JOHN WAYNE GACY-DEFENDING A MONSTER-Judge Sam Amirante and D

to be the worst serial killer in America's history. Sam Amaranti has just opened his first law practice when he got a phone call from his friend John Wayne Gacy, a well known and well liked community figure. Gasey was upset about what he called police harassment and asked Amarante for help, with the police following his every move in connection with the disappearance of a local teenager. Gasey eventually gives a drunken, dramatic early morning confession to his new lawyer.

Gasey is eventually charged with murder and Amorandi subtly becomes the defense attorney for one of America's most disturbing serial killers. It is his first case. This is a gripping narrative that re enacts the gruesome killings and the famous trial that shocked the nation. The book this evening we were featuring is John Wayne Gacy Defending a Monster with my special guest Judge Sam Amaranti and Danny Broderick. Thank you, gentlemen for agreeing to be on this program and welcome to True Murder.

Just go back to that moment? What is first? Tell us who John Wayne Gacy is? Just roughly who he is basically in that community. What type of person is he? And take us back to that faithful night on December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight.

to specialize somewhat in doing pharmacies and drug stores. Nissan Pharmacy was a drug store and he had he went there to bid a job to the Tork brothers who were the owners of drug store. Gaycy was also a precinct captain in his precinct. He was also on UH commission for the Lighting district. He was a local politician of some note. He was a very good precinct captain. He brought in the votes, et cetera. So he was he was a clone. He was also a clown, that's correct.

And he was very very well known. He used to have parties at his house that four hundred people Black parties and very well white and very end of that, believe it or not. Yeah, And he would have parties at his house that were theme parties. Year after year he would have, you know, four hundred people or thereabouts in attendance. So this is the guy that we're talking about, someone that everybody knew and if the mayor knew him or knew who he was, he was he was. He

actually ran the Polish Day parade. And not a scary guy. And it was the scariest thing about him. He was not a scary guy. Yeah, he wasn't intimidating, nerve wracking. He wouldn't scare you. As a matter of fact. He was the kind of guy that would volunteer for just about anything and everything. If somebody said I need somebody to pick up around here, he'd be the first one

with his hand up. So this is the guy. And on that night, December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight, he was in the pharmacy to bid a job for, you know, some remodeling in that pharmacy. Now they were friends with.

But then he finally admitted that and he ran across him and he told the kid he saw him working hard and that he might be able to fit in with his contracting with Gaysey's contracting company, and asked him to come and go with him and apply for a job. And at first the boy was hesitant because his mom was waiting for him, he was getting out of work,

but he really wanted this new job. Gaysey promised him he could make more money than he was making at the pharmacy, and then he basically lured him into his his car. Gasey went home first, actually he went home. He left, and he went home and he forgot his fate would have it, he forgot his his calendar book, his diary at the pharmacy, and he went back there. And when he went back, he struck up this conversation

with Robbie Peace too. He saw the throwing garbage out in the back of the pharmacy, and then he ultimately, you know, Gasey was the consummate con man, the world's chief manipulator, and he was able to manipulate and cond Peace and getting into his car truck, into his truck come back with it tright, we would normally he wouldn't

do that. And then he did his typical braggedo's type things, telling Peace how he could do this and do that, and what a great guy he was, and how much Peace would like to work for him, and eventually took him back while Robbie's mother was waiting for him in front of the store. Gasey took Piece back to his house, which was probably about fifteen twenty minutes away from the pharmacy, and ultimately, as he read in the book, he he killed Robert Peast after showing him this rope trick and

just different things like Casey did. Yeah, and the depiction in the book, we've gotten some questions about how we could put in such a vivid depiction. That depiction was given to us by John Wayne Gacy, given to Sam during some of the confessions. We also had access to all the statements that he made to the police. We had access to all the books that have been written, and so there's some but very little artistic license. We know for a fact that that's what happened when he

when they got back to John Wayne Gacy's house. Yeah, when Gessey talked to me. He was very very specific about what happened. He was specific about the conversations he had about his murder victims, how he killed him, why he killed them. And Robbie basically kind of broke the mold because a lot of Casey's victims either were from already or he picked him up in a place called buck House Square, which was a hangout for one of homosexual hustlers. Rather try to hustle to make some money now,

and Robbie broke the robery, broke them. He wasn't the same. It was something that Gaysey did a little differently than he did with his other murder victims.

knew how important this birthday was. Yet he still talked this kid into with the lure of a five dollars wage rather than two eighty five that the kid was making, and he played upon that, manipulated the kid with that. Now, what happens back at the pharmacy with the mother and with rob Peaste's father and family, tell us about what happens back at the pharmacy. Meanwhile with the mother, Well.

said okay, well he'll be home, things like that. But they hounded the parents hounded the police I mean, they wouldn't take no for an answer. They wouldn't take he's not coming home because he's a runaway teenager. And they were so hounding them so much and so serious about the kids lack of doing this in the past that the police really got on the case right away and they went to see Gaysey. But again, Gaysey was the it was a manipulator, and he was able to con the police that night too.

the same time that the police did. So they stayed outside with the kid, kept him occupied, and two went to the door and Gacy invited them in and to talk to them as if nothing had happened. And the eerie and grotesque thing that is true is that all the while there was Rob Peaste was in the attic and just a few under seven bodies were underfoot, and he talked to them as if nothing had happened. Now they got a little insistent, and at that point he

got a little belligerent. He said the kind of famous words, don't you have any respect for the dead? Because he had gotten word that his uncle, his mother's brother, had passed away and he had to go and see to that, you know, make a funeral arrangements and everything. So he said these words to these officers at a time, and after some prolong questioning, they didn't have any other evidence, they didn't have anything else to go on. They left.

