Buried Dreams (10 page)

The way John tells it, Voorhees, Sr., agreed to manage John’s campaign that night. “And the next day, the kid spills the little secret. This is just supposition, but I suppose Voorhees, Sr., is sitting at the table and he mentions this to his family, and the kid tells him he shouldn’t get involved with me. Something like that.” John imitates the way the kid must have said it: he lets his voice go slack and dumb and weepy. “Please don’t help Mr. Gacy,” he says, sounding like a moron at the point of tears, “he molested me.”

These days, John’s pretty sure someone had been working on the frame for some time. “What happened, one of the Jaycees had borrowed some of the stag films from me, and he brings them back: actually carried them right downstairs to my office.” The next day, the police knocked on John’s door. “If they were looking for personal items and shit,” John argued, “how come they didn’t go into the bedroom, which is where you’d think a guy’d keep stuff like that? Instead, they go right downstairs and pick up the films. They’re still in the same envelope from when the guy brought them over the night before.”

Up to this point, it was just as John said it would be: his word against the kid’s. But now the cops had evidence. Never mind that the films had been planted there by a political enemy who opposed John for the presidency of the Jaycees. The films had been found in John’s house. He couldn’t very well deny knowledge of them. “So, in accordance with Iowa State law, they indicted me for the sodomy. The definition then was very broad, and the films showed oral sex, which was sodomy. So I was indicted for the sodomy of the films.”

The charge, in fact, was sodomy committed with a teenage boy. The Black Hawk County grand jury acted not only on the testimony of young Voorhees, who said that Gacy had forced him to perform oral sex and had attempted anal sex with him, but also on Edward Lynch, sixteen, a clean-up boy and occasional cook at the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet on the corner of Broadway and Park Road. One day in late August of that year, when Lynch had finished his work at the restaurant, Gacy offered to give him a ride home but said he had to stop at one of the other restaurants on the way. Somewhere along the way, Gacy suggested another stop, at his house. According to Lynch, Gacy said, “I have some stag films. We can have a couple of drinks at my place and watch the films.”

Gacy drove the boy to his house and led him to the downstairs rec room, where they had a drink and played several games of pool. Marlynn Gacy was in the hospital, where she was about to give birth to the couple’s second child, the perfect baby girl.

Lynch remembered that Gacy said something about being involved in an important scientific study of sex. The boy was making eighty-five cents an hour, and Gacy had proposed a bet of fifty cents on each game of pool. Lynch won every game, and Gacy upped the bet to a dollar. After losing another game, Gacy said:

“Well, let’s make it interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s play for a blow job.”

The boy said he wasn’t at all interested, and Gacy redefined the bet in a way that confused Lynch. It wouldn’t be a blow job exactly, it could be whatever amount of money a guy named if he won, but there was a sexual option—just an
option—thrown in there somewhere. Lynch wasn’t real sure about the terms of the bet, but he wasn’t worried. He hadn’t lost a single game.

When Lynch won again, Gacy asked, “What would you like?”

“You can pay me,” Lynch said.

“I’d rather give you a blow job,” Gacy replied.

“No,” Lynch said. This was getting a little sticky, but the man was his boss. “That’s okay, just forget it.”

Gacy seemed unconcerned. He mentioned the stag films again and brought out a projector and screen. The first film showed sex between men and women; the second showed women coupling with animals. When the films were over, Gacy suggested they go back upstairs. Lynch stood at the head of the stairs, while Gacy went into the kitchen. He came back with a carving knife in his hand.

“Do you see this?” he asked.

Gacy was holding the knife in a threatening manner, and Lynch said, “Yes, I see it.”

“Well, get in the bedroom,” Gacy said. He advanced on the boy, holding the knife in front of him. Lynch backed up, staying out of Gacy’s reach. He was moving down a narrow hallway, and the man kept coming at him, brandishing the knife. Lynch backed through a doorway into a small bedroom. There was no way out for him. As Gacy moved within reach, the boy grabbed at and caught Gacy’s knife arm at the wrist. The man’s forward momentum carried Lynch backward, and he felt himself toppling onto a bed behind him. Lynch kept hold of Gacy’s wrist. He could see the blade, pointing down, could feel Gacy flexing his wrist, trying to cut at his arm with the knife. Lynch couldn’t hold him, and he saw the point of the knife puncture the skin of his arm.

