You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaysey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening, an eight part miniseries, The John Wayne Gacy Murders, Life and Death in Chicago is the first ever historical, comprehensive and chronological mini series to study the life and crimes of the infamous serial killer, from his birth to the ongoing investigation of identifying unknown victims. This is the groundbreaking documentary project that filmmaker John Borowski has dedicatedly worked on for five years, uncovering extraordinary new facts and dispelling
certain myths about the case. Barowski features important and exclusive interviews he conducted with leading psychologists, childhood friends, arresting officers, prosecutors, Gasey's Death Row, attorney employees, and victims family members in order to create the definitive documentary regarding John Wayne Gacy. Feature this Evening is the documentary miniseries The John Wayne Gaysey murders, Life and Death in Chicago with my special
guest writer, author, and documentary filmmaker John Barowski. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
John Borowski, thank you for having me again.
Thank you so much. And congratulations on the John Wayne Gacy Murders Life and Death in Chicago documentary mini series.
Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a long time coming, and definitely proud of it and glad it's been released to the world for everyone to, you know, watch this chronological epic of Gaysey's life.
This is a definitive story, the definitive film and exploration of John Wayne Gacy, totally comprehensive. I applaud you for this incredible body of work.
Thank you so much. And that was what I really
wanted to do, you know. I had seen other documentaries, of course, researched and read all the books, and I found like in some of these other documentaries, they were somewhat scattered, they would jump back and forth in timelines, and I wanted to My ultimate goal was to create a epic mini series where you could study Gaysey's life and crimes from his birth to even to now, with all these conspiracy theories going on, because you get a more fuller picture of how Gasey became what he became,
and a lot of that is instilled in the childhood. And that's where I begin with in the series, in his childhood.
Now, just before we start, we'll just tell our audience your role in this entire documentary film series. You're the producer, writer, and director. I'll just tell us I interviewed you in twenty twenty about your book, John Wayne Gacy Hunting a Predator. Just tell us briefly about the genesis of this film series.
Yeah, it began a little over five years ago. I was thinking of what my next project was going to be a I actually was in the middle of working on a documentary on Jesse Pomroy, the boy Killer from Boston in eighteen seventy four, which I still want to return to. But then a friend of mine had the same camera that I had, so he said, well, let's
do something where we could do two camera shoots. And I'm like, okay, Well, and I started thinking of a project, and I started looking into Gacy, and he's very contemporary to me in that respect because the serial killers I usually focus on are late eighteen hundreds through early nineteen hundreds American serial killers, and I knew that would be a challenge as well, doing something even though it was forty years ago the case, or when he was arrested,
over forty years ago, there is still people. There are still people alive and relatives of the victims. So I was very careful about that as well. And I looked into the case and I thought, wow, there are similarities between Gaycy's life and mind. I grew up in Chicago, we both grew up on the Northwest Side. Both of our fathers are buried in the same cemetery. We both went to the same high school. Obviously, he was kicked out, obviously,
and we're both gay. So I thought, Okay, now this is something that I could bring my personal experience to and tell the story and really flesh it out as far as all of these different aspects of not only Gaycy's life, but what was going on in Chicago and America at the times he was growing up.
In this extraordinary film series, you have exclusive interviews with forensic psychologist doctor Helen Morrison, also a clinical social worker, Catherine Clevenger, and also Stephen Gianagelo. He is a author and criminology professor. Tell us about John Gasey's early life.
He was born in nineteen forty two in Chicago. Tell us about his early life as you do and you tell in this film through the interviews with the three people talking about the psychology and the origins of John Way Gasey's psycho sexual development in this film, tell us about some of the information garnered through these interviews.
Yes, you know it was. I was somewhat lucky enough to be in Chicago while the majority of these experts that I interviewed were still in Chicago or in the Chicago Land area. I flew one of the interviewees in from Texas, but everyone else was still here, So I was lucky in that and the first episode there are only three interviewees. But as the mini series goes on, each segment has to do with that part of Gaysey's life.
So I try to best possible to contain those areas within themselves, so we don't see the police who arrested Gasey until we get that point where he's being under investigation. I wanted Helen Morrison to give an account of Gacy's childhood because Helen Morrison interviewed Gacy's mother and Gacy himself. So Helen Morrison was Gaysey's psychiatrist who spoke for the
defense at the trial. And I also wanted someone to talk about child abuse, how that affects the child, especially growing up, and that's why Cathy was important in that. And Steve gin Angelo I've worked with on other projects. He's great on camera, and he's a great author. I've actually published one of his books and going to publish
another one of his soon. And at the whole beginning is very important for me of any of these serial killers, because I believe that these serial killers form what they later become in their formative years as a child. And I've seen this through studying serial killers. And it's interesting
that you could watch my Gaycy miniseries. You could watch the entire first episode, watch the entire eight hours, and come back to that first episode and see the parallels between what's in his childhood and what happens later in his life. So those are two key things I wanted to touch on in the first episode. Obviously, I think the world knows, or many people know, that Gaycy was abused by his father verbally and physically. His father also
abused his sisters, not as much as Gaycy. His father actually hated Gaycy himself, and he would abuse their mother sometimes. The father would abuse you know, his mother sometimes as well. But the Gaycy's mother, Marian, put him through a lot of tortures as a child. She gave him enemas when he was very young baby. She thought he was ill. She thought he had some sort of a heart condition. So not only was she giving him medicines, which she wasn't a pharmacist, so she was just trying out different
medicines on him. I have no idea where she obtained them from, but this obviously affected Gacy later in life. But also, and this happens we see with other serial killers that have issues with their mothers. She would coddle Gacy. So because she thought he had an heart issue, she wanted to protect him from ever getting hurt by anything.
So that means she wouldn't let him play sports at school, She wouldn't let him hang around with other boys running around doing things, And so Gacy developed this affinity to hang out with his mom and his sisters and do more feminine things or gentle thing, you know, working in a garden, you know, building some things. You know, he had a paper route, but he was always industrious ever
since he was a kid. But you do. I don't want to give too much about the first episode away, but like I said, I wanted to make sure there were parallels between his childhood and what comes later, because I've read these books about Gasey and there are factual and fictional information in these books about Gasey's childhood and not much as really fleshed out. And that's exactly what
I wanted to do. And not many people realize how much Marion his mother had kind of to do with also that negative upbringing of him by using him as a test subject for these different pharmaceuticals, she was giving.
