Transcription
This program contains graphic violence and sexual situations. Viewer discretion is advised.
Dozens of teenage boys taken, tortured for hours, then killed in cold blood.
"The killing for him is very arousing."
They're victims of a power-hungry satist that can't get enough. He is obsessed and there's times when he actually is killing two individuals on the same night.
A plot of a Hollywood horror film. This is a terrifying true story.
He actually had something that most killers don't. He had a graveyard underneath his house.
The original killer clown. the real monster that came before the movies it clown house and many others behind the screens.
[Music]
Chicago, Illinois.
[Music]
Norwood Park is a quaint neighborhood just a short drive from O'Hare International Airport.
[Music]
It's a sunny day in 1975 when 18-year-old Johnny Buukovich and two of his friends arrive at the residential office of PDM contractors.
"Let's go."
The owner often hires young, unskilled workers to keep costs down. Sometimes he doesn't pay them anything at all.
"Johnny's had enough."
"Open up. Come on, man. I know you're in there."
"Johnny, you need to pay me right now."
The two men argue for hours.
"I keep telling you I have the money. It's just been an accounting problem."
"You have it? You have it now?"
"No, I haven't."
Johnny threatens to expose his boss's sketchy business practices.
"You're absolutely right. I'm sorry this has happened. Listen, I'll tell you."
But in the end, he realizes he's not getting what he came for.
"Johnny, I'll give you every penny I owe you."
He leaves with his friends. This should be the end of the story. But after leaving his boss's home, young Johnny Buukovich suddenly disappears.
[Music]
The next morning, his parents suspect something terrible has happened. Johnny's father comes across his son's car only a few blocks away from his home. And the key is still inside.
[Music]
Johnny loves his car. He'd been saving up to race it. He'd never leave it that way.
Chicago precinct 14.
The local police receive an urgent call from Mr. Buovich. He frantically alerts them to his son's disappearance.
Arriving at the scene, Officer Burkhard of Chicago PD approaches the driver's side door. Peering in through the window, he sees a key in the ignition. But there's more inside. The young man's checkbook has been left in the glove box. His wallet is in the center console and it's filled with cash. It's undeniably suspicious. Still, these abandoned items aren't proof of foul play. Burkhard heads back to the station to file a report.
Weeks later, the police still have no leads, but Johnny's parents won't give up. His father keeps calling the police over and over.
"Chicago precinct 14."
He remembers his son had a wage dispute and had gone to see his boss. Then he vanished. But Johnny's boss is someone the police would never suspect. He's a respected businessman and a prominent member of the local community. Still, Officer Burkhard contacts him about the young boy. The contractor tells him Johnny Bukovich did come to his house with two friends. He says those witnesses can confirm the boy left his place just fine. Where he went from there is a mystery.
[Music]
Over the next 3 years. This same mystery plays out again and again in Chicago. Young men keep going missing. The ones reported to police remain unsolved. This is the 1970s. This is a period of time when hitchhiking was still very popular. It wasn't unusual for people to travel distances, to go periods of time without actually identifying where they were. So, it's hard to go back and determine where someone goes missing if you're not sure precisely where they should have been.
For a predator that stalks human prey, 70s Chicago is the perfect hunting ground. Street after street of young boys willing to ride with nearly anyone who offers to get them high.
"Generally, there's a preference for a certain type of victim. They want victims that are vulnerable, victims that aren't going to be sought out quickly by police. So, you choose high-risk victims, which is why prostitutes are such an easy target for offenders. Or you get young men engaged in prostitution activities, or you get drifters. uh people wandering around looking for a job that you know they're not from the area. You know, these are very vulnerable individuals, people that will go missing and people won't be looking for them."
Then 3 years after Johnny Bukovich goes missing, 26-year-old Jeffrey Wrignel rushes into another Chicago police precinct.
"There's a guy trying to kill me and I think he almost did."
He's clearly traumatized from the bruises on his face. Detectives expect the worst.
"I need to know where you were."
"I was leaving Williams. There's this dude in a black sedan."
