but she can survive if she cooperates. she actually helps him shepherd the children into the bathroom and lock the door. thinking, of course, that the children will be protected if they can t see or experience what s about to happen to her. morton: he then takes shirley vian into the bedroom to assault her. in the meantime, the kids are yelling, and the phone rings. [ telephone rings ] jordan: it interrupts the fantasy of btk the children screaming and crying, the phone ringing. the fantasy is not there. btk: the kids were really banging on the door, hollering and screaming, and then the telephone rang. so i cleaned everything up real quick-like and got out of there, left and went back into my car. jordan: the children actually manage to break the bathroom window
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 gonna follow me, why don t you just join me? so mike and i joined him. and we developed a bit of a relationship. amirante: but life is a series of curve balls, 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 gonna put on my wall. and the phone rings. [ telephone rings ] hey, sam, how you doing? i said, how you doing, john? he was the kind of guy oh, yeah, john gacy? i know john gacy. so it was like that. a neighbor, a good brother, a good cousin,
in chicago, thousands upon thousands of young men and women go missing. woman: james byron haakenson disappeared shortly after moving to chicago. man: john butkovich, an 18-year-old north side youth, who disappeared on july 31st, 1975. [ telephone rings ] missing persons. polito. can i help you? sullivan: the police departments were understaffed when it came to the juvenile divisions. and it was very difficult to try to track runaways. sneed: 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
he was the guy that would be out there when it snowed, plowing their sidewalks. this guy was so nice. and he was trusted. he wanted to make people laugh, and he particularly wanted to help kids. sneed: and he became a clown. and he did a lot of functions for charity that involved him dressing up as the clown. that was the good side of him. sullivan: then, the other side of the coin was, my god, how many disappearances was he involved in? [ telephone rings ] then one day, they got their answer. after cops searched gacy s house, he calls his lawyer and says he wanted to talk about rob piest.