John Wayne Gacy (44 page)

“It’s like Dr. Morrison used the example of your palm sweating, or the heart palpitating. You don’t tell your palms to sweat; you know they are doing it. You don’t tell your heart to palpitate, but you know it is happening. These are things that are caused by some kind of emotional stress.

“The other day I was sitting here, and I had a little red blotch on my cheek, and it was there, and I knew it was there, and I kept
trying to hide it like this, or sitting over by the table. It was like a blotch with a white spot, a hive. I kept trying to hide it. My instinct was, I knew it was there. I knew I had no control over it, and my instinct was to hide it.”

 I continued, pointing out the crazy person that was my client, painting a picture, asking the questions, reminding the members of the jury that this guy was crazy long before he ever killed anyone. He had left the rails as a little boy, developed fetishes, developed defense mechanisms, passed out for unexplained reasons, was in and out of hospitals—the life of a one-day serial killer. Why not study a guy like this? We study everything from insects to elephants. Why don’t we study these guys? Maybe they are savable. Maybe their victims are savable. We study microscopic organisms that can kill us. Why don’t we study people that can kill us?

“Instead, we continue to act like we did when we were carrying spears or when we were carrying pitchforks and torches. We haven’t changed a bit. Kill the bad guy. Don’t try to figure out why he is a bad guy, just kill him. Emotion is a powerful thing, isn’t it? Funny, though, if you ask anyone, anywhere, they will tell you the same thing: ‘No one acts rationally when they act upon their emotions.’” I spoke for hours. I tried to cover everything. I was fighting for a man’s life.

Finally, I said, “Now, bear with me. I will be done in just a few minutes. Go back to 1886, right around the time of that thing they were talking about, dementia praecox, paranoid schizophrenia. Well, in 1886, an author by the name of Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a novel—you can still read it today. I am going to read you some excerpts from that novel. While I am doing that, I am also going to quote some of the testimony in this case. I’d like you to see the similarities. I am sure that you will recognize the novel when I start reading it.”

 I walked over to our defense table and picked up Stevenson’s timeless novel. I had previously marked certain passages. I moved
away from the table slightly but stayed close by. I had other items that I needed on the table. I was farther away from the jury, so I raised my voice a bit. I read directly from the book in my hands.

“‘All at once, I saw two figures: One a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some dammed juggernaut … . It was a man of the name of Hyde.’

 “‘What sort of man is he to see?’

“‘He is not easy to describe, there is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.’”

 I looked up from the book and let the passage linger in the air. I looked at each member of the jury while I did this. I set the book down on the table and picked up a transcript of testimony previously given in our case.

“And then you remember the testimony of Jeffrey Rignall,” I continued.

“‘Nothing ever showed on that guy’s face. He just went around torturing me like it was something that happened every day. My assailant was an oddity, a person so evil, so vile, so malicious and cruel that he was almost inhuman.’

“Now, the novel goes on:

“‘There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human.’

“Back to Rignall: ‘It was another case of somebody wanting control of another person who loathed himself for having those desires, his sexual desires must have been so disgusting he had to punish that stranger, the other person involved in the act, he himself detested, a way of purging the demons from one’s soul, punishing someone for the crime you yourself were committing. He was incapable of registering the same kind of emotion as other people.’

 “Back to Hyde:

“‘This Master Hyde, if he were studied, must have secrets of his own, black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine.’

 “In describing his Jekyll, the other part of Hyde:

“‘A large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a stylish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness, you could see by his looks that he cherished for Mr. Utterson a sincere and warm affection.’

 “‘He became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, Dr. Jekyll as at peace.’

 “He writes of himself: ‘If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. Both sides of me were in dead earnest.’

 “‘I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck; that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point.’

 “‘I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.’

“‘Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I have already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.’

“‘Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Howard Hyde.’

“It goes on and on and on. I am sure you know the story, the Jekyll and Hyde story, the words that were used so often in John Gacy’s house as a child.

“You heard how Jeffrey Rignall described him. You heard how Lynch described him. You heard how Cram described him when he was attacking Cram. You heard how Donnelly described him. You heard what Michel Ried said about the hammer, the strange look in his eyes, the bizarre behavior.

“The man who lived with bodies underneath him—here is what his friends and neighbors, his family said: ‘John Gacy was a very nice person … he was jovial, kind, genuinely happy … he enjoyed people … he was always busy … he was a good daddy … he seemed to show deep and sincere affection … he was generous … he was not selfish … when he would smile, his smile would light up his whole face … he was not a vile, evil person … his house was open to people all the time, he engaged in charitable activities, he was warm and considerate, he was a good man, a nice man, a friend … ‘I can’t fathom that the John Gacy I knew would have done what he is accused of.’ But his hours were irregular … and his wife, his ex-wife said, ‘And now I feel sorry for him.’ And Rignall said of him, again, at another time, ‘His voice was demanding and demeaning. It was not like a common person talking back and forth, but his voice was like a giggly-type thing, gentleman, and then he became totally violent.’ And again, when Jeff Rignall was asked, what is your opinion? [He said,] ‘My opinion is that at that time John Gacy could not conform
his conduct to the requirements of the law, because he was so beastly and animalistic.

“That is the same John Gacy, supposedly, that his neighbors and family and friends talked about.