Rel his horrifying story. Two days earlier, he's walking home when he notices a big black car cruising right behind him.
"Hey,"
the driver invites him to hop in and smoke a joint.
"You want to get high?"
The man seems friendly enough.
"All right,"
"Right on."
So, Wrignell doesn't hesitate to hop in.
"All right."
"All right, let's go."
"When we're looking at serial offenders and how they select their victims, often times they're picking very vulnerable individuals, they're reading individuals. They're very good at reading people and what they want. So if this individual is looking for drugs, I'm the individual that can supply those drugs. Then they need to disarm the individual and they need to get them alone. They need to get them vulnerable."
But as soon as the car pulls away, the man pounces, shoving a rag over his nose and mouth. It's soaked with a sweet smelling liquid, probably chloroform.
[Applause]
He wakes several times during the ride, briefly catching glimpses of street lights on the expressway and signs. Then the kidnapper puts the rag back over his mouth and everything goes black and the worst is yet to come. When he regains consciousness, he finds himself inside the predator's home. He's been stripped naked. His hands are locked in some sort of torture restraint, and the man from the car looms over him ominously. His face, so friendly and innocent before, now twists into a maniacal, obscene grin. He slowly steps forward, picks up a short, blunt object from the floor, and attacks.
"I think you need to kill me."
For hours and hours, he's raped, whipped, and beaten.
"All at the hands of the brutal sadist."
"Don't cry."
Over and over, the asalent uses chloroform to knock him out. And each time he wakes up, the nightmare begins again. Then after countless hours of pain in a rare and inexplicable moment of mercy, the sadistic monster dumps Rignal in a park. Alive, but unconscious. Battered and disoriented, the tortured young man goes straight to the police.
"Can you tell me nothing?"
"He's a white guy. He's a white guy."
The detectives believe Jeffrey Wrignal's frightening story.
"Okay. So, sir, right now all I know is that he was a white man with a mustache."
"Yeah. Can you tell?"
But without a name, an address, or a solid description of his abductor, there's very little they can do.
"The one unique detail Rel does remember the car, a black osmo. Also, he remembers seeing an exit sign on the expressway as he drifted in and out of consciousness. The leads are insignificant for the detectives. It's not enough information to open an investigation."
"Investigators know they're looking at a serious crime, a crime of battery of one form or another. But they don't have any good clues. They don't have an identity of who this guy actually is. In fact, they have nothing to work with."
Angry and frustrated, he takes matters into his own hands and launches his own investigation. He decides to go on a stakeout at the exit ramp he remembers from his nightmare experience. It's a long shot. Thousands of cars travel this busy expressway every day. But if he can spot that one car, he might be able to bring the depraved attacker to justice.
"What are the odds that you could sit at a location knowing not nothing about the pattern of the predator and actually see the same car you were that was used in your crime? Pretty slim odds. That's why for the most part, detectives probably wouldn't even take that approach. But here, Rignal decides this is the only approach I can take. I only know one thing about this guy for sure. I know where he snatched me."
But it looks like a needle in a hay stack. Weeks turn to months and there's no sign of the black olds mobile. But just when Rignal is about to give up, he sees it. It's heading northwest into the suburbs. He can hardly believe it. It's definitely the same car and the chase is on.
"You got to give Rignal a lot of credit cuz he was able to do something that that most agencies can't even finance. He he spent a period of months looking at the scene, a surveillance basically and actually identified the car that he was taken from."
Wrignal discreetly follows the car into the neighborhood of Norwood Park. As it stops outside 8213 Summerdale Avenue, Rignel is confident he's found the location where he was attacked and tortured. Armed with a license plate number and a residential address, he goes straight to the police and they identify the man behind his abduction, John Wayne Gasey.
Gayy is a very public figure. He's a respected Chicago businessman who lives in a nice suburban neighborhood with a wife and two stepdaughters.
"He's reputable. He's involved with business. He's well known in the community. He's a good neighbor."
"Thank you very much."
He's politically active.
"I'm very proud of you."
