The Fuzzy Mic
After retiring from a 30-year, major market morning radio career, I'm often asked what I miss the most about the job. I miss 3 C's...camaraderie, creativity but most of all, conversation.
The Fuzzy Mic is built around creativity and conversation to develop camaraderie. The 4 focus areas are: Mental Health, True Crime, Music and Sports.
So, while The Fuzzy Mic allows me to fill some professional voids, it's my sincere hope that maybe you'll find something personally fulfilling in it too.
The Fuzzy Mic
Attorney, Karen Conti on Defending Serial Killer, John Wayne Gacy
We welcome the formidable Karen Conti, attorney and author of "Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy," for a conversation that challenges the depths of our understanding of crime, punishment, and human nature. With the chilling dichotomy of Gacy's life as both a community figure and a predator, Karen opens up about the rollercoaster of emotions and dangers she faced while representing one of the most vilified individuals in America's criminal history.
In a startling revelation of Gacy's possible accomplices, Karen shakes the foundations of our assumptions, and expertly navigates us through her findings that may rewrite the narrative of the serial killer's gruesome legacy.
The tug-of-war between societal norms and the legal system's integrity takes center stage as we scrutinize the death penalty's role in our society. Karen's insights dissect how her gender shaped interactions with Gacy, and the overarching impact of high-profile criminal defense on her personal life. As we reflect on the repercussions of capital punishment on victims' families and its questionable efficacy as a crime deterrent, this discussion brings to light alternatives that could reshape our approach to justice and healing.
Finally, the episode probes the unsettling fascination with figures like Gacy, delving into the human psyche's dark curiosities and the ethics intertwined with the insanity plea. Sharing her own poignant journey with a man deemed monstrous by the public, Karen's personal sacrifices and professional milestones emerge through a narrative that urges us to consider the complexities of empathy, justice, and the human capacity for love in the face of evil. Tune in for an episode that goes beyond mere facts, inviting a deeper contemplation of life's most profound questions.
Hey F-U, excuse me, Z-Z-Y, it's the Fuzzy Mike with Kevin Kline the Fuzzy Mike podcast.
Speaker 1:Hello and thank you for joining me. I'm Kevin Kline. My guest this week is famed attorney Karen Conte. Karen has written a book called Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy. What is this all about? It's about Karen's time representing John Wayne Gacy during his final death row appeal. Karen spent a lot of time with John Wayne Gacy, america's most prolific serial killer at the time, convicted of murdering 33 boys and men, and many of them were buried in the crawlspace underneath his house. Karen had an interesting relationship with the convicted serial killer. She knew a John Wayne Gacy that the public didn't know, the one that we only learned about after his arrest and finding out that he had murdered 33 people. Karen breaks this down for us in the book Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy Defending America's Most Evil Serial Killer on Death Row.
Speaker 2:You have a fuzzy microphone.
Speaker 1:I certainly do.
Speaker 2:I thought that was all just hype.
Speaker 1:No, it's kind of twofold. Yeah, I have a fuzzy microphone screen, but also I like to get into the fuzziness of our minds and talk about mental health, and with serial killers and true crime, there's quite a lot to unravel.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Congratulations on the release of the book.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Kevin.
Speaker 1:Why did it take 30 years for the book to come out, though, Karen?
Speaker 2:Well, I think when I was done with representing Gacy and he was executed, I wanted to just get away from that whole thing. It was very intense, it was very negative for my career at that time and I wanted to give everyone a rest on it the victims, families and it just it was too much. I always knew I had a book in me because everywhere I went, everywhere I've gone for 30 years people ask me you know, how did you do that? Why did you do it? But they also ask what was it like? And so I knew I had a story in me and I think during COVID I just sat down and I started writing and I really enjoyed the process of writing and I finished it up and here I am.
Speaker 1:Well, the book is amazing in the respect that it's very informative, it's very candid, but there's also some humorous aspects to it. Your writing style is very, very reader friendly.
Speaker 2:Thanks, and you know it's hard to be humorous when, to it, your writing style is very, very reader-friendly, thanks. And you know it's hard to be humorous when you're talking about somebody who's done such horrible things, and so I don't like to wave that flag. But you know what I do for a living and what many people do for a living. You know you have gallows humor and you make light of what's going on because it's very difficult and hard to handle the stress and the gravity of what you're doing. And so you know Gacy and I had a banter back and forth. He was very humorous and I talk about that in my book, that I think that was one of the ways he sort of deflected that darkness that he had and also it made him attractive to people, to people. And you know he was all about getting people into his charmed you know charm and manipulating them and doing to them what he wanted. So as a sociopath, his sense of humor really served him well.
Speaker 1:We're talking about serial killer John Wayne Gacy. We're talking with author and attorney Karen Conte. Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy, defending America's most evil serial killer on death row, convicted of 33 murders. You say that even on the day of his execution he was cracking jokes with the guards.
Speaker 2:He was. I mean he, you know, he, he, he didn't stop that. You know he was very funny. At one point he said something like I wish they had the electric chair because, and the guards were like why? And he said because then I'd ask you to hold my hand. So you know he had them all and you know, having an execution imminent in his life was did not stop him from cracking those jokes.
