"My Fight Is in the Courts": John Wayne Gacy's 1993 Phone Interview with Ken Hackney

Name: "My Fight Is in the Courts": John Wayne Gacy's 1993 Phone Interview with Ken Hackney
Uploaded: 2011-09-15
Duration: 8 min 36 s
Description: In a collect call from death row in 1993, answering questions he had helped prepare for a 900-number phone line, John Wayne Gacy denied that any confession existed and set out his case for innocence point by point.

In a collect call from death row in 1993, answering questions he had helped prepare for a 900-number phone line, John Wayne Gacy denied that any confession existed and set out his case for innocence point by point.

Subject: John Wayne Gacy
Recorded: 1993
Runtime: 8:36

Content warning: Concerns the murders of 33 boys and young men and the recovery of their bodies from Gacy's house.

The Interview

In 1993 John Wayne Gacy, on death row at Menard Correctional Center in Illinois, made a collect call to Ken Hackney, a drummer with the punk band Bloody Mess and the Scabs who had a home recording studio. Hackney had hoped to obtain one of Gacy's paintings. Gacy proposed a deal: in exchange for paintings, Hackney would record an interview, using questions Gacy wrote himself, for a 900-number telephone line. In the recording Gacy answers each question in turn, denying that any confession exists and arguing that others had keys to his house, that the police found nothing, and that evidence in his favour was hidden.

Historical Context

Gacy was a building contractor who lived at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park Township, near Chicago. He was arrested on December 21, 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 he was convicted of 33 murders and sentenced to death.

Circumstances of the Interview

By 1993 Gacy had been on death row for thirteen years and was still pursuing his appeals. The call came through the prison's collect-call system, and an automated message warns that it is subject to being monitored and recorded. According to Hackney's own account, published here, the questions were written in advance by Gacy, and Hackney took the call in his home studio, asked the prepared questions and recorded the answers. That explains the scripted, statement-like answers. Whether the 900-number line ever went live is not documented. Hackney uploaded the recording to YouTube in 2011.

What the Interview Covers

Hackney asks about the confession, the insanity defense, the bodies under the house, the smell, the police search of December 13, 1978, the car of victim John Szyc, the 16 victims Gacy says disappeared while he was out of state, a sodium amytal ("truth serum") session, and the spray-paint mark in the garage. Gacy answers each point. He says the house was used by his PDM Contractors employees, who held 12 keys; that a state handwriting report showed his employee Michael Rossi forged the transfer of Szyc's car; and that his trial lawyers cared more about "book rights" than his defense. He ends by calling himself "an embarrassment on the justice system".

What Makes the Recording Significant

The recording is a clear statement of the denial Gacy kept up in his last years. In December 1978 he had admitted killings to police and his lawyers, and Rossi's car purchase had been traced to him. About a year before his execution, he presents a case for innocence point by point in his own voice.

Archival Importance

Unlike Gacy's broadcast interviews, this was a private arrangement between Gacy and a musician, made for a commercial phone line. It sits alongside the 1992 Ressler videotape and the 1994 Inside Edition call as one of several recordings of Gacy's late denials. Hackney's own text of the interview, with his account of how it came about, is published separately here.

Important Caveats

Everything Gacy says is his own claim, and it is contradicted by the trial evidence and by his statements in 1978. Gacy drafted or shaped the questions, so the exchange is not an independent interview. The video presents one part of the call; Hackney's published text includes further material not heard here. Some words are hard to make out and are marked in the transcript.

Ken Hackney: The following is an actual recording of an interview with John Wayne Gacy, recorded by Ken Hackney in 1993. This interview has never been released. Copyright 1993. This audio may not be reproduced, rebroadcast, or used in any way without the expressed written consent of Ken Hackney. For permission to use this audio, or for a raw copy of this interview without the music, contact this YouTube account.

Automated Operator: This is a Consolidated Communications automated operator with a collect call from Menard Correctional Center [unclear: "in May" / words not caught by captions].

John Wayne Gacy: John Wayne Gacy.

Automated Operator: This call is subject to being recorded. Hang up to decline the call. To accept the call, dial 3, or clearly say "yes, I accept" at the [unclear: "count" / "tone"]. [inaudible] Subject to being monitored and recorded.

Ken Hackney: Now, the unreleased interview with John Wayne Gacy. [music]

Ken Hackney: People say that you confessed to the crime, then later recanted it. Is this true?

John Wayne Gacy: That is what has been said in the media and at the trial. To this day, nobody has produced one. There is no written confession. There is no tape recording confession. There is no police stenographer type confession, and no videotape confession. It was in my appeal, and the court refused to look at it, and the state refused to answer it. If they have nothing to hide, I can't understand why they can't produce one.

Ken Hackney: Okay, that if you're not guilty, then why did you go with an insanity defense?

John Wayne Gacy: [unclear: "I did" / "I didn't"], and I was totally against it, but [unclear: "was deceived" / "we, what was deceived"]. The only plea that I ever entered was on January 10th of 1979, when I entered a plea of not guilty.

Ken Hackney: But what about the evidence in the case? You can't deny that the bodies were found buried in your house.

John Wayne Gacy: Yes, that's true, but the house wasn't a home, like what you, you know, what you go to a home to each night. The Summerdale house [unclear: "was rented to" / "was run at" / "has rented"] the PDM Contractors. There was 12 keys out to it, but that was never allowed to come out at the trial, as it would put doubt in the state's theory. They didn't want anybody to know that other people had keys to the house. Plus the fact that I wasn't always at the house, so others used it just as much. And again, that wasn't brought out at the trial, as it didn't fit with the state's theory of the case, that I committed all the crime.

Ken Hackney: Okay then, what about the smell in your house? Surely you must have noticed a smell.

John Wayne Gacy: There was no smell. Over the six years' time, other than when it rained, the musty odor was present. People were in and out of that house daily for years, and other than when it rained, there was no odor, and certainly not like what some of the books said. That's all fantasy. If that odor was there, somebody would have noticed it sooner.

Ken Hackney: Okay then, the police were at your house before your arrest, and what did they smell when they were at your house?

John Wayne Gacy: Well, apparently nothing. As of December 13, 1978, there was 20 trained police officers came to the house with a warrant, searched the house, and even went down in the crawl space, while I was being held at the jail in Des Plaines, Illinois. They never took anything from the crawl space, other than bringing [unclear: "up lime" / "a blime" / "a blaim"] into the house. They also were no mounds of dirt like what is mentioned in books.

Ken Hackney: Okay, you sold a car to your employee, Michael Rossi, that belonged to one of the victims, John Szyc. Yet you deny this.

John Wayne Gacy: That's true. This came out at trial too, and it's not true, and even the state knew this and covered it up. The Bureau of Scientific Services in Maywood, Illinois, on March 27, 1979, a year before the trial: this report shows that the handwriting samples were taken from me, from John Szyc, the victim, and from Michael Rossi, and that they were compared to the motor vehicle's title, R1209194, and the other questionable vehicle transfer papers. The result of the findings was that all the names were forged by Michael Rossi, as it was all done in his handwriting. Yet at trial, even knowing this, the state told the jury that John Wayne Gacy did this. My defense attorneys never objected to it, because they thought it didn't harm my case.

Ken Hackney: You claim that you were not even in Illinois when 16 of the victims went missing. Why was this not brought out in trial?

John Wayne Gacy: Because my trial attorneys never did their job to investigate my claim, and it wasn't until we took over the investigation on my own that we learned of this. Even the FBI, who joined in in 1984, with their reasoning being that they wanted to know if others in other states disappeared or were murdered while I was in those states, the result shows that during the time of the victims' disappearances in Chicago, that I wasn't even in Chicago. One judge said, "So what, if he was out of town for 16 of them, there are still 17 others." That alone should have raised some doubt.

Ken Hackney: Okay, you said that there were 12 keys out to the Summerdale house, and yet this was not mentioned at your trial. Why do you think this is?

John Wayne Gacy: It wasn't in the state's best interest to let the jury know this, as it would raise doubt that John Gacy acted alone. The defense attorneys didn't bring it out, as it didn't go along with their insanity defense, showing that others were involved. The entire defense theory was to leave it stand where it was, which I never understood to begin with.

Ken Hackney: Didn't you take some sort of tests that you willingly submitted to?

John Wayne Gacy: Yes. In the Cook County jail, I was given three and a half hours of truth serum, sodium amytal, the maximum amount you could give, while the results, again, are not admissible in court. The results were positive, one showing I had no knowledge of about 28 of the victims, and that the five I had information about was not about their deaths.

Ken Hackney: John, in book and television interviews, it's been said that bodies found in your garage were shown and even marked by you with a can of spray paint.

John Wayne Gacy: Yes, I marked the spot in the garage when I was back at the house on December 22nd. They had asked me, with all of the rebuilding of the garage, which was the last area of concrete, the last area where the concrete was poured. And they handed me an orange spray can, and I put an X. That's it. An X over the spot in the corner of the garage where I thought the last area was poured. Now, all of a sudden, Kunkle claims that I not only drew an X, but I put an O on top of it where the head was, and it made the X look like it was a stick figure. And that's not true. Somebody else must have taken the can after I had left the garage.

Ken Hackney: Well, given all of this damning evidence against you, don't you think it's going to be difficult trying to get the public to believe you?

John Wayne Gacy: I'm not interested in what the public thinks. My fight is in the courts. And while I have been fighting with the appeal, it's been an uphill battle, because I am an unpopular cause. Too much public pressure, too much politics to give me a hearing so that I can prove that the state withheld evidence favorable to me, that the identification of some of the victims was wrong, and that my attorney was more concerned about book rights and [unclear: "how sensational he made" / "houses how sensationally more"] the case, to get the higher value of the book. Keep in mind, the public has been brainwashed, and nearly 80% of what is known about me is fantasy and self-serving theories of the state. But overall, I am an embarrassment on the justice system, because if I am right and they are wrong, and the killers are still out there, for political reasons it would be better that I drop dead. Then they could all say what a great job they've done, and nobody else would be pushing for the truth to come out.