his wife was granted an emergency divorce. >> over the years, his daughters exchanged letters with her father, searching for some kind of explanation for his horrible deeds. something violent happened to him during his childhood, but rader has always insisted he was never physically or sexually abused as a child. lieutenant kenny landwehr was determined to get his man, and he did. many credit him as the reason rader was finally captured. a true hero. landwehr died in 2014 after a battle with cancer. donnie wahlberg, thanks for watching. good night and

to me, clowning was a way of relaxation for me. >> you regressed into childhood. you were able to relax and you could be goofy if you wanted to and still you had the facade of your face being covered. >> welcome to very scary people. i'm donnie wahlberg. it was the mid 1970s. years

before the phrase serial killer had even been coined. so no one in chicago could have imagined there was one living among them. and that's just how john wayne gacy wanted it. by day, he was a beloved community volunteer, a friendly neighbor, and a successful businessman. even a professional clown who made kids laugh. but by night, john wayne gacy became the stuff of nightmares. cruising the streets of chicago looking for prey. the things gacy did to his victims were unspeakable. what made this seemingly normal guy into such a depraved monster? and how would police ultimately discover his evil secret i remember being in bed. >> my mother came into my room and said, do you know where your brother is? i said, no. and she said he didn't come

home it just wasn't something we were used to. and immediately she called the police and they said to my mother, well, what do you want us to do about it? 17 year olds are goofy. they all run away. but they'll be back. that's. that was the the mantra. he'll be back. don't worry about it. >> the 70s was a different time. >> kids were running away all the time. >> in chicago, thousands upon thousands of young men and women go missing. >> james byron hawkinson disappeared shortly after moving to chicago. >> john butkovich, an 18 year old north side youth who disappeared on july 31st, 1975. >> missing persons toledo. >> can i help you? >> he. >> police departments were understaffed when it came to the juvenile divisions, and it

was very difficult to try to track runaways. typical in this case, and in many cases, families go to the police department or they call and they say, my son's missing. >> and they say, well, wait 12 hours. well, you know, he may come home. just let us know. my mother kept saying, there's something wrong. there's something wrong. there's no way that my brother would have left my brother at that time thought he was on cloud nine because he had a girlfriend. he got a car that he always wanted. he got a job making $5 an hour. been working for this contractor for about a week. we were contacting anybody that would have a connection with my brother. my mother went over to the contractor's house. and she knocked on the door

and she said, my son has been missing. have you any idea where he could have gone? the contractor said, you know, it's really odd that he left a message on my answering machine. and my mother said, well, let me hear it. he goes, i erased it already. and he said, just like the police said, you know, kids at 17, they run away all the time. you just got to give it time. they'll be back. but the next day, when my mother was driving around in the neighborhood, she found his car parked in a parking lot two miles from our house. the car was unlocked, and inside the car was his wallet. there's no

way that my brother would have left without taking his car. his driver's license. she knew that there was something wrong because this was his pride and joy. this car that he just got. this is so out of character. this is not your brother. >> what no one knew at the time was that a lot of these kids were not runaways. >> they'd been abducted. and all by the same man he was on the prowl to find people to have sex with. >> he liked young men. 14 to 20. shark fit, but not muscular. and he'd find himself cruising the streets where the young hustlers were.

and he'd pick them up pull to the corner, roll down the window and just say, hey, kid, you want to go get a drink? >> want to get a beer? >> you want some work, you know? >> come on, get in. >> let's go for a ride. >> and he'd find a vulnerable child who would be susceptible to this kind of sympathy. >> after taking the kid to his home, he would subdue them with a trick. >> he would trick his victims into handcuffs. >> he would show them a magic trick, and he would put handcuffs on himself and then he'd go around, turn around and take the handcuffs off. >> presto chango. he would be spinning the handcuffs around on his fingertip. now the victim is fascinated. how did you do that? and he goes, i'll

show you. >> put your hands up. >> so, in other words, his victims allowed him to put handcuffs on them. and once you're in handcuffs, you can't fight back then he says, i can't get out of these things. >> what's the trick? >> and he pulls out a key, a handcuff key, and he says, the trick is you got to have the key he had a second manner, which i would guess he employed when he was growing frustrated, and he couldn't find a kid who was vulnerable, which is that he would pretend to be a cop his big black oldsmobile that he tricked out to make it look like a police car and he'd

