The Last Victim_ A True-Life Journey Into the Mind of the Serial Killer - Jason Moss [32]
Although Gacy had included his “fact sheet” proclaiming his innocence in the first letter he sent me, this self-serving statement was consistent with what he would state over and over again. At times, he was so persuasive I actually began to believe him.
I’d heard about the so-called Stockholm syndrome in which kidnap victims begin to identify with their captors to the point where they feel sympathetic toward them, but I never imagined that I’d come to feel something resembling empathy for this cold-blooded murderer. I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable, but I was unprepared to deal with the confusing feelings Gacy’s letters evoked.
I wanted to look at this monster almost as a “specimen”—as a thing to be examined, analyzed, manipulated, in some ways tested—yet I began to see him as a pitiful human being who was doing the best he could like everyone else. I was repulsed by my own compassion. All I had to do was think about Gacy’s victims and their childless parents to remember who and what I was really dealing with.
14
Perversity
In my next letter to Gacy, I tried to lead him to an area in which he might begin to trust me more. In retrospect, I can’t believe that I didn’t anticipate the extent to which he would turn the tables back my way. The question I asked him was pretty direct: what he fantasized about sexually. I received a response six days later, just as my first semester of college was ending.
Gacy enjoyed being as graphic as possible in describing his sexual tastes. I realized this was another test of sorts, trying to determine my own preferences, as well as how I’d react to his explicit descriptions.
At first, I was sort of amused by what he wrote. I couldn’t believe his lack of inhibition.
What do I fantasize about sexually? I assume you mean when I jack off. Well, it depends on what mood I am in and what I am thinking from out of the many past encounters I have had. Since I like being the aggressor, I like to get on in threesomes. Both male and female, making them my slaves in bed and doing it all.
Straight sex or bi I enjoyed it all, knowing I can get off with both and enjoying anything that is consenting with others. I find if you satisfy your partner first then you can do anything. So I like to get them off first.
In talking about sex, I suspected that Gacy was unwittingly revealing his philosophy toward his victims as well. As long as he helped them find satisfaction first, then he believed he had the right to do anything he wanted afterward, up to and including torture and strangulation. I made a note to follow up on this, to ask him at some future time what had influenced him to let some boys go and others not.
In the letter, Gacy went on to explain that whereas he hated homosexuals and “gay acting” people, he was actually bisexual—an orientation he considered quite natural.
He made a clear distinction between being with a man for mutual pleasure and actually loving another man. He thought that if there were no women around, then having another guy to “get it on with” was the next best thing. Although he held this position until his death, before he was arrested he’d completely stopped having sex with his wife and slept only with males.
The word “consenting” in this letter was also something that helped Gacy rationalize his actions and behavior. He thought that as long as someone was consenting, then literally anything that ensued, sexually or physically, was okay. This would hold equally true if the partner in question was a handcuffed, fourteen-year-old boy who’d been handed an ultimatum to perform oral sex on Gacy or die.
In my previous letter, I’d taken a bit of a risk by asking Gacy about the sense of power he felt when killing another human being—if indeed he’d actually killed