The Last Victim (21 page)

In a masterpiece of flawed logic, he continues:

The state said that I confessed to the Crime and thats not true, so the state is presenting improper evidence. They are giving
you fantasy and not fact, which was told the trial jury. That could have lead to believing my guilt and that was false.

In my letter, I’d asked him point-blank about the manner in which he killed the boys. I’ve read and reread his response over
and over again and I have no idea what he is talking about. He maintains he was framed, that the prosecution lied to convict
him because he was a convenient scapegoat, and that his confession was manufactured. He then goes on to list every discrepancy
and unknown item related to his case. Supposedly, if you add up all these inconsistencies, they prove he was innocent.

He cites, for instance, that the victims were killed in different ways, signaling different culprits; the police couldn’t
identify some of the bodies, nor could they say positively when the crimes were committed; there was a lot of drug and alcohol
use going on in Gacy’s house—engaged in by others, not him; the prosecution couldn’t prove where he was at the time some of
the crimes were committed. His main argument seemed to be that nobody actually saw him commit the crimes, so he was within
his rights to insist he didn’t do them.

When I read his long, convoluted arguments, all I could do was shake my head. Did he have any idea how crazy all this sounded?
At his arrest he said unequivocally: “I did it.” Under interrogation, he revised his statement to say: “I didn’t do it; Jack
did” (his alter ego). During psychiatric evaluation, he admitted: “I may have done it but I don’t remember.” At his trial
he said: “Someone else did it and framed me.” Later he admitted to me: “They [the victims] deserved what they got.” Did he
really think that other people were so stupid that they’d forget all the things he’d said earlier and ignore the mountain
of evidence? In a word: yes. He concluded his first mid-February letter with this point:

. . . if I were as guilty as the State would like you to believe, then how come there is so much to my appeal and I am not
dead yet? Clearly cases of crimes with death penalty conviction after mine are already dead within 6 to 8 years. Next month
we go into the 15 year. As there is a lot of doubt in my conviction. The May 10th date is not written in stone and I wouldn’t
bet that I will die then.

Although I enjoyed drawing him out in this way, asking him direct questions just to see what kind of answers he’d give, he’d
only let me get away with it on a few occasions. In his very next letter, he indulged me further by responding to each of
the fifty-three questions I’d compiled from various magazines and books.

In directing questions to him, I’d tried to focus in on areas he’d previously been evasive about. For instance, there was
a long-standing story about his being caught when he was five years old smelling his mother’s panties. Experts point to that
as the earliest sign of his sexual deviance. I asked him to tell me about his panty fetish, whether he preferred clean or
dirty ones, and what he did with them. He answered by saying that he used to take only the panties of his mother and keep
them in a brown paper bag. He couldn’t recall ever wearing or smelling them, and he said he eventually grew out of the habit.

I asked him about his voluntary confession to the police in which he not only admitted that he’d killed the boys but actually
drew a map showing where the bodies were buried in their exact positions. He insisted that there’d been an illegally obtained
confession and that the map must have been drawn by the police to frame him.

I was feeling more and more frustrated by these programmed answers until I came to a question concerning his being sexually
molested as a child. For a change, his answer was direct and to the point:

Yes [I was molested] by a contractor who would come take me for rides. I was 8 years old and we always ended up with him holding
my head between his legs. Until one day I was hiding when he came by and Mom asked me why I didn’t go. After explaining, she
told my Dad. Next time this guy came by, my dad yelled at him and he never came back again.

Gacy seemed to be in incredible denial about other issues, though. When I asked what it felt like to be beaten and abused
by his dad, he vehemently denied that he felt anything but love for his father. He was equally insistent that all the other
stories about him were false—that when he worked in a mortuary he hadn’t had sex with the bodies and that he’d never raped
anyone.