Although they suspected him greatly, they all left and after that he disposed of the body. Yeah, there was really nothing they could do. He was a businessman in the area, and they at the time they didn't know about his background, that he had a conviction for sodomy ten years before that, and they were just beginning the investigation. They did know anything about him other and he was upstanding members of the community, and these people were complaining about him. So

what they when he told them? Although they suspected he might have been lying, they tended to believe him a little bit too.

to do with the disappearance of rob Peace. But they didn't know if he was hiding him, right, They didn't know if he was dead or if he was just being hidden or you know what to think at the time, nobody, but nobody at that time suspected John Wayne Gacy of anything other than his his potential involvement with Robbie Peat.

a chief public defender in the Northwest suburban area. And he called me because they were tailing him so much. They just put a constant tail on him to see what he would do where he was going, and he was actually playing games with them. He would, you know, he would tell them things like, oh, clowns could get away with murder, and playing little cat and mouse games like a lot of these serial killers do. But they were looking for evidence. But even though they were tailing them,

they simply couldn't find anything. He actually invited them into his house and he had a some pump they used to work in the crawl space where most of the bodies were, and he turned off to some pump to create a smell, he turned up the forced air heat. And at the time he did that, one of the police officers said he smelled when he was in the in the house, he smelled a smell that in his experience he knew was similar to that of putrefying bodies.

And that was one of the bases of the first search war, that the officer smelled that smell and Gasey fighted them into the house. And actually, to me, it seemed like he was trying to get caught. Why don't get companies just couldn't come out and say he did something. Actually, there was another search warrant. There was another search warrant that they did that they did execute while Gasey was with them, I'm pretty sure. And then that was when

the officer smelled that smell. And then they got the second search war when he was in custody.

her own pictures in to be developed. She was wearing Rob's jacket because it was cold up front at the checker. You know where the cash register was, because the doors and if you go back there today, that building is still there, that parking lot is still there, and it's eerie. But it happens to be a nurse.

she forgot about it. She gave the coat back to Rob because it was the end of their shift, and Rob wore that coat into Gaycy's house.

police on him, tailing him. John Wayne Gacy knows that he has a tail on him, and he basically drives around like a madman through the city, playing games and then inviting police in for uh into his home like maybe an innocent person would Certainly you wouldn't think a guilty person would be inviting police into the home. To continue with what John Wayne Gacy does and what the prosecution does.

hit associated with Gasey. They were coming up with some evidence and statements from people, and they found out about asidemy background, and then then another key bit of evidence is that one of Gacy's employees was driving a car that once was owned by a person who was missing, and so they put together hello, hello, Hello, you're going

we just heard something on the line. They put together that the car was owned by a kid who had been reported missing, and they literally went to the Department of Motor Vehicles and found that the car looked exactly like the car that this kid owned. They found that the two bin numbers were identical except for one or two letters or numbers, and therefore they were sure that this kid was driving the car that was owned by

this missing kid. So now they are starting to realize that there may be other kids who are missing who are linked to Gaycy. At that point, they start getting together the evidence sufficient to get a second warrant and they are going to go in that house for sure now. All the while, while Gaycy is being tailed, not only does he invite these officers into his house, he goes out drinking with them. He introduces them as his bodyguards. It was one of the most bizarre situations known to man.

He'd come out to their car in the morning and tell them where he's going, just in case they'd lose him in track, and then if they did lose him, he'd get out a we didn't have cell phones, bit then he'd get a fight a pay phone. He'd call the police station and let the police station know where he was, and he'd laugh at himself, dou'b' stupid they

were because they lost them. Yeah, very strange. So now with armed with the evidence that they had about other missing kids, the smell, you know, one of the officers felt it felt he was sure enough to sign an affidavit that said that he smell. The smell was challenged extensively in court by Sam and Bob Mada. But because the smell, the smell of rotting bodies is no different than the smell of rotting carcasses of any other animal. That's the one thing that makes that little piece of

evidence not that important. It was similar to it could have been. But they did have a key, that key piece of evidence, which was the receipt for the photographs, and that put rob piece in that house, that that evidence for the judge. They were saying, basically, judge, how

did this piece of evidence get into his garbage? And with that they got the warrant that allowed them to go in and search extensively, and at that point they went down into the cross space and covered the first bone and there.

I was going to find out. And he came to me, really not because I was a lawyer, because he wanted me to present him. Casey was a Chicago clout kind of guy. You know, he was looking for influence, and he figured I was involved with the Displayings Police Department because my office, when I was a chief Public Defender, was in the same building with them, and I knew a lot of those guys, and I had tried a lot of cases with them, and I knew Terry Sullivan's.

