Boys Enter the House

by David Nelson

  That was all she could do. The day of the funeral, Denise could not bring herself to go. “I couldn’t watch the coffin go down [into the ground],” Denise said. “I didn’t get to see an open casket. You can’t even see that they’re dead. But then to have them put in the ground too.… I couldn’t do it.”

  Frank Landingin Jr., or Dale as he was called by so many, went to his final rest at Maryhill Cemetery, not far from the body of Bryan Wagner, who’d gone ahead of him into the dark.

  Days later, Denise gave birth to her daughter.

  And while she tried her best to focus on caring for her newborn as well as her son and husband, Denise still struggled to make sense of her brother’s violent death. She did not have to wait long.

  Only a few weeks after her brother’s murder, and only days after her daughter’s birth, she began to hear the name John Gacy on the TV, on the radio, on the lips of everyone around her, and often uttered in the same sentence as her brother’s name.

  While investigators at the Des Plaines police station put together the details of Gacy’s life behind the scenes, officers on the ground had begun a daily odyssey throughout the North Side of Chicago as they watched Gacy’s every movement.

  Oftentimes, Gacy was accompanied by various associates of his construction company, whose houses he also frequented as the Des Plaines police’s surveillance team, the Delta Unit, watched. Since Gacy’s vehicles had been requisitioned by the police, he relied on friends to get him around to business and personal appointments.

  Other times, Gacy himself—driving in a rented Volare—led the police on a merry chase along the freeways snaking through the neighborhoods of Chicago. In another instance, he was able to slip out through his backyard unnoticed and go about his business.

  The surveillance team followed him one evening to the Moose Club, where they watched as Gacy schmoozed his way among the ordinary patrons. Growing brazen, Gacy even sent drinks over to the police officers as he commiserated with a friend.

  Gacy kept the hours of a much younger man, and even well after midnight continued to keep the surveillance team moving. That weekend, he ended his evening at the Pot ’n’ Pan restaurant on Central Avenue, where the officers sat at a table beside Gacy’s.

  Officers Dave Hachmeister and Mike Albrecht listened as Gacy made small talk before pressing them for information around the investigation. Gacy theorized that they were watching him because of his involvement with drugstores. He admitted to sometimes helping himself to pills during jobs.

  Throughout the conversation, Gacy continued to profess his innocence, telling them about his side job as a clown. And indeed, if there’s one detail that’s been widely linked with John Gacy, it’s his work dressing as Pogo the Clown, a happy-go-lucky alter ego that entertained children in the hospital or at birthday parties.

  Gacy also stated he had four years to live after a diagnosis of leukemia. Later, he’d complain of heart problems. In his conversations, he was frequently the victim, a hypochondriac who also liked to inflate his character and business prospects.

  But whatever illness he’d invented obviously did not keep him down. After he paid for all their meals, Gacy flew back into his car and led them to the Good Luck Lounge where, once again, Gacy seemed comfortable among the regulars at the bar. He also continued his attempted charm campaign on Hachmeister and Albrecht, sending drinks again to their table, much like he’d sent one to MaryJane Piper the previous month, as she sat at a table still wondering about her missing boyfriend.

  By around 3:30 AM they were at PJ’s bar, where John Szyc had sometimes sat waiting for older men to pick him up, according to a rumor heard by his friend, Mark Johnson.

  At 4:30 AM at yet another bar, the Unforgettable Lounge, Gacy introduced the officers as his “bodyguards.”

  By 5:30 AM they were eating once more at the Golden Bear restaurant where he talked loudly about business associates and his habit of hiring young men so frequently that he suspected his neighbors thought he was a homosexual. He continued to brag that he was well-connected to “heavies” around town, and that the cops hadn’t seen his bodyguard “Nick” because he was that good at tailing people.

  At 6 AM, they finally got up from their tables, though this time, Albrecht and Hachmeister paid Gacy’s bill too. They followed Gacy back to his home where he shuffled inside to get what few hours of rest the contractor managed to run on.

