John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown Case and the Dark History Behind It

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: [00:00:00] Elizabeth Piet arrived to pick up her 15-year-old son, Robert, who had just finished his shift.

[00:00:06] Kyle Risi: he asked if she minded, hanging on just a couple minutes while he spoke to a man about a possible job.

[00:00:11] Adam Cox: Oh, right.

[00:00:12] Kyle Risi: But Adam, two minutes turned into 10 minutes, which turned into 30 minutes. And when Elizabeth eventually went to see what the holdup was,

[00:00:20] Kyle Risi: Robert was nowhere to be found.

[00:00:22] Kyle Risi: Robert had actually become the final victim of John Wayne Gacy the killer clown.

[00:00:29] Adam Cox: Oh isn't he one of the biggest serial killers in America?

[00:00:34] Kyle Risi: he managed to kill more than 30 men and boys, and then burying them under his house, which he shared with his wife. And two stepdaughters.

[00:00:43] Adam Cox: What?

[00:00:44] Kyle Risi: What I thought I knew about John Wayne Gacy is actually very wrong because he was not going around killing people dressed as a clown.

[00:00:51] Kyle Risi: The reality was far more terrifying, in that he preyed on his victims under the guise of actually a very well-respected, member of the community.

[00:00:58] Kyle Risi: And I think that makes us more [00:01:00] terrifying.

[00:01:00] Adam Cox: I think it does. This isn't someone that's lurking in the dark you just think, God, who else is out there? Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:40] Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:47] Kyle Risi: I am Kyle Reese, your ring master for this week's episode.

[00:01:50] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the lion hairdresser for this week. I make sure those lions have really good style Maines before they go out on [00:02:00] set

[00:02:00] Kyle Risi: Broons.

[00:02:00] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I give them a good old blowout.

[00:02:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it. A blowouts always make you look really great.

[00:02:05] Kyle Risi: What is, it always makes you look really fresh. Yeah, it's fresh. That's the word.

[00:02:09] Adam Cox: Fresh out from the wind.

[00:02:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Standing on Lion's Peak or whatever you call it. Like the wind be blowing, been looking over your kingdom.

[00:02:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. And then, sometimes I set curlers in the night, the day before. Yeah.

[00:02:19] Adam Cox: So I put 'em all to bed

[00:02:20] Kyle Risi: uhhuh

[00:02:20] Adam Cox: with the curlers in Uhhuh and give them a chicken to eat.

[00:02:23] Kyle Risi: It's not very, inclusive because really. You could only satisfy the male firearms. The females are like, there's not really much to work with. How the dynamics have flipped, huh?

[00:02:33] Adam Cox: Story of my life.

[00:02:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. The best we can do, ma'am, is um, put a bow on it. but I'm a girl and that's a blue bow. Eh, that's all we got.

[00:02:41] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:02:42] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:02:43] Adam Cox: Who cares about them? It's all about the line main.

[00:02:45] Kyle Risi: It is, it's true. It's about the men. Guys, if you are new to the show and you want to support us in the absolute best way to support the show and enjoy all of our exclusive perks is of course to pop over to Patreon.

[00:02:57] Kyle Risi: Sign up because it's free. And you'll get access [00:03:00] to next week's episode an entire seven days before anyone else.

[00:03:05] Adam Cox: And for as little as $5 a month, you can become a fellow freak of the show, which will unlock our entire back catalog of us secret episodes. Mm.

[00:03:13] Kyle Risi: Secret, top secret that no one gets to listen to it apart from you.

[00:03:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:17] Kyle Risi: And I wouldn't even recommend you listen to it.

[00:03:20] Adam Cox: Just skip that.

[00:03:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Actually, should we take that bit out?

[00:03:23] Kyle Risi: But Adam, of course, as we always say, every week, the real reason to sign up as a certified freak or a big top tier member is that you get exclusive, one of a kind access to our compendium, key chain people call it. The crotch dangler.

[00:03:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. You just sent out a fresh batch of crotch dangler. Mm-hmm. And so just think if we are really quiet,

[00:03:45] Kyle Risi: can hear him jingling. They say that when two compendium freaks get together, you can actually hear a crotched Angus clang together as they connect.

[00:03:56] Adam Cox: It's beautiful.

[00:03:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah. The jangle is the equivalent of giving two [00:04:00] twins. Like when you're like, oh God, we're pregnant. It's and it's twins. Like, oh God, let's get rid of them. And then you like, what we'll do is we'll give each of them half a medallion, send them off, and then one day they'll come back together and join the medallions together.

[00:04:12] Kyle Risi: It's the same thing, but with the jangle of the key chain.

[00:04:14] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:04:15] Kyle Risi: So, you know, come back together, you've come home.

[00:04:17] Kyle Risi: By the way, when I was sending out the batch of, uh, Crotched Anglers, one of the addresses that I noticed was from a woman, from, Wishaw

[00:04:26] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:04:27] Kyle Risi: Where my mom and my sister live.

[00:04:29] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:04:30] Kyle Risi: She's literally a four minute walk away from my sister's house.

[00:04:34] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:04:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I'm just gonna say her name. Caitlyn. Hi. Hi, Caitlyn.

[00:04:38] Kyle Risi: I'm so excited. I'm wondering if maybe this is the work of my sister and she's like, you should listen to my brother's podcast.

[00:04:45] Kyle Risi: And maybe they know each other

[00:04:46] Adam Cox: doing promo for you.

[00:04:47] Kyle Risi: Maybe. But anyway, we have someone in Wishaw where my parents live. It's great. Anyway, I think we've, I think we've digressed.

[00:04:54] Adam Cox: And so lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. 'cause your [00:05:00] support helps others find us and keeps these amazing stories coming. So they're always in your feed?

[00:05:04] Kyle Risi: Always. Always. Yeah. I think the most important bit there is Just follow us, please.

[00:05:08] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:08] Kyle Risi: So on a Tuesday when the new episode arrives, you get a notification. That's all we care about.

[00:05:13] Adam Cox: Only 20% of our listeners actually follow us, isn't it? Something like that.

[00:05:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Seven people.

[00:05:19] Adam Cox: Let's get that up to 10.

[00:05:20] Kyle Risi: Yay. 10 Adam. That is enough of the housekeeping, because today on the compendium, we're diving into an assembly of myth versus reality, where the most famous version of the story is not actually the most terrifying one.

[00:05:37] Adam Cox: So it's the other version. Mm-hmm.

[00:05:39] Kyle Risi: The reality.

[00:05:40] Adam Cox: Ah,

[00:05:40] Kyle Risi: Adam. At 9:00 PM on the 11th of December, 1978, Elizabeth Piet arrived at the Nissan Pharmacy in this plains just outside Chicago. She was there to pick up her 15-year-old son, Robert, who had just finished his shift.

[00:05:56] Kyle Risi: As Robert came outside to Elizabeth, he asked if she minded, hanging [00:06:00] on just a couple minutes while he spoke to a man about a possible job.

[00:06:03] Kyle Risi: One that apparently paid double than what he was earning at the moment. $5. So he was earning $2 50. It's crazy. This is 1978.

[00:06:12] Adam Cox: Is that kind of like average with back then?

[00:06:13] Kyle Risi: I guess so, but he was like, my $5 mom, that's wild. I've gotta do this.

[00:06:19] Kyle Risi: But even though this was a great opportunity, Elizabeth was actually celebrating her 46th birthday that day and she wanted to get home to start the celebrations, but in the end it is $5. $5 is $5, right? Mm-hmm. Just like our key chain.

[00:06:32] Kyle Risi: So she reluctantly agreed, especially since he said he was only gonna be two minutes.

[00:06:36] Kyle Risi: But Adam, two minutes turned into 10 minutes, which turned into 30 minutes. And when Elizabeth eventually went to see what the holdup was, Robert was actually nowhere to be found.

[00:06:46] Kyle Risi: And it just didn't make sense to her. If Robert had left the premises, surely she would've seen him leave like she was only in the car park, right?

[00:06:54] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:55] Kyle Risi: Eventually, Elizabeth, she cuts her losses. She went home. Looking forward to telling Robert off for [00:07:00] just leaving her in the lurch in the car park, right?

[00:07:02] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:02] Kyle Risi: On her 46th birthday. That's mean. When she got home, the only people in the house were her husband Ken and her daughter Kerry.

[00:07:09] Kyle Risi: Both equally annoyed that she was now also late for her birthday party. She of course, explained what had happened, and from there the family set out to try and find Robert.

[00:07:19] Kyle Risi: But Adam, by 11:30 PM when Robert still hadn't turned up, Elizabeth and Ken drove to the Des Plaines police department to report Robert missing.

[00:07:27] Kyle Risi: What Elizabeth didn't know was that Robert had actually become the final victim of who the world has come to know now as John Wayne Gacy the killer clown.

[00:07:39] Adam Cox: Oh yeah, I have heard about this guy. Isn't he one of the biggest serial killers in America?

[00:07:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Like at the time when he went on trial, this is the most people anyone had been convicted of killing.

[00:07:53] Adam Cox: Oh, right.

[00:07:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So it's pretty crazy at the time. And it wasn't even that long ago, it was only 1980. So, [00:08:00] I mean, I'm sure that record has been broken, especially by the likes of Harold Chapman. Who's killed upwards of 280 people.

[00:08:05] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. But in America at the time, that was like crazy.

[00:08:08] Adam Cox: So how many or can you reveal? Yeah.

[00:08:10] Kyle Risi: I can 33 people.

[00:08:12] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:08:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But what do you actually know about the story?

[00:08:16] Adam Cox: Well aside from him being a clown, 'cause he is called the Killer Clown, right?

[00:08:19] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. And isn't that where American Horror Story, season four of Freak Show, it always turns up in these episodes.

[00:08:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:08:25] Adam Cox: Is that where the Killer Clown was inspired from him in real life?

[00:08:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Twisty. His name was Twisty the Clown.

[00:08:31] Adam Cox: Ah, in real life or in the show?

[00:08:33] Kyle Risi: Oh, in the show.

[00:08:34] Adam Cox: Okay. Yes.

[00:08:34] Kyle Risi: So yeah.

[00:08:35] Kyle Risi: And he was kidnapping kids and that was directly inspired by the story of John Wayne Gacy.

[00:08:40] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:08:41] Kyle Risi: But I also didn't really know too much about John Wayne Gacy until this week, if I'm honest. And Adam, I have to tell you, this is a really disturbing story.

[00:08:49] Adam Cox: Oh no.

[00:08:49] Kyle Risi: But what is interesting is what I thought I knew about John Wayne Gacy and his crimes is actually very wrong because his image has sort of been flattened down into this image of this notorious killer clown, [00:09:00] right? Mm-hmm.

[00:09:00] Kyle Risi: This is what you knew, right? You know very little about the story, but yet that's the thing that stood out.

[00:09:05] Kyle Risi: you can totally see why like the notion of a clown going around killing kids is a terrifying one. Clowns are meant to be these fun, safe, ridiculous personalities, especially around children, so the image of one murdering people is horrifying.

[00:09:18] Kyle Risi: And so this is the angle that led much the reporting around the story of John Wayne Gacy winner first erupted.

[00:09:26] Kyle Risi: But Adam, the reality was that John Wayne Gacy was not actually going around killing people dressed as a clown.

[00:09:32] Kyle Risi: It is true that he was a clown, but only towards the end of like his killing Rampage. But there is no solid evidence whatsoever that he used Pogo the clown to stalk and hunt his victims.

[00:09:43] Adam Cox: So was it just like a side hustle that he was a clown or that was just his job?

[00:09:48] Kyle Risi: It was a side hustle,

[00:09:49] Adam Cox: right?

[00:09:49] Kyle Risi: That's the best way to describe it. 'cause he did a lot of stuff right. But it is an aspect that the press really into, which ends up inspiring a whole genre of horror from Stephen King's Killer Clown Pennywise in the IT [00:10:00] novels. Mm-hmm. You got twisty, the killer clown from American Horror Story as you amazingly picked out as well.

[00:10:05] Kyle Risi: In fact, Adam, the data suggests that in the aftermath of this case, there is a real observable correlation between the story and the rising fear of clowns across America. This is kind of where people think that this might have come from.

[00:10:19] Adam Cox: I was gonna say up until this point where people quite happy with clowns, they just turned up at kids' parties. They, honked their nose and did whatever, and then this story got out and this is where

[00:10:28] Kyle Risi: I think, so I think for a time, but then I also think there's an element of pineapple and pizza, whereby a few people kicked off about it, it went viral, and then all of a sudden everyone just hates pineapple and pizza.

[00:10:39] Kyle Risi: But I have to say, I fucking love pineapple and pizza.

[00:10:42] Adam Cox: Do you know what? With the right kind of ham,

[00:10:44] Kyle Risi: It has to be a salty ham.

[00:10:45] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:10:46] Adam Cox: And maybe a little bit of chili.

[00:10:48] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:48] Adam Cox: It's okay.

[00:10:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And we know that because we experimented. We gotta experiment, guys.

[00:10:53] Adam Cox: It was college.

[00:10:54] Kyle Risi: Oh, you mean you gotta experiment like college?

[00:10:58] Adam Cox: [00:11:00] Yeah,

[00:11:00] Kyle Risi: but Adam, the reality was far more terrifying in that he preyed on his victims under the guise of actually a very well-respected, upstanding member of the community. He was like John Wayne Gacy was a businessman. He was active in local politics, very well known in the community, apparently reliable, very charming, overly charming in fact.

[00:11:19] Kyle Risi: Which is yet another reminder that evil more often than not, lurks amongst us in plain sight. And I think that makes us more terrifying.

