"Charge Me with Complicity": John Wayne Gacy Talks to Walter Jacobson, WBBM-TV, 1992

Name: "Charge Me with Complicity": John Wayne Gacy Talks to Walter Jacobson, WBBM-TV, 1992
Uploaded: 2023-10-07
Duration: 27 min 3 s
Description: In a five-part Chicago news series filmed on death row at Menard in 1992, John Wayne Gacy told Walter Jacobson he had killed no one, blamed former employees, and demonstrated on Jacobson's arm the "tourniquet knot" he said he had once shown police with a rosary.

In a five-part Chicago news series filmed on death row at Menard in 1992, John Wayne Gacy told Walter Jacobson he had killed no one, blamed former employees, and demonstrated on Jacobson's arm the "tourniquet knot" he said he had once shown police with a rosary.

Subject: John Wayne Gacy
Recorded: May 1992
Runtime: 27:03

Content warning: Concerns the murders of 33 boys and young men, the burial of bodies under Gacy's house, the method of strangulation, and the grief of a victim's mother.

The Interview

In May 1992 Walter Jacobson of WBBM-TV, Channel 2 in Chicago, spent about two and a half hours with John Wayne Gacy on death row at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois. The station broadcast the interview as a five-part "News Extra" series on its 10 p.m. news from May 11 to 15, 1992, presenting it as the first time Gacy had talked about the case, after 13 years of refusing to talk. In the excerpts Gacy says he killed no one, claims a "truth serum" session proved he had "no knowledge of the crime", and says others had the run of his house. Jacobson narrates throughout and sets Gacy's claims against the evidence.

Historical Context

Gacy was a building contractor who lived at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park Township, near Chicago. He was arrested in December 1978 after 15-year-old Robert Piest disappeared. Twenty-six victims were found buried in the crawl space under his house, three more elsewhere on the property, and four in the Des Plaines River. In March 1980 a Cook County jury, after about two hours' deliberation, convicted him of 33 murders, and he was sentenced to death.

Circumstances of the Interview

By 1992 Gacy had spent twelve years on death row and his appeals were still running. Jacobson, a long-serving WBBM anchor and commentator, interviewed him at Menard; the station's anchors, addressed on air as "Linda" and "Bill", introduced each night's part. The segments also include William Kunkle, who had prosecuted Gacy; Delores Nieder, the mother of one of the victims; and the Northwestern University psychiatrist Daniel Yohanna, who reviewed the interview for the station. CBS Chicago re-published the series in its "CBS 2 Vault" in 2021.

What the Interview Covers

Part one sets out Gacy's claim of innocence and his description of himself as a loving father, and shows him saying that John Butkovich "is not one that I killed", then trying to take the words back. Part two turns to the house on Summerdale: Gacy says the house was used by his employees and others, names former employees as "suspects", gives an account of finding victim John Szyc dead in his house, blames heavy Valium use and explains the smell in the house as his dog and a flooded crawl space. Part three concerns the victims: Gacy calls himself "the 34th victim", and Jacobson sets his remarks about a victim's mother against her own words. In part four Gacy says he would accept a charge of "complicity in two of the murders", gives his account of Robert Piest's death, disputes what the orange paint mark in his garage meant, and, telling how he once showed police a knot with his rosary, ties on Jacobson's arm the "tourniquet knot" he says he learned in the Boy Scouts. Part five covers his clowning as Pogo the Clown, the daily log he keeps on death row, his father, and the paintings he made in prison.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The series preserves Gacy's recantation in full flow two years before his execution, in a setting where it was tested on air. Jacobson points out that in December 1978 Gacy had told police how he killed, and that the paint mark he made in the garage lay over John Butkovich's body. In the same interview in which he denies every murder, Gacy says Butkovich is "not one that I killed" and admits helping to dispose of Robert Piest's body, claims that he then tries to limit or withdraw.

Archival Importance

The station presented this as the first time Gacy had talked about the case, and it is one of a cluster of recordings from his last years, alongside Robert Ressler's 1992 videotape, Ken Hackney's 1993 telephone recording and the 1994 Inside Edition call. Unlike the others, it was made as a local news series, with the prosecutor and a victim's mother answering him on air.

