I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin
Face to face with John Wayne Gacy: Dr. Jeff Smalldon Pt.1
02 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What unique experiences does Dr. Jeff Smalldon share about communicating with serial killers?
The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.
Imagine you open your letterbox to a letter from Ted Bundy or a handmade Christmas card from John Wayne Gacy. My guest today, forensic psychologist Dr Geoffrey Smallton, doesn't have to imagine. He's communicated with some of America's most notorious killers, trying to understand them. I found the conversation fascinating and it gave a surprising insight into the mind of evil. Take a listen.
Dr. Geoffrey Smolden, welcome to I Catch Killers. Thank you very much. Good to be here, Gary. Well, I'm excited about sitting down and speaking with you, although I've spent the past weekend reading through your book, The Beast Was Not Me, and it's a pretty heavy reading.
I suppose it is. I mean, I think of it, it's mainly a memoir, true crime second, but it's got some pretty dark stuff in it for sure.
Well, I think the way that you told the story through your perspective and there was, I might say, almost an innocence to you at the start when you were meeting with some of these notorious killers.
Yeah.
probably giving me a little more credit than I deserved, actually. I was very young and pretty stupid in most ways in some of the early things reported in my book.
Yeah. I was a homicide detective for over 20 years, and I know what it's like sitting and communicating with people that are evil or have committed crimes that shock most people. How did you isolate yourself from the type of people you were dealing with? How did you, from a personal point of view, step back from it and not walk away thinking the whole world's evil?
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Chapter 2: How did John Wayne Gacy manage to appear normal despite his crimes?
A theory on it that when I went to a homicide scene, I was focusing on doing the work. And I'm sure that was your focus when you're sitting down speaking to these killers, consulting with them, that you're focused on your job. And I think that provides a degree of protection from the horrors that you see or hear about and the people that you meet.
I think that's right. You focus on what you're doing. This is my job. And, you know, you just you couldn't take that home with you. Certainly not at the level of intensity you experience while you're actually going through the encounter, either with the the suspect or with the crime scene itself. If you were walking around with that in your head all the time, you'd have a hard time functioning.
But you did bring up one interesting point, I think, at least implicitly, and that's You know, you deal with these people. It would be nice if they all look like Charles Manson because we would all go to immediately turn and run. But most of them don't. Most of them are very well camouflaged. They've got a carefully curated social persona.
And I did think frequently over the years about the relatively superficial cues that all of us use every day. And, you know, it seems like a nice guy, nothing the least bit threatening, easy to talk to. And a lot of people rely on those cues to put themselves in positions where they would be potentially very vulnerable to a predator, for example, a Gacy or a Bundy.
Yeah, that's what you're saying there, the normality of people that have committed horrendous crimes. And it is hard not to drop your guard down because I think it's human nature. And I would often say to people, you lock me in a room with someone long enough and I will develop a rapport. I think it's human nature. And some of those people are very bad people.
But you start to communicate, you socialise, and it's just human nature, I think, that you make that connection.
Yeah.
That's certainly how I thought about my interviews with even some of the most horrible people on the planet. One of the things, and not every forensic psychologist would agree with me on this approach, but I always tried to establish a very horizontal relationship with whoever I was talking with. Never wanted to come across as the expert looking down on someone.
Always tried to make it conversational. I always introduced myself as Jeff, not Dr. Smeldon. Gave them my business card. They could see who I was. Their attorneys told them they knew I was a psychologist. I didn't need to tell them that. What I was interested in mainly is making a connection with them.
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Chapter 3: What was the impact of a double homicide on Dr. Smalldon's career?
And he was arrested in December of 1978. These killings had begun in 1972. And he, like a lot of these predatory killers, he chose people who might not immediately be missed. Maybe they had problems, they were addicted to drugs, they had legal issues. And some of their families inquired, you know, what happened to so-and-so? He was working for you.
And Gacy would say, well, you know how hard I was working to get him off drugs and put him on the straight and narrow. And he disappeared one day. I don't know where he went. So there were any number of cases like that where people inquired, but they were relatively quick to believe Gacy's bullshit. about what really happened.
And in the end, what happened and got him arrested, it's really a creepy story. And I've been to this location and it was a drug store, like a chemist back in 1978. Now it's a childcare center, but it's where Gacy, speak about irony, Gacy wouldn't get that one at all. But when he abducted his final victim, that is drugstore talking the owner about doing some remodeling inside.
And he saw a young man and said, hey, I can pay you more money than they're paying you here. Want to talk with me about a summer job? And the kid's mother was in the parking lot. And this is a small parking lot. She was there waiting for him to take, I think it was her birthday. And he went over to her and said, I'm just going to talk with this guy for a few minutes. I'll be right there.
And he was never seen again. and Gacy insisted he had never seen this guy and knew nothing about it. And it was some very good police work that Gacy would never admit that it was good police work, but it was. They tracked down a receipt from a photo order at the drugstore that a co-worker of his had put in a jacket that she had lent to him. So that receipt ended up in Gacy's kitchen trash bag.
And the police found it there and did further investigation. And the gig was up for Gacy in December of 78.
So 33 victims all up. Over what sort of period of time were these murders being committed?
1972 to 1978. Yeah.
It's frightening the way that he got away with it for so long, but I think that he had that confidence to present as a decent person. He might have his flaws in his personality, but people mustn't have suspected him. To have that many people disappear around you and suspicion, but he had enough bluff to get through it for all those years.
