The Last Victim (10 page)

He had a point.

Remember, too, that logic had always been my own favorite weapon—the tool I used to convince anyone of almost anything. Because
I relied so much on logic myself, I was unusually susceptible to others’ rational arguments. And I’ve got to tell you: Gacy
was a master. Each time I’d poke a hole in his story, he’d find some way to explain it away. I was actually starting to feel
more and more sympathetic to his cause—that is, until he changed the rules of our relationship.

I
n spite of all my efforts to choreograph the interactions between us, Gacy apparently had his own ideas about where we were
headed. Judging by the content of his latest letter, he was prepared to play outside the boundaries I’d constructed.

“You mention you have a brother, 14,” are the words that riveted my attention. “Is he into sports like you and do you get
along with him?”

This might seem like the most ordinary of questions, but in hindsight, Gacy was planting seeds in the hope of acting out some
very sick fantasies. I learned later through my correspondence with Gacy that he claimed to have had a youthful sexual relationship
with his sister.

Since even in the best of circumstances I was overprotective of my brother, the red flags shot up soon after Gacy’s first
mention of Jarrod.

All the time my brother and I were growing up, both my parents worked long hours in retail and gaming jobs, so the responsibility
often fell on me to be in charge. As much as I was plagued by my own fears, I was always even more concerned that something
bad would happen to Jarrod.

I remembered the year before this whole serial killer project of mine started, Jarrod had gotten himself in a jam. He was
a thirteen-year-old junior high schooler, while I was a senior in high school. Some gang members started bothering Jarrod,
harassing him and following him around. One day they even put a dog chain around his neck and started choking him. A teacher
arrived just in time to break things up.

When I heard what happened, I went berserk. My first impulse was to take care of the problem myself, find the kids and teach
them a lesson. I was a big weight lifter and kickboxer at the time, so I had few doubts I could put the fear of God into them.
But I didn’t think that would be a long-term solution.

I presented Jarrod with my plan.

“Look, this whole situation could get totally out of hand. We don’t want to deal with some gang war where someone will end
up getting shot.”

Jarrod listened intently. He was in over his head and anxious for a way out.

“If I kick this guy’s ass,” I explained, “then he’ll just get someone bigger to kick both of our asses. I don’t want this
going back and forth forever.”

“So what should we do?” he asked. I liked the sound of that “we”—this was our problem together and we’d solve it as a team.

“I’m going to take you to his house right now. Then you’re going to fight him.”

“Are you kidding?” he screamed. “He’ll
kill
me.”

“No he won’t,” I reassured him. “I’ll make certain that doesn’t happen. It’ll be a fair fight.”

Jarrod looked sick. Before he could think too much about it, I said, “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Right now?” he asked, taken completely off guard.

“Yes, Jarrod, right now. If you fight him at his house, then even if you kick his ass, he won’t make a big deal of it because
all his friends won’t be there to get revenge.”

All he could say in response was, “You want me to go right now?” He seemed to be in shock.

“Yeah, get your stuff and let’s go. I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise. If things get out of hand, I’ll jump
in.”

Jarrod didn’t look convinced.

“I know you’re scared,” I continued. “But you have to get this over with. Otherwise, this guy and his friends will never leave
you alone. It’s better that this asshole kicks your ass with me there than with all of his friends beating you with bats in
the desert somewhere, leaving you for dead. We can end this whole thing today.”

Jarrod trusted me completely, so he agreed to come. “If you say so, but if he starts kicking my ass too bad, you better break
it up.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jarrod. You’ll probably kick
his
ass!”

We went to the kid’s house together and I set things up. “Here’s the deal,” I explained to the gangbanger, who was surprised
by my offer. “You fight my brother right now. A fair fight. I’m tired of hearing all this bullshit about what you’re doing
to him at school. If you have a problem with Jarrod, then you can fight here like men, and I’ll stand and watch. I won’t do
a thing, unless someone else steps in or you pull a knife or something. Then that’s the end of it. If you beat the crap out
of him, then leave him alone; if he beats you up, he leaves you alone. It’s over.”

“That’s cool,” he said, getting all pumped up at the idea of getting into a fight.

“Hey, man,” I interrupted as he was pumping himself up, “I mean it. No matter what the hell happens, it ends here . . .
today
!”

“All right by me,” he declared. “Let’s get it on.”

We all walked down the street to this deserted area where they were building new homes. Jarrod fought a good fight, but the
guy was from the barrio in Los Angeles. He was tougher and had a lot more experience. Jarrod lost, ended up with a nice black
eye, but he refused to give up. After that, he got a reputation for being one of the toughest kids in the school.

That was just one of several times when I came to Jarrod’s defense, taking care of him when our parents were unavailable.
Simply put, I tend to overreact whenever anyone tries to hurt my brother. Which is why I was more than a little concerned
that Gacy was trying to bring him into this mess.

In the same letter that my brother’s name was mentioned, Gacy also pressed for more communication between us. He challenged
me to be more frank and open.

I am a PMA type person. Positive Mental Attitude. I don’t have time for negative thinking. Death is negative so why fill your
head with that. Lying is negative, so I have no time for that.

Hey, I say what I think to some. That’s great. To others, they think I am not tactful. But I am not a cream puff and I believe
a true friend will not tell you what you want to hear to stroke you but let you know whats right from their point of view.
So you won’t find me stroking you as you have your own hand for that once a day if not more.

Again, there were those references to masturbation. And also some tendentious comments, intended to paint a picture of an
upstanding man “caught up in the system.” Gacy would always preach to me about school, my grades, and being good to my family.
In his letters he mentioned everything from football scores to the new movies out on tape. Clearly, these observations on
pop culture were intended to make me see him as a
person,
as no different than a friend down the street.

