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The bogyman in all our nightmares

By John Whiteside

Behind the high gray walls of Stateville Correctional Center, a man died this morning. Men die every day, unnoticed except by loved ones and friends.

But John Wayne Gacy's death was noticed. His death was chronicled in every little detail. It's all being shouted out today in front page headlines. His words, his life story, even his last meal have been preserved in millions of printed words and volumes of television videotape. This man's death, timed to the exact minute, was shared completely with the public.

Why?

Because Gacy was the bogyman of our nightmares. He was an evil symbol of the worst that can happen. Gacy was the nearest thing to a human monster that our minds can conceive. He was the mysterious molester who hid behind a clown's face. He was a madman with a deadly desire for young victims.

We live in a violent society. Murder, pillage and tragic crimes are all around us. We have little control over when or where they will happen. That frightens us. But we're seldom shocked by it all. Gacy did shock us -- 33 victims, 33 young lives ended. We can't forget watching those bodies pulled one by one from the earth of Gacy's private cemetery: the crawl space under his brick home.

Still we gave this brutal killer every legal benefit of the doubt through nearly a decade and a half of court appeals and thousands of documents. Eventually, the monster grew tame. He painted pretty pictures in his cell. He wrote letters to pen pals, who hung his clown paintings on their walls. Gacy became so well-known that he was able to establish a 900-number telephone line with his voice on recorded messages. People, sick as it seems, paid money to hear his messages.

That's the real shame about the execution this morning: not that we finally executed Gacy, but that we waited so darn long to do the deed. Just as shameful is that we let Gacy die while taking all of his secrets with him. Those secrets included the only possible clues to the identities of those young men pulled from the crawl space who are yet unidentified. Somewhere out there are mothers still waiting for those young men to come home. They'll never know how their sons' lives ended at Gacy's hand. Shameful, too, is the way Gacy died in the midst of a full media blitz. He couldn't have received more attention if he had been president of the United States.

But, at last, the monster has been destroyed.

Gacy is gone.

His legacy to criminal history remains. Richard Speck. Jack the Ripper. John Wayne Gacy.

We can't explain why they did what they did.

Now John Wayne Gacy has to explain it all to someone who already knows the truth.

John Whiteside is the Herald-News city editor.