Him other than these maybe psychosomatic or in her mind, these illnesses that didn't exist. But he was plagued by certain actual alements, and he was in and out of hospital as a young boy, wasn't he.
Yes, And they never found throughout Gasey's life from when he was a child until he was under investigation and in Waterloo, Iowa, when he went to prison, and eventually when he was studied in Chicago after he was arrested he showed no abnormal signs of anything physiological or psychological.
Everything came up on tests perfectly. But as Kathy in the documentary explains, that children can have these, their children's bodies or anyone really could have this reaction to some sort of a stressor, and they can't the body itself could go into these seizures. And that's what would happen
with Gacy. He would have these seizures, he would black out, and usually they were around times when he was most likely extremely nervous or anxious because he lived in that environment almost twenty four to seven, you know, other than when he went to school, because it was a constant stressor at home for him. That's the other thing I didn't understand. I read a lot of these books and they said some would say he definitely had a heart condition.
You know, these things happened, but you know, even when I interviewed the experts, they knew he was you know, he would manipulate them and use that as a tactic. Sometimes it may have been real, but other times, you know, I think he may have used it to his benefit, outlining the fact that he had this supposed issue already. And I think, like many conmen and serial killers. Gaycy learned as he went along and how he could manipulate people.
And I think that also started in his childhood kind of with you know, his mother in that way, and just continued.
In this film. You talk about that, this idea that the mother was overprotective and then she thought he was sickly and so he didn't participate in any physical activity fearing that he might get hurt or something. But this was at direct odd to his father's attitude towards homosexuality, but more importantly his attitudewards femininity and masculinity. And he thought that all of the things that his son was interested in were surely going to make him not grow into a real man.
Yeah, you know, it's a perfect storm in the Gaysey household. Obviously from his birth, you know, he was given, you know, the name of John Wayne Gacy, modeled after the iconic American Western hero John Wayne, and so already from the second he was born, he had something to live up
to in his father's eyes. And you're right, so after he started doing these feminine things, not hanging around with other boys, he did have a best friend, Barry Boshelley, who's also I believe he's in the first episode and he was Gasey's best friend. But yeah, all of those things affected him, and his father began viewing him negatively because he did those feminine things. So again it was
a catch twenty two. He couldn't play with other boys or do sports because his mother wouldn't let him, and so he's doing these you know, alternate things to have fun and he has this one best friend. But that's about it. And talking about he grew up during the nineteen fifties, which was like one of the worst time for anyone to be gay in America or you know, even the world. But I believe his issues definitely being
gay started like obviously adolescent, you know, teenager years. But yeah, he grew to hate himself because his father hated him, and he would hear all these negative things from his father about homosexuals, about femininity, you know, and the mum. When the father would abuse Gaycy, the mother would stick up for the father and say, well, you know, he does a Molly column and that's the way it has to be, you know, So she went along with his abuse.
So yeah, there were definitely all these issues going on, and it was difficult for Gaysey at that time period because anywhere you look, you look at religion, your school, your work, your home. In the fifties, everything was negative against homosexuals. And that comes into play too, because I feel that was an important part of Gaycy's psychology and his creation when you look at later what happened to
these young boys. Gasey hated himself, and I believe, and many do believe also, that he took it out on these other young boys because they were something that he would never be. Handsome, young, attractive, cool, and he was never like that, so he took out his rage on these young victims.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, you talk about that he was hospitalized, but the strangest thing was it seemed like, and then you have psychologists to attest to this, that he was having what we would now call a panic attack or an anxiety attack, and some of the features or the feature of that was that he would pass out unexpectedly. So tell us about how those anxiety attacks that we would now recognize, how they were treated.
Then well, the further you go back with psychology and psychiatry kind of gets very fuzzy because, especially if you're looking at the fifties, even through the seventies and maybe even into the eighties, anyone that took anyone to their family to see a psychiatrist. They didn't have therapists back then. It wasn't like that they had mental institutions and mental hospitals that they would admit people to. So that was
about it. You know. Even later, when I interviewed Larry Finder, who is the Assistant State's Attorney, he said he couldn't even go for therapy even if it was available then because as an attorney, the word would get out and
he wouldn't have work anymore. So there was one point where, because of these issues with Gaycy, because of these the passing out and the seizures, his mother did take him to the hospital and there was a doctor there that asked her to admit Gacy, and she didn't want to, and later she said she wish she wouldn't have done that. But you also have to realize it's that time period. If she admitted her son and people found out, they'd be labeled as crazy. That's what they called them back then.
Your son's crazy, your whole family's crazy, and nobody wanted to be labeled as especially in the nineteen fifties where everyone was supposed to be this perfect family. So it's very interesting that he was presented with these stressors and he had these anxiety and panic attacks. But back then they didn't know what those were. They had no idea what panic attacks and anxiety were. And now we could look back, as Kathy does and explain what was going
on with Gaysey. And that was very important for me to do in this mini series because, like I said, I had read many things about Gaysey and his childhood wasn't really fleshed out, and I wanted to make sure I did that.
One of the very more interesting topics that you touch on in this film series is the idea that he has some fascination with his mother's panties and then that behavior continues as he gets a little bit older and somehow collides or morphs into some of his sexual orientation. As you have the psychologist explain, can you explain this phenomena?
