Few Obstacles Remain to Gacy’s Execution : Crime: The serial killer is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday. He remains hopeful that last-minute appeals will postpone his death again.

Only a final spate of legal maneuvers remains before John Wayne Gacy is slated to disappear into the annals of American crime as a prolific killer without a conscience who swathed himself in the reassuring trappings of middle-class life.

Found guilty in the murders of 33 teen-age boys and young men, Gacy, 52, was expected to spend his final hours today at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Ill., where he is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

An attorney for Gacy said Sunday that defense lawyers were requesting an emergency stay of execution from the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The call for a delay, lawyer Gregory Adamski said, is based on a request for a hearing to determine whether prosecutors had failed to turn over business records that Gacy claims prove his innocence in at least three of the slayings.

After Gacy finishes his chosen last meal--fried chicken, french fries and a soft drink from a fast-food chain, plus fresh strawberries--he is scheduled to be strapped to a gurney and hooked up to a device that will drip a lethal solution into his veins. The chemical mixture will sedate him, paralyze his muscles, arrest his breathing and stop his heart.

“I want to be there to watch him die,” said William J. Kunkle Jr., one of Gacy’s prosecutors and among 18 witnesses who will watch the execution from behind a glass partition. “For all his victims, for all the law enforcement people who had to deal with him, it will be a privilege to see him draw his last breath.”

A flurry of appeals filed by Gacy’s lawyers so far has done nothing to alter the timing of his execution. The Illinois Supreme Court, several county courts and a federal district judge all turned down challenges last week.

“If I were Gacy, I wouldn’t be making any long-term plans,” said a weary David Keefe, one of the convicted killer’s lawyers.

Gacy’s best chance, Keefe said, lay in a five-pronged legal challenge made last week in federal court here. But U.S. District Judge John F. Grady’s summary rejection of that effort on Friday appeared to leave the convicted killer little ground for appeal.

The final option, Keefe said, would be an appeal to U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and, ultimately, the entire high court. But that avenue has proved to be of little use in death penalty challenges in recent years.

Gacy was scheduled to be transferred under armed guard to the Stateville prison by this evening.

The cramped Death Row cell Gacy occupied for nearly 14 years at Menard Correctional Center in the southern Illinois community of Chester was stripped bare last week, and his few belongings were packed into boxes. The paintings that once lined his walls--self-portraits of himself in clown regalia, depictions of gaping skulls and Walt Disney cartoon characters--are bequeathed to relatives.

In telephone calls made over the weekend to TV reporters and his lawyers, Gacy expressed impatience with the court decisions on his appeals, but he insisted his execution will be delayed.

“He says he has plans for the 11th,” the day after he is scheduled to die, Adamski said.

Gacy’s “gross denial” of his impending death and his tendency to mindlessly repeat his claims of innocence like a “human tape-recorder” is stark evidence that he is not mentally competent to be executed, Adamski said.

But to Kunkle and other state officials, Gacy is a “sociopath, a person with no remorse, no regards for the feelings of other people. He’s an evil killer.”

According to psychiatrists who examined him before his trial, Gacy compartmentalized his life, submerging his deadly impulses behind a facade of banality.

There was Gacy the politician, a Democratic precinct captain who was respected enough among party regulars to hobnob with former First Lady Rosalyn Carter. There was Gacy the clown, who appeared at parties and charity functions as the smiling, red-lipped entertainer Pogo. There was Gacy the contractor, a successful businessman.

And there was “Jack Hanley,” Gacy’s alter ego for the predator who cruised Chicago streets for male prostitutes and showed up at suburban high schools with work offers for teen-agers. He lured both to his ranch-style house in Norwood Park, near O’Hare International Airport, for sexual trysts.

Gacy later confessed to police that he handcuffed those he decided to kill. He said he stabbed one victim and strangled 32 others.

Despite Gacy’s insistence that his impulse to murder arose from multiple personalities, one Cook County psychiatrist who interviewed him said: “Mr. Gacy remembers everything.”

“He’s a jellyfish, a con man,” said Dolores Neider, whose 19-year-old son, Johnny Mowery, was one of Gacy’s victims. “Death is too good for him.”

The remains of 27 people were found buried in the crawl space of Gacy’s house. Two victims were under Gacy’s lawn and four were dumped from a bridge over Des Plaines River south of Chicago.

Nine remain unidentified.

Mowery’s wallet and driver’s license were found among the mementos that Gacy stored in a dresser drawer.

“Every time I see his face on television, it hits me so hard,” Neider said. “The hurt is endless.”