Important Caveats

Everything Gacy says about his innocence, about other people being responsible, about a truth-serum test and about the garage mark is his own claim, unsupported by the evidence and rejected by the jury and the appeal courts. The former employees he names as "suspects" were never charged with the murders. The upload is a third-party copy of the broadcasts; the interview itself is heard only in the excerpts the station chose. Jacobson's on-air numbering of the victims (Butkovich as the "second", Szyc as "number three") differs from later counts. Some words are hard to make out and are marked in the transcript.

Anchor: Tonight in News Extra, the man who committed what may be the crime of the century. His name is John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 innocent people and destroying hundreds of lives. He's never talked to anyone about the case until tonight. His murder spree was first discovered on a cold December day, when the first of his victims were found in the crawl space beneath his home. They were taken out one by one as the world watched. For 13 years, Gacy refused to talk. But tonight he's breaking that silence, walking out from death row in Menard State Prison to speak one-on-one with Channel 2's Walter Jacobson. Walter is here now to tell us what Gacy had to say in an exclusive interview. Walter.

Walter Jacobson: Quite a bit. Well, I spent two and a half hours with John Gacy listening to a whole new story about his case. He was rambling and often inconsistent, but always, always, always very cagey. Thirteen years ago, he told the police how he murdered his victims. Now he's telling me he never did. [music]

John Wayne Gacy: People don't want to know the truth, and the honesty of it. If they want to be convinced or brainwashed into what they believe, then fine, then go ahead and kill me. But "vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord", because you will have executed somebody that didn't commit the crime.

Walter Jacobson: Those are the words of John Wayne Gacy, pleading innocence from death row at Menard State Penitentiary, 13 years after being convicted of his crimes, the most notorious serial killer of our time.

John Wayne Gacy: When they paint the image that I was this monster who picked up, like, these altar boys along the street and swatted them like flies, I said, this is ludicrous.

Walter Jacobson: But the jury didn't find it ludicrous. After barely two hours' deliberation, its verdict was murder by Gacy, 33 times, 29 bodies buried in that house of his on Summerdale. A crime of horrendous proportions. In the crawl space underneath, bodies covered with lime and encased in plastic, dug up a few days before Christmas and carried into the December cold, one after another, after another. But despite all this evidence, he says he has proof he didn't do it. Here's one of dozens of examples of what he calls proof.

John Wayne Gacy: I've taken, uh, five and a half hours, three and a half hours of truth serum, and under, under sodium amytal, the maximum amount that I could have, it shows that I have no knowledge of the crime whatsoever. Never have had.

Walter Jacobson: But this is where his attempt to change history, which is what he thinks will get him a new trial, begins to break down. There is no proof anywhere that he ever took truth serum. Now, it's not only a matter of physical evidence, it's a character issue as well. Many times during our interview, he tried to portray himself as a good guy, an ethical, hardworking family man. Here's how he describes himself as a father.

John Wayne Gacy: Loving and caring. I've always looked after my children, even now.

Walter Jacobson: What kind of values do you remember imparting to them?

John Wayne Gacy: The kind of values?

Walter Jacobson: Were you strict, were you strict with them too?

John Wayne Gacy: No, not, no, not as strict as... no. A lot of things that my dad did, I refused to do. Because I don't believe in hitting children. I don't believe in, uh, spoiling a child either. My values are such that if you give enough love to a children...

Walter Jacobson: You're accused of murdering 33 kids, and you say you didn't believe in hitting?

John Wayne Gacy: I mean, well, anybody that knows... You see, first of all, you're basing, you're basing this garbage on what you've heard of me.

Walter Jacobson: And what the jury said, and what the courts of appeal have said. And the prosecutor who put him in jail says Gacy is a ruthless and sadistic killing machine.

William Kunkle: He's responsible. He knew exactly what he was doing. He planned it in advance, and he carried it out, and he enjoyed it. And he admitted it, in fact boasted of it, to the police.

Walter Jacobson: But now, 14 years later, he's denying it and talking to me about it. What does Prosecutor Kunkle think of that?

William Kunkle: He's a desperate man. He's going to die in two or three years. He's going to be executed when the law is finally carried out, and he'll clutch at any straw.

Walter Jacobson: Two and a half hours of clutching at straws, cunning and manipulative denials. But if you listen carefully, you catch him slipping up, about John Butkovich, for instance, his second victim. What happened to, uh, what happened in the Butkovich case? Where was he picked up, and, uh, how did he get to the house, and what happened with him?

