Buried Dreams (11 page)

It was a very tense gathering, and John could see the continuing controversy was harming the image of the Jaycees and of Waterloo, Iowa. There was no point in running if his candidacy would just rip apart everything he was trying to build. He made up his mind to do the Right Thing. He waited until he was nominated—no use not to accept that honor at the very least—and then, with all the considerable courage at his disposal, he stood and declared that he was withdrawing from the race for the good of “the organization and my family.” It was a very emotional speech, a speech tinged with a certain sad nobility.

Thinking about it later, John remembered that he had never been very worried about what the Lynch kid had to say. The story sounded idiotic, and even if it was true—which, of course, it wasn’t—anyone could see how it could have been a kind of practical joke that got out of hand. Edward Lynch never said he was raped. He was just a kid who got fired for sloppy work and had a gripe.

No, it was the lying little fuck Voorhees who landed John in the shit. It was Voorhees whose testimony led to the one charge he could never ride out. It was Voorhees who accused him of sodomy; it was Voorhees the blackmailer who cost him what would have been his highest honor, the presidency of the Waterloo, Iowa, Jaycees; it was Voorhees whose testimony before the grand jury generated all those reputation-shattering headlines in the
Waterloo Courier.
Because of Voorhees, half the people in town thought he was some kind of goddamn fruit picker.

Because of Voorhees, he lost everything he had ever worked for: his reputation, his standing in the community, everything. Because of Voorhees, he would never be president of the Jaycees. Refusing the nomination had been a sacrifice John Gacy felt honorbound to make. Because of Voorhees.

Voorhees!

*
*
*

Despite the indictment and the results of the polygraph test, Gacy continued to proclaim his complete innocence. In July, a month after the total collapse of his presidential campaign, he was one of four Waterloo Jaycees to receive Key Man awards. When you are facing a trial where it’s going to be your word against someone else’s, the heft of an award like that adds weight to your testimony.

Apparently encouraged by this evidence of acceptance, Gacy agreed to take a second polygraph test. The lines on the graph showed Gacy’s responses rising from the flat land of neutral questions to a mountain range of “emotional disturbances indicative of deception” each time he answered “no” to questions about having either oral or anal sex with Donald Voorhees.

At the county attorney’s office, investigators were astounded by the results of the two tests. The man had insisted that the first be administered, had readily agreed to the second, and he had failed more miserably than anyone in recent memory. “The only thing Gacy got right,” the joke in the county attorney’s office went, “was his name.”

At this point, the colonel began to change his story. First of all, he wanted investigators to know that what had happened was really just a matter of curiosity on his part. It wasn’t as if he was “queer,” but, yes, he said, he had picked up the Voorhees boy that summer night in 1967. Gacy had heard that the boy hustled blow jobs for cash and had simply asked the kid if this was true. Voorhees, in this version of Gacy’s story, not only admitted that he engaged in acts of prostitution for money, he also made a proposition. The price for oral sex was forty dollars.

There were some negotiations then, and the price dropped to five dollars. Voorhees, according to Gacy’s postpolygraph story, attempted to consummate the act right there in the car. Gacy said that he couldn’t even maintain an erection. It was all just curiosity on his part, and he didn’t find the act all that exciting. He said the Voorhees boy offered to try again, some other time, but he wanted to be paid another five dollars. It was Voorhees who kept coming on to him.

A few days later, Voorhees stopped by the Gacy house. It was a Saturday morning and, in his own house, for some reason, Gacy was more successful. A month or so later, in this version of the story, Voorhees dropped by to ask for a loan. Gacy worked for his money, and he expected others to
do the same. He told the boy that he already knew how to earn five dollars. It was more a fatherly gesture, a lesson in economics, than a desire for sex on his part.

That was it, according to Gacy: three acts spread out over a month-long period, all of them initiated by Voorhees for financial gain, and committed, on John’s part, entirely out of curiosity about homosexual relations, a type of sex he had never indulged in before. He didn’t like homosexuals, but he was liberal-minded and didn’t condemn them. With that sort of attitude, was it any wonder that, when the opportunity presented itself, he would try a little experiment? A man should know what he’s talking about. Voorhees provided the opportunity. For a price.