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Chapter 4: How do predators manipulate social cues to their advantage?
So she said, well, I don't really know what it is either. But there are a couple of nice looking young men down at the hospital where I work. And I've heard them referred to as administrators. They always say hi to me when I pass them in the hallway. Why don't you go down and talk to one of them? So I had nothing better to do. And I did that like a nice guy. He seemed to like me.
And he said, I'll tell you what you do, Jeff. Go to George Washington University, get your master's. That's where he had gotten his. And then come back and work for me. And it kind of sounded like a job offer. And I literally applied to one school. If I had gotten rejected there, that would have been the end of hospital administration. But I got accepted and I went there.
And then I ended up doing a residency at a hospital here in Columbus, Ohio, where I still live. And two of my co-workers were murdered. at the hospital. But after those murders, I thought, I don't really want to be a hospital administrator. I never did. So I went back to graduate school with the goal of becoming a forensic psychologist.
Peaked your interest. Tell me about the two co-workers that were murdered because, well, you've just described it, it steered your career, but it had a sort of profound effect on you. And You know, a lot of us go through life and never knowing anyone that's been murdered. So you would have felt the pain and the shock that comes with a homicide.
Tell us about that and how it played out in the end, because I think that's very interesting too.
It is. And as a homicide investigator, that part would be fascinating to you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean... I was at the hospital. I completed my residency here. They asked me to stay on. I kept getting promoted, even though I had no special skills as a hospital administrator, but I kept getting promoted.
And among the departments that I had responsibility for was this small research lab that had a total of six employees. And it was located just around the corner from the main corridor of the hospital, had a single door that served as exterior entrance, and the lab itself was probably the size of an average living room, very small.
For Christmas that year, as the administrative contact for that department, they invited me to their small party. I went. All the talk was of plans for Christmas. Everybody seemed upbeat. And I went home to Western New York, Niagara Falls, where my parents lived for the holidays. And while I'm there, I get a call from the director of public relations at the hospital. Jeff, I've got horrible news.
And my assumption was that something horrible had happened in the mental health and addiction building that I also had responsibility for. So I'm expecting something had happened there. And she says, Joyce and Patty were murdered in the research lab Friday afternoon between 4.30 and 5.05. And I said, what? I mean, no news could have shocked me more. I was absolutely astonished.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Dr. Smalldon provide about Gacy's psychological profile?
I mean, the grandiosity was something truly. You're going to meet the man. So we sat down and he was, I could just see him working. I could see his mind working and realize how skillfully he disarmed his victims. He just, for one thing, he just wouldn't stop talking. And he just controlled the conversation that way. He wouldn't stop talking.
And, you know, we started talking about mutual interests, football, democratic politics. And he was very easy to talk with, not the least bit threatening. At one point, and, you know, this is one example, I think, of how green I was. There are a lot of them. But... He came out on each of the four days that I spent with him.
He would come out with this log book and then usually some photograph albums. He was so compulsive that in this log book, he registered every piece of mail he received, every meal he ate, what time he got up, what time he went to bed. Visitors, he was very compulsive. And... After we'd talked, I'm trying to think whether this was on the first day. It occurred a couple of different times.
He said we were sitting at a relatively small table in a death row visiting room, either side of the table. And he said, come over on my side of the table. I remember thinking, I don't want to go over there. But I also don't communicate fear. So I thought, well, Okay. You know, I know, like, you know, and I already knew by this time, by the way, that the guards weren't monitoring us at all.
I learned that there was a video camera in the room, but we were not being monitored.
I know people often think the jail visits in situations like that, you've got a screen between you or the guards are standing around, but you are potentially vulnerable. And the way you're describing it now and as you were written in the book, I'm thinking, okay, you're putting yourself out there a little bit.
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Chapter 6: How did Gacy's charm contribute to his ability to lure victims?
He's on death row. He hasn't got anything to, uh, to lose. It might be his final, uh, scalp taking out this, uh, naive visitor that's come in, uh, come into my cell. What, what's he got to lose? Yeah. That's, uh, the reality of it.
Well, it's, it's a very good question that you raise. And, uh, He still, at the time I saw him on both of my visits, had hopes of having his death sentence overturned.
Okay, yeah.
So I think he was on his behavior in the sense he wasn't going to attack me. Even though while I was sitting next to him, he could just put those cuffed hands over my head and squeeze his massive forearms around my neck. Nothing like that happened, but ā What was really sobering for me is some years later, he was executed in 1994.
My visits to him were in 1986 and 87, closer time of his execution. And basically, it would have been clear to him that the gig is up. My appeals exhausted.
Run out of all options.
And this kid who had corresponded with him, his idea was he was actually working under the tutelage of a very well-known psychologist. This was like his freshman honors college or freshman honors in college. Yeah. And his idea was, I'm going to posture as the ideal victim for a number of incarcerated serial killer, including Gacy.
And with Gacy, he postured as a sexually confused product, a dysfunctional family. And Gacy and he began exchanging pornographic fantasies by letter. And then Gacy invited him, come visit me. young man went on to write a book called The Last Victim, which tells about his time with Gacy. And it was very clear from his description that he met Gacy in the same way I did. The setting was the same.
And the situation was totally different. Gacy attacked him verbally, threatened to rape him, said, you know, I could rape you on this floor and nobody would come to help you in time. Basically, in so many words, saying you're mine, you're mine. And it got very harrowing. Gacy gave him a bracelet, a pair of underwear that he wanted him to wear the next day when he came back.
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