The Last Victim (8 page)

“You guys look a little blazed right now. You’re pretty fucked up, huh?”

They’d giggle. “Hey, man, you gotta do what ya gotta do.”

“Yeah,” I’d agree. “I bought a eighth last night for twenty. Good shit. Some really good fuckin’ shit.”

“Really? What’s it laced with? Coke or something?” That sort of insider question might trip me up, so I’d just nod, hoping
an affirmation wouldn’t set off any alarms.

“Well, man,” I’d say, “I gotta bail now. Let’s hook up later.”

“Cool.”

Next, I’d saunter over to another part of the cafeteria where the jocks were eating lunch and talking about their latest athletic
exploits.

“You still training, Jason?” one of them might ask as I approached.

“Damn straight,” I’d say. “Feel these arms.”

At that point one of them could be counted on to grab my biceps and squeeze as hard as he could, trying to bring some pain.

After some more posturing and high-testosterone ribbing, I might see a teacher coming down the hall and choose to transform
myself into another person altogether. Sometimes I’d do this all day, never growing tired of it, moving from one group to
another.

The fact is, I enjoyed learning what made various people tick. As I’ve said previously, it armed me against potential threats,
and
it satisfied my curiosity.

During my last year of high school, I decided to learn about some of the most exotic people of all—transsexuals and transvestites.
I thought they’d make an interesting topic for a paper I’d been assigned. I began to write individuals who described themselves
as such, pretending to be one of them. In turn, they told me their stories, sent me pictures of themselves, and provided a
wealth of information that proved invaluable when I began drafting letters to serial killers.

As part of my continued “training,” I also began answering ads placed by heterosexual women. I’d carefully study what each
was looking for and then describe myself in such a way as to get a response. Getting replies turned out to be easy, though,
so I began looking for bigger challenges.

I suppose that’s how I came round to my serial killer idea.

What bigger challenge was there than to try to outfox— and in the process learn about—someone who’d led police on a merry
chase for years? As someone who considered himself an above-average but still amateur role-player, I could think of no greater
turn-on than to go mano a mano with one of the country’s most lethal—and clever—Jekyll and Hydes.

J
ust prior to Thanksgiving vacation I was finally ready to send off a letter to my first subject, John Wayne Gacy. Every word
was carefully constructed to project the image of someone who was young, lonely, needy, and yet also very desirable. If I
was correct, the total “package” would represent the same kind of irresistible temptation that had attracted Gacy on over
two dozen separate occasions thirteen years before.

On November 24, 1993, I posted the following letter:

Dear Mr. Gacy,

My name is Jason Moss, and I’m a full time college student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I’m 18 years old, and I’m
writing because I thought you might get bored or lonely where you are, and that you might want someone to correspond with.
I’m sure there are many others who write you, but I hope you take the time to write me back. You’ll see that I’m a pretty
nice guy, and I know what it’s like to be bored and alone. The constant screaming of my father keeps me secluded in my room
when I’m not in school or at the gym. I hate it here at home, and I guess I understand what it’s like to need a friend.

At this point I don’t really know what else to say until you write me back. If you should need anything like paper or supplies,
just let me know. I would be happy to help. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Your friend,

Jason Moss

I felt a tremendous relief after I sent the letter off; it was out of my hands. There was nothing more I could do. I’d researched
things as best I could. Now it was time for me to get on with the rest of my life, which I’d been neglecting for some time.
I jumped back into schoolwork with my usual zeal and also devoted extra time to my girlfriend, Jenn, whom I’d been avoiding
during the weeks leading up to sending the letter.

Just seven days later, though, to my utter shock, a letter arrived from the Menard Correctional Center in Illinois. I hadn’t
expected to receive a reply so fast. The first thing I did was run down the stairs to tell my mother the news.

“Can you believe it? Look who wrote me! John Wayne Gacy wrote me back. I can’t believe it!”

