Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 9, 1994 TAG: 9405090080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LINDSEY TANNER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
Daniel Genty stepped down into the dark and crouched low. On his knees, the police evidence expert played a flashlight beam across the muddy floor, and saw something move.
A small puddle was alive with tiny, squirming red worms. They're feeding on something, Genty thought. He stuck a small shovel several inches into the muck and struck something solid.
"I pulled it up and it's a bone, an arm bone," Genty recalled.
Then, to co-workers, he yelled, "Charge him, I've got one!"
The date was Dec. 21, 1978. The crawl space where Genty probed was under the modest yellow brick ranch of building contractor John Wayne Gacy, suspected in the disappearance of a 15-year-old boy 10 days earlier.
Genty had entered the crawl space looking for a single body; police thought the dimensions of trenches dug earlier under the house seemed more apt for a grave than for the pipes Gacy's workmen were told would be installed to get rid of the damp.
But in the next days, 27 bodies were found under Gacy's house. Two more were unearthed elsewhere on his 60-by-144-foot lot on Chicago's northwest edge. Four others had been dumped in nearby rivers. All had been killed from 1972 through 1978.
The search was revolting beyond comprehension. Kneeling in muck, reeling from the stench, Genty endured a week of 10-hour days digging his gloved hand through decomposing flesh into rib cages or finding his fingers stuck in eye sockets.
Genty, now a patrol sergeant with the Cook County sheriff's police, recalls "kneeling there and going, `Oh, my God, this basement is full of kids.' "
Among those kids was 19-year-old John Szyc, who had disappeared almost two years before. His parents last saw him in January 1977, on one of his weekly visits from his new apartment in Chicago to their home in suburban Des Plaines.
When Gacy stood trial in February 1980, Szyc's parents were in the courtroom "to show there was somebody who cared about those boys," said his mother, Rosemarie.
They heard testimony about sodomy, sadism and torture, the most chilling from victims who'd managed to escape. Gacy lured high school kids with promises of high-paying jobs; he picked up gay men and male prostitutes with the promise of sex.
Prosecutors maintain Gacy confessed to the slayings and drew a detailed diagram of his crawl space graveyard. Gacy's trial lawyers contended he was insane when he killed, but Gacy later rejected that defense. He also denied ever confessing or drawing a map.
Testimony showed that victims were frequently 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.
In court, and in the years since, Szyc's father has felt he himself was choking.
"I didn't believe what I was hearing. I couldn't believe that this was going on," Richard Szyc, 58, said in an interview at a lakeside park near the couple's home.
"I have nightmares. I go crazy. Sometimes I think about walking into this lake - about suicide. I dream as if I'm next - the man is strangling me."
Rosemarie Szyc, also 58, speaks in a monotone and seems emotionless until she recalls the good times with "Johnny," the third of five children, a boy who made funny home movies and Gacy was first scheduled for execution June 2, 1980, but repeated appeals kept him alive. dreamed of being a television cameraman.
It is the only time she smiles.
David Keefe, the lawyer who's handled many of Gacy's appeals, said his client spent much of his time in recent weeks on what he called "trivial" matters, examining old business records and talking to reporters.
"You or I would be sitting there frantic . . . trying to marshal every possible resource aimed at the May 10 date," Keefe said. "I think he denies the reality."
Gacy was first scheduled for execution June 2, 1980, but repeated appeals - including three to the U.S. Supreme Court - kept him alive.
Just Friday, Gacy's legal team lost bids in federal court, Cook County Circuit Court and the Illinois Supreme Court to delay or stop the execution. Lawyers said more action was planned before Tuesday.
by CNB