Yeah, it's very interesting. It's a fetish and the panteasing didn't have anything to do with, you know, his homosexual tendencies. It was more of a fetish. He liked the soft feel of the panties, the silky and what he would do is he would steal panties off clotheslines or from his mother's drawers and he would masturbate with them because of the soft, silky feel, and because he was so
embarrassed of stealing these panties, he would bury them. And eventually the family did find out and they saw him bury him one time, and his father forced him to wear the panties all day and belittle him. But what's interesting is when I went to his childhood home, not his first childhood home, but the second one on Minard. When I went there, the owners let me film the
entire house from top to bottom. So what you're seeing in my miniseries is the inside of Gacy's house where he grew up from I believe around age ten until he finally left in his late teen's early twenties. And I had went to the house twice to film. First time filmed all the interior, but I had to go back because I wanted to get the exterior again and
another part. And the second time I went, I went downstairs underneath the house and right where the basement is there's like a little area under the porch and when you look at it, it pretty much looks like a crawl space. I almost exactly like a crawl space.
Wow.
And it's that area where Gacy buried the panties. And again, you know, I wanted to make these connections that Gacy was embarrassed of stealing the panties when he was a child. So what did he do when he was embarrassed by something? He buried it. Now you flash forward later in life when he's burying these young boys under his house and his crawl space, it's the same concept. He was embarrassed,
he was shamed, and that's what he did. So I wanted to make a lot of those psychological connections, you know, and his behavior because I had never, you know, really seen that done anywhere, and I thought those things were important. And you know, again, I hope people watch the entire mini series and then go back and rewatch it because a lot of these issues in episode one and two and even three come up later in the series. In case his.
Life, you have this extraordinary witness that becomes Casey's best friend at a young age, and it's Barry Boshelly and it's important because we have heard about the abuse from his father, that he was abusive, but he tells a story that's just more specific about how how much of this abuse did he endure, and how regular was this and of what nature exactly.
Yes, and back then there was no child protective services, so again families wanted to keep these issues within the family. Now, Barry Bishelley, he was friends with Gaycy as a child, and what happened was his doctor was the same family doctor as Gaycy's family, so he heard what happened, you know,
through the grapevine, what happened with Gacy. There was this one point where his father beat him with a two by four and knocked him out and he was pretty much almost dead, and then the father took him to the doctor. But of course, you know, at that time period again keep it quiet. Oh he fell, this happened, whatever, you know, and there were no investigations like that. Back then. Everything was kept within the family and in the units.
There was nothing. Nothing could be let out in the fifties that your family is ill or sick or crazy, or there's something wrong with you. And Barry's a great resource because he actually was there. He grew up with John Wayne Gacy, so again it was important for me
to have first hand interviewees in this documentary. I wanted friends of Gacy, victims, relative the prosecutors, the detectives, you know, almost everyone except probably three or four people in my documentary met Gaycy, talked to him, prosecuted him, worked with him, Tony Antonucci, who was a survivor who got away from Gacy. And it was again when I formulated this mini series, I wanted all these important people, and you know, I got as many as I could, and I was happy
with that. But this was such a huge case. I mean hundreds and hundreds of people involved, and even more than that when you look at the web of how many people Gaycy affected and the case affected.
Well, you provide this evidence in this film series about he tries to fit in at high school by going on a heterosexual date, and you have this dramatic evidence that you provide that he passes out when they're trying to consummate, when they're fooling around with each other. And again psychologically, we relate back to the incredible pressure he
has being a homosexual. Having to keep that secret, especially from his father, would have as his mother said, would have killed him if he would a knew and this idea that he couldn't conform, he couldn't perform. He was not interested in heterosexual sex. And he passed out again.
Yeah, and you could see that that was from the anxiety and the stress of what he was going through. So again, I do believe there are times where it was real. But you could have taken him to a hospital that day and they would have found nothing wrong with him, which is strange, but it's all in his mind and how his body reacts to that. Interesting with women in Gacy's life, his first wife he had married and lived with in Waterloo. Then his second wife he
had lived with in Chicago with her two daughters. His first wife he had two children with, Michael and Christine, and his second wife, Carol, she brought she had two daughters already and I believe they were I don't know, between six and nine years old. But they were ruses. They were cover ups for Gasey's being a homosexual his
first wife. It's interesting because when you read the newspapers and official reports from the case, there was one account where the prosecutor of the case said that Gasey tied a young man up to the bed while Gasey was having sex with his wife, so they were swingers, him and his wife. Out there. Gasey was involved in these illegal gambling and prostitution rings. So eventually, when he was convicted of sodomy on a young man out there, of course the first wife divorced him and got the majority
of everything. But they were ruses. You know that The second wife, Carol, I found extremely interesting because here he is. She sees him outside at night bringing young men into the garage, and then she goes into a garage and there's a blanket and a red light in there and a mirror, so obviously he's having sex with these young men in the garage, and all these pieces of evidence are adding up, and that's what she thinks. And because he told her, well, I'm bisexual.
But.
She thought, well, you know, obviously he's more into the young men than he was into her, because he seemed to be spending most of the time with them, and she was a housewife. She kept the house clean, she kept everything fine at home. That way, during the day, when he was at work, he could get his work done, and then at night he could go hunting for his victims.
It Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these mesas I wanted to go back just a little bit, because there's some incredible information that you went part here that again seems to be directly involvement to his sexual development, in that he has another fight with his father when he's almost twenty years old, and then moves to Las Vegas and has a particularly interesting job, and some of the things that later he is convicted of seemed to have been formulated during this time and this work.
Yeah, when he went to Vegas, he found a job at a funeral home, so he was transporting dead bodies to the funeral home. And his mother herself said in a newspaper that Gaysey told her that he was sleeping in the morgue with these bodies. And then I found a quote from Gasey that said, ever since the age I believe of sixteen, he said he was interested in death, and so here he is at this funeral home. Now, there have been numerous accounts of what may have happened
at the funeral home. One of them is that Gacy, you know, was working there, and it was a young man in a casket and he crawled into the casket with the body and slept with it or did something with it. And another story says, well, one of the workers there at the funeral home found clothes next to the casket, whether they were Gacy's or the kids. And again, you know, they covered things up at this time period.