John Wayne Gacy: I don't want to go in, I don't want to go into the other, the five that I know about. Just take it that I did. Butkovich is not one that I killed, so I don't know nothing about him. The little bit that I know about him is that he was an employee of mine. See, when, when you look about this, this [unclear: "recall business" (both sources; sense unclear)], and, and...

Walter Jacobson: I'm not a prosecutor, John, but you just...

John Wayne Gacy: I know you're not.

Walter Jacobson: Wait a minute. "Is not one that I killed", which suggests that maybe, in fact, there were others that you did kill.

John Wayne Gacy: I'm not... okay, I'm, I'm sorry if I led you to believe... No, strike it, then. That is wrong.

Walter Jacobson: But it's, uh, too late to strike it. There are others he killed, children he lured into his home anyway, who didn't get out alive. When he was arrested, he told the police what he did and how he did it, with a rope that he used as a tourniquet. Now he says he didn't do it, and shows me his rope trick to explain how the police misunderstood that, and more of what he's twisting into his pleas of innocence, tomorrow. Linda, Bill. ### Part 2

Anchor: Fascinating. We've heard an extraordinary story told by a desperate man. John Wayne Gacy is trying to rewrite history and retry his case. Tonight, Gacy's story focuses on the house on Summerdale. For years it was his home. As Channel 2's Walter Jacobson is here to tell us, it is the center of Gacy's case and all of his alibis. Walter.

Walter Jacobson: Linda, as you know, it was the house on Summerdale that, he buried 26 of the 33 bodies. It was his home, and his office as well. And he now says there was so much going on inside that house that any number of people could have been involved.

John Wayne Gacy: See, there's a misconception of what the, the house on Summerdale is. It's not a house where you work nine to five and come home, and it's, it's like a house where you live in. The living room was, was a major, was the private office section. One of the bedrooms was a terrarium. The kitchen was more like a, a, a fast-food kitchen.

Walter Jacobson: He's painting a picture of a busy place, but conveniently omitting the crawl space, which he divided into plots like a cemetery, numbers one through 26, six feet by about three feet, and a foot and a half deep. That was under the house. Up above, 8213 West Summerdale was not only where Gacy lived, as he says, but headquarters for his company, PDM Construction, and a flophouse for PDM employees, upon whom Gacy is now laying the blame for the murders.

John Wayne Gacy: We have always contended that there was, there's others involved. At the, at the time, at the time of my arrest, uh, there was four other suspects. Three of the suspects that we knew, that they knew then, was, uh, Michael Rossi, David Cram, and Phillip Paske.

Walter Jacobson: All employees of PDM Contractors, all with keys to the house on Summerdale. And they had friends, Gacy says, and friends of friends, as he weaves for me an alibi. There was Michael Rossi, for one, who worked for PDM and actually lived there during the time of the murders. Gacy and Rossi socialized in the house with Johnny Szyc, victim number three, the night he was murdered.

John Wayne Gacy: I met him the night he was killed, because I met him with Michael Rossi. I had a drink with the two of them, and then I left. And when I next seen the individual, he was dead.

Walter Jacobson: Where did you see...

John Wayne Gacy: Why didn't I say something about it? Because it wasn't my business, and I stay out of other people's business.

Walter Jacobson: Where did you see him dead?

John Wayne Gacy: In the house on Summerdale.

Walter Jacobson: And did Rossi tell you who had killed him?

John Wayne Gacy: No, Rossi didn't say nothing. Rossi was sleeping on the couch. I, I just left.

Walter Jacobson: And how did he get buried, do you know?

John Wayne Gacy: He was buried in the crawl space. When I come back, he wasn't there. So, Walter, that's your guess as to who put him in the ground in that.

Walter Jacobson: Gacy finds a corpse in his living room and doesn't say anything because it's not his business? Well, if you don't believe that, he has another story, about being so high on drugs he didn't know what he was doing.

John Wayne Gacy: No, I started back in [unclear: "1984" (both sources) / "1974"], I started taking 10 milligram of Valium, and by the time 1978 come around, I was doing 130 milligram of Valium. But then I was moving 80 jobs a year, and I was working 16, 18-hour days, and I, I just had to have something to take the pressure off.

Walter Jacobson: So the next thing people wonder is, what about the smell in the house, of decomposing bodies? Gacy has a Lhasa Apso story for that.