wear a leather jacket, a leather bomber type jacket so he could look as if he was an undercover cop. >> and he'd say, i'm a cop. >> get in the car. >> and he put handcuffs on the kid or something like that. >> sort of scare him. but then say, don't worry, everything's going to be okay. >> and i think he was getting very confident that he could do whatever he wanted to do and was going to get away with it once he had them handcuffed he would do painful sexual things to to them through. >> awful tortures he would

drown them in the bathtub, pull them out. he would burn them with his cigarillos. >> he would show them tricks. clown tricks magic tricks. things he had learned. only they turned out to be deadly. things that ended their lives. >> shortly after i got in the car with him, he placed a rag over my face. >> he floats in and out of consciousness and finally begins to plead to be killed because what he's going through is so awful. >> he had it down to a science andy anderson, take a seat. >> look at this. you're wet. disheveled. there's debris hitting you. >> why do you have that on your phone? >> i watch it all the time. hey, listen, we need to be ready for new year's eve. there could be an ice storm or a hurricane and obviously,

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16 pro with apple intelligence on us and ipad and apple watch series ten all three on us. that's up to $2,000 in value only on verizon. hello i'm. >> 1970 chicago. young men were going missing and for the most part, they've run away. >> and you're a police officer. you don't really look into that too deeply. >> the chicago police department was inundated people knew in chicago that boys were disappearing. >> but of course, if you have one boy disappear and a week goes by and another disappears, it takes a long time before a pattern emerges. >> but nobody in chicago knows that, that the explanation for the disappearance of all these boys is that a serial killer is operating in these haunts.

>> this guy, his name was jeff rignall. walking outside a bar one night. when a guy in a black oldsmobile picked him up, asked if he wanted to share a joint it's a clean cut looking man and, uh, i got in the car with him and shortly after i got in the car with him, he placed a rag over my face, of which turned out to be chloroform. >> and proceeded to have a lengthy drive. every time i would come to the rag, would go back over my face and i remember him carrying me into his house the boy wakes up in the man's house. >> of course, he must not have

had any idea where he was. but he's being tortured by this man who's just doing unspeakable things to him he did express he appeared to become almost a monster his face changed, his eyes changed, and he became a completely unrecognizable being. he floats in and out of consciousness and finally begins to plead to be killed, because what he's going through is so awful. >> and then, for some bizarre reason, who knows? the men put him back in the car and drove him to a park, did not kill him, dumped him off

that's the last thing i remember until i was found myself about 5:00, 530 in the morning on the steps right by lincoln park, half dressed my face completely burned. >> he's bleeding from his backside and he's got burns on his face from the chloroform. >> the guy gets to his girlfriend's house. she takes him to a hospital. he goes to the cops, and the cops don't believe him so now he's determined to find this man that did this to him. >> what i did, since the police took the matter very, very lightly, i rented a car and sat where i thought i was approximately waiting for his car to come by, waiting for a very distinct car, a black four door sedan with license plates, pdm 42.

so i just took me about a week for that car to pass and i just followed it to the house it was just a regular old ranch style house, a very nondescript kind of house. >> jeff rignall reported the address to the police. >> he then goes to the police and says, this is the man who assaulted me, but the police don't bring charges because they think we have a somewhat established citizen in our community. >> the story just doesn't seem to square with the image that we have in our community of this man. >> here was a guy who was respected in his neighborhood. >> everybody knew john wayne gacy. >> he was in politics. he was

involved in bowling leagues, neighborhood parties for the 4th of july, themed parties, hawaiian, italian festival, sometimes 400 people at the party, important people. >> he had a contracting company called pdm painting, decorating and maintenance. >> if john was walking down lasalle street and the mayor was walking the other way, the mayor would say hi to john. >> he had his fingers in everything and everyone thought he was great. >> and he did a lot of functions for charity that involved him dressing up as as the clown he loved doing that he was actually a real clown who did tricks for little kids, and he was in a union and all that. >> he got kids laughing. he had little hand puppets. he had a squeaky voice that would talk to the children and they would

talk back. >> pogo the clown was the clowning that i did for charity hospital work for the democratic party. pogo comes from being polish and on the go all the time. so it's pogo he. >> got pleasure out of performing for people, particularly little kids in hospitals. he'd see this kid who's got leukemia and is, you know diagnosed incurable. he'd do his clown act and cry on their behalf he became the director of the polish day parade that in chicago is a big deal. >> and one of them, he met rosalynn carter, the wife of the president of the united states. >> so it's really no wonder, with a reputation like that, that after this guy, jeff rignall, went to the police,

that even though they did charge gacy, the charge went nowhere. >> jeff rignall reported this to the chicago police department and jeff really didn't have that much information, so they couldn't do too much with it. he turned out to be an individual that the police didn't believe. >> but what no one knew at the time and would never have guessed, is that jeff rignall was really the luckiest of all of gacy's victims, because gacy never showed him his scariest trick the final trick? >> was the rope trick. >> the rope trick was a thing that he developed. put the rope around the kid's neck and he would use, like, the handle for a hammer or any kind of strong piece of wood that he had handy.