Gacy was ten years older than the boy and about 50 pounds heavier, but Lynch, who stood six feet and weighed 160 pounds, was strong for his age, and there was blood running down his arm. He forced Gacy off his body, turned him over onto his back, and hit him twice, hard. Gacy dropped the knife.

The boy had disarmed the man. Gacy, breathing hard, asked Lynch to turn on the light. He seemed very apologetic.

“Did I cut you?”

“Yes.” In the light, Lynch could see that it wasn’t really a bad cut, just a little puncture wound, without much blood.
Gacy got up and got a Band-Aid. As Lynch peeled the Band-Aid and put in on his arm, Gacy continued to apologize, saying he was sorry about the incident. Lynch believed him. It was just a bit of harmless horseplay that had gotten out of hand. Lynch may have even been made to feel that he brought it on himself, that he had overreacted to what amounted to a little joke.

Gacy couldn’t stop apologizing. He was, Lynch knew, a man under a lot of stress. He worked long hours in the restaurants, where things were never quite right, never satisfactory. He was always working on community projects, burning himself out, and on top of everything else, his wife was in the hospital, having a baby.

Still, Lynch wanted to get out of the house, and when Gacy said, as part of his continuing apology, “Come on, let’s go back downstairs. Let’s watch this other film,” the boy declined.

“I better get going. It’s kind of late.”

Gacy insisted, as if watching the last film was a way for Lynch to show that he had accepted the apology. John Wayne Gacy was the boss on the first job the boy had ever had. Lynch followed him downstairs. During the film, Gacy went into another room in the basement and returned with a length of chain and a padlock. The film was over in about ten minutes, and Gacy said:

“Stand up a minute. Just let me try something here.”

Lynch looked at the chain and padlock. He felt very hesitant but may have actually believed he had overreacted to the earlier horseplay. He wanted to keep his job, and Gacy’s tone was reassuring. “I ain’t going to do nothing,” the man said.

“I don’t think I’m interested,” Lynch said.

“Come on, just let me try something. Put your hands behind your back.”

“No.”

“Ah, come on,” Gacy said. “I ain’t going to hurt you.”

Recalling the incident a dozen years later, Lynch said, “I had just turned sixteen. He reassured me. I was very gullible. I believed him.”

Lynch put his hands behind his back, one crossed over on the other, and Gacy wrapped the chain around them once and secured it with the padlock.

“Is it secure?” Gacy asked. “Can you get loose?”

“No, I can’t,” Lynch said, and when he sat back down in his chair, Gacy sat on his lap in a suggestive, straddle-legged posture. It took Lynch less than five seconds to realize he had made a bad mistake. He gave Gacy a head butt to the face and stood up, toppling the man off him.

Gacy struggled up off the floor and disappeared into the room where he had gotten the chain. In less than half a minute, Gacy came back into the rec room pushing a fold-up cot on wheels. Lynch stood watching, his hands locked behind his back, as Gacy unfolded the bed between the screen and the projector. Then he began walking toward the boy.

“Don’t come near me,” Lynch said. “I want this chain off.”

“It’s okay,” Gacy said. All at once he was apologetic again, very reassuring. “Here,” Gacy said, “I’ll take it off.” He walked around behind Lynch as if to remove the chain, then shoved him, savagely, face first down onto the bed. Gacy had both his big hands around the boy’s neck and he began to choke, bearing down hard. Lynch felt his throat being closed off: he couldn’t call out, he couldn’t even breathe. He struggled, but Gacy kept his full weight on the boy’s back, and it was no contest.

After about a minute, Lynch felt “consciousness teetering” and realized, with a shock of horror, that Gacy might actually kill him. He stopped struggling, and the man relaxed his grip somewhat but then continued to choke the boy for a period of time Lynch was never able to determine.

The boy felt himself falling off into a whirling darkness. There was a “dizziness,” a “blackness,” and in some remote corner of his mind, Lynch felt himself lose control of his bladder and urinate in his pants. He was dying. He knew he was dying.

Lynch never could say whether he was absolutely conscious at all times. He only knows that he was lying still, his soul falling into some dark, spinning void, when he felt himself being rolled over onto his side. Then his hands were free and he was gasping for breath, trying to swallow. It took some time before he was able to stand.