He's involved as a precinct captain. The scary thing about cases like this is that Gayy, like other predators, he's not hiding. He's actually very, very comfortable out in the open. And as a matter of fact, he's established himself in a way that would put him beyond suspicion. He's even photographed with First Lady uh Rosyn Carter. These are the kinds of things that give you cover so you can hide in plain sight.
And that's not all. In his spare time, Gayy polishes his public persona as a member of the Jolly Joker Clown Club.
"For Gayy, this is just simply another way of being like the guy everybody likes. I mean, how could you not like a clown? It would it allows him essentially to dress up in face paint and you know act in a way that he probably wouldn't normally act when he's not in costume."
"Hey kids, it's Pogo the Clown."
Gayy creates his own costume and takes the name Pogo the Clown.
"Hey kids,"
performing for kids at birthday parties and local hospitals. It's just another piece of this public persona that keeps people thinking he's just your average great guy in the city, in the neighborhood. Very helpful. And look, he even entertains children.
"Oh, I can't wait to share some birthday gags with you."
Three years earlier, when 18-year-old Johnny Buovich disappeared, police spoke briefly with Gayy. At that time, due to his positive reputation in the community and the fact that no one could directly connect him to the boy's disappearance, they quickly dismissed him as a suspect. Now, there's someone who has evidence. Wrignal has seen Gasey's dark side, but without a corroborating witness. The only charge police can file in the Jeffrey Rignel case is battery. It's a minor offense with a fine of just $100. and no jail time.
"So why are you asking questions and not getting up?"
Rignal is furious. Remember that months have now transpired between the point of the attack and the point of the arrest. The opportunity to go back and collect physical evidence that would either corroborate Rignal's version of the story or Gasey's version of the story has now vanished because so many months have transpired. And that's why this is a difficult case to really even try because you have a one-on-one uh one person's word against somebody else and probably little or no forensic evidence to corroborate one side or the other.
Gasey's ultimately arrested for this battery, but very common to other kinds of crimes. Doesn't mean he's going to stay in custody. And in fact, this is not unusual to have somebody be out of custody awaiting trial. And that's exactly what happens with Gayy. In fact, he's out of custody for a long period of time, waiting to go to trial on the Rnal case.
With his slap on the wrist misdemeanor trial pending, Gayy quickly falls off the police radar. In his private life, he may be a deviant, but in public, he's still seen as a pillar of the community.
[Music]
For police, John Wayne Gasey's community service makes him a civic hero. On the other hand, his accuser, Jeffrey Wignel, openly admits to police that he's bisexual. It's a dangerous confession in the late '70s, and it labels Wrignal a sexual deviant in the eyes of many.
"Chicago precinct 14."
Meanwhile, every few weeks, police get another call from the parents of young Johnny Buovich, the boy who worked for Gayy and disappeared mysteriously 3 years earlier after they had an argument.
"You need to pay me right now."
And Johnny isn't alone. The number of missing teenagers in Chicago keeps growing. 19 young men have vanished. Most are never even reported to police. The ones that are quickly get dismissed as runaways. If these cases are linked in any way. Without witnesses, there's almost no way for police detectives spread out over multiple precincts and jurisdictions to make a connection.
"It's a real detriment to law enforcement because you have a lot of cases that really are linked, but there's no ability to link them because the individual law enforcement agencies aren't aware of the other cases."
"Remember, we're in the 70s. This is pre-internet. This is pre- really computers being able to do the kinds of databasing we do today. It's pre-technology for DNA and other kind of forensic technology. It's preocial media. You know, your smartphone today can identify where you are. It's pre any of that. We're looking at a a time in history in which someone could go missing and there'd be little or no trail online, little or no trail forensically that would help investigators solve such a case."
[Music]
Then there's a break that could finally solve these mysterious disappearances.
"My son is missing."
9 months after Wrignal's brutal abduction, Desplaines, Illinois officer Ron Adams takes a statement from a very frightened mother.
"Please, you've got to help me."
Named Elizabeth Past. She says her 15-year-old son, Robert, is missing. And unlike previous cases, Robert is a model child with no motive to run off.
