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On November 24, 1993, I posted the following letter:

Dear Mr. Gacy,

My name is Jason Moss, and I’m a full time college student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I’m 18 years old, and I’m writing because I thought you might get bored or lonely where you are, and that you might want someone to correspond with. I’m sure there are many others who write you, but I hope you take the time to write me back. You’ll see that I’m a pretty nice guy, and I know what it’s like to be bored and alone. The constant screaming of my father keeps me secluded in my room when I’m not in school or at the gym. I hate it here at home, and I guess I understand what it’s like to need a friend.

At this point I don’t really know what else to say until you write me back. If you should need anything like paper or supplies, just let me know. I would be happy to help. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Your friend,

Jason Moss

I felt a tremendous relief after I sent the letter off; it was out of my hands. There was nothing more I could do. I’d researched things as best I could. Now it was time for me to get on with the rest of my life, which I’d been neglecting for some time. I jumped back into schoolwork with my usual zeal and also devoted extra time to my girlfriend, Jenn, whom I’d been avoiding during the weeks leading up to sending the letter.

Just seven days later, though, to my utter shock, a letter arrived from the Menard Correctional Center in Illinois. I hadn’t expected to receive a reply so fast. The first thing I did was run down the stairs to tell my mother the news.

“Can you believe it? Look who wrote me! John Wayne Gacy wrote me back. I can’t believe it!”

My mother looked up from the magazine she’d been glancing through. “Great,” she said without enthusiasm, and resumed reading.

I stood there staring at her, the letter gripped tightly in my hand. She looked up again at me, as if she wondered what I was doing there. “So now you’ve got a new serial killer friend. You really worry me sometimes.”

“Mom, don’t you see how great this is!” I just couldn’t restrain my excitement. “How many people can say they’ve received a letter from John Wayne Gacy?”

“Who’d want to brag about such a thing?” she countered, and again went back to the magazine.

Both my parents had been hoping that my latest obsession would go the way of dozens of others, and eventually fade out. But alas, now I would only be encouraged to continue this foolishness to wherever it might lead next.

Gacy’s letter was only a paragraph long, typed double-spaced. The grammar and punctuation revealed his lack of education. He was brief and to the point in thanking me for writing. He included a few enclosures, a self-authored article that described his version of the events that led up to his arrest and conviction, and a questionnaire he wanted me to complete before the correspondence could go any further.

This survey, I later learned, was part of Gacy’s standard operating procedure. It was the means by which he filtered out, from among the thousands of people who contacted him, a few fans to correspond with. The form contained dozens of items related to interests and preferences, such as “My childhood hero,” “Why you wrote J. W. Gacy,” “Ideal evening,” and “Nobody knows about: ______.” Yet hidden among these seemingly innocuous queries were also things like: “Thoughts on sex,” “Thoughts on crime,” and “What you’re thinking now.” These were the items I figured would be most significant to Gacy.

My initial elation now gave way to a certain anxiety. Clearly, Gacy wasn’t going to take at face value just anything that was sent to him. He may have been guilty of overconfidence but he wasn’t stupid; he obviously planned to dig deep into the mind of whomever he befriended.

This project was going to be a lot more difficult than I’d ever imagined. While I welcomed the challenge of trying to plumb Gacy’s mind, all the while blocking access to my true self, I also felt a lot of external pressure.

Although I was busy planning the