and then twist it, twist it, twist it. he had arranged it in such a way that it was lodged against the kid's back. the more he struggled, the tighter it got. >> when he got so good at this rope trick. >> at every half turn, the body would start reacting a little bit differently, and he knew exactly what he could do or not do with the body at that point. so he had it down to a science pretty eerie and pretty creepy we got a report of a missing person it was something fairly evil that had happened. >> i think everybody kind of agreed that there was more to this than a runaway and it just started building up come play with me.

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or get started with comcast business internet. and for a limited time, get an $800 holiday bonus. call today. z e to 42424. >> i'm hanako montgomery in tokyo and this is cnn nobody knew that gacy found a niche in which he was operating. >> i was assigned to the detective unit. we got a report of a missing person robert piest. >> robert piest was a 15 year old kid that was active in high school. a good kid with a loving family. he was working at a pharmacy called the nissan pharmacy in des plaines. >> he worked part time as a stock boy, and his one desire was to buy a car. when he was

16 and able to drive the night that robert piest went missing, his mom had come to pick him up at the end of his shift. >> it was his mom's birthday that particular day. they were going to go home and celebrate her birthday. she was waiting outside in the parking lot. rob went out there and said, i'll be back in a few minutes. i just want to talk to this guy about a job. she said, no problem. see you in a few there was a contractor in the store. >> he was there doing an estimate for the owners of the pharmacy. >> this contractor had been hiring young people, and he paid them pretty well. >> when he heard that, he could maybe make $5 an hour, basically double what he was making, he was excited and wanted to approach them for a job. >> and that's the last anyone saw of rob piest. >> he was not the kind of young man that one would expect to run away or just go missing.

>> so there was something apparently evil that had happened the owner of the pharmacy had identified that contractor as john wayne gacy. >> the detectives went out to his home that following morning and spoke to gacy in hopes that he had seen the young boy. he denied any involvement or any contact with robert piest. we really had nothing big to go on. >> all we had, as far as evidence, was robert piest going out to talk to john gacy and never being seen again. >> some time after that, a check was made on gacy. >> there was no internet at the time, so it took a little while to get court records and to dispatch leads to local police departments to find out more about him.

john gacy was married to a very pretty, pretty young lady. >> he had two children with her, a boy and a girl. >> he said that he would like to playing kind of a fatherly role, and he insisted that he was a very warm and loving father. >> were you strict with them? no. >> i don't believe in hitting, hitting children. >> i don't believe in in spoiling a child. >> either. he was extremely successful. his wife, marilyn's father, had three kentucky fried chicken stands. and john was hired on to manage all three stands in waterloo. john joined the junior chamber of commerce. he did a lot of work for the jaycees. he was the chaplain for a while. >> if you serve other people,

it'll come back to serve you. you know, i've always believed that way with generosity. >> there was some evidence during those years that john was going to be a normal suburban guy investigators in chicago discovered that john wayne gacy had charges in iowa from ten years ago stemming from his first marriage. >> john wayne gacy had a fairly extensive record minor types of things, basically battery, disorderly conduct. but one conviction was for sodomy and it was learned that it was performed against a young boy. >> on the day he was convicted. his wife filed for divorce, left him, took his two kids. he never saw any of them again. >> it ended his wonderful life he was having in waterloo, iowa, because he wound up in a

penitentiary. >> after serving more than a year in prison, john wayne gacy moves to chicago to start an entirely new life, and no one knows anything about his checkered past. he lives under the radar for years until rob frehse goes missing, and then the des plaines police finally have a suspect. >> i think everybody kind of agreed that there was more to this than a runaway and it just started building up. >> it was shortly after that we got the first search warrant looking for rob peace. we really had the confidence that we had the right guy. but to put it together to where we had some sort of a criminal case, we had nothing the investigators did not know what they were about to get into. the hairs on the back of my head just went up. >> you only come across an

artist like luther vandross. once in a lifetime. >> he was a boss from the beginning. luther said, i have a sound in my head. i got to get it out. you are my shining star. it was the most exciting time in the world. his life had extremely joyful moments and some really difficult moments. if we were to be able to talk to luther as fans, we'd be able to say. we just love you. >> luther. never too much. new year's day at eight on cnn from creating memories. >> to finding the perfect gift let us make this holiday season a little easier right now. save up to $60 on select as battery sets. happy holidays from steel.