Speaker 1:You use the word sociopath in describing him earlier. Is that why he was able to joke before getting executed on the very same day, but his last words were not joking at all. His last words were kiss my ass.
Speaker 2:He didn't say that that is an urban legend, yeah.
Speaker 2:He did not say that and I have spoken to at least seven people who were present at the execution and he did not say that it's a good story. I think that sociopaths you know I mean there's a lot to unpack when you're talking about a sociopath. But I think one of the elements of Gacy's personality was that he was very compartmentalized. He had this life where he was moral, he acted in a moral fashion, he went to church, he worked really hard at his business, he volunteered, he was a politician, in a way a minor politician. He shoveled the walks for his elderly neighbors. He did all of these good things and then at night he would go out and he'd get these boys and men and torture them and kill them.
Speaker 2:So he was able to be in denial about that bad side of him. So I think that served him well. When the execution was coming, because he just didn't deal with it, I would talk to him about it. I would say are you okay? Do you need to get your affairs in order? Is there something I can do? Because that's what I do as a lawyer I'm supposed to help that person legally. And he did not want to talk about it and I think that probably saved him from a lot of mental agony.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would imagine. So you said that you talked to people who were at the execution. You were not as one of his attorneys, you weren't.
Speaker 2:No, I was not allowed to be there. I didn't like that because I wanted to be there. You know, we are, as lawyers, entitled to be with our clients at any step in the process during an interview, during arrest, after appeals, whatever. So but in Illinois that wasn't the case and in fact, the victim's families didn't get to go. It was a lottery that was drawn and a lot of the media ended up being the witnesses there.
Speaker 1:Wow, a lottery to watch somebody get killed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I wanted to be there because I felt that was my job as Stacy's lawyer. I thought that he deserved to have somebody there. But I also wanted to experience that because if we're going to be in the process, if our government is going to be in the process of executing people, I want to see what that's like. I do, even if it's gory, even if it's hard to watch. I think it's important that I you know that I did that, but I, you know, I guess, looking back, it probably saved me a little bit of bad memories. I guess watching someone be executed probably wouldn't have been the most pleasant thing in the world, no matter who it is I don't care if it's Gacy or Mother Teresa it would have been awful to watch.
Speaker 1:You actually say Gacy was the poster child for the death penalty, but since the age of seven you have been anti-death penalty. Tell me about that conversation you had with your dad at such a young age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had to remind me of that. We were listening to something on the radio about executions and I don't know exactly what it was, and my dad said yeah, you know, if someone kills, they should just kill the. You know? And he uses swear word. And I said no, why? I said why? So if you kill somebody, you're supposed to be killed. That doesn't make sense. It's sort of like saying I have a messy room and my punishment is going to be you're going to mess up my room. So a lawyer was born at that moment, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Gacy had 20 appeals in over 14 years. Why?
Speaker 2:This is just the system. It's. He didn't get any more than anyone else and the system really. There are a lot of appeals and liberal lawyers did not create this appellate process. Conservative judges and politicians and legislators do, because we make mistakes all the time. In fact, one of the things I talk about in my book was that in about a 15-year period after Gacy was executed, we had 12 men walk off a death row not on technical arguments, on actual innocence, because someone confessed, because DNA proved them not guilty, and 12 were executed. So we had this 12 and 12. That's a bad batting average when you're executing people, and our Republican conservative governor took one look at that and said I can't do this on my watch, and he commuted all of the sentences for all the people on death row, which led to a moratorium, which led to the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois.
Speaker 1:In the book you actually, along with your partner at the time, said Gacy wouldn't be executed because Illinois didn't do that. It was like 1962 was the previous time that they had put somebody to death. So how shocking was it to you that Gacy actually got a date.
Speaker 2:That was shocking to me, because there was a moratorium on the death penalty in the 70s due to the fact that the US Supreme Court said that the death penalty is cruel and unusual unless the government would retool its jury instructions to make it less cruel and unusual. So there was a period of time where all the death sentences were commuted and then they started using it again because they retooled the jury instructions. So there was this time when I was growing up and when I was a lawyer. For the first few years we didn't have executions, not because people weren't being sentenced to death, it was just that there was a lull in the execution machinery.
Speaker 1:So you're 29 years old, pretty much been an attorney for six years. At this time you get the phone call to represent Gacy. How did this come about?
Speaker 2:Well, my partner and I had argued before the US Supreme Court a couple of years back on a First Amendment case, and so I guess our names were up on the list of First Amendment lawyers. In Illinois. Gacy had been sued by the prison. There's a statute in Illinois that says that if you can afford your incarceration then you have to pay it. So the prison had brought a lawsuit against Gacy because they thought he was making a lot of money on his horrible paintings that he was doing in his prison cell, and Gacy wanted to defend it. Well, I was like you have seven months left to live. Why would you defend a civil lawsuit First of all? Why would the prison bring it? But you know? But I wanted to meet him. So I agreed, along with my partner, to go down the six and a half hours south on the Mississippi River and visit the most prolific serial killer in the history of the country. At that time I did it. I wanted to do it just to have the experience. I had no intention of representing him in anything.