My mother looked up from the magazine she’d been glancing through. “Great,” she said without enthusiasm, and resumed reading.

I stood there staring at her, the letter gripped tightly in my hand. She looked up again at me, as if she wondered what I
was doing there. “So now you’ve got a new serial killer friend. You really worry me sometimes.”

“Mom, don’t you see how great this is!” I just couldn’t restrain my excitement. “How many people can say they’ve received
a letter from John Wayne Gacy?”

“Who’d want to brag about such a thing?” she countered, and again went back to the magazine.

Both my parents had been hoping that my latest obsession would go the way of dozens of others, and eventually fade out. But
alas, now I would only be encouraged to continue this foolishness to wherever it might lead next.

Gacy’s letter was only a paragraph long, typed double-spaced. The grammar and punctuation revealed his lack of education.
He was brief and to the point in thanking me for writing. He included a few enclosures, a self-authored article that described
his version of the events that led up to his arrest and conviction, and a questionnaire he wanted me to complete before the
correspondence could go any further.

This survey, I later learned, was part of Gacy’s standard operating procedure. It was the means by which he filtered out,
from among the thousands of people who contacted him, a few fans to correspond with. The form contained dozens of items related
to interests and preferences, such as “My childhood hero,” “Why you wrote J. W. Gacy,” “Ideal evening,” and “Nobody knows
about: ______.” Yet hidden among these seemingly innocuous queries were also things like: “Thoughts on sex,” “Thoughts on
crime,” and “What you’re thinking now.” These were the items I figured would be most significant to Gacy.

My initial elation now gave way to a certain anxiety. Clearly, Gacy wasn’t going to take at face value just anything that
was sent to him. He may have been guilty of overconfidence but he wasn’t stupid; he obviously planned to dig deep into the
mind of whomever he befriended.

This project was going to be a lot more difficult than I’d ever imagined. While I welcomed the challenge of trying to plumb
Gacy’s mind, all the while blocking access to my true self, I also felt a lot of external pressure.

Although I was busy planning the next step in our correspondence, my parents were adamant about calling a halt to the whole
thing.

“What are we supposed to tell our friends you’re doing lately?” my mother complained. “‘Oh, nothing much. He’s got a new friend,
though. John Gacy. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Tortured and killed thirty-three boys about Jason’s age. But I understand
he’s very nice when he’s in a good mood.’”

My father added his own concerns. “Don’t you worry people might think you’re a little strange, writing to killers?” Eventually
realizing that his argument was falling on deaf ears, he pleaded, “Jason, why don’t you start going back to the gym again?”

“Dad, I’m going to learn a lot of cool stuff if this works out. So what if other people wouldn’t try this? You know I’m not
like everyone else. Why are you trying to make me
act
like everyone else?”

One cool, fall night I followed my father outside so he could smoke a cigarette. We stood in the backyard, moving around to
stay warm. “Jason,” he said, “you’re going to do whatever you want. I know that. But Mom doesn’t like this idea, and it’s
going to cause trouble around the house. I can already feel it.”

I felt sorry for him. He was always catching flak for the things I dreamed up.

“Dad, you know Mom is against almost everything I try. Why should this be any different? I promise I won’t let it get out
of hand.”

But “out of hand” is what it eventually got.

The response from Gacy suggested that if I did my homework carefully, I could get inside the mind of
anybody.
Already, I started thinking about other serial killers I might contact, but I was getting ahead of myself: first I had to
capture Gacy’s interest.

I knew that my next hurdle was to get through his primitive “psychological test” in such a way that I’d not only “pass” but
that he’d fight to be my mentor and teacher. I needed to fill out the items in such a way that I’d sound genuine and sincere,
yet very confused and vulnerable.

I reviewed what I knew about Gacy, and what I suspected was the case. Although he claimed to be bisexual, I knew that he’d
stopped having sex with women just about the time he began his two-year killing spree. As for what I suspected: obviously,
he’d be against the death penalty, he’d have some fairly liberal attitudes about sex, and he’d be especially attracted to
someone who was easily controlled.