Gacy’s second story still didn’t mesh with testimony the grand jury had heard. Donald Voorhees, testifying under oath, said that he had been working for Gacy, spreading gravel on the driveway, when the man invited him to take a break in the downstairs rec room. There the two of them engaged in oral sex, and Gacy had attempted and failed to perform anal sex. He said the acts had been forced upon him. He was then sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school, and he seemed very troubled.

It was still a question of the word of a man—a Key Man—against a boy’s, but the fact that Gacy had amended his statement to the police and had made limited admissions did not look good. And the results of the two separate lie-detector tests were damning.

Gacy may have been working behind the scenes, applying leverage in the places where it would do the most good. There was a feeling in the county attorney’s office that there was a certain amount of foot-dragging involved in the case, that certain individuals who had pledged to uphold the law weren’t particularly interested in seeing John Wayne Gacy go to trial. Gacy, the prosecutors knew, had not only been involved in wife-swapping, he also was neck deep into the prostitution and gambling rackets at a local motel. What if he had a list of names, a nice little secret list showing who did what with whom? It would explain why the case was being allowed to drift into a land of limbo.

Gacy, however, didn’t know of the prosecutors’ frustration, and it is likely that he saw only one way out of his troubles. If Donald Voorhees were to recant his testimony, or
refuse to appear at the upcoming trial, Gacy was home free. There had to be a way to scare the kid away from court. On August 30, 1968, the colonel set his plan in motion.

Russell Schroeder, an eighteen-year-old West High School senior, had been employed for two years as a night cook at one of the restaurants Gacy managed. On the night of August 30, Gacy, after work, invited Schroeder to ride with him on the Merchant Patrol route. At each stop, Schroeder helped check doors to see if they were securely locked. Brown’s Lumber Company, for one, was locked up tighter than a drum, but it was there that Gacy took an iron bar from under the seat of his car.

“You can get into any place with one of these,” Gacy told the boy. He seemed very proud of the iron bar, and it took only seconds to break into Brown’s. Once inside, Gacy gave Schroeder the bar, then told him to open the Coke machine and take what money was there—three dollars. Gacy insisted the boy keep the money. Schroeder had never stolen anything in his life, but he did as his boss said, putting the coins in his pocket. The colonel stole an extension cord and a can of paint.

Gacy and the boy drove around for six hours, checking some businesses and burglarizing one other. At the Oldsmobile lot in downtown Waterloo, Gacy asked the boy to get out and pop the hubcaps off a few of the cars. The colonel would monitor his police radio, checking to see that there were no police patrols in the neighborhood. Once again, Schroeder did as he was told. It was the first time he had ever ridden with Gacy on the patrol route, and within about two hours, he had committed two crimes. It changed his relationship with the boss. Now there was a nice little secret just between the two of them.

The boy didn’t have any experience at theft, and he wasn’t particularly good at it. “Don’t make so much noise,” Gacy counseled. “Quiet, quiet.”

After stealing the hubcaps, Gacy and the boy drove around listening to the police radio and talking.

“You want to steal anything else?” Gacy asked, as he would to a confederate, a partner in crime.

“No,” Schroeder replied.

Gacy began to coax the boy. “It’s so easy with the police radio,” he said. “I know where they are at all times.”

“No,” Schroeder said. “I want to go home.”

Gacy shrugged, driving around some more, protecting the businesses of Waterloo from thieves. The colonel carried a gun and a badge. He was about as proud of his police gear as he was of his burglary tools.

Schroeder had read about the charges against Gacy in local papers, and sometime during their six hours of burglaries and police work, Gacy mentioned Donald Voorhees.

“I want him beaten up,” Gacy said. “So he won’t testify.”

Schroeder stood six feet tall and played football for the West High team. He had never met Voorhees, but Gacy described him as nearly half a foot shorter than Schroeder and a good deal lighter. The kid was a sophomore, almost three years younger than Schroeder. It would be easy.

Schroeder said he wasn’t interested. They were thieves together, buddies now, but Schroeder wasn’t mad at the Voorhees kid. He had never even met him. Gacy dropped Schroeder off at about six in the morning.