He figured I had the inside scoop on what was going on, and I would try to find out, and I simply couldn't find out. I mean I went everywhere trying to find out. I went to Sullivan, I went to the mayor of the town, I went to the chief of police, and nobody would really tell me anything. I'd get a little bit, you know, bitch and pieces of things here and there, but it really seemed like

he was a victim of circumstances. You know, even when I found out about the sodomy conviction, I thought, this guy's just the wrong place at the wrong time, and they're they're targeting him for something they didn't do. And that was my feeling when he came in. And we actually prepared a lawsuit, a federal lawsuit against the police department to restrain them from harassing them. But before I had the opportunity to file that suit. He and I

also set up a polygraph for him. He came into my office late one night after telling me the same garbage story over and over again, and I started to just think that he just wasn't being frank with me. And he called me one night, and you have to understand, at the same time I had my older son was in the hospital himself. He had a real high fever and he had been hospitalized for about a week, and I was spending my nights at the hospital like days working on the gaycy case, and I never slept for

a few days. After he called me, and the eye was just really aggravating me. He got to the point where he was just just really irritating me to the hospital. To the hospital, He'd called me constantly and he would tell me the same old stuff, and I start suspecting that he was laughing to me. And I set up this polygraph and he was supposed to take it. The next day. He calls me about eleven o'clock at night. He said he want to talk to me, meet with me.

He had some new things to tell me, and I yelled at him and said, look, Johnifer's something I knew he wanted to tell me. Fine, Otherwise I don't hear about it. I don't hear of the same old cramp all the time. I don't want you to come in and just tell me the same thing as Christmas time. My kids in the hospital. I'm tired, I've been working for days. If it's something that he yes, it's something new,

I want to tell you. I agreed to meet him at my office late at night, but the other lawyer was involved at the time, Leroy Stevens and Gasey was late as usual and which made us more aggravated with him. And then he comes in and talks to us and tells me the same old story. He was in the pharmacy. He may have seen the kid, he didn't have anything.

looks at me. And Gasey was not an intimidating guy. He was just a con man, like a milk toast sort of Santa Claus kind of guy. And he looked at me like a puppy dog. And he said, he looked at Rob's picture. He said, this boy is dead. He's not the boy that was in the drug store, but he's dead. And I said, what are you talking about. He goes, he's in This boy's into the Splains River. He said. Now my heart started pounding. I said, what are you talking about? And then he asked me if

it had anything to drink. And I happened to have some bourbon in my car that I'd given got as a Christmas present from somebody. I ran out to the cart the got the booze, and I poured him a little drink, myself a drink. Steven's a drinker. We're gonna have a toast and uh, he said, poor, poor the whole glass. I poured the coffee cup full of booze at that when he went out to the car. This is an interesting sideline. When he went out to the car, he saw the poor the coppers who were tailing him

freezing to death because it was Chicago winter. I know, you guys have real winter up there where you are, but we have pretty good ones here too, uh. And so he invited them into the reception area all you know. But they were inside the office, divided by a glass partition. Yeah, not in my office. They were in the hallway in the office. So I poured him a drink. He down the whole coffee cup full of full of whiskey, and he asked for another one, down to another, chugged another

full cup of whiskey. Then he looked at me eyeball, the eyeball, I'll never forget this, like it was just yesterday. And he said, Sam, I've been the judge, jury and executioner of many, many people. Now I want to be my own judge, jury and executioner. I'm going to tell you the story from the beginning. I'm want to do things my own way. I don't want you to interrupt me. I'm going to tell you everything that happened. And I said,

what are you talking about? My heart was like in my throat at this time, and I said, what are you talking about? He said, it started in nineteen seventy two. I was driving past the Greyhound bus station in downtown Chicago. And for that statement it went on for the next

five or six hours. He never stopped. He told me that he had killed thirty four young men boys, gave me names, why he killed him, how he killed them, told me about this thing called the rope trick where he would trick them into putting handcuffs on them and put a rope around their neck. Told me that they were greedy, they were dumb and stupid, had a reason for every one of them. And he knew exactly where everybody was, where there were multiple bodies in a grave,

he knew approximately when he killed them. And then he wanted to show me the crawl space and I didn't want to see it. I mean, I was just You have to understand, I was beside myself. I didn't know which way to turn at the time, and Lee Roy Stevens didn't know which way to turn. And he went into this thing for five or six hours and then

he fell asleep. In all week Ado, we were scurring around trying to find a phone number for a psychiatrists to try to have him committed and try to keep off the law enforcement authorities, keep them from arresting them, get him committed, try to put him in a secure environment.