Speaker 1:So then, how did you get on the death row? Appeal team.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't. It just hit me that when I met him and I saw what was going to happen to him and I saw the other people on death row who were walking around milling about freely, I thought to myself they're going to really execute these people and I'm really against the death penalty. And you know what? Gacy's civil case you know I'll handle that and get rid of it. But what I really want to do is do something important. I want to stand up against the death penalty, even for someone who's as evil as Gacy, and I thought to myself that Gacy will probably be executed.
Speaker 2:If there's anybody in this country who deserves a death penalty, it's him. He's as guilty as can be. He had good lawyers, he's white, he didn't have any racist issues, he was unrepentant. He was not sympathetic. You know issues. He was unrepentant. He was not sympathetic. But I also thought that by advocating for him, I was also advocating for all the other people on death row, not only in Illinois but all over the country, who might have some of these good arguments for exoneration or just at least stopping the death penalty. So I kind of thought it was a cause rather than just one client.
Speaker 1:I can get that. I understand that. But Gacy, when he was arrested, became the most reviled human in America, maybe even the world, other than Hitler. How did you representing him affect your reputation?
Speaker 2:Well, during the time I represented him, I think it took a plummet. I mean, I naively believed that everyone would understand that I'm doing my job. That's what you do as a criminal defense lawyer. You represent people who are guilty. You represent people who are nice, who are mean, who embezzle, who beat their wives, who, you know, manufacture asbestos. You know I've done all of those things. This is what we do.
Speaker 2:But we all all the lawyers on the team, including myself and especially myself we got a lot of public backlash and we had death threats, most of them directed to me. We had a bomb threat that emptied part of our building. I got kicked out of a restaurant because someone complained that Gacy's lawyer is over there eating. I had neighbors come up to me and say things. So even judges took me aside and said you know, you're embarrassing the profession, just let the guy die. I mean a judge, what you would think would understand why I was doing what I was doing. So it was really terrible for that seven months, but after Gacy was executed, things changed completely. I think there was a societal relief that he was dead and that now, oh, you represented Gacy. Well, that's an interesting experience. And so then it became a novelty to this day that when I get introduced it's Karen Conti. She represented Gacy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I did not introduce you as that, because I knew that that is a stigma that has stayed with you throughout the entire process from 1994 until now. I introduced you as the author of Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy. Karen Conte, would you say that over the time that you represented Gacy you became friends?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say we became friends. I would say that we had an amiable relationship. I have to connect with my clients to do a good job. I do this with all of my clients, even the ones I really don't like, and actually Gacy was not the most unlikable client I've ever had. I've had very difficult clients who are really horrible to me and horrible to everybody.
Speaker 2:But Gacy was a sociopath, so they're a shell of a person, so you don't really get a full person. He doesn't have real feelings for anyone or anything. So even if he says the right thing, it's because he knows he should say it. So I didn't feel like I was dealing with somebody whole. But there was a sense of humanity in him and he and I exchanged pleasantries. He and I talked about family. He and I talked about family, he and I talked about different experiences we had and I bonded with him to do my job. And it turns out that of the lawyers on the team I was the only female I was able to get work done with him because he was very difficult to deal with, confrontational, he was oppositional, especially with men, but with me he was softer and I was able to kind of get him to calm down and then we do our work and we'd get it done. So I think being a woman was actually very helpful in representing him.
Speaker 1:A couple of things I want to touch on, but you brought up being a woman. Tell me about being a woman and walking on death row the first time.
Speaker 2:Well, whenever you go to a prison and you're a woman, you are a target and you know catcalling and all that stuff. But you know you expect that and that's just the way, that's the way of the world there. But when we walked into death row, I knew that Gacy wasn't going to hurt me. First of all, I wasn't his type.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Second of all, he was a compartmentalized killer. He would he, he had he wanted to manipulate me. That's, I mean, that's his job, is manipulation. So I had a purpose for him, so there was no way he was going to harm me. In fact, in some of the passages that you may have read, he actually protected me when one prisoner lunged into the area where we were sitting, who was really psychotic and maybe was having a psychotic break. So the other. But the other prisoners were not as controlled as Gacy and those people were, I would say, a little more frightening because they didn't. I didn't sense that they had control over their, their conduct, right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's got to be scary because there's really no other penalty that you can get outside of being on death row. So what's preventing them from attacking you? They can't face anything more harsh, you know.
Speaker 2:The nothing left to lose argument. Yeah, exactly, I did feel that. But I also felt, kevin, that they, even in their psychotic states or their mentally ill states, they understood we were there to save Gacy, and if Gacy went then the rest of them are going to go. So they were, I think, like at least trying to control themselves. And you know, a couple of them came over, introduced themselves, asked if we could help their case or send them case law or help them. So you know they're desperate. So actually the scariest people there were the guards.
Speaker 1:Is that?