“Are you okay?” Gacy asked. It seemed a question of little significance, and there was no apology in the man’s tone.

Lynch swallowed, unsteady on his feet, and said, “Well, yeah.” Then, with the blackness receding and the breath
back in his body, he advanced on the man, his fists clenched. Gacy backed up, staying out of reach. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his tone was now one of abject apology.

“I think you just better take me home,” Lynch said, threateningly.

“Sure,” Gacy said. “Okay, okay, I’ll take you home. I mean, I’m sorry. Are you okay? I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.” Years later, Lynch would tell an Illinois jury that Gacy didn’t apologize until “after I threatened him.”

“I really didn’t mean to do that,” Gacy said. “I’m very sorry.”

A few days later, Edward Lynch was fired from his job at the Park and Broadway Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

At first, Gacy denied all the accusations, insisting that he be given a lie-detector test. People in Waterloo—his colleagues in the Jaycees, his family and friends—must have been reassured by this request. Generally, guilty men do not demand lie-detector tests.

On May 2, 1968, John Wayne Gacy was given a polygraph test in nearby Cedar Rapids. He was asked a series of gentle warm-up questions so that the operator could measure his responses. The examiner read the lines on the graph, noted the readings on emotionally neutral questions, then asked Gacy if he had ever indulged in homosexual activities of any kind with Donald Voorhees. Gacy insisted that he had not. The polygraph noted increases in his blood pressure, respiration, and pulse as well as an aberration in his psychogalvanic skin response. The official results say flatly that Gacy’s answers were “indicative of deception,” which is to say that he failed the test.

A week later, on May 10, the grand jury indicted John Wayne Gacy on a charge of sodomy.

Even after failing the lie-detector test, John loudly and publicly maintained that he was innocent of all charges. The Lynch kid’s testimony was a joke. “He says I attacked him with a knife,” John said later, laughing at the absurdity of it. “Then he says he sat down and watched more films with me. Then, get this, then he says he let me chain his hands behind his back. That’s real believable, after I just supposedly attacked him with the knife. What happened is he got fired and wanted to get back at me.”

According to John, there was a transparent conspiracy in the works, a blatant frame. Ask anyone in Waterloo: John was going to be the next president of the Waterloo, Iowa, Jaycees.

The truth is he had never really gotten along with Voorhees, Sr.—there had been some public friction—and Voorhees probably had been backing his opponent for Jaycee president all along. John blamed himself for being too naїve to see this. At the time, however, Voorhees was running for statewide Jaycee office, and he was influential. John was willing to let bygones be bygones. Voorhees was the best man for the job he had in mind. How dumb. How dumb and stupid.

Those who opposed John for the presidency could see he had a lock on it, and they had to stop him somehow. The Lynch kid and the Voorhees kid were good friends, by their own admission. Anyone with a nose could smell a frame-up.

There were people who believed John without question, influential people such as the Jaycee president, Charles Hill. Many people thought the charges absurd on the face of them: Christ, the colonel had been a marine, and if he wasn’t making jokes about “fruits” and “queers,” he was bragging about how many women he had laid last week. “Listen to John,” one Jaycee said, “and you’d think he slept with a hundred women a month.” The guy went to strip shows, for Chrissake. No way the colonel was queer for boys.

John’s friends gathered around him in his time of need; they believed him. He could see it in their eyes as he talked. And talked. And talked. John could wear you down, just blow right over you with sheer verbal energy. People got tired of listening to an innocent man defend himself against the manufactured charges. It was less exhausting to capitulate completely, to believe him.

However, John’s political enemies made the most of the charges. The Jaycees were now split pretty evenly among those who bought John’s story and those who didn’t. The colonel had been indicted on May 10, 1968. The charges, he thought, would surely be dropped before he was nominated for the presidency in late May. John thinks he was naїve back then. He was just a young man, barely twenty-six years old, and so dumb and stupid he really believed he could beat the frame-up.

Unfortunately, a young assistant county attorney named David Dutton had been named to prosecute the case. The
guy was politically ambitious, looking to run for office himself. John could see it all very clearly. A prominent businessman indicted on charges of sodomy: it was a headline-grabber, a reputation-maker. “The charges weren’t dropped,” John explained later, “because Dutton turned me into a political football.” The sodomy charge was still pending when the Jaycees met to nominate their choices for office.