Latest / Legally Brunette / Killer Thriller: Bodies Under the Floorboards - Inside John Wayne Gacy’s House of Horrors

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Killer Thriller: Bodies Under the Floorboards - Inside John Wayne Gacy’s House of Horrors · Legally Brunette

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Killer Thriller with your host,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Elisa Donovan.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hey, everybody. Elisa Donovan here, and this is Killer Thriller.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: For years, young men and teenage boys were disappearing around Chicago.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Some had worked for the same local contractor. Others had
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: survived terrifying encounters with him and gone to police. But
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy remained free. It wasn't until 15-year-old Robert
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Piest disappeared in 1978 that investigators finally searched Gacy's home
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: and uncovered the horrifying truth. The respected businessman and community
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: volunteer had murdered 33 young men and boys, burying most
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: of them beneath and around his house. Devil in Disguise,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy, tells the story not just of Gacy,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: but of the victims, their families, and the failures that
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: allowed him to keep killing. Joining me today is the
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: series creator and showrunner, Patrick McManus.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Hi, Patrick.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Killer Thriller. Thank you so much for talking
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: with me today.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: We have so much to cover that I don't even
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: know where to begin, but I want to say, first off,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Devil in Disguise is one of the most, it's so disturbing.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: And this man was just one of, I don't say
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: this often, even though this is a podcast about true
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: crime and we cover serial killers and some horrific things.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: This John Wayne Gacy, he might be pure evil.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: He's really, I feel like one of these, I've never
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: seen anything like it just kind of the way he
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: talks about the bodies and the murders in this matter
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: of fact way and has pride it's just it's chilling
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: it's disturbing and the the series is so good and
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: um i have heard that you actually turned this project
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: down twice so is that true and then what finally
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: made you realize that there was a john wayne gacy
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: story that you wanted to.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Tell first of all i i can't agree with you
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: more uh yeah it's gacy is an extraordinary figure and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and and i'm not using that euphemistically i i i
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: will get into it a little in in greater detail
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: but i found him to be completely confusing and and
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: we could talk about this in the development of the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: show in a little bit but it wasn't just me
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: it was our writers once the writers room got started
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: it was Michael Ternes, who played him in the show
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: where we were all just, he's amazing. And he's also
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: just a spectacular human being beyond being talented, which is
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: annoying because I'm a terrible human being, but, or I'm,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: or I'm not talented. I have a great team of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: writers who are stupid enough to work with me over
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and over again. But anyways, I, so we'll get into
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: him in a second, but I agree. I think that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: there's a very real probability that he's as close to
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: as close to evil as you get. And as it
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: relates to the point of your question, yeah, I turned
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: it down twice. They kept coming back. This was Peacock.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: They kept coming back saying, we really need you to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: do it. And I said, no. And through a series
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: of conversations with people that I have a great deal
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: of respect for, that I've worked with for a long
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: time over there, they said, well, what would it take
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: for you to do it? And I said, well, I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: would want to really focus it on the victims' stories
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and not on John Wayne Gacy.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: And not on the murders. And I don't want to
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: show a single murder.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And I really, I've talked about this quite a bit
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: over the last 18 months or so, where I thought
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: that would be it. And then they called my bluff
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and they were like, okay, sure, you can do it
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: that way. And look, the reason that I wanted to
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: do it that way wasn't out of some desire to, like,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, or to be more reductive, like to do
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the right thing in true crime that had nothing to
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: do with it. It was simply that we were coming
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: out of the, you know, Dahmer had just come out
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and was an extraordinary success. It was before the Menendez
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: side of things. I had done a couple of seasons
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of True Crime. I'd watched a lot of True Crime.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I just felt like if you were going to do it,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: then you needed to do it different. You had to
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: try to do something different. You had to make it
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: interesting in some way and not just have it be
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: a show about a guy killing.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: People all the time.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And that's... that's sort of what took us down that
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: primrose path. And then I was lucky enough to, the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: writers I've worked with for a long time, they sort
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: of got what the mission was and they really helped
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: make the show what it became. Yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate that so much that it's told from
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: their perspective for the most part. And just with a
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: generally a great respect for the The victims, and it
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: begins with Robert Pease's disappearance rather than Gacy's childhood, which
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: obviously you just explained why, or even his first murder.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: So why was Robert the right way into the story?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that part of it had to do
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: with the fact that I had told the studio and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: the network that I wasn't going to show a single murderer.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And so if that becomes sort of your thesis statement
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of what you're going– how you're going to approach the work,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: then you– it almost assuredly– and by the way, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: then by extension, you're not making it about John Wayne Gacy–
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: then almost by extension, the logical next move– is for