Speaker 2:right. They just they seemed I don't know like I don't think if something were to have happened. First of all, in death row in Illinois. Everyone thinks it's the plexiglass thing, but no, it's like this big bullpen where you're there with all the free range killers walking around and you're kind of like, oh, there's the I-57 kill and that guy poisoned his whole family. I mean it's just crazy and but the guards are locked in the other room and I doubt they would do anything to help us if something would happen. I just felt that that they were kind of enjoying watching us be squirm a little bit. I don't know, maybe that was just my, my take on it.
Speaker 1:And considering that Gacy killed boys, was death row the safest place for him in prison.
Speaker 2:I think it was. In fact, I asked Gacy about something about getting out of prison and and because of course we never, we never were trying to do that, just so your listeners are clear we just wanted the death penalty off the table. That's all we were doing. We were never going to have him out, no one was ever going to let him out. But he said he would rather stay in prison. And I said, john, why? Really, you know what hole. And he said you know what, I'm safer here. And I don't think he meant that, but he probably was safer.
Speaker 2:I think what he was saying to me through all the things he has told me, I think he at the very end, wanted to be caught because he was in a frenzy. A lot of serial killers they start out once a year, then it ramps up and then they need more violence, then they need more victims, and so Gacy, I think, at the end, was very, it was just wearing at him, and so it was a relief for him to be arrested and to confess to all of these crimes. And I think he knew that if he got out he would just start doing it again and he'd be back where he was before. I think he liked the regularity of prison and the idea that he couldn't do this anymore. Again, I'm not saying that Gacy was rehabilitated and, like now, didn't want to kill people. He did. I'm sure he did, but he knew he couldn't do it in the prison and that was better for him. So then that begs the question why was John Wayne Gacy's life?
Speaker 1:savable or worth saving.
Speaker 2:I look at it the other way. Why kill him? Okay, you know, I, I just I always just change that question because I don't. I just to say why should someone live is just. It goes against my grain and I I think that Gacy got a lot of attention because of the execution. I think the entire process probably cost Illinois over $5 million. We tried to calculate that If we had just put them in jail, thrown away the key, I just think it would have been less expensive and it just gave him so much attention. And you know what, no one can remember a single name of any of those 33 young men and boys who were buried under his house. But we all know John Gacy and I just think that some of these executions put the focus on the wrong person. There's a lot of people, too, who think that being in prison is a lot more punishment than a simple execution. I'm not sure I believe that one way or the other, but I just think there's a million reasons not to execute somebody, even someone evil like Gacy Karen Conte.
Speaker 1:I don't want to spend a second in prison. I really don't. I mean, you know, I, I, just I, I know I wouldn't survive. Number one and number two I, it's just it, it's hopeless and they don't have a fuzzy microphone. They do not. Yeah, you, you said earlier that you know explaining Gacy's psychopathic and sociopathic personality. Was he born that way or was that over time developed?
Speaker 2:That's such a great question and I do talk about that in my book and I would say I talk about it but I sort of muse about it because no one will ever know. We do know that his brain was examined after his execution and the psychiatrist could not find anything organically wrong with his brain. So you know, the experts will tell you that. You know, I don't believe that people are born evil, I just don't. And I believe that Gacy had a combination of things going on.
Speaker 2:I think his father was abusive, but he wasn't more abusive than a lot of fathers at that time. His father was abusive, but he wasn't more abusive than a lot of fathers at that time. He beat him, he belittled him. He was named after John Wayne, the macho actor, and he was never macho. He never wanted to hunt or fish or do any of the sports that his father wanted him. So his father used homophobic words with him, which wasn't kind.
Speaker 2:But you know that's not something that makes you into a serial killer necessarily. He was sexually abused twice when he was young, by all accounts, and he did sustain two very serious head injuries. His sister told me that and we all know from our research that if some people who have head injuries it can actually change their personality, change that impulse control part or the empathy part of their brain. And I think he was raised in a very Catholic setting, very strict, and I think he was a homosexual and he knew that and I think he didn't want to be and I think my guess from an armchair psychologist point of view is that he was killing himself over and over again when he was killing these boys.
Speaker 1:That is something that I read and, uh, and I also heard you say that in a previous interview and that makes complete sense. Uh, you know, there's a part of him in what I know about him and that's just based on books and movies that he did. He, he had a tough time reconciling parts of his life with himself the homosexuality and and the. Didn't he have a need for notoriety? Didn't he have a need to be somebody powerful?
Speaker 2:Yes, so he was, aside from being a sociopath, he was also diagnosed as a narcissistic personality. They have a low self-esteem because of what happened to them in their childhood, generally speaking, and so what they do is they seek out fame and they seek out money and status. That's why you see a lot of narcissists run for office or become lawyers, you know, because it's a status thing. And then narcissists are very obsessed with status, and so Gacy had all of that. I mean, he liked to run with the politicians, he he made good money, he liked to throw parties and he liked, he liked, to be in the fray with with all the big shots. Certainly he had those tendencies.