 “‘My opinion is that John Gacy could not appreciate the criminality of his acts because of the way he attacked me, the beastly manner that he did it.’

“Michel Ried said that when he hit him over the head with that hammer, he had a strange look in his eye. He could feel the tension. ‘He changed, he was out of character, and he did not know what he was doing.’

 “John Gacy is truly a Jekyll and Hyde, despite what psychiatric terms you put on it, despite what labels you put on it, he is the personification of this novel which was written in 1886. He was so good, and he was so bad, and the bad side of him is the personification of evil.

“I’d agree with the State that he is evil. Now, whether it is premeditated, planned, and so forth, I don’t know. Killing thirty-three people is bad, it is evil. The man is insanely evil. He did not want to do it … he could not control himself.

“What do you do? Do you hold him responsible for that, or do you take the first step of having him studied to prevent, to at least try to prevent something like this from happening again in the future? My god, take that first step, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Do it.

“Mr. Motta and I have tried to present you with an open, straightforward case. We put Rignall on, we put Ried on, we put his family on, we tried to tell you what John Gacy was all about. We also put his friends on, we put four independently retained psychiatrists and psychologists on the stand. We wanted to show you the different sides of John Gacy. We wanted to show you that he was acting under constant, raging, mental illness. We wanted to show you that this man should be studied. The most frightening, the most
horrible kind of mental illness, the kind of thing you would not recognize—the fact that John Gacy, two years ago, could have been your neighbor, he could have been your friend, he could have been on this jury, he could have been the foreman of this jury. It isn’t that—that alone, isn’t that, if you use your common sense, enough indication, enough motive to have this man studied?

“Bob Egan ended his opening statement with the words, ‘God help all of us if another man like John Gacy walks among us.’ Well, if you don’t want to find out, if you don’t want to have him studied, if you don’t want to learn why, God help all of us, because there probably is going to be more John Gacys walking among us.

“Putting him away won’t prevent anything. Punishment won’t deter a madman. The next mass murderer out there, do you think that John Gacy, setting an example with John Gacy, would help?

“It wouldn’t deter him. It didn’t deter John Gacy.

“He couldn’t control his conduct. He couldn’t control his evil conduct, just like Jekyll could not control Hyde; and eventually, Hyde took over, Jekyll lost it more and more and more, and then eventually the evil side of Jekyll’s personality took over beyond the control of the good side. Beyond the control of the good side.”

 I stole a glance at the clock. It was time to finish up. I took a quick second or two as I silently reviewed what I had said. Had I left anything out? One final item came to mind.

“By the way, Mr. Sullivan mentioned that our doctor testified that John Gacy was unconscious. They never said he was unconscious. We said he was reacting to unconscious stimuli. He was awake, he was walking around—he wasn’t unconscious.

 “His drive was in his unconscious. He is a danger to himself; he definitely is a danger to others. Remember, he began serving that ten-year sentence December 11, 1968; and he ended it on December 11, 1978.

“Do the right thing, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Don’t decide this case with hate, with revenge, with passion and fear.
Commit yourselves to our laws, perform your duty well as jurors, look at all of the evidence; and when you look at the whole picture, you will find that the State has not met their burden of proving Mr. Gacy sane beyond a reasonable doubt.

“We expect you to return a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

“On behalf of Mr. Motta and Mr. Gacy and myself, I would like to thank you again for being such an attentive jury. I would indicate that our work is now on the verge of being over, and your work is just beginning.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

I turned and walked quietly to our table. The only sound in the room was the muffled sound of my footsteps on the carpeting. I realized that we were done—no more evidence, no more arguments. The case was coming to a close. Memories of the previous fifteen long months cascaded and crashed into one another like in a dream. The courtroom was a blur; faces were unidentifiable. Adrenaline still coursed through me. My heart thumped. For me, it was over.

As I sat down, Judge Garippo’s voice resonated and reverberated throughout the room, snapping me back from my rushing memories, back to reality.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the arguments that you will hear tonight. The schedule of the events would be that tomorrow the State will have the opportunity to give a rebuttal argument. After the rebuttal argument, I will instruct you as to the law, and then you will begin your deliberations.

“Again, as each day goes by, it becomes easier, and the temptation is deeper to begin making judgments in your own mind about the believability of witnesses and as to what your verdict will be. It would not be fair to either side to do this at this time. Because you have not at this time heard all of the arguments, and you haven’t formally been instructed as to the law.

“Further, I just want to correct one thing—a mistake that I made during the course of Mr. Amirante’s argument. I sustained an objection relative to testimony of Dr. Cavanaugh relating to suicide. I sustained the objection of the State, and I erroneously sustained that objection. There was testimony relative to that subject. You have heard the evidence, and you are the judges of the evidence.

 “We will resume tomorrow at ten o’clock. Please do not discuss this case in any way. Thank you.”

36

B
ILL
K
UNKLE STOOD
well over six feet tall, and his bathroom scale bumped up against 250 pounds when he stood on it, maybe even a little more. In summer, when it was warm enough, he arrived to work on a big ol’ Harley Davidson, with chrome gleaming and the deafening blast from hot pipes reverberating against the Chicago skyline. It’s a hog on which any denim-jacketed Hell’s Angel would ride his colors proud.