[00:11:26] Adam Cox: Do you know what I've come to learn? There's three types of killers, the really like rough and ready. Mm-hmm. Ones that you, one, yeah.

[00:11:33] Kyle Risi: Like a cloud.

[00:11:35] Adam Cox: Then you've got the ones that just hide in plain sight. They're like the family men.

[00:11:38] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:38] Adam Cox: And then you've got these really charming, like, well, to do maybe high flying people.

[00:11:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Ted Bundy would probably be in between those two. I don't think he was too high flying, but he was very intelligent, charming, really good looking with the ladies when we did the Hillside Stranglers as well. Both of those boys. Apart from, I think it was it Angelo, the first guy he was really attractive and charming. In fact, they used him as the way to lure the women in.

[00:11:59] Adam Cox: Yes. [00:12:00] Yeah.

[00:12:00] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, it goes that John Wayne Gacy led this double life in a system though that kept failing to stop him. And it's because of how he presented himself to the world. The magnitude of what John Wayne gated did. Adam is just wild. Here's the thing. His killing period was just a little over six years, and yet he managed to kill more than 30 men and boys, sexually assaulting them before murdering them, and then burying them under his house, which he shared with his wife. And two stepdaughters.

[00:12:31] Adam Cox: What? So was he closeted then?

[00:12:33] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yeah, he was gay.

[00:12:35] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:12:37] Kyle Risi: Oh, well take that back.

[00:12:38] Adam Cox: I just noticed

[00:12:40] Kyle Risi: That sounds weird.

[00:12:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he's gay.

[00:12:43] Adam Cox: I just mean like, wow, that guy's got a lot going on.

[00:12:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So much going on. Especially when you consider the other things that he was doing in his life as well. Yet he was killing all these people as well.

[00:12:53] Adam Cox: Okay. Wow.

[00:12:54] Kyle Risi: So Adam, today on the compendium, I'm gonna tell you the horrific story of John Wayne Gacy, [00:13:00] not so much the killer clown that the media would have you believe.

[00:13:03] Kyle Risi: Instead, we'll find out who the real John Wayne Gacy was, the scale of the horror of what he did, but also how he was able to get away with what he did for so long, all while hiding in plain sight.

[00:13:16] Adam Cox: Okay. I am ready to be educated.

[00:13:19] Kyle Risi: Educated and horrified.

[00:13:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. It sounds like it might be a bit of a hard listen

[00:13:23] Kyle Risi: and, um, there are a lot of, obviously victims. And I'm also not gonna go into the gruesome details. There will be some horrifying aspects of this. Mm-hmm. Which your imagination will definitely run wild with you, but we're not going to obviously go and cover every single one. We're only in like an hour podcast, which goes on for an hour and a half many times. So we can't cover them all.

[00:13:42] Adam Cox: Thanks to you.

[00:13:44] Kyle Risi: So I actually kind of, sort of did what you did in your stories actually, where I start with the last victim and then bounce back to the beginning.

[00:13:50] Kyle Risi: Because what you've just heard with Robert Strange disappearance is actually the moment where everything starts to fall apart. For John Wayne Gacy, Elizabeth has just walked into [00:14:00] the Des Plaines police department and has reported her son Robert missing.

[00:14:04] Kyle Risi: And what is interesting, Adam, is that the moment she reports him missing is very much the outlier experience in the story in that the lieutenant on duty, a guy called Joseph Coza, actually agrees that the situation seems concerning, especially because Robert had said that he would only be a couple minutes.

[00:14:21] Adam Cox: So John must have been very quick at capturing or kidnapping the boy, right?

[00:14:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It must have been just within a couple minutes, right? Because after 30 minutes he was not on that site. Mm-hmm. He was not in that car park. And what I mean by being an outlier in the story is that so often we hear cops call the same old kind of rehearse line, right?

[00:14:38] Kyle Risi: Like it's only been a few hours, come back in a couple days, for example. And you're like, um, my son said he'd be two minutes. He is not there.

[00:14:45] Adam Cox: Something's up.

[00:14:45] Kyle Risi: From what Joseph could see, Elizabeth and Ken, they were respectful middle class parents. Robert clearly came from a good family.

[00:14:51] Kyle Risi: And so for probably Adam, the only time in the story the police treat this missing report with the urgency that sadly none of the other [00:15:00] reports received.

[00:15:00] Kyle Risi: So after speaking to his team, Lieutenant Joseph Kak decides that he's gonna look into it. He starts by speaking to Robert's boss. He's a guy named Phil Toff at the Nissan Pharmacy Since he was likely the last person to have seen Robert. Right. Phil tells Joseph that a contractor named John Wayne Gacy had been carrying out work at the pharmacy. And if Robert had said that he was going off to speak to someone about a potential laboring job, this was likely the guy.

[00:15:29] Kyle Risi: So Lieutenant Joseph. Cousin Zach, he tracks down John Wayne Gacy. He asked him if he would mind coming down to the station for just a chat. But by 11:00 PM that night, John still hasn't turned up to the police station. Just as Joseph was getting ready to leave, the phone rang and it was John. He apologized saying that he was having car trouble and asked if he still wanted him to come in.

[00:15:52] Kyle Risi: And Joseph was like, um, yes. Yeah. When can you get here?

[00:15:55] Adam Cox: Why would that excuse you? Just 'cause you got car issues.

[00:15:57] Kyle Risi: Exactly. I think it's 'cause it was so late at night.

[00:15:59] Kyle Risi: Right, [00:16:00] Right.

[00:16:00] Kyle Risi: To which John said that yes, I could be there with him the next 30 minutes, but that two hours go by and John Wayne Gacy still hasn't turned up.

[00:16:06] Kyle Risi: And by this point Joseph has decided to go home for the night. It's not until three 20 that morning that John finally arrives at the station.

[00:16:15] Adam Cox: Has he been doing some cleanup? I feel

[00:16:17] Kyle Risi: the officer on duty remembers him being covered in wet mud all over his clothes and his shoes. So whatever he did to get that filthy must have happened within the last couple hours.

[00:16:29] Adam Cox: That's weird.

[00:16:31] Kyle Risi: The officer tells John to come back in the morning, and when he does, they hand out the usual line of questioning, which ends up with John basically saying he doesn't know anything about Robert's disappearance.

[00:16:39] Kyle Risi: And at the time, the cops have no reason to not believe what he's saying. On the surface, he seems like a very decent guy.

[00:16:46] Kyle Risi: They knew he was very active in the community. He was a local business owner, part of like Adam, multiple groups around town, and by all accounts, the man answering their questions was extremely charismatic standing in front of them.

[00:16:58] Kyle Risi: But Lieutenant Joseph [00:17:00] Kza does something that seems like no other detective in this story seems to have done.

[00:17:05] Kyle Risi: He decides to do a basic follow-up check. And when he does, he finds something very concerning, something that just does not line up with the upstanding member of the community persona that was sitting in front of him just hours before.

[00:17:16] Kyle Risi: And that was that John Wayne Gacy had previously served time in Iowa for the sodomy of a 15-year-old boy when he himself was just 26 years old.

[00:17:25] Adam Cox: Oh, so he is got a record. Then

[00:17:27] Kyle Risi: he has a record that Adam, and again, this is the end of this story, essentially. No other cop, no other reports of a missing boy has ever picked this up.

[00:17:39] Adam Cox: But then has he been questioned before on other missing people?

[00:17:43] Kyle Risi: He has, yes.

[00:17:44] Adam Cox: Oh, so this isn't even the first time.

[00:17:46] Kyle Risi: It's not No.

[00:17:47] Kyle Risi: And so Joseph thinking that basically this must be a different John Wayne Gacy, he looks a little bit deeper and he also finds another outstanding charge for battery from Chicago.

[00:17:57] Kyle Risi: So with just these two pieces of information, the picture [00:18:00] already seems very different to the one that John Wayne Gacy at painted for himself when he was being questioned.

[00:18:04] Kyle Risi: And so Lieutenant Joseph Cousins act decide that John Wayne Gacy needed to be looked into with even more detail with a finer comb.

[00:18:13] Kyle Risi: And this basically is a moment that ends up finally bringing John Wayne Gacy down. What Joseph will uncover is that John Wayne Gacy may have been responsible for murdering as many as 33 people between the years 1972 and 1978.

[00:18:29] Kyle Risi: That is Adam, a period of just six years, mostly young men who John sexually assaulted before murdering and then often burying them beneath his house. Isn't that just terrifying?

[00:18:40] Adam Cox: I find it strange that no one, if he's been questioned before

[00:18:43] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:18:44] Adam Cox: And no one's picked up on this. Like, how hard did this detective have to just look into his past?

[00:18:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:18:50] Adam Cox: Or are all these other, officers that have been on this case or other cases have just gone when they've questioned him? Oh, he's a good man of the community businessman. not gonna really look into it,

[00:18:59] Kyle Risi: [00:19:00] Adam. It is a bunch of things, like the reason it took so many victims before detectives finally started connecting the dots was partly because of who his victims were,

[00:19:07] Kyle Risi: many of them were class as runaways, or they were young gay men who frankly, people did not care enough about at the time.

[00:19:15] Kyle Risi: But crucially, it was also largely down to how John Wayne Gacy presented himself to the world.

[00:19:20] Kyle Risi: But another major factor, probably the biggest one, is the idea of a centralized police database that just didn't exist, you couldn't easily link a case across state jurisdictions, which is something John absolutely took advantage of.

[00:19:33] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:34] Kyle Risi: But the important thing was that Lieutenant Joseph Cozak has now connected a couple of dots, and it is this that pushes him to now dig deeper.

[00:19:43] Kyle Risi: And so Joseph gets a warrant to search John's house in the bins in his kitchen. He finds a receipt, right for a roll of film that has been developed and processed at the Nissan Pharmacy, the same pharmacy that John had been renovating, and also the same pharmacy that Robert was [00:20:00] working on, right? So it makes sense that, oh, I've a roll of film. Let me get this developed.

[00:20:03] Kyle Risi: The wild thing is, is that the receipt is not even a big deal to the cops. They almost just left it in the bin, like it just wasn't on their radar. They're not even sure if it's even evidence. It's only by chance when they show the receipt to Robert's family that they confirm that it actually belonged to a friend of Robert's who had asked him to get the film developed at work.

[00:20:22] Kyle Risi: And so by a brilliant stroke of luck, Adam, this is the only thing that firmly links Robert to John's house, and they almost missed it.

[00:20:31] Adam Cox: Just a receipt.

[00:20:33] Kyle Risi: Only a receipt. Isn't that crazy?

[00:20:35] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's got nobody's name or any details on that, so they're just, I can't believe that was, that was the link.

[00:20:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. A single link that you could have easily just missed. Mm. And that's the thing about the story is that there's so many clues that are there, but people just don't look at it with more detail.

[00:20:48] Kyle Risi: And again, like I said, this is the moment that John gets busted, and yet the chance of them linking that receipt to John is just so small if they hadn't, John Wayne Gacy would've probably [00:21:00] gone to kill even more people.

[00:21:01] Kyle Risi: But as well as the receipts, the cops also find a main West High School graduation ring it didn't belong to Robert, but it is strange to the cops because John didn't actually go to Main West High, and as far as he could tell, he didn't have any sons that were living in the house with him.

[00:21:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:18] Kyle Risi: Even with his receipt, Adam is still not enough to conclusively tie John to Rob's disappearance.

[00:21:24] Kyle Risi: And so the police needed something else. And so Joseph instructs the cops to start following him to see what he does next.

[00:21:30] Kyle Risi: What is wild is that John is very much aware that the police are following him to the point, Adam, that he invites them out to lunch on multiple occasions.

[00:21:42] Adam Cox: So I was gonna say like he knows that they've got this receipt, right?

[00:21:45] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Or they've been to his house.

[00:21:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[00:21:47] Adam Cox: they're onto him.

[00:21:47] Kyle Risi: He knows they're onto him.

[00:21:48] Adam Cox: So what now he's just gonna show that he's got like nothing to hide.

[00:21:52] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. You are so right there. Yes. So this is either a very risky game that he's playing or he's been very strategic saying, look, you're wasting your time with [00:22:00] me. I have nothing to hide.

[00:22:01] Kyle Risi: Or Adam, he genuinely thinks that he's smarter than the police and that he will get away with this, that he can cover his tracks up. And we know it's the latter because eventually it turns out that they weren't wasting their time at all.

[00:22:12] Kyle Risi: So while the cops are following, John Joseph starts digging into John's background, which pretty quickly makes him very certain that he was indeed responsible for Robert's disappearance.

[00:22:24] Adam Cox: Okay. So what does he find?

[00:22:25] Kyle Risi: So lemme tell you a bit about John, shall we?

[00:22:28] Kyle Risi: So he is born John Wayne Gacy on the 17th of March, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. He is the second child of John and Marian Gacy. Just like we've seen from a lot of killers, his childhood, Adam, it's wrought with abuse and incivility. His father is a raging alcoholic

[00:22:44] Kyle Risi: with John, his siblings, and his mother obviously burying the brunt of his violent temper, which included Adam, systematic abuse, both physically and sexually.

[00:22:52] Adam Cox: Really.

[00:22:53] Kyle Risi: It's awful.

[00:22:54] Adam Cox: So this is another kind of learned behavior then, is what we're saying?

[00:22:56] Kyle Risi: It could be. It's not to say that everyone who comes from an abusive [00:23:00] family ends up like this, but uh Yeah, of course.

[00:23:01] Kyle Risi: It certainly seems to be a pattern, doesn't it?

[00:23:03] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:04] Kyle Risi: When John is finally arrested, he talks a lot about his childhood. One of the things that he vividly remembers is how his father would spend hours by himself in the basement, and the whole family were always forbidden from going down there.