Speaker 1:Killing time with John Wayne Gacy, defending America's most evil serial killer on death row. Karen Conte, who was one of Gacy's death row appellate attorneys, is my guest today. The notoriety how well known was Gacy in prison.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he was a big man on campus there, for sure, and you know he was that way because he had money and he had money because he was, he was doing these horrible pains. He actually had a 900 number where you remember those 900 numbers where people could call and hear him talk about how he was the 34th victim, which was just really horrible. But he made money doing that. I'm not saying a lot of money, but enough to buy things in the commissary and at the time there were cigarettes available and those types of things. So if he wanted protection, he was able to do that by giving people canned food or whatever. There's a certain currency in the prison system and he certainly was able to do that. But despite the idea that he was big man on campus, he did get attacked by one of the unruly death row inmates. He was stabbed several times. So yeah, death row is certainly a very, very dangerous place, but Gacy could protect himself with the little money that he had.
Speaker 1:That is something about Gacy. I did not know. I didn't know he was attacked in prison until I heard that on one of your interviews.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the guy who attacked him is a bad dude. I mean, he makes Gacy look like a Boy Scout in a way. But you know, and he was just violent and he attacked guards. In fact he was in prison with a life sentence and then he attacked and killed the guards, for which he got the death penalty. So here was a guy who was just a walking crime spree.
Speaker 1:How were the victim's families when you were representing Gacy? Did you ever have any interaction with them?
Speaker 2:I did not and I'm surprised that I didn't. I really, you know I can't say this enough, but I mean my heart goes out to the victims' families. I mean my representation of Gacy, I'm sure, irritated them to no end. I'm sure that this book is going to bring up really bad memories and I'm waiting for the hate mail to start. But again, you know, I say in my book that I, you know you're, when you're a lawyer, you have one focus. You know, whether you're a prosecutor or a defense lawyer, I don't make justice, I just do my job. And I, I have to say that I, if I don't do my job, and I have to say that if I don't do my job, then the wrong person could be convicted.
Speaker 2:Now, that wasn't what happened with Gacy. I'm not even beginning to say that. But if I don't get it right and if I don't give him a really good defense, then someone else walks away. Who's the real killer? No-transcript guy went to jail. I hope he did. So I'm not immune to the loss and to all of that, because if that were my brother or my husband or you know, gosh, I don't know what I would do. You know, I would hate everyone too. I would hate, I would lash out, but I can't live my life thinking about that.
Speaker 1:Two things there. Number one I have a good friend who is also an author and he's written a book called Watch Me Die. He's been present at three executions. His name is Dr Bill Kimberlin and he said he would never advise a family to seek the death penalty because you have to relive that crime over and over and over during the appellate process. And so he says no, just go life in prison without the possibility of parole and forget about that person.
Speaker 2:There are studies done and again, I don't want to be preachy about it, but there are a lot of studies done saying that when you have a death penalty, people like every year, you know it's the 13th year, it's the 15th year and all you want is this guy to die because you're being told that that's justice. And then when the person is executed, there's this feeling of you know that didn't help anything, didn't bring my loved one back, it didn't make me feel any better, didn't you know? I'm not saying you feel sorry for the guy, it's just that you, you hold that out as something that is going to help you and it just doesn't for the most part. And you know a lot of victims' families now don't want the death penalty. You know, not on my watch. I don't want this. I don't want you to seek the death penalty and you know if it can eliminate a trial.
Speaker 2:You see a lot of victims' families say you know what? Put that guy in jail, that's he will never do it again. I don't have to relive it, like you said, or deal with all these appeals. And again, I can't tell a victim what is going to make them feel good. You just can't. But I think.
Speaker 1:I think we're heading away from the death penalty to some extent. You say it's actually cheaper to house somebody in prison for life without parole than it is to execute them. Do you know? You said $5 million earlier. Do you know what the cost differential is?
Speaker 2:It depends on the state and it depends on the defendant. Gacy's case they had a lot more money involved just because of his notoriety. But like, if you look, but if you research it, even the people who believe in the death penalty will understand that it's more expensive to execute. You get more trial lawyers, you get more trial forensic people, experts, you get more appeals and the lawyers involved in every step of the way the prosecution and the defense and even the method of execution. I just read in Idaho they're getting ready to spend $750,000 to build a firing squad chamber. You know, I say take that money and get some more pedophiles off the street. You know why are we doing this, why are we spending all this money? And there have been states that just abolish it because it's too expensive. And then then you know the idea being use that for social services, use it to prosecute more people, keep people in prison longer that need to be in I I I think that if you do the research, you'll see that I'm right about that.
Speaker 1:You say that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
Speaker 2:It isn't and that that is a proven fact. And I think anyone who has studied this issue will see that In fact the places where we have most murders are the places where we have the most death penalties. So it doesn't deter. And they've done studies over and over about this. Where they've implemented the death penalty and did crime go down? Did murders go down? Because people don't say to themselves, hmm, should I kill somebody because I'm going to get the death penalty as opposed to life in prison? They just don't. They're crimes of passion for the most part, or compulsion crimes, like Gacy, so nobody thinks about that. Why would Ted Bundy take a flight to Florida to start committing more crimes when that place is? You know Florida loves the death penalty, so it just doesn't deter.