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>> y'all see this? >> patrick mahomes is saying goodbye. >> patrick. patrick. people was tripping. >> where are you going? he was actually saying goodbye to his old phone. >> i'm switching to the amazing new iphone 16 pro at t-mobile. it's the first iphone built for apple intelligence that's like peanut butter on jelly on gold. get for iphone 16 pro on us plus four lines for 25 bucks and save on every plan versus the other big guys. what a always free.

>> go to deal dash dot com right now and see how much you can save. >> listen to chasing life with me doctor sanjay gupta. wherever you get your podcasts. >> welcome back to very scary people after rob peace disappeared from his job at nissan pharmacy, detectives learned that john wayne gacy was the last known person to see him. they also learned that gacy had a criminal record for sexually assaulting another 15 year old. now they were pretty sure they had their man, but they still had to find a clue that tied gacy to the boy's

disappearance. and as the investigation continued, they realized they were dealing with something and someone far more sinister than any of them had ever imagined the des plaines police did get a search warrant early on to search for john wayne gacy's house. >> it was determined that, in fact, he was. restraining kidnaping, rob frehse and that the kid possibly was still being held in his house during that search warrant, a variety of items were found in his house. some pornography, some sex toys, and they recovered some driver's licenses of young boys and some jewelry. >> while much evidence was taken from that residence, rob frehse was not found. >> of the items that were taken, and there were many to stand out in my mind.

>> maine west class ring rob frehse had gone to maine west, so we felt a man was an even possibility that there are two or 3 or 4 other victims. so that was just unimaginable in itself. there was another thing there that the police came back with, and that was a partial receipt found in gacy's garbage. >> it was a pick-up slip for a roll of film that was being developed at the nissan pharmacy, and that was the pharmacy where rob peace disappeared from a day or so after the first search warrant, i asked the police department if they would put a 24 hour surveillance on gacy with the hopes that, in fact, he would go back to wherever rob was. >> now. >> two 12 hour shifts, two guys, they watched him around the clock. >> my partner and i really we

had no exact direction where to go with this case, other than the fact that we were not to lose him. >> i decided pretty much that the first night that we were out, that if gacy went into a public place, dave and i would go in and follow him. >> we didn't want to leave him alone for one minute. whatever it took, we were to stay with him. the second night that mike and i were on the surveillance. gacy was out late at night. he goes over to a restaurant. he sits at a table. he's all by himself, and we sit at a table, a couple tables away from him. and pretty soon he says, hey, guys, as long as you're going to follow me, why don't you just join me? so mike and i joined him and we developed a bit of a relationship life is a series of curveballs, and this was a huge curve that came at me for my first time at bat. >> i had planned to be this

wealthy, successful personal injury lawyer. i'm sitting in my new office that i had just opened up, trying to figure out what i was going to put on my wall, and the phone rings hey, sam, how you doing? i said, how are you doing? john was the kind of guy. oh yeah, john gacy. i know john gacy. so it was like that. the neighbor, a good brother, a good cousin, somebody who was helpful all the time. i mean, that's the reputation he had. he said, kid, do me a favor. sure, john. no problem. what do you need? he said, could you please find out why the des plaines police are tailing me? they're all over me. they're ruining my business. i was shocked at that and very curious as to know why they were tailing him. i said, john, i know those police officers. i know the chief over there. i'll ask them. i'll find out what's going on gacy was not a scary person. there was no reason to believe he would have done anything criminal or wrong. and i was just going to help him out. he he needed a favor, and that's what i was going to do it turned out, turned out to be my

first case in private practice. >> gacy walked into the room. people just gravitated towards him. i mean, he was very popular, very well liked and very well respected. >> everyone that they talked to just swore up and down that gacy was like the best guy that they ever knew. he was like the best neighbor, the best coworker, just a great guy. and that's the way he came across to myself and my partner. he was a lot of fun to be with. he was a his conversations were funny and fun and carefree. we had to on many occasions, remind each other if one was getting a little too comfortable, you know, the other would remind him, hey, you know, it's looking like maybe this guy's involved with maybe a homicide here or a couple. so let's try to stay sharp. let's not fall into any bad habits here. there was one particular time we followed him around, and he goes into the