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: you to pick up with him being caught.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: And then try to.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And then you're building a story about not who did it,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: but why did it and who did they do it to.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And by extension to that, then that became... you know,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't really, you know, to go back for a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: second on, on this whole idea of focusing on the victims,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know what that meant.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I just said it. And then I didn't know really
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: how to achieve it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Um, right. Cause I really was just trying to get
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: them to say no to me. I was trying to
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: get them to like, say, you're okay.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: Well, we don't want that. You're, you're, you're boring.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Um, and, um, and then when they got behind it,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I had to figure that part out and, and that, um,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And I can tell you, I was in DC visiting
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: friends with my kids and my wife, and I was
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: on a run down on the National Mall.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: And it just.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Hit me that what I would do is I would
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: focus it on their backstories without having anything to do
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: with John Wayne Gacy. And so once I figured that
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: part out, then it became like, let's start with the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: last victim and then make our way back to how
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: do we tell their stories. And that's part one. And
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: then part two was why start with Robert Piest was
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that Piest was really the only victim that they truly
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: took seriously, right? And so if a part of the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: storytelling became about how these other victims were, again, I'm
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: being reductive for the point of this conversation right now,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: were ignored for various reasons, then you want to figure
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: out why, you want to begin with why did the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: police pay attention? And that was Robert Peast. So that's
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: why we started there.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: That's one of the most frustrating parts of the case
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: is how many warning signs, how many things, you know,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the sort of devastating failures of the Chicago PD. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of that seems to be related to the
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: bigotry and, you know, trying to blame the boys as
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: delinquents and gay addicts. And there just was a real
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: prejudice against gay men at the time. So How much
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: did assumptions that some of these men were gay, transient,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: or runaways affect the urgency or the lack thereof of
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: which their disappearances were treated?
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: So, look, this is a somewhat dangerous question to answer
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: because what I don't want and what we never wanted
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: was for anyone to come away from the show with
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: demonizing the police, right? Like it was important that, and
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I think that we really achieved it by, by in
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: two different avenues.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: This will come to your question to answer your question.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Number one is that it's really important to remember that,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: that while putting our show aside, but while you can
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: go back and you can look at all the prejudices and,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: and all the bigotry and, and, and just sort of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the systemic cultural corruption within the police force. And what
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I mean by that is that it was very common
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: for kids.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: To just disappear.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And so kids ran away, and the police were like,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: these are kids who just ran away, and so they'll
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: come back.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: They usually come back.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: That's above and beyond bigotry, the prejudice against homophobia.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: That's above and beyond....
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: The general bigotry against kids who came from the wrong
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: side of the tracks or, or who had some, you know,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: either drug addiction or petty crimes or anything like that, that,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: that influenced.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Them as well.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So we had that, but on the flip side, it
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: was all the police that were in that pit for
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: months on end, trying to uncover every victim and, and,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and trying to put a name to, to, bits of
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: bone and, and whose lives were, many of whose lives
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: were ruined by it, who turned to alcohol and drugs,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: who got divorced, who left the force because.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: It was so overwhelming to them.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, I think it's easy for us to,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to just to put all of the cops in this
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: basket of it's their fault. And I think it's, what
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: we tried to do is to find sort of all
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: of the reasons for why it was their fault while
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: also trying showing, appropriately so, the heroism of the police.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: That finally stepped in and tried to fight. try to
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: name all of these boys.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I think that's one of the strongest parts of the whole,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, the series, as I said, I think is
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: really excellent in so many ways, but that is very powerful.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: How we keep coming back to just digging in that
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: horrific space. And, it's so relentless because it was a
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: relentless endeavor. But it's really very strong. And it's so
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: effective that we get to see several of the cops
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: in their full, like their real passion to try to
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: solve this and help people.
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: And it does an excellent job of that, for sure.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Thank you. It's easy, by the way.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, in my opinion, it's very easy to do true
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: crime right because the story has been told. You just
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: have to figure out how to tell it right. And
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: for these police officers, they really, really did sacrifice quite
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: a bit to try to bring these boys home as
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: best they could.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is definitely clear. Robert Donnelly is another victim.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: He survived an assault and went to the police. And
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Rignall also survived a horrific, horrific attack and ultimately
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: tracked Gacy down himself. And he kind of had to
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: become his own investigator because there was no statutory precedent
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: at the time for what happened to him.
