Gacy Executed for Killings
Last words: His death can’t compensate for victims’ lives
The Associated Press
Serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed early Tuesday, more than a decade after police dug up the makeshift graveyard under his house that shocked the nation and led to 33 murder convictions. Gacy was executed by injection at the maximum -security Stateville Correctional Center at 12:58 a.m., said corrections department official Howard A. Peters. The execution was delayed nearly an hour because of difficulty with the injected chemicals flowing into Gacy’s body, Peters said.
“There was : a jelling or a clogging in the line,” he said. “We didn’t have to reinsert the needle but we had to rerun another tubing.” Gacy’s last words were to the effect that taking his life wouldn’t compensate for the lives of his victims, Peters said. His execution ended more than 14 years of legal wrangling, including a flurry of 11th-hour appeals filed by his lawyers in the last few days. One was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court Monday evening, hours before the execution.
As the hours ticked away, Gacy remained in a “very chatty” mood, according to prison spokesman Nic Howell. “He’s reflective,” said Howell, who strolled through a prison yard with Gacy hours before the execution. The two smoked cigars and Howell said he listened as Gacy reflected on his life and his years in prison. “He’s talking about the past,” Howell told reporters before the execution. “I guess you don’t do that if you think you’re going to have a chance to do it again.” Relatives of Gacy’s victims, barred from the execution chamber by state prison officials, maintained a tense vigil waiting for word of his death.
In Chicago, members of the Guardian Angels demonstrated in a downtown plaza in support of the execution. They laid out 33 body bags to symbolize Gacy’s victims and carried signs with slogans such as “Say Goodbye, It’s Time for You to Fry.” “We’ve been waiting for this for 14 years and when it’s over with it will be a relief,” said Harold Piest, father of Gacy’s last victim, Robert Piest, whose disappearance led to Gacy’s arrest. “In the back of our minds, this guy is slippery as an eel, liable to sneak out of the prison under some technicality, so it’s scared our family no end,” Piest: said. Gacy, 52, was convicted in March 1980 of the killings of 33 young men and boys, most found buried in the crawl space beneath his ranch-style home on the northwest edge of Chicago. Gacy, who sometimes entertained neighborhood children as “Pogo the Clown,” had lured some of the victims with offers of construction jobs, others with offers of sex.
The victims were killed between 1972 and 1978. Many were handcuffed and repeatedly raped. Most were strangled after Gacy tricked them into allowing him to slip a rope around their necks, then slowly twisted it tighter and tighter with a stick. With his final appeals still pending, Gacy was flown to Stateville by helicopter early Monday from the Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, where he spent 14 years and two months in a windowless cell on death row. He took with him only a couple of boxes of legal papers, Howell said.
Gacy had asked to meet with relatives and a priest, and requested a last meal of fried chicken, fried shrimp, french fries and fresh strawberries. He said the shrimp was very good, Howell said. Six law-enforcement officials and a dozen reporters were invited to witness the execution. Prison officials barred both Gacy’s relatives and the families of his victims from the execution chamber, citing security reasons. Gacy’s plea to the federal appeals court contended, among other things, that he was mentally incompetent, that the state’s execution method was unconstitutional and that he was out of town when 16 of the murders were committed.
Serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection early today for the murders of 33 men and boys. AP Final victim in murder put police on trail.
