Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes (Season 1)

Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes (2022) is a Netflix documentary series you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Joe Berlinger. The series is built around previously unheard audio recordings made with Gacy himself in the months before his execution — conversations that lay bare the mechanics of a mind behind 33 murders.

Gacy killed young men and teenage boys across Illinois throughout the 1970s, burying many of them beneath his own house. What made the case so disturbing was the exterior: a thriving contractor, a Democratic Party activist, a man photographed shaking hands with First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Berlinger brings in defense attorneys, lead detectives, and survivors to frame the recordings, refusing to let Gacy narrate his own mythology unchallenged.

This is the third installment in Berlinger's Killer Tapes franchise, following the Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer editions. What sets the Gacy entry apart is how mundane he sounds — friendly, self-justifying, occasionally jovial — which proves more unsettling than any dramatic reconstruction. Stream Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes online on iFILM.