Speaker 1:What if we die, executed somebody faster than what the wheels of justice move right now? Would that? Would that make others change their change, their method of operation? You know, instead of like what you say, you know, nobody wakes up and says, oh, I'm going to kill somebody, but wait, I better not because I might get killed. Well, geez, casey spent 14 years on death row and you know there's people on death row that have been there for 30 years now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hear that argument a lot, that if you're going to have capital punishment, it should be swift.
Speaker 2:You know I think, hey, if capital punishment worked, I might change my mind. You know, if it eliminated murders, if it stopped people from doing these things, if it changed the way people thought about crime, you know, I might just say I don't like it. It rubs me the wrong way morally. But you know, if it works, it works. Maybe I'm going to make that. It just doesn't.
Speaker 2:People do not think, Because it's not like the difference between being executed and walking free. It's the difference between being executed and being in prison for life. People just don't reason that out, they don't talk about that. I mean, you know how? About this? Why don't we have public executions where we use the guillotine? Because that's the least painful way to do it, but it's disgusting and nobody would like to see that. But if we're going to use it and if we're going to try to deter people from committing crimes, maybe that's what we do. I don't think our country can stand that. I don't think we could stomach watching that. I think it's barbaric. But if you want to deter, let's do that.
Speaker 1:I don't think I would watch it.
Speaker 2:No, I couldn't stomach it.
Speaker 1:I couldn't stomach it. No, you actually have one of Gacy's paintings.
Speaker 2:I have three of them.
Speaker 1:Three Are you stunned at the amount of money those things could bring in?
Speaker 2:I, you know, after the execution I didn't know what to do with them. They were like face down on my basement floor, so they're not in very good shape, they're really ugly and they're really kind of creepy. But yeah, I used to check on, you know, the various sites. Yeah, people are buying these things up and I've been approached to you know, I just can't make money on it, but I also can't throw them away and I don't know where they're going to end up.
Speaker 1:Are they? Are they have clowns?
Speaker 2:I have one that's a clown.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause. Pogo was his alter ego.
Speaker 2:Yes, I and Gacy gave me that for my birthday, and then he gave me a seascape which was really ugly, and then later he gave me a skull clown, so it was this skull with a clown's hat on it.
Speaker 1:Have you ever had anybody?
Speaker 2:I don't even think Goodwill would do that.
Speaker 1:Really, have you ever had a psychologist? Psychoanalyze those paintings.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think. I don't think it's hard to do that. Yeah, I think that Gacy and I do talk about him being a clown and dressing up as a clown, and I do think there was something psychological about that. I think that he liked to hide that dark side of him and I think he liked to take away who he was and be somebody else and get away with things, because he always used to say clowns get away with murder, and I think he really believed that he could. He can kind of. You know, when people are in masquerade parties, they do things that they would normally never do because they're behind a mask. That's sort of what the mentality was with Gacy, I believe that.
Speaker 1:Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy Gacy, the most prolific serial killer that we know of in America 33 boys and men killed and many of them buried underneath his house. In the book Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy, Karen Conte, the author and his death row appellate attorney, one of them, you posit an interesting theory about accomplices.
Speaker 2:Yes, I truly believe that Gacy didn't kill all of those boys. He killed many of them, most of them. But Gacy kept telling us, go and get my business records from the evidence locker because it will show that I was out of town during the time that several of these boys were deemed to have gone missing. And I thought this is just you know, BS right, but we did it. We went and got those records and we looked and Gacy kept meticulous, almost neurotic records with receipts for hotels and he did all these jobs out of town and he had the contracts and he had the dates and his travel and the tolls and everything. And sure enough, we matched it up with six or seven of the boys and even if you fudge a few dates on either side, that they went missing.
Speaker 2:Gacy probably didn't do these murders and he had two young men living with him at the time who testified at trial that they dug the trenches under the crawl space in the crawl space. But it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't have known what he was doing and it wouldn't have made sense that they didn't put those bodies down there, because Gacy was very portly and I just can't see him lifting up a dead human being and bringing them into this crawl space and laying them, you know, side by side. The other thing that I talk about is that there was at least one victim who got away, who told the police that there were more than one person perpetrating the sex acts and perpetrating the torture. So I think that was a house of horror. I think there are other perpetrators who walked free.
Speaker 1:Was he grooming those two that were living with him? How did he not kill them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he was grooming them and there's a new book called Serial Killers Apprentice. And he had two young men who were not evil human beings but they were just kids who kind of came from sad backgrounds, who didn't have a lot of self-esteem. He gave them money, he gave them drugs, alcohol, whatever, and they would go out and procure young men and help with the crimes and help dispose of the bodies. And yes, I think it's very parallel that he was grooming these boys to help him. And you know, I don't know why they never prosecuted them. I think they wanted to make it tie it up with a nice bow. You know Gacy's the most prolific serial killer at the time. You know, we want to just put a feather in our cap and get this done and I do think that those two young men were guilty of murder.
