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This conversation was so strange because we were both pretending we were talking about a mysterious killer who had yet to be found. Although his language would sometimes slip, he was careful to keep up the fiction of his own innocence. Once I acknowledged his lack of culpability, then he’d freely talk about the crimes as if someone else had done them.

“John,” I asked at one point, “who the hell is the guy who killed all these kids, then?”

“We think it’s actually a group of guys. Probably drugs were involved.”

I smiled at the way he used “we” as if his theory of the case were the prevailing one. I wondered what would happen if I pushed him more.

“Doesn’t it piss you off to think that all these people out-smarted and manipulated you?” I asked. “I mean, to think that these guys came into your house, used all your stuff, and then framed you for murder. How could you have not seen it coming?”

“Those fuckin’ kids couldn’t control a goddamn thing!” he screamed, as angry as I’d yet seen him. “Nobody framed me. They just got lucky and I took the fall.”

He seemed to calm down of his own accord. “The state contends I was the killer, that I had all this anger and rage. Shit, I had no time to kill anyone, even if I wanted to. I was running a $300,000-a-year business.”

Continuing through his secret files, we next moved to his appeals to the United States Supreme Court. I had a keen interest in the law, and I was fascinated by what I saw here regarding the intricacies of preventing an execution. Gacy, by contrast, seemed profoundly bored. I noticed that he kept looking at his watch, then glancing outside the room to check where the guards were positioned. Each time I noted his attention averted away from me, I checked the time as well, counting the minutes until Ken would arrive.

So far, I was encouraged by the way the morning was progressing—it wasn’t at all like the disaster of the previous day. It really seemed as if I’d gained the upper hand.

Unfortunately, my optimism was misplaced, a fact that became clear when I noticed the pen in Gacy’s hand. He kept playing with it. Still vivid in my mind was his threat from the previous day in which he described how easy it would be to stick the pen in my neck and let me choke on my own blood.

“So, John,” I said to ease the tension, “tell me about the next step with your appeal.”

“Huh?” he answered, not at all sure what I’d asked him.

“I said—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupted. “Would you like to see the way I supposedly killed those boys?”

“You mean the rope trick?” I answered apprehensively, remembering having read about it. It would be interesting to see how he did it. I was feeling confident I could control him.

“Here,” he said, “give me your wrist. I’ll show you how it works.”

I noticed now that he wasn’t making any attempt to hide his guilt. Strange how he seesawed back and forth between indignant protests of innocence and outright admissions of being what everyone said he was.

The rope trick is what Gacy called his technique of strangling victims. First, he’d place some rope around the neck of a boy under his control—usually, the boy was handcuffed with his arms behind his back—and he’d twist the rope once. Next, he’d place a stick or some other object behind the twisted rope and slowly turn it. This method of strangulation enabled him to have complete control over the victim’s airflow. If he wanted the victim to die quickly, he’d twist the stick several times tightly, but if he wanted him to breathe again, he’d gently unravel the stick. Using this method, he could take his victims in and out of consciousness as he pleased, enabling the torture to go on for hours.

Gacy took the pen in his hand and inserted it under the bracelet I was wearing, next to my skin. “Feel the pain this could cause,” he said, smiling as he twisted the pen around, causing the bracelet to tighten around my wrist.

Just as I started to wince, he said, “Now I could have some fun; I really could.” With that, he gave it one final twist, pinching my skin in the process.

And