John Wayne Gacy: When I was arrested, um, they claimed, well, there was a putrefied odor in the house. And I contend that was a lot of hogwash, too, because one Officer Schultz claims, on the 18th or on the 19th, that as he came into the house, we had come into the house, and my little Lhasa Apso was in the house. And of course he had been locked in the kitchen, you know, all day. Well, a little puppy, he piddles, see, and while he's piddling, and while he is, uh, doing his business on the paper and that, you can imagine what it smells like if you go into a closed room. And when the heat came on, [unclear: "as soon as the heat came on, I'd give you" / "soon as he'd come out and give you"], you know, that strong feces odor.

Walter Jacobson: Or if not the dog, maybe just the house itself. How about the sump pump?

John Wayne Gacy: You know, I found it as odd when we bought the house, that a house with a crawl space would need a sump pump. But then I learned the first time it rained that this ground gets wet under there, and then the crawl space actually floods up to a foot deep in water. And then as it recedes, it puts out a musty odor. There was always a musty odor in that house.

Walter Jacobson: These excuses, and the ones we've heard all week, are the basis for Gacy's appeals, which are expected to go on for another two years, maybe three, before his death sentence is carried out. What have 13 years of thinking about that done to John Gacy? Nothing, he says, nothing at all.

John Wayne Gacy: I'm just as lovable and [unclear: "jokable" / "jokeful"] as I was back then. You know, I don't, I don't sit around worrying about the death penalty or things like that, no.

Walter Jacobson: How could you not?

John Wayne Gacy: If you believe you've lived your life the right way, then you do not have nothing to fear, in my case.

Walter Jacobson: You're not worried about facing God?

John Wayne Gacy: No. I am fairly comfortable with him. I've been at the, uh, at the Catholic services. I'm the server for the priest for the last 10 years. I have no qualms about doing that. I've had confession, I have communion, and, and I, I am at peace with myself.

Walter Jacobson: That's what he says, that he's at peace with himself. But he seemed to be, to me, to be highly agitated and very frightened about death. He says he's religious, so how could he not be afraid of death, or what'll happen to him after death? Clearly, John Gacy's afraid enough to be doing whatever he can to avoid his execution: making up new excuses, denying his involvement, trying now to involve others, anything to open his case and prolong his life. But given the facts of the case, no matter what, [unclear: "three times" (captions only) / words not caught by Whisper]... ### Part 3

Anchor: 33 families forever changed. Tonight in News Extra, the victims of John Wayne Gacy. For the first time, Gacy is speaking out about the young men who died and the loved ones they left behind. And as you know, he is talking exclusively to Channel 2's Walter Jacobson. Walter?

Walter Jacobson: Linda, John Gacy talks about his victims like so many numbers on a scorecard. He seems to have no feelings whatever about them as human beings. [music] But look at them, and you see 33 children who lived and loved and were loved. John Butkovich was 18. Michael Bonnin was 17. Randall Reffett, 15. Why them? There is no logical explanation for why them, any of them. Several were runaways from broken homes, 14 years ago, when John Gacy was preying on families that split apart. Today, in his arrogance, he lectures them.

John Wayne Gacy: And nowadays, do you realize, by 1993, that 50% of the American families will be single-parented? And that shows a breakdown in the church, and not being able to hold families together. And for this reason, children run away from home and seek love in other places.

Walter Jacobson: And wind up in trouble. That's Gacy's view of things: kids get in trouble because nobody cares about them. Gacy got in trouble when, after 32 victims, he strangled Robert Piest, an all-American, clean-cut local kid, whose disappearance attracted police. Such carelessness is typical of a serial killer.

Unnamed Expert: By the time they've committed 10 or 12, they are very, very laid back. By the time they commit 20, 15 or 20, they start getting careless, cavalier, and they...

Walter Jacobson: If it sounds familiar, it's because you've heard the experts say it about Jeffrey Dahmer. Gacy dislikes the comparison.

John Wayne Gacy: What do I think of Jeffrey Dahmer? I don't know the man personally, but I, I'll tell you this: that's a good example as to why insanity doesn't belong in the courtroom. Because if Jeffrey Dahmer doesn't meet the, the requirements for insanity, then I'd hate like hell to run into the guy that does.

Walter Jacobson: Do you feel...

John Wayne Gacy: Beyond that, uh, I have no comment on Jeffrey Dahmer, because I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer. And I would not, whether it's, it's Berkowitz, whether it's Bundy, whether it's, uh, Williams, uh, Wayne Williams down in Atlanta, or any of the others, or Charlie Manson. See, I, I don't comment about other cases, for the simple fact is that I wasn't there.