The next night, Gacy picked Schroeder up and drove him to a local quarry known as the Sand Pits. Sitting there in the darkness, Gacy once again brought up the subject of Voorhees and his testimony at the expected trial.

“I want him taken care of,” Gacy said. “I want him persuaded not to testify. I want him beaten.”

Once again Schroeder declined, but he was under a great deal of pressure. Not only was Gacy his boss, but now the colonel could also implicate the boy in two burglaries. If the matter of the burglaries were put before the police, it would be Schroeder’s word against the state’s outstanding Jaycee chaplain.

Five days later, on a Thursday afternoon, Gacy picked Schroeder up at work, and they went driving around. Gacy was rattling on about the conspiracy against him and about how the Voorhees kid had blackmailed him. At one point, they stopped at a car lot. Schroeder couldn’t afford a new car. He told Gacy he still had three hundred dollars to pay on his four-year-old Pontiac.

“Tell you what,” Gacy said. “I don’t want Voorhees to testify. You want to pay off your car. If you beat up Voorhees, tell him not to testify, I’ll pay off the loan on your car.”

This time Schroeder agreed to the plan. He had never seen Voorhees, so Gacy showed him a picture in the East High yearbook. The kid had recently transferred to West, Schroeder’s school, so it would be easy to nail him. Just to be
sure there were no problems, Gacy gave the husky football player a spray can of the tear gas Mace. A few squirts of Mace in the face will temporarily blind a man, Gacy explained. It hurts like hell. A faceful of Mace would scare the shit out of Voorhees.

“Look,” Gacy said, “the kid likes to drink. I know that. Just tell him you got some booze stashed somewhere. Take him there, then Mace him and beat the shit out of him. Tell him not to testify.”

Schroeder was on a school-work program, and he was scheduled to attend school in the mornings and work in the afternoons, but that Thursday afternoon he returned to West High, went to the attendance office, and asked where Voorhees would be at the end of the day. When school let out, Schroeder met Voorhees, introduced himself, and said that he had recently stolen twenty cases of liquor. The stuff was stashed at Access Acre, a lonely wooded county park about five miles out of town.

The two students drove out to the park in the Pontiac Schroeder believed he would soon own free and clear. They parked in an isolated spot, and Schroeder led Voorhees deep into the woods, secretly pulling Gacy’s can of Mace out of his clothes and positioning his fingers on the spray device. Suddenly he spun around and sprayed the younger boy full in the face. Voorhees thrashed around, suddenly blind, his face streaming with tears and his eyes burning like fire and sudden death.

Voorhees lurched like a man aflame, then fell, more than jumped, into a nearby creek. Schroeder watched him as he splashed water into his face, trying to cool the burning in his eyes. And when Voorhees finally managed to crawl, weakly, out of the water, Schroeder sprayed him again. Then he began to beat the boy.

“Don’t testify against John Gacy!” Schroeder shouted, hammering away at Voorhees, telling him all the time exactly why he was doing it. Eventually the younger boy, battered and in tears, escaped through the woods and hid in a cornfield.

Schroeder drove home thinking he had just made the final payment on his car. That night, Schroeder returned the Mace to Gacy, saying he’d done the little job they had talked about. “Don’t tell me about it,” his boss said, “I don’t want to know anything about it. I don’t want to be involved.” Somehow,
Schroeder didn’t get his three hundred dollars from Gacy that night.

The next day, Friday, September 6, county sheriff's deputies picked Schroeder up at his parents’ house. Voorhees had been able to identify him. The kid had come into the police department, covered with angry bruises, and put the finger on Schroeder. The deputies dragged Schroeder to the station and grilled him. They said they knew the whole story; they knew that he had beaten the kid to prevent him from testifying.

“Gacy put you up to it, didn’t he?” the cops said.

Schroeder tried his best to stand up against the curses, the shouted accusations. He said that he had never talked to Gacy about Voorhees. Someone else had put him up to it.

“Who?”

A guy named Jim. Schroeder couldn’t remember his last name, but it was an older guy named Jim, who thought Voorhees had stolen his tires. Jim had given Schroeder ten dollars to teach Voorhees a lesson. Jim was behind the whole thing, an older guy who had no last name.