But I think one of these things, and I tried to illustrate this in the miniseries that you know, did these things really happen or were they fantasies of Gacy? One time he said that there was a corpse, a male corpse, that came in with an erection. Now, there are such thing as death erections. Most likely they may not have lasted that long. Usually they happen during a traumatic event like a hanging or a traumatic death, and the male body produces his death erection, but it doesn't
last that long. So did that actually happen? Did Gacy see a male corpse, a young male corpse at the morgue with an erection? Who knows? But again whether that was real or fantasy. Having sex with these corpses or doing whatever he wanted to with the corpses comes up later again, when he's in Waterloo, and he tells one of these young men to play dead, and the young man said that in the newspaper. So a lot of people don't realize this aspect of John Wayne Gacy. He
wasn't a necrophiliac. He didn't search for young men to kill and just have home with their bodies and savor. He wasn't like Dahmer, but he did do things to their bodies after he murdered them himself. He said that he would put the bodies under the bed or in a closet before throwing them in the crawl space. So and then Robert Piece, the last victim, he said, well, another John Wayne Gacy thing is he said he had
two personalities. And he said, well, I didn't have sex with peace corpse, but Jack may have, and that was his alternate personality. So basically he was telling him us after he killed the young man, he had sex with his body. So when I read about all of these incidences and I put them together again, that's one thing I never saw any book or documentary do, and I think that's pretty important because it is all about death.
And he said he had a cemetery under his house and he savored the thing that Gasey savored the most is his knowledge of these things happening and no one else knowing. And he could lie and crack jokes, just like his photographer Marty Zelenski said he could tell us he had fifty bodies in his basement. We'd say, yeah, whatever, John, because Gasey would joke about everything. Oh yeah, hey, I got to get some beers and bodies out of the trunk.
He would say things like that, so nobody would even believe him if he did say he did all these things, and even his friends at the end when he was going on this death run, they didn't believe him either.
You have this extraordinary interview with Tony Antonucci, and it's very important because he really outlines the victimology because he was able to not be assaulted by John Wayne Gacy, but Gaysey certainly attempted to do that. And it's very interesting some of the things he says, like he didn't realize how much danger he was in when he was in extreme danger with John Wayne Gacy. Can you just give us a little bit of what he testified to and what he says in this film documentary.
Yeah, he says that Gasey would play mind games with him and other workers. He would sit them down and question them and go through this whole spiel about asking them, well, are you homosexual? What if somebody wanted you to perform homosexual acts on them? And this was his way of vetting these kids to see if they were somewhat amenable. Maybe if he gave them money, they would do something
sexual with him. And I think anyone that was around Gaysey, the people that testified later, the detectives, everyone, everyone that met Gaycy personally and would say, you'd never know that he did these things. They said, he's funny, jovial, he'll make you laugh, and people thought he was an all around great guy and that was his ruse, and that's how he got away with these things for so long.
And Tony Antonucci. It's a frightening experience when you think about it, because Antonucci said he would play mind games with his workers or his victims as he did with Tony, and that's how he would feel them out. It happened that twice. That one time that Antonucci had went to set up a Democratic office with Gasey, and Gaysey had tried to grab him and grab his behind and he thought he was just testing him, because Gasey said, this is how the test my workers. Again, you know, his
excuses and cons for getting away with things. And then he was playing wrestling with Antonucci and he wound up putting handcuffs on him, and Antonucci got out of the handcuffs and put him on Gaysey. And the biggest, you know, one of the most well known minds ever is when Tony says that Gasey told him that you're not only one of the only ones to get out of the cuffs, but you're the only one to get them on me.
And of course Tony didn't know what was going on at that time, and it was very important for me to ask Tony directly, Okay, well then why didn't you go to police? Why didn't you do because that's the first question in everyone's mind, and I wanted to make sure in this mini series I confronted some of these people and asked them these difficult questions. And like you said, it was the time period, and he thought Gacy was
just kidding around. After Gasey most likely tried to kill him, he slept at Gacy's house another night and was still worked for him a lot of people don't realize that, but he trusted him and he thought it was just all a big game. And through Antonucci we also learned because he worked with Gaycy, the connection to when Gacy started in Waterloo, when he would do work out there,
he would actually steal from businesses. And when Gaysey was doing his construction work, he would take Tony with him sometimes and he would say, well, we're going to steal this lumber. And then Antonucci would be like, well, aren't they going to know? And Gacy would tell him, well, well, if the cops show up, just pretend like you're taking it the lumber out of the truck and you're leaving
it there, nobody's going to question you. And Gasey one of Gasey's famous lines is it's not illegal if no one knows about it.
You have in the film you talk about Donald Vorhees Junior, sixteen years old, that was hired by Gasey and he was invited inside the house when Gasey's wife Marlon was out of town. He plays porn for the team, showing his mo He ties them up and says something very incredible. He said, you should invite death with open arms. He also has another person he takes to his home, Edward Lynch, and both of these people eventually go to the police.
But it shows Gasey's guile and also his cleverness in knowing how the police will react, and he acts accordingly. And these people, these victims aren't believed, are they. No.
Casey would always turn the tides on his victims and make himself up to be the victim. A lot of times if he was caught with a young man, he would say, well, this, it was consensual. He's into s and M that's why these things happened. And again, you're looking at these time periods back then. If that was the case, the police would most likely turn a blind eye and just walk away, because what do you do in that case. It's kind of a domestic disturbance, but
it's not legal in a sense. You know, you're doing something that's illegal in America at the time, you know, just by having you know, being gay. So it definitely was, you know, tough times, but very interesting that he started these things in Waterloo and wanted them to play dead
and invite death with open arms. It really says a lot and that was the beginnings of his career of crime in Waterloo, he learned how to be a master con and he started coming at one of these kids with a knife, and he would have started his murders there, but it just didn't happen until later.
He gets recognized by a psychiatric analysis and he is The recommendation is that he should be sent to prison for as long as possible. There's no cure, lock him up, and he is a sexual predator and this is recognized when he again has scrapes with the law and evades eventual prosecution just before he does go to prison for the ten year sentence and then is released in eighteen months.