"Robert Pie is unusual. He's different than the other missing young men. He's an outlier in the sense that he's the kind of guy who's connected to his family. He's close to his parents. His parents have an expectation when they're going to see him, when they're not going to see him. He goes missing for a short period of time. They're alarmed."
"And when's the last time you saw him?"
"Um, I went to Niss's drugstore where he worked."
He goes missing on the night of his mother's birthday. It's very unusual for Robert. They've got a close relationship and they don't expect this kind of behavior from him. And for that reason, the detectives take this very seriously.
Earlier that evening, Mrs. P is waiting to drive her son Robert home from his current job at a local pharmacy when he asks her to wait a little longer.
"I got to meet with him. It's going to be twice as much as the pharmacy job. Really good money, Ma. 2 minutes."
"Who are you meeting with?"
He says he has a lead on a new job for the summer. He runs off to talk to the potential employer. Young Robert never returns. It's a parent's worst nightmare. And his mother has no idea how real and terrifying this nightmare truly is.
[Music]
Her son's current boss says the name of the man Robert went to see.
"I had a guy in here before. He was talking to me about some shelving. Is he a contractor?"
"Yeah."
"Is John Gayy."
That night at the precinct, police take Mrs. P's story very seriously.
"And turned the corner and he never came back."
Lieutenant Joe Kosenzac is the chief of detectives at Dez Plains PD. And this case hits especially close to home. Kosenzac also has a teenage son and he attends the same high school as Robert Past. It's not hard for him to imagine what Mrs. P is going through. It's almost as if he's searching for his own child.
"And you find that Gayy, he's the last person to see Robbie."
Using the name John Gayy and a phone number supplied by the boy's boss, Kosenzac contacts Chicago police headquarters to see if this mysterious contractor has any prior convictions. What he finds is very disturbing. Digging through records from multiple precincts, he finds out John Wayne Gayy has a serious criminal history involving young men and boys.
"We know that offenders choose, especially serial offenders, tend to have a particular victim type that they're looking for. When you see a particular sex being targeted, a particular age range being targeted, it starts to really sort of raise your hackles."
His rap sheet shows the recent case involving 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignel.
"That criminal trial is still pending, but there's more. 10 years earlier, Gayy was convicted in Iowa of sodomizing a 15-year-old boy the same age as Robert Past. He served just 18 months of a 10-year prison sentence. Clearly, moving to another state and building his reputation as an upstanding citizen did not curb his deviant appetites."
"Gayy has a very clear definition of what is legal and what is not legal. He understands that, but he doesn't care. He just simply chooses to do wrong without any consequences because that's what makes him feel good."
Detective Kosenzac knows the boy is in serious danger and every second counts.
"It's not a cliche to say that the first 48 hours of an investigation are critical because it's all about evidence and what evidence is still available to us. At some point, evidence either deteriorates because of the nature of the evidence if it's biological, for example, or a suspect has the opportunity to dispose of evidence. So, that's why we want to work quickly. It's not just in figuring out who did it. It's about preserving the evidence that points to the person who did it."
Detective Kosenzac and another officer head to Gasey's home on Summerdale Avenue. They want to question the suspect face to face. They're also praying they'll find teenage Robert inside the man's home unharmed.
"Hey, Mr. John Gayy."
"Yes."
"But when Gayy opens the door, there's no sign of anyone else inside."
"He spoke with you?"
"No, I I I don't."
The contractor denies ever meeting Robert Past. He says his uncle just died. He doesn't have time to talk about missing boys he's never met. Gayy wants them to leave so he can speak to his mourning mother.
"This may not be a good time, sir, but we just need to clear a few things up."
Lieutenant Kosenzac is suspicious.
"He thinks this story is smoke and mirrors."
Deceased uncle or not.
"I need you to come down, sir."
Coenzac knows Geese is hiding something.
"Detectives are always looking for some form of evidence in everything they do. Sometimes that evidence is just behavior. It's just what somebody says and how they say it. the things they chose to say, the things they could have said but chose not to say, expressions. These are the things that are important to detectives."
But Kosenzac can tell he's not getting any more out of Gasey right now. He asks the contractor to come to the station and make a formal statement later that evening.