And we actually set up an appointment with a psychiatrist for early in the morning after he fell asleep, and then Leroy took off and Leroy told the police to shoot his tires out when he if he tried to leave, which they kind of looked at him, like, what are you talking about? And then I just sat up there

and watched him. He was sleeping in my conference room across the table from me, and a couple hours later, maybe an hour later, he woke up and he started he had this guttural sound to him, almost like a growling, and he stood up like in the movie Frankenstein when Boris Karlov stood up and just kind of put his arms out straight, and his eyes were his eye lids were fluttering, his eyes were set back in his sockets,

like could just see the whites of his eyes. And he started walking towards me, and I'm calling his him going John. We looked like Igor and Frankenstein walking. I picked up a baseball bat that I had my conference room and I'm holding it in my hand and he's walking toward me. I'm backing up. I went out the door of the conference room into the foyer foyer area of my office, which was separated by a glass partition, where the police run all the way and they see

this happening. And I'm walking with this bat in my hand, backing up, and Gasey gets in the front part of the office there and he stops walking. I push him with the bat, with the end of the bat, and I pushed him down on a couch and he sat down and fell asleep again, and I put his feet up, and for the next half hour hour or so, I was sitting there watching him again, reading a book and waiting for Leroy to come back because we were going to try to get Gaysey to a psychiatrist. And then

he wakes up like nothing happened. He said, I have to get out of here. I got to go ahead, things to do, place to go. And I'm like, John, where are you going? We got appointment a psychiatrist. Is no, I'm not going to any psychiatrist. And what are you talking about? He said, John, you told us everything that happened. He told us about the cross space. He wanted to show us. You told us this they had about the murders,

he said, so I did. But you know what interesting thing he said at that time, he said, I told you I wanted to do it my way, which made me think he started his manipulation and his cunning and he was going to just do something crazy. And he took off, ran out of my office, took off, jumped in his car and drove about seventy miles an hour down down the street and followed by followed by the police. And then he stopped and delivered a bag of marijuana to some kid in the gas station and smiled at

the police and took off again. And he ultimately they stopped him. I couldn't do anything at that point, couldn't take m a psychiatrists. They didn't stop him immediately. They waited a while. He made some stops along the way. He stopped and saw this kid named David Kram, who was one of his employees, kind of a a sidekick of his, and he told Crab and then Cram subsequently

told the police that John Gasey told me. He told his lawyers he killed all these people, and the police just thought he was, you know, talking like it was a hit man or belonging to mafia or something, and they didn't even think anything of it. And then he took off again and they eventually stopped him and arrested him for the possession or delivery of the marijuana. Right, And that's sorry I got called into the police station.

they were trying to figure out a reason. They still didn't have the evidence sufficient to arrest him for murder, so they were trying to figure out a reason, and then somebody remembered, hey, wait, we just watched him give this kid a bag of pot, so we'll arrest him

on the pot. Which was another subject of our emotions to exclude evidence, to suppress evidence, because the police really had no authority to arrest him for they had defense where they arrested him, they weren't in their own jurisdiction at that time, and they were not in hot pursuit, and it was one of the things that we argue which eventually changed the law and they had peace officers

jurisdiction in Illinois. But Terry, you know, Terry had to act because you know, Terry and I are good friends. Now we're great friends. And I saw him this morning and we were on Extraly, the TV show together. But at that time Terry and I and we had a lot of respect for each other. But he was a chief prosecutor out there, I was the chief public defender, and we used to constantly lock horns. You know, we never agree on anything. We constantly lockhorns, and we're both

vicious advocates, proponents our own side. So he knew I wasn't gonna stop, and I was gonna go ahead and get that tro and I was going to screw up his entire investigation. So he had to do something. Terry had to do something. He's a he's a bright guy, sharp layer, and he just had to do something.

bit of time in that. A lot of people that read true crime probably are on more on the prosecutor's side, and many true crime books, maybe as a vast majority of true crime books are written from that perspective of the prosecution's perspective that people are evil and that they deserve to spend the rest of their life in prison. And there is a fair amount of people that probably believe in the death penalty as well. And you mentioned that you're not opposed to the death penalty by principle.

Tell Us, one of the big theme in this book is and tell us, what your position is in terms of the defense of everyone, and why do you think it's important that you would have and do everything you can for your client despite being John Wayne Gacy for example.

you know, why do you defend somebody with that? How do you defend somebody like that? It's it's principal. We need defend a person that using such a heinous crime. Everybody, as Judge Grippol said, and as we said in the book, everybody is safe. Everybody could get a fair trial. Anybody could get a fair trial, doesn't matter who they are. In Our constitution doesn't only say citizens, says all persons are protected under the constitution. Yeah, it's the hard cases

the test that concept. It's not the easy cases. It's very easy to say, you know when when asked, how can you defend a person like that? Well, first of all, it's a four there's a four hundred page answer to that question. It's called John Wayne Gacy Defending a Monster. That book is the answer to that question. But people say that, Sam, they say it. They said it often to me when I was practicing, and people hate us for doing it too. Yeah, that's the strange thing that

people don't. You know, Sometimes the people that weigh the flag the highest are the ones that criticize you the most, and they don't understand that the constitution requires that, it requires that, it requires that otherwise, so you know, we would ask, you know, I would ask, do you know anybody that's ever gotten a dui? You know, were they drunk at the time? And the standard answer to that is, well, that's different because that's not this heinous, ugly, terrible, satanistic person.