all night restaurant for breakfast. so we're all sitting around a table just discussing all kinds of different things, vacations and you name it. and he starts bringing up his being a registered clown. and he said, i got to tell you, dave, this registered clown thing is pretty cool. as a matter of fact, i can go on a parade route and i'd be in my clown outfit, and if i see a nice looking gal, i can go up right alongside of her, sit down, put my arm around her and get a little feel. he says that's what clowns can get away with in fact, clowns can get away with murder. and he just stared me in the eye and said that to me. i tried to remain cool, you know. i tried to just let it go over my head. but man, the hairs on the back of my head just went up. >> police were tailing him, and they certainly knew a lot more than i knew about it. i came in totally cold and they sincerely believed that he had kidnaped robby peace. and they said, oh,

come on, he didn't do that. but of course they had already investigated his background. they knew about the sodomy conviction. >> we were on top of something that just was too much to even believe by ourselves. >> john and i continue to meet, and i would ask him over and over again, what happened? did you do this? did this happen vehemently. unequivocally denied. we decided to file a lawsuit against the des plaines police department in the federal court to stop them, restrain them from violating our client's civil rights by tailing them for no reason at all. >> we were concerned that if there was a federal lawsuit and an order against us, that our case would be over our investigation could really go nowhere else he had had ended up coming back and telling us, man, i smelled dead bodies in

there. and i said, boys, we might be dealing with a lot more than we think welcome to times square that's not in my life. >> cheers that was so embarrassing. >> we are joined by john mayer. >> we are at a cat bar here. oh. >> oh my gosh, that's perfect. >> tv new year's eve live with anderson and andy. live coverage starts at eight on cnn, streaming live en masse. >> my moderate to severe crohn's symptoms kept me out of the picture. >> now i have skyrizi. i've got places to go, and i'm feeling free controlling my crohn's means everything to me. >> control is everything to me. >> and now i'm back in the picture. feel significant

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following the execution of that search warrant, police reviewed everything that they recovered. >> now, we had so much literal junk from gacy's house. junk turned out to be evidence that we had to go through things didn't move as fast back then to try to identify jewelry or a license or any of those kind of things we had in there, among other things, a class ring that had initials on it in a class ring that did not bear gacy's initials. >> it's a js so what was gacy doing with that? >> they ran that ring down and they found out that that ring came back to a young boy by the name of john zick. john zick had been reported missing, and he was an ex-employee of gacy's. they determined that

some of these driver's licenses that were found in gacy's house were from young boys that had been reported missing. there was way too much that came back on the first search warrant for us to think that we were just looking for rob peast, and i said, boys, we might be dealing with a lot more than we think and we had no idea what was going to end. quite naturally, some of the first paths that we took were to try to interview some of the people that work for gacy, and one of the key things that they found out was that he had instructed these employees to go into his crawl space and dig trenches, and he claimed it was because they had a sewage issue and that he was trying to resolve that problem. and

occasionally the smell would come back up. so we'd instruct them to go in there with a lime and spread lime down there, which would cover up that smell for a while. they certainly were helpful in telling us that we really probably wanted to get down to the crawl space then one really cold chicago night. >> gacy actually invited the surveillance team into his home gacy was trying to make it seem as if he was friends with the police, and that there was no reason that they should be surveilling him. >> they went to gacy's house. gacy invited them in, offered them a drink. >> of course, the police officers were delighted not only to go into a warmer place, but to go into the house where gacy lived. >> they talked with him. john would talk. john will talk your ear off. and one officer said he wanted to go off to the bathroom. >> he excused himself to go to

the bathroom, which is in the older part of the house. when he was in the bathroom, the heat kicked on and this odor came up from the heat vents and he equated it to the smell that he would smell at the morgue. if you've ever been to a morgue around a dead body, it's an odor that you will never forget. >> he had ended up coming back and telling us, man, i smelled dead bodies in there. we now were coming to the absolute conclusion that this guy had to be stopped. we needed to get a second search warrant to get back into gacy's house. >> you can't just start ripping apart someone's crawlspace because of a bad odor. >> you need judicial approval, so you have to get a warrant. the problem with getting a warrant is you have to connect john wayne gacy to rob peace. on the night he disappeared

he called me and said, it's very, very important. >> i talked to you and i didn't know what to think. i had a zillion things going through my head like, oh my god, what am i going to do? >> nobody could have predicted this. this is more than people would have ever believed possible you only come across an artist like luther vandross. >> once in a lifetime. >> he was a boss from the beginning. luther said. i have a sound in my head. i got to get it out. you are my shining star. my god, it was the most exciting time in the world. his life had extremely joyful moments and some really difficult moments. if we were to be able to talk to luther as fans, we'd be able to say we just love you, luther. >> never too much new year's day at eight on cnn. lowe's knows the best holiday tradition is taking your tradition to the next level. so if you find a lower price on the things you want need, we'll match it. plus, with milo's rewards, you can earn points when you shop to make the

