Read Online The Man Who Killed Boys by Clifford L. Linedecker - Free Book Online

well as anyone. They had been close friends who worked on club projects together and partied together almost from the day Gacy arrived in Waterloo, and Hill had never seen anything that would make him believe that Gacy was the kind of man who would molest young boys. In fact, Gacy projected an image that was just about as macho as it could be. So Hill accepted Gacy's explanation of why he was in trouble. "Somebody," Hill was convinced, "had to believe in the poor guy."
    When Gacy was transferred to the prison release center at Newton, the minimum security institution where he was to spend the last few months of his sentence, it was Charlie Hill who showed up to see him on family day. On family day at Newton prisoners were given furloughs of a few hours outside the gates. Gacy qualified, and his friend Charlie Hill drove him thirty miles west to Des Moines for a steak-and-baked-potato dinner. Gacy ate two.
    His friend watched, pleased and only mildly surprised as the burly convict dug into the double meal. He was a man who enjoyed eating good food as well as preparing it. It had been months since Gacy had sat down to a similar meal.
    That night, as Charlie Hill drove on the long trip back to Waterloo, he felt better about his friend than he had in a long time. Gacy had been a model prisoner, and he was sure to win final approval for early parole.
    He had stayed out of trouble, avoided bad companions as best he could, and never missed attending Mass on Sunday. He was so well behaved and nonviolent that when a quarrel flared and another inmate punched him in the face, he didn't even strike back. John Prenosil, who worked in the kitchen with him and later became an Iowa state corrections officer, watched as Gacy shrugged his beefy shoulders, then turned and walked away, his eye already puffy and turning black and blue. Gacy had no intention of dying in prison with a piece of sharpened mattress spring or a filed-down spoon handle jammed between his generous ribs. And he didn't intend to lose good time by getting into a no-win fight with another inmate. The better he held his temper in check, the sooner he would be a free man again.
    Gacy's parole was approved eighteen months after he had begun serving time in the Black Hawk County Jail.
    No one consulted judge or prosecutor about the parole. The court's jurisdiction over a felon ends once he or she is sentenced. There are no provisions for the sentencing judge or prosecutor to continue their involvement in the fate of a convicted criminal. The convict's immediate fate is in the hands of the Department of Corrections and the Board of Parole.
    "Even if Gacy hadn't been paroled after eighteen months," Judge Van Metre pointed out, "he would have been out in less than five years." The Iowa Department of Corrections has a "good-time" formula, similar to those in most other states, that permits a well-behaved convict to compile slightly more than five years' credit off a ten-year sentence.
    When Gacy left Newton on June 18, 1970, he was a passenger in a car driven by his friend, Charlie Hill. Momentarily at least, Gacy's enthusiasm for life was dampened. He admitted to his friend that he was depressed by his experience in prison and by the way he had been mistreated and framed on the sodomy charge.
    He was also bitter because while he was in prison, his father had died—during the Christmas holidays—and state corrections officials refused to permit him to return to Chicago and attend the funeral. Gacy had told court investigators before he was sentenced that his father had a history of heart trouble.
    His mood changed as they neared Waterloo. Gacy began talking passionately about getting a new job there and putting his life back in order. But first, he said, he planned to go to Chicago and visit his mother.
    Less than twenty-four hours after his return to Waterloo, Gacy walked into Hill's office and told him he was leaving for Chicago and would see him again in a few days. Gacy never