What's interesting to me as well, And if we're talking about that, I want to go back to that Waterloo incident Gasey when the two boys went to the police Casey hired older teenager to beat up one of the boys. The older boy made a mistake of saying, and whether Gaycy told him this or not, he told a victim, you know you better, you know, lay off Gaysey and not prosecute him and don't go to the police anymore
and don't continue this case. Well, eventually all three of those kids went to the police, so the older teenager ratted on Gaycy. And this is important because there are theories abound, but it's my theory that Gaysey acted one hundred percent alone. Other than you know, these kids he hired to build dig these ditches. He learned from Waterloo not to involve someone else because if you involve someone else, they could rat you out unless you have something on them,
you know. And then when we talk about his prison lock up, he was released after eighteen months. Now, if he would have served his entire tenure sentence, and he was released because of the pear people at Waterloo, they made that decision. There were one or two people, and it's to me they're the ultimate culprit. But they couldn't predict what was going to happen. And if he would have been released ten years, he would have been released right around the same time that he killed his last victim.
So all those thirty three young boys would have been alive if he would have served that ten year sentence. But how did he do it? He was a master con man, so in prison he played the good guy. He was so good there that they gave him a white shirt so he would stand out from the other inmates. He was special. He brought an entire miniature golf course which was donated. He had it sent to the prison and he built it with the other prisoners, which that
miniature golf course is still at Animosa Penitentiary. Very interesting when he looked. He did a toy drive. He was a chef in prison. He was part of the prison choir. He knew what he was doing. He learned in Waterloo, he learned from Animosa Penitentiary. When he was let out of there, he was basically like a tiger being let out of a cage because he had all this experience.
You have a fascinating interview with Greg godsick sister, and she talks about her mother's response and when Greg goes missing. Tell us a little bit about this confrontation with the mother and Gacy and just some of the information imparted in this interview with Greg's sister.
Yes, it was important for me to have a victim's relative, and I didn't want to bother the families. I really didn't reach out to the families. A contact of mine new Eugenia Godsick, Greg Godzick's sister, so I interviewed her and again, very sad but what happened was Gregory Godzick came home one day and told his mom and sister and family that, hey, this guy, this contractor is going to hire me. He came into my job. He said he'll pay me twice what they're paying me. And then
his mother's like, oh, I don't know about that. And so then he did some work for Gacy for a couple of days and he was digging ditches and he told his mother, He's got us digging in his crawl space. We're digging these ditches. Well he didn't say they were ditches, of course they didn't know that at the time, but Gasey said they were for the issues with the rain water in the crawl space, so they had to dig
these trenches. He said they were trenches, and the mother was kind of against it, but Gregory Godzick would still go and see Gacy. Gregory Godzick went out with his girlfriend one night and then said he was going to pick up a check and he was never seen again. Well, Gregory went to Gacy's place to pick up a check and that's when Gacy murdered him. And ironically enough, Gasey put Gregory's body in the same ditch that Gregory dug, so he dug his own grave, which is extreme sad.
And then the mother went to Gacy's house because she didn't believe, you know, she kind of knew that, okay, he was seen last with Gasey. She confronted Gacy and he invited her in the house, so she was standing above her son's grave when she was in the house. I'm sure Gacy loved that, knowing his character, but he told her, oh, there was a voicemail on my voice
message on my answering machine that he called. He said he ran off to Puerto Rico with someone, and eventually someone did call from Puerto Rico, so Gasey must have had that covered. Someone else must have called, which is strange, but I'm sure he set that up. And Gregory's mother said, well, can I hear the message? She said, oh, no, I
erased it. So and then that was it. So for you know, these whatever two or three years until Gacy was apprehended, you know, there was Gregory just disappeared, like many of these other children.
That Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, people are more familiar now because of various documentaries and also the book by Courtney Lund O'Neill, and also the book Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy with Karen Conti, which is one of the other interviews that you have, incredible interviews that you have with John Wayne Gacy's death
row attorney. So let's talk about the incredible information that was imparted to Detective Dave Hackmeister and also Detective Mike Albrick, and then when the audience learns and as well the world learns via these two detectives, the incredible ruses that Gaysey employs, the rope trick, the handcuff trick, and then the graphic and gory details of the murders themselves.
Yeah, well, as the two off there were actually four officers that were surveilling Gaysey at the time. Mike Albrecht was a detective who are actually arrested at Gacy and Albrecht was on the night shift with Hackmeister. They were in separate cars. One of the strange things, well many strange things happened. Obviously, it kind of goes in the
realm of absurdity, kind of like Goodfellas does. It's a true story, but you're kind of laughing at the absurdity of it and just being stupefied by it that here he is. He's telling the cops where he's going to go. He invites them over to his table to eat with him, drinks beer with them. They almost get into accidents. He takes them on high speed chases, and then at one point they're in a restaurant and he's sitting Gaysy's with Dave Hackmeister and he tells them, oh, man, it's great
to be a clown. You could be at parades, put your arm around a woman, get a feel. It's awesome. And then he looks them directly in the eyes and he says, did you know that clowns could get away with murder? Basically telling him what he did. And I'm sure once again Gasey loved that. That was very chilling. So eventually, once Gacy is apprehended, you know, he gives these statements where he tells what he did to these
young victims. He would trick them into handcuffs. He would tell them, I'm a registered clown here, look what I can do. And he had a key on him, so he would put the handcuffs on himself and he would get out of the handcuffs with the key. He knew how to do that trick. And then he would hand the keys to a young man and say here, you try it now. And once he tricked them into the handcuffs, he would tell them, well, you need the key, you're
not getting out of the handcuffs. And then the next thing would be is he would put them through a night of tortures, painful tortures, rape. He would dunk their heads in water and revive them, try to drown them, beat them, just awful, awful tortures throughout the entire night.
Some he would let go. Some he would kill. And if he wanted to kill them, he said he would let them go if he thought they were going to go to the police or tell other people about what he did with the vicary them and you know, being a homosexual, and he didn't want that out there. So what he would do is after the handcuff trick, he
performed his what he called the rope trick. And he would take an ordinary clothesline rope, just a couple feet long, and he would put it around their neck, tie one loop in the back, put like a hammer handle or a stick in there tie another loop, and then he would there were three loops actually, and then he would twist that probably once or twice, maybe three times, and they would die with from a you know, suffocation from being choked by that clothesline within fifteen to thirty seconds,
and there was nothing they could do. They would reach for their neck to try and pull the rope out, but they had to actually reach behind them and they couldn't reach the stick to get it out. And then what he would do is he would just take them to the crawl space door in his house, throw them down there, and either that day or the next day, he would bury them in one of the train which was already dug by some of these other teenage workers that he hired. And it was awful. Eventually there were
thirty three bodies. At the end, there was no more room on his property, so he threw four in the river. He says five. They never found a fifth body, but there were twenty six in the crawl space right under his house buried. There was one in the garage, there was one in the driveway, and one under the addition of the house.
Very interesting. We didn't talk about early on when he was having all kinds of problems in school, not really fitting in, being socially awkward. He joined the Cub Scouts and seemed to thrive somewhat in the Cub Scouts. And that's where he learned about the tourniquet. Not didn't he.
Yes, And he even admitted that in an interview. He said, the only knot that I knew how to tie was the tourniquet. So it's again, I wanted to put those pieces together. And you know, all of these early experiences for serial killers ultimately lead them to what they do later in life.
It's interesting for the officers, the detectives. He draws a map, a very accurate one, they say in retrospect, where exactly the bodies were, and he is crucial in trying to identify who these people were.
Yeah, Gasey took pride in what everything he did, whether his whether it was his clean house or his construction work, he took pride in it. At first, when he was interrogated, he was wishy washy. Yeah, there's some I don't know how many you know, playing games with the detectives, but he knew exactly where they were. He knew exactly how many there were. He knew exactly where he threw them off.
He threw them off the sprit Smith Bridge in Shanahan, Illinois, because he took them to the piling and he said, here's where I threw him off, right here. So being a contractor, he knew exacts any new numbers. And it was very important for me to have Larry Finder and Mike Albrecht on camera together talking about this because in over forty years of documentaries, no one's ever got them together. And I thought, well, these are the two, you know, people who stood in front of the cell when Gacy
drew that drawing. Why the hell Holly would get these people together. And I thought, well, okay, it was meant
for me to get them together. And they show you exactly what he did, and they talk about how he was writing and how the pen wasn't working at first, you know, and there are a lot of these conspiracy theories, and of course Gasey later said, oh, I didn't do these murders, and I don't remember drawing that, but yeah, that was a crucial thing, the drawing of the bodies in the crawl space, and you could even see Gaycy putting numbers on there. And there's one where he has
thirty three. They weren't all in that crawl space, but I think he was new that total and he was kind of like working back from it.
You have in the film about the discovery of the board with the holes for restraint for be able to restraint victims, and you say that Casey got this idea from the Houston murders and Elmer Wayne Henley and this henchman or the other way around Dean Coral.
Yes, Gasey admitted that he was inspired by the Houston mass murders. Now these were before Gacy started his murders,
but he obviously knew about them. And Elmer Wayne Henley would bring young teenage male boys as victims to Dean Coral and they would eventually torture them, rape them, and kill them, and they would bury them in a boat shed, which was in the boat shed was a dirt floor, so they buried them in a spot where no one but them really had access to and no one probably wouldn't find the bodies because they're under the ground there.
And a few were buried on a beach somewhere, and when they buried them, they bury them in plastic bags. And they threw lime on them, quicklime, and that's what Gasey did with his victims as well. Very interesting. And they did have a torture board where they would handcuff their victims too, and that's how Gacy made this board
to incapacitate his victims. Interestingly enough, there was one point where through a contact, I got to briefly speak on the phone with ELM Wayne Henley and I told him that and I said, Gasey said, you inspired him, you know, in the murder methods that he used on his victims. And I loved his response because he told me, well, he's got to blame somebody.
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, tell us about some of the other interviews that you have in this documentary, including Karen Conti and also very interesting somebody that experiences John Wayne Gacy behind bars, Ricky Carter at a correctional center. He's an officer.
Yes. Again, it was my goal to get as many people who were involved with the case in the mini series of mine and the Minards segment is interesting, again, very strangely enough, very comical in a sense because the absurdities Gasey changed prison policy. By you, they were charging too much for our photocopies. They agreed with him, they
changed prison policy. He was selling paintings. Ricky Carter is the guard who worked the day shift, I'm sorry, the night shift with Gaysey, so he relayed first hand information about what went on with the prison. Because there are a lot of these other misconceptions. Gacy never had a personal phone in his cell, but Gasey was selling paintings, writing books, writing letters, doing all these offensive things for the victims for fourteen years on death Row. Episode seven
has the most interviewees in it. Karen Conti, who is his last attorney on death Row. She talks about what it was like there. The murder metal band Macabre, who sings songs on serial killers. They went to visit him, They bought paintings from him. He was extremely popular. He was really the first American celebrity serial killer in that aspect that all these people from all around the world wanted to visit him and write him and they could.
Strangely enough, you know, it's different nowadays, but back then it was very easy. And the absurdity of it, of you know, what was going on in there and fascinating to me. How you know Rick Stayton, his collector, who is a collector and he would sell Gaycy's paintings for him. Just a fascinating look at the worldwide interest and appeal of Gacy as a serial killer.
Again strangely, you know, it's interesting too. He galvanizes the public by making some money. It's reported he's making some money from these paintings and it outrages everyone, and then the state sues him for room and board, tries to stop him from painting again. He's litigious and wants to threaten them with a lawsuit if he can't continue, and
so he does. And his career he's quite ambitious, according to your interviewee Rick Statten, that he is all about promotion and furthering his career in painting.
Yeah, he even painted Death Row. So he was always idustrious, ever since he was a kid, working and even in prison he was probably busy twenty four to seven. He had a logbook of everything he did every minute while he was in prisoned. He even compiled which I think is very disgusting. He compiled a big binder with information on all of his victims so he could look at this every day and salivate over very disgusting. But for
fourteen years, that's what would happen. He would get banned from selling the paintings case, he would have the attorneys involved. You know, it was amazing, how you know the legal process actually helped Gaysey in prison.
