American Monsters: John Wayne Gacy - Featuring an Interview with Gacy Attorney Karen Conti

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning, Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:18 Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic. I'm zevn Odelberg, host of Kind of Murdery, a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey, everybody, thanks for being here. Just like it says in the intro, I am Zeven Odelberg, and this is kind of Murdery.

0:50 Speaker 2: You know me. I am your friendly neighborhood true crimes and real Horror's host. Welcome to the first episode of season seven of Kind of Murdery. It's been a busy sun and I know I've been dropping a string of classic episodes, but I am back, live and unfiltered for the start of a new season with a very very intense, but I think compelling and even edifying. That's a fancy word for educational. First episode here in season seven. Now, if you've been listening to me for a while, you probably know that I don't think much of trigger warnings.

1:23 Speaker 2: In fact, I think the trigger warnings themselves can trigger trauma, and beyond that, they communicate the idea that avoiding facing one's fears and trauma is the proper first choice path. Now, I've found it to be true in my own life that facing scary stuff is really the only way to deal with it. As the saying goes, the only way out is through, So I don't hold much truck with trigger warnings. That said, I'm going to issue one today. Today's episode is the story of famed American serial killer, I should say infamous American serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the Killer Clown, a man whose heinous acts makes Stephen King's famous Killer Clown novel.

1:59 Speaker 2: It read like a children's bedtime story, but it is certainly not good Night Moon, and I must tell you that though I've covered all kinds of heinous killers on this show, serial and otherwise, for me, Gaysey's story is the worst. I hated the days I spent researching it because the man was truly a stomach churning monster. So if you're squeamish at all, and a lot of you probably aren't because you listen to this show, But if you are, this might be an episode to skip and certainly not to listen to with children.

2:27 Speaker 2: That said, I hope you find the courage not to skip it, because this is no ordinary episode. It's the new season premiere. And after I tell Gasey's story in case some of you don't already know it. And by the way, here I should give a particular shout out to Katie Serena and all its Interesting dot com for her article on Gaysey that I found particularly helpful. All sources are in the show notes. But after I tell Gaysey's story, I have a pretty fascinating guest interview that follows. I interview defense attorney, legal scholar, television legal expert, podcast host.

2:58 Speaker 2: Her resume is truly impressive. She's even tried a case before the Supreme Court. She's got a radio show too. Who am I talking about while I'm talking about my guest? After the Gaysey Story. Award winning author of the National Indie Excellence Award, the Silver Nonfiction Book Award, and shortlisted for the International Rubery Award for Best True Crime Book. My guest is Karen Conti, who represented John Wayne Gacy on death row. Now I didn't learn this, I learned it from Karen's excellent book, Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy.

3:29 Speaker 2: That's the book that won all the awards. But Illinois state prisons charge prisoners of means rent for the time they spend incarcerated. Now, John Wayne Gacy, who was owner of several restaurant franchises, was in fact a prisoner of means, and as he told Kanti when he reached out to her, she was just a young, up and coming lawyer at the time. If they're gonna charge me rent, they ought to just evict me. Gaysey, alongside many of his terrible, terrible qualities, was famously very witty and had a sharp sense of humor, although it feels strange to compliment the man in any way.

4:03 Speaker 2: So John Wayne Gacy already had defense attorneys handling his death row appeals cases, and Karen was initially hired for his suit, objecting to being charged rent for his time in prison. But Karen Conti was and is a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, believing it is never justified for the state to take a life, and so her role with Gaysey evolved from the civil rent suit against Illinois into assisting with his death penalty appeals. Gaysey himself was a big fan of Karen and her partner, and so over the years she spent quite a bit of time with him, both on the phone and in person.

4:35 Speaker 2: And the story she tells is a gut wrenching, bone chilling, emotionally difficult read. But the book itself is never difficult to read because it's fantastically paced, incredibly well written, emotionally raw, and absolutely gripping from start to finish. I give Karen a ton of credit for the honesty and truth of her voice and her willingness to take a hard look at all aspects of the gay See case and to ruthlessly examine all parts of it, just like the expert defense attorney she is. And when I say ruthlessly examined, to her credit, Karen does not spare or excuse herself for her role or her reasons as to why she would choose to represent a monster like Gaysey, and her account is highly personal, revealing not only the events and actions she experienced, but also the emotional and professional toll and advantages that dealing with an evil like Gaysey's brought.

5:28 Speaker 2: It's a great book. I can't say I enjoyed reading it, but it's great. And if you are interested in serial killers, legal history, the moral quandaries presented by the death penalty, or just expertly written nonfiction that reads like your favorite legal thrillers, then you should absolutely get your hands on a copy of Karen Conti's Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy. All relevant links are in the show notes, and you should absolutely stick around after the Gaysey story for my interview with Karen herself.

5:56 Speaker 2: It's not easy content, but it is fascinating, compelling, gripping. We cover ground that hadn't occurred to me before I spoke with Karen, and I'm proud of the interview. So with that, these horrors aren't going to tell themselves, let's get to it. Kind of murderies American Monster John Wayne Gacy, featuring an interview with award winning author and Gasey's defense attorney, Karen Conty. Starts now January two, nineteen seventy two, the dawn of a new year and the promise of a fresh start, But for sixteen year old Timothy McCoy.

6:41 Speaker 2: It was the beginning of a nightmare. McCoy had met John Wayne Gacy at the Chicago bus terminal just the night before. Gasey, with his seemingly generous demeanor, offered the young traveler a place to stay. McCoy, eager to get home to Iowa after spending Christmas in Michigan, accepted Gaysey's offer. In the early hours of the morning, McCoy got up, deciding to repay Gacy's kindness with a simple breakfast. He carefully laid out eggs and bacon, setting the table for two. With the innocence of youth, he walked up the stairs to wake his host, completely unaware of the knife still in his hand.

7:13 Speaker 2: What followed would forever alter the course of John Wayne Gacy's life, and, of course, tragically ind McCoy's. Not realizing the boy had intended no harm, Gasey reacted with sudden violence, stabbing Timothy McCoy in the chest and killing him instantly. Then, in a sudden panic, he dragged the body to the crawl space beneath his home, burying it and covering the grave with concrete. Gasey would later report to authorities that the act of killing McCoy gave him a quote mind numbing orgasm unquote.

7:47 Speaker 2: Though the murder had been a mistake, it awakened in Gacy a craving for what he called the ultimate thrill. Imagine living in a quaint neighborhood where everyone knows your name and praises your generosity. John Wayne Gaysey fit that description perfectly to the unsuspecting public. He was the epitome of a good neighbor, a mild mannered, likable man who always had a smile and a helping hand. He worked diligently in customer serviced, first managing his father in law's trio of KFC franchises before launching his own construction business.

8:21 Speaker 2: His customers saw him as a beacon of kindness and generosity. He hired local teenagers, providing them with much needed jobs, and was an active member of the local Junior Chamber of Commerce. Gaysey even dedicated his weekends to bringing joy to children, dressing up as Pogo the clown for birthday parties. No one would have guessed that behind the painted smile lay a monstrous secret. John Wayne Gacy's life began on March seventeenth nineteen forty two in Chicago. His father, a man with a mean streak, despised him.

8:52 Speaker 2: He called young Gaysey a sissy and subjected him to brutal abuse From as early as four years old. Whippings with a belt and harsh verbal assaults were routine in the Gaycy household. At seven, Gaysey faced another nightmare when a family friend molested him. Too scared of his father's wrath, he kept the incident to himself. In the nineteen seventies, Gasey was a familiar face at community events, mingling with local politicians and even managing to snap a photo with First Lady Rosalind Carter. To everyone around him, he was a model citizen.

9:23 Speaker 2: Yet just months after that photograph with the First Lady was taken, the horrifying truth would come to light. John Wayne Gacy had murdered thirty three young men and boys. His charm and seemingly altruistic nature were nothing more than a grotesque mask hiding his true monstrous identity. Early on, Gasey realized that he was gay, but during the nineteen fifties, homosexuality was still taboo, so he pretended to be straight his entire life. Gaysey had a congenital heart condition that limited his physical activity and plagued him with lifelong obesity.

9:56 Speaker 2: He spent much of his youth in the hospital. When he was eleven, doctor discovered that he had a blood clot in his brain. They were able to treat it, but even that didn't spare Gaysey from his father's wrath. Eventually, Gaysey had had enough of the abuse, and he picked up and moved out west. While working as a mortuary assistant in Las Vegas, Gacy slept on a cot behind the embalming room one night. After observing the morticians embalming dead bodies. He crawled into a coffin with one. He laid in the coffin for a time, embracing and caressing the body a teenage boy.

