John Wayne Gacy

At least 33 teenage boys and young men were killed by serial killer and rapist John Wayne Gacy in Cook County, Illinois, with the majority being buried beneath his home. Gacy, who went by the moniker “Killer Clown” because to his propensity for dressing up in clown costumes and applying makeup, had a difficult upbringing and battled homosexuality. All of Gacy’s killings took place in his Norwood Park residence. He would entice his victims with the promise of construction labor or some other falsehood, then torture and sexually assault them before killing them—most often by strangling. After being taken into custody in 1979, Gacy was found guilty of 33 murders the following year. 1994 saw the execution of Gacy.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: John Wayne Gacy

BORN: March 17, 1942

DIED: May 10, 1994

BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, Illinois

SPOUSES: Marlynn Myers (1964-1969) and Carole Hoff (1972-1976)

CHILDREN: Michael and Christine

ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

Childhood

On March 17, 1942, John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robison welcomed John Wayne Gacy into the world in Chicago. John’s father, an auto repair machinist and World War I veteran, battled alcoholism and used a razor whip to discipline his two sisters and him if they were thought to have misbehaved. According to Barry E. Boschelli’s Johnny and Me: The True Story of John Wayne Gacy, John’s father constantly made fun of him, calling him names like “stupid” and making derogatory comparisons to his sisters.

According to Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders by Terry Sullivan, Gacy’s psychosexual history started between the ages of 6 and 10 when a teenage daughter of one of his mother’s acquaintances supposedly undressed and played with him. A family friend and contractor allegedly assaulted Gacy when she was young, and between the ages of 10 and 12, Gacy and a friend were charged with sexually touching a small girl, according to Sullivan.

As a weak, overweight, uncoordinated youth, Gacy was unable to connect with kids his own age or excel in sports, according to Sam L. Amirante and Danny Broderick’s John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster. Due to a congenital heart problem that his father perceived as another flaw, he experienced estrangement at school and was unable to play with other kids. As a teenager, he was in and out of hospitals on a regular basis, suffering from recurrent seizures and blackouts. However, his father suspected that he was making up the illnesses to get attention. After realizing he was drawn to guys, Gacy struggled greatly with his sexual orientation.

Work and Family Life

Gacy studied and completed his studies at Northwestern Business College in Chicago, even though he did not complete his high school education. Following this, he had managerial and sales positions at a shoe firm. He got to know Marlynn Myers in 1964 and they got engaged. Her father had three KFC locations in Waterloo, Iowa. According to Tim Cahill and Russ Ewing’s book Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer, Gacy moved there to oversee the eateries, and he and Myers had two children together.

In the 1970s, Gacy worked his way up to become a Democratic precinct leader and self-made building contractor in the Chicago suburbs. Later on, he conjectured that his political activity could have been an attempt to provoke his father, who made fun of his political interests. Gacy reportedly remarked, “And maybe it was a way to get acceptance,” according to Buried Dreams. “I felt like I was never good enough because of my dad, so I was always looking for acceptance.”

Popular in his neighborhood, Gacy was involved in political organizations, the Jaycees civic club, and cultural events. Gacy subsequently described this time as the happiest of his life, and he even received his father’s much-coveted approval, admitting that he had been “wrong” about Gacy. Buried Dreams claims that Gacy stated, “I was thinking of running for alderman back then.” “I wanted to run for mayor after that, and if that didn’t work out, I was going to run for the state Senate.” I failed to see any boundaries.

As “Pogo the Clown” or “Patches the Clown,” Gacy routinely performed in clown makeup and costume at children’s parties, charity events, and other gatherings. He was a member of the “Jolly Joker” clown club in the Chicago region. Years later, while under observation, Gacy spoke with detectives about his profession as a clown and said, “Clowns can get away with murder.”

Initial Arrests and Sexual Assaults

Gacy was charged with sexually abusing one young boy and making attempts to harm another in 1968. He angrily refuted these charges, and a few people in the neighborhood chose to trust him rather than the victim. According to Killer Clown, he attempted to dissuade the victim from testifying by enticing one of his staff members to assault him. Following his conviction and ten years in prison, Gacy’s wife filed for divorce and was granted full custody of their children.

