Conversazioni con un killer: Il caso Gacy

I'm a true crime junkie and of course have seen most documentaries on Gacy. This one though, I hadn't heard any of these audio clips before and it really shows the evil of the man. In most footage and interviews Gacy had a mask on. These tapes are something else though. There is one point in episode three where he laughs and if it doesn't send a chill up your spine, nothing will. Probably the best Netflix documentary series I've watched so far.

A concise and well put together documentary on John Gacy, focusing on the investigators and putting a positive highlight on the victims. The interviews were relevant and good use of archival footage.

With most drama shows or even documentaries on Netflix, they can be rather hit or miss, but generally one thing that a viewer can always bank on is that Netflix delivers the goods with regards to documentaries concerning serial killers. The reason is perhaps society's morbid fascination behind the minds of the worst killers of the past century. The John Wayne Gacy tapes were fascinating to watch, I never heard of this case before watching this documentary. Perhaps due to the fact of my age as I was only a baby when he finally was executed much less caught earlier in the late 70s.

The documentary is spanned over 3 episodes, the first looks into the victim that opened then case and also into John Gacy's background as a young man, all very informative and you think of this killer as a person, not one you are empathetic towards but perhaps understanding towards how his sociopathy came to be. One thing of note. I have to say and perhaps the documentary could have been a little stronger at pointing out. Across the United States, sodomy was a criminal offence as was buggery. So homosexuality was unfortunately looked upon very negatively by many people in the United States. Which of course has much changed since. The second episode focuses on the case and the building of it. The third episode looks at conclusion of the case, the trial, the execution. Spread throughout the 3 part documentary you have interviews with people from all angles of the case. People who were almost victims, relatives of victims. The cops, prosecuters, defence attorny and indeed John Gacy via tapes from beyond the grave

Eventually in the modern era with the advancement of DNA technology, bodies that just had numbers attached to their names were identified years after being buried. All in all, one of the beat serial killer documentaries out there. You'll not be disappointed if you enjoy watching them.

The coverage was great and the events reconstructed in depth but I feel it wasn't as shocking as it should've been. I've watched the episodes about Ted Bundy from the same creators and I remember feeling disgusted and upset about the way he killed and tortured his victims. Now, I know there are certain things you can't say on tv but in a 3 hours documentary not once it was mentioned (they never dared to even say the word) what he did to his victims before he killed them. There were really slight allusions to tortures in the last minutes but overall it made it seem like he "just" killed his underage victims and it's just not acceptable that a documentary about a "man" like Gacy tries to sugarcoat his crimes. I'm not saying it should've contained gory descriptions and details to the point it becomes morbid and in no way I am one of those sickos who like hearing about stuff like that, but to me these documentaries should be about raising awareness and turning the general public's interest away from this type of individuals; they're doing the opposite, and if Netflix wants to turn serial killers into easily digestible mass-consumable entertainment it should stick to its shows about imaginary ones.

In the annals of US serial killer history, there have been numerous more prolific, depraved or callous perpetrators than John Wayne Gacy.

Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway, Albert Fish and Richard Ramirez are names that spring to mind.

But I somehow found Gacy's story to be the most sickening. This monster had absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever and didn't appear to be the product of his upbringing or environment. He was a hateful and sadistic sexual deviant by design.

His heartlessness and utter contempt for human life was seriously difficult to comprehend. He was completely hellbent on indulging in his perverted tendencies and disposed of human bodies like they were bags of waste.

Listening to the arrogant, conceited and self-indulgent pig's recordings really got on my nerves. Not even the slightest hint of regret or remorse in him. Quite the opposite in fact, he was actually proud of his hideous life's work and revelled in his infamy, celebrity status, the attention he attracted from Police and the pain and suffering he caused his victims and their families.

When he said that because he had paid for the sexual services of many of his victims he was entitled to do whatever he liked to them, like something you buy from a shop, it became crystal clear that these deaths were not merely the outcome of sexual misadventure.

His insanity plea was a blatant ploy to save his own neck. I believe that most people have some form of mental illness, emotional weakness or inner demons to face, but only the most extreme cases can be used in defence of multiple murders. The question is whether those disorders, however severe, prevent a person from exercising self-control.

Gacy's debauched series of crimes were clearly the actions of an extremely cold-hearted and calculating individual, with a carefully premeditated strategy. I don't feel that he was ever impulsive or out of control - he made a succession of conscious decisions, based on sinister fantasies that he went on to realise time and time again. He was a control freak who got off on owning and degrading his victims.

He might be the most repulsive human being I've ever come across. A lethal injection was a wholly inadequate and relatively painless end, in stark contrast to his casualties. The rotter deserved to suffer total misery and solitude for the rest of his sorry existence. He got off pretty damn lightly in my opinion.

This documentary was extremely difficult to digest and made me feel somewhat uneasy. God only knows what the poor souls who had to unearth all the corpses from Gacy's crawlspace went through.

I also felt that compared with the superbly-made Netflix series 'Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes' it was a little repetitive, lacked explanation and coherence in places, contained some very strange and irrelevant imagery between segments and didn't fully examine important aspects of Gacy's crimes.

That was partly down to the insignificance with which law enforcement treated many of the disappearances, due to the status and vagrant nature of the victims. There were plenty of opportunities to put Gacy behind bars for a long, long time way before his eventual arrest.

There was such a strong homophobia embedded into US society at this point in time that sex crimes committed against males were not taken seriously. The stigma of homosexuality was so negative that many of Gacy's victims were outcasts who had been disowned by their families and living on the fringes of society, which he preyed upon and took advantage of.

It was as though the lives of these young men didn't really matter to anybody.

I think that was what I disliked most about this documentary - the fact that it was a continuation of Gacy's twisted, nightmarish legacy and perpetuating his wicked life for future generations to experience, but with a tragic lack of information on the majority of his victims.

He really should be erased from existence rather than documented or sensationalised. Since notoriety was something he craved it would be the most appropriate course of action.