10:29 Speaker 2: His night spent fondling a male child's corpse shocked the not yet completely depraved Gaycy so much that he returned home and enrolled in business school after just a few months in Vegas. He never told anyone about his night with the body in the morgue, at least that version of him never told anyone. After graduating from Northwestern Business College, John Wayne Gacy met Marilyn Myers, a bright and engaging coworker at a shoe company in Springfield, Illinois. Their connection was immediate, and in nineteen sixty four the married.

11:00 Speaker 2: Soon after, Gaysey took over the management of his father in law's Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Waterloo, Iowa. The young couple moved in with Meyer's parents, setting up what appeared to be an idyllic life. Gaysey and Myers had two children, adding to the picture perfect family image. To neighbors and friends, Gaysey was the epitome of a devoted husband and father. He managed the family business with apparent dedication and seemed to thrive in his new role. But behind the mask of normalcy, Gaysey harbored dark and insatiable desires.

11:29 Speaker 2: While maintaining his respectable facade, Gasey sought out secret avenues to satisfy his depravity. He joined the Waterloo Jaycs, a group of local businessmen whose extracurricular activities included wife swapping, prostitution, pornography, and drug abuse. This clandestine world provided Gaysey with a semblance of freedom to indulge his twisted inclinations. Not content with the jc's hidden debauchery, Gaysey created his own secret haven. He transformed his basement into into a club, specifically targeting teenagers.

12:03 Speaker 2: Here, under the guise of a friendly neighbor, offering a safe space, young people could drink and play pool without fear of getting in trouble. But his club was more than just a teenage hangout. It was a predator's lair. Gasey's basement was a trap designed to lure unsuspecting teens. The welcoming atmosphere masked the true danger that lay beneath. While the community saw him as a generous and kind hearted man, those who entered his basement stepped into the dark world of John Wayne Gacy, a world where his insidious nature thrived unchecked.

12:35 Speaker 2: He often would build up trust with his victims so they wouldn't need to be on guard. Detective Sergeant Jason Moran of the Cook County Sheriff's Office said years later he was their employer, their friend. He may have been someone who provided them with alcohol and drugs and maybe a place to sleep at night. That's an easy way to kill someone. Then Gasey began to force some of those young men, including those he employed at KFC, to perform sex acts with him. This would be his first downfall. The line between employer and predator blurred as Gaysey used his position to manipulate and control.

13:10 Speaker 2: The facade of the benevolent businessman crumbled, revealing the sinister predator beneath. John Wayne Gaysey was arrested on charges of sexual coercion in the workplace. The chain of events that led to his arrest began in August of nineteen sixty seven, when Gaysey hired a fifteen year old named Donald Voorhees, the son of a fellow JC member, to do some housework. Gasey lured the teenager into his basement, plied him with alcohol, and forced him to perform oral sex. The boy kept the incident to himself until March of nineteen sixty eight, when he finally confided in his father, sparking a criminal investigation that shattered Gaisey's carefully constructed facade.

13:46 Speaker 2: Desperate to silence Vorhees, Gaysey's actions turned even more sinister. A few months later, he paid a KFC employee three hundred dollars to beat up Vorhees, hoping to intimidate him into silence. However, Vorhees escaped the attempted beating and reported the incident, which only intensified the case against Gaysey. In December, he pled guilty to oral sodomy. At that time, sexual relations between two people of the same sex were illegal in Iowa. Gaysey was sentenced to ten years in prison and was promptly served divorce papers from his wife, whom he would never see again.

14:18 Speaker 2: But less than two years after his sentencing, John Wayne Gacy was granted parole for being a model prisoner. During the short time he was incarcerated, Gaysey managed to secure a raise for the prison mess hall workers, increased membership of the prison jacs by six hundred, worked to improve conditions for prisoners, and oversaw the installation of a miniature golf course in the recreation yard. He also pretended he was straight and that he hated quote queers unquote, in order to protect himself from the wrath of his fellow inmates.

14:46 Speaker 2: Gasey was given twelve months probation under the condition that he moved back to Chicago to live with his mother and maintained a ten pm curfew. He agreed and declared, I'll never go back to jail. The illusion of his normal life had crumbled, revealing the true nature of the man. Months after his release, when he and his mother were living into Plains, Iowa, John Wayne Gacy lured a teenage boy to his house and tried to rape him. Gaysey was charged with sexual assault, but the charges were dropped when the boy failed to show up to court.

15:14 Speaker 2: Gayzy had technically violated his parole, but somehow his parole officer was never aware of the episode. By nineteen seventy one, Gacy had settled into a new home in Norwood Park, a neighborhood in midwestern Chicago. His yellow brick ranch house there at eighty two thirteen West Summerdale Avenue would eventually become a graveyard for twenty nine young men and boys. While in prison, John Wayne Gacy became something of an artist, obsessively sketching the image of Pogo the Clown. After his release, he channeled his fixation into reality by joining the local Jolly Joker Club, a group of clowns who performed at birthday parties and hospitals.

15:49 Speaker 2: Gasey taught himself the intricacies of applying clown makeup, transforming himself into Pogo the Clown, just as he had envisioned in his prison drawings. Gaisey's performances as Pogo the Clown were not limited to children's parties. He became a familiar face at various local events, including Democratic party functions and charitable gatherings. He was the life of the party, bouncing kids on his knee and spreading cheer. But this cheerful exterior masked a much darker reality. Residents of Norwood Park recall seeing Gaisey at his favorite bar, the good Luck Lounge, dressed in full clown regalia.

16:21 Speaker 2: The public would feel much more comfortable if Gaysey was the type of creepy, sequestered ghoul that was unkept in heinous, Detective Sergeant Jason Moran said years later. But instead he dresses a clown and bounce kids on his knee. He would knock at your door and say vote for my candidate. Gaysey's clown persona was a master stroke of deception. By presenting himself as a friendly and harmless entertainer, he managed to ingratiate himself with the community, disarming any suspicions about his true nature.

16:48 Speaker 2: The cheerful clown mass concealed the predator lurking underneath, enabling him to gain the trust of those around him. This duality, the friendly clown and the monstrous killer, made Gaisey's true nature all the more ten terrifying. The neighborhood saw him as a harmless entertainer, never suspecting the horrors he was capable of committing. But Pogo the Clown didn't fool everybody. Carol Hoff, his high school sweetheart and second wife, whom he married in nineteen seventy two, began to question his sexuality.

17:15 Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy five, Gaysey admitted to her that he was bisexual. Hoff promptly divorced him, leaving him alone in their house, though she denied knowing what was to come, Hoff later admitted to authorities that she had seen him bringing teenage boys into their garage. The same year that Gaisey married Hoff, he committed his first murder, that of Timothy McCoy. He stashed McCoy's body under his crawl space. Gasey reportedly managed to kill a second victim while still married to Hoff in nineteen seventy four.

17:42 Speaker 2: This victim remains unidentified, but Gaisey claimed to have strangled a young man and hid him in his closet. When the body began to leak. He moved into the crawl space as well. After his divorce, Gaysey had the freedom to bring more victims into his house. The killer clown operated with impunity, luring young men and boys to their doom. Save for his final four victims, who he dumped into the river. All of his victims were killed in and stored under his house. The crawl space became a macob graveyard, a silent witness to Gasey's horrific crimes.

18:11 Speaker 2: Gaysey's victims were all young men and boys. He prayed on still unidentified teenagers, some who were drifters from out of town, and some who were local boys who worked for him. He lured some into his car by impersonating an officer, or to his house with the offer of a job, a place to party, or even money. Once he had a victim in his space, Gasey coaxed them with drugs or alcohol, or a sick magic trick during which he'd handcuffed them and dangle keys in front of their face. Then the true horror began.

18:41 Speaker 2: Gasey would torture, rape, and murder them. One of Gaisey's favorite acts of torture was to sit on his victim with all of his weight, which was substantial and forced the victim to filate him. He strangled and revived his victims, sometimes even partially drowning them in his bathtub. Oh my God, the nightmare did an end. With their deaths. Police continued their search around John Wayne Gaisey's house, where the badly decomposed bodies were discovered in the crawl space. Gasey's monstrous acts were concealed beneath the floorboards the silence of his house, hiding the screams of his victims.