[00:23:15] Kyle Risi: And John says that he would often hear different voices coming from down there. So his father had other people down there with him, and they weren't friends. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been all the secrecy, right? He would've seen them coming through the house or whatever.

[00:23:28] Kyle Risi: At the end of the night, he would then come up stinking drunk and would routinely assault the whole family.

[00:23:35] Kyle Risi: He says that most days they spent living in fear of that moment when he finally stumbled up from the basement. That one time he beat his mother so badly that he knocked her teeth out, chased her into the street, and then when he caught her, just continued to attack her with no regard. Who was watching?

[00:23:50] Adam Cox: That is crazy.

[00:23:52] Kyle Risi: He just didn't care.

[00:23:53] Adam Cox: That is a very violent man. And like I'm guessing, did he ever get arrested? People are too scared to leave. He's [00:24:00] like the breadwinner. So they're trapped in this scenario. I guess

[00:24:03] Kyle Risi: we're also like talking in the forties and fifties as well. Different dynamic the man is in control of the household and it's a domestic issue of very often police would turn a blind eye to it. Mm-hmm. I don't know the dynamics of it, but it sounds horrific.

[00:24:14] Kyle Risi: Now, when John Gacy turns 18, he gets really into politics, specifically the local Democrats for a time.

[00:24:20] Kyle Risi: And he hoped that maybe one day this would lead to a career.

[00:24:23] Kyle Risi: But by 20 Adam, the desperation to just get away from the abuse causes him to run away. It's after he falls behind on a car payment that he owes to his dad. His dad ends up taking the keys away, which basically cuts him off from the only escape that he has from that house.

[00:24:37] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And so one day he's just like, fuck it. He steals a car. He knows that he's gonna get an absolute beating if he comes back. And so he just decides that he's gonna run away to Vegas.

[00:24:47] Kyle Risi: When he gets there, he does the responsible thing and he gambles away all the money that he's got.

[00:24:53] Adam Cox: Of course you're in Vegas, right?

[00:24:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think he goes to like $136. He spends most of it on like [00:25:00] motels and petrol getting there. He rides $25 and he is like, well maybe put it all on black. Maybe I'll

[00:25:05] Adam Cox: Yeah, you could turn that into something, right?

[00:25:07] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:25:07] Kyle Risi: So he ends up sleeping in his car, which in Nevada is actually really dangerous because it's brutally hot even in the morning.

[00:25:14] Kyle Risi: So he goes to bed at night, he wakes up, it's like 9:00 AM the sun is beating into his car and he gets heat stroke. He ends up passing out. By the time he wakes up, he's already in an ambulance.

[00:25:24] Kyle Risi: Someone has called an ambulance for him.

[00:25:26] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:25:26] Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, he is got no way of actually paying for it.

[00:25:30] Adam Cox: Oh, and this is probably, was this before they even had like emergency kind of care like this?

[00:25:35] Kyle Risi: I have no idea. But the point is that he has to pay for this ambulance. He's like, let me out, let me out. They're like, we've already given you treatments. You're on your way to the hospital. Too late. You were passed out, you shouldn't have passed out.

[00:25:43] Kyle Risi: It's like,

[00:25:44] Adam Cox: I can't control that. You should have left me.

[00:25:48] Kyle Risi: So to pay off his debts to the hospital, he offers to wash ambulances, but for whatever reason you apparently have to be like 21 in order to do that.

[00:25:55] Kyle Risi: So instead, someone at the hospital, they find him work at a local [00:26:00] mortuary. And Adam, it is here that apparently one night when John is all alone. He gets this urge to climb into one of the coffins containing the body of a young boy, like a teenage boy. Right. He says that the experience leaves him with erection.

[00:26:15] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:26:15] Kyle Risi: Which actually frightens him. And I guess maybe it made him realize that he was perhaps gay.

[00:26:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. But with a dead man, A dead boy.

[00:26:23] Kyle Risi: Do you reckon it could be like necrophilia?

[00:26:25] Adam Cox: Ah,

[00:26:26] Kyle Risi: I don't think it is a necrophilia. I think it is just that he's,

[00:26:29] Adam Cox: he's just with or close to another

[00:26:32] Kyle Risi: boy,

[00:26:32] Adam Cox: boy. Yeah. But even still one teenage boy. Yeah. Which sounds like he's younger than 16.

[00:26:38] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:39] Adam Cox: And he's dead.

[00:26:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. So that's still not okay.

[00:26:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. I think he even arranges the body on top of him.

[00:26:44] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:26:45] Kyle Risi: And it just freaks him out. Either way, him being this freaked out results in him calling his mom to ask whether or not their dad will allow him to come back home.

[00:26:53] Kyle Risi: And stroke of luck. He does. And so he goes back to Chicago. He's just like, I can't deal with this.

[00:26:59] Adam Cox: So he's, [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Kyle Risi: it's definitely woken something up in him, hasn't it?

[00:27:01] Adam Cox: It's something I, yeah. I dunno what to make of that.

[00:27:05] Kyle Risi: No, it is freaky, isn't it?

[00:27:06] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:06] Kyle Risi: But it is a key detail in the story because back in Illinois, John eventually enrolls at Northwestern Business College, and he ends up graduating in 1963 where he takes a job as a trainee at a shoe company.

[00:27:18] Kyle Risi: Adam, a year later, he manages to rise up department manager and is here that he actually meets a woman called Marilyn Meyers.

[00:27:25] Kyle Risi: And soon after this, they start dating. And so on the surface, he's really turned a corner. He is in the process of building a respectful life for himself despite the abuse that he grew up with.

[00:27:35] Kyle Risi: So this is the thing, like we always say oh, people who end up killing people, they come from a real broken home, but he actually seems to kind of like be dealing with a well, like, in spite of everything that I've been through, I'm actually well adjusted. I'm actually really smart, clever. I look sharp. I'm got a bit of a business kind of mind on me. And he, he seems to be coming out of it.

[00:27:52] Adam Cox: Yeah. Which I'm sure a lot of people can do, but I'm guessing that's, there's still something inherently flawed within him. [00:28:00] Right? Well, we

[00:28:00] Kyle Risi: know that, don't

[00:28:00] Adam Cox: we? Yeah. He's just caught an erection over a, a dead

[00:28:03] Adam Cox: Person.

[00:28:03] Kyle Risi: Problematic.

[00:28:05] Adam Cox: That's your first quote.

[00:28:07] Kyle Risi: But here's the thing about him, which will kind of change your tune. He is extremely image conscious. there's something very performative about almost everything that he does. The best way to describe him is to say that he's the classic salesman type, always looking the part, talking the talk.

[00:28:21] Kyle Risi: He's also really extremely arrogant as well, like people who know him say that he is a blowhard, someone who would talk endlessly at you and always about himself.

[00:28:31] Adam Cox: Okay. So he loves himself a little

[00:28:33] Kyle Risi: bit. Yeah. And that's what I mean. The best way to sum him up is that salesman person, we've all worked with him.

[00:28:37] Kyle Risi: We all know them, you know?

[00:28:39] Kyle Risi: So eventually after six months of dating Marilyn in 1964, they get married and after the wedding they end up moving to Waterloo in Iowa, where Marilyn's father sets John up as a manager of three of his KFC restaurants. And Adam is not a bad gig for a 22-year-old because he's earning the equivalent of about [00:29:00] $130,000 a year by today's standards.

[00:29:01] Adam Cox: Damn.

[00:29:02] Kyle Risi: At 22.

[00:29:03] Adam Cox: I dunno what I was, I don't even think I was working.

[00:29:06] Adam Cox: I was unemployed.

[00:29:07] Kyle Risi: And one of the first things that he does as manager he sets up a sort of clubhouse in one of the basements of the restaurants for his employees, mostly teenagers. And he wants to create somewhere where they can hang out, they can play pool, but of course Adam, this is somewhere where John is able to apply them with alcohol and then make sexual advances on them.

[00:29:25] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:29:26] Kyle Risi: he would do this thing where like if you tried it on and you rejected him, he would guess like you and ~kind of ~say that he was joking, would tell you that you were just imagining it.

[00:29:34] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess is he is trying to like, 'cause one at that time, obviously being gay obviously was against,

[00:29:39] Kyle Risi: it's all taps and symbols, isn't it?

[00:29:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And like hanky chiefs and like clues and like, oh, brush your hand a little bit.

[00:29:45] Adam Cox: Yeah. So he's trying

[00:29:46] Kyle Risi: to like touch your penis, flick it.

[00:29:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. All those things.

[00:29:49] Kyle Risi: Oh, that not, is that not okay?

[00:29:51] Adam Cox: He's trying to suss that out, which, fair enough. If you are closeted. Yes. But I then obviously gaslighting someone and being abusive to them.

[00:29:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's [00:30:00] it. So it seems pretty clear that he is obviously keen to explore whatever that thing was that awoke in him when he got into that coffin, in that mortuary, which is gross.

[00:30:08] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:08] Kyle Risi: Around the same time, John also joins the local junior chamber, which is a not-for-profit organization focused on teaching business development management skills and networking for kind of people, mostly boys between the ages of 18 and 40 years old, which sounds noble, but Adam in practice, it's quite literally a boys club because rather than focusing on what the junior chambers were supposed to do, members just sit around watching porn or they would hire sex workers and for some, they used the chamber as like a swingers club where they would literally bring their wives and just swap their wives around.

[00:30:42] Adam Cox: So it's a bit like a brothel.

[00:30:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. This is like a not-for-profit charity. Why not?

[00:30:51] Adam Cox: I, yeah. I don't know any charities like that.

[00:30:53] Kyle Risi: No, but goddamn one out and because John just three KFC [00:31:00] restaurants, he often supplies the food like to these little events, which is a gross image of him all just sitting around wanking eating greasy chicken with their greasy chicken fingers.

[00:31:10] Kyle Risi: It is so rank

[00:31:12] Adam Cox: his little lemon wet wipes. They don't go far enough.

[00:31:15] Kyle Risi: Yuck. Oops. eventually, he starts insisting people. That's his colleagues and his staff. So call him the colonel.

[00:31:23] Adam Cox: Oh God.

[00:31:23] Kyle Risi: It just, I don't know what, there's nothing wrong with that sentence, but I don't know, it just in this context, it just makes you feel a bit sick.

[00:31:29] Adam Cox: I feel like he's slimy. Yes. And just, I don't want him near me.

[00:31:33] Kyle Risi: And as time goes on, John rises quickly through the ranks at the junior chamber and like, it really doesn't take long either. He is voted in as vice president within like a year, and he's 23 at this point.

[00:31:45] Adam Cox: Wow. He's doing well for himself in that respect.

[00:31:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And again, it's all down to how he talks and how he presents himself. He can talk the talk, walk the walk. He comes across credible, he says plays chicken.

[00:31:57] Adam Cox: Oh, John, with the chicken.

[00:31:58] Kyle Risi: Oh. We just got a little something there. Let me dab that [00:32:00] up for you. at one point he's even recognized as the third most outstanding JC member or colleague in the entire state of I. So he. He's good at this and again, like I said, it's mostly people skills. He knows how to talk.

[00:32:13] Kyle Risi: But it's a couple years after this that things start to take a turn for him. Right? His little clubhouse in the KFC basement results in him sexually assaulting two boys after they end up rejecting him. Amazingly. The first is actually the son of another junior chamber member that he works with, so that's his colleague.

[00:32:32] Adam Cox: That's really risky.

[00:32:33] Kyle Risi: Apparently John lured him back to his house with a promise of showing him a porno movie, which he then got him drunk and then he basically assaulted him.

[00:32:41] Kyle Risi: The other boy, he assaults is one of his employees. John basically offers to drive him home after his shift one night, and then they magically end up at his house where again, John shows him a porno.

[00:32:52] Kyle Risi: He gets him drunk. And then during the assault, John ends up choking him until he's almost unconscious. [00:33:00] When the boy finally comes round, John is like, sorry, I didn't think that would hurt. And then, um, he drives him home.

[00:33:06] Adam Cox: And what do these boys do? Do they report him

[00:33:09] Kyle Risi: Adam? Some of them do. Some of them don't.

[00:33:11] Kyle Risi: And we'll explain why in a minute.

[00:33:13] Adam Cox: Horrific. Is that kind of like shame almost?

[00:33:15] Kyle Risi: Yes, that's exactly it. Not just for these boys, but also to their families. Mm-hmm. At a time when being gay or like being involved in something like this is a little bit shameful.

[00:33:23] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:33:24] Kyle Risi: But here's the thing. Surprise, surprise. A few days later, John fires the boy, which I guess is because things are probably a bit awkward around the friars, right?

[00:33:32] Adam Cox: Well, that's an understatement. I would not even wanna work with this guy.

[00:33:37] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's crazy.

[00:33:38] Kyle Risi: But the detail that makes this especially disturbing is, where the fuck is Marilyn? While all this is going on, right? This is at his house.

[00:33:46] Adam Cox: Oh, yeah.

[00:33:47] Kyle Risi: Turns out Adam, Marilyn is in hospital giving birth to their second child.

[00:33:52] Adam Cox: Oh. So while she is away,

[00:33:54] Kyle Risi: yeah. Away giving birth, doing the most beautiful thing a woman can do.

[00:33:58] Adam Cox: He's getting his [00:34:00] jollies from attacking his workers?

[00:34:01] Kyle Risi: It's gross. So in the story of John Wayne Gacy, these are the first two known physical assaults that he carries out. And these were actually the charges that Lieutenant Joseph Cousins act first uncovered. That was the sodomy charge and also the, the battery charge that was with these two boys.

[00:34:17] Adam Cox: Oh, so they did report it then?

[00:34:19] Kyle Risi: So these two boys did? Yes, but others didn't.

