On February 6, 1980, the trial of John Wayne Gacy started in Chicago before Judge Louis Garippo. Gacy was charged with thirty-three counts of murder. Due to the overwhelming media attention in Chicago, the jurors had to be selected from Rockford, Illinois.
Before going to trial, Gacy’s lawyers spent hundreds of hours with doctors at the Menard Correctional Center while psychiatrists conducted tests to determine whether Gacy was mentally fit to stand trial. Gacy, with all his wisdom, tried to convince the doctors that he suffered from multiple personality disorder, but the doctor’s decided otherwise. His lawyers opted to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and did manage to find experts who testified at the trial that they believed Gacy to be a paranoid schizophrenic who indeed suffered from multiple personality disorders. The prosecution’s experts, however, stated that Gacy was sane and in full control of his actions. They produced numerous witnesses to testify that his actions were premeditated. Employees testified about digging trenches for Gacy, which they were told was for some kind of drainage system.
The trial went into its fifth week with the prosecution bringing in dozens of people to testify. The defense only brought in a few people, which infuriated Gacy. On March 11, 1980, both sides began their final arguments. Terry Sullivan, the prosecutor, presented a summary of Gacy’s history of abuse on youths and recapped the testimony given by the surviving witnesses, Donnelly and Voorhees, who had been abused and tortured. After four hours of summation, Robert Motta, for the defense, rebutted the doctor’s testimony for the prosecution and tried to portray Gacy as a “man driven by compulsions he was unable to control.”
It took the jury less than two hours deliberation to find John Wayne Gacy guilty of all thirty three murders. The defense asked for life without parole, but the prosecution was adamant that he wanted a death sentence for Gacy, which had only came into effect in June of 1977 in the state of Illinois. The jury deliberated again on the fate of Gacy and in only two hours sentenced him to death.
Execution
On May 9, 1994, Gacy was transferred to the Stateville Correctional Center to be executed. That afternoon he was allowed a picnic on the prison grounds with his family. That evening, a priest prayed with him before going to the chamber.
Prior to beginning of the execution, the chemicals unexpectedly solidified, clogging the I.V. tubing so that the team had to replace the clogged tube and start over. The procedure took eighteen minutes to complete. Before the chemicals started to flow, Gacy was asked if he had any last words. His reply was, “Kiss my ass.” William Kunkle was one of the prosecutors. He summed up the execution pretty good by saying, “He still got a much easier death than any of his victims. In my opinion he got an easier death than he deserved, but the important thing is that he paid for his crimes with his life.'
Ted Bundy
Victims (30+)
Background
Theodore “Ted” Bundy was born on November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont, to Eleanor Cowell. The identity of his father was never determined. It is suspected that Bundy’s father was Eleanor’s abusive and violent father, Sam Cowell. Bundy was raised by his grandparents in Philadelphia, told that they were his parents and Eleanor was his big sister. Bundy didn’t find out the truth about his birth records until 1969 and then resented his mother for lying about his identity.
At nineteen years old, Bundy spent one year at the (UPS) University of Puget Sound. In 1965, he dropped out, and the next year enrolled in Chinese studies at the University of Washington, from which he graduated in 1972. After graduating, Bundy joined Governor Daniel Evan’s reelection campaign. Evan’s was reelected, and subsequently Bundy was hired as an assistant to the Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, who described Bundy as aggressive and smart. In 1973, Bundy was accepted into the law school at UPS to become a lawyer.
Assault, and Murders in Seattle, Washington
On January 4, 1974, Joni Lenz, eighteen years old, a student at the University of Washington, was alone in her basement apartment when Bundy entered, battered her with a metal rod, and raped her with it, causing her massive internal injuries. Lenz remained unconscious for ten days, and lived through the attack, albeit with permanent brain damage. In February, Bundy struck again, late at night. Lynda Ann Healy, twenty-one, was a student at the University of Washington and a radio weather broadcaster for a Seattle radio station. Bundy broke into her room, beat her unconscious, dressed her, and then carried her away. Her skull was later found on Taylor Mountain. In March, Donna Gail Manson, nineteen, a student at The Evergreen State College, left her dorm on her way to a concert but never made it. To this day, her body had never been found.
Susan Elaine Rancourt, nineteen, disappeared on April 17, 1974. Susan was abducted from the campus of Central Washington State University in Ellensburg while on her way to meet a friend to see a movie. Her skull too was later found on Taylor Mountain. That night, two other female students suffered attempted abductions, and reported that the man had been wearing his an arm in a sling, and had asked for help to carry books to his Volkswagen Beetle. It seemed that Bundy was taking one female student per month, which indicated a “cooling off” period according to FBI profilers.
Roberta Kathleen Parks, twenty-three, left her dorm at Oregon State University to have coffee with her friends on May 6, 1974, and never arrived. Her skull was later found on Taylor Mountain, but not her body. It is interesting to note that, in 1974, Bundy worked at the Washington State Department of Emergency Services, the government agency involved in the search for these missing women.
In the meantime, citizens, students, and parents alike, were concerned about the missing young females, as was the Seattle Police Department, and in particular the Crimes Against Persons Unit. Unfortunately, the police did not have much to go on; there was little to no physical evidence found, and the only common factor between the attacks was that the girls were all white college students, attractive, and wore their hair long and parted in the middle.
On June 1 , 1974, another young girl went missing. Brenda Carol Ball, twenty-two, was last seen leaving the Flame Tavern in Burien talking with a man who had his arm in a sling. Brenda’s body was never found, but her skull was found on Taylor Mountain. Just ten days later, on June 11, another University of Washington student, Georgeann Hawkins, twenty-two, disappeared while walking between her sorority house and her boyfriend’s dorm residence. The CSI searched the area with a fine toothed comb and came up with nothing. Once the disappearance of Georgeann was made public, witnesses came forward and reported seeing a man that night on crutches with his leg in a cast. One young woman said that the man asked her to help him carry his briefcase to his brown Volkswagen Beetle. Georgeann’s bones were later found with two other bodies near Lake Sammamish Park. Her remains were cremated accidentally by the coroner's office along with those of unidentified persons.
The missing young women and the brutal attack on Joni Lenz attracted significant exposure from television and newspapers throughout the states of Oregon and Washington. Hitchhiking by women dropped off and the