I crafted my responses with the same meticulous care that I devoted to a pivotal term paper. One question asked me about my
impression of the “perfect man or woman.” I crossed out “woman” and wrote in “partner” instead, so it would seem that I might
be inclined toward bisexuality or homosexuality. I added that my partner would have to be kind, sensitive, sincere, funny,
and good-looking. I tried to make my responses as ambiguous as I could so I’d have some flexibility later to alter my beliefs,
depending on what evolved. I was really just operating in the dark, even though I’d gathered some good intelligence.

There was one question that began: “Nobody knows I’m ______.” I decided I should throw in something provocative to get his
wheels spinning. I answered: “. . . thinking about being a nude dancer to earn extra money.” In my mind, this accomplished
the following: First, it let him know that I had an attractive body and wasn’t inhibited about flaunting it. Second, it suggested
I wasn’t above
selling
my body—which, undoubtedly, would play into his incredible rage toward boy hustlers. I remembered, for example, that a hustler
by the name of Donald Voorhees was responsible for Gacy’s early conviction for sodomy. Thereafter, from what I could determine,
most of Gacy’s victims shared physical characteristics with Voorhees.

I tried to answer every item on the questionnaire in a way that I believed would entice Gacy. I was like a fly fisherman who’d
felt the tiniest tug on the line, and was trying to shake the fly in a way that would get the fish to take the hook.

I
t had been several days since I’d mailed in the questionnaire and I wondered how long it would take for Gacy to reply. I’ve
never been patient during the best of times and this was positively agonizing.

I’m a compulsive worrier and I agonized over the responses I eventually settled on. Maybe I shouldn’t have said something
about my parents so quickly. I could think of a dozen other responses I wished I’d constructed differently.
What if he doesn’t write back?

While the wait continued, I thought about the other killers I wanted to contact. As a preliminary step toward writing them,
I tried to obtain addresses for some of the more famous Death Row inmates—a task that turned out to be far easier than I anticipated.
Charles Manson, in particular, was fairly simple to track down, so I started reading a bit about him as a way to keep myself
occupied.

Since I’d been unable to persuade my parents that becoming a serial killer’s pen pal was “cool,” I made it a point to leave
school promptly every afternoon so I could intercept the mail. I figured I’d have a clear shot at it, given that my parents
were always at work, and my brother was at school. After a few days I developed the habit of sitting in a rocking chair in
my parents’ room, which faced the street, waiting for the mail truck to come.

Our mail lady, Cynthia, was utterly dependable, never varying more than a few minutes from her usual arrival time. This was
especially important because I was cutting things very close. There were times my mother would come home from work only a
few minutes after I’d sorted through the mail.

“Well, Jason,” Cynthia said one day after finding me standing by the mailbox, “this might just be your lucky day.” We had
become fast friends and I’d confided to her the sort of thing I was looking for. She tilted her head in the direction of the
top letter on the stack of our mail. Clearly typed at the top of the envelope was the return address: Menard Correctional
Center.

All riiiiight!

I read through the letter, which was quite long, quickly the first time, just to get the main ideas Gacy was expressing. He
seemed to be trying to make it clear that he was a very open and safe person. He wanted me to know that I could confide in
him about anything, and he was obviously hoping I’d do so.

It was strange to read Gacy’s words—to think that this man, who’d taken the lives of so many young men just like me, was now
turning his attention my way. I could feel a chill that reminded me of the first time I watched
Friday the 13th
all the way through. All the time you’re watching the movie, hearing that scary music, seeing the unsuspecting kid about
to get decapitated, you want to scream out: “You idiot! Get the hell out of there! Can’t you sense that monster about to devour
you?” I felt like I might be in a movie as well, and I wondered, if an audience
were
watching, whether they’d scream out for me to throw the damn letter down and run for my life.