  A little after 9 AM on the morning of December 17, after the surveillance team had switched shifts, Gacy was already on the move again. This team, comprising officers Bob Schultz and Ron Robinson, were treated no less amicably by Gacy. He continued his generosity by buying them beers along the way. In turn, they listened to his incessant bragging about life and work.

  He talked about themed house parties he’d held on Summerdale Avenue—a Hawaiian luau, a western, a Southern jubilee, and a bicentennial party during which white stones were arranged on his front lawn to spell out “76.”

  Alongside his regular jobs, he also worked as a precinct captain for the Democratic Party. Gacy had even met and been photographed with First Lady Rosalynn Carter on her visit to Chicago. Gacy was especially proud of his work as a registered clown, marching in parades, entertaining children. As a clown, Gacy told them, he could get away with things you normally couldn’t do out of makeup. As a clown, you could feel women up and they simply let you do it. “Clowns can get away with murder,” he said to them.

  Surveillance continued, as did Gacy’s generosity and arrogance. Once more, they crisscrossed the Chicago area, often visiting properties owned by Gacy’s associates. At times, investigators checked the area around these properties, on the off chance they might stumble upon Rob Piest’s body.

  And although the officers kept a strict watch over the man from Summerdale Avenue, Gacy often let his guard down, thinking his “bodyguards” had been distracted. During one conversation with Michael Rossi, one of the officers heard Rossi reply to a statement by Gacy with “And what? Buried like the other five?”

  As the surveillance team continued their vigil and helicopters rippled the sky above nearby forest preserves searching for signs of Rob Piest, the team back at headquarters furthered their investigation, looking into the evidence gathered from the Summerdale home.

  Investigators had found hair fibers inside the vehicles Gacy owned and used for PDM Contractors. Though lab analysis was still pending, it was enough evidence to bring cadaver dogs into the garage. Officers stood by silently as the dogs padded around the cars, skipping the van, while lingering on the pickup truck. Not until they got to Gacy’s personal vehicle, the black Oldsmobile, did one of the dogs jump inside and sit down on the seat, indicating the clear presence of human remains inside the car at some point.

  In another corner of the station, in parallel to the many other branches of the investigation, police were beginning to place more boys within Gacy’s sordid history, including some of his employees.

  Twenty-five-year-old Charles Hattula had drowned in the Pecatonica River in a rural area of northern Illinois.* During one of his interviews, Michael Rossi had also mentioned the name of another former employee, Gregory Godzik, who police learned had been missing since December 1976, only weeks before Johnny Szyc.

  Another investigator had spoken with police in surrounding counties and learned of an unidentified body found floating in the Illinois River in Grundy County. Despite the severe decomposition, they were able to decipher a tattoo on the young man’s arm that read, “Tim Lee.” The man was later identified as Timothy O’Rourke, last seen leaving his Uptown apartment in the fall of 1977. His whereabouts between then and June 1978, when his body was found, are unknown, though he had been submerged for several days.

  Dale Landingin had been found in the Des Plaines River only a few weeks prior. Along with the clothing in his mouth, Dale’s body had shown evidence of a sexual encounter, though pathologists did not indicate if it was consensual. For many years, Dale has been incorrectly recorded a
s Frank Wayne Landingin instead of Frank William and falsely labeled a homosexual by investigators.

  An interview with Carole Lofgren, Gacy’s second wife (now remarried), provided more details to her husband’s life. While John had been a good provider and generally a good father figure for her two girls, the relationship between her and her husband began to break down only months into the marriage. He spent much of his time working among his crew comprising mostly young men. Even late into the evening, she noticed John in the company of teenage boys, some of whom he didn’t even work with. They’d emerge from the garage after hours, driving off together in John’s car. On the garage floor, Carole found a mattress sitting in the glow of a red light.