19:15 Speaker 2: In a grotesque twist, Gasey had the gall to participate in the search parties for some of the boys. He was friendly with their parents. Considered an upstanding member of the community. Gaisey's ability to blend into society while committing such heinous murders made him one of the most terrifying of all serial killers. The friendly neighbor, the cheerful clown, and the devoted community member all masks that hid the true face of a monster. He had set himself up to kill, unfettered and unsuspected, but his thirty third murder wouldn't go quite as planned.

19:47 Speaker 2: At about nine pm on December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight, Elizabeth Peaste drove to pick up her son, a high school sophomore and honorable student named Robert, from his job at a pharmacy into Plains. Robert Piaste went outside and told her to wait a few minutes. He wanted to talk to a customer about a summer contracting job that would pay him twice what he was currently making. That was the last time Elizabeth saw her son. Before midnight, she went to the police station to file a missing persons report.

20:14 Speaker 2: Police quickly connected the dots and figured out the man Robert Peaste was talking to was John Wayne Gacy, whose company PDM Contractors had recently remodeled Peaste's pharmacy. They called Gaisey into the station for questioning, and Gasey obliged. After taking Peace's body and dumping it into the Plains River. Within hours, authorities searched Gaisey's home. They didn't find any bodies, but they did find evidence that Peast had been there, a receipt that belonged to a friend of his. The discovery was enough to keep the investigation alive, setting off a chain of events that would finally expose Gasey's horrifying secrets.

20:48 Speaker 2: It wasn't until December twenty second, nineteen seventy eight, almost exactly ten years after his first sodomy conviction, that Gaysey, the Killer Clown, confessed to murdering dozens of young men and boys. Investigators swarmed his house, uncovering a nightmare scene. The crawl Space, a grim graveyard, held twenty nine bodies, many decomposed beyond recognition. Dental experts were brought in to identify John Wayne Gaisey's victims by their teeth, piecing together the chilling puzzle of his horrific crimes.

21:15 Speaker 2: The true extent of Gaisey's monstrous acts was finally coming to light, revealing a decade of terror hidden beneath a veneer of normalcy. Three years later, the Killer Clown attempted to escape justice by using an insanity plead during his trial, hoping for a not guilty verdict. The jury didn't buy it. Gaysey was sentenced to death, and the friendly facade he had maintained for all those years finally dropped. He showed no remorse for his victims, revealing the true coldness of his character. The man who had once charmed his community as a jovial clown and a helpful neighbor, was unmasked as a remorseless killer awaiting his fate on death row.

21:51 Speaker 2: He looked at his victims like he was taking out the trash. He had no feelings about them, said Gaisey's lawyer sam I Mooranti. He could talk about a child who was dying of care, answer and cry like a baby about the child that he didn't even know or had never met, and feel authentically sad about the child, and then he'd talk about another child, one that he murdered, and have no feelings whatsoever. John Wayne Gacy spent fourteen years in prison awaiting his execution. The night before he was to be put to death, he returned to his roots and ordered a bucket of Kentucky Fried chicken as his last meal.

22:22 Speaker 2: According to reports, the killer clown's last words before his execution were, kiss my ass. And that is the terrible story of a truly, truly evil man. Now, please stay tuned after this short break for my interview with Karen Conti. Hey, everybody, welcome to Kind of Murdery. I'm your host, Zevan Odelberg, and I'm very excited because I have an extremely fascinating, accomplished, incredibly interesting, and frankly strong, principled person here to join me today. That is Karen Conti. Some might call her a super lawyer, Others might call her a death penalty expert.

23:11 Speaker 2: She is that. She's also a fantastic writer. She's written a book called Killing Time, about the time she spent defending the notorious, infamous, horrific human being, John Wayne Gacy while he was on death row. And I have to tell you, the book is beautifully written. The prose is concise, well paced, The story drives forward almost like a detective novel. It's a beautifully, beautifully written book. And yet, and yet one of the most difficult books I've ever had to read. It kind of ruined my day, not because of Karen and not because of how it was written.

23:55 Speaker 2: I mean, frankly, it was a page turner. I felt like I was reading a thriller. And yet the reality of what Gasey did, and even some of the very real moral and judicial and legal struggles that Karen and her partner Greg went through, it was just emotionally really heavy. For excuse my friends, but it was really heavy. Shit.

24:19 Speaker 3: Uh.

24:20 Speaker 2: It put me in a pretty dark place and I read all day and made a lot of noticeable I read over a couple of days because frankly, I couldn't do it all on one day. It was too much for me. Not again, the book's beautifully written, but the subject matter is really heavy, and yet it's also extremely fascinating and insightful. And so I would like to say that I'm very much honored to have Karen on the show today to talk about her book Killing Time and the time she spent on a one on one basis with America's I guess these days, with the fascination that we have with serial killers, there could probably be some big argument about who the most notorious.

25:01 Speaker 2: But I've covered a lot of them, and I got to tell you that Gacy was the hardest one for me to get through. And with that, Hi, Kartt, thank you so much for being here. It's an honor and I can't wait to pick your brain about all kinds of stuff. But I do appreciate you taking the time to join us here on kind of Murdery.

25:21 Speaker 3: Nice to be here, and you know, I think what you said was about reading it and feeling that darkness. You know, people ask me why I waited almost thirty years to write the book, and that's exactly why it took me so long, Because when I was in that dark place and went through all those dark things with a dark human being and the darker side of the world, you know, you want to just get away from it. And I needed that much time to kind of look back. And now I'm able to look at it with a sense of humor, with a little bit of retrospect, a little bit of wisdom, and a little bit of time away from it.

25:57 Speaker 3: So I hear you when you make those kinds.

26:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I really, I really admire the emotional and moral strength that you have to have gone through what you went through doing that job, which in some ways I want to compare you and your partner Gregora Zowski to Atticus Finch for being the lawyer with the fortitude to stand up and do the job that had to be done that no one else wanted to do, and for being pilified in the process. On the flip side, of course, Atticus was defending an innocent man who was the victim of racial prejudice, as where Gaycy was probably the least innocent man ever, so so it may not be a perfect parallel, but yeah, well.

26:46 Speaker 3: I see that lawyers every day take on things that are difficult, you know, and I appreciate your comments, but that's kind of what we do. We represent people who make mistakes, whether they're on you know, you know, whether they're beating their wives or a company manufacturing of asbestos. You know. We take our clients as we find them, and we do our best to get them the best deal. And that might be a conviction for life, you know, in prison, or it might be an acquittal, or it might be something in between.

27:16 Speaker 3: And I think that, you know, we as lawyers have to do that. That's what we're tasked to do. That's what we swear under oath when we become a lawyer to do.

27:26 Speaker 2: You make a great point in the book that it's ultimately a slippery slope. If you always make an exception for the most obviously guilty person, that obviousness will erode to the point where you end up convicting the innocent. Right lawyers, you.

27:39 Speaker 3: Know what I and I say this, and I've said this for years. I understand why people lashed out at me. I represented gaycy and people should hate the gaycies of the world. People should have rage about somebody who's capable of doing these horrible things and taking these young innocent men and boys off the face of the earth. I mean, the repercussions continue. I mean, I can't be in a room with one hundred people in Chicago where there's not somebody there who's affected by gaycy. And so, you know, I understand that I represent the target, and I just hope that people can separate me occasionally from the target and say, I get why she did it.

28:22 Speaker 3: I don't like the gaycies of the world, but I understand that if it were my turn, or my son's turn, or I went out and you know, hit a pedestrian and killed them and I'm being charged with manslaughter, she's the one I want. And you know, constitutional rights are just that they're not loopholes, and you're going to want someone to fight for you, just as I fought for gaycy. It's the same thing over and over. So but I do I do understand that some people can't separate those two things.

28:52 Speaker 2: I agree with you there, And one thing that you and I share philosophically is I also a categorically in all cases opposed to the death penalty. I wasn't always. I can remember being like a young teen and not having a very nuanced view of the world and thinking like, well, sure if something, if somebody did something bad enough, they ought to be executed for it. What I eventually arrived at, and for me, I think it was I think in part it was reading Tolstoy's War in Peace while I was living in India after high school.

29:30 Speaker 2: But I arrived at this feeling that only God has the perspective to see the full tapestry of human existence. And beyond that, the only point really of having a government a state is so that, or at least hopefully the point. The government is supposed to be better than we are as individuals, at least in its laws and the way that it administrates and organizes our society and takes care of us. Now, that may not be the reality, but that's what it's supposed to be. And if it's not, If our collective governance is not built on the hope that it's better than any one of us, what's the point of it.