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can save. >> there are auctions going on right now. so what are you waiting for new year's eve live with anderson and andy. >> live coverage starts at eight on cnn. >> as the evidence was building up against gacy, it became

clear that he was starting to feel the heat. >> we really started to see his demeanor change quite a bit, say 5 or 6 days into the investigation. typically early on, he would come out of his house and he'd say, hey, i'm going to check on a job, this and this, and he'd take off and we'd follow him. but now he seems to not be telling us that. and on the way to job sites, actually trying to lose us, driving like a madman through the city he was driving 75, 80 miles an hour through his reginald cherry many times we had to cut him off and pull him out of the car and shake him around a little bit and say, gacy, you know, you're going to hurt somebody. you're driving like a madman. you got to slow it down. you know, we don't want to arrest you on this gacy called me and said, it's very, very important i talked to you. >> i have to tell you something i'm like, okay, john. it better be important. it better be new because you're telling me the same old crap all the time. i don't want to hear it. no, it's something new. it's

something important. i have to talk to you about he comes into the office and. and i'm. i'm getting because he's telling me the same old stuff he had been telling me. i lost it. i lost it. and i start pounding my my hand on the table. pounding. it really hurt. i said, john, tell me the truth. it's i don't want to hear any more. he goes, okay, you know. do you have anything to drink around here? one of my investigators in a public defender's office. he happened to give me a bottle of vodka that day as a christmas gift. and i had it in my car. i ran out to the car, and i go in with the bottle. gacy says fill it up. we all toasted gacy drank it. fill it up again poured another old thing. we each had a shot. gun and he looks at me and he says, i want to tell you the whole story from the beginning. i've been a judge, jury and executioner of many, many people. now i want

to be my own judge, jury and executioner. my heart start pounding like boom, boom, boom. what are you talking about, john? and he goes, i don't want you to interfere. i just want you to listen to what i have to say. >> meanwhile, across town, cops had a big breakthrough. they finally figured out that that photo receipt they found in gacy's garbage belonged to a woman named kim byers. and she happened to be a coworker of rob frehse at nissan pharmacy. >> and the story behind that was kim byers was going to go out and take a break, and she asked rob if she could borrow his coat. and just before she did that, she processed a roll of film and took the film receipt and put it in the jacket of rob pete ricketts coat. rob eventually borrowed his coat back. >> how would that photo receipt that was in rob frehse jacket pocket have ended up in gacy's house. unless the two of them crossed paths that night. so

now police have the proof and the evidence they need to get that search warrant to go back into gacy's house to examine that crawl space. >> so maybe six hours. you talked continuously describing every murder. >> i did kill him. i think he was strangled he remembered every single detail about every single murder. >> i think i stabbed him in the chest 4 or 5 times. >> it was getting daylight. he finishes talking and his head just dropped. he starts snoring. so now i'm sitting there watching gacy sleep also. he sat up perfectly straight and looked at me, but like, looked right through me. like i wasn't even there. and i'm going, john, john! john, are you awake? he stands up. and he

starts walking toward me i always have a baseball bat around. i went over and i picked up this bat. and i'm walking backwards. and he sat down and he starts snoring again. and i didn't know what to think. i had a zillion things going through my head like, oh, my god, what am i going to do? it was it was frightening. this guy just told us he killed all these people. he's crazy. he's crazy. and the police are out there. what are we going to do now? i was in a panic i believe i did kill him. >> i had never seen anything like this before. >> i had never heard anything like this before. >> i had never experienced anything like this before. >> on our job, we see a variety of horrific things. but this was the norm. >> identities unknown. >> victims of a man who probably did not know their

names. >> you see bodies in your sleep. you see him in your sleep. it's just too much. >> it was very eerie because you knew exactly what was happening. >> nobody can explain what he did. who can explain it? >> john wayne gacy's detailed confession to a gruesome seven year killing spree was almost impossible to believe. within 24 hours, police would learn the truth for themselves. the questions on everyone's mind were how did gacy become so evil? and how did he get away with killing so many people for so long? the shocking conclusion of john wayne gacy evil secret next. i'm donnie wahlberg.