"Fine."
Reluctantly, Gasey agrees. Gasey's criminal record makes his possible involvement in the disappearance of Robert Past very disturbing. But it also gives Lieutenant Kosenzac hope. The contractor may be a sexual predator, but there's no evidence he's a killer. Robert may still be alive, but the clock is ticking. Kosen Zach needs a search warrant. Now, the problem with many of these cases is trying to develop enough probable cause to write a search warrant so you can actually find the evidence you need to make the case. And if you're standing on the outside, don't have much information to begin with. It's hard to do that.
"This offender is not going to stop. And your concern as an investigator is what can I do now to get this guy identified and get him stopped?"
Lieutenant Kosenzac contacts the state's attorney. He's short on physical evidence, but Gayy's criminal record and the witness testimony that says Robert went to speak to the convict contractor right before he disappeared is enough to secure the warrant he needs.
"Hey fellas."
Later that day, when Gayy finally shows up to make a formal statement, his demeanor is calm and confident. He has no idea he's walking into a trap. He sees himself as infallible. There's no way the police are going to catch me. I am just that good. That's the way he looks at himself. And often times, that's the undoing for individuals like this.
"Kosen Zach serves him the warrant and requests the keys to Gayy's house and vehicles."
"You can't do this."
Gayy's volatile reaction, says everything.
"You can't have my keys. I know your boss. I will have your jobs for this. There's obviously something he doesn't want them to see."
"You have no idea who you're dealing with."
Gayy is clearly a very clever, cunning man, but there's even something more disturbing about it. There's a sense here that Gayy thinks that he's got more experience in this than the people who are investigating him. And he acts that way. He's very bold. He's very brazen. He's leaving things out. He's not covering all of his tracks. There's a sense that he's very comfortable doing what he's doing.
With Gasey at the station, Lieutenant Kosenzac heads to the contractor's home. His heart is racing. It's been nearly 2 days since 15-year-old Robert Past vanished, trapped by a vile predator like Gayy. It would be naive to think that Robert's unharmed. But Kosenzac praise he's still alive. Stepping inside, Kosenzac and the other detectives spread out, going room to room, they search every inch of Gasey's home.
"Detectives are always trying to connect the dots. You're trying to find those pieces of evidence that connect your victim to your suspect, especially if the suspect has denied having any extended contact with the victim or has maybe even denied knowing the victim. I'm looking for something that betrays the lie. That can be personal property from the victim. It could be his jewelry. It could be clothing from the victim. It could be anything like this that connects victims to suspects."
They find gay pornographic videos, magazines, and sex toys. A set of nickelplated handcuffs. And something far more disturbing. A 2x4 with human restraints at either end. It's a device someone like Gayy might use for sexual torture.
But that's not all they find. In the kitchen trash, there's a film developing receipt from Nissan Pharmacy where Robert P worked. Gayy also has a suspicious assortment of personal effects that clearly are not his own. A class ring with the initials JAS, underwear that's too small to fit a man his size. and a blue hooded coat similar to one Robert P wore the night he disappeared. Then while pulling items from a closet, Kosenzac sees something unexpected, a trap door leading down under the house. Reaching down, he slides his hand under the door and slowly begins to lift it up. Robert could be trapped below or worse. Is this a crawl space or a deadly tomb?
The air inside the dank dungeon-like area is thick with a musty smell, but the dirt appears undisturbed, and there's no sign of the young boy. Removing the evidence they've collected, Kosenzac and his team leave Gayy's home. What he's found so far is chilling. But before he can make an arrest, he still needs solid proof Robert Past was in Gasey's home. He wants to keep close tabs on the predator. He instructs his team to follow Gasey wherever he goes, day and night.
"What's interesting here is if you know your suspect is uh kind of baiting you in a way, thinks he's clever, more clever than you are, then this surveillance, him knowing you're watching him may actually play in your favor because he may want to do something in response to your surveillance."
"I may speak, please."
Kosen Zach does some further investigating into Gayy's past.
