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News Anchor: The murder trial of John Gacy
did indeed get underway today with opening
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statements from the prosecution and the defense. Vivian Rosenberg is covering the trial.
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Vivian Rosenburg: Security was tight at court
today, and some people coming in had more
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than a passing interest in the case. Trial Attendee: What are my feelings? I'd like to see them do something to him besides
put him in an institution.
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I'd like to see him being, well, killed if
I got my feelings to say. Vivian Rosenburg: Prosecutor Robert Egan described
Gacy as rational, premeditated, and evil,
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who killed his victims like flies when they
got in his way, carefully planned murders
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that resulted in bodies and bodies and bodies. Day after day after day. Defense attorney Robert
Morra countered to the jury that by any standards,
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Gacy is insane. He sleeps with corpses in a house where bodies
have been buried for years.
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Can that be normal? What kind of a mind is that? Phoebe Judge: John Wayne Gacy's trial began
on February 6th, 1980, in Cook County, Illinois.
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He was being tried for 33 murders. One of the first people in the courtroom was
a young woman named Andy Austin.
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And she had one job: to get John Wayne Gacy
to look her straight in the eye. I'm Phoebe Judge.
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This is Criminal. [Piano music.] Andy Austin: I started in 1969 and I worked
in the courts for another 43 years in Illinois.
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And once I went to California when a Chicago
real estate owner's wife was kidnapped and
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tied to a cactus. Phoebe Judge: Andy Austin is a courtroom sketch
artist. Andy Austin: I usually don't like covering
murder cases.
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Not because people are dead. I mean, that would certainly be a good reason. But because they're boring, and they don't
have the passion that, say, a bankruptcy case
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has. Phoebe Judge: Wait, why? Andy Austin: Because everything's over and
done with and the evidence is technical.
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It's about bullet trajectories. And the person who is killed is obviously
not there, and the murderer is not allowed
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to speak, so you don't know much about him. However, with John Wayne Gacy, you had a real
phenomenon as a human.
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He was so complicated, and his defense had
these witnesses, like his own mother, like
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his ex-wife, and they gave evidence that showed
that John Gacy was in some ways a really good
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guy. And that was enormously upsetting. When that came after the evidence from the
mothers, the mothers identifying their sons'
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pictures and we had, oh, I don't know, maybe
20 of them that took the stand for two days.
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They had to say that their son was dead. They had to identify pictures of the son.
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And then when they saw the pictures, they
almost always burst into tears. Phoebe Judge: Andy Austin drew everyone in
the courtroom — the victims' mothers, the
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lawyers, the witnesses — to try to capture
the mood so that Chicago's ABC News Channel
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7 would have visuals for their stories every
night. Andy Austin: And at one point, the reporter
I was working with said she needed a sketch
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of him smiling. And I said, "Well, I'll do my best, but he
doesn't smile all the time."
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And she said, "Well, just make it up. Just go for it." And I can't make things like that up, so I
had to make John Gacy smile.
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So the way I did that, and I'm a bit ashamed
of this, but I started smiling at John Gacy
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and he started smiling back. And so we have this smiling thing going on
and he poked his lawyers, pointed at me, and
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I kept smiling. And that's how I got a sketch of him smiling. Phoebe Judge: We've been using courtroom sketch
artists in this country since the Salem witch
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trials. Today, obviously news outlets do sometimes
take photos and record video in the courtroom.
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Ted Bundy's trial was televised nationally
in 1979. Court TV broadcast the OJ Simpson trial.
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In 2010, 2.3 million people live-streamed
the guilty verdict against Lindsay Lohan.
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Most states have said media cameras are allowed
in the court if the judge says it's OK, but
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there's a strict rule prohibiting journalists
from taking photos, video, or making audio
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recordings of criminal proceedings in federal
court. That's why the Boston Marathon bombing trial
was reported with drawings.
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So even today, there's work for an artist
like Andy Austin. It's a strange job, because no one thinks
about you or the many, many decisions you're
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making when you draw. Andy Austin: I was often teased, particularly
by men, that I had made them too ugly.
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I was once told by someone who had a massage
parlor, in tears, "Please don't show my sketch.
