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,
amirante: 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-change-o. 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 out. so, in other words, his victims allowed him to put handcuffs on. and once you re in handcuffs, you can t fight back. hachmeister: 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.
amirante: one day he called me. he said, it s very, very important i talk to you. i have to tell you something. gacy sits down, and he tells me the same old. about robbie piest, vehemently, unequivocally denied. i took the newspaper with robbie piest s picture. i threw it in front of him, and i said, look at this kid. john, look at him. he s a good kid. he s missing. he looked at the picture. he said, you know what? this boy this boy s dead. i said, what do you mean? he goes, i ve been a judge, jury, and executioner of many, many people. even now my hair stands up on end thinking of hearing those words. he said, i m gonna tell you the whole story from the beginning. it started in 1972. i was cruising around . broderick: he s cruising the greyhound bus station, and he sees a kid that looks kind of on his own.
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. amirante: 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 kidnapped robbie piest. and i 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. amirante: john and i continued to meet, and i would ask him over and over again what happened.
and pull him out of the car and shake him around a little bit and say, gacy, you know, you re gonna hurt somebody. you re driving like a mad man. you got to slow it down. you know, we don t want to arrest you on this. amirante: gacy called me and said, it s very, very important i talk 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 i m getting pissed 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 hand on the table, pounding it really hard. i said, john, tell me the truth. it s bull [bleep]. i don t want to hear it anymore. he goes, okay, do you have anything to drink around here? one of my investigators in the public defender s office happened to give me a bottle of v.o