The Man Who Killed Boys Read Online Free Page A

impressed a girl friend of his sisters, Carole Kotowski. Carole was petite and perky, with a kind of vanilla-ice-cream beauty, and she giggled with John's sisters about the fact that he kept his room cleaner and neater than theirs.
    Even though they dated only once, when they were both sixteen, she remembered his neatness. She was a student at Schurz, and he had just transferred from there to Providence St. Mel High School.
    As a high school student, he did better in some classes than in others. He made better grades in English and science than in print and auto shop. Soon after his date with Carole, he transferred again, this time to Cooley Vocational High, and signed up for business courses. But a year later he had again changed schools and enrolled at Charles A. Prosser Vocational. His enthusiasm for classes changed along with the shift of schools. At Prosser his attendance was spotty, and after a couple of months he dropped out. The restlessness that had been growing within John Gacy until it culminated in his leaving school led him to a brief separation from his family. It was perhaps overdue.
    Although he respected his father, signs of strain had been increasingly developing between the two men in the family. The young man resented what some were to later describe as the senior Gacy's tendency to be a little too strict and demanding of his son. Perhaps because he was the only boy, his father was less tolerant of his problems than of those of the girls. In later years the son talked sadly of his love for his father and his disappointment that they weren't better friends. The teenager was closer to his mother and sisters. The bond between the young man and his mother was particularly strong, and she affectionately called him "Johnny."
    The day finally came when Johnny Gacy, still a teenager, left home. He headed west and eventually wound up nearly broke and alone for the first time in his life without family or close friends nearby. He landed in Las Vegas, where newcomers are appreciated more if they arrive with money than without. Jobs weren't easy to find for a teenager without so much as a high school diploma, but he finally found part-time work as a janitor, cleaning up at the Palm Mortuary.
    Twenty years later, funeral director George Wycoski recalled that Gacy was a good worker, who cleaned about two hours a night when he showed up. "He was trying to get money to get back East," said Wycoski. "That's all there is to it. He was just a transient." 2
    Gacy saved enough money within a few months to pay for his transportation, and a couple of nights later he was at home with his family, being fussed over by his sisters and eating his mother's cooking.
    His parents would have been pleased if he had returned to high school to earn a diploma. Although he had not graduated, he enrolled at Northwestern Business College. This time he applied himself to his lessons, and on graduation day he celebrated on campus by posing with his parents for pictures.
    If there was any trouble ahead for the young man, it seemed that it would involve his health. He was developing a weight problem, and the heart condition that had intruded into his life was still bothering him. In one period of three years he was doctored or hospitalized several times with heart trouble. In 1961 he spent twenty-three days in the hospital with a spine injury.
    Nevertheless, his future looked rosy, and he left business college optimistically looking forward to carving out a place for himself in the business world. A position in the sales profession was perfect for him. He loved to talk. Words spilled topsy-turvy from his mouth, and few people listened closely enough to realize how little meaning the motley collection of words and phrases often had. He was articulate and ingratiating. Those qualities, along with his natural gregariousness, made him a good salesman.
    So it wasn't long after his graduation from business school that he went to work for the Nunn-Bush