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My wife doesn't know." I was threatened by Jeff Ford, a gang leader,
by his henchmen, that if I drew Jeff's wife,
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they would break my legs. I was jokingly threatened by a mobster that
if I didn't make him handsome, he would get
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the entire weight of organized crime against
me. Phoebe Judge: I went to meet Andy Austin at
her apartment on the South Side of Chicago.
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I grew up in Chicago, and I wanted to see
her drawings for myself. Andy Austin: Chicago has always been called
a great news city.
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It's got wonderful politicians. It's got bad crime. It's got just normal people who get themselves
in trouble.
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Phoebe Judge: Her apartment is big and open
and filled with antiques and books. You would never guess that the woman who lived
here spent the majority of her life in a courtroom,
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except for the fact that her main hallway
is filled with sketch after sketch from her
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career. Her favorite pieces for more than four decades,
in frames and on display.
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This is interesting. This is a guy asleep. Andy Austin: This is a typical courtroom sketch
where there's more time to finish it and less
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pressure. And this is a narcotics card. Phoebe Judge: Why did you like the work so
much?
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What kept you doing it for 43 years? I mean, what was it about the courtroom that
you liked so much?
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Andy Austin: The courtroom is an amazing place. Almost everything ends up in court.
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You see human nature here at its worst, at
its best, at its most intelligent. I don't know how I could have seen so much
of the world without being in harm's way myself,
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except in a courtroom. And I loved the work. I loved being there. I loved being part of it.
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I love drawing. It was an absolutely perfect job for me. Phoebe Judge: It was the perfect job that
she never saw coming.
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After graduating from Vassar with an English
degree, she was thinking about a career in
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journalism. A newspaper reporter told her, "Everybody
can write, but not many people can draw."
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Andy Austin: It was a very interesting time. It was the '60s and there was a lot of protesting,
and there was going to be this trial.
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The charges were conspiracy to incite riot,
and they came from the 1968 Democratic Convention.
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And I decided to go to that trial. Phoebe Judge: Before Andy had a job as a sketch
artist with ABC in Chicago, she just started
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showing up to trials and drawing. And one day she was told by the Marshals that
she wasn't allowed to draw in the courtroom
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unless she was seated in the press section. Instead of leaving and going home or just
putting away her sketchpad, in what seems
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like a rather bold move, she started pestering
the judge. Andy Austin: I would call him.
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I would write him. I would try to see him. And then somebody suggested that I write him
a telegram, that it would have more force.
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And so I wrote him a telegram telling him
that I was a journalist, which was not yet
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true, but I wanted to cover the trial on a
freelance basis. And he let me in. I was surprised and I got permission to go
there every day and sit wherever I wanted.
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Phoebe Judge: So when you first got there,
I mean, you had kind of finagled your way
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into the press box and you liked to draw,
but how did anyone start to see your drawings?
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Andy Austin: One day after court, I overheard
a local reporter complaining that he wouldn't
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have an artist the next day. And so I went up to this guy and I said — I
don't know what I said, but I said I could
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do it, that they should hire me. And they did. So I got my life's career in about three seconds
in the courtroom on that day.
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Phoebe Judge: She was now a credentialed courtroom
artist with a paycheck, and she'd go on to
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become a staple in courtrooms all over Chicago. Murder trials, mob trials, small claims court
cases, which she says she liked the best.
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People fighting over stolen lawnmowers, that's
where you find the most passion. She began drawing in ballpoint pen, but soon
the news stations were asking her for color
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drawings for color TV. Andy Austin: So I just splashed water colors
in the backgrounds, which was not very successful.
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And over the years, I managed to learn how
to work with these watercolors, though most
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courtroom artists I believe use chalk or colored
pencils, which I've never liked.
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And so my sketches come out — are very different
from theirs. Phoebe Judge: She showed me tons of her sketches.
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She's started to scan some of them. And so after we talked for a while, she took
me in the back office where she has a couple
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of computers. [to Andy] Can you double click it? There it is. What is this? One of my favorites was of John Wayne Gacy's
mother.
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Andy Austin: It doesn't do her justice. She really didn't look like this. She was a really nice lady, sort of short,
fat, earnest, very — trying so hard to be
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helpful. Obviously, couldn't get her mind around the
fact that her son killed people.
