Literary True Crime: An Interview with David Nelson
David Nelson’s debut narrative nonfiction book Boys Enter the House pays literary homage to the victims of John Wayne Gacy. Over the past four decades, Gacy has become a household name in the arsenal of serial killers, but little attention has been made in relation to the victims—who they were, what they loved. Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind (Chicago Review Press, 2021) is a compilation of research to better know the boys Gacy murdered. True crime often centers serial killers and other perpetrators of violence while victims and survivors are pushed to the periphery. But Boys Enter the House, like other important works that blend complex true crime and literary ambition—The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich; Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green; Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson; The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg—pushes past sensational true crime tropes to illuminate the human lives who were lost and the living ones that are still affected.
I have been writing about the ripple effects of these murders for the past few years and was interested in meeting over Zoom and email with Nelson to learn more about his craft, process, and what drew him to the subjects. My mom, Kim Byers, was the prime witness on the trial of Gacy. She was friends and coworkers with his final victim, Rob Piest. The story of these men and boys and my mother’s role has played a large part in my life with generational storytelling and what we inherit when placed in proximity to such horror. It only made sense to learn more of David’s process in writing this book.
Courtney Lund O’Neil: Boys Enter the House is an exciting new way to look at true crime, which typically does not spend significant time on the lives of the victims. In this case you are examining the case of John Wayne Gacy from a different angle. What drew you to tell the lives of the victims?
David Nelson: When I originally moved to Chicago for journalism school in 2011, the story was back in the news. It goes in and out of the news a lot, because it still draws a lot of interest. In fall of 2011 though, it was circulating for a few reasons: one, there was a mother, Sherry Marino, who always suspected the remains given to her were not actually her son, Michael Marino. She was pushing to get him exhumed and retested via DNA (according to a third-party DNA company, she was proved right in 2016). Two, the same law firm that was helping Mrs. Marino was also looking at evidence of a possible accomplice to Gacy’s crimes. And then, three, the Cook County Sheriff’s Department was exhuming the then-eight unidentified victims. They eventually came back about a month later with their first identification: Bill Bundy.
So, naturally, being fascinated in true crime and being at grad school for journalism, I took a peek at the case. I wrote a little update on the case during that time but didn’t get the victims’ voices in it (just investigators and lawyers), so I looked even closer for a possible long form piece. As I started delving into the stories of the victims, who they were, where they were from, I started discovering that a good portion of them had lived on the north side, Uptown, where I was living at the time. I could literally look up an article, find the address where they lived, and then take a short walk to their apartment building. I realized that, at the time, the whole case had unfolded around me only thirty years ago… so in a way, the story sort of found me, but then I couldn’t stop learning about it.
CLO: How did you go about writing Gacy without centering him? What did you do differently from other books about this case?
DN: While I knew that Gacy was not going to be the focus of the project when I started, I still had to put him in somehow. As much as you want to make it about the victims, you still have to create tension within story.
One thing that I drew influence from was the movie Jaws. While Steven Spielberg was making the movie, he had a ton of problems with the mechanical shark, so he had to be, as he called it, “Hitchcockian.” So, throughout the movie, you don’t see the shark, maybe just the fin or bubbles, or just the thought of it is enough to create tension on the screen. And that’s what happens in the book; you sort of vaguely meet Gacy at the start (I only refer to him as “John”), just like the shark carries out the horrible attack on the young woman at the start of Jaws.
CLO: I love that, the Jaws analogy. How long did it take you to write this book and what tips might you offer other writers interested in reported or researched narrative nonfiction books?
DN: All told, the book took about eight years; however, that doesn’t mean it was eight years solid, every day, every night. Looking back at my journal of progress and to-do items, I took a lot of hiatuses and breaks. I wrote other things along the way or pursued other ideas. I had to self-teach myself how to research, and I think I still have a lot of room to learn there. But I will say, one of the key things is how you approach people you want to interview or talk to for the book, especially when discussing potentially unsettling or traumatic experiences. I’ve seen even seasoned journalists and writers struggle with this, particularly with this case. Going into it with empathy and honesty is helpful. Don’t overdo it or butter people up, and express empathy to what they went through and explain what you’re looking for. Be short and sweet in your approach, but also honest and gentle. Don’t push, don’t try too many times, and make sure to listen. They’re not there to hear about you; be quiet.
CLO: What were your influences while writing this book? What were you reading?