Strangely enough, you feature a reporter that gets a big break and a scoop and his name is Walter Jacobson, and he worked at CBS and he gets one on one with John Wayne Gacy, and it's fascinating to see or to hear about some of the things that John Wayne Gacy tells him in that interview.
Yeah, I really wish I could have used that interview, but you know, CBS owns the interview and they could charge what they want. I don't understand, though, why they would charge ninety thousand dollars for two minutes of footage to an independent filmmaker who's creating a factual documentary. Could I have put it in there, maybe, could have gotten away with it for fair use maybe, But you know, I never do that. I never, you know, would steal anything.
Everything's you know, on the level and legit, and I have permission, But in one of the interviews, you know, Walter Jacobson asked him. He says, well, tell me about this one victim, this Bukovich, Butkovich, and he Gasey tells them, oh, no, Butkovich, No, he's not one of the five that I killed. And he said, you just listen to what you just said. You said he wasn't one of the five that you killed. And then Gasey said, oh, okay, you're right, you misunderstood me.
Forget about that. So he slipped and admitted it right there. That interview was Gasey's first on camera interview at death Row, and it was important for me as a local Chicago and to have Walter Jacobson on to talk about his experiences everything, you know, through the execution because he was a witness to that as well.
Statton talks about how much correspondence Gasey got thousands of letters and from all kinds of people, all kinds of walks of life, but also that he had a one nine hundred number and they would wheel a telephone in and he would just have basically recorded denial that he was guilty of anything at all.
Yeah, he created this nine hundred number where you would call and just listen to him. Basically, he would go down this list of things he was accused of and he would tell, you know, his reasons why you know, he didn't do them, or he wasn't around and it couldn't possibly be him. So he would make money off of that as well, and most of this money was sent to his sister, you know, Rick would get a
cut of it. But interestingly enough, what they would do in the prison is they would have this huge payphone, a huge metal payphone with a long line hundred you know, y hour to log line, and they would walk it down the death row and they would dial the number for the prisoners and hand on the phone and they would talk. So people would call Gasey and Gacy would call people in prison, which again is very fascinating, and he would spend time, you know, talking to these people.
And there were many people out there that recorded their conversations and those are floating out there as well, and I believe some of those were used on some of these other documentary shows.
In this series, you try to attempt to get some people to talk about the psychology of John Wayne Gacy and try to make some conclusions as to the formation, the origins of his sexual and his violent behavior.
Yeah, several, there are I believe there are only two psychiatrist psychologists who are still alive from the case, and I did interview Helen Morrison. But when you really look at the statements that were given, you know, about Casey's psychology, it varied. It went everywhere from obviously narcissistic, some multiple personality disorder which he didn't have. So the defense and the prosecution had all these different theories. And again the one that I believe the most or favor is the
one that he hated these young men. He hated himself and he took it out on these young men. So he saw them as symbolically, you know, killing that gay part of himself or that dirty part of himself that he was shamed about. There are so many experts. Bill Huncle, who was the prosecutor in the case, he passed away recently, But Bill Kunkle to me, was really the key master. Terry Sullivan, you know, obviously is a wealth of information.
But there were times where I would email or call Bill Cuncle with a question and he would send me back a long email or talk to me on the phone in detail. He knew every aspect of the gay sy case, every single hair of the case, and he still did at the end when you saw the interview when I interviewed him, So you know, everyone, you know, Karen Conti gives a great perspective on gaycy because again she was there, she spent a lot of time with him, and she said, a lot of people aren't going to
like this, but he was a very funny guy. She said, we had a lot of fun and we talked about things. And again, you know, there are many ways to deal with this darkness. And as we know, there are probably many officers who you know on a case and they joke about it because it's so deep. You know, you try to make this light of it rather than standing there crying about it because it is so awful.
And you also tie in, you said that you are gay, and so you share that with John Wayne Gacy, but just the societal pressures. You say that gays were considered either criminal, mentally ill at that time, it was considered a mental illness, or just rejected from religion or society in general. And then to top it off with his father so adamantly stating that he hated homosexuals and effeminine men. That gasey again, like you say, I had this self loathing,
but also the role of humiliation in that. A lot of people thought that and his parents thought that maybe humiliating him when he was caught naked with the girl down the street, or when he was caught burying the panties, that humiliation would be there to absolve his problems or cure him of his desires.
Yeah, and Kathy Clevenger does talk about that, and she said, that's the worst thing a parent could do, that, you know, humiliate them, because in their mind, that pairs sex with shame, and that's what he was. He was ashamed of having sex. He was ashamed of his sexuality, and that's kind of what they instilled at him by, you know, chastising him
for touching this young girl. You know, when he was a little boy, they touched each other, got naked, whatever, And I'm sure it's somewhat a normal childhood thing, but they made it out to be the worst thing in the world. So at first thing he's learning about sexuality is that it's embarrassing, it's wrong. What are you doing?
You know?
And that goes into religion. As well. I'm sure that aspect, and when they forced him to wear the panties all day, the humiliation was a big part of creating him as who he was. And then you throw on the fact that he's a homosexual. In having these feelings again, you could see the storm inside of him which would lead to those blackouts and seizures which weren't health related but more mentally related.
It's interesting when he is adamant that he's not homosexual, that he's bisexual, and then he has the rationalization why he's much different than the homosexual victims that he kills. Tell us how he reconciles this in his mind.
Well, yeah, in the ninth teen seventies there was a big gay liberation movement, so it was coming to the forefront of people's attention. So at that time for Gacy, it might have been a little hip or cool to say I'm bisexual, and of course that might have made him a little interesting or not in other people's eyes.
But he wouldn't say he was homosexual. He would only go to as far as to say he was bisexual because that gives him somewhat of an out to say, well, I do sleep, I mainly sleep with and women, but I sometimes I have fun with men. So again there was this shame aspect, and that was his way of
saying it, and he was adamant about it. Even when he was interrogated the first time, I'm not homosexual, and they said, he was very adamant about that, and that just shows you how society saw homosexuals at that time period. It definitely created issues with his mentality and psyche.