[00:34:21] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:22] Kyle Risi: Apparently the first boy told his dad what had happened. That his colleague basically had attacked him. And so he goes to the police and eventually John is charged with sodomy of a 15-year-old boy.

[00:34:32] Kyle Risi: When the news ends up spreading throughout the town, more boys start coming forward saying similar things that happened to them. Of course, this is massively damaging to his reputation. And so to get ahead of this, John insists to the police that he take a lie detector test, which he fails twice. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's do a doo. But I wasn't ready. Yeah. And I'm like, do it again. Do it again.

[00:34:55] Adam Cox: I'll do it right this time.

[00:34:56] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And they're like, sir, you failed again. [00:35:00] Sorry.

[00:35:00] Kyle Risi: And Adam, when I say he failed, I mean he failed hard. Apparently the only question he got right was his name.

[00:35:06] Adam Cox: What else was he asked?

[00:35:08] Kyle Risi: Just all sorts of things, but he failed every single one of them.

[00:35:10] Adam Cox: What does his wife make of this? Like he's just had another child.

[00:35:14] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Of course. Of course. Marilyn seems to have a little bit sense because you will eventually divorce him, right?

Mm-hmm.

[00:35:19] Adam Cox: And what he's 23, 24 at this point?

[00:35:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. And the reason the sentence is so heavy is because the court ordered a psychiatric evaluation of him and the results basically said that he a, was not remorseful. That he continued to deny all responsibility and instead presented himself as a victim of circumstance in this.

[00:35:38] Adam Cox: How is he the victim?

[00:35:39] Kyle Risi: But that's how he saw it. And based on that, they deemed that he was very likely to offend. And so the judge this early on saw this for what this was, and he made the decision to sentence him to 10 years in prison, saying the sentence is intended to make certain that for a period of time you cannot seek out teenage boys to solicit them for immoral [00:36:00] behavior of any kind.

[00:36:01] Adam Cox: That is the right thing, right? I think the judge could clearly see that yeah, he would attack again.

[00:36:07] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:08] Adam Cox: And I felt like that, the law, the justice system was doing the right thing.

Ad Break 1

[00:36:12] Kyle Risi: But here's a really maddening thing though, is that sentence is based on the court's view that he will probably re-offend, right? But the prison system, Adam, is not the same as the court system. They operate completely independently. And so, because John is basically a model inmate, they parole him after 18 months.

[00:36:29] Adam Cox: And that's just him probably talking the talk, schmoozing, all that sort of stuff, which we know he's good at.

[00:36:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But it's not just that. It's also being well behaved.

[00:36:36] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:36:37] Kyle Risi: Of course. While he's in prison, Marilyn, she gets a sense, she divorces him. She takes the kids. I don't think he ever sees him again either. Oh

[00:36:43] Adam Cox: really?

[00:36:44] Kyle Risi: And so when he's released, he can't exactly stay in town since now obviously he's a pariah. And so in 1970, John moves back to Chicago to live with his mother. God knows what he must have told her. I don't even know. She even knows the full story.

[00:36:57] Kyle Risi: Of course, one of the conditions of each [00:37:00] probation is that he stayed the fuck away from teenage boys.

[00:37:03] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:37:03] Kyle Risi: just a few months after being released in February, 1971, John sees a boy hanging around the bus station and offers to drive him home.

[00:37:10] Kyle Risi: I'm not sure if he spotted doing this or if he attacked the boy and then the boy reported him. But it's a direct violation of his probation. So it looks like he's about to go back to jail, but when it comes to his hearing, the boy actually doesn't show up in court and so the judge drops the charges.

[00:37:28] Kyle Risi: Isn't that wild?

[00:37:29] Adam Cox: So he doesn't show up. Yeah. Is that 'cause he's missing?

[00:37:31] Kyle Risi: He's not missing. No. Again, it's that probably that shame factor.

[00:37:35] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:35] Kyle Risi: That we talks about.

[00:37:36] Adam Cox: Or he is paid someone to scare him off. 'cause he is done that before John

[00:37:39] Kyle Risi: has possibly and we just don't know about it.

[00:37:40] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:37:41] Kyle Risi: Then again, a little while later he gets caught a second time luring a teenage boy into his car just this time using a police badge again, he is dragged to a probation hearing.

[00:37:51] Kyle Risi: So like they know that he did this. There is no question by the way, but his lawyer managed to prove that the boy had blackmailed him and when John didn't pay up, [00:38:00] that's when the boy finally reported him. Which is wild. There is no question that John assaulted him, regardless of whether or not the boy tried to blackmail him.

[00:38:07] Kyle Risi: But because of that they were like, yeah, he may have assaulted you, but you did blackmail him. So we're gonna drop the charges.

[00:38:13] Adam Cox: Alright, so two wrongs make a right,

[00:38:14] Kyle Risi: basically. Yeah. One does not cancel at the other.

[00:38:16] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:38:16] Kyle Risi: The point is that it is clear that he has violated policy and yet two times John does not go back to jail.

[00:38:24] Adam Cox: I'm like surely the justice system can see that this guy, he was sent away for 10 years originally and he's out offending again.

[00:38:32] Kyle Risi: There's a very good reason for that because eventually in October, 1971, John's probation ends and as far as the probation office in Iowa is concerned, he has stayed outta trouble and it's because nothing is joined up across the state lines.

[00:38:46] Kyle Risi: There's no centralized database where they can go. Okay, so he was not living in Iowa for the last couple years. Maybe we should check to see whether or not he has any records in Chicago to see if maybe he's violated his probation. They don't check that. They just check the state of [00:39:00] Iowa and they go, yeah, he's fine.

[00:39:02] Kyle Risi: And so basically, nope. Clean. You're free to go.

[00:39:04] Adam Cox: That is crazy.

[00:39:05] Kyle Risi: It's wild, isn't it?

[00:39:06] Kyle Risi: When John went back to Chicago this whole time that he was there, even though he was still attacking his boys, he was trying his very best to try and rebuild his reputation. And it's because reputation what other people think of him is so important to him. It is the most vital thing in his entire life.

[00:39:21] Kyle Risi: I read a story that when he was like at his lowest, he was working as like a cook in a restaurant. So he has no status or no standing amongst his peers. So in order to elevate himself, he would tell people that his ex-wife was a relative of Colonel Sanders himself.

[00:39:35] Adam Cox: He's obsessed with

[00:39:37] Kyle Risi: chicken.

[00:39:37] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:39:38] Kyle Risi: it's gross. And so it's just such a meaningless lie. But amongst the people that he surrounds himself with, it's important that they believe that he's a somebody.

[00:39:45] Adam Cox: And do, are they like, do you know the Secret five Spice recipe?

[00:39:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:39:49] Kyle Risi: It's literally like scrapings from five of the spice girls and, and 11 men called Herb. They just kind of grew up to his beer and they [00:40:00] scratch his beard until they get some of the kind of the crusting off kind of flakes, and they combine them all together. And that's the secret. 11 herbs and spices.

[00:40:08] Adam Cox: That's gross.

[00:40:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:40:10] Kyle Risi: So eventually he moves from being a cook. He ends up starting up his own construction business. He mostly hires young teenager apprentices, okay, we're problematic. We know something's coming.

[00:40:20] Kyle Risi: And just like he did with his previous employees, he would often badger them for sex. And Adam, of course, it was almost always a no. But being very young, they would often come to him for a wage sub or they'd ask if they can borrow his car. And so he starts using this in exchange for sexual favors.

[00:40:37] Adam Cox: Ah,

[00:40:38] Kyle Risi: so rank,

[00:40:39] Adam Cox: yeah.

[00:40:40] Kyle Risi: At this point, John's business is now growing and he has amassed huge amount of tools and building materials, which is difficult to store at his mom's apartment that they're living in at the time.

[00:40:51] Kyle Risi: And so in 1971, the same year his probation is lifted, he persuades his mother to buy them a house at 8 2 1 3 West [00:41:00] Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park. this of course is the house that's going to be very central to all of his murders.

[00:41:07] Adam Cox: And then is his dad still around at this point? Is it just his mom?

[00:41:10] Kyle Risi: It sounds like either he's dead or they're divorced. Mm-hmm. I don't know

[00:41:13] Kyle Risi: which, actually Adam, now that he's got this house, brings us to his first murder. He is 16-year-old boy called Timothy McCoy, who in 1972 was traveling from Michigan to Nebraska and he ends up stopping over in Chicago for the night.

[00:41:28] Kyle Risi: and I think Timothy was just planning on sleeping there until his connection. But I also think that this is somewhere John was able to spot vulnerable men, like just arriving in town who might need a place to stay.

[00:41:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. Clearly he's preying on these people. Yeah. Who are passing through.

[00:41:42] Kyle Risi: He knows where to go,

[00:41:43] Adam Cox: perhaps don't have families or whatever, runaways themselves.

[00:41:46] Kyle Risi: Sure. Exactly.

[00:41:47] Kyle Risi: John persuades Timmy to let him show him around Chicago, which Timmy agrees to, and at the end of the day, John invites him back to the house saying that he will drop him back at the station in the morning.

[00:41:57] Kyle Risi: Now it's not clear if anything happened during that [00:42:00] night, but John later says that when he woke up the next morning, Timmy was standing in his bedroom doorway, holding a kitchen knife.

[00:42:09] Kyle Risi: So John charged at him, he got the knife off of him and then used the knife to stab him multiple times until he was dead.

[00:42:15] Kyle Risi: So it sounds like he is trying to frame this as self-defense, which already sounds like it's bullshit.

[00:42:21] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like why would this 16-year-old boy. Wanting to want to kill you.

[00:42:25] Kyle Risi: Yes. But Adam, it gets so much worse because John then says that when he went into the kitchen, that he saw that Timmy had made them both breakfast and that he was standing in his doorway so he could wake John up.

[00:42:38] Kyle Risi: And he just so happened to be holding a bread knife in his hand because he was making breakfast. So he killed him by accident.

[00:42:45] Adam Cox: Do you think that's true?

[00:42:47] Kyle Risi: Well, this is the thing, right? He says that he didn't assault the boy, but to wake up and interpreting a guest standing in your doorway with a knife as them coming to attack you, says that you likely did assault them the following morning.

[00:42:58] Kyle Risi: They've come to terms and then now [00:43:00] come to get you. Right?

[00:43:01] Adam Cox: That's what I think. And for someone just to make you breakfast, maybe they would've done a nice thing, but normally they just call you down, right?

[00:43:07] Kyle Risi: So it could be that to me was gay and that this was a consensual thing that had happened.

[00:43:11] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:11] Kyle Risi: And he was doing something nice, so he liked him. But then maybe he did assault him and that's why he maybe misinterpreted him standing in the doorway. I don't know.

[00:43:19] Adam Cox: That's what it feels like. But yeah, I guess we'll never know really.

[00:43:22] Kyle Risi: So after the murder, Adam John says that he buries Timmy's body in the crawlspace under the house. But the important thing is, is that John later says that this is the moment that he realizes that killing someone was the ultimate thrill.

[00:43:36] Adam Cox: So when you say under the house, is that like where houses are built on stilts and you can go underneath?

[00:43:42] Kyle Risi: That's what I think. But a couple images that I have seen, it seems like there is like it's built on like a concrete base where you can go under, it's almost like a tunnel. I dunno. I'm not sure how it works, but I think you can access it from the inside.

[00:43:54] Adam Cox: Fine. Because I was just trying to work out how do you bury someone under a house that's already there?

[00:43:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah. There must be enough headroom for you to kind [00:44:00] of work Yeah. Up there. Do you know what I mean? But also what is wild to think about is that murder was not necessarily the thing that John had been consciously building towards for years, right?

[00:44:09] Kyle Risi: Like so many serial killers, they always have this fantasy of what that must feel like. Instead, for John, this is just one terrible moment that in hindsight has unlocked something in him.

[00:44:21] Kyle Risi: And I find that really interesting. I don't think John is very introspective as a person. Because something similar happened years earlier, when he got into that coffin, it's in that moment that he first realizes that he might be gay.

[00:44:33] Kyle Risi: You just assume that people just know themselves, right? Like you just know that you're gay. Or like you just are really into like my little pony or like that you really want to wear an adult size elsea dress. Do you know what I mean? You just have that feeling inside you that's what you want to do. Do

[00:44:47] Adam Cox: you wanna talk about something?

[00:44:48] Kyle Risi: I do actually later,

[00:44:49] Adam Cox: but then I guess, this feeling of, or that thrill of killing someone for the first time, he's abused people before, and he is been violent with them, right?

[00:44:58] Adam Cox: So he's clearly got this tendency and then [00:45:00] he is just taking it to a new level. Yeah. And I guess from that, that's kinda like a new thrill, right? Mm-hmm. It's something different.

[00:45:05] Kyle Risi: So I guess what you're saying there is kind of was kind of building up.

[00:45:08] Adam Cox: Yeah, I just feel like there's a pattern and given his abuse as a kid, that kind of, I dunno, repeating that behavior.

[00:45:13] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:14] Adam Cox: I dunno. I just feel like maybe there was something underlying a lot longer, but then this just, you know, it's a whole new level.

[00:45:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But I just find it so surprising that it takes these big moments for him to kind of have these realizations, which makes me think that he is not a very introspective person.

[00:45:28] Adam Cox: But then don't they say most serial killers or male killers turn into killers when they're in their thirties.

[00:45:34] Kyle Risi: Oh really? If it's a profile, possibly.

[00:45:36] Adam Cox: I'm sure there was a point. As an age, if you're gonna be a serial killer, we would've done it by now.

[00:45:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Oh, damn. We missed the boat.

