Gacy investigator Kozenczak recorded account of case weeks before his death
Weeks before he died, Joseph Kozenczak discussed one last time how he and a team of Des Plaines police investigators broke the case that led them to serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Now those recordings are available in an audio narration of the book he cowrote about the case.
Kozenczak, the lead Des Plaines Police Department investigator in the notorious 1978 case, always wanted to do an audio version of the book, "The Chicago Killer: The Hunt For Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy," said his wife Karen, the other co-writer.
But it wasn't until last January that he started making the recordings at a Forest Park studio.
He finished narrating all 256 pages in April, just before his death on May 13 at the age of 75.
"Originally he kicked around the idea of having Brian Dennehy narrate the book," Karen said, referring to the Chicago actor who played the role of Gacy in a 1992 TV miniseries. "Then as time went on - Joe was a historian, and the case was his life - he asked me one day, 'What do you think if I do it?'"
"If you listen really closely, you can hear some of his Chicago-ESE, which is just so lovely because it's a Chicago crime story," Karen said. "If anybody should do it, he should do it."
In total, the narration lasts about 7½ hours. It's available for purchase for about $20 at Amazon.com, Audible.com and iTunes.
Karen Kozenczak is now working on a short book about the use of psychics in the Gacy investigation, and plans to accompany audio recordings of the actual psychic readings with the book.