What he said was that he didn't love them even though he had sex with them, so he kind of rationalized it like that.
Yeah, And what's interesting, Karen County also said that Gacy stated that he never kissed a man above the waist, so it's you could see that, Yeah, he didn't love them, He just wanted to have sex with them. And you could kind of see that carry over to his victims, that they were just bodies. He would call them bodies. He wouldn't call them you know, people or victims. He would just say their bodies because that's how he saw them,
and many serial killers do. Once they're done, they're just material. They're nothing. There's something to be played with or thrown away or discarded.
I thought it was very interesting as well that he goes to prison for being a sex offender, and during that time he's in prison, his father dies on Christmas, and then you write that later on, even though he had this incredibly bad relationship, he routinely visits his father's grave. So I thought, psychologically this was a crucial moment in his psychological development.
Yes, he you know, And that's the strange thing, the dichotomy and the duality of these serial killers. You know, at one point after he was apprehended, he was crying when he read a letter that he wrote to his mother. I do believe he loved his sisters, his mother and his father. I think that is possible, and there is that duality and that you know, kind of separation. But that was a big thing for Gasey because he never got to prove himself in his father's eyes, to be
the man that his father wanted him to be. And very interestingly enough, Gacy told his second wife, Carol that one day she's going to read him about him on the cover of every newspaper. So, you know, he he had grand plans to become something, and he did. He became known throughout the world, but not for the right things. You know, he kind of accomplished what he wanted to do, what his father wanted to do, but just in this wicked way.
Very interesting. One of the guests that you have I mentioned Greg Grey, God's sister, and I thought it was very interesting. She wanted to attend the execution and she did, but was not very satisfied with what happened there at that time.
That's another perspective I wanted to show because I think Hollywood may be a little afraid of getting into more of these details. A lot of times they'll just gloss over things, and their documentaries they'll tell a little nugget of information, but nothing more. We don't hear about these things.
I was shocked to hear that only the reporters, prosecutors, and people involved with the actual case were allowed to see Gacy's execution, where the family members of the victims were put in a windowless room with a telephone and somers and that's it. So they would sit there and they would get a call on that phone and say, okay, we're going to begin the execution process. And then of course there was a problem with the line, so there was a delay. And then she said after he was executed.
They just called that phone. They picked it up and they said, Okay, he's gone, and that's it. I think kind of an injustice and a disservice to the victims' families. And there was a lot of that that we don't hear about. Supposedly there was this fund at the time for kind of like Chicago wrongful death victims or whatever,
and that would pay out ten thousand dollars. And when the Godzak family tried to claim that because they paid ten thousand dollars for a private investigator before Gacy was apprehended, the city told them, no, we're not going to pay out ten thousand dollars to every thirty three you know,
family members. Just interesting. How yeah. Yeah, And another thing I do want to mention to, you know, the police get a bad rap in all of these documentaries, and you know, I'm all about justice and injustice and shedding light on injustices. But I hope through my documentary I also illustrated that it was the time period. People don't realize that that yes, okay, Gasey, you know, someone says
he was last seen with this boy that went missing. Okay, the police knock on his door, he invites them in. There's no smell. We learned that through my documentary. So the house is fine, there's no signs of struggle. They're not going to take fingerprints, they're not going to do forensics because they didn't have DNA typing at that time period,
so they just walk out the door. You know, I don't fault the Chicago Police Department at all, because the districts didn't even communicate with each other, you know, and you know they were missing persons. That was it, you know. I mean, they did the best. There was a one time where they put gaycy on a two weeks stakeout and they watched this The Chicago police watch this house for two weeks, so they did their due diligence, but it was the unfortunately, it was the lack of technology
at the time period. Like the detectives said, here they are, you know, having Gaycye under surveillance, and their CBS don't work when they got too far away from headquarters, so they had to carry quarters to go to payphones. Yeah wow, I mean, this is the absurdity of the case. The biggest mass you know, serial killer in history, and the detectives are going to payphones with quarters.
Yeah, and then we've heard about this before, just the agencies didn't communicate. It wasn't routine, and they in the documentary you show that they had a little filing cabinet with little files and there was no real way of anybody updating or seeing the progress of any of the information, and there was no coordination to be able to do that in the first place.
That's true, and you know, in a way, Gaysey did some good things. You know now they're the investigation is not himself, but the investigation is still ongoing because they have to identify for or five more victims which they haven't identified. And through that investigation, they found people who were thought to be dead who weren't victims of Gayy,
but he found them alive. So there's that. Plus this nationwide database CODIS and another database were created that stores all the DNA from criminals from this crime scenes, the victims, the offenders. There's all that information now because they learned from the Gaycy case that they needed to do that. And then you know, when I was younger, I remember kids faces and information being put on milk bottles and
milk carts. That was because of Gaycy. All these children were missing, so they said, this is another way that we could spread the news and have you know, the general public hopefully see one of these children and call in and report it.
And also different protocols other than the seventy seventy two hours that they had to wait at that time before somebody could considered missing. So some good things from a very bad thing. Definitely, I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about the John Wayne Gacy murders, Life and death in Chicago for people, this
is a Waterfront Productions. Can you tell us a little bit more details how many episodes, when it was released, and how people can watch this extraordinary film series.
Yes, it's an eight part mini series. It totals almost eight hours, and it was released late September, initially on Blu Ray and DVD, which I'm still selling from my store and that store dot John Borowski dot com. And they come with a limited edition autographed card which is autographed by some of the officials in the case. And then the end of October it was released on Amazon Prime, so you can view it on Amazon Prime for streaming or by the DVD or Blu Ray. And middle of
this year. It's going to be on other channels such as to be in YouTube and some other iTunes and other channel outlets. I just wanted to put out there at first where I was able to control it. So yeah, The John Wayne Gacy Murders. It's on Amazon. The Gasey site is Gaseymurders dot com and my website is Johnbowski dot com.
I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about your film series, The John Wayne Gacy Murders, Life and Death in Chicago. Thank you so much for this interview, and have yourself a great evening and good night.
Thank you, Dan, thank you so much, thank you.
Good night,