{"id":28517,"date":"2014-10-11T10:46:35","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T02:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=28517"},"modified":"2014-10-11T02:37:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T18:37:38","slug":"ex-prosecutors-rob-zombies-haunted-houses-gacy-room-insensitive-to-families-of-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/11\/ex-prosecutors-rob-zombies-haunted-houses-gacy-room-insensitive-to-families-of-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex prosecutors: Rob Zombie\u2019s haunted house\u2019s \u2018Gacy room\u2019 insensitive to families of victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Rob<\/a>
Rob Zombie. Alfred Nitsch \/ Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VILLA PARK, Ill.\u2014Two former prosecutors who helped convict John Wayne Gacy say that horror filmmaker Rob Zombie\u2019s decision to include in his suburban Chicago haunted house a room dedicated to the serial killer could be hurtful to the many loved ones of Gacy\u2019s victims who still live in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t argue with Rob Zombie\u2019s right to do what he\u2019s doing but it\u2019s a shame that what he\u2019s doing is causing the victims\u2019 families pain,\u201d Robert Egan, who now teaches law in the area, told The (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald (http:\/\/bit.ly\/1oXAh5w<\/a>\u00a0).<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it to be in terrible taste,\u201d said Terry Sullivan, a former prosecutor who helped win a conviction of Gacy that led to his execution in 1994.<\/p>\n

The newspaper reports that Zombie has in interviews described the Gacy room as \u201cfunny.\u201d And the haunted house\u2019s producer, Steve Kopelman said the true crime rooms dedicated to the likes of Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson was meant to be shocking to visitors.<\/p>\n

Egan understands that the fascination people have with Gacy, 40 years after he lured at least 33 young men to his Chicago area home, killed them and stashed many of their bodies under the crawl space of his house. And he suspects younger people who don\u2019t remember the very real horror that gripped the area and the country might see Gacy as sort of an \u201curban legend.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Egan said the haunted house and the room in which an actor dressed as Gacy in his infamous clown costume with two dolls dressed as Boy Scouts sit on the couch is just 10 miles from where the family of the last identified victim lived at the time and still lives. \u201cIt\u2019s not like this is in the middle of Nebraska; it is close to where most of the victims and where many of their families still live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only that, but Egan said that for many people the slayings are not just history, but something they live, including those who continue to give DNA samples in an effort to determine if any of the still unidentified victims of Gacy are their loved ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo all these people are sitting on the edge of their seats anyway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Information from: Daily Herald,\u00a0http:\/\/www.dailyherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  VILLA PARK, Ill.\u2014Two former prosecutors who helped convict John Wayne Gacy say that horror filmmaker Rob Zombie\u2019s decision to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}