"I >> just have a couple questions I want to ask you about your ex-husband. you have a few minutes to talk to me."
He contacts Gasey's ex-wife, Carol. She has some very interesting things to say about her former husband. While they were married, Gasey would often go out without explanation, and as their marriage began to fall apart, he stopped concealing his sexual appetites, even telling her the kind of young men he preferred.
"Carol had seen wild mood swings, had seen acts of violence in the course of their marriage. But when she discovered that he had a sexual appetite that she wasn't aware of, that changed everything."
"Okay."
And that's not all. She tells Lieutenant Kosenzac that a former employee of Gayy, Johnny Bookovich, also disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
"You need to pay me right now."
At the time, Gayy was questioned and dismissed as a suspect. But now it's very suspicious. The list of missing boys connected to Gayy grows bigger and bigger.
"Hello, Mrs. Past."
"Hi, detective."
Then Kosen Zach gets his big break when Robert P's mother checks in on the status of the case and she has some new information.
"Robbie had a receipt."
She remembers that the night her son disappeared, a coworker put a Nissan pharmacy film developing receipt into the pocket of Robert's blue coat. Kosenzac is stunned. He races over to the table of evidence. And right there in an evidence bag is a Nissan Pharmacy film developing receipt. It's the smoking gun he's been searching for. He immediately calls the pharmacy and confirms 2349. It is a match. Fantastic. Thank you.
The numbers on the receipt found in Gasey's home perfectly match the film envelope at the store. Gasey said he never even met the teenager, but this is undeniable evidence. Robert Past was in Gayy's home. Kosenzac believes without a doubt that Gayy is responsible for the disappearance of Robert Past and several other young men. But without a body or proof Gasey harmed the missing teenager, getting a second search warrant will be tough. Amazingly, Kosenzac gets help from Gayy himself. The contractor becomes very cocky, even inviting the officers inside his home. How bold is that? How risky is that? But for him, in his mind, he thinks, I've got all of this completely under control. There's a cat and mouse relationship here, it seems, between Gayy and the detectives who he invites into his house at some point. As if to say, "Hey, you can't make a case against me. I'm clever enough to be able to avoid detection. I'm clever enough to be able to fool you."
"Well, fellas, what can I do for you?"
"Well, we appreciate you uh giving us a moment of your time, Mr. Gasey. Just have a couple of routine questions to ask you, hoping you might be able to help us out."
"Always trying to develop probable cause for the next search warrant. The problem is right now I've got not enough probable cause to do a search warrant."
"But if you're going to invite me in, well then trust me, I'm going to find a way to look for the pieces of evidence I need to have the probable cause to do an in-depth search."
"So, how's business going, by the way?"
"Oh, it's good. It's good. Business is booming. I got about 15 employees right now. Takes up a lot of my time, though. Keeps me away from my passion."
As the men talk, the topic quickly turns to Gayy's love for clowns.
"I'm a professional clown on weekends for charities, kids parties. Pogo the clown."
Then out of the blue, Gayy says something that shows just how little he fears the law.
"Oh yeah, detective. I tell you, clowns are where it's at. A clown can get away with murder."
While one officer keeps him talking, another steps away to use the bathroom. And just as he flushes, the heating vents suddenly kick on, a strangely sweet, putrid odor seeps into the room. There's no denying that smell, and it's coming from under the house. It smells like a morg.
"If I'm the investigator, there's a bone chilling moment here. There's a moment, an aha moment that's horrific. And that's that moment when you actually smell death coming up from the heater underneath the house. Death has a particular smell and you learn it pretty quickly as an investigator. Even if you haven't worked a case where someone's been dead for a period of days, if you do an autopsy or go to an autopsy as an investigator, you're going to smell that. And once you've smelled it once, you never forget it. Death's got a very particular smell and virtually nothing else can account for that smell."
"You kidding?"
It's all Lieutenant Kenzac needs. Gasey's criminal record involving young boys, the matching photo receipt from Nissan Pharmacy, and the deathly odor coming from under his home is enough proof to get a second search warrant. Meanwhile, as if Gayy knows they're closing in, his behavior becomes more and more erratic. He drives recklessly. Then suddenly he veers off the road, walks up to a total stranger, and slides a bag of drugs into his back pocket right in front of police.
