John Wayne Gacy was one of America’s most prolific – and gruesome – serial killers, responsible for the deaths of 33 young men, 26 of whom he buried in the crawlspace beneath his home in Norwood Park Township in Chicago. Gacy, a selfish sociopath who ran a remodeling business, had strong local political ties (and ambitions), and moonlighted like a children’s hospital clown named Pogo, was the worst of the worst. Unsurprisingly, he was also a devious liar, as confirmed again by a 1992 interview that serves as the centerpiece of John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, claiming that the police and media made “this fantasy monster image” of him, and that “I had nothing to do with the murder of anyone.” Rarely has an arrogant killer lied so much, and so boldly.
In fact, the only real thing he’s allowed to say in the entire chat, conducted by legendary FBI profiler Robert Ressler, is that “clowning has gotten a bad name because of what they used in my case.”
Premiered March 25 on Peacock, John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise is part history lesson, part psychological inquiry, and part showcase of cold, deceptive inhumanity, treading a fine line between inquiry and voyeurism. The main hook is that conversation between Gacy and Ressler in 1992, staring up close at the inmate killer as he talks candidly and confidently about his innocence – even going so far as to say he didn’t even know the dead – as flips through an enormous amount of research material that he says he is releasing. Nobody on planet Earth buys that nonsense, not even this docuseries. But if anyone gets close, it’s Craig Bowley, a longtime prison correspondent with Gacy who helped set up Ressler’s videotaped encounter with the enemy, and who has befriended him for years, to the point that he tells us that He was nearly broken when he finally got to say goodbye to his old acquaintance and confidant via a hug.
Bowley’s twisted fascination with Gacy is one area in which John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise may have struggled much harder. However, this six-part non-fiction venture is, for the most part, a little too comprehensive; like so many of its genre brethren, it could have been at least one episode shorter without losing important facts or insights. That’s especially felt in his back half, when an inordinate amount of thought is given to the details of Gacy’s trial (and, in particular, his pointless defense against insanity), as well as attempts to name the handful of victims that never officially are identified. at the time. Such subjects are relevant to the larger portrait being painted here, but more brevity would have amplified the impact of those passages and enhanced the momentum of the proceedings.
Happy, John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise is otherwise exhaustive, enlightening and intriguing. The Gacy it reveals is a relentlessly ambitious, narcissistic man who grew up with an abusive alcoholic father and a sexual appetite for young men. He was married and divorced twice (he had children with his first wife), while conducting homosexual trysts with numerous individuals (he insisted on being bisexual). He strived to penetrate political organizations and power players in Chicago (sometimes through the distribution and promotion of pornography), and he ran a remodeling business with male teens who had a suspicious habit of disappearing. When a potential recruit, 15-year-old Robert Piest, a resident of Des Plains, disappeared in 1978 when he saw Gacy about a job – this while the boy’s mother was waiting for him outside of work – the police began to snoop around. What they eventually found was a mass grave unlike anything seen before.
Using interviews with detectives, journalists, relatives, friends, victims’ relatives and more, as well as archive news broadcasts, crime scene footage, home videos and photos, John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise gives a thorough account of the police surveillance and arrest of Gacy, and the excavation of his nightmare house. The series shuns formal sensationalism at the most; dramatic recreations are missing (only staged shots of sets that look like key locations are used) and images of Gacy as Pogo – a figure he didn’t use to attract victims – are kept to a minimum. There’s a sobering quality to the stories, which also takes a look at Gacy’s pre-Chicago checkered past in Iowa, where he was convicted of sexually assaulting the teenage son of a state representative and sentenced to 10 years behind bars at Anamosa State Penitentiary.
What they eventually found was a mass grave unlike anything seen before.
The fact that Gacy was only released on parole for 18 months proves one of many instances where the criminal and law enforcement system fell short. John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise describes how Gacy repeatedly appeared on the police radar for various crimes and missing persons cases, yet always seemed to escape, whether because of his personality or the political connections he had made throughout the area. Additionally, the series alleges in the epilogue chapter that the police, fearful of dredging up revelations that would cast a disparaging look at their initial investigation, deliberately ignored clues and evidence in subsequent years that would have unearthed more Gacy victims (he boasted that his body count was closer to 45).
Open and implicit accusations against the police are a regular part of this John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, and they’re complemented by a rather compelling conspiracy theory regarding the possibility that Gacy wasn’t acting alone, but was instead aided by members of John Norman’s pedophile sex trafficking ring that Gacy was linked to through a collaborator (Phil Paske). Gacy’s familiarity with those individuals, as well as his dark trench-digging cronies Michael Rossi and David Cram, makes it quite possible that others helped him carry out facets of his long-running killing spree. Consequently, even though Gacy was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, the case continues to raise uncomfortable questions.
John Wayne Gacy: Devil in DisguiseThe conclusion is a compelling argument that in some respects more needs to be done – for example, the police digging up the garden near the apartment building where Gacy’s mother lived, and where he most likely buried more bodies. Needless to elaborate, however, are the depths of Gacy’s aberrant depravity, which, despite his affable 1992 routine to Ressler, can be seen behind his hard, emotionless eyes.