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And she adored her son. I remember her walking down the steps of the
courthouse in the snow after she testified
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and all these guards and policemen helping
her, and her being so nice to them and so
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gracious. And I guess we were all stunned that John
Wayne Gacy had this lovely mother.
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So you're going to be —
Phoebe Judge: I can do whichever way is easiest for you.
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Andy Austin: Profiles are easiest. Phoebe Judge: Oh, OK. So I'm just going to go like this.
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After lots of prodding, I convinced Andy to
draw me. Andy Austin: I've found that starting somewhere
around the nose is best, because the sketch
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is going to go from there. Phoebe Judge: Is there a difference in drawing
guilty or innocent people that you can tell
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by the way they look on the stand or just
watching them so closely? Andy Austin: No, and I'm not sure what guilty
looks like.
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Phoebe Judge: Tense, I guess, maybe. Andy Austin: I know people often ask if I
could make somebody look guilty and I show
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my opinion of him or something, and I just
don't even know how that would happen.
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Phoebe Judge: I don't know either. Make them uglier I guess. Andy Austin: Yeah. Phoebe Judge: Someone you didn't like or thought
was a real jerk or a bad guy, put 10 pounds
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on them, I guess you could do. [Laughing.] Andy Austin: I only did something like that
once.
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Phoebe Judge: What did you do? Andy Austin: And I'm kind of ashamed of it
and I wouldn't have done it to anybody important,
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but it was in a small courtroom. And this woman was sitting where I wanted
to sit, and I asked her, I said, "Come on.
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Can't you just move over an inch?" And she said, "No." She would not. She would not even give me an inch so I could
sit down and do my work.
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She was just a spectator, I thought. Later, they put her on the witness stand and
I drew her and I thought, "Wow, now I get
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my revenge." And I didn't make her look that bad, but I
didn't make her look great.
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She asked to see the sketch afterwards and
she had a fit, of course. And I said, "All I wanted was an inch."
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[Laughing.] Phoebe Judge: That's a good story. [Plucky guitar music.] Andy Austin: Now we had the most recent governor
in Illinois that was put into jail, Rod Blagojevich.
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Everyone thought he'd be wonderful to draw. He's wonderful to cartoon. He has lots and lots of hair, kind of chipmunk
eyes.
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And I had a terrible time drawing him. I almost never got his expression right. I have no idea why.
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Women, on the whole, are more difficult to
draw because you don't want to slash around
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on their faces and give them wrinkles that
they don't really have. Men, ugly old people are the easiest to draw.
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It's very hard to predict, but when you find
somebody that you do like to draw, it's just,
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there's an enormous enjoyment involved. Sometimes they look at you in this evil way,
trying to intimidate you.
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That can be great fun, because then you get
that expression, and I'm never the first to
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look away. I don't care how terrible this murderer whoever
it may be is, I just look them down.
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I'm armed, in a sense, and they're not. Phoebe Judge: Andy Austin retired in 2012.
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She says that after so many years, she started
to lose the feel for it. And anyway, more and more state judges are
agreeing to allow cameras into the courtroom.
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As for federal court, there's a pretty robust
debate going on. Some argue that video recordings are not only
educational, but they improve the public's
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confidence in the judicial system. Otherwise, the argument goes, we learn about
the legal system by watching Law and Order.
00:15:43
But others worry that cameras turn a trial
into a spectacle where defendants become celebrities,
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jurors get distracted by how they look on
TV, and that emotional testimony becomes that
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much harder when a witness knows they're being
broadcast. Andy Austin: OK. I think I've done enough.
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Phoebe Judge: When she finished drawing me,
I packed up my things and we called it a day.
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Hey, that's great. Can I keep this? Andy Austin: Sure. Phoebe Judge: Great. It's kind of nice to think that for now, some
things still have to be done with pen and
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paper, by law. [Plucky guitar music fades out.] [Percussive, upbeat music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and
me.
00:16:28
Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder and Chelsea
Korynta. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal.
00:16:38
You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And if you'd like to see the picture that
Andy Austin drew of me, we've got it up on
00:16:44
our site, along with some of her other drawings. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
00:16:51
We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.
00:16:58
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight
Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity,
00:17:02
chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.