Gacy was a model prisoner who served his 18-month term before being granted freedom in the summer of 1970. But according to John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster, Gacy was arrested once more the next year after another kid said he was enticed into his car and driven to his house, where Gacy attempted to force him into sex. When the boy failed to show up for the trial, the charges were withdrawn. Buried Dreams states that Gacy purchased a home on 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park, Illinois, with financial support from his mother. This is the address where all of his future killings would occur.

Gacy founded PDM Contractors, a construction company, in 1971. It expanded quickly and was profitable. In the same year, Gacy became engaged to Carole Hoff, whom he had dated for a short while in high school. In 1972, the two tied the knot. He would occasionally threaten them with violence in order to get sex with the young guys and high school students that made up the majority of his workforce at PDM Contractors. Still, Gacy maintained a public persona as a community leader, throwing well-liked and packed summer parties, according to Buried Dreams.

The Victims of John Wayne Gacy

After enticing 16-year-old Timothy McCoy to his residence for sex, Gacy carried out his first documented murder in January 1972. The following morning, Gacy raced to assault McCoy as he was standing in the bedroom doorway with a knife. He managed to wrestle the knife away from McCoy and fatally stab him. After all, McCoy had just finished preparing their breakfast, so Gacy only recognized after the fact that he was holding the knife rather than threatening or attacking him. Buried Dreams claims that Gacy eventually declared, “That’s when I realized that death was the ultimate thrill,” after realizing he had experienced sexual pleasure from killing McCoy.

John Butkovich, an 18-year-old PDM worker, was another victim of Gacy’s, whom he enticed to his home by promising to talk about unpaid overtime. Clifford L. Linedecker’s book The Man Who Killed Boys: The John Wayne Gacy Jr. Story claims that after giving him drink and tricking him into putting on handcuffs, Gacy strangled the man. Gacy began using handcuffs frequently and occasionally pretended to be performing a “magic trick” on his victims. Linedecker claims that Butkovich’s parents were wary of Gacy and contacted the police over a hundred times, pleading with them to look into him more.

By the mid-1970s, Gacy was being questioned by authorities over the disappearances of additional young men after two more of them accused him of rape. The majority of Gacy’s killings occurred during what he called his “cruising years.” Many of his victims were interred in a shared grave beneath his crawl space, while the majority of his victims were buried on the property.

According to John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster, one of his victims, a 17-year-old PDM employee named Gregory Godzik, told his family that Gacy had previously given him the order to dig trenches in the crawl area at his home. Gacy later told authorities he scheduled this work to prepare space for graves. When Godzik vanished, his family got in touch with Gacy, who informed them that Godzik had told him he was going to take off for his own country.

Gacy murdered a number of additional people at this time. Robert Donnelly, a 19-year-old college student he kidnapped from a Chicago bus stop, was the only one he managed to leave alive. Once they got to his house, Gacy proceeded to rape and torment Donnelly, repeatedly submerging his head in a bathtub until he passed out and staging mock executions with a revolver that was loaded with banks. Donnelly begged Gacy to kill him since he was in so much pain, but Gacy released him after warning him not to tell anyone. But Donnelly reported him to the authorities. Buried Dreams claims that during the investigation, Gacy claimed that the meeting was a consenting instance of “sex slavery,” and the police accepted his account. A month later, Gacy killed another victim.

Examining and Seizing

In December 1978, serial killer John Wayne Gacy posed for his mug shot from the Des Plaines Police Department.

Killer Clown claims that in 1978, Gacy ran out of room in his crawl area and began throwing his victims into the Des Plaines River from a bridge off of Interstate 55.

15-year-old Robert Piest vanished on December 11, 1978, shortly after informing his mother that he would be meeting Gacy to talk about a possible construction job. After Piest’s family reported him missing to the police, Gacy’s Norwood Park home was searched. There, investigators found a number of suspicious objects, including pistols, police badges, hypodermic needles, pornographic movies, and items that they subsequently determined belonged to some of Gacy’s victims.

According to John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster, during an extended period of police observation and investigation, authorities found a receipt in Gacy’s home that had belonged to Piest, refuting Gacy’s assertion that he had not spoken to Piest on the day he vanished. This prompted more searches of Gacy’s home, which ultimately resulted in the crawl space beneath his home being found to have multiple ditches containing human remains. In the