The fact is is that if you don't defend the satanistic person, eventually the people with the DUIs and the traffic tickets and the smaller charges don't get defended either, because the concept gets eradicated. It gets eroded and eradicated. You know, in the civilized society, you know that that's

what we do. And you know, if t had to handle it, myself is a dad, and I have you know, I have two boys, and I have a little girl now, and I have a stepdaughter, and Danny has two sons, and you know, if anybody laid a hand and any of my kids, I'd be the first in line to grant this guy myself to make sure he didn't go to trial. I'd want to grab him, I'd handle them. I'd want to torture and everything else. And Danny would do the same thing. But we don't want our government

to feel the same way. We don't want our government to act like the victim. I'd go there, and I feel when you see people stand on line, and you know, I'm the same way when it comes to that, And you know, I stand on the bench a long time too, and I had to enforce the laws trust for both sides, for the state and for the defense. But the thing is, when you're representing somebody, it's not that person. It is that individual you're representing, but it's the premise of our

whole country. It's the basis of our constitutional cornerstone. And that's why we wrote that prologue in the book, the prologue about the Boston Massacre, about Johnny Adams stepping forward and representing the British soldiers because that was the right thing to do, and he did it at his own expense.

He did in his own cost. He did it because he believed in those principles and all it was flight for that and that our soldiers and our marines and our sailors and everybody near and forcers have fought for in our free society depends on for centuries. Yeah, I mean, it depends on that, and that's what we fight for. Of course, Sam was a marine, I was in the army. We both know what it's like to be uh to be in a position to have to defend those rights.

And you only judgment about you know, you might not like your client. I certainly didn't like John Gacy. But just like a doctor, if you know who takes the hypocratic oath to preserve and protect life, a lawyer takes a similar oath to preserve and protects somebody's individual rights. And we would never expect or even think that a doctor would treat somebody like Acy who might be dying and purposely let him die because he doesn't like the guy,

or because he did something heinous. A doctor would. You would never expect an ethical physician to do something like that. So the same thing with an ethical lawyer. You would expect a lawyer to just lay down and die on his client because he doesn't like the client, or because a client did something so horrible that everybody hates the client for because a lawyer, just like a doctor, is a professional in his duty bound to follow his oath. And that's what we do, and we believe in that,

truly believe in that. We truly believe in what we do, and that really protects us as a free society and free people. Yeah, we don't agree on a lot of things, Sam and I, but we agree on that. We disagree on many many things. Dan is the old hippie liberal against the death penalty. I'm the more that John McCain conservative gang.

so that I think people can understand your position. If John Wayne Gacy were to come to you and Leroy Stevens, but as his counsel, if he were to come to you and you only and give you that confession of the thirty three murders, would you then do everything in your power to go to court and say that my client is not guilty of the crimes that he's accused of and suppress in practicality all that information that he gave you.

a reasonable doubt, then they failed. And the defense lawyer doesn't go in there and say his clients innocent. But the fact that the government needs that evidence sufficient to connect those dots to prove somebody guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, front Stow does that. He says, like, we don't want to correplate our client innocent. We player client not guilty. There's a difference between somebody being innocent and somebody being

not guilty. Not guilty simply means there is not enough evidence to prove the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I think O. J. Simpson was a perfect example that in the States there where you know, there's no doubt in my mind as a retired judge, as a as a lawyer that he was guilty, and all the evidence

there proved and guilty. But the system broke down in Ojy's case number one because we had, first of all, our criminal justice system came in disrepute because there was a judge who handled the case initially, who didn't they have the courage, in my opinion, to throw out evidence that the judge should have thrown out because there was a bad search of Ojay's house that have particular evidence became the bloody glove, which the defense layer made a

mockery of and made a mockery of the police officer who discovered they had bloody glove because of his racism and everything else that think that he went in there, lied about why he went in and how he went in. If the judge initially called the prosecution the police officer and they have bad evidence, the o J trial never would have taken place. But because it took place, the judge didn't call him on it, and then it became

a media spectacle. The jury called him on it. The jury called him on it, and they said, you know what, State, you don't have enough evidence approves this gut guilty beyond the reasonable doubt. These are twelve people who aren't lawyers, who come out of society from different backgrounds, different economic backgrounds,

different racial backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds. They come together unanimously and say, state, you didn't have enough evidence, approved this guy guilty beyond a reasonableout state, you screwed up, and that's bad, and that brings our whole system into this refuge. And if the defense lawyer falls down. We have another example of that in the Wine Corona case out of California, was another serial killer. In that case, his lawyer did

did not defend his client properly. He didn't do anything for his client. Corona killed twenty six migrant farm workers, buried him in the fields, and his lawyer was more interested in writing a book at the time of the trial and defending his client. Corona was convicted. But you know what, in our appeal system here in the States, dead conviction. Twenty six convictions were overturned because the lawyer was incompetent. And so that's why a lawyer. There's so

many built in safeguards in our system. So we have to do the right thing, no matter what are guys accused of, no matter what he tells us he did. We had our plea, and if we think a guilty plea could mitigate the sentence, we do that. But if we think the state doesn't have sufficient evidence to prove our client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, we have to assert the rights and assert the rights of the defendant that they have proof beyond the reason without going to

gives him because in the States, he's presumed innocent. That's correct. And frankly, we don't execute crazy people. So even if, like in this case, where you admit that the crime occurred and that your client did the act, the defense of insanity is that he was incapable of knowing what he you know, did was wrong. He was in capable at the time of conforming his acts to the law. And that is another that that is a defense to any crime because you don't execute crazy people in this country.

