John Wayne Gacy
The word “influence” has a very specific meaning in Chicago. Basically, if you are just an ordinary idiot and want to add an addition to your home, you will need to complete the paperwork and obtain licenses and make sure everything complies with the code. If you have influence, just build the thing, and the city will stop by with a concrete mixer to see if you need help (free, of course). Influence is a by-product of the Chicago political machine, and if you want a government job that pays well and has few responsibilities, you better expect to meet someone who does. Clout is also useful if you are accused of a crime and can delay, say, an investigation of several missing persons who worked for your construction company in the mid-1970s long enough for a dozen more young people to disappear.
Clout is just one of the many things intensely in Chicago about John Wayne Gacy: the demon in disguise, a series that reinforces the generally sound advice to never trust anyone who uses the middle name and the middle name. Most of this six-hour documentary is based on numbers, giving the official version of the John Wayne Gacy story told by a series of middle-aged and older white guys with bristling mustaches and a tendency to pronounce their “O” S as “A” s. (Cops, lawyers, reporters – you know the guy.) Complementing his memories are interviews with relatives of Gacy’s victims, as well as Gacy’s sister and a handful of ex-friends, all of whom have told their story so many times that they are is clearly no longer bothered by this. Then, the last episode revolves around a claim that will not surprise anyone familiar with the way power is exercised in Chicago: that, due to a combination of indifference and incompetence, the local police investigated Gacy – a well-known and much-loved Democratic captain . – the least they could, and may have mistakenly identified at least one of their victims.
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In addition to Gacy’s political connections, one of the main reasons for this is because Gacy committed sexual murders against other men, and homophobia at the time meant that victims who escaped his clutches were not taken seriously. This point is not given as much oxygen in Devil in disguise as more conspiracy ideas about Gacy’s alleged accomplices, as well as a snuff-movie operation that, according to rumors, existed in the city at the same time as the wave of Gacy’s murders. And that is unfortunate, not only because – unlike snuff films – the existence of homophobia is not a matter of debate, but because one of the most moving moments in the series comes from the partner of a survivor of Gacy who later died by suicide. The man’s contempt and anger are palpable when he explains that, at the time, the Chicago police did not think a gay man could be raped.
Devil in disguise he doesn’t dwell much on that statement, or even on any of the reasons why Gacy was able to get away with murder for so long. Much like the recent Netflix Night Stalker Series, Devil in disguise ignores sociopolitical comments in order to concentrate methodically, chronologically marking all family boxes: the wounds to the head of Gacy, Pogo, the clown, the Jaycees and their conviction for sodomy 10 years before the bodies of 29 people were found in the rubble of his beautiful brick bungalow suburb. (The story of how This one it was also discovered is the quintessence of Chicago: Gacy had become friends with the policemen who were watching him and one of them entered the house to use the bathroom when “the heater started” and the unmistakable odor of decomposition began to blow through the openings. )
Devil in disguisethe visual style of is similarly normal, although its combination of footage and interviews conducted in hotel rooms will adjust the nostalgia centers of Dateline brains of the fans. (The final credits, in particular, have a captivating news magazine from the je ne sais quois network.) And the only thing that filming from a prison interview conducted by FBI profiler Robert Ressler in 1992 adds to the series is frustration: Gacy, so ensconced in the privilege that he thought he was untouchable even after a decade in prison, refuses to confess his crimes, claiming that he “had no idea” how all those corpses ended up under his floor. He still has the audacity to say that it would not be “fair to the victims” if he were sentenced to death, while telling one of his fellow police officers that finding their bodies was “his job”. In other words, he is a boring, authoritarian and boring idiot, and if you didn’t hate him for going on the show, you will hate him after watching.
But why? Why go over the familiar beats of an already infamous story? If it weren’t for your final hour, there would be no real reason to Devil in disguise exist. And the reason we understand – because there are still six victims who have never been identified and many unanswered questions about the investigation – is more about the culture of heterosexual, white, and middle-class impunity that surrounds the case than the killer himself. John Wayne Gacy is dead, and Devil in disguise it is correct, because all that remains to be said about him is not a horror story about an evil criminal, but a cautionary tale from a serial predator who went unpunished because he looked and acted like the men who were supposed to stop him.
What the series fails is that, in its attempts to be a definitive account, its interrogation of the Gacy case is caught up in the myth it is unmasking. A problematic point that comes up repeatedly is that respondents whose methods and motives are openly questioned on some subjects are taken seriously in others. This is a question that arises a lot when we talk about the life and criminal career of serial killers; it is a particularly difficult bone to break, since the only living witness to these events is, 99 times out of 100, also a pathological liar with a narcissistic aversion to taking responsibility for his actions. The funny thing here is that we can use the same terms to describe the Chicago Police Department. In fact, some of the respondents in this series do. No wonder they got along so well.