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: A man can't be raped by another man.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: So Was that one of the stories that changed the
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: way you viewed the case?
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: If I'm being completely honest with you, that was the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: reason why I ultimately said yes to doing the show, Rignell.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Because I, and not only that, it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Was also, so I had sworn off the idea of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: ever directing Rignell.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: I have a hard time being.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm always on set and I have a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: hard time being on set because it's so boring to me.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Because it's just... And I always want the excuse as
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: showrunner to be like, I got to go to a meeting.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: I'm going over here.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: But I will say that I... And I think showrunning
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: is hard enough. You don't want to throw directing on top.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: But I will say that when I read the Rignell
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: story before I said yes, that was the reason why
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I said yes. And then I even said to the studio,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the network, if I ever... if I'm ever going to
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: be open, and this was 18 months before we shot,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, if I'm ever going to be open
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to directing, I would want to direct that story. And
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I ended up doing it. I ended up directing that story.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: But I find that to be, I don't want to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: say the most compelling, but it was like the story
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: that best summed up everything that went wrong with this case.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, It was the story that
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: best humanized these young men who were being dehumanized in
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: many ways because of who they were or who they
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: loved or the mistakes that they had made. And you
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: really got to see this person take agency in their
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: own lives to fight back against the system that was
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: basically make forcing his hand like Rignal was, was for,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: he was, and he refused to just sit there. He
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: refused to just take it. And that's so compelling to me.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: I find him an extraordinary human being, even in the,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: you know, some of the documentary footage that I've watched
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: with him in particular is his full fierce spirit comes
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: through his fate, like comes through the screen where you
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: see that determination of like the outrage of But the
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: ability to take care of, to say, nobody's going to
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: do it but me.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: Like, I have to.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: It's really something. Back to Gacy himself.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, yes.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. One of the strangest relationships in the story is
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: between John Wayne Gacy and Sam Amiranti, who becomes his attorney.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And Gacy initially presents himself essentially as a victim of
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: police harassment. And then he starts admitting what he's done
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: to Sam. So can you talk about how do you
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: dramatize the moment that a young attorney realizes his client
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: may be one of the most prolific murderers in American history?
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: This is where I'm going to disappoint your audience.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Your fans and your listeners and everything.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: This was the easiest show that I've ever written because
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: it was all there.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: This is all real.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And what we had to figure out was how to
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: dramatize it. When I first got in alone into the process,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And I was researching him. I was like, this guy's
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: not real. Like, how do you write this guy? How
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: do you write this guy who flies into everything, says
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: everything is real.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: But it's not my fault. But yeah, I did this
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: and I did that.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And he does it jovially and kind of goofily. And
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: he's like the guy at the bar who's a little annoying,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: but you still laugh at him every once in.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: A while, right?
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then I had to get over it because
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I did all this research and I listened to all
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: these tapes of him. And I, and I was like,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: this is who this guy is. First day of the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: writer's room writers. I've worked with some of them for
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: over a decade. Others first time.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: In a room with me. And I, and they're all,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: they all call bullshit on me on my pilot. They
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: were like, this is not get out of here. This
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: is bullshit. Right. Right. And I said, I said, guys, like,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: go take all the research that I have. Take the week, go.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: And they all came back.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And they all said the same thing, which is how
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: do we write this guy? Like, this guy doesn't make sense.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Michael Chernus, same thing when we met. How do I
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: act this guy? And where Chernus and I landed was
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: that if you make him evil, if you make him
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: dumber or, you know, whatever, right? Then you were actually
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: doing a disservice to the victims, right? Because you've got
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to give the victim's permission to have taken the job,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to have hung out in his house, to have gotten
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: in the car.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: You've got to lean into the fact that this was
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: a guy that everybody wanted to hang out with. He
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: was fun.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: And he had something to offer some people. It was
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: a job that was.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Paying more than twice as much as working at the
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: pharmacy or whatever it might be.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: And so there are.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: 29... bodies were ultimately recovered from Gacy's property and four
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: from waterways. Again, the 29 people in that crawl space.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: And in fact, he had said he had to start
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: dumping them in the river because there wasn't enough space anymore.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: And that's just hard to wrap your head around. But
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: was there anything about the physical scale of the crime
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: scene that was particularly difficult to recreate?
