Nation: I Do Rotten, Horrible Things

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His second wife's mother, who lived with the couple, remembers often complaining of a foul smell in the house, "like dead rats." Gacy's ex-wife admits, "I think now, if there were murders, some must have taken place when I was in that house." Martin Zielinski, a friend, recalls being puzzled when Gacy once told him, "I do a lot of rotten, horrible things, but I do a lot of good things too."

Two young men who had encounters with Gacy told reporters last week how he managed to trap his victims. First he would put handcuffs on himself and release them. Then he would put the handcuffs on the boys but refuse to show them the unlocking trick. The two survivors refused to play.

By now, after more than a week of excavations, only a shell of Gacy's house remains—just the outside walls, roof and some support beams. "We are looking for any scrap of evidence—a ring, a belt buckle, a button—that will help us to identify the victims," says Dr. Robert Stein, Cook County medical examiner. Gacy cannot help with most of them because he never knew their names. He does recall Robert Piest: he was thrown in the river, and his body has not been found. Gacy—whose confession, if true, would make him the worst mass murderer in U.S. history—is now strapped into a bed at the hospital in the Cook County jail. Before the police came, he had bedecked his home with colored lights. They shone throughout Christmas, until last week when somebody finally turned them out.