30:15 Speaker 2: And secondly, or maybe this is thirdly now me personally and this is this is sort of a conflict of some kind of morality. I have no problem with personal retributive or revenge killing, so it's not killing that I'm against. I mean, of course I have a problem with it in a legal or moral sense on the one hand. But if somebody hurt my daughter or somebody who is really close to me and my family, I wouldn't have a moral issue with going and shooting them myself. But I do have a moral issue with society killing people, even the worst of them, because they need to be society needs to be better than us individually.

31:01 Speaker 2: We have the right, I believe, to protect ourselves from danger. But I think that that final analysis, and you allude to this in your book, but the final analysis of the value of any human soul really is left to God alone, or if somebody doesn't believe in God per se, then I don't know what to call it. Fate the universe, but it's beyond our purview or capability to judge the purpose and value of an individual human soul. And so that's why for me, I have always been against the death penalty. And I think you speak beautifully about why you have the feelings that you do in your book, But I would love it.

31:41 Speaker 2: If you could expound for us a little bit now about what that makes you believe that the death penalty is so wrong, to the point that you devoted a lot of your life dying on that hill, as it were, or not dying on that hill to make that point, even at times a great personal cost to yourself. So could you talk about those leafs, the wise warforce, but also how you feel about them just emotionally. What does it do to you when you think about this issue.

32:08 Speaker 3: Well, I've always been against it, even when I was a kid, and my parents were both in favor of it. So I remember having an argument with my father saying, you know, killing somebody for killing somebody is like I mess up my room and my mom punishes me by messing up my room. So that doesn't make any sense to me. It never made any sense, and that was just my juvenile thought process. But you know, it's not a god thing for me. That's not at all what I think about when I think about the death penalty.

32:37 Speaker 3: I just think that it doesn't work. You know, if it deterred one person from getting killed, or if it helped the world in any way, I might I might get on board with it, but it's barbaric. I mean, we are one of four, you know, four progressive countries that have the death penalty. If you go to Europe, they are shocked that we have it. They think of us as being the most civilized country in the world, and we still kill people along with Bangladesh, you know, China, and.

33:08 Speaker 2: You know it was in Saudi Arabia. The countries you listed were sort of like a bit of an access of evil. The ones that are the ones that are ahead of us in executing people. It's not necessarily the group that you want to be in, as I recall from the book, right, yeah.

33:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, So I guess what I'm saying is that it's not just me saying this is this is the rest of the world has already come to this conclusion. And you know, going back to actual innocence, you know, I witnessed this myself after Gasey was executed. He was certainly guilty. He was white, so there was no racist prosecution. He had really good lawyers throughout the process, so we can't say that he had incompetent counsel. And he wasn't poor, so he didn't have any of those food groups that usually make those death penalty opponents meet on their chests, but he represents other people on death row.

34:03 Speaker 3: And when I was on death row and I was visiting, I realized that there were several people, now that I look back, who actually walked off of death row. In fact, twelve twelve were executed after gaycy. Twelve walked off of death row actual innocence, not technicalities. Somebody else did the crimes. Somebody else did the crimes and weren't punished for it. During the time period these people were incarcerated, and in the case of many of them, they were hours away from being executed. So and those people were so guilty, right, twelve people, one guy, Twelve jurors found them guilty, not only guilty be on a reasonable doubt, but not worthy of living.

34:42 Speaker 3: And then the appellate court reversed it, and then another twelve convicted, and then another twelve convicted in.

34:48 Speaker 2: The case wait wait, I got a pose. Not that they were not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but they were not worthy of living. Sorry, I don't mean to chuck. I don't It's not funny at all, but there's an absurdity to it that somehow brings out a chuckle in meat when you say that, I mean, and I think not to correct you because it's your book and you're the expert, but I think that the odds were even worse. What I remember reading was that twelve were executed between nineteen ninety four, I think you wrote, and the year two thousand, twelve people were executed and thirteen were exonerated.

35:23 Speaker 2: So I think the state of Illinois had a less than fifty percent getting it right rate during that time, if they even got it right across the board, right, So yeah, absolutely, that's appalling.

35:37 Speaker 3: Well, and you also have to understand that the cases that where the death penalty is sought are usually cases where there are aggravating factors like multiple victims, a little child, pregnant none. No, I'm just kidding, but just like you know, you've got all those, you know, the aggravating factors, and when you have an especially horrific murder, they're all horrific, but especially those twelve jurors. I'm telling you. First of all, they have to be qualified to get on a death penalty jury, which means they believe in the death penalty.

36:07 Speaker 3: So everyone who doesn't believe in the death penalty is off the jury because you have to be willing to give it if the law provides for it. So first of all, you're calling out people who are law and order, you know, and believe in executions. So then you're looking at this defendant who's sitting there, and these jurors are saying thesecying these horrific crime scene photos and the victims' families and everything else, and they're thinking to themselves, I can't possibly let this guy off, even if I have a little bit of a reasonable doubt.

36:37 Speaker 3: And that's why you have these wrongful convictions in these horrific cases the death penalty. People don't get better justice, they get less, you know, less competent justice because of the horrendous nature and the emotions that are so attendant to these things.

36:53 Speaker 2: Confirmation bias essentially. I mean, these days we often decry, you know, Google is spying on us all the time, so are our smartphones everything else, and basically knows that we will engage with something we agree with. So you people go to do their research and they basically get the first article that says what they already think, and that's what they read them there, that's the truth. So basically, what I hear you saying is that a pro death penalty juror who has been confronted with all this horror is way more likely to find someone guilty, right, And that that's.

37:28 Speaker 3: Just yeah, absolutely, there's there's no question. I mean, and there's studies on that. It's not just Karen saying that it's the studies will actually show that they're more inclined to believe police officers. They're more inclined to to you know, to just have the bias against you know, African Americans unfortunately, and so there's there's just a whole lot of reasons why we get it wrong, and the system is not perfect, and when it's not perfect and you make a mistake in a death penalty case, that's a pretty serious mistake.

37:58 Speaker 3: It's bad enough that people are incarcerated for thirty or forty years. I don't think a week goes by in Chicago where we don't have two or three you know, dudes walking out of prison, you know, having you know, been coerced into a confession, or the police you know, did something wrong with the evidence, or they had a crappy lawyer, or whatever the story or a combination of all of them, they're walking off, you know, having spent their entire life behind bars. So if we're getting it wrong there, we're getting it wrong with the death penalty even more.

38:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think you allude to in the book that the there's a massive, you know, racial disparity in who is who is executed for what which crimes. There's a massive disparity in what becomes a capital case depending on the identity of the defendants, not to mention that capital cases are more expensive because of the appeal process. These are all things you allude to in the book, and I think they're all legitimate things. Some of them are more sort of politically charged, especially today, than others, which is why I find myself and I always kind of have, because I've always been something of an abstract thinker.

39:06 Speaker 2: But it's why I find myself gravitating a little bit more towards the philosophical reasons. You gave a great one. You're a lawyer. It's logic. It literally doesn't make sense to kill someone for killing someone. I have that feeling that we can protect ourselves from danger but don't have the right to actually decide the value of any individual human soul, that that's beyond our purview as humans. But I think all of these things are totally legitimate reasons to be opposed to the death penalty.

39:37 Speaker 3: Well, and I don't want to have your listeners think that my book is all about that, because it's not. And I say, I seek think I said it a few times. I'm not going to change anybody's mind about the death penalty. That's not my point, because I know how we have those hot button issues, whether it's abortion or you know, guns or what have you. We're going to all have our our opinions. And so, but I would be remiss in writing this book not to devote a chapter to why I don't believe in the death penalty.

40:09 Speaker 3: So I give you my reasons with the idea that you can just skip the chapter if you want, because I'm not going to change your mind, and I respect that, and I think that, you know, I think we're seeing a change in how people view the death penalty. I think young people would actually an all time low in the approval rating for the death penalty. It was usually up in the eighties to eighty five percentile would favor a death penalty over a life imprisonment for certain murders, and now it's way below fifty.

40:38 Speaker 3: And I think our young people don't have the stomach for it. I think that we're looking around and we're seeing states abolishing it or putting a more oreum on it. We're seeing fewer prosecutors seeking the death penalty. We're seeing fewer jurors even in some of these horrific school shootings, not giving the death penalty for one reason or another, because of mental illness or bad upbringing, or drug and alcohol, you know, in the bloodstream while while pregnant, and all of those things you're seeing, you're seeing, and you're seeing a lot of jurors saying, listen, not on my dime.

41:09 Speaker 3: I'm not doing it. I can't do it. If you want to do it, you do it. I'm not doing it. And there are people who think it's more punishment to spend the rest of your life in prison, as I say, in a half a parking lot space. So that could very well be worse punishment.

