TRUE CRIME FRIDAY: DEVIL IN DISGUISE

Ninetoes watched Peacock’s Devil in Disguise true crime bioseries and has thoughts about the cases presented.

Hey there, true crime lovers! It is your favorite investigator, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ, and I am on the beat with a look at PEACOCK’S Devil in Disguise. I have my notebook in hand and coffee in my system, so let’s get to it!

John Wayne Gacy. The name says it all, right? An American serial killer convicted of murdering 33 boys and young men and sentenced to die. His death sentence was carried out on May 10, 1994.

Open and closed, right? Of course, the evidence against him was sky high.

HE did all of it, right? Sure he did. The bodies were at his residence, and he confessed to dumping some in the river.

No one else was involved, right?…well, this one is a bit tricky to say for certain.

AND it was only thirty-three victims and no more, right?…ummm. Gacy himself said to one of the police officers, “45 sounds like a good number, doesn’t it?”

That is what I thought while watching Devil in Disguise. The show involves news footage of the crimes as well as interviews with those involved in his capture, prosecution, and sentencing. There is another aspect, and that is the footage of an interview with Gacy in prison conducted by Craig Bowley. Bowley was granted unprecedented access to Gacy. For some reason, Gacy got whatever he wanted when it came to phone time in prison. If he wanted an hour, he got an hour.

The first four episodes deal with the crimes, capture, and trial of John Wayne Gacy. Don’t get me wrong, what was done was horrific. The families’ lives were shattered. They may never know any form of peace again.

When you watch this documentary, you will notice a binder that Gacy has that is at least eight inches thick, but it could be as many as twelve inches thick. These are notes and research HE compiled on his victims. There were as many as thirty pages each for each victim. Along with his research notes, he had his own version of lies.

When the story broke and became popular, people were under the impression that Gacy dressed as a clown to lure young boys to their death. This is not true. Gacy wore many faces: businessman, politician, clown. His clown persona, “Pogo,” was used for charities and things like that. He lured young men to their deaths with employment. Gacy took them under his wing and taught them a useful skill in construction. We are talking about an age range of late teens and early twenties. This does not make the crimes any less tragic. He would sometimes have sex with these men, then show them a “magic trick” involving handcuffs and then tie a cord around their neck, insert a stick, and twist. These young men would suffocate and die.

Another fact to consider was that the bodies were not buried in his basement. They were buried in the crawlspace under his house. This area was relatively small, and Gacy was a big man. There is no way he could fit under there and dig a hole to deposit the bodies in. 27 bodies were found under his house. Sure, he may have buried the first few, but he had two of his workers, Mike Rossi and David Cram, go into the crawl space and dig the holes as he instructed.

Now, the question on my mind is why Rossi or Cram never went to the police with any suspicions. After a while, you had to have some clue as to what the holes were for. Sure, they were on Gacy’s payrol,l and U get the idea of doing what the boss says, but the fact that they dug the holes made them, at the very least, accomplices after the fact. Yet, no criminal charges were ever filed against them.

It is episode five that caught my attention. This is a case of “Just when you thought you had it all figured out…” and you find out that you don’t. Episode five opens your eyes to several questions:

·         What if there were more than 33 bodies?

·         Did Gacy act alone?

·         How could he have committed some of the murders if he was not even in the area at the time of some of the disappearances?

·         Was Gacy involved in an underground “Snuff Film” ring? A Snuff Film depicts the murder of a victim in various ways, often slow and torturous.

If nothing else, John Wayne Gacy took meticulous notes on his business dealings, some of them taking him out of Illinois. He kept receipts for hotel accommodations, meals, entertainment, and travel. These documents showed that John Wayne Gacy was nowhere near his home at the time of some of the killings.

What becomes interesting at this point is the introduction of John David Norman. He was a pedophile and sex offender who was basically on a prison merry-go-round. He would get out, commit another crime, and go back in. While he was in prison in Illinois, he started a newsletter called The Delta Project. This project claimed to “provide educational, travel and self-development opportunities for qualified young men of character and integrity.” This was nothing more than to lure young men into sexual acts and snuff films. His right-hand man was Philip Paske, who worked for Gacy at one point. It is thought that this was how Gacy got into making snuff films. This being said, no snuff films involving any of Gacy’s victims have ever been found.

As to the question of the number of victims, episode five points out the fact that Gacy was a handyman/caretaker for his mother’s apartment building. The property had a triangular-shaped backyard. Some witnesses had seen Gacy digging trenches in that very backyard. When the Gacy case broke, an investigator mentioned the property and the possibility that more bodies were there. This investigator was told, “We don’t need anymore bodies.” Upon further investigation a couple of decades later, using ground penetrating radar, there were seventeen anomalies that had the possibility of being more bodies. When police went to dig in the backyard, they went to two unrelated areas on the map that was drawn and found nothing. End of story.

The more I watched, the more questions I had. Does all of this excuse what John Wayne Gacy did or turn over his conviction? No. If you eliminate the bodies that were put in the crawlspace and other areas, he is still guilty of seventeen murders. It is interesting that in the area he resided in, there have not been any more reports of disappearances of young men in the manner that Gacy did his crimes.

Until the next time, keep your pencils sharp and your paper dry. I bid you successful investigations.

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing, nor do the views or opinions of Crystal Lake necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or its staff. Thank you for understanding.