  The marriage disintegrated in 1975, when Carole finally asked for a divorce. Although they continued to live in the Summerdale house for a few more months, eventually she and her girls moved out, after which David Cram and, later, Michael Rossi eventually moved in. By that time, John had admitted he was indeed bisexual, later even going so far as pointing out to his ex-wife the type of fair-haired boy that got his attention.

  She told the police to get in touch with one of her ex-husband’s former employees, John Butkovich, a nice kid from the North Side who’d abruptly run away years prior, from what Gacy had told her.

  Gacy began to show signs of unraveling as the surveillance team continued haunting his every move. Although he’d been friendly and generous with all the officers on the team, he often lashed out at them too, threatening a harassment suit over their daily vigils.

  Gacy had also begun paying visits to his lawyers, LeRoy Stevens in Chicago and Sam Amirante, who kept an office in Park Ridge near Des Plaines.

  The officers themselves began to show signs of wear. Long hours waiting in the cold for Gacy to do something had taken their toll, and when he did move, they were forced to follow at a nerve-racking pace along the freeways of the metropolitan area. Even their cars had begun breaking down.

  The surveillance team had also been tasked with a new request from headquarters: get inside the house and copy down the serial number to the Motorola television they’d seen in Gacy’s bedroom during the first search. The investigators had already established that his TV was the same make as John Szyc’s, but they wanted proof it was the very same set.

  On the evening of December 19, 1978, Gacy invited Detectives Ron Robinson and Bob Schultz to come inside for a drink to make up for the car they’d ruined while chasing him along the roads that day. They took note of the lingering smell inside the home. On a previous occasion in the house, they’d noticed it, but Gacy had blamed it on his dog doing his business on some newspapers. But this day in particular, the dog had been tied up outside, something Schultz chided Gacy for as they took him inside out of the cold.

  Gacy took them into a recreation room at the back of the house, where he began fixing them drinks. As they made small talk, another officer arrived at the front door to let them know a replacement car had arrived.

  Detective Schultz excused himself to go to the bathroom, breaking away from his partner and Gacy. The contractor had obviously started letting his guard down, not bothering to tell Schultz about the washroom beside the bar.

  Through the darkness of the house, Schultz quickly went into the bathroom to flush the toilet to mask any noise he might make as he ducked into Gacy’s bedroom. With only a cigarette lighter illuminating his way, Schultz lifted the television and rotated it until he found the number. Schultz repeated it in his head until he had the number memorized, then set the television down.

  With Gacy just around the corner, Schultz returned to the bathroom to complete the ruse. He flushed the toilet once more and ran water from the faucet. As he stood there, the furnace turned on from somewhere inside the house, and the scent they’d all noticed permeated the air around him in a new wave.

  When he returned to the recreation room, Gacy had just received a phone call. He spoke only for a minute before peeling off, grabbing his coat, and heading out the door. The officers followed, breaking off to their own car, but Gacy already had a head start. They kept up as best they could, but at an intersection, Gacy veered sharply into a parking lot and passed through a tight alley behind a drugstore. The officers’ new car was too large to pass through.

  Schultz and Robinson quickly made a tour of the contractor’s favorite haunts, to no avail. Just days before, they’d witnessed a loud conversation between Gacy and his lawyer, LeRoy Stevens, about taking a trip to relieve stress. Stevens had mentioned Belgium. They quickly radioed headquarters, explaining their situation and their concern.

  Headquarters radioed back, letting them know a flight was about to depart for Little Rock, where Gacy’s mother and sister now lived.

  Minutes later Robinson and Schultz were dashing through passengers at nearby O’Hare Airport looking for the familiar, stocky figure they’d gotten to know over the previous few days for better or worse. But when they arrived at the Delta Airlines gate, they saw no sign of John Gacy. As Schultz quickly explained to security guards, Robinson waited as the attendant at the gate checked the manifest. But there was no passenger by that name.

  Defeated again, the officers walked out of O’Hare and continued driving through the area. They found him finally at his friend’s Christmas tree lot. Smug and arrogant, Gacy tried to convince them he’d not intentionally tried to lose them.