Walter Jacobson: You feel somewhat of a kinship with some of these people?

John Wayne Gacy: No. God, I, I hate that, when they, they put me in the same club with them.

Walter Jacobson: That's precisely the club that John Gacy belongs in.

Unnamed Woman: I hate you! I hate you!

Walter Jacobson: And the pain felt by Dahmer's victims is still felt 13 years later by the families of Gacy's victims.

Delores Nieder: When you have a child taken out of your life, it is like a little piece is taken out of your heart. You just, you can never forget it. Everything keeps revolving back to the day when he did this, or he did that, and we reminisce.

Walter Jacobson: Delores Nieder, courageous mother, still in the same house on the northwest side of Chicago, 13 years remembering Johnny, who was a Marine and then studying to be an accountant. Like others, he went to Gacy's house for a job and never came back. About which John Gacy expresses no remorse whatever. On the contrary, he says he's a victim, for being found guilty, the 34th victim. And he says the families are victims, because they don't know who the real killer is.

John Wayne Gacy: I'm not only the victim here. I, I, I might be the 34th victim, but there are other victims to this crime, and that is the family. Because if I know that I didn't commit the crime, then I have been given the injustice, and so is the families, and nobody gives a damn about the families.

Walter Jacobson: As though he cares, which clearly he does not. And when the families insist that John Gacy pay for his crimes with his life, his real feelings come out.

John Wayne Gacy: That one mother that gets on television all the time, who thinks I should be, uh, given 33 injections, I think she ought to take 33 Valiums and go lay down. She goes on Geraldo's show and all these other shows, talking about, uh, I think it's [unclear: "Mowery" / "Maury"], I think is the name. Her Marine son, her Marine son, if her Marine son was so great, what the hell did he run away from home 12 times? [speaker uncertain from here:] It's not enough for him to be murdered, I know that.

Walter Jacobson: He's also lying. Johnny was not a runaway. And as to Gacy's snide remark about the Valium...

Delores Nieder: Well, Walter, it's hard for me to comprehend that Gacy has the right to say something like that about me, because of the fact of what he did.

Walter Jacobson: What right has he... to say anything about you at all?

Delores Nieder: Right. Right.

Walter Jacobson: John Gacy now faces death by lethal injection. Tomorrow night, we'll hear what he has to say about that. ### Part 4

Anchor: In fact, Gacy's now talking about many things. He says, for example, that there were accomplices in his murders.

John Wayne Gacy: Had this case properly been investigated, I think you would have had, there should have been four indictments, a minimum of four indictments. And I say that sincerely.

Anchor: [unclear: "He was liberated" (Whisper) / "liberated" (captions); probably "(the jury) deliberated"] for just two hours before finding John Wayne Gacy guilty of murdering 33 young men and boys. The evidence seemed clear. Gacy went to death row. But tonight in News Extra, a Channel 2 exclusive, John Gacy speaks out, claiming that he is a victim of circumstance, and he sets out to try to prove it to Channel 2's Walter Jacobson. Walter?

Walter Jacobson: Linda, Gacy is, as you noted, I think quite accurately, a minute ago, a man who was found guilty of all those murders, and of being plenty sane enough to have committed them. Very quickly, the jury acted, in fewer than two hours. There were half a dozen pieces of evidence that were just overwhelming. But Gacy now says that he refutes that evidence, and all he's owning up to is having some knowledge of just five of the murders, and direct knowledge of even fewer than that.

John Wayne Gacy: If you want to charge me with any, anything, charge me with complicity in two of the murders.

Walter Jacobson: Just two?

John Wayne Gacy: That's all I know about.

Walter Jacobson: That's his story: that he didn't kill anyone, just an accomplice, he says, and that he helped dispose of two. One of them, Robert Piest, who was 15 years old when he went to the house on Summerdale. Gacy owned a construction company and invited young Piest to apply for a job.

John Wayne Gacy: Robert Piest was killed by another individual in my home.

Walter Jacobson: How did he get to your home?

John Wayne Gacy: Uh, he was transported to the house by another.

Walter Jacobson: How did the other, whoever he was, kill Robert Piest?

John Wayne Gacy: I believe he was strangled.

Walter Jacobson: You were there, right?

John Wayne Gacy: Not during the crime, but I was there afterwards, and I watched the removal of the body.

Walter Jacobson: And what, what happened to the body?