A few days later I would receive my first glimpse of what I’d learn to call the “artificial Gacy”:

. . . I did not kill or murder anyone. I owned the property so they want you to assume I did. They say I confessed, but have
no confession when asked in court. I have had 3 hours of truth serum, showing that I had no knowledge of some 28 victims,
and the five I knew about, it wasn’t about killing them. That’s not admissible in court. I was sold out by my own attorneys
for book rights. Thats what I have been appealing all of these years. But I am an embarrassment on the criminal justice system,
because if I am right then they are wrong, and too many careers and money have been made off my name, and for political reasons
its better to kill me than to let the public know they fucked up 15 years ago.

Although Gacy had included his “fact sheet” proclaiming his innocence in the first letter he sent me, this self-serving statement
was consistent with what he would state over and over again. At times, he was so persuasive I actually began to believe him.

I’d heard about the so-called Stockholm syndrome in which kidnap victims begin to identify with their captors to the point
where they feel sympathetic toward them, but I never imagined that I’d come to feel something resembling empathy for this
cold-blooded murderer. I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable, but I was unprepared to deal with the confusing feelings
Gacy’s letters evoked.

I wanted to look at this monster almost as a “specimen”—as a thing to be examined, analyzed, manipulated, in some ways tested—yet
I began to see him as a pitiful human being who was doing the best he could like everyone else. I was repulsed by my own compassion.
All I had to do was think about Gacy’s victims and their childless parents to remember who and what I was really dealing with.

I
n my next letter to Gacy, I tried to lead him to an area in which he might begin to trust me more. In retrospect, I can’t
believe that I didn’t anticipate the extent to which he would turn the tables back my way. The question I asked him was pretty
direct: what he fantasized about sexually. I received a response six days later, just as my first semester of college was
ending.

Gacy enjoyed being as graphic as possible in describing his sexual tastes. I realized this was another test of sorts, trying
to determine my own preferences, as well as how I’d react to his explicit descriptions.

At first, I was sort of amused by what he wrote. I couldn’t believe his lack of inhibition.

What do I fantasize about sexually? I assume you mean when I jack off. Well, it depends on what mood I am in and what I am
thinking from out of the many past encounters I have had. Since I like being the aggressor, I like to get on in threesomes.
Both male and female, making them my slaves in bed and doing it all.

Straight sex or bi I enjoyed it all, knowing I can get off with both and enjoying anything that is consenting with others.
I find if you satisfy your partner first then you can do anything. So I like to get them off first.

In talking about sex, I suspected that Gacy was unwittingly revealing his philosophy toward his victims as well. As long as
he helped them find satisfaction first, then he believed he had the right to do anything he wanted afterward, up to and including
torture and strangulation. I made a note to follow up on this, to ask him at some future time what had influenced him to let
some boys go and others not.

In the letter, Gacy went on to explain that whereas he hated homosexuals and “gay acting” people, he was actually bisexual—an
orientation he considered quite natural.

He made a clear distinction between being with a man for mutual pleasure and actually
loving
another man. He thought that if there were no women around, then having another guy to “get it on with” was the next best
thing. Although he held this position until his death, before he was arrested he’d completely stopped having sex with his
wife and slept only with males.

The word “consenting” in this letter was also something that helped Gacy rationalize his actions and behavior. He thought
that as long as someone was consenting, then literally anything that ensued, sexually or physically, was okay. This would
hold equally true if the partner in question was a handcuffed, fourteen-year-old boy who’d been handed an ultimatum to perform
oral sex on Gacy or die.

In my previous letter, I’d taken a bit of a risk by asking Gacy about the sense of power he felt when killing another human
being—if indeed he’d actually killed anyone. Although he never stopped denying his guilt, he did slip innuendos into some
of his correspondence referring to his crimes. This time, however, he chose to ignore my question about killing and instead
talked about power in a sexual context.

You asked about a sense of power. I think everyone feels that when having sex, be it with male or female. The power to bring
someone off with your tongue is wild, as you have control over setting off their ejaculation, kind of like the power you have
when beating it, you can bring it up and stop and hold off and then wait and bring it up again. Thats wild and to be honest
with you I could even see doing it to you and having a lot of fun or even with you and your girlfriend getting both of you
off without either of you touching the other.

I loved wild parties. I think that when you have had an older woman you tend to want to control the younger one in doing what
you want. What do you think? Older women like young toy boys as they call them. And its not the size of the ship, its the
motion of the ocean. As anyone can fuck. Most like cut cocks circumcised. I am just 7” as I have been asked that many times,
cut with a large head.

This portion of the letter struck me as significant in many ways. It was the first time he’d made any reference to involving
me in one of his sexual ideas or thoughts. And he’d referred to me as a “toy boy,” a term for a good-looking guy, sometimes
a male prostitute, who gets what he wants by using his body.

In future letters, Gacy began addressing me as “toy boy,” sometimes as an endearment, other times in a derogatory fashion.
If I had any doubts that he was now thinking about me in a sexual way, his interest was confirmed when he asked for various
photos of me posing in suggestive ways. Since there was a limit to what I’d do to keep him engaged, I merely sent him a few
standard pictures.

He also brought up my brother again. “You mention your brother with no name or photo,” he said. “I would think if your close
then share that and give him a name. . . . Say hi to your brother tell him to stay with it [playing baseball], but enjoy life
as well.”

I was sitting on the porch one day, rereading these very words and reviewing other letters—much the way a miser savors his
gold—when Jarrod arrived home from school. It was a perfect autumn day in the desert: cool, clear, bright sun. Jarrod had
just gotten off the bus.