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: We did everything we could do on location.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Sorry. In Toronto, where we shot, we.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Had the exterior, the physical location that matched best with
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: his house. We had to do some changes to it
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: to make it look exactly like the front.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: And then on stage, we built.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: an only slightly larger version of the full house. And
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: so we had, we had, it was up two stories.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And so we had a lower deck that was basically
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: where we had all of our equipment and we were
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: able to bring cameras up into the actual crawl space,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: which was only slightly larger than what the real crawl
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: space was.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Cause we obviously had all the dimensions.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: And so we built the physical crawl space that also
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: included the dirt and graves. Like we built all the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: graves and all that so that we could do all
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the digging in real life. And then on top of that,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: we had the actual height of the distance between the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: ground of the, between the top of the, of the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: dirt and the bottom of the top of the floor.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And the hardest part of the, of the job, I mean, again,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: for me, it's pretty easy. I'm sitting in video village
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: for the actors. They're literally crawling through this space and
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: digging in this space was that we had to shoot the,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the entire season in a way in which the house
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: was fully together, and then we broke it all apart.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: And normally, if you look at the scripts, we would
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: be bouncing back and forth between putting the floor together
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: and taking it apart, but we had to shoot it
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: in a way that we shot out the house in
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: its entirety, and then we just, over lunch, when I
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: tell you that over lunch, our crew flipped the stage
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and ripped up all the floorboards and everything like that
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and created the torn up space, It was a salute
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: achievement by our production design team and our crew to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: build what they did in the way that they did.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: And it was haunting.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll say that I have done this for.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: A long time.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I typically, on all of my shows, will find a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: place on stage that I know most people won't.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Be on any given day, so I can just kind
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: of go in there and work quietly.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: This was the first stage that I'd never went and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: worked in because it was it was too disturbing.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Gacy himself had said, I mean, it's, he's so, he's
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: just so diabolical because it's like he gave all that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: He hired some of these boys to dig under there.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Because he couldn't fit under there himself. So he needed
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: someone else to assist.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: And there's a reason why there are conspiracy theories out
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: there that there were others that helped him. And we
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: did not get into that.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Right. Because they think it's not possible that he could
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: have done all this himself.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Right. There is enough, and I apologize.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: To your listeners that I have a few constraints on
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: me from my partners at the studio and the network,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't take a lot.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: To do a quick research on this.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: There are a couple of his employees who they think
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: knew what was going on and that they helped investigate.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: in terms of digging underneath the floorboards. But there were
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: absolutely a couple of.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Victims who didn't know that they were ultimately digging their
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: own graves in there as well.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they always, they smelled the smells, they
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: knew something wasn't right, but the vast majority were just
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: in there partying with him and just thought his house
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: smelled bad.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Right. Right. Yeah.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Like just maybe wasn't the, the cleanest of guys. I mean,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: and you can, and especially we have to remember most
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of these people were, you know, they were kids, teenagers
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: and they wanted to work. They just wanted to make money.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And if they could make money and party, like that's
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: a home run.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Correct. And that's what he offered.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's, it's, I mean, we never really, and purposefully,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: because I don't care to really know what broke him.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I fundamentally believe, and I know that Michael Chernus and
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I talked about it often in the writer's room, we
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: talked about it all the time, that there was never
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: going to be a moment in this show that the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: audiences were going to be able to the audience was
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: going to be able to pinpoint as us saying, this
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: is the reason why he did it.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: And the reason.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Why is that the excuses that he made or could
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: make had something to do with an abusive father. The
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: excuses that he made or could make had something to
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: do with his suppressed homosexuality, society not letting him be
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: who he really was. And what we always circled back
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: around to always circled back around you. Every time we
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: got like close to excusing it, we came back to
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that there are millions, tens of millions, hundreds
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of millions over the course of all of humanity of
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: boys and girls who were abused by their parents who
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: didn't go and murder 33 people. And there are millions,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who identify
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: as queer and who didn't go and murder 33 people.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: And so whatever excuses could be made for his psychology,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: ultimately to your first point that you made, I think
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: comes down to nature instead of nurture and that he
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: just was evil and there was no.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: Way around it.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: That's a very reductive term to use, but I don't
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: know how else you explain this person.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: You and your team actually tracked down the victims' families.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: What did those families tell you they were most worried
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: about when they heard that another John Wayne Gacy series
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: was being made?