41:25 Speaker 2: I've always sort of assumed, thankfully have had no opportunity to know, but I've always assumed that life in prison would be worse. Although interestingly, reading your book, with someone like Gacy, who had a level of celebrity and notoriety and money and a sense of humor and a certain kind of interpersonal charm and seemingly status among his other inmates. It's hard. It was hard for me to determine if for a guy like that, life in prison would be worse punishment. It seemed like there were at least parts of his prison experience.

42:00 Speaker 2: As awful as it was, I'm sure, and as terrible as you point out the facilities were, it seems like he probably would have preferred life in prison.

42:08 Speaker 3: Well, I shouldn't make this argument because it goes against the death penalty, you know argument. But I have seen, representing criminal defendants going to prisons my entire life, that people generally adapt in prison. It's called institutionalization. They at first can't stand the idea that, you know, they have to be confined and they can't do certain things, but then after a while they adapt to it. And I find that people who visit prisoners have a harder time adapting to watching their loved one, you know, live this confined life.

42:38 Speaker 3: But in fact, you know, human beings find joy and find pleasure and find satisfaction in the smallest of things, whether it's a special meal or going out to the yard on a sunny day. And you know, it's not that gaycies money bought am any nicer facilities. But I do believe the gaysies of the world wanted to I mean, he told me he did not want to get out of prison, not that that was an option, but he said, you know, I read between the lines. I don't think he liked not to say that he didn't want to kill.

43:08 Speaker 3: He wanted to kill, and if he had gotten out, he would have kept kept killing. But I think that it got out of control. I think a person like Gacy was needed more and more to fuel his urges, and he just couldn't take it after a while. I mean, there were some nights he would go out and kill three boys one after another, and then get up and go to work the next day, and take drugs to get up and take drugs to go to sleep. And you know he had, you know.

43:31 Speaker 2: The stress and workload of trying to plan. Yeah, I mean, imagine him all under his house, for God's sake, So he clearly started running out of ideas about how to deal with all these bodies, right.

43:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm not saying he was remorseful, because he wasn't. Don't make any mistake about that. But when he was in prison, he lived an orderly life. He could control it. He didn't have the urges because he didn't have the opportunities. And I think that Gaycy was a happier person in prison for that very reason.

43:59 Speaker 2: So yeah, so indeed, life in prison would not probably would not have been worse punishment for John Wayne Gacy. So if we are concerned about punishing evil in his case, it may be a good thing that he got the death penalty, except that both you and I are across the board opposed to the death penalty. But the assumption that life in prison is always worse is probably more on a case by case basis. Is what I hear you say.

44:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think, you know, like the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world are not going to adapt very well to that lifestyle. And whether you think he was did it to himself or someone else did it, you know, you could see that he wasn't going to farewell in a lock up, And yeah, I mean.

44:45 Speaker 2: You know on that point. So I have a I have a friend who has spent most of his life in correctional facilities, mostly for drug offenses in the occasional armed rob I think, but he's out now, he's out, been out for years on parole. But he basically said, yeah, you don't want to go into prison as a child molester. You're most likely going to get murdered by inmates because the only thing that us prisoners hold sacred are our mothers, our sisters, and childhood because that's the last time we were innocent.

45:21 Speaker 2: So if you violate any of those things, we're probably going to take you out ourselves. How do you think Gacy managed to avoid being killed by another prisoner? Is it just because they bundled him off to hypersecurity death row sort of right away? I know, so many of the people around him were just nuts. I mean, I'm sorry, nuts is not the most sensitive way to put it, but some of them were truly unhinged from reality instad like there was a cannibal. I'm not remembering everyone's name right now, But how do you think that Gacy managed to avoid what is one of the sort of standard prisoners taking care of their own business things where they go after someone like him blue targeted children.

46:02 Speaker 3: Well, he was shanked by one of the one of the other inmates, so he was attacked. I don't know that there was a purpose for that, because the man who attacked him was pretty psychotic and attacked everyone, including guards and prisoners and people in the courtroom wherever he went. So, you know, I think that Gaysey because he had some money, and he had the ability to buy things at the commissary, those little tiny things like being able to buy cigarettes or a can of soup for somebody, you can buy a little bit of protection.

46:31 Speaker 3: And I think that Gaysey, because of his status, you know, is the most prolific and the most famous and the one with the most money. I think that others knew that they could get something from him. I mean, people who are antisocial in their personalities, are they everyone's a pawn to them, and you know Gaysey was no different. Everyone in his surrounding area was of use to him, so you know he was. He was a master manipulator, and so are all these other So I think that there is a hierarchy there and in a way of living and a way of protection that's kind of foreign to us because we don't have to do that.

47:08 Speaker 3: We're not surrounded by predators necessarily, and so Gaysey managed to do that. But you know, Gaysey didn't really walk around very much. I mean, he kind of kept to himself, and he didn't go outside even when he was allowed to, just because he feared for his safety. So he was pretty savvy when it came to protecting.

47:26 Speaker 2: Himself, right, So he knew what might happen to him if somebody had the chance.

47:31 Speaker 3: Sure, and understand this, the people on death row were all all did really bad things, kill women, rape women, epe women. I mean, there were no choir boys in this group here, So I don't know how you look down your nose on somebody who did this when he did that.

47:51 Speaker 2: So you reference many times in the book too that he had And maybe this is counterintuitive, maybe it's not because we seem to know so much of about serial killers these days in terms of the pop culture fascination. That he had this sense of humor and this charm that was in some ways sort of irrepressible. So the first time we went to see him, you and your partner Greg were served the prison lunch, the same lunch that Gaysey got. So tell the listeners, how does that work? Why were you guys eating prison lunch?

48:26 Speaker 2: And Gasey had a joke for you that I thought was pretty clever, but I'd rather have you tell that story if you don't mind.

48:33 Speaker 3: So the first time we went to visit Gacy, it was about noon and Gasey we knew that lunch was served. So Gasey went and he came back with three trays, and so we each had a lunch. And I said, oh, that's really nice, John, like, is the prison paying for this? Who's paying for this? He said, oh, no, No, we have this rule on death row if we have guests, then somebody else who doesn't have a guest that day will sacrifice the lunch for the guest, and then when it's their turn to have a guest, I would sacrifice my lunch.

49:05 Speaker 3: And I go, oh, oh that's that's nice. It's a nice little rule. And he said you know yeah. So I said, well, who sacrificed their lunch for me? And he looked right at me and he said, Charles Albanie. Well, if you're in Illinois, you know who Charles Albanie is. He poisoned his entire family with about two pounds of arsenic So so and then, of course I realized he was joking. That was the first big joke that he told, and I realized that Gacy really did have a sense of humor. And you know, I have to be careful talking about this because I don't want to have people say, well, Karen, did you really think what he did was funny?

49:42 Speaker 3: You know, obviously I don't think what he did was funny, But I also would be remiss in a book about gaycy if I didn't mention and didn't talk about his sense of humor, because it was one of the most blatant traits he had. And I really believe that he was able to deflect a lot of his darkness, a lot of his lying, a lot of his bad deeds and just you know, bad whatever with that sense of humor. And you know, everyone wants to be around somebody who's funny, who's telling jokes, who's quipping back and forth.

50:16 Speaker 3: And sure, my guess is that this sense of humor served him very well during the time he was committing these crimes.

50:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, I mean it is true that who doesn't list sense of humor? And I think you say this in the book too, but who doesn't list sense of humor as a desirable quality in a friend or a partner or a romantic partner. Almost everyone the world over likes someone with a sense of humor. I think you bring up an interesting point here too, and it's something that I've talked about on this show quite a bit, which is that different people have different prom or responses. Maybe trauma's even the wrong word, but just the experience of being confronted with something that is very dark or difficult to emotionally process, like reading the story of John Wayne Gacy.

51:02 Speaker 2: And what I find is that there are those when darkness is sort of shoved at them, will will react with anger and horror and moral reprobation. All of those things are absolutely legitimate find ways to respond. And then there are others who will take that stress and try to release it by finding a way to laugh at it. And I try not to judge the way that people process emotional trauma, because I think that everybody's different and that both of those can be legitimate responses. I know on this show there have been times where I find myself laughing at something, not because I actually think it's funny, but because that sort of nervous laughter is almost like a way to protect myself.

51:52 Speaker 2: So I thought that that was a really interesting part of your book, talk about humor faced with darkness, what it means to you, how it helps you, how it makes you feel. I'd love to hear more about that.

52:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, my father was a stand up comic. He was a child actor when he was young in Hollywood, and then he did stand up for the whole time we grew up. That's how he made his living. So growing up and I didn't know it was abnormal to grow up in a family with a comedian as a father, but I realize now it was a very unusual situation because my dad's livelihood was based upon making people laugh. And so during the course of the day, no matter what we were doing, he was trying out new materially, he was trying out different different things, and he was trying to make people laugh.

52:36 Speaker 3: And that was just something that came very naturally to him. And I think that if you get to know me, I have a little bit of that in me. Certainly not to the level of my father, But I'm always looking for the punchline. I'm always looking for something that's funny about something serious. And when you practice law, and you see the tragedies that happen to people, the things that they do to each other, the things that the system does to the people who do bad things, the people that who are the victims to all these horrible crimes.

53:03 Speaker 3: If you don't have a coping mechanism, you're going to be in deep trouble. And you know, lawyers have a high rate of drug and alcohol abuse. I think it's one of the highest of any profession. It's rampant in in the bar, literally the bar, so pardon the pun. See my dad, that was my dad. So you know, I think that you know you you you were either exercise, you either drink, or you have a way of deflecting this. And it's gallows humor in two words, gallows humor. And you know what that means. It means someone's going to the gallows and you're you're laughing about it because you're you're nervous, and it's not it's not something you want to see, but you're you're making fun of it.

53:45 Speaker 3: And and Gacy was big on making fun of even himself. He was self effacing. He I'll tell you one situation where I came to visit him one day and I had seen the Phil Donahue Show, which was the precursor to the all the talk shows back in the day, and I said, I saw this woman and she said she was going to marry you. I said, John, what are you playing for both teams? What's up? He goes, Oh, he goes, that's Sue Terry. He goes, Yeah, she was my pen pal for a while. You know, she wanted to marry me. But you know, she's got two kids and they're both in the penitentiary.

54:15 Speaker 3: Like I'm going to marry into a family like that. When you hear gasey joke, you realize what you know, if you're analyzing it, humor shouldn't be analyzed. But he was making fun of himself, and in so doing you felt a little bit of connection with him because I'm laughing at him, he's laughing at himself. It breaks the ice. And so you can see that that's just a really valuable tool in your box. And I you know, people say, you know, I mean some of the jokes that he told me in the book are pretty you know, not you know, they're.

54:51 Speaker 2: Blue if you're blue. Yeah, And I.

54:54 Speaker 3: Didn't even put the really blue ones in there. Because I didn't want to offend everybody the book, some of them, but you know, and everyone says, well, didn't you get offended. Well, you know, I probably would have been offended you know today in today's times. But you know, back then, it was like I grew up in a law firm thirty seven years ago, where men would call me abroad, you know, they had.

55:16 Speaker 2: Like smash your ass, like there was just any of that.

55:20 Speaker 3: You know. And and so I I have a really high tolerance for, you know, jokes and swear words and calling people names and stuff like that. I mean, it's if you don't mean, if you don't mean to hurt me, then I don't care about your words hurting me because they're not going to hurt me.

55:38 Speaker 2: On the subject of humor, your father was a comedian, as you said, and I read in the book that he was living with you when you were representing Gaysey, and that he and Gasey developed quite a relationship over the phone. Can you talk about that a little bit, Yeah.

55:53 Speaker 3: I mean, my dad was living with us. He had some health issues at the time, and my dad was in favor of the death penalty. My dad didn't like the fact that his favorite daughter was getting ready to represent the most notorious Tero Keller and had a few words with me about that, and you know, basically said this guy should be executed. He killed all those kids, you know. Ah. Well, Gacy started calling the house, and you know, he would call when my dad was there, and my dad would pick up the phone, and they started a little bit of a relationship.

56:22 Speaker 3: And it was funny because Gaycy was funny and my dad was funny. So they would sit there and go back and forth, telling each other jokes, making fun of each other. And one day I walked in and I realized that there's my dad. I could tell he's talking to Gacy. I can almost hear on the phone. And I heard my dad say, you know, John, you know, do you know what you're going to have for your last supper? And you know, you could hear Gaycy's I'm not sure yet or something, and my dad says, you know what, John, you should have fresh strawberries.

56:50 Speaker 3: And you could hear Gacy go, why, Joe, why should I have fresh strawberries? And my dad said, because they're out a season. So anyway, so when you start to get to know somebody, even somebody as evil as Gacy. Even somebody with an antisocial personality, you develop a little bit of a bond. There's humanity there, even though what Gaysey did was horribly inhumane. My father at the end was very upset when he was executed, very upset. Same with my office staff. They did not want to pick up the phone for him.

57:21 Speaker 3: They didn't want to. You know, a couple of them wanted to quit because they did not want to deal with John Wayne Gacy or tell their friends they were dealing with it. But by the end, when Gaycy had spoken to all of them, you know, at one time or another and told jokes and you know, had you know, sent him a Christmas card, and they were very upset too. So the moral of that story is that once you experience humanity, and Gacy had humanity. He had a life where he was married and he had children, and he was a hard worker, and he you know, volunteered for the church, and he was a political guy, and he did these things that were pretty good, and then he did these things that were really for it.

58:00 Speaker 2: So I mean so bad that I've done a lot of serial killers, I gotta tell you. Because you have extremely graphic descriptions of what he actually did contained in your book, and I found Gacy's crimes to be the hardest to take when described to me of any serial killer that I personally have covered on this show or read about. Like I don't know if that's just my own personal visceral reactions, but for me, he's like heads and shoulders above Dahmer or Bundy or pretty much just anybody else that I've covered.

58:38 Speaker 2: Anyway, there's a difference between murdering somebody and making sure that they suffer as much as possible when they're being killed. The fact that he would essentially waterboard them, which is something that at the time we didn't know so much about later post nine to eleven and all the questions about torture we do now, but he was essentially waterboarding them while raping them, while strangling them. Today, I mean, I don't even really want to get into it, but my god, my god. But it's an interesting thing you say about humanity, because we very often as humans, when we're confronted with somebody whose behavior is truly monstrous, we want to divorce that from ourselves.

59:20 Speaker 2: We say, he's not even human, he's a monster. It seems to me that monstrosity, especially the kind that wants to harm others, other people in terrible ways, is a uniquely human trait. Tortureous sociopathy and psychopathy and murder is not something that you see in nature or among other organisms. It's something that people do. It's very human. How did you feel thinking about Gacy's humanity versus monstrosity when you were both representing him, or even just in the room with him.

59:55 Speaker 3: Well, I never saw Gacy as a monster in that whenever I was with him, he was being normal. He was acting as a normal human being. So I knew what he did, and I knew in great detail what he did. I read all about it, I saw the pictures I saw, I lived in for years before I even met John Wayne Gacy. So how I look at it is this just because Gaysey did things that were inhumane doesn't mean there wasn't a human sense of him. His family loved him. At the end of the execution, at when we were saying our goodbyes, their families streamed in.

1:00:28 Speaker 3: They unconditionally loved him. He had neighbors and friends and family who loved him despite what he did. So I understood at that point why it was so difficult for me when Gaysey was getting ready to be executed, because I knew Gaycy as a human. I knew that human part of him, and as a human being. It's you know, we all say this, Oh, I could kill him. I don't like that again I take him out and shoot him, or my ex wife, Yeah, you know. But when you get to know somebody, when you get to know somebody and break spread with them and talk to them, in my case, trying to save somebody's life, you don't want them dead.

1:01:05 Speaker 3: That's just not a human reaction. I don't want to kill a deer. I don't want to kill anything. Because I'm human. That makes me a human being. And so I can hate what Gaysey did that was inhumane to those boys, because that's not human that when he was doing that. You want to call him a monster, you want to call him in human, you want to call him you want to call him damaged? Do you want to call him whatever? You want to call him. But the Gaycy that I spent time with was a human being. I did not want him to be excested.

1:01:33 Speaker 2: So but I would argue that those horrible things that he did were human in the sense that humans almost uniquely among animals in the animal kingdom, only humans do that awful stuff. We have serial killers, no other animal does. So I feel like we as a society as humanity as creatures, rather than saying there's a human gaycy and an inhuman we need to be willing to say that even monstrosity is in fact human and can't be divorced from what we are as much as we would like it to be. Don't you think that Gacy weaponized his ability to be charming and funny and to show people his humanity.

1:02:20 Speaker 2: I mean that that was one of his key assets in committing the crimes that he committed.

