in preparation for his anticipated trial. A list of some twenty straight and homosexual bars was found in his house. Two agents with the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement traveled to Waterloo to compile additional behavioral information.