"He is an individual who has a very, very high opinion of himself. I think he's very narcissistic. I'm untouchable. The police simply haven't got the wherewithal to do anything with me."
Amazingly, with all the evidence mounting against Gayy in the disappearance of several young men,
"This is really necessary."
It's a simple drug offense that gets him arrested.
Now, with Gayy in custody and armed with a new search warrant, this time with a team of evidence technicians, Kosenzac has entered Gayy's home again. And there's no question where they'll begin the search. The crawl space under the house.
"This is a missing person's investigation. So, you're looking for the person who's missing. And that means you're looking for a body. Especially if you think you've smelled death coming from underneath this house to begin with. Your fear is probably that there's a dead person under the house."
They begin digging in the hard packed dirt. Almost immediately, they find something truly horrifying, a human bone.
[Music]
And the more they dig,
[Music]
the more they find. It's not just one victim. There are dozens of bodies. He had a graveyard underneath his house.
"When we typically read about these kinds of gruesome finds, we we read about it very briefly. It's in a newspaper article. You don't put yourself in the position of the people who actually had to do it. I think when you work a case in which you get to a crime scene that's horrific, where the level of of mayhem that's been performed is just beyond the pale, those are the ones that are the hardest to to process. The investigators, the detectives who had actually had to sift through this evidence, had to touch the bodies, had to move these bodies. It's the kind of thing that you cannot you cannot just leave it at the crime scene. This is a horrific experience. It is very troubling. It's very hard to just do it and remain calm, remain detached."
It's apparent Gayy was too arrogant to think he'd ever get caught.
"He feels that he can bury his victims on his own property under his house, which of course becomes very problematic if they're discovered. But for him, he doesn't see that as a problem because in his mind, he is so much smarter than the police that I am actually able to do this. I can actually bury people on my own property. That way, I know where they are. I have control over them. I know that the police haven't discovered them. There's no way the police are going to catch me."
"Mr. Gayy."
Kosenzac returns to police headquarters and confronts Gayy with their discovery.
"We found multiple bodies."
Kosenzac is staring into the cold dead eyes of a psychopath.
"One of the hallmarks of being a psychopath is this complete uh lack of remorse for the victims and their abject lack of empathy for the victims. They simply do not care. What they're interested in is what's important to them. So if torturing somebody is important to them, then they're they're going to engage in it. Killing somebody means almost nothing to them."
"Boy, he was a pain. Kind of had it coming."
In Gayy's case, despite the fact that the police had dug up these victims out of his crawl space and from underneath his house, Gayy is completely unaffected by the the enormity of what he's done.
"I showed him the rope trick. You use a rope, but if you just use your hands, they struggle way too much."
If it feels good to Gayy, that's all that matters. How the victim feels is unimportant. The victim is just a tool I'm using to feel good. And when I'm done with the victim, I just dispose of them. They're just like trash. I get rid of them. And I I don't have any more concern about dumping this young man under my house and throwing quickline on him than I would with throwing away a cardboard box.
"You do a little double loop and you put a stick in there and then you twist it."
Gayy casually admits he strangled Robert P and threw his body off a bridge just like a piece of garbage.
"There was no room under the house."
"For serial offenders, people are simply objects to be used to be stepped on, to be hurt, and there's no empathy, no thought about that. They're predators and they are only out for themselves. And because they have this complete lack of empathy, they simply can murder somebody in a most cruel and unusual way and then moments later be completely um unbothered by this."
"You're under arrest."
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be used against you in the court of law."
Disgusted. Lieutenant Kosenzac reads him his rights and arrests him for murder. The scale of Gasey's butchery is unimaginable. Police find a total of 27 bodies in his home. 26 buried in the crawl space with one additional victim hidden underneath the concrete of his garage.
[Music]
It's Johnny Buukovich, the young man who disappeared three years ago after arguing with Gayy. If you look at it in terms of possession and control, even in death, he has control of these victims because they're right there. They're right under his house. He knows where they are. And that that really is the ultimate in control.