1:02:25 Speaker 3: I think he had two parts of them. I don't think the average human being wants to go around killing people. They just don't.

1:02:31 Speaker 2: Sure.

1:02:31 Speaker 3: I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I couldn't be a John Wayne Gacy if you paid me money. I think I'd rather die myself than to do stuff like that. Absolutely, So my point is that he wasn't all that person. You know, and I've met a lot of people like this. They're perfectly good people. They do like everything right, they're nice to people. And then they beat their wives, and then you look back and you figure out why maybe and not that you're going to excuse it. Maybe he'll explain it though, And and you sit there and you go, that guy's a wife beater, but like he's a human being.

1:03:04 Speaker 3: Like it's hard, it's hard to have those two things coexist. But I think in some people they do. I really do. Gasey was not a consistent person. When you're an antisocial person, you do what other people think you should should do. You know, he mimics human emotion because his human emotion is really messed up, whether it was because of something he was born with or the number of things that happened to him when he was young that caused him to be what he was. But he was still a human being. And that's why when it came down to the very end of this, it's very, very difficult to have somebody, you know, execute it.

1:03:41 Speaker 3: I will just tell you that.

1:03:43 Speaker 2: I hear everything you're saying about him being a complex person and the humanity that he was able to demonstrate. I just wonder how much of that do you think was purely performative in terms of knowing what he needed to do, because he was very smart and wanting to elicit particular reactions from others. And how much of it do you think was genuine? Do you feel like he had real affection for you and Greg andst certain others, or that he just knew what he needed to do to make himself look good or how he wanted to look in a particular moment.

1:04:18 Speaker 3: It's hard to say. Will I can only tell you what I felt from him, and I think that at first when I met him, he was very much on the surface, But as I got to know him, I think I got to him a little bit. He is, you know, he loved his mother. He had two sisters whom he loved. He had two wives who he got along with very well until he divorced them. Gasey loved women. He loved his mother, he loved his two wives, he loved his two sisters. And he and I had a little bit of a bond because I would get through some of the stuff with him and I'd say, Gacy, you know what, just tell me the truth for one just let's get let's cut the crap, and let's tell me about this.

1:04:57 Speaker 3: Did you love your father? Did you hate him? What's story? Why did you do this, why you know? And so I think he and I I think he did have a little bit affection for me. I can't speak for the other people, but I definitely, you know, we had a couple bonding moments about different things in our lives. I'm an mpath So you know, your listeners are probably going like, oh, you're your friends.

1:05:20 Speaker 2: Oh you're one of those people who makes everybody's trauma about the Yeah.

1:05:24 Speaker 3: I'm pretty realistic about who people are. I mean, I never I mean case who was associopath. I know all about it. You know, I read.

1:05:32 Speaker 2: Absolutely narcissist.

1:05:34 Speaker 3: He's a borderline, he's you know, he he was. He was a bad dude. Like that's that's not an issue. But what I'm telling you, and I'll tell the story really quickly. I taught the death penalty class for a number of years at the University of Illinois. I had a number of students. Every year, I take a poll, how many are you in favor? How many are against? We had a lot of people who were in favor of it. And part of the project was I would hook up my students with a lawyer who was handling a death penalty case on Illinois death row, and the student could do whatever they want.

1:06:05 Speaker 3: They could go visit the guy. They could write briefs, they could talk to the lawyer like a look at the case, they could talk to the victims. They whatever they wanted to do. They would write some report, give a little bit of an oral presentation. At the end of the class, I'll let him do whatever they wanted. So at the end of the class, every year, every single student, even the ones who were wildly in favor of the death penalty, there's not a single one who met and talked to the death row inmates who said they believed in the death penalty for their guy.

1:06:33 Speaker 3: And this is the significance when you get to know somebody, when you talk to somebody, when you deal with that person's humanity, despite his inhumane acts, you don't want him to die.

1:06:46 Speaker 2: At one point in the book, you talk about representing Gacy on death row and how it was important even though you and everyone felt like he was obviously guilty of these horrible things. You compare it to a pool, basically saying that as we test the strength of these various arguments and counter arguments, even if it doesn't work out for Gayy we're trying to put the ball in the corner pocket because it may help another inmate who perhaps is innocent or not as guilty and deserves to help. We're laying groundwork for someone else, if not gazy.

1:07:25 Speaker 2: The question I had for you there as you were writing the book, how much did you struggle with, think about, agonize over the metaphors that you chose to use. I think this is a pretty apt one, but I also find when talking about really emotionally intense topics, it can be really difficult to pick the right analogy or metaphor.

1:07:47 Speaker 3: Well, I've used that a lot, and I use it. I actually use that analysis yesterday with a client of mind. We were trying to strategize about what to do in court and how to approach a particular problem, and I said, why don't we file the motion, because if we don't win it, then at least we have the judge's attention that this is an issue, and then the next time we have an issue, the judge is going to pay better attention to it. And that's the same thing. You want to get the ball in the pocket, but if you get in the pocket, you still want to set it up for the next shot, so you have a clear shot to get the next ball in, or if you miss the pocket, at least you know you think about setting it up for the next shot.

1:08:29 Speaker 3: So so I think I've used that analogy a lot, and it really is very apt because not everything you do is going to win, but you have to be strategic even if you are sure that you're not going to win. And frankly, this case was all about not winning. I mean, you know, I wasn't that naive as a twenty eight twenty nine year old lawyer that I was going to you know, beat the system. And Gasey wasn't going to be executed. I mean, he was going to be executed. My thought in this whole process was I want to stand up against the death penalty.

1:08:59 Speaker 3: I don't believe it. I don't know that I'm going to change anyone's mind, but I'm going to get researched and I'm going to get articulate, and I'm going to be an advocate against the death penalty and maybe, just maybe I'm going to help these other people on death row, not just in Illinois but other states who might have actual innocence and racist prosecution, etc. So when you are handling a death penalty case, you really are representing the cause as well as you're defendant. And when you think about things on those terms, then it's bigger than you, and it's bigger than you're defendant.

1:09:33 Speaker 3: You know, I argue before the US Supreme Court, and I will tell you that you're not just advocating for your defendant or plaintiff. You are changing the law. You're asking the court to interpret the law of the nation, and going forward, the law is going to be different because of you. And so that's how important it is. It's almost like you're lobbying a branch of government to make a change. So I felt the same way about Gaysy, that this was a cause and not just a defendant.

1:10:02 Speaker 2: You make the point that you often would endeavor not to let your clients suck up too much of your time, attention, and emotional energy, because criminals and inmates can be something of energy vampires. But then you say, when Gacy only had about seven months to live, the finality of that, you found yourself giving him more of your energy, emotional energy, time and attention than you would have for another client. Is that the whole truth of why you did that, knowing that you had always been fascinated with serial killers, did you find yourself sometimes emotionally or cognitively wanting to sort of separate your intellectual excitement lifelong interest from how you were feeling about it in other ways?

1:10:48 Speaker 2: What was the emotional experience of all of that, Like.

1:10:51 Speaker 3: I let Gacy, you know, take more of my time because of the finality. That was one thing. And maybe it was just like feeling bad for him in a way, because I mean it wasn't like he was pathetic or that, you know, there was a lot of sympathy because he did what he did and he was facing what he was facing. But I just thought to myself too that I am fascinated by him. I'm fascinated with these conversations, and I'm fascinated with maybe getting an answer from him before he dies. And at some point in the book I said something to him along those lines, because he wasn't owning up to what he did, and I said, well, how did those kids get in your efing crass space anyway?

1:11:27 Speaker 3: John, you know, And then he'd make his joke like, you know, I'm the only thing I'm guilty of is running a cemetery without a license, and then I just say, no, John, tell me how did they make? No? So I was I was trying to get to the bottom of it. I would love, I would have loved for him to tell me why he did what he did, or what compelled him, or what it was like, or what he thinks did his father create the monster that he became? You know, I wanted an answer, and I thought if I spent some time with him, maybe I'll get that answer because I wanted it.

1:11:56 Speaker 3: I wanted to know what happened when I saw a picture of him as a young boy and I got to know his family, that's another story. You know. That family was, you know, fairly normal, and his sister was a lovely person, totally moral person, lived a great, upright life, was a good mother and grandmother, loved her brother, had no idea what was going on, had to this day, you know, just could never figure out what happened to him. And I just think, what happened to you, John, what happened along the way that made you what you became?

1:12:24 Speaker 3: Because I don't believe that he was born that way, and so I think that was part of my uh, that combination of all of that the fascination, the finite amount of days he had left to live, and that I gave him the time and I don't regret it at all.