It was my very last question to him, number 53, that he seemed to find most provocative. I asked why he tried to make a point
to outsmart teenage boys. He responded like this:

I disagree about outsmarting boys, as they nowadays are streetwise. There you have the rest of your questions. You can learn
all you want on the visit, as I will give you private lessons if you really want to know.

Now,
that
was a frightening thought. Until this moment, the idea of visiting Gacy in prison sounded like a novel way to spend my spring
break. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might be planning something special for me; after all, I’d be safe behind glass partitions
and everything would be carefully monitored by guards and video cameras. How creative could he get?

But there it was: the first clue that everything might not be as it seemed.

E
very time I asked Gacy something that he thought was too personal, private, or confidential to be discussed over the phone
or via the mail, he’d say, “When you come and visit, we’ll discuss it then.”

I just thought this was his way of avoiding having to answer. I also knew that I had neither the time nor the money to travel
that far. In fact, in my whole life I’d only been on one major trip out of the state.

Additionally, there was the obvious problem of getting my parents, especially my mother, to agree to such a preposterous adventure.
Many of my friends were planning trips during spring break to the beaches in Southern California and Mexico or to the ski
slopes in Utah. I could just imagine telling my mom: “Guess where I’m going over the holiday? Death Row!”

At first, Gacy countered my reluctance by telling me I could hitchhike to Illinois, or even drive my own car. When, in a phone
conversation with him one day, I balked at this suggestion, he said, “Don’t worry. Let me see what I can do.”

I started to protest that I didn’t have any money when he impatiently interrupted.

“Look, I’ll talk to my attorney. I’ll have him send you a check to cover the tickets and hotel, even some spending money while
you’re here. How would that be?”

I was speechless. I’d now run out of excuses. I was also amazed that he wanted to see me so much he’d
pay
me to visit.

“Wow, John, I can’t believe it,” I said, really meaning it. “I’m actually going to be able to visit you. This is gonna be
great. This is going to be awesome.”

Now, how was I ever going to get my parents to let me go?

“Mom,” I said excitedly not a minute later, “I just got off the phone with Gacy.” I could barely catch my breath. “He said
I could
visit
him. He said he’d pay for the whole thing! Can you believe it?”

“No, Jason, I can’t believe it.” Then she gave me her look that said I was being hopelessly naive. “What does this guy expect
from you?”

“Nothing, Mom. He’s in prison locked up, with no normal people to talk to. I’m his way of connecting with the outside world.
I’m his audience.” I could see her smirking, but I tried to ignore her and explain myself—a difficult proposition because
even
I
wasn’t sure why I needed to do this.

“C’mon, Mom, I just want to know what makes him tick. And this could help someday when I try to get into graduate school.”

She rolled her eyes.

“It’s the opportunity of a
lifetime,
” I pleaded. “How many people can say they interviewed a serial killer?”

That piqued her interest. Every mother likes to brag about her kids.

She thought for a minute while I paced back and forth. “Yeah,” she agreed, “it would be interesting, but I don’t understand
what a fifty-year-old man has in common with an eighteen-year-old boy. People don’t give anything for nothing, Jason.
You
know that better than anyone.”

She was referring to my constant suspiciousness. I was always assessing people’s motives, and it was difficult for me to believe
that anyone would do anything that wasn’t self-serving. Looking back on it later, I’d find my making an exception of Gacy
especially ironic.

“We get along great,” I assured her. “The guy is just lonely or something and he appreciates the attention I give him. Besides,
you know me—I can get along with people of any age.”

When I saw her nod her head in agreement, I knew I was scoring some points.

“Besides,” I said, spreading the frosting on the cake, “I could write some really cool papers for school about the prison
system and serial killers. It’s totally safe.”

It was the safety issue that most concerned my mother, as it would any parent. There was no way she was going to let me go
unless she was totally convinced nothing bad could happen. She absolutely insisted on talking to the prison’s warden to go
over arrangements for the visit and hear his own assurances that I’d be protected. I agreed this was a sensible precaution.