[00:45:41] Adam Cox: Basically we missed the boat.

[00:45:42] Kyle Risi: We're still in our thirties. That's fine.

[00:45:45] Kyle Risi: So even before John Murders, to me, he's actually dating a woman called Carol Hoff. She already has two daughters from a previous marriage, and Adam in August, 1972. So this is just a few weeks after John has killed Timothy Carol and the [00:46:00] girls, they move into his house.

[00:46:02] Adam Cox: That was sudden.

[00:46:02] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:03] Adam Cox: But then, I guess this is a great coverup story for him because he's, you know he's with a woman, he's got a family. No one's ever gonna suspect him of doing any wrongdoing.

[00:46:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But why would you do that? I just wouldn't waste my time. If I was gay, I wouldn't waste my time with a woman.

[00:46:17] Adam Cox: Yeah. But back then, you've probably gotta pretend otherwise, people start questioning things. If he's getting into his thirties and he's still single,

[00:46:25] Kyle Risi: possibly, I don't know, not someone from the seventies.

[00:46:29] Kyle Risi: So after Carol moves in, she starts to notice a strange smell that's circulating around the house. Anytime the heating or the air conditioning is turned on. It's basically because air is being pulled from underneath the house, right?

[00:46:40] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:41] Kyle Risi: It gets to the point, Adam, where it begins attracting swarms of flies everywhere.

[00:46:45] Adam Cox: Oh God.

[00:46:45] Kyle Risi: And Carol literally thinks that it's a dead rat or something under the house. John, however, tells her that it's just a broken sewer pipe and that he'll deal with it. And so he starts lugging like 50 pound bags of lime under the house and just like covering wherever the body [00:47:00] is buried.

[00:47:00] Kyle Risi: What he doesn't realize is that this actually accelerates the decomposition of the body and just makes the smell worse. Oh

[00:47:06] Adam Cox: God.

[00:47:07] Kyle Risi: Eventually Carol and the girls, they leave to go visit family and when he's away, John decides to pour cement on the air where Timmy was buried and I mean the flies to go away, but there's always, there's just fate smell that still hangs around again, especially when the heating or the cooling is turned on.

[00:47:23] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I imagine if he's gonna hide more bodies under this house.

[00:47:26] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:27] Adam Cox: Like this is a smell that's just never going away. Mm-hmm. If I was that woman, I'd be like, can we move?

[00:47:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly.

[00:47:32] Kyle Risi: And this is amazing to me. He and Carol, they're getting very, very serious. They now like live together.

[00:47:38] Kyle Risi: In fact, he proposes and while they're making plans to get married, he on the regular is going out tonight looking for young boys,

[00:47:46] Kyle Risi: and I think it's like a week before the Jews get married, he actually gets arrested yet again after a boy says that John forced him into a sexual act.

[00:47:53] Kyle Risi: And when he refused, he tries to then get out the car and John apparently tries to run him over. Of [00:48:00] course, John tells Carol it's all a mistake and that he's innocent and whatever he tells her, she buys it.

[00:48:07] Kyle Risi: But I can't get my head around what excuse he could have come up with to make someone believe that a sexual assault accusation was just a misunderstanding.

[00:48:16] Adam Cox: Do you remember, and I dunno if this is the right thing to reference at this point.

[00:48:19] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:48:20] Adam Cox: Little Brin.

[00:48:21] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:22] Adam Cox: Do you remember there was a guy that would always, I think he was in the public eye.

[00:48:26] Adam Cox: Um, it's played by David Williams, which again is another issue.

A

[00:48:29] Kyle Risi: politician.

[00:48:29] Adam Cox: Yeah, a politician. And he would have his wife there standing right next to him while he'd have to explain that he found himself in an awkward situation and that it was a complete accident, that he fell over naked on some woman or whatever.

[00:48:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. On the 15th of July, I found myself in the train station toilets at Waterloo Station when I was having a wei, when a young man fell over a roll of toilet paper and landed right in my crotch.

[00:48:55] Kyle Risi: And conveniently his mouth landed firmly on the end of my penis [00:49:00] and in pain and in exhaustion, he started screaming, but with the obstruction of his penis inside my mouth, he began sucking on it.

[00:49:09] Kyle Risi: It's just stupid. Like it had a just ridiculous. So yes.

[00:49:12] Adam Cox: That's what it feels like. Yeah. I mean, I didn't expect you to go into that much detail.

[00:49:17] Kyle Risi: but yeah, that's the gist.

[00:49:19] Kyle Risi: But here's the thing. When the boy's family decides to drop the charges, he uses this to drum home to Carol that, see, I told you it was all just a misunderstanding. But this just keeps happening. When people accuse him of assaulting them, they always end up dropping the charges more often than not.

[00:49:33] Kyle Risi: And it's really sad because it tells you something about the stigma associated with male sexual assault, especially in light of attitude towards gay men. About this time my family's feel embarrassed. Or ashamed by it. And so for John, these problems just keep going away so conveniently.

[00:49:50] Adam Cox: Yeah. 'cause you probably just don't want your neighbors finding out and all that sort of stuff in the news.

[00:49:54] Kyle Risi: And when they don't drop the charges, the problem comes from the cops who refuse to take any of these [00:50:00] accusations seriously.

[00:50:00] Kyle Risi: So it's coming from all different directions. It's another factor that allows John to evade being caught for so long.

[00:50:06] Adam Cox: But the thing is, if he's getting into so much trouble and there's so many instances that, okay, fair enough. The boys go quiet, there is surely something there the police must or could have done.

[00:50:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Here's the other factor. It's John standing in the community, Adam, he's charismatic, he's well liked. He also knows a huge amount of influential figures like politicians and police officers. And so when it comes to him being held to account for any of this, his influential friends, right?

[00:50:33] Kyle Risi: They're there ready to vouch for him, right? And there are a lot of them. He becomes known for hosting these huge summer parties, sometimes with more than 400 guests, including local politicians and other well connected people from the community. So when police speak to them, they're like, that doesn't sound like the John that we know.

[00:50:52] Kyle Risi: You must have it wrong. This must be an understanding. And so, yeah, it goes away.

[00:50:58] Adam Cox: Do you think some of these other people [00:51:00] in the community that have this higher standing are also probably a bit corrupt?

[00:51:03] Kyle Risi: I mean, if what's happening right now with all the Epstein files is anything to go by, it makes such realize that there's a lot of people up the top that are very corrupt. So I wouldn't be surprised, honestly, that 10 years ago I would've been, nah, people are naturally good. No, everyone, there's pedophiles everywhere.

[00:51:21] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:51:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:51:22] Kyle Risi: But also side note, Adam, all these people that are turning up to this party at his house have absolutely no idea that there are bodies buried all over the place. They've just no idea. It's so grim.

[00:51:33] Adam Cox: But he's already, put cement down. So is he like, broken up that cement to then put more bodies in the ground?

[00:51:39] Kyle Risi: It's a big crawl space, so I think he's only cementing the area where the bodies are.

[00:51:43] Adam Cox: Oh, okay. I

[00:51:43] Kyle Risi: think, yeah.

[00:51:44] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, here's the thing. So Timothy was murdered in 1972, and by 1973, John has this whole kind of setup at his house. He tells Carol and the girls that he has converted the garage into a workshop for business and that they are to stay out of it because there's a lot of [00:52:00] dangerous equipment in there.

[00:52:01] Kyle Risi: In reality, he is set it up to do sex stuff with a lot of the teenage boys in the area. A lot of it is consensual. No, that's wrong to say. A lot of it is, predatory, but he's not, he's not, he's not, he's not beating them up and bringing them there. The boys have come there himself, right? Even though they're minors,

[00:52:18] Adam Cox: are these gay boys themselves or I guess could be a mixture, right?

[00:52:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah. People exploring this, I don't know. Who knows? It's just the,

[00:52:26] Adam Cox: they agreed to come back willingly.

[00:52:27] Kyle Risi: And so following him, setting this up, he starts working late into the night. He tells Carol that he's out prospecting for construction jobs, saying that he's more productive at night because he can get more done, he can have more productive conversations with clients and prospects

[00:52:42] Adam Cox: Who like is gonna be wanting to do work at 10:00 AM or 10:00 PM

[00:52:46] Kyle Risi: I'm sorry, but there is just no way Carol fully buys this. There's just no way.

[00:52:53] Adam Cox: I would think so. But then is she so blind to his, like good standing in the public community that she

[00:52:59] Kyle Risi: doesn't? [00:53:00] Maybe. Maybe. But again, if she does, I've completely lost all respect for her because the alarm bells are going off left, right and center. For example, one red flag is that Carol finds some pornographic magazines under the sink.

[00:53:12] Adam Cox: Gay pornographic.

[00:53:13] Kyle Risi: Gay pornographic magazines, but also much darker fetish magazines featuring men covered in blood. Ooh. I dunno where you get those from.

[00:53:21] Adam Cox: No, ~I ~I don't. But also under the sink of all the places to leave your porn stash.

[00:53:25] Kyle Risi: Exactly. John says that when they first got together, he did tell her that she was bisexual, but apparently she thought that he was joking. Even when holding these magazines in her hand, she doesn't quite believe it. She's oh. Must be part of his joke. It's just wild.

[00:53:39] Kyle Risi: She also starts seeing loads of local teenage boys coming and going from the garage as well. She thinks that there are apprentices at first, but some of them are really young and she doesn't recognize any of them as being some of these apprentices that she's met the parties and the work dues and like the coming and GOs from his garage.

[00:53:55] Adam Cox: Do you think she just doesn't want to accept the truth?

[00:53:57] Kyle Risi: Possibly. Possibly. That's, that could be a [00:54:00] thing. Another time she finds a man's wallet and identification that John has just left in the living room and when she asks about it, he tells her mind your own business.

[00:54:09] Kyle Risi: So like the alarm bells are there. Now, obviously your mind doesn't necessarily just jump straight to, oh my God, my husband is murdering young boys, right?

[00:54:17] Adam Cox: Oh no. It's just that he's, yeah. Having it off with them,

[00:54:19] Kyle Risi: but not even that potentially, but still something is wrong. At least something's wrong.

[00:54:24] Kyle Risi: If not that he's having them off with them, I guess maybe the magazine, but something would definitely, you'd definitely say something's wrong.

[00:54:31] Adam Cox: Yeah. You'd wanna go into the garage to check what's going on,

[00:54:33] Kyle Risi: right? Yeah. Why am we not allowed in there?

[00:54:35] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean?

[00:54:35] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:36] Kyle Risi: But also, especially as her, as a mother of two young girls, that she has to think about, you need to keep your wits about you. Mm-hmm. Why is the flag's not flagging.

[00:54:44] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:45] Kyle Risi: In 1973, John goes on a business trip to see a property that he is bidding on, and he takes one of his teenage employees with him, of course, with nowhere to run. John ends up assaulting him on the business trip. It is grim afterwards, the boy, Adam, he is forced to stay in the [00:55:00] room with him and then has to endure the entire trip back home with him.

[00:55:03] Kyle Risi: That must just be horrible.

[00:55:05] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:55:06] Kyle Risi: But when they get back a couple days pass and the boy starts to come to terms with what has happened to him. And so he goes to John's house and in the front garden, he beats the absolute shit out of him right there in front of Carol and the girls.

[00:55:17] Kyle Risi: And John explains this away by saying that the boy had attacked him because he decided not to pay him for the shitty work that he did. And again, there is always an explanation and Carol always seems to accept it.

[00:55:28] Adam Cox: I just swear there's smoke, man.

[00:55:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So they say that John was hunting his victims between 1972 and 1978. This shows you just in itself how prolific he was. But Adam, that's not the full picture because remember, he murdered Timothy in 1972.

[00:55:42] Kyle Risi: He doesn't commit his second murder until 1974. And so that means in just a four year period, he killed 32 more people. That's one. Every one and a half months potentially.

[00:55:55] Adam Cox: That's a lot.

[00:55:56] Kyle Risi: That's a huge amount. Remember Carol and the girls are [00:56:00] in the house

[00:56:00] Adam Cox: and the thing is that's the people he's killed the amount of people he's hurt.

[00:56:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:56:05] Adam Cox: And abused

[00:56:06] Kyle Risi: or having sex with like these minors.

[00:56:09] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:56:09] Kyle Risi: it's horrific. Now he's second known victim is a boy he strangles in 1974, and we never find out who he actually is and Adam, he's not alone in that. A lot of these victims are never identified. The most recent John Doe is actually identified as recently as 2021.

[00:56:27] Kyle Risi: Of course, we can't go through obviously every murder, but the next one that is important to moving the story forward happens in 1975 after John hires a 15-year-old boy called anthony Antonucci.

[00:56:40] Kyle Risi: It's only a couple months later that John does his usual thing. He invites him over, he gets him drunk, plays him a couple porno movies.

[00:56:46] Kyle Risi: One of the things that John like to do is to restrain the boys using a handcuff trick that he shows them. He'll kind of put the cuffs on first and he'll show them how he can supposedly escape from them. And then once they're impressed, he offers to teach them how to do [00:57:00] it.

[00:57:00] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:57:01] Kyle Risi: Except once they put the handcuffs on, he's like, great. I'm literally now going to rape you. Like he announces it. It's gross. Does he? Yeah.

[00:57:09] Adam Cox: And he admits this when he is

[00:57:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's gross. In this situation with Anthony. Anthony manages to free one of his arms, and when he does, he's able to beat the shit outta John and then gets the cuffs on him instead.

[00:57:21] Kyle Risi: Suddenly John is the one begging to be let go, right?