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to answer very quickly and then I'll get
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit in detail. We received zero responses back
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: that were worried. Very interesting. Because we didn't have to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: reach out. That's not something that you legally have to
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: do in any way, shape or form. It was purely
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: something that was basically like the other thing that I
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: said to the student network, which was that this is
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: a non-starter.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: I'm going to reach out to anyone that I can
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: get in contact with.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't that I was looking for their blessings
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and I was definitely not looking for them to share
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: information with me.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: It was actually the opposite.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: It was that I wanted them to be given the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: opportunity to be able to tell me that they were
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: angry at me, that they were upset that it was happening.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And allow me the opportunity to be able to discuss
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: with them what I was going to try to accomplish
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in this.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Um, and so we reached out to, to thankfully universal.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: They did a very deep dive trying to find every
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: point of contact they could. We reached out to literally
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: every point of contact that we could find that was
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: by some of them were just addresses.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: So there were letters that I sent. Some of them
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: were emails.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Some of them were phone calls that I just called rant,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: like cold called numbers and didn't, I actually never got
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: a phone call.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: Um, I never got a phone call back.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: But the five or six family members that got back
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: to me at that time that we were developing it,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: they all sort of said, you know.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: We wish you luck. We hope that you're able to
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: do it in a way that is respectful. But there
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: wasn't anyone.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Who rejected it wholesale.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: I can tell you that I don't know how they
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: feel now.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Now that it's been out, I have
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: no idea.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Did anything they say cause you to change something you
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: had planned to put.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: In the show?
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: No. No, it didn't. There were only two phone calls.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: There were a handful of people who got back to me.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: So there were emails, and there were two phone calls
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: that ultimately got back to me. And one of them, again,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I would prefer not to say who they were, but
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: one of them began to talk about the time and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: place of Chicago and how they felt like that affected
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the outcome for their relative, which was, which was interesting
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: to hear it out of their mouths as opposed to
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: just the research that we had done, but it supported
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the research that we did.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: But then it never got back. It never, we never got.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Into specifics about who they were as people or what
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: their family lives were like or anything like that.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: All right, last question here on this. After we haven't
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: even talked about how John Wayne Gacy was associated with
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: this clown figure, which really that was sort of not really,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: it was a bit of sensationalism. So what do you
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: think that people fundamentally misunderstood about how John Wayne Gacy
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: was able to get away with murder for so long?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Or what do you think they fundamentally misunderstand about him?
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: Look, I think that there are a couple of things.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: First of all, I think it happened so long ago
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: that the vast majority of people actually don't have an
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: opinion on him other than the fact that he was
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the clown killer. And I'll talk about that in a second.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I think that there was a small percentage of people
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: who probably came into the show understanding that there was
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: a breakdown in Chicago PD and how they approached it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: This is just my opinion. This is not rooted in
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: any data or anything or fact. I would imagine that
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: there were some who believed that he was a gay
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: killer and that just didn't really understand the nuances around
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Gacy and his homosexuality or his queerness. But I think
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of people, especially, I mean, look, I'm 50.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Years old, right?
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: This basically predated me, right?
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: And all I knew was, before I started to research it,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: was that he was the clown killer.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And in fact, all I genuinely thought coming in that
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: he did dress as a clown and kill kids, right?
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And once I figured out that we were not going
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to show the murders, and once I figured out that
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: we were going to try to tell the backstories of
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the victims without connecting them to Gacy, and once I
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: found out that there is no evidence that he dressed
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: as a clown as he killed his victims, I became
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: so set in stone probably to a fault, and I
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: can comment that if you would like or not, that
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I rejected the clown completely, that I didn't want it
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in the show.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: And I didn't want it in our marketing at all.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I wanted this to be the anti-clown Gacy show. And
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I think I may have been a little bit too
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: strident about that, almost to the detriment of the commerciality
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of the show.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: Well, they used it in the marketing.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: They did.
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: It was a fight.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I will tell you that I was not supportive of it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: But I will tell you that if I could make
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a time machine and go back in time, I would
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: have had them do clowns all over the place. Really.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Because I think we would have been more commercially successful.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that if even more people came to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: watch the show, then I would have been able to
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: tell the story that I wanted to tell, which was
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: come and watch this show, but I had to get
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: them in their seats. And I think that I was
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a little bit too purist about it.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Well, it is.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Streaming on Peacock right now, Devil in Disguise. It is
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: a very powerful series. So hopefully many more people will
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: watch it now. Patrick, you're just a dream. Thank you
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: so much for talking with me.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: I'm going to call you every morning and have you
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: say that. Do you mind? Because I need a little
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: bit more validation in my life. You're a dream. Have
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: a good day. Thank you.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: This has been an absolute pleasure and I really appreciate
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: you plugging the show because everybody should go out and
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: watch it.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: We are not done with Patrick McManus yet.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Next time on Killer Thriller, he'll be back to take
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: us inside his series, The Girl from Plainville, and the
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: real story behind the case that became known as the
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: texting suicide trial.