Why Does the System Protect Predators? From John Wayne Gacy to Aaron Spencer’s Fight for Justice | Bob Motta Guest
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From the John Wayne Gacy investigation of the 1970s to Aaron Spencer’s prosecution today, we keep coming back to the same haunting question:
Why does the system protect predators and punish those who fight them?
In the first half of this episode, Defense Attorney Bob Motta — host of Defense Diaries and BURIED: Inside the John Wayne Gacy Investigation — takes us deep inside the newly remastered Gacy Tapes: never-before-heard recordings of Gacy speaking with his defense attorneys, including Bob’s own father. For decades, those tapes sat in darkness. Now, with enhanced audio and new detective interviews, BURIED exposes how the Gacy investigation really unfolded — revealing police shortcuts, ignored victims, and the desperation that finally cracked the case.
It’s a chilling reminder of how often the system gets it wrong — even when it’s trying to get it right.
Then, in the second half, we shift to Lonoke County, Arkansas, where a father named Aaron Spencer is facing second-degree murder charges after allegedly shooting a known predator he found with his 14-year-old daughter.
The twist? Spencer is now running for sheriff — against the very department that arrested him. His slogan: “Restoring Trust.”
To some, he’s a hero. To others, a vigilante. But to many, he’s proof that faith in law enforcement has been replaced by something darker — a belief that justice only comes when you take it into your own hands.
From Gacy’s crawl space to Arkansas courtrooms, this is the connective tissue of true crime: the failure of systems built to protect us, and the people forced to fill the gaps.
Hosted by Tony Brueski | Guest: Bob Motta (Defense Diaries, BURIED)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruske, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:08.6 | All right, Bob Mata, defense attorney, and as you also may know, he's got the podcast |
| 0:17.3 | buried all about John Wayne Gasey, all about the cassette tapes that he received from |
| 0:24.2 | his father, who was one of Gacy's attorneys, and on those cassette tapes, the words of John. |
| 0:31.0 | Things people had never heard before, never will again. Things about the case that were never even part of the trial. There's so many |
| 0:41.2 | interesting nuggets in this podcast. If you're an in, I'm going to say a fan of Gacy, but if you're |
| 0:47.2 | interested in the case, it is certainly definitely worth checking out, especially if you just |
| 0:52.3 | got a chance to watch Devil in disguise |
| 0:54.3 | or have seen the doc or the series out on Peacock right now. |
| 0:58.0 | And incidentally, Bob is with us along with Stacey Cole and Todd Michaels. |
| 1:01.8 | Bob, welcome. |
| 1:03.1 | Thank you, Mike. |
| 1:03.8 | We've been talking about doing this for a while now, talking about the Gacy tapes. |
| 1:07.8 | And why not now more than ever with everybody buzzing about it? For those who |
| 1:14.5 | don't know, just kind of give us a little backstory on you getting a hold of these tapes from your |
| 1:20.6 | dad. How did this all go down? So my dad back in 79 and 80 was one of Gacy's two trial attorneys. |
| 1:29.4 | So Sam Emeranti, who had done other work that wasn't related to crimes for Gacy and his contracting business, put together little contracts for him. |
| 1:43.2 | You know, if there were little people in terms of small claim stuff that weren't paying him, he'd file suit for him. |
| 1:50.2 | So they had a relationship, a business relationship prior to the shit going down with Gacy. |
| 1:58.6 | So when they start tailing Gacy in 1978 in December, he ends up reaching out to Sam. |
| 2:07.8 | And he's like, hey, Sam, you know, these fucking cops, man, they're following me around. |
| 2:12.7 | They've been doing it for like a week. |
... |
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