1:12:39 Speaker 2: And that dovetails into my next question, which and it's something you actually address, I think quite elegantly in the book, But how do you feel about the fact that much of your success and fame is linked to one of the most horrific and terrible killers of all time? How much do you think about that? Is that a weight you feel like you carry on your shoulders? Have you made your piece with it? How do you feel about your connection with John Wayne Gacy today?

1:13:05 Speaker 3: Well, somebody told me that I should stop saying that I've had success in the media or in my career or is an academic because of Gaycy. The better way to say it, according to my friend, is that the fact that you represented Gaysey put you in the spotlight. You handled yourself well, you educated yourself, you handled yourself with dignity, and people respected you after that. I think that's part of it. But I also think that in our society, when you're associated with someone who's a household word, whether it's valid or not, they think more of you.

1:13:39 Speaker 3: So you know, Kim Kardashian is famous for what we don't really quite know, but she certainly is. And she took that to the bank. And I don't have any problem with that. You know, it is what it is. But I think that, you know, I am like a legal novelty. I think that Gaycy. You know, someone seems to think that because John Gaycy chose me. Here's a guy who had made a lot of bad choices in life, and he chose me to be his lawyer. And I took the case and I lost it famously, and he was executed the exact minute he was supposed to be executed.

1:14:08 Speaker 3: I didn't save him one minute, and all of a sudden, now I'm a better lawyer. That's the perception that we have in this country. I'm a designer lawyer. You know, the Alan dershowitzz of the world. They lose a lot of their cases.

1:14:20 Speaker 2: You had the guts to take on the unwinnable case and to wade through those waters and to go through that emotional hell and do the job that most people wouldn't want to or were afraid to do. And I think I think that's why people see you as a better lawyer. In my mind, you didn't really lose, because it was already lost. But anybody would want a hard nosed, super intelligent attorney that was going to be willing to jump into the trenches and fight an unwinnable battle for them because of the courage and acumen that it takes.

1:14:52 Speaker 2: And so I think that you should be commanded for that. But that's also why I think people see you as a better lawyer that and yes, we have a fast nation with celebrity, there's no question about that. So one of the most chilling moments in the book for me, I found you described talking to Gacy and about killing all these young boys and men, and he said to you, the hard part isn't the killing, it's finding the people who aren't going to be missed. And that just kind of made the hair stand up on my arms and my stomach drop and something there about just the vulnerability of the disenfranchised.

1:15:32 Speaker 2: And in the book you describe how for your entire life ever since, you have these recurring nightmares of his final victim, Robert Peaste, and what the family went through and how he died, And for me, that was so movingly illustrative of who you are inside and emotionally and the weight and the toll that this has taken on you. So for those people out there that think you're an opportunist reptilian who's taking advantage of a horrific murderer, read the book. Not at all the case. I think, Karen. Seems to me that you've dealt with a lot of emotional torment and all kinds of stuff related to having gone through this difficult experience that most people wouldn't have either the fortitude, courage or desire to do.

1:16:15 Speaker 2: Talk just really briefly, if you would, about this idea of the hard part is finding the people who won't be missed, and how that sort of dovetails with the way that you find his victims on your mind or in your dreams.

1:16:29 Speaker 3: Well, Gasey was a predator. He had a type. He was instinctive, and as most predators are. I was just on a safari in Africa and I watched it in action, and I watched how predators responded to things. And you know, if there was an injured bird, the leopard was going to get that bird. And you know, I watched a hippopotamus had broken leg, and I watched how you know, the animals came in, and then the hyenas came and then the vultures came in. So I know that in Gaysey's world, he was predator, and he knew instinctively who would be missed and who would not be missed.

1:17:04 Speaker 3: And he made a mistake with Robert Peaste because he was ramping up and he was losing control. And Robert Peaste was left at a drug store with his mother in a car running whose birthday it was, and they were going to go back home and celebrate the mother's birthday. And Gasey took that kid to his house and killed him within probably an hour. And he was the reason, Robert Peaste was the reason that Gaycy was finally caught, because his mother was sitting there and knew where he was. And so I think that you're seeing you see this all the time.

1:17:34 Speaker 3: The Gilgo Beach murder. He did the same thing as Gacy. He found the marginalized part of society, the sex workers, the women who were slight in stature. Even though he was six ' four or whatever he was, he wanted the small women because then he could overcome them. He was a predator. He is a predator. So I think that these people do things that we don't even know. We couldn't even do that. We couldn't even do that by thinking it all out and planning it. These people, it's the way they roll. And as to the victims, I have, you know, a lot of space I think dedicated talking about victims because I represent victims all the time.

1:18:10 Speaker 3: I represent people who are sexually abused, I represent people who are beaten by their husbands. I represent people who want to get someone prosecuted. And because I am, you know, somewhat prominent in my community, legally I can go to the state's attorney and talk to them about getting something prosecuted. So I've done or using my media connections to get the word out that somebody should be prosecuted. I'm happy to do that because when I'm playing, when I'm the manager of a baseball team, I can only coach one side.

1:18:42 Speaker 3: I can't coach both sides. So if I pick the victim side, I'm going at it and you watch out, and if you land in jail, buddy good. That's what my whole goal is. So but if I'm representing you, I'm going to advocate for you and That's that's all you can ask of a lawyer. So going back to that, I think he picked his victims well and he was right about that. And I think that the people who do this kind of thing no know who to choose well.

1:19:09 Speaker 2: So, Karen, thank you so much for being here. This has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate your time having absolutely I do quickly. Now, you have a radio show in Chicago, right and you also have a podcast, so could you quickly just quickly plug those for us. Tell people about your your radio show and your podcast and where they can find it, and in case anybody wants to tune in and listen, because I'm sure it's fascinating stuff.

1:19:32 Speaker 3: I have a radio show on WGN in Chicago, and you can stream, you can listen live. It's a live show. It's wgnradio dot com. And you can go on WGN's website and put my name in Karen Conti, and you can get all of my interviews that I've done over the years, and I talk about all kinds of legal issues. You know, I'll talk about serial killers, but I also talk about Supreme Court decisions. Whoever is being indicted these days, celebrity kinds of legal issues. I talk about family well, I talk about really pretty much everything and anything.

1:20:06 Speaker 3: And my website is Karenconty dot com. I really like to hear from people who either read my book or are listening to me. Hello at Karenconty dot com. And of course I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

1:20:20 Speaker 2: Sure sure. And you also make frequent television appearances as a legal analyst, right, yeah.

1:20:25 Speaker 3: I do. I am the designated local Fox affiliate and I've been that for over twenty five years. You can see me once in a while on CNN News Nation. I'm on on a very regular basis. The National Desk also on that show, and then you know MSNBC, Fox News National not as much these days.

1:20:44 Speaker 2: Great, great, well, and I hope everybody checks you out on all of those platforms, because I have found our time together utterly fascinating. Again everyone, The book is called Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy, defending America's most evil serial killer on Death Row. Karen Kanti, who has joined us today, that's Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy. Karen. Where can they buy your book?

1:21:06 Speaker 3: Amazon is the best place, of course, And thank you, Jeff, Jeff bezos and uh, if you like it, please give me a nice review because that helps me. If you don't like it, just tell them you read a John Grisham novel and be done with it.

1:21:19 Speaker 2: And I have to say this, this book, Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy by Karen Conty, I gotta tell you it is wonderfully written. Karen. Your pote, your prose is fantastic, You're you're concise, your pacing is amazing. It's dramatic. It feels like a novel, not there's nothing dry about it. I found it to be a very difficult read, but only because of the subject matter as a the the uh, the book itself is wonderfully written. So anybody, if you're if you're fascinated with serial killers, if you're fascinated with crime, if you're fascinated with gaycy or just the legal process, do read Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy by Karen Conty.

1:21:59 Speaker 2: It's a beauty, fully written book. It's pulse pounding. I pretty much couldn't put it down. It is definitely an emotional rollercoaster because of just what happened and how close Karen was to all of it, and all the sort of details that she's able to provide, which is also what makes the book fascinating. So again, Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy defending America's most evil serial killer on death Row by Karen Conty. Go out, get the book, Read the book. It is fantastic. Karen, once again, thank you for joining us.

1:22:29 Speaker 2: I'm so happy to have had you on the show.

1:22:32 Speaker 3: Thank you, Sevan, thank you for having me.

1:22:34 Speaker 2: Absolutely this has been kind of Murdery.

1:22:38 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at kinder Murdery or email at Kindamurdery at gmail dot com