October 1st, 1997 to October 7th, 1997

The Killing Fields

Chicago Killers: Gacy and Eyler

Part Three by Lori Weiner

The Midwest may evoke romantic images of whole milk, corn husks, fluffy clouds, and mashed potatoes; to a certain extent the stereotype is correct.

But Chicago's geographic nexus also has a darker side: three of the most notorious serial killers to ever terrorize the gay community lived, worked, and slaughtered within a hundred miles of the city. In 1978-9, Chicagoan John Wayne Gacy killed 33 young men and boys. In the period between 1980-1984, native Indianan and adoptive Chicagoan Larry Eyler was suspected in upwards of 23 murders and convicted and sentenced to death for a single slaying, that of Chicago youth Danny Bridges (before his own death from AIDS complications in March 1993, Eyler confessed to other killings).

And in 1991, Milwaukee resident Jeffrey Dahmer was apprehended when intended victim Tracy Edwards escaped. Dahmer's career as a torturer, killer, and cannibal extended back 10 years, and four of his victims had ties to Chicago.

In this installment of "The Killing Fields," we take a closer look Chicagoans Gacy and Eyler and their trail of blood and pain. Next week, a look behind the eyes of Jeffrey Dahmer.

The Killer Clown
John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was born in Chicago on March 17, 1942, the second of three children and the only son. According to the book The Man Who Killed Boys by Clifford L. Lindecker (St Martin's Press, 1986), Gacy was struck in the head with a playground swing when he was 11 years old. He suffered from blackouts until the age of 16, when a doctor diagnosed him with a blood clot on the brain and treated the condition with medication. The blackouts ceased immediately.

Lindecker's book reveals that as an adolescent, Gacy attended Carl Schurz High School and was an undistinguished student there, though he would later tell his first wife that he was hauled out of the school in a straitjacket "a couple of times" after becoming uncontrollably enraged. Gacy transferred from Schurz to Cooley Vocational High, only to leave in favor of Prosser Vocational. Ultimately, Gacy would drop out of Prosser and travel to Las Vegas, where the teenager found part-time work as a janitor.

Gacy soon returned from the West Coast and enrolled at Northwestern Business College; though he was a high school dropout, Gacy graduated. The newly matriculated Gacy was hired by the Nunn-Bush Shoe Company as a salesman in its Springfield, Ill., office. After being with the company only a few months, in September of 1964 Gacy married Marlynn Myers in a Catholic ceremony.

Lindecker reports that Gacy and his bride soon relocated to Waterloo, Iowa, where Gacy's father in law offered him stewardship of a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. While there, Gacy became a father as his wife gave birth to first a son, then a daughter.

For years Gacy's only trouble with the law involved speeding tickets; he was an impatient driver who was cited frequently for traffic offenses. But in 1968, according to Lindecker, Gacy was indicted on sodomy charges after a 17-year-old boy reported "deviate sex acts" occurring between he and Gacy during the late summer of 1967. While Gacy denied the sodomy charges at first, he ultimately pled guilty-but not before hiring another youth to beat up his accuser, an additional offense with which he was promptly charged. In the aftermath, his marriage was destroyed; Marlynn Gacy filed for divorce the same day her husband was sentenced to prison.

Lindecker notes that Gacy was released from jail after serving just 18 months of his 10-year sentence. He immediately returned home to Chicago, moved in with his mother, and found work as a chef in a Loop restaurant.

Shortly thereafter, Gacy purchased a two-bedroom ranch home at 8213 W. Summerdale, just outside the Chicago city limits.

Lindecker reports that Gacy was released from his parole by Iowa authorities on Oct. 18, 1971. Unbeknownst to them, Gacy had been arrested by Chicago police on Feb. 12-eight months after his release from prison-for disorderly conduct after a gay youth complained that Gacy had picked him up from the Greyhound station at Clark and Randolph, then taken him to 8213 Summerdale where he attempted to have sex with the boy. The case was dismissed when the victim failed to appear in court.

In June of 1972, according to Lindecker, Gacy married again. Carole Hoff was recently out of a failed marriage and had two young daughters.

Lindecker infers that by that time, Gacy had already murdered at least one young man.

Lindecker reports that shortly after his marriage Gacy was arrested for aggravated battery and reckless conduct after a young man stated that Gacy had flashed a sheriff's badge, identified himself as a deputy, and ordered the youth into his car, where he was forced to perform oral sex. Gacy then allegedly drove the boy from the Near North Side to suburban Northbrook, where he asked again for sex. When the boy refused and leaped out of the car, Gacy allegedly tried to run him over. But the case never made it to trial, and Gacy would not be arrested again until the discovery of 33 bodies in the crawl space of 8213 Summerdale.