It's like executing a child. Sery of ver defense was to save his life in this particular case.

of law. That's the legal definition of insanity, and it was the legal definition of insanity in Illinois at the time. So we did is put on psychiatric evidence, and we put on some lay testimonies, some of Casey's victims who testified he was crazy, victims that weren't murdering victims who we have victims who obviously were alive and who got away will we found and they testified that Gaysey was totally crazy, and that testimony is allowed in our trial

system here. So we raised the issue and we put on some psychiatrists. Then the state came back and they put on other psychiatrists to say that he was sane at the time of the effect. Yeah, thirteen thirteen doctors testified at different times on different issues. Most of them psychiatrists are psychologists, very dramatic to a very dramatic testimony.

One doctor described him as having an onion skin personality where he could take away layer after layer after layer after layer, and he had a Swiss cheese alter ego. Casey had no conscience. He was a psychotic, neurotic psychopath with an IQ about one hundred and sixty on hundred and sixty five. He was a consummate manipulator, a con man because it was a psychopathic or sociopathic personality, and because he had no conscience. But yet he was psychotic,

a borderline psychotic, because he suffered from delusions. He suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. He suffered from hypochondriosis. He believed he had an upside down heart. He believed he had these hosts of medical physical illnesses that didn't really exist physiologically. He was a necrophiliac. He liked to sleep with the dead. I mean he was on leave sexually, but sleep next to yes. He was a pedophiliac, liked

having sex with children. He was such a complex human being that he's probably one of the most complex human beings I could ever imagine meeting in my life or anybody could ever imagine meeting. And the scariest thing about this complex person who everybody perceives as a monster, and of course he was my client, But the scariest thing is the guy wasn't scary at all. All those horrible things that were wrong would have He was not scary at all. He could be anybody's brother or father, or uncle,

or teacher or fellow juror or lawyer, doctor. I mean, he was just not a scary guy. You would never think he was capable of doing those sort of things. He was the classic. He was the classic Jacqueline Hide. He was a Jeculin height out of the book. When he was good, he was the best of good, and when he was bad, he was the worst of evil. And that evil was taken over the good more and more and more and more. And the man was just incredibly, incredibly complex.

the home. He said he conned him as he had done many others in the past. He used guile, and he used cutting, and he talked about premeditation instead of a psychotic break. And he said he countered what you had said, Well, how could he eat food with the cops upstairs and or a cop with the police, and with the body nearby? And he said, well, how does a And Councle said, well, how does a coroner eat

lunch after he's done an autopsy? So it's an interesting Vali because you know both of you state your case is very eloquently, as does Terry Sullivan. But basically it was hard for the jury and they only deliberated for an hour and fifteen minutes.

of what a prosecutor should be. And because the state has the burden of proof, he gets the last word, and his last word was left with the jury, and his last word was throwing all of the photos of the boys who were killed in the same opening of the cross space, the original real opening in the crosspace that was put right in the middle of the courtroom, and he threw the pictures in the cross bace, and he asked the jury to do the same thing to Gaycy that he did to all these kids. And it

left that jury spellbound. I mean, after that, you could hear a pin drop in the courtroom. People were just spellbound at their closing argument. And he did an excellent job conco and he did an excellent job in rebudding or in sanity insanity defense. And I'll tell you a thing about their argument. They said Gaysey was evil and he knew what he was doing. There's a big difference between guys like Gacy and I don't know if I'm sure you know about John Hinckley who tried to kill

President Reagan. He shot President Reagan, and he did it because he was suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder, trying to impress Jody Foster I think at the time, or whoever there was, and he did it in front of the whole world. He shot at the President, tried to kill him, and nothing was going to stop him. And that's insanity because he could not conform his conduct to the requirements of law. And he was found not guilty of every reason in sanity, and he'll probably be locked

up for the rest of his life. Who killed John Lennon. Yeah, people like that just don't get out of don't get out of that that environment. Although everybody's afraid they will, they never do. And that's a class against sanity. Gaysey, on the other hand, and there's something that's going on in our news right now. We're just saying that Gaycy killed people all over the country and they're looking for bodies all over the country, which I can tell you

is untrue. And I would be very surprised if they will find another body associated with him, because he did everything right in that house and if he truly was crazy the way I argued, if he truly was crazy, he wouldn't have cared. He would have done it anywhere in front of anybody. And that was I think Cuncle's best argument. That he was able to control his conduct. He was able to conform his conduct and the requirements

of the law. He was able to appreciate the criminality of his act because he buried his victims, because he hid the evidence. So all those things voted against the the very believable insanity argument that that we gave in the theory of our case. But Kuncle, in his brilliant way, was able to totally rebutt it. And uh, and I think, really, if the state is right, they won't find anybodies anywhere else because Gacy killed everybody in his in his own house.