  Aside from the episode at the airport, there’d been another setback that evening. As they’d later learn, Schultz had mistakenly taken down the model number to the television, not the serial number. They had no further proof the television was Szyc’s.

  Eventually, the officers followed him home where Gacy turned in for the evening. It was the final evening he’d spend inside his home at Summerdale Avenue.

  Tiny clues were accumulating: the television set and the car possibly belonging to Szyc, and now, the photo receipt that Lieutenant Kozenczak had personally extracted from Gacy’s trash. Kim Byers, the cashier at Nisson’s Pharmacy, confirmed that she’d put the receipt in Rob’s coat as she wore it to keep warm near the store’s front door.

  And on December 20 police at headquarters had decided to question David Cram, the other young man who’d started working for Gacy around the same time as Rossi. Gacy had picked him up back in August 1976, just after Cram had been fired from a nearby tire store. When his stepfather had thrown him out, Cram had moved into the home on Summerdale.

  Over the course of their relationship, Gacy often pushed Cram aggressively for sex. He would enter his bedroom at the house, get into bed with him, and try to pull off Cram’s pants. On another occasion, while dressed as a clown, Gacy had showed him a trick with a set of handcuffs. First, he’d demonstrated them on himself, then encouraged Cram to put them on, which he did, although both men had been drinking most of the evening. When Cram could not get the handcuffs off, Gacy told him the solution to the trick was to “have the key.” His face smeared in makeup, Gacy took hold of the chain and dragged Cram around the room until the teenager broke free, kicking Gacy in the head and taking the key from him.

  Cram told them Gacy had been extremely nervous after officers had searched his home the previous week. In particular, he’d asked Cram to check the closet, fretting over the possibility that officers had gone down into the crawl space.

  Investigators pressed Cram on the crawl space, and he replied that he’d previously worked down there putting lime on the ground during one job then digging trenches for pipes another time.

  Officers honed in on this detail. They asked how large the pipes were.

  A foot to two feet long.

  How deep?

  A foot to two feet.

  Why?

  To lay pipes to help drain the moisture in the crawl space.

  And had Cram actually laid any pipe?

  No.

  Police also brought in Michael Rossi that same day, this time subjecting him to a lie detector. Rossi answered all questions about his potential involv
ement in Rob Piest’s disappearance in the negative. The results, although not conclusive, were deemed mostly truthful.

  Rossi arrived home in the back seat of a police car late that evening. John Gacy was waiting for him and berated the young man for speaking to police without a lawyer. They went inside together, while officers waited out on the street.

  Gacy returned after about thirty minutes and proceeded to drive back out into the suburbs. He stopped at the office of Sam Amirante, where Gacy quickly went inside, telling officers the visit would only be about fifteen minutes. LeRoy Stevens, his other lawyer, also pulled up to the building.

  But after some time had passed, neither officer had seen Gacy. They went inside Amirante’s office, where the lawyers insisted Gacy was still present.

  By 3 AM, when the officers came again to check on him, he’d fallen asleep inside the office. His lawyers appeared nervous, insisting the officers stay nearby.

  Several hours later, Gacy emerged from the building and continued, once more, his frenetic routine about town. This time, his driving appeared more erratic than usual, and when the surveillance team pulled up alongside him, they could see Gacy clutching a rosary to his lips.

  They followed him to a Shell gas station operated by a man Gacy knew. He also knew the teenage attendant and tried to slip him a plastic bag of marijuana. At first, the boy refused, but when the two went inside the gas station, officers watched as Gacy pressed it inside the boy’s pocket, then bid farewell to the station owner with several handshakes and pats on the back.

  After Gacy emerged and drove off, the team decided to split up so Officer Dave Hachmeister could go inside to talk to the station owner and the attendant. The young man quickly turned over the marijuana to Hachmeister. Gacy, meanwhile, had noticed Hachmeister’s absence in his entourage and returned to the station. Hachmeister pretended to be asking for advice from the station owner regarding his transmission.