Lindecker reports that as early as 1973, the new Mrs. Gacy had noticed an offensive odor in the house. Gacy explained that the smell was caused by the "dampness and darkness" of the crawl space.

According to Lindecker, Gacy was a good stepfather to Carole's two children. But when Carole began finding billfolds belonging to unknown men in Gacy's car, her husband exploded in rage when she questioned him as to the owners' identities. Lindecker also reports that by 1975, Gacy had told Carole that he preferred boys sexually. It was also in 1975 that Gacy apparently perfected the "handcuff trick" that led to death for at least 33 young males. Gacy would tell his victim that he wanted to show him a "pair of trick handcuffs" he used in his clown act, claiming there was a special way to unlock the cuffs and daring the youth to break out of them. Once the youth was securely manacled, Gacy strangled him.

By 1976 Gacy's second marriage was over. But, reports Lindecker, this union ended amicably. The estranged husband and wife remained friends, with Gacy spending hours telling Carole of his struggles with bisexuality.

John Wayne Gacy was well known in the underground world of teenage hustlers that existed at the time, largely concentrated in the area of Clark, Diversey and Broadway. Lindecker reports that he was a regular at Cheeks, Blinkers, and the Broadway Limited. Lindecker further states that one of Gacy's victims, 16-year-old Billy Carroll, Jr., lived in Uptown and was involved in the underage gay hustler scene; his specialty was "fixing up" older clients with young hustlers, for which he would receive a cut of the hustler's take.

Like virtually all of the young men who were later confirmed to be Gacy victims, worried family and friends reported Carroll's disappearance to the police. But because the victims were young, troubled, and in some cases openly gay, authorities reacted by shrugging their shoulders and musing that the youths had simply run away. It wasn't until the disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest, a Des Plaines high school sophomore, that police seriously investigated Gacy. Lindecker reports that Piest had last been seen talking to Gacy about the possibility of working for his construction firm.

Des Plaines Police Department Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak took personal responsibility for the Piest case, as his own son was a classmate of the missing boy. Barely two weeks after Piest's disappearance, Cook County Sheriff's Police had apprehended Gacy, staking him out and unnerving him so completely that he confessed to killing "30 people, give or take a few" to at least two individuals, a business associate and his attorney. Before his trial, Gacy flippantly commented that "the only thing they can get me for is running a mortuary without a license."

With 33 confirmed victims, Gacy killed more people than any other serial killer in U.S. history. In the early 1990s, Gacy was put to death by lethal injection.

Larry Eyler
Many of Larry Eyler's victims were also hustlers who hailed from Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. A handsome, muscular bodybuilder with a trim moustache distinguishing an otherwise cherubic face, Eyler was a habitue of the Chicago leather scene, frequenting Touché on Lincoln Avenue, the original Gold Coast on Clark Street, and Male Hide Leathers. Born in Terre Haute, Ind., on Dec. 21, 1952, Eyler was the youngest of four children.

Gera-Lind Kolarik, author of the definitive Eyler chronology, Freed To Kill (1990, Avon Books), was a prominent newswoman for ABC-Channel 7 in September of 1983, when a routine phone call to one of her regular sources suggested to the experienced journalist that a serial killer could be targeting area men.

Information first published in Kolarik's book explains that the death of Ralph Calise, 28, was strikingly similar to that of several other murder victims found in Lake County, Ill., and rural Indiana. All the bodies were found along Highway 41, connecting Indiana and Illinois and running through the city of Chicago and its northern suburbs. Calise was found in tony Lake Forest, directly off 41. He had been viciously stabbed numerous times, and his pants were pulled down to his hips. Kolarik had been involved in identifying the body of a Chicago victim, John R. Johnson, when she informed GayLife, then Chicago's leading gay and lesbian newspaper, of the discovery of his corpse-in Indiana. Johnson, like the others, had been stabbed repeatedly and found along Highway 41.

The two dozen transient youth believed to have died at Eyler's hands were largely "street people," battling drug addiction and often involved in prostitution. Their families were accustomed to not seeing them for weeks, sometimes months at a time and would not necessarily be alarmed at their disappearance. And as in the Gacy case, police were quick to dismiss thoughts of foul play, assuming instead that the nomadic youths had simply tired of Chicago and decided to move on.

According to Freed To Kill, Eyler was supported financially by Robert David Little, a library science professor at the University of Indiana. After meeting Eyler when he was a student at the University, Little invited Eyler to move in with him. Unlike Gacy, Eyler was openly gay, but lived discreetly, preferring to remain within his small circle of friends in Indianapolis. Eyler and Little were not lovers; in exchange for financial support, Eyler kept Little company, traveled with him, and according to allegations made by Eyler after his conviction for murder in 1986, acted out "scenes" with Little. A "scene," according to Eyler, involved "somebody dying." (A 1991 inquest into the murder of Steven Agan, a 23-year-old Terre Haute resident found eviscerated in an abandoned farmhouse, cleared Little of involvement in that homicide, to which Eyler confessed and received a 60-year sentence. Little has not been charged with any other killings.)