John Wayne Gacy: Afterwards, it was one that was, that body was put into the river. It was taken to the river and dumped into the river.

Walter Jacobson: Did you help do that?

John Wayne Gacy: Yes, I'm, I'm in complicity with that. I've always, I've always contended: don't, don't look at me as an innocent babe in the woods.

Walter Jacobson: Not for a second would I look at John Gacy as a babe in the woods. He may be admitting now only to being an accomplice, but 13 years ago, when he was arrested, he confessed to almost everything. "You have all the bodies", Gacy said. And there was even a killer map showing where 27 youths were buried. And in fact, he led police to his garage and sprayed orange paint on the concrete to mark the spot precisely where a body was found.

John Wayne Gacy: No, no, no, no, no.

Walter Jacobson: Now he says he was simply marking a spot where some new concrete had been poured.

John Wayne Gacy: Uh, in regards to going out into the garage, yes, I know I went to the house, and yes, I know I walked in the garage, and they asked me where the last section of concrete was poured. Okay. I said, there's the last section, where the last section of concrete was poured. Okay. They are the ones that took the orange can of paint and said, here, put a mark there. So I put an X there.

Walter Jacobson: So the paint was not to identify the place of burial?

John Wayne Gacy: No, no, it never was. They asked...

Walter Jacobson: But according to authorities who were with Gacy that morning, he made more than just an X on the floor. He sprayed a stick figure with the orange spray can in the garage. Not just a mark: a stick figure, showing the orientation of the body. Right underneath that stick figure, exactly where he drew it, pointed in the direction he drew it, was the body of John Butkovich. And then there's the Gacy confession about how he killed his victims: strangled them with his now infamous rope trick, that police say he demonstrated to them with a rosary bead. He says he was simply discussing knots in general. Catch his sense of humor.

John Wayne Gacy: [unclear: "Too late, huh?" / "Shoelaces, huh?"] You're in trouble now.

Walter Jacobson: Yeah, right.

John Wayne Gacy: Aren't you afraid, sitting that close to me?

Walter Jacobson: What the hell.

John Wayne Gacy: Oh, this is too long. Why, you don't need it this long. [pause] Okay. I had a rosary, which I carried in my pocket. I've always carried a rosary; it was my communion, uh, rosary. They said, what, what kind of a, a knot do you use? I said, what do you mean, knot? When I tie things up? I, I says, uh, depending on what I'm using it for. I says, the only thing I ever learned was from Boy Scouts, is a tourniquet knot. He said, well, show us what that is. So I took, at that time, and again, it's together, but in order to demonstrate it here, I took the rosary, and I said, well, here, you, you put it around. This is hard, trying to do this. Why don't you put your hand out?

John Wayne Gacy: Okay, here, what I told him, I says, here, all you do is you, you wrap it around, you put one knot in it. And I said, then you put a second knot in it. Okay. I say, then you take a stick and stick it in here, and you just turn this. And I says, it causes a tourniquet. I said, that's the only knot I ever learned.

Walter Jacobson: Precisely the kind of knot found on the ropes wrapped around the necks of the victims found under the house on Summerdale. And there was other compelling evidence, including wallets and rings of the victims found in Gacy's home, that leave no doubt whatever he was the killer. But what is it that made him do what he did? A look at the mind of a serial killer, tomorrow. Linda and Bill. ### Part 5

Anchor: [News] Extra: a portrait of a killer. Paintings and diaries that provide a frightening view inside the mind of the worst mass killer in American history, John Wayne Gacy. Tonight, Gacy talks exclusively to our Walter Jacobson and reveals a part of his life that most of us have never seen. Walter.

Walter Jacobson: Linda, there are personality traits that are common to mass killers, including arrogance and cunning, and enough cleverness to kill many times without getting caught. John Gacy has all those traits, and then some. [music] He was a Kentucky Colonel, and a husband, and a father of five children, and an actor dressed as a clown. John Gacy loves clowns.

John Wayne Gacy: To me, clowning was a way of relaxation for me. You regressed into childhood. You were able to relax, and you could be goofy if you wanted to, and still you had the facade of your face being covered.

Walter Jacobson: The clown suit hid his face, and his evil crimes as well. Even today on death row, he's painting portraits of himself as a clown. The 33 Flavors clown and the convicted killer of 33 can't help but chuckle at the irony.