[00:57:24] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:25] Kyle Risi: Eventually, Anthony does uncuff him and just before Anthony leaves, John tells him that he's the only one who has ever escaped the cuffs. Not only that has managed to cuff him back, and that line makes my stomach turn because it tells you that there are a lot of boys that weren't so lucky

[00:57:47] Adam Cox: and that this is some kind of sick game for him.

[00:57:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he does have another trick which explains the. Situation with the first boy where he strangles him and he goes, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that would hurt you.

[00:57:59] Kyle Risi: It's another [00:58:00] trick where he would kind of do like a turnbuckle around your neck with like a rope, and he'll tighten it and tighten and then he just gets carried away and then they'll pass out. But he masks as a trick. Hence why it made sense that he was like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't think that would hurt you.

[00:58:12] Adam Cox: I mean, I would never let anyone do that.

[00:58:15] Kyle Risi: No, no. So later that same year, one of John's laborers also goes missing. This is an 18-year-old boy called John Kovich, his family eventually find his car with the keys in the ignition, along with his jacket and his wallet.

[00:58:29] Kyle Risi: When his father calls John and asks him whether or not he's seen him, John obviously says no, and that he is sorry that his son has run away.

[00:58:38] Kyle Risi: And his dad is like, nobody said he ran away. Why do you think he'd run away? And so that is like a massive alarm bell for this family, right?

[00:58:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, yeah.

[00:58:45] Kyle Risi: Naturally they call the police and they tell them that they think that John is involved. But again, when police interview him, John says, I don't know anything. He does, however, admit that yes, the boy did come over. And it was to collect some owed wages from two months prior, but [00:59:00] after that, he left and his parents were like, no, we know our son.

[00:59:04] Kyle Risi: If he was owed wages, we would've known about it. And it would've been the father that went to John's house to collect those wages. It was just how the family operated. He wouldn't have let his son go on his own.

[00:59:14] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:14] Kyle Risi: And so they're convinced that John has done something so convinced, in fact, Adam, that they just refuse to let it go. They say that they ended up calling the police more than a hundred times, begging them to do something.

[00:59:25] Kyle Risi: But based on what John says, based on his reputation, based on his standing in the community, police do not believe that he had anything to do with his disappearance.

[00:59:35] Adam Cox: I'm sorry.

[00:59:35] Adam Cox: There are just too many signs of people reporting stuff, him clearly getting away that he must have dirt on someone. There's no way that people or the police could just Oh, interesting. Sweep that under the rug.

[00:59:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:59:49] Adam Cox: I know it's a different time and yes, you'd be blindsided by someone like this, but a hundred times. Yeah. And then all the other accounts, no, he's. He knows he's in a position of power. [01:00:00]

[01:00:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's wild. And again, when John is finally caught, he admits he used the same basic method, lure John over, got him drunk, showed him the handcuff trick, then attacked and killed him. John's intention was to bury John under the house like the others.

[01:00:15] Kyle Risi: But he says that just as he was about to pull the body into the crawlspace, Carol and the girls came home so needing to get rid of the body, he decided to bury him in the garage and then fill it with cement.

[01:00:26] Kyle Risi: So there's one body in the garage, or the others are under the crawlspace.

[01:00:31] Adam Cox: Isn't the garage made of cement anyway?

[01:00:33] Kyle Risi: How are you? It was a drain, was gonna go in that place. Okay. So I think maybe when he was doing the renovations, he had sectioned off a section for the drain, but then I see, yeah. In the end he ended up bearing a body in it.

Ad Break 2

[01:00:43] Kyle Risi: So round about the same period, John gets back into politics with the local Democrats. And again, Adam, this bodes really well for his credibility, which is a constant running theme throughout this episode, as we know, because in less than a year, he manages to work his way up to becoming precinct [01:01:00] captain so that's pretty high up.

[01:01:01] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:01] Adam Cox: And

[01:01:01] Kyle Risi: at the same time, he gets also involved in the Chicago's Annual Polish Constitution Day parade. in fact, He's appointed as their director, which is extremely proud of, because he's part Polish.

[01:01:12] Kyle Risi: The point is that on top of being a business owner and a husband and a father, all of this takes up a huge amount of time. Like he's organizing parties for more than 400 guests at a time, and yet this is also his peak killing period where he is killing the most people. Right. That four year period it's like 1.5 a month.

[01:01:30] Adam Cox: So what you're saying is he can, he can manage a lot of projects.

[01:01:33] Kyle Risi: He's taking Adderall, man, I just generally do not understand where he's getting all the time to do all of this.

[01:01:39] Kyle Risi: In 1978, he even receives Secret Service clearance to meet First Lady Rosalyn Carter as part of his work in politics.

[01:01:48] Kyle Risi: And by this point, as we know, he's already murdered a shit ton of people. Like you have to go through this clearance and when anyone is like in the room with the president or the First Lady, you can see like they're wearing like an [01:02:00] Secret Service Badge. Mm-hmm. Which means they've received their clearance and yet even the Secret Service have found nothing on him that stops him from meeting the First Lady.

[01:02:08] Kyle Risi: It really does show how far a warm smile and a charismatic personality can get you.

[01:02:13] Adam Cox: I still think there's something he's got dirt on someone.

[01:02:16] Kyle Risi: Do you reckon? I think it's a good theory.

[01:02:19] Adam Cox: I guess it would've come out probably by now. Mm-hmm. But I dunno, something makes me suspicious.

[01:02:24] Kyle Risi: The thing is that once he's finally busted his, this clearance, the Secret Service gave him, becomes a bit of a scandal in how the, the US government should have not have let this happen. And I assume, that week a few people lost their jobs when that came out. Do you know what I mean?

[01:02:39] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:02:40] Kyle Risi: Eventually Adam Carroll does file for divorce and when I read why I had to do a double take because there's not for reason that you won't expect

[01:02:48] Adam Cox: that's a serial killer.

[01:02:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's not like, oh my God, my husband's killing boys, or bury them under the house. It's because John freaks out at her for not balancing a checkbook properly.

[01:02:55] Kyle Risi: And Carol is like, right, that's the final straw.

[01:02:58] Adam Cox: That's the final straw. You can bring boys [01:03:00] back into that garage all you want.

[01:03:02] Kyle Risi: But the point is, it really does seem like she had no idea what was happening literally in her own home.

[01:03:07] Adam Cox: I don't

[01:03:07] Kyle Risi: like people, which is wild to me.

[01:03:08] Adam Cox: I don't like people criticizing my math skills, so

[01:03:12] Kyle Risi: now I'll do it.

[01:03:13] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:03:13] Kyle Risi: But it is crazy like how you don't know, how does she not know? Like he's so busy. He's doing this almost every night. Like I know when you do a silent fart, I know it.

[01:03:23] Adam Cox: The thing is though, he's clearly just so good at putting on this show in this front, right? So I dunno, maybe it's very easy for us to say in hindsight as we look back at this story.

[01:03:33] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:33] Adam Cox: We dunno what it's like in the moment.

[01:03:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I mean, one of, to be fair in the court filings for the divorce, she does cite one of the reasons as author secrecy. Mm-hmm. She just didn't know what he was getting up to.

[01:03:44] Kyle Risi: But still, I understand the secrecy if he's doing all this stuff away from home, but he's doing it at home, that's the wild thing.

[01:03:50] Kyle Risi: Also Adam, I'm also super relieved that she did finally leave when I read that those two girls had moved in, I genuinely thought that was it for them that they were gonna die?

[01:03:59] Adam Cox: Yeah, I'd [01:04:00] be worried. And she, when she finds out about what he did

[01:04:03] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[01:04:03] Adam Cox: She must be like, that was a lucky escape.

[01:04:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 33 bodies.

[01:04:07] Kyle Risi: So following the divorce, he goes through a bit of a midlife crisis. He is like, I have no wife, no kids. I have a bit more time in my hands. And so Adam, he decides that he's finally going to do the thing that he's always wanted to do. He is gonna graduate from clown school.

[01:04:26] Adam Cox: It's good, you should still set yourself new ambitions in midlife.

[01:04:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. Little side note, like I mentioned, how the story sort of brought about the steria towards clowns in the aftermath. How do you think McDonald's fed in the fallout of all this with Ronald McDonald being a clown?

[01:04:41] Adam Cox: Was Ronald McDonald a thing back then?

[01:04:44] Kyle Risi: I think it's always been part of their brand. Like I know he didn't strangle kids, but you could say that he was killing kids through obesity.

[01:04:52] Adam Cox: Okay, well that's a bit of a stretch.

[01:04:55] Kyle Risi: I imagine this period of history for McDonald's for sure was definitely a [01:05:00] bit of a PR nightmare for them.

[01:05:01] Adam Cox: They're like, oh, we just launched Ronald McDonald. What are we gonna do now?

[01:05:04] Kyle Risi: Oh no, roll back. Roll back. So he ends up joining the local Jolly Joker clown club where he eventually settles on two clown personas. One is called Pogo named because PO stood for Polish and go because he was always on the go.

[01:05:20] Adam Cox: Okay.

[01:05:21] Kyle Risi: The other one, so Pogo is like the happy clown persona, but he also had patches, which was more the serious clown. And he has that kind of classic image you have of a clown. The little triangle hat with a big white face, huge lips. And once he graduates Adam, he starts working as a clown all over town at hospitals, kids, parties, pretty much anywhere he performs, he's literally surrounded by kids, which is unsettling.

[01:05:46] Adam Cox: Is that why he's decided to become a clown to get closer to kids? Not that's really stopped him from getting close to younger boys.

[01:05:53] Kyle Risi: Well, that's the thing though. I think the demographic for young kids is not what he's interested in. I think he's more interested in [01:06:00] like teenage boys. Mm-hmm. Like 15, 16, 17, 18. I dunno if there's any evidence that he is assaulted anyone younger than that. So, yeah, I don't know.

[01:06:08] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:08] Kyle Risi: But there is no evidence though, that he used pogo or patches to stalk or hunt his victims to murder or assault them.

[01:06:14] Kyle Risi: But there is one instance which actually lends to a theory that maybe he might have had an accomplice.

[01:06:19] Kyle Risi: And it happened in July, 1976. John is basically out looking for teenage boys when he spots an 18-year-old boy called David Cran.

[01:06:28] Kyle Risi: And he's hitchhiking apparently that same night John offers him a job and then a month later, David literally moves into the house with him.

[01:06:37] Adam Cox: He moves in with John.

[01:06:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Again, remember this is his peak killing period, right? Like he's gotta be at least killing one person a month. David Cram actually moves in the day before his 19th birthday.

[01:06:47] Kyle Risi: And so to celebrate John de decide that is gonna dress up as pogo for him, which is creepy as hell in itself. Pogo shows David the handcuff trick. David wants to try it and as soon as he puts them on, he tells David he's now [01:07:00] going to rape him.

[01:07:00] Kyle Risi: And that's another detail that came up a bunch of times. He would often just announce that he was going to hurt you. It's just so creepy.

[01:07:07] Kyle Risi: But this is the only known instance where he attacks someone dressed up as Pogo.

[01:07:12] Kyle Risi: But while this is happening, David manages to kick John in the face. And by a stroke of luck, he managed to escape from the handcuffs.

[01:07:19] Kyle Risi: But Adam get this after the attack, David continues to live with him for two more months. And it's this that causes people to wonder if David was perhaps involved in some of the murders.

[01:07:31] Kyle Risi: Remember this was like his peak killing period, right? He doesn't have time to waste if he's managing to kill 33 people.

[01:07:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. Why would David stay there? If he had announced that? So how do we know he said that to David? Is that because John's admitted? Mm-hmm. That's what he said.

[01:07:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Wild Adam. It just goes on like this.

[01:07:49] Kyle Risi: He gets arrested a few more times for Lew behavior or accused of assaulting other boys and it just goes nowhere.

[01:07:55] Kyle Risi: There is just one exception where one accusation results in a civil lawsuit, [01:08:00] but they end up settling in court and his ordered to pay $3,000 in settlement. But nothing ultimately sticks.

[01:08:06] Adam Cox: But what happened to David then? So he lived with him for two more months.

[01:08:09] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:09] Adam Cox: Was he alive?

[01:08:10] Kyle Risi: As far as I'm aware, he's alive. I'm not sure if he testified at the actual trial.

[01:08:14] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:14] Kyle Risi: But some people who did escape did testify, and I think if they managed to get this information about what happened, it might have come from David.

[01:08:22] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So I assume David is alive.

[01:08:24] Kyle Risi: And so, like I said, he just keeps going on these rampages, assaulting boys, murdering them. Nothing ever sticks. He gets pulled up a few times, but Adam,

[01:08:33] Kyle Risi: that is not until Lieutenant Joseph Cozak decides to do what on paper was just another follow-up check on his background. And then from there, one by one the domino start falling around him.

[01:08:43] Kyle Risi: Which brings us back to Robert Piet, who as we know is John's last victim. By this point, Robert has been reported missing and the police think that John has something to do with this because of the receipt that they find in his house, which belonged to Robert's friend.

[01:08:57] Kyle Risi: The cops have John under 24 hour surveillance [01:09:00] and are basically waiting for any reason to arrest him because this will essentially let them search his house while they're trading him, they managed to track the ring that they find back to a boy named John Syke, I believe that's how you pronounce it, who just so happens to have been missing for two years. So there are now two missing boys linked to John.

[01:09:18] Kyle Risi: The cops also start speaking to John's employees, which is where they find out two more names of boys who mysteriously disappeared and again, never returned. So that total is now four.

[01:09:28] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:29] Kyle Risi: Obviously word gets back to John, that the police are now sniffing around and amazingly he plays along according to the officers.

[01:09:36] Kyle Risi: He would often go out of his way to speak to them while they were following him. He would like leave the house and be like, oh, by the way guys, I'm just heading to like Trader Joe's. I don't want you guys to lose me in traffic.