Frankly, I was amazed she was so amenable to the idea. I wasn’t sure if she thought the whole thing was a scam by Gacy that
would never come to pass. More likely, she saw, in me, a chance to vicariously live out her own fantasies of being a criminal
investigator. After all those years of reading crime books, she realized how unique this opportunity actually was.

Now that my mother was on board, I knew my father would be a snap. The only obstacle was setting up a conversation with the
warden.

The next time Gacy called, he was more than happy to speak with my mother, telling her that he and I would just hang out like
old friends for a couple of days. He reassured her that he was just a regular guy. Sure, maybe he’d killed a few dozen boys
my age, here and there, but he could be charming when he wanted to be.

Despite his breezy claims, my mother asked him straight out, “Look, you’re on Death Row. What’s to stop you from harming my
son, or making sexual advances towards him, or even killing him?”

That seemed to give him something to ponder because he waited awhile before he responded. Finally, he said, “First, I’ve never
killed anyone. Second, if I did hurt your son in any way, they’d take away all my privileges.” He forgot to mention, however,
that his scheduled execution date was just weeks away and he really had very little left to lose.

Still unconvinced, my mother said she’d have to talk to the warden, too.

“No problem,” said Gacy. “It’s already been arranged— hold on.”

While my mother was waiting to be connected to the warden’s office, I told her that because Gacy was such a prison celebrity,
there was even more than the usual amount of security to make sure nothing unpredictable would occur.

Before she could answer, the warden came on the line.

“Hello, Mrs. Moss,” he said, “how can I help you?”

“Well, Warden, my son was thinking about going down there to visit Gacy. How can I be sure that nothing bad will happen to
him?”

“Well, you can never be completely sure about anything, Mrs. Moss. But we take a lot of safety precautions here at Menard.”

“Will Gacy be able to touch Jason or be near him?”

“No, that won’t be possible. They’re each seated in two different rooms, with a glass wall between the inmate and visitor
so they can speak to one another. Gacy will have his hands and legs shackled as well. There’s also a camera in the room where
the visitor is seated. This is monitored at all times.”

“Really?”
my mother said, apparently impressed.

“There’s not much to worry about,” said the warden. “There hasn’t been an incident here in many, many years. Your son will
be fine.”

“Yes,” my mother agreed. She seemed a bit flattered that someone with this much authority was treating her with such respect.

“Gacy gets visitors here all the time,” he explained. “He’s getting old, and surprisingly, he can actually be fun sometimes.
I don’t think a guy trying to get out on appeal would risk his whole life and the postponement of his execution to try something
stupid. And let me reassure you again, all he could do is
try.
The security is just too tight.”

Before my mother hung up, she hit the warden with one last question: “What about guards? There’ll be guards around, right?”

“Oh yes, there’ll be a guard walking the halls every couple of minutes, checking on Gacy and your son. If anything happens,
all he’d have to do is holler, and a guard would be there in five seconds.”

Thus reassured, she hung up the phone with a big smile, proud of how well she’d handled herself. She now realized that extraordinary
security measures would be taken to make certain I’d be safe at all times.

There was one tiny problem with the scenario. The warden, you see, wasn’t really the warden. Gacy later admitted to me that
he’d gotten one of the guards he’d befriended to pretend to be the warden so my parents would feel reassured.

To tell you the truth, I suspected something funny might be going on, but there was no way I was going to say anything and
ruin this opportunity. Even if everything wasn’t set up as Gacy’s “warden” said it would be, I was confident I could handle
a fat old man in handcuffs.

None of us were really aware of the extent to which Gacy had a firm hold on the prison and its staff. He was a rich man by
prison standards and could basically bribe anyone to do anything. He’d been living on Death Row for fifteen years, much of
that time spent in the company of prison guards he’d befriended. Thus, he was fully in control of his environment, more like
a celebrated guest than a convicted murderer.