go wallah. Also in the handcuffs would be off, he'd be out of him and they say, how do you do that? He said, well, here, you try it. He'd give them the handcuffs to put on, and they put the handcuffs on, or he'd put them on them, and he's stand there and look at him and smile, and they say, well, what's the trick, John, what's the trick? And then he would take the key out of his hand and they'd hold it up and say the trick is I have the key. And I was able to

get out him because I have the key. You don't have the key. You're dumb and stupid not try to get out of this, and he would put this rope. He would have a rope and put the rope around their neck, what she called the rope trick, and while they were struggling to get out of the handcuffs, he would put the roper on their neck and twist the rope like a turner kid with a hammer handle that he had inside the rope. And then he would just sit there and watch the die and he would carry

on with his business. He would make phone calls, he would do paperwork while they would be suffering and dying right in front of him, and he had no he had no feeling about it at all. It was a it's just an unbelievable thing. I could talk to him about children who were dying in a children's hospital of cancer, and John Gacy would cry like a baby, authentic tears, not crocodile tears, authentically feel compassionate sorrow for these children

who didn't know who he never met. And then in the same breadth, I could ask him about a victim and he would talk about them as if they didn't exist, as if they were garbage that could put on the street that he just didn't have any feeling for it all. It never had any feeling of remorse. I was hoping that when he was executed, his final lawyers would be able to convince him to apologize and to show some remorse and to show some respect for the victims and

the victims' families. I thought that would be a good way for him to go out. Instead, he was such a con man. He actually convinced the lawyers who were representing him at the end of the case before he got the death penalty, that he was innocent. This guy actually convinced, you know, he convinced them of that. He convinced himself by that time, at the time you get the death penalty in nineteen ninety four, that he really was completely innocent. A committee which lends itself to the

fact that he might might just have been crazy. I mean, he was crazy. Let's put it this way. John Langacy was crazy. Whether or not he was insane, his insanity rose to the level of passing the small test for the law in the state of Illinois. It didn't okay, Jerry did not agree that he did. But he was a nutcase.

country is safe and could get a fair trial. And Gaysey was He had no effect, He had no emotion at all. As a matter of fact, he asked me to call the prosecutors back to the bullpen where he was being held. The jail sew where he was being held, right, and he wanted to congratulate them. He congratulated Bill Conkle, he congratulated Terry Sullivan, He congratulated Bobby Egan and Jim Varga for the great job they did in prosecuting the case.

The guy who was just crazy, he was crazy, but like Danny said that he rised at a level of insanity as the friend. And all the jury said no, you all the appeals along the way said no. The jury was right. And the thing is is defensillawyers by modern and I did our job to defend all those rights. And you know, I could go to sleep every night know that I did everything I could for them man

and protected his rights and justice was served. Yeah, and you know it's funny, and I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I have to say this. It was the defense council, it was the defense attorney. It was this guy sitting across the room for me that did something ultimately about the fact that you know that kids when they first went to look for John Wayne Gacy, they it was the parents that got them

involved in the case immediately at the time. However, if you reported somebody missing, you would they would wait forty eight hours, sometimes seventy two hours because they would assume that the kids were runaways. So often they were. And so this was a policy which Sam wrote a law years later in nineteen eighty four. Nineteen eighty four called the Eye Starts Law, and that stopped that policy, and the I SARTs Law became the precursor to what we now know as the Amber Alert. It was called the

Missing Child Act of nineteen eighty four. It ended the seventy to hour waiting period that police would routinely use before they start looking for runaway missing children. It started these local agencies that specialized in locating and finding lost,

missing runaway children. And it started a statewide central computer system where all information regarding runaways and missing kids would go into the system and then profiles of people who would be suspects in perhaps causing the fact that they were missing now and that came as a result. That's kind of the silver lining behind the behind the gaycy cloud. As a result of that law, thousands and thousands of missing children have been relocated in the state of Illinois all over the states.

Study now for those people that think that when somebody is recommending or advocating or fighting for somebody to not receive a death penalty or life without the possibility of parole, that people are suspicious that psychiatrists and their ultimate wisdom will let a guy like John Wayne Gacy out on the street again to recommit, or just let him out without and thinking that he didn't get his due punishment. What are you what were you recommending ideally with with John Wayne Gacy?

a structured environment, he would kill again. If Casey ever got out of jail, he was going to kill again. So we were looking for is to keep him in a structured environment where he could shed light on situations where maybe we could prevent a future serial killer from doing something like that. And I told the jurors, there was other people out there like that. If we study him, if we find out what makes him tick, maybe, just

maybe we could stop it before it happens again. And sure enough, there have been other serial killers, other mass murders since that time. And I was just hoping him, praying that the jury would accept our argument and study him. If we could say one kid, we could say one kid by doing it, Why put this guy to death? I mean, I told him I would join hands with them if we could bring one child back to life. Again the gay Sy kill the woul joined hands them

and I put Gaysey to death. But if we could save one child, one child by keeping them alife, isn't it worth it? And that's what I was hoping to do. But obviously it fell in deaf fears, because what do you do? As Bill Councle said, John Gaysey was the poster boy for the death penalty. If you don't put John Gaycy to death, who do you put to death?

prosecuted on there in Wisconsin. Right, it's not if a person pleads guilty in Illinois, they could still get the help in a mental institution, but then they have to be punished, serve their incarceration, whatever punishment's been imposed after they've served time in the minilism, which doesn't make any sense to me. The reason that the laws of the death penalty has been aboused in the state of Illinois is because they found thirteen people men on death row

who had not committed a crime. Now, imagine yourself driving down the street one day and you get stopped for a traffic ticket and you happen to look like someone