But these are only some of Gayy's victims. The serial killer confesses he ran out of room under his home and
"All that digging the hell on your back."
And began dumping dead bodies into the Dez Plains River. He thought about putting bodies in his attic, but thought that would become problematic. So really, as a matter of simply disposing of the bodies, he actually started taking them to the river, throwing them off the bridge.
[Music]
How many? He can't remember. And one missing body police are desperate to recover is Robert P. This whole search was dictated by a missing person. So the first thing you're looking for in this kind of a search is a body. And that's what they're actually looking for evidentially is the remains of something they can identify as a human body.
Over the next 5 months, police pull body after body out of the river. Then finally, they discover young Robert's remains. And in a cruel twist of fate, his final resting place is in an area of the river he and his father used to travel by canoe. It's much needed closure for the victim's families and Lieutenant Joe Kosenzac. At least now Gasey will finally answer for his crimes.
March 1980, after 5 weeks of testimony from more than 100 witnesses, jurors began deliberations. There was no doubt Gayy killed all of the boys. But was he legally insane when he did it? Gayy ultimately admitted to these killings. So the issue is not whether he did it or not. The issue is was he crazy? Is that his excuse? Can he use insanity as his plea? Can he use insanity as his way out of any kind of a criminal charge?
"The problem of course is if you look at the history of how he did these murders, the methodical way. He's got a very consistent pattern. He does things the exact same way. Only when he makes small changes in his pattern does he expose himself to risk. These are the maneuvers of somebody who's clever, not crazy."
In just two hours, jurors returned a verdict.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, John Wayne Gasey,"
"guilty on all 33 counts of first-degree murder."
"What's fascinating about Gayy, like other serial killers, is um the fact that no one suspected him until investigators actually did an investigation. It's really hard for people to imagine that guy could do that. Really? You're telling me that this guy who I know and I go to business meetings with and I've been involved in in political fundraisers with, I know this guy pretty well. He's capable of that. No way. It it shocks us. What people really want is when we have a serial killer, when we have this really disturbing series of murders, we want the behavior in that crime to match the complexity of the offender. We want to see the monster. We want to be able to recognize that we are dealing with a serial killer. The fact is that almost never happens. It almost never happens. The reason that these individuals are so successful is that they look just like you and I. They aren't the monster. They're your next door neighbor who has that secret life. They've got the public life and that's the life they let you see. That's why neighbors are always talking about on television shows. He seemed like the nicest guy. He always said hi to me in the morning. He was always walking his dog, took care of his garden. That's the public face that we get to see for these guys. We never get to see the private life or the secret life for these individuals. And it's very disturbing for people. They want to know that if I see a serial killer, I can recognize him. It's never going to happen. That's what makes serial killers successful is that they don't look like the monster. They just look like you and me. And sometimes really, you know, they're they're the antithesis of what we would think a serial offender should be like."
"is hereby recommended that the defendant be executed."
John Wayne Gayy, considered one of the most vicious serial killers in US history, was sentenced to death. Even when they're pushing the cocktail, the deadly cocktail into his arm, he's being executed. He still is taking control. He still tells them, "Kiss my ass." He still thinks that he's in control. And that really was the hallmark of his entire career. Gasey's vile acts, his unquenchable appetite for young men and murder, and his bizarre fascination with a favorite children's entertainer, clowns, has completely changed the way we see these previously innocent painted performers. And this new face of horror continues to inspire countless villains, each one more disturbing than the last. There's something horrific about the clown figure that Gayy represents and our culture has kind of exploited that. You'll see costumes now on Halloween that are evil clown costumes. That all stems and starts with Gayy. That's what makes serial killers successful is that they don't look like the monster. And sometimes really, you know, they're they're the antithesis of what we would think a serial offender should be like. A mass grave of missing boys, sadistic sexual torture, and a clown-obsessed murderer behind it all. These things shouldn't be real, but they are. It's the true story of John Wayne Gasey, the original killer clown. Behind the screens.