[01:09:47] Kyle Risi: It's wild. There are even several occasions where they are telling him to like a calf or a restaurant.

[01:09:52] Kyle Risi: He'll then approach him in the car park and be like, Hey, do you guys wanna join me and Adam? They do.

[01:09:57] Adam Cox: Oh really? Oh my.

[01:09:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. In [01:10:00] fact, this becomes a bit of a strategy for the police because thinking is that if we stay close to him, maybe he'll say something that gives us calls to arrest him. Sure. Or gives us a clue.

[01:10:08] Adam Cox: Or a free lunch.

[01:10:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Or a free lunch. Yeah.

[01:10:11] Kyle Risi: But John does not see it that way at all. He is just so unbelievably arrogant that he thinks that they are all deeply interested in him as a person.

[01:10:22] Adam Cox: He is deluded, isn't he?

[01:10:23] Kyle Risi: He's so deluded. He'll just go on and on about himself. He is like, wow, you guys are really good listeners. Let me tell you more about myself. And the police are like, uh, please do, go on.

[01:10:34] Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess it makes sense that the police are waiting for him to slip up, right?

[01:10:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. It's quite clever that they've built their trust and he's the way he is. Right. And he does say some questionable things. He obviously loves talking about being Pogo the clown and at one point, Adam, he says, you know, clowns can get away with murder. Right. Which really does feel like a taunt, doesn't

[01:10:53] Adam Cox: it?

[01:10:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. And do the police like con onto that then like, that seems like an odd thing to say.

[01:10:58] Kyle Risi: Of course I do. Hence why it's in the [01:11:00] story.

[01:11:00] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:11:02] Kyle Risi: Here's the kicker.

[01:11:03] Kyle Risi: On the 9th of December, 1978, John arrives back home one morning and of course the police pull up because they've been trailing him.

[01:11:09] Kyle Risi: And just before he goes inside he says, do you guys want to come in for breakfast, like in the house that are buried all the bodies in? And of course the police are like, yes,

[01:11:19] Adam Cox: we've been waiting to get inside. Actually,

[01:11:21] Kyle Risi: while they're eating. One of the officers excuses himself to go to the bathroom and of course to have a bit of a snoop while he's in there, Adam. The central heating kicks in.

[01:11:30] Adam Cox: Oh no.

[01:11:31] Kyle Risi: And within seconds, the smell from the crawlspace starts circulating through the house is very awkward for John in that moment.

[01:11:39] Kyle Risi: Eventually the cops leave. John is obviously panicking, and that same day his lawyers file a $750,000 lawsuit against the police claiming they were harassing him and had done an illegal search on his property, the same property that he literally invited them into.

[01:11:56] Kyle Risi: His lawyers must be like, you're a fucking idiot.

[01:11:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. [01:12:00] And also just like the nerve to think

[01:12:02] Kyle Risi: The nerve. Yes.

[01:12:04] Adam Cox: The, you also must know his, his stupid heating is shit.

[01:12:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's a bit cold. This is December. It's gonna kick in.

[01:12:11] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:12:11] Kyle Risi: Crazy.

[01:12:12] Kyle Risi: So three days later, police finally get what they need to arrest him. When they see him handing a bag of marijuana to a petrol station clerk. He's such an idiot.

[01:12:22] Kyle Risi: They can basically now use this to arrest him. Mm-hmm. And search his house. And what is really sad, Adam, is that when the police enter that house, they still have hope that John is holding Robert prisoner. Mm-hmm.

[01:12:35] Kyle Risi: Remember, this is still just a few days after Robert went missing. So part of them thinks he's still alive, but I think very quickly becomes clear that things are far worse than they ever imagined. Because as soon as he's arrested. John immediately admits to killing one of the boys.

[01:12:51] Kyle Risi: They think he's going to say it's Robert, but the name that he says is just not a name that's on their radar. And it's John Kovich. And [01:13:00] he claims that it was self-defense and he tells the cops specifically that he buried him in the garage.

[01:13:05] Kyle Risi: So he, we know that he's the only body that's in the garage. So in John's mind, he knows the jig is up. And so it's now about damage control.

[01:13:12] Kyle Risi: So his thinking is, is that he will tell them to search a garage, they'll find his body, maybe they won't search the rest of the house, and then he'll only be charged with one murder. Maybe they'll stop digging, essentially.

[01:13:22] Kyle Risi: So it's a risky game, but it's the only car that he has to play at this point. But also, isn't that amazing like that he started confessing even before they've searched the house?

[01:13:32] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I guess they're not expecting him to say that he's killed someone at this point in time or they might have a bit of a suspicion, but like you say, they're still expecting to find. Robert alive.

[01:13:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:13:42] Adam Cox: They're not expecting to find 30 bodies under this house or whatever. Mm-hmm.

[01:13:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:13:45] Kyle Risi: So John takes the police to the spot in the garage where he buried John. But while the cops are searching the main house, one of the officers opens the trap door leading to the crawl space. And the moment he does, he's just overcome with a putrid smell. On [01:14:00] that first day, they managed to recover the remains of three separate bodies.

[01:14:04] Kyle Risi: Without John saying anything to the cops. They know there are more bodies under there, and it's because the crawlspace is a big space, right. There's plenty of room to spread out the bodies, but while they're digging one grave, they find the remains of another in an adjoining grave.

[01:14:21] Kyle Risi: So it's clear to them that there are so many bodies down there that he had to start packing them in.

[01:14:25] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:27] Kyle Risi: Grim, isn't it?

[01:14:28] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:14:29] Kyle Risi: The next day, John confesses to killing 33 young men, most of them after he had sexually assaulted them. He says 27 of them were buried in the house, but in the end, the police actually fined 29.

[01:14:40] Kyle Risi: So it's clear that he's lost. Count the other six bodies, John says he dumped in the river, which explains why when he was called in for questioning after Robert went missing, he was covered in mud, is because he was in the middle of disposing Robert's body.

[01:14:55] Adam Cox: Ah, so Robert's in the river. Yeah. Not under the house.

[01:14:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. The reason [01:15:00] why he was so late was because his car slid off the road and had to be towed. John later claims that on the night that Robert disappeared, he drove him back to his house under the guise of offering him a job, which honestly, I don't truly believe, because we know that his mom was waiting for him in the car park.

[01:15:14] Kyle Risi: Plus he said that he would only be two minutes. Right. So I think that he took him against his will.

[01:15:19] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:20] Kyle Risi: But according to John's version at the house, he tricked Robert into putting on the handcuffs before assaulting him and then murdering him.

[01:15:27] Kyle Risi: And what is striking about the confession as a whole is how everything is described in the third person. He keeps referring to the person who killed these boys as a guy called Jack.

[01:15:37] Adam Cox: So has he got some kind of psychosis then, or split personality?

[01:15:41] Kyle Risi: Sounds like it. Right. And now John's a clever guy. This is also the seventies. How many times have we covered a story from the seventies where this was used as a defense?

[01:15:50] Kyle Risi: And so is it a bit of a trend?

[01:15:52] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:15:53] Kyle Risi: Interesting. So following the confessions and finding all the remains, John is arrested. He's charged with 33 murders, and he's [01:16:00] put on trial on the 6th of February, 1980.

[01:16:03] Kyle Risi: The trial takes place over five weeks in Cook County, Illinois, overseen by Judge Lewis repo.

[01:16:08] Kyle Risi: The defense's argument was that John was not guilty by reason of insanity, that he suffered from multiple personality disorder with four distinct personalities, namely the hardworking civic minor contractor, the clown, the politician, and a policeman called Jack Hanley, who John refers to as bad Jack and says, is the personality responsible for all the murders?

[01:16:33] Kyle Risi: Which again is interesting. It's the 1970s. We've seen this so many times before, haven't we?

[01:16:37] Adam Cox: Does anyone buy that?

[01:16:38] Kyle Risi: I don't think so. And we'll find out why. Because the defense really put all the effort into this strategy, painting him as this sort of kind of Jekyll and Hyde figure created out of kind of childhood trauma.

[01:16:49] Kyle Risi: They even bring his mother to testify about how abusive his upbringing was. So it is really clear that she stood by him throughout this, which must be [01:17:00] an awful position to find yourself in. Right? She must know that he did this

[01:17:03] Adam Cox: well. Yeah, like by the end of it. Surely she did. Like she probably would've known throughout that. That's why he was up to tonight.

[01:17:10] Kyle Risi: But it's so many boys, and even after he's eventually convicted, she continues to write him on the regular.

[01:17:16] Adam Cox: Hmm.

[01:17:16] Kyle Risi: That's difficult, isn't it?

[01:17:17] Adam Cox: I dunno. How do you do that as a parent knowing that your child's

[01:17:21] Kyle Risi: exactly.

[01:17:21] Adam Cox: serial killer? You Yeah. I dunno how you can separate yourself from that.

[01:17:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah. On the other side, the prosecution's argument is the exact opposite. They said that not only was he saying, but he was also calculated and fully in control of his actions. And they say that the evidence for this was that none of the murders were random or chaotic in nature. there was a strategic, deliberate aspect to every single one of them.

[01:17:44] Kyle Risi: Especially when you think about the degree of planning that is needed when you know that your wife and endorses are in the house, right? Mm-hmm. They argue the kind of maneuvering that this would've required, required a composed, organized mind in order to kind of get around that Clever.

[01:17:58] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:17:59] Kyle Risi: Further [01:18:00] evidence for this was his o the handcuff routine. The way that he lured his victims in the way he concealed the bodies in the crawlspace using cement and lime, it was all the same. None of it was random, right?

[01:18:10] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I haven't heard anything to say that he was like dressing up as a policeman, aside from the handcuffs. There's, yeah. It feels like that's just been made up by his defense.

[01:18:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah. even though he murdered 33 people, there are some people

[01:18:21] Kyle Risi: who did escape we don't know the full number, but prosecute is, do manage to find at least seven boys, four of whom end up testifying at trial.

[01:18:30] Kyle Risi: And that, as you can imagine, is hugely persuasive to the jury because these men were able to describe the exact pattern that he used from the alcohol to the porn, to the stupid fucking handcuff trick. Mm-hmm.

[01:18:42] Kyle Risi: At one point in response, the defense tried to argue that the deaths were actually the results of accidental erotic asphyxiation.

[01:18:50] Adam Cox: That's horrendous.

[01:18:51] Kyle Risi: It's just absurd. Imagine having to stand there and say that as his lawyer with a straight face like, oops, strangled another one. No worries. I'll get [01:19:00] the technique right on the next time.

[01:19:01] Adam Cox: Yeah. 30 more times or whatever that I, this is why I could never be a lawyer. Yeah. I could never do that for that reason. Defend someone like this knowing that you're lying.

[01:19:10] Kyle Risi: Sure. Yeah. And it sounds absurd to us when I say that, but remember they were using the angle with the, the little trick that he was showing them with the turnbuckle thing.

[01:19:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:19:18] Kyle Risi: But still, still,

[01:19:19] Adam Cox: you ju you just Yeah.

[01:19:21] Adam Cox: You wouldn't be doing that.

[01:19:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:19:23] Adam Cox: Do you know what? We've said a few times that he killed 33 people.

[01:19:27] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:19:27] Adam Cox: That is, I dunno, I don't think I really comprehended just how many that is. I know. And the number that is a lot of people that he has, manipulated back into his house and killed in one way or another.

[01:19:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:19:40] Kyle Risi: Don't get me wrong, I don't think it was just these 33 people that he had concert with, remember? Mm-hmm. He was soliciting these boys for sex that were coming and going. He was out like finding these boys. There could be hundreds of them, just 33 of them ended up dying. We dunno how many were assaulted.

[01:19:55] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:19:56] Kyle Risi: Because of course we know that there's that stigma. Yeah. Attached to these young [01:20:00] gay boys engaging in sex with this weird man.

[01:20:03] Adam Cox: Or even they don't have to be gay. Some of them by the sounds of things.

[01:20:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Some of them were not gay. Yeah, that's true.

[01:20:08] Adam Cox: Yeah. What a evil man.

[01:20:10] Kyle Risi: At the end of the trial, it takes the jury less than two hours to come back with a verdict that he is guilty on all 33 counts of murder along with sexual assault and taking indecent liberties with a child. Mm.

[01:20:22] Kyle Risi: What is wild is that at the time of his conviction, this is the highest number of murders anyone in American history has been convicted of, which is wild. Here's the interesting part. If he had been caught just a year earlier, he would've been sentenced to life in prison. But the state of Illinois had just reinstated the death penalty, and so this meant that he was going to be sentenced to death.

[01:20:44] Kyle Risi: I don't know how I feel about this, and I'm keen to hear your thoughts, but at his sentencing at there are a ton of anti-death penalty protestors there protesting against him being put to death.

[01:20:54] Adam Cox: Is that because they want him to suffer and they think that's an easy way out? Or are they [01:21:00] just in

[01:21:00] Kyle Risi: pro-life in that sense?

[01:21:01] Kyle Risi: It's probably that, it's like I understand being anti-death penalty in principle. I do, I think we are both anti-death penalty, but protesting at a John Wayne Gacy sentencing, a man who murdered very young men minors feels at least to be just really badly judged. Do you know what I mean?

[01:21:19] Kyle Risi: I think even the people that were there protesting, I don't think they'll be protesting very hard. I think they'd be like, yeah, no, no, don't kill him. Yeah, I know.

[01:21:27] Adam Cox: I dunno if I do feel bad he killed 33 people. Mm-hmm. That's not just, and I know he probably had a traumatic upbringing, but I feel it's deserved in a way considering how many lives he took.