DN: Aside from Jaws, there is also a lot of true crime that influenced me as well. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara was heavy in my head for a lot of this book. Victims take a much bigger role in her book, and you can see her influence on them in the docuseries for HBO too, how much she started helping them find some sense of closure, even before the killer was caught. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson was also key for me, because it has this balance of true crime and Chicago history, which I think my book has too with the history of some of the neighborhoods. His book about the sinking of the Lusitania, Dead Wake, was also a good guide for how to structure my book. In his, you have a group of passengers that he is following as they make their way toward a horrific event. In some ways, my book was similar, though my victims got to their horrific event at different times. Still, it was a good way to see how to structure and weave stories together.
CLO: We spoke briefly about how researching many of the queer communities the victims belonged to affected your own coming out journey. Can you share a bit more about how you saw yourself in the lives of these boys?
DN: There is a large chapter in the book called “In the Company of Homosexuals” which is probably my favorite in the book. This was a phrase that appeared a lot in the police reports from the 70s—so and so suspects someone may be “in the company of homosexuals.” That was a catch-all phrase for anything non-heteronormative, and unfortunately that tangled up a lot of sinister aspects of human sexuality with things that are today starting to be viewed as normal. In this case, there is a lot of deviancy, specifically pedophilia, that unfortunately was just referred to as homosexuality. I think, because society viewed anything non-heteronormative with such suspicion and disdain, these people gravitated to the same areas, to other people who were rejected by society, living side by side. Unfortunately, some of those people were also sort of flying under the radar at the expense of people, like ordinary gay men, who were trying to live a normal life.
And as I started researching, I knew there was going to be an LGBTQ angle to the story, or specifically a gay angle, but I just wasn’t sure how much. I knew maybe a few of the victims indeed identified as gay, but I wasn’t sure how many. During my research, I ended up hearing a lot of stories, some of which I was asked not to publish, which I thought was sad. People are still uncomfortable acknowledging the truths behind their loved ones’ identities. In this case, I think talking about sexuality gave some of the victims so much more dimension and depth, which is why I wanted to uncover and tell those stories with permission. And I like to think, hopefully, that the victims who did identify as gay before their death would want that part of their lives told.
What made me sad about these stories is that these kids were at the start of their lives, and, in some cases, a few of them were struggling with their identity, trying to figure out what exactly they liked and who they were. In my case, I didn’t want to be like that—I didn’t want to regret anything or live in the shadows like some of these victims. Chicago is a place where you can be yourself, and I think in the 1970s we were seeing the start of that. Because the lives of these people were cut short, I wanted to live for them; I leaned into everything I was feeling at the time and began a journey of coming out that took place in many stages over a few years.
CLO: Thank you for sharing that. On a similar note, what kind of larger cultural commentaries do you hope Boys Enter the House makes?
DN: Obviously, I don’t expect this to start a movement of victim-centric retellings, but I do think there’s an example to be set, not just by my book, but by the podcasts I’ve listened to and books I’ve read: there should be some focus on victims. Their voices need to be amplified and present within these stories more. We see ourselves in these victims, which is why we come to true crime to begin with, I think. Tap into that.
CLO: Toward the very end of the book, you write: “After their disappearance, after their murders, they walked, like living people, through the landscape of others’ dreams.” It is beautiful, this image of the boys visiting their families through dreams. Do you think there can ever be closure on a case like this—why or why not?
DN: No, I don’t. I think there can be better days and things can fade a bit, but it is always present. Maybe not in the visceral memories of the case but in the way families have formed their relationships with each other, in the next generations. These murders created a ripple effect in the lives of their families and friends. There has been addiction, suicide, divorce, and a host of interpersonal challenges for the people affected. Their kids and grandkids are facing these issues too. This case is a crater, and hundreds of people have fallen in and attempted to climb out, but I don’t think it’ll ever fully happen. Instead of climbing out of the crater, they have to learn to live inside it.
David Nelson (@Nelson88David) is the author of several short stories published in The Rappahannock Review, The Tishman Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received honorable mentions from Glimmer Train. His coverage of ongoing war crime trials and the DNA identification process for victims of the Balkans conflicts was published by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). A graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Nelson has been researching the John Wayne Gacy case since 2012, when he published an update on the case’s developments for Medill.
Courtney Lund O’Neil (@courtneylundo) is a writer living in California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, Harper’s Bazaar, Washington Post, The Normal School, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere.