Killer in plain sight

Attorney Sam Amirante likes to joke that he was 6-foot-4 before he began representing an acquaintance named John W. Gacy and wound up 5-foot-2 after being ground down by the immense and horrifying details of the case. Amirante, who later became a Cook County judge, wrote about his experience and how his infamous former client made a drunken confession to being “judge, jury and executioner of many, many people.”

Amirante said it took months of exposure to Gacy to recognize his chilling duality.

“He looked at his victims like he was taking out the trash. He had no feelings about them,” Amirante said, sitting in a private office at his Barrington home nearly 40 years after hearing the famous confession. “He could talk about a child who's dying of cancer and cry like a baby about this child he didn't even know or never met and feel authentically sad about this child. Then he'd talk about another child that he murdered and have no feelings whatsoever.”

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of Gacy’s case wasn’t the body count — it was that the portly, unassuming man killed 33 able-bodied young men and boys.

Over time, he’d refined his technique of trapping and killing his victims so well, it allowed him to ensnare multiple victims within days. It wasn’t until Gacy’s arrest that cracks began to appear in his carefully cultivated image. Gacy had secret gay relationships but, according to his former attorney, denied being gay. Still, he cruised the city’s North Side from Lakeview to Uptown prowling for young men. He also conditioned his neighbors to see young men coming and leaving his home any time of day or night, easily explaining visitors as young workers digging trenches underneath his home.

Amirante, a former assistant public defender who represented Gacy as his first private client, agreed that the secret to Gacy’s success lay largely in his unctuous charm developed over years as the son of a harsh, verbally abusive father and later refined as a successful shoe salesman.

“I always tell people that the scary thing about Gacy was that he wasn’t scary at all. That’s the scary thing — he could have been anyone’s brother or father, uncle,” Amirante said. “He was not an intimidating kind of person, with the exception of when he would turn and change out of the very affable, charming, likable guy into the killer that he was.”

“Everyone who ever knew John Gacy knew one thing about him — he was a master manipulator. He could sell ice cubes to Eskimos,” Amirante wrote in a 2011 book with Danny Broderick, “John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster.”

Gacy also knew how to set a trap, Moran said.

“He often would build up trust with his victims, so they wouldn’t need to be on guard,” Moran said. “He was their employer, their friend. He may have been someone who provided them with alcohol and drugs and maybe a place to sleep at night. That’s an easy way to kill someone.”

Bettiker recalled the elaborately themed parties that Gacy hosted at his home, where dozens of guests unwittingly celebrated over his private graveyard.

“He’d have parties at his residence where he’d invite maybe 200 people. He’d be the center of attraction,” he recalled. "One-on-one, or in a group setting, he would be the last person that you’d think was a serial killer and is as devious as he was.”

A photo used as evidence in the 1980 trial shows the excavation in Gacy's crawl space. (Cook County Circuit Court) Image p2p slug: ct-john-wayne-gacy-house-crawlspace-excavation-20181213

Where victims were found Most of Gacy's victims were buried in the crawl space under his home. Others were found elsewhere on his property, and four victims were recovered after Gacy dumped them in rivers south of Chicago. Front of house 26 victims Storage shed Garage: 1 victim Addition: 1 victim Crawl space: 26 victims Driveway: 1 victim 29 victims on property Front of house O’Hare International Airport 4 victims in rivers COOK KANE Gacy’s house 290 55 Des Plaines River 1 victim 80 1 victim Joliet WILL Morris Channahon 57 2 victims Illinois River Miles 5 55 Front of house Crawl space: 26 victims Storage shed Crawl space: 26 victims Garage: 1 victim Addition: 1 victim Driveway: 1 victim 29 victims on property Front of house O’Hare International Airport 4 victims found in rivers 90 Gacy’s house KANE 290 55 Des Plaines River KENDALL 1 victim 80 COOK Joliet 1 victim Morris Channahon WILL 57 2 victims Illinois River Miles 5 55 Front of house Crawl space: 26 victims Garage: 1 victim Addition: 1 victim Crawl space: 26 victims 29 victims on property Storage shed Driveway: 1 victim Front of house O’Hare International Airport 4 victims found in rivers Gacy’s house KANE 290 55 Des Plaines River KENDALL 80 COOK 1 victim Joliet 1 victim WILL Channahon 57 Morris 2 victims Illinois River Miles 5 Source: Tribune reporting

(Jemal R. Brinson/Chicago Tribune)

Had Gacy not targeted Piest, a well-regarded Maine West athlete and student with strong family ties to the community, his killing spree may have continued. Today, Amirante speculates that the usually cautious Gacy may have subconsciously pursued a victim who he knew would get him caught.

“I think he was being absolutely self-destructive and in the good side of him — the very limited good side of him that was left — clearly wanted to be caught,” Amirante said. “He was sabotaging himself.”

Gacy became the bogeyman to a generation of boys who never considered that they could be victims of sexual violence. The case left an impact across the entire area, including the city’s South Side, where Moran spent his boyhood.

“I was only a boy during the original investigation, but growing up a boy in Chicago, the case, facts and circumstances, the Gacy serial killings stuck with you because it meant that boys could be victims of violent crime just like girls had been,” Moran recalled.

He and others who worked during Gacy’s time said the case also tapped a well of homophobia that may have scared off some families from seeking information on their missing loved ones due to the social stigma.

“These victims were primarily born in the 1950s and their parents were born in the 1920s and ’30s,” Moran said. “That generation, the parents of these victims, was not ready to accept homosexuality, and because the media constantly brought up the gay aspect of this case, Sheriff (Dart) and I thought it may be what kept people from coming forward.”

Amirante said he believed a killer with Gacy’s personal demons would be less likely to exist today.

“The police department (at the time) looked at things differently. Society looked at things differently. Gacy looked at himself differently then, because he was homosexual and, because of the trauma he went through, he couldn’t accept himself. Today, the world is more open, people are more open. People are more understanding and compassionate about people who are different,” he said.