John Wayne Gacy murdered more than 33 victims, but his lawyer believes the “killer clown” did not act alone.
Karen Conti was a fledgling lawyer in the early 1990s, representing the most notorious serial killers of the time in their final appeals from 1993 until his execution by lethal injection on May 4, 1994.
Gacy was convicted of 33 murders, but Conti said he believed there were many more victims.
“I’m mostly positive about it,” she told FOX News Digital. “While committing his crimes, Gacy was traveling, even traveling into the countryside to do construction work. I did look at his business records, and they were carefully kept. I did.
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John Wayne Gacy’s mugshot after his arrest in 1978. (Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images)
“I just can’t imagine why he stopped killing at that time.”
“He would disappear for two or three weeks at a time and be in the thick of this crime. I have no idea why he stopped killing during that time.”
Nearly all of the victims he was convicted of killing were buried throughout his home and property in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, about 25 miles north of Chicago.
Conti said Gacy frequently traveled to rural areas, which “would have made it easier for him to recruit, kidnap, and bury young men and boys.” .
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“At the time, there was no unified database, but my guess is that if podcasters and detectives were to go into these areas and look at these business records and try to find out if there were any missing people, they might connect the dots and conclude that what I’m saying is true,” Conti said.
She believes there are at least 20 more victims of Gacy’s murder spree, which extended beyond the suburban town limits.
Karen Conti, a 37-year trial judge in the Chicago area and author of “John Wayne Gacy’s Time Killer,” shares what it’s like to defend one of the most prolific serial killers in history. Masu. (Karen Conti)
And she is “convinced” that Gacy likely had assistance from two men who lived with him and had sex with him when he committed his crimes.
“They testified at trial that they took money and drugs from him and actually dug a trench under his house,” Conti said. “To me, there’s no way they didn’t know what they were doing and why they were doing it.
“And I can’t believe that Gacy, who was so physically fit, could actually go down into that small space and carry the body and bury it by himself.”
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According to court documents, she mentioned Jeffrey Rignall, the victim who escaped Gacy’s clutches in 1978, and during the trial, she said that after Gacy offered to give her a ride home from a local bar, she gave him a chloroform rag. He testified during the trial that he used it to knock him out.
He passed out in and out of consciousness during the brutal sexual assault detailed in court documents Then I woke up next to a statue in a Chicago park.
This is a police photo of John Wayne Gacy, 37, who was taken into custody for questioning after five badly decomposed bodies were discovered. The body, believed to be that of the young man, was found in a small space in a home owned by Gacy. Neighbors said he ran a construction business out of his home and employed several young people. (Getty Images)
During Rignall’s testimony, Gacy said he was “assisted at one point by an accomplice,” an incident documented by one person. West Virginia University Research Paper Regarding the insanity defense.
The research paper included a footnote stating that no one else was arrested for sexually assaulting Rignall.
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But prosecutors didn’t want to “taint” the case against Gacy by bringing in other suspects, Conti said in an interview with the US Sun in March. Therefore, potential co-conspirators were never introduced.
“I have a strong feeling that these two young men were procuring young men for Gacy, holding them captive, and possibly collaborating with them in criminal activity, and certainly burying the bodies. “We’re working hard,” Conti said.
Shown are mugshots of boys and young men whose bodies were identified as victims of John Wayne Gacy. Gacy was charged with murdering 33 boys and young adults. (Getty Images)
Debunking the myth about Gacy’s last words
What stood out to Conti was Gacy’s dry, cynical sense of humor, which lasted until his final moments.
“Gacy, despite all his evil deeds, did not appear to be evil, which is why he was exonerated,” she said. “He was a very sweet guy. He was affable and soft-spoken. He could be very aggressive with other guys on the team, but not so much with me. He was a little soft on me.”
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Ms. Conti was a pioneering 29-year-old lawyer and the only woman on Gacy’s death row defense team.
“The other thing that was really interesting was his sense of humor,” she says. “Because obviously nothing he did was funny, but he used his sense of humor to distract from his dark side and get people to like him.
“And I think that was one of the tools he used to commit his crimes. These guys (like Gacy) are very manipulative and very interested in manipulating the people around them. And Gacy certainly was.”
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John Wayne Gacy created a self-portrait of himself wearing a “Pogo the Clown” costume. (Steve Eichner/Wire Image)
In the lead-up to his death, Gacy told his guards, “I wish they had given me the electric chair,” he said in an April 2 interview.fuzzy microphone. ”
“And the guards were like, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Then I’m going to ask you to hold my hand,'” Conti said.
This dark humor and anecdote seemed to contradict Gacy’s supposed last words: “Kiss me…”
It turned out to be just an urban legend.
“I had a conversation with a prosecutor who passed away a few months ago,” Conti said. “The prosecutor was with Gacy at the time of his death. And I asked him, ‘Did he actually say those words?’ And he said, ‘No.'”
In fact, he didn’t say anything.
The barren land is unpleasantly reminiscent of John Wayne Gacy’s “House of Horrors” that once existed there. (Bettman Archive/Getty Images)
Her final impression of Gacy was that he wanted to be caught by the police and was “relieved” to be in jail. Otherwise, he will also kill people.
“He was furious (when he was arrested),” Conti said in an interview on “Fuzzy Mike.” “Many serial killers start out killing once a year. Then the number increases. And they need more violence. They need more victims. We need them,” Conti said. “So, Gacy, I think at the end of the day, it just hurt him.
“And I think he knew that if he ever went out again, he would go back to killing.”
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Karen Conti, an attorney for death row inmate John Wayne Gacy, said Gacy’s humor was prominent in their interactions. (Karen Conti)
She said he had been sexually abused, suffered a head injury as a child and had repressed homosexual tendencies.
As for the murder, “I think he tried to kill himself multiple times,” she said.
“I think he tried to commit suicide many times.”
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Conti said she received death threats and bomb threats, and that her role in Gacy’s case almost tarnished her career at the age of 29.
After Gacy died and many years passed, the threats and evil glances turned into a conspiracy of strangers.
Karen Conti’s book “Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy.” (Karen Conti)
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She has been a trial lawyer in Chicago for 37 years, is a law professor and is now an author, recently publishing Killing Time, about her interactions with Gacy.
“It’s more of a story about how a young lawyer approaches this case, receives public backlash, and how he has to build a relationship with someone who is the epitome of evil,” Conti said. He talked about his book.
The book explores “how this man (Gacy) who committed the most inhumane acts imaginable had humanity and a family who loved him.”
fox news digital emmett jones contributed to this report.