Speaker 1:You say that Gacy was the most prolific serial killer at the time. At the time, I said allegedly the most, because we know about, uh, henry Lee Lucas, and you actually brought him up to John. Wayne Gacy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know Henry Lee Lucas. I don't know how many were tagged to him, like 200 or something. But uh, gacy was a little angry when I said hey, you know, henry Lee is kind of is is pulling up in front of you and he said oh, karen, how can you say that? And he was angry. He was like Henry Lee Lewis, he didn't kill all those people. Oh, the prosecution is just putting wants to close cases. He didn't kill all those people. So he, we had a little argument about that. I probably agree with him on that. But I think the Green River killer had more victims, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1:Well, now we know about Samuel Little. Samuel Little yeah he's dead now, but yeah, I think he was up to 70 is what I think they have his count at, and we talk about this like runs batted in in a baseball game. You know, oh, he had 70, he had 30. What is our fascination with serial killers?
Speaker 2:I think that we are fascinated by the best of the best and the worst of the worst. I think that we like to watch the Olympics because we see these athletes who are just doing unbelievable things and breaking records that human beings have made over the years, and so we're fascinated by that. We're also fascinated by evil, like how does a person get to be that way? What is it like? I mean, people are fascinated by evil. Like, how does a person get to be that way? What? What is it like? I mean, if people are fascinated by it? I also think they say that women are more fascinated by it because they they use it in a way to sort of protect themselves. They, they feel like, if they watch these shows or they understand a killer or a rapist, that they can maybe protect themselves from that.
Speaker 2:I think it's an interesting theory, but I just think this is not new. I mean, we have been obsessed with crime, you know, from the Ripper days and way before that, and I think we like to try to solve crimes. I think that's part of this podcast world where we're solving crimes, I think. You know. I think it's just human nature, curiosity, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We all have that innate curiosity and I think there are some people who may have a dark side who think like, oh, could I ever be that bad? I don't feel that way because I don't think I have that dark side, but I think some people do.
Speaker 1:I believe there are a lot of people that do you know, and a lot of people, but we also have the mechanism of a conscience and we also have the mechanism of a conscience and we also have the mechanism of self-control. And that side of Gacy was not, it wasn't there.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't there.
Speaker 1:Did he talk about? Did he talk about how he felt after his first kill?
Speaker 2:See, what you have to understand is he confessed at first, like when I was in high school when he was first arrested, but then he developed this idea that he didn't kill anyone except the first one who he killed in self-defense, and he talked about how this guy was a hooker and he tried to come at him and take his money with a knife. So he turned the knife on him and he killed him.
Speaker 3:Tim McCoy was the first one, and Tim McCoy's name wasn't put on him until 1988. Prior to that, he was known as Unknown Number Nine and he was buried by me in the crawl space. That's the only knowledge that I have of it. What was the circumstances of that? He was killed in the house in self-defense, and who killed him? Then I stabbed him. Yeah, and it was an house in self-defense. And who killed him? Then I stabbed him. Yeah, and it was an issue of self-defense. Was he in the process of assaulting you or what? He was coming at me with a knife. I just took the knife away and twisted it in his hand, and that's what killed him.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's BS. So that's what Gacy said he didn't come to grips with any of this stuff.
Speaker 1:Why didn't an insanity plea work?
Speaker 2:Oh, because it hardly ever works. In Illinois, the law is that you have to suffer from a mental illness or disorder, but also that that disorder or mental illness has to cause you to not know what's right or wrong. I'm going to just paraphrase that, and that's the hard part, because when you hide a body, you know it's wrong. You know, I mean it doesn't. This insanity defense doesn't work unless you're completely psychotic and you're. You're seeing purple cows or something, because Gacy clearly knew what he was doing was wrong.
Speaker 1:Killing time with John Wayne Gacy. The book is out now. You can get it on amazoncom. Karen Conte is my guest. Gacy lives. He walks into your office right now. What do you say to him?
Speaker 2:I mean, if he walked in I would probably joke with him.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I probably would say how are you doing, John? You know, he and I had a pleasant, you know, back and forth. I found him to be intelligent, I found him to be humorous, I found him to be human in a lot of ways. But then he had this side of him that was pure evil and it's hard to describe that. And people are going to say, people think that anyone who does these things they're always evil. But if they were always evil they wouldn't get away with it. So that's why he walks among us, acting in a way that's perfectly acceptable, until he doesn't. So I would just exchange pleasantries with him probably.
Speaker 1:So the time that you spent defending Gacy and his final appeal of death row, he does get executed Did you lose?
Speaker 2:I felt like I lost. You know I took my job seriously, like I do with every single client for everything I do. I zealously advocated for him, as did the other lawyers on the team. We lost sleep, we lost clients, we donated our time and money to this cause. You know, probably $250,000 worth, something like that. So, yeah, we lost, and I didn't expect to win, but it was still a loss.
Speaker 2:And even more than just losing as a lawyer, I just felt the loss of a human being. And it wasn't because I was so connected with Gacy but I talk about in my book when we were leaving the area where he was getting ready to be taken to the death chamber and in rushes, all his family, his family, his nephews, neighbors who he lived next to for years, political people, lawyers that he had over the years and many of them were sobbing and saying goodbye to him and they were like they knew what he did, but yet they unconditionally loved him. I said, john, did you do this? How do you love somebody that's so evil? My name is Karen Kuzma. My brother was John Wayne Gacy. So when you see that, it's just hard. It's just hard to know that we are doing that to somebody, just let him in jail, put him away, don't listen to him, but killing him. It just seemed wrong and it will always seem wrong to me.