Eyler's primary partner during the early 1980s was allegedly the late John Dobrovolskis, a Chicagoan who lived in Central Lakeview near the intersection of Belmont and Lincoln. According to Freed To Kill, Dobrovolskis was an enigmatic man. He was married with two children, and Mrs. Dobrovolskis and the kids were reportedly fond of Eyler. The extended family would frequently spend casual summer evenings watching television and playing the popular card game, Uno. Police later theorized that occasionally, after a lover's squabble with Dobrovolskis, an emotionally wounded Eyler would pick up a hustler and murder him as a "substitute" for his insufferable lover.

According to Freed To Kill, Indiana police had built an impressive and potentially foolproof case against Eyler for the murder of Ralph Calise using damning evidence obtained after citing the suspect for a traffic violation.

But in February of 1984, Judge William Block suppressed that evidence, ruling that its seizure was a violation of Eyler's civil rights. While in the custody of Indiana police after the traffic stop, Eyler had been detained for more than 12 hours without being charged and much of the incriminating material had been taken without a warrant. Judge Block, wanting to impress upon the Indiana police the importance of protocol and hoping that the sensational murder trial had sufficiently cowed any homicidal urges still lurking in Eyler, set bond at $1,000 which Eyler's family met easily. That day, he walked free. Shortly thereafter, Little co-signed an apartment lease for Eyler at 1641 West Sherwin, in Chicago's Rogers Park.

Freed To Kill reports that Eyler's attorney warned him against resuming his relationship with Dobrovolskis, but the lovers picked up where they had left off before the Calise murder charges separated them. Always contentious, possessive and passionate, the two men forgot the rest of the world and focused all of their intensity into the relationship.

Freed To Kill describes the chain of events leading to the murder of 15-year-old Danny Bridges, the killing that put Eyler behind bars for good. On Aug. 17, 1984, Eyler and Dobrovolskis fought bitterly over their plans for the weekend. Professor Little had come to visit Eyler from Indiana; Dobrovolskis and Little loathed one another. Dobrovolskis wanted Eyler to spend time with him on Saturday night; Eyler replied that he could not because of Little.

Enraged, Dobrovolskis announced that he would be going out alone that night. Eyler begged him not to go, but Dobrovolskis stubbornly refused to yield. Dobrovolskis hung up on Eyler, who called back several times. Each time Dobrovolskis repeated his intention to go out alone, without Eyler.

That night, Danny Bridges disappeared. Bridges, a hustler who frequented North Halsted Street, had a reputation for doing virtually anything for money. The thin, blond teenager was also a police informant, testifying against pedophiles in criminal cases.

According to Freed To Kill, on Aug. 21, 1984, janitor Joseph Balla discovered the dismembered remains of a human body in the trash can behind 1641 W. Sherwin. The body was later identified as that of Danny Bridges.

Eyler was eventually convicted of the Bridges murder, as well as kidnapping the boy and concealing the slaying. He was sentenced to Death Row at Pontiac Correctional Institution in 1986.

An afterword to the paperback edition of Freed To Kill reports that efforts to reverse Eyler's sentence began almost immediately. In May 1988, an appeal to the conviction posited that Professor Little had actually murdered Danny Bridges and that Eyler's only crime was disposing of the body and failing to notify police. The appeal failed, and Eyler remained on Death Row.

Freed To Kill also describes how in December 1990, Eyler's attorney Katherine Zellner made headlines by offering, on her client's behalf, information about as many as 20 killings in Illinois and Indiana in exchange for a reduction in sentence from death to natural life behind bars.

State's Attorney Jack O'Malley soundly rejected the offer, calling Eyler a "butcher." Zellner's offer came after the Vermillion County, Ind., sheriff's department reopened their investigation into the death of Steven Agan. On Dec. 4, 1990 Eyler dictated a 17-page confession to the Agan killing which accused Professor Little of participating in the murder. As a result Little himself was put on trial in the spring of 1991. But Eyler was not a convincing witness against his former benefactor, and Little emerged victorious.

Though State's Attorney Jack O'Malley did not accept Larry Eyler's offer of confession to 20 additional murders in Illinois and Indiana, Eyler eventually told what he knew. As he lay on his deathbed in Pontiac Correctional Institution, Eyler dictated an admission of guilt in upwards of 20 killings.

In March of 1993, Larry Eyler died in prison of complications due to AIDS.

In the next Outlines, "The Killing Fields" looks at convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

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