John Wayne Gacy: I used to do clowning, and I don't know if you want to mention the name, for an ice cream company in Chicago who had 33 flavors. I used to, I'm serious: Bresler's Ice Cream Company. I was their contractor, and I was also their clown. And Pogo the Clown was the clowning that I did for charity, hospital work, for the Democratic Party, and that. And Pogo the Clown is originally, Pogo comes from being Polish and on the go all the time, so it's Pogo.

Walter Jacobson: On the go for Democrats as Norwood Park committeeman. A visit with Rosalynn Carter, the First Lady, during the Carter administration. Gacy, right here, is hiding the fact that there are bodies buried under his house. He's the great deceiver.

John Wayne Gacy: I always felt that service, [unclear: "humility" / "community"] and community service to others, you know, in my religious background, I felt if you serve other people, it, it'll come back to serve you. You know, I've always believed that way, with generosity.

Walter Jacobson: So if he looks for good, and he's generous, why'd he kill 33 people? Nobody knows. But the psychiatrists talk about how obsessive and meticulous he is, enough to kill repeatedly and to stack his victims in a careful and ordered manner, like cordwood, under his house. Even now, he's obsessed and meticulous with his life. What's your life like?

John Wayne Gacy: Day to day. Mm, I live it day to day.

Walter Jacobson: What do you mean?

John Wayne Gacy: If you want to know what my life is like, I log it every day, for the last 12 years. All you got to do is ask. I can tell you everything. I can tell you [unclear: "it's" / "if"] the first meal they serve me here, because I do it daily.

Walter Jacobson: What do you do?

John Wayne Gacy: All, every phone call, everything that I do, every time an officer is around me, is logged. Every movement that I make is in the book here.

Walter Jacobson: And he and his lawyers have a log on his victims too, everything they did before they were killed.

John Wayne Gacy: You know, when I tell you I've got background information on them, we took each, each one of them by, uh, we took each one of the victims, and this is, this is by, by their names or by their indictment numbers. And what we did with each one of them, we did profile sheets on them. We wanted to know what this kid was into, what his background was.

Walter Jacobson: Chicago psychiatrist Daniel Yohanna of Northwestern University spent a few hours this week screening the interview.

Daniel Yohanna: He's very attentive to all details. And so he's sort of, uh, uh, that's the way that he operates. And that's how, that's how, uh, people like him are able to cover up these, do these crimes and cover them up, because they are well planned and organized.

Walter Jacobson: One thing John Wayne Gacy could not plan was the way he got that way.

John Wayne Gacy: My dad was domineering, in [unclear: "effect" / "the fact"]. He had a different set of values, but also very stern individual. My dad drank a lot. When he drank a lot, yeah, he was abusive to my mother and to me. But I never swung at my dad, because I loved him for what he stood for.

Walter Jacobson: Maybe that's where it began to go wrong for John Gacy. He doesn't know, nor does he seem to care. He loses himself in his paintings. Why the skeleton?

John Wayne Gacy: This was done by request. Somebody requested a skull clown, and, uh, mostly the punk rockers and the undergrounders like that stuff there. This is Christ as I see him [unclear: "in myself" / "in myself, see"], and it's monolithic, because Christ to me is monolithic. He, he's all things to all people. This here is the, uh, the Hi-Ho series, and, and that is, uh, self-explanatory. It's the Seven Dwarfs, and they've always stuck to me as, as a great child painting. And so I've done a series of Hi-Ho series paintings, and this is the 1990 one. This is called "Hi-Ho Around the Campfire". It's, it's an original work. Walt Disney is a mentor for me, because I, I've always enjoyed his [unclear: false start, captions "Cate"] creativity. And the, uh, the Seven Dwarfs, if you actually look at all the faces, they represent the, the seven different moods that most people can get into.

Walter Jacobson: Moods are important to John Gacy. He has so many of them himself: angry ones, mostly toward his father and his victims, and especially, it seems, toward the victims' families, who are constantly reminding him of his crimes.

John Wayne Gacy: That one mother that gets on television all the time, who thinks I should be given 33 injections, I think she ought to take 33 Valiums and go lay down. She goes on Geraldo's show and all these other shows, talking about, I think it's [unclear: "Maury" / "Mowery"], I think is the name. Her Marine son, her Marine son, if her Marine son was so great, what the hell did he run away from home 12 times?

Anchor Or Walter Jacobson: As callous and as cunning as he is, John Wayne Gacy talks about his victims, tomorrow at 10. ---