Speaker 1:You said you did it pro bono, you lost about $250,000. It ended up not going your way.
Speaker 2:Waste of time up not going your way. Waste of time. No, no, I was able to speak out against it. I'm proud that I was able to do that. I learned a lot of lessons during that seven months and that's one of the things I think may be uplifting to people who read my book, because I'm looking back at my career over 30 years after the execution and some of the good things that have happened to me are directly related to having represented Gacy. Like, for instance, I did a lot of media appearances being interviewed about the death penalty in Gacy. As a result, I became adept at talking to the press. I was given a radio show. I've had radio shows for 30 years in Chicago. My law professor came up to Chicago and gave me a law professorship to teach the death penalty after I took on one case and lost it. I've been a law professor for 20, 25 years.
Speaker 2:So a lot of and I think now clients say, oh, she represented Gacy. She must be tough. Not that I'm that's true or false or that I'm a better lawyer because I represented Gacy, but that's appearance that we have. It's the Marsha Clark thing. It's like here. She handled the OJ Simpson case. Maybe she should have won that case Maybe not. She got a million-dollar book deal and she's got a show and she's doing really well. Good for you, marsha. But that doesn't mean you're a better lawyer or a worse lawyer. It's just that you get this reputation, having been associated with somebody, really bad.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's such a high profile case. Obviously you're. Yeah, obviously that's going to help make a name. That kind of answers my question, though representing Gacy, make you or cost you?
Speaker 2:I think it made me.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I think, I think it enhanced me.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:I think that's probably a better way to say it. I think I had a lot of those qualities, those good qualities, but as a young lawyer, you know you're always, when you're in your 20s you're just not as secure and not as confident as you become later. And I think that this matured me very quickly as a lawyer, as a human being, as you know almost every aspect of my life. So I think it really enhanced me. It put me, as you say, in the spotlight and it allowed me to flourish quicker than I probably would have flourished without the representation.
Speaker 1:Well, as an outsider looking in, I don't think a lot of people could have done what you did. I don't think a lot of people could have done what you did. I don't think a lot of people could have handled the scrutiny, handled the negativity that came their way. So even before you took that case, Karen Conte, I think you already had that toughness in you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, and I have to think about that.
Speaker 1:but maybe you're right. Final question what's the lesson we learned from John Wayne Gacy and his story?
Speaker 2:I think the lesson is that there are bad people in this world and that we all have to be very, very careful. I think a lesson could be that we need to look at people's upbringings and we need to look and see if there are warning signs along the way. And this was a different time and place. Okay, so the seventies we didn't know, we didn't have the databases, we didn't know about pedophiles as much as we do now and serial killers. But we we have to take serious the victims cries for help and there were so many along the way and so many warning signs victims running out of the house horribly damaged by Gacy, and charges being brought, charges being dropped. You know children and young men going to get a job with Gacy and then they disappear and Gacy gets questioned and they blow it off.
Speaker 2:So you know, I think we need to really pay attention to these warning signs. And you know, at some point there was a point of no return with Gacy. And you know, at some point there was a point of no return with Gacy. I don't know when that was, but you know, hopefully in the future we may be able to predict these kind of things and maybe stop a person from becoming that? I would hope.
Speaker 1:Well, we have a pretty good track record now since 9-11 of stopping terrorist attacks, so hopefully, maybe one day you're right that we can find these abnormalities in society and deal with them and get them off the streets before somebody before somebody loses their life, exactly.
Speaker 1:Karen, thank you so much for joining me, congratulations on all your success and in Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy. It's a great read If you want a quick read, if you want interesting stuff and you want behind the scenes stuff, because Gacy was very forthcoming with you that he didn't tell things to other people. So it's fascinating and thank you for sharing your story with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, kevin, and if people want to go to my website, they can sign up, for I'm doing some webinars and book clubs. So, even if you're in different states, it's karencontecom and I'm happy to share that with you.
Speaker 1:It absolutely is a fascinating read. It's written in a very reader-friendly style. Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy Defending America's Most Evil Serial Killer on Death Row. My thanks to Karen Conte for taking time out of her busy schedule. Believe me, she is very busy promoting the book a lot of media outlets, not to mention the cases that she's still working, and also her own radio show, which airs for the past 30 years in Chicago. But anyway, my thanks to Karen Conte for joining me and my thanks to you for listening. The Fuzzy Mike is hosted and produced by Kevin Kline, production elements by Zach Sheesh at the Radio Farm P-H-A-R-M, and social media director is Trish Kline. Don't forget to like, subscribe, follow, share, all that kind of stuff. And thank you again for joining me on this episode of the Fuzzy Mike. See you next Tuesday. That's it for the Fuzzy Mike. Thank you. The Fuzzy Mike with Kevin Klein.