Suddenly you're in the system. You've done nothing wrong, But as the ball starts to roll and people start pointing their finger at you in lineups, et cetera, they find some kind of evidence that links you wrongfully to a crime or the problem with death that can't be reversed, right, and so and they you know, through DNA, they found thirteen people who did not commit the crimes that they were convicted of. Enough for governor who who bounced the death penalties in jail himself.

had his arms spread him round. It was it was an assassination type murder, and it was just a horrible thing I chose. Although I am not you know, as you know you and Danny are. You know, I'll equivocally opposed to the death pedalty. I think you better be damn sure before you send somebody to that because it is irreversible. But this particular kid, I felt it was a harsher punishment to send him natural life without prole. That's what I did. It was only eighteen years old,

and I'll never forget it. You know. I saw tears streaming on his eye and asked if he anything just if I asked him if he had anything to say to me, and I he said, just give me some hope, Judge. And I told I'm going to give you the same hope that you gave your victim that night on the railroad tracks, and no hope at all.

All you got to do is put them in a room and feed them instead of pay for all the lawyers and all the armies of lawyers and all the repeated and continuous appeals that go on, which are safeguards and they belong there. So it's actually cheaper to sentence them to life.

classy book. It's a difficult subject to write on. True crime is difficult to begin with, and and we wanted to make sure this was a book that would become a classic. And all the occasions are now that they are. The books have been flying off the shelves in the bookstores. Independent bookstores are Barnes and Nobles, Amazon dot Com, Kindle. Look, we've gotten great receptions. We've had book signings all around the immediate area. We've made all the local media. It's

still going on the media. We were out in California and Hollywood, a book signing at book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, the Gunda Beach and Eras Zona, Vegas, and everywhere we've gone we've been accepted, interestingly enough. In Vegas, we actually stopped a protest one of the victims of family members was protesting a Gaysey art show over there, and we appeared as speakers, and we actually defused the protests after

they hurt us and give our talk. We defuse the protest situation because they realized that, you know, we had a job to do, and we were presenting this book as the character of this book is a constitution, it's the criminal justice system. It's not only about gaycy. Certainly doesn't glorify gaycy. And it's been more apologized, were apologize.

It's very well. It's been very well received. Not often you hear the sight of the defense lawyer, and everywhere we go, we've got offers for movie options by producers in Hollywood. Wanted to do a big screen movie in a classic movie trial drama, not like you know, the blood and gore, murder Mayhem type thing, but a trial drama like a John Risham type trio. Except in this case it's not fiction. It's it's real in the genre

of in Cold Blood or or Helter Skelter. It's the true story, and it's a riveting story, and it's it's been we're still we're still flying high. We came out August first, and we haven't made the New York Times bestseller list, which we'd like to do. We've been selling some books up in Canada, which we were really happy about, and we'd like to keep selling them up there. We'd like to come up there and visit you guys. And things have been really great. We're appearing. I was on

TV this morning, I was on radio this morning. I'm gonna we're gonna be on radio and TV again next week. So the media has been absolutely wonderful, wonderful to us. Yeah, and we really appreciate it.

and complete access to his files. You have to realize that, you know, lawyers don't dislike each other just because they go up against each other's and it's sort of like playing football or you know, I mean, that's why as kids we play football and play sports so that there can be competition and you don't wind up hating each other. And so Terry, not only you know, agrees that this

book is a good book. He participated in some small way in that he gave us access to his five And you know, in Danny's Becers, you respect another lawyer, just like you. Hockey team, you know, Vancouver and the Hawks, No, you don't want to see them players lay down and die against each other. We'll seem out there fighting and

trying to win for their teams. And football players, you don't have respect for a quarterback who has a phony knee injury he gets out of the game as opposed to the guy who who really you know, plays through hurt and injuries. And talking about someone specific, I'm talking about Cutler here in Chicago, and uh, you know, you respect the guy who's tough. You respect the guy who goes in there and fights for his team, and that's

what lawyers doing. I respect Terry Sullivan, and I respect Bill Cuncle, and I respect all the police officers who revolved in the Gaycy case because they did their job and they did it well. And in turn, I like to think that they respect me for doing my job because they did my job well. And and that's what's about. And uh so I respect Terry and I respect his book. I think Killer Crown Clown is a great book. And

and we're, you know, for defending a monster. We're getting great great uh the books kind of compliment each other, and we're getting great reviews all over the country over here, great views out of Canada too, is I think we've been getting some.

at that time. Your very first real wow, how could you get a bigger case than this to start off, I mean, this is quite the baptism by fire, to say the leader.

and so he handled it. So it reads like a Grisham novel, except it's all true and it sets a story. It sets the record straight for history too. It is the true story, and we wanted the truth to know one.

And the book looks great. It's out in hardcover, it's got fantastic photos in it, and it's a fantastic thrill ride of a read. So I want to thank you, gentlemen for coming on. Judge sam Ammarati and Danny Broderick a great book, and thank you for a great interview. And I wish you guys the best of luck with this and I'm sure you won't have any problem. It has to be turned into a film and this story

will continue. Fascinating case, fascinating story, and fascinating book. Thank you very much, gentlemen.