[01:21:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I'm not sure if it's the kind of like the minor issue. Like the mi him assaulting minors. Including minors. That's the clincher for me. Also the 33 people. That's a lot of people.

[01:21:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. I just, I'm I was almost like, oh, they brought in the death penalty in some ways I don't feel bad about that for him.

[01:21:55] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So that's what I mean, like these people protesting. Surely you must be like, okay, well yeah, [01:22:00] you can be anti-death penalty, but this is John Wayne Gacy.

[01:22:02] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:02] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean?

[01:22:03] Adam Cox: This is pretty extreme. This isn't just someone that's, you know, an accidental killing or just one person.

[01:22:08] Kyle Risi: Mm.

[01:22:08] Adam Cox: 33 people died.

[01:22:09] Kyle Risi: Of course, throughout the years, John, he appeals, he is never successful. When the appeals don't work, he starts changing his story. Sometimes he'll say he didn't kill anyone. Other times he says he only killed a few.

[01:22:22] Kyle Risi: He also claims the real killers were his employees that let themselves in his house with his keys and then were murdering boys without his knowledge.

[01:22:31] Adam Cox: What?

[01:22:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And this is where some of the accomplice theories is born out of. From his testimony, specifically David Cramp, but also a clown friend of his called Michael Rossi, who lived with him for about a year Now, if he wasn't killing during that period again, that only concentrates the rate at which he was killing when Michael wasn't around.

[01:22:53] Adam Cox: But he was killing whilst his wife was there. So, yeah, I don't think, it doesn't stop him from doing it just 'cause some boy moved in.

[01:22:59] Kyle Risi: [01:23:00] Sure. I don't really buy that any of these boys were an accomplice.

[01:23:02] Kyle Risi: I think he was doing this all on his own because it proved that he was able to do it under Carol. Yeah. And you know, like wives are really nosy.

[01:23:10] Adam Cox: If anything, they're gonna be nosier.

[01:23:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:23:13] Adam Cox: Than these, you know, teenage boys

[01:23:14] Kyle Risi: on death row with nothing else to do. Amazingly, John turns to painting, which is grim in itself.

[01:23:20] Kyle Risi: Most of these paintings are of Pogo, the clown of him. They're self portraits. And Adam, they end up selling for as much as $20,000.

[01:23:29] Adam Cox: That's why you're selling that.

[01:23:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah. People who buy them said they did so because they didn't want them to become a shrine to kind of him in a way. So I get that.

[01:23:39] Adam Cox: Oh, so taking them off the mark almost.

[01:23:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's only a few people have said that though, the reason why they bought it. But even still, that's a lot of money to be potentially going back to John Wayne Gacy himself. Like for what? So that he could fund more legal appeals.

[01:23:52] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:23:53] Kyle Risi: Try and get off. So I don't know, it just doesn't sit right with me.

[01:23:57] Kyle Risi: Then Adam, on the 10th of May, [01:24:00] 1994 at 12:58 AM John Wayne Gacy is executed via lethal injection.

[01:24:06] Kyle Risi: Apparently the chemicals that they used had degraded and they ended up clogging the IV tube. And so while everyone was watching the families, the witnesses, members of the press, the execution team had to kind of stop, draw the curtains, and then get it sorted out.

[01:24:21] Kyle Risi: Which is weird. It is a weird thought that people are watching.

[01:24:24] Adam Cox: I, yeah, that's the bit, I don't agree with the death penalty. I don't think it should be a spectacle.

[01:24:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:24:29] Adam Cox: Even if I knew someone that had killed someone, I don't think I'd want to watch.

[01:24:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Just so strange that even today we turned death into this kind of theater with viewing galleries and curtains.

[01:24:42] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:24:42] Kyle Risi: It's weird, like the idea of going to watch someone die, it's like, Hey Adam, like there's a show in Mama Mia at the theater tomorrow night. Do you wanna go? And you're like, actually there's an execution in the square. You wanna go? I'm like, only if they've got hot dogs. Do you know what I mean? It's just so weird.

[01:24:57] Adam Cox: It feels just goes back to medieval times, that's what [01:25:00] okay, we used to do back then, but have we not learned that? That's not right.

[01:25:03] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I mean there is a degree of it being for the families. Mm-hmm. They wanna see him suffer. They want to see him die. So I get that from that angle. But there's press there.

[01:25:11] Kyle Risi: There's also, I dunno if there's members of the public there, but that's a bit strange.

[01:25:15] Adam Cox: Yeah. I feel like you're just playing into his history and his infamy, by doing this.

[01:25:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So eventually they get things sorted with the chemicals.

[01:25:23] Kyle Risi: Still, the chemicals themselves weren't great to the point that it takes him 18 minutes to die.

[01:25:28] Kyle Risi: Which is what a lot of the protestors used to kind of say, this is inhumane, right? Like you, the chemicals should have killed him way sooner. They normally would kill you in minutes. But because they've gone bad, it took him ages. Mm. Apparently Adam, he's last meal was KFC, which again is not great PR for KFC is it?

[01:25:45] Kyle Risi: It

[01:25:45] Adam Cox: really isn't.

[01:25:46] Kyle Risi: And his final words to the viewing gallery were, kiss my ass,

[01:25:50] Adam Cox: what piece of shit?

[01:25:52] Kyle Risi: What a piece of shit.

[01:25:54] Kyle Risi: But the thing to note is that right up to the very end, he never showed any remorse for what he did. And [01:26:00] again, like we mentioned earlier, even at his execution,

[01:26:02] Kyle Risi: there were still protesters out there protesting against this, which is just weird. It's just so strange to me. He is such a prolific evil murderer. I don't get it.

[01:26:12] Kyle Risi: As for the murder house, the authorities actually dealt with that pretty quickly after he was charged just for months, they got the entire thing demolished.

[01:26:20] Kyle Risi: But even as an empty lot, it became this major true crime tourist spot, which is just grooming itself. Eventually though a new house is built in its place, and the owners say that no matter how hard they tried, they cannot get grass to grow on the site.

[01:26:34] Adam Cox: Really

[01:26:35] Kyle Risi: neighbors also say it's haunted. Reportedly seeing ghostly figures running across the lot, hearing strange voices, apparitions that will appear and then disappear in a flash.

[01:26:43] Kyle Risi: And in 2010 paranormal investigators, they decide to go ahead and check it out. And they say that they made contact with John Wayne Gacy himself, so I don't believe any of that.

[01:26:53] Adam Cox: Mm.

[01:26:54] Kyle Risi: But, but yeah, they say he's on to get grim.

[01:26:56] Kyle Risi: As for his victims, as I said, a lot of them have never been [01:27:00] identified. I think there's still five victims that they've just never been able to. But as recently as 2021, genetic genealogy sites like 23 and me helped identify one of them as Francis Wayne Alexander.

[01:27:12] Adam Cox: And was he just like a missing boy then?

[01:27:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he wasn't a, I think he was 22 or so. He worked in local bars. He'd just divorced his wife. I dunno if he was gay, but he was clearly meeting up with him. He went and met up with him and yeah, he murdered him and he was one of the last victims that were found or identified.

[01:27:29] Kyle Risi: And Adam, that is the story of John Wayne Gacy the killer clown.

[01:27:34] Adam Cox: Well, yeah. Not even really a killer clown.

[01:27:36] Kyle Risi: No, not at all.

[01:27:37] Adam Cox: But. I didn't know just how prolific he was.

[01:27:41] Kyle Risi: Crazy.

[01:27:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, that is, it's quite shocking actually.

[01:27:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I'm surprised I've never heard of the story before. 'cause it seems to be like one of the big ones, right?

[01:27:49] Kyle Risi: Like the ones that broke the records killing the most people. But God, I just didn't know that it wasn't really about a killer clown at all. And that actually the truth was more terrifying. [01:28:00] That he was a real upstanding member of the community, well-respected, liked, and was able to operate in plain sight. Mm-hmm. Through maneuvering and manipulation and secrecy.

[01:28:09] Kyle Risi: It makes it more scary in my opinion.

[01:28:11] Adam Cox: I think it does. Yeah. This isn't someone that's lurking in the dark putting on a mask. This is, I dunno, you think of the state of the world, you just think, God, who else is out there?

[01:28:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Crazy. Anyway, Adam fancy doing some member shout outs.

[01:28:25] Adam Cox: Yeah, let's do something. Let's end on a positive note.

[01:28:28] Kyle Risi: Bit something a bit cheery.

[01:28:29] Adam Cox: So this is the part of the show where we remind you that the compendium is not just a podcast. It is also for reasons that remain legally and spiritually unclear. We are a literal functioning circus and a legally regulated place of work.

[01:28:44] Adam Cox: Who is hiring?

[01:28:44] Kyle Risi: We are hiring Adam. Exactly.

[01:28:47] Kyle Risi: So make sure you guys head over to the compendium podcast.com. Click the jobs tab in the footer where you can browse through all of our growing collection of bizarre and suspiciously specific, [01:29:00] deeply bureaucratic circus jobs that we have on offer,

[01:29:04] Adam Cox: all of which, sound fake and yet somehow feel more professionally organized than most companies we've ever worked for.

[01:29:11] Kyle Risi: You can pick your favorite role, apply for it, and then tell us exactly what you do in your position day to day.

[01:29:16] Adam Cox: Yeah, but don't make it vague. In a middle management sort of way, we want proper details. What are your duties? What incidents have you had to deal with? Who is underperforming in your team? What are your KPIs looking like? Is more low? Somebody who bidden by a ferret again.

[01:29:33] Kyle Risi: If you also include a photograph with your application, you'll be added straight to our team members page, where you'll officially become part of the Compendium family.

[01:29:40] Kyle Risi: Every week we'll pick our favorite submission and read it out on the show, which means it's now time to shine that glorious spotlight on this week's Star employee.

[01:29:51] Kyle Risi: This week's star employee is Natalia Devereaux Ward, who is our incident clerk, Glitter Containment Unit. the ideal person will [01:30:00] respond to sparkle outbreaks with clipboard urgency, log accidents, establish quarantine zones, and coordinate decontamination of costumes. Paperwork and sos

[01:30:14] Kyle Risi: Traces, shier trails to their source and issues. Citations for unauthorized twinkle maintains the glitter register levels 1.5 and refuses to touch anything still glittery.

[01:30:30] Adam Cox: I imagine her going, excuse me, who gave you permission to twinkle?

[01:30:35] Kyle Risi: You have got no jurisdiction for that.

[01:30:36] Adam Cox: Come with me,

[01:30:38] Kyle Risi: get the shotgun so, Adam, tell us how is Natalia performing?

[01:30:43] Adam Cox: Well, she says she logs any instance on her very organized spreadsheet. This helps her to track any patterns and prevent future sparkle outbreak incidents.

[01:30:51] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:30:52] Adam Cox: She coordinates the decontamination of these incidents. This mostly includes the use of, uh, her Hetty, Hoover, and balloon roller. [01:31:00]

[01:31:01] Kyle Risi: And a lit roller.

[01:31:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. Uh, this is detrimental to the smooth running of the circus. If even one performer is distracted by the glisten of an unwanted glitter, the entire show could be ruined.

[01:31:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's true.

[01:31:13] Adam Cox: It's happened more than once.

[01:31:14] Kyle Risi: It has, it has

[01:31:15] Adam Cox: She also offers glitter counseling for anyone affected by any past incidents, as I know it can really have a long lasting effect on a person's morale.

[01:31:25] Kyle Risi: See, we, we put people first.

[01:31:27] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. she then says that with her organized spreadsheet, she can very successfully track and prevent major glitter incidents, but is always important to remember the great glitter instant of 1968.

[01:31:37] Kyle Risi: Ah,

[01:31:39] Adam Cox: make Gertrude rest in peace.

[01:31:43] Kyle Risi: Poor Gertrude.

[01:31:44] Adam Cox: And in terms of her self-assessment, she just says she thinks she's doing a cracking job.

[01:31:48] Kyle Risi: I think so too. Minor violation. We don't use spreadsheets. It's the clipboard. Babe, you need that clipboard

[01:31:56] Adam Cox: pen and paper.

[01:31:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that was a good one. I, had, [01:32:00] Lois contact me. Just the other day saying that ~she, ~she wants a role on the circus.

[01:32:04] Adam Cox: Lois a cleaner.

[01:32:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She wants a job as a cleaner.

[01:32:06] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[01:32:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:32:07] Adam Cox: That's fitting.

[01:32:08] Kyle Risi: She was preparing to be, um, the crotch dangler cleaner, but then she thought that sounded too, um, too much like she was a whore, and I was like, well babe, it's not too far from the truth.

[01:32:17] Adam Cox: Harsh

[01:32:20] Kyle Risi: but true. And, um, yeah. So her job is still pending,

[01:32:24] Adam Cox: pending.

[01:32:25] Kyle Risi: We'll come

[01:32:25] Adam Cox: back to that one.

[01:32:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah. We'll have to circle back, find the right role.

[01:32:28] Kyle Risi: So guys, if you wanna be featured on a future episode, head over to the companion podcast, click jobs in the footer, and pick your role and send in your application. We will read the best ones on a future episode,

[01:32:40] Adam Cox: shall we run the outro?

[01:32:42] Kyle Risi: I think I'm ready.

[01:32:43] Kyle Risi: And that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium.

[01:32:47] Adam Cox: If today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show

[01:32:57] Kyle Risi: for our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget, the next week's [01:33:00] episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and as always, it's completely free to access.

[01:33:04] Adam Cox: And of course, if you want even more than you can join our certified Freaks tier to unlock the entire archive. You get to delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:33:14] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday and until then, remember, monsters rarely introduce themselves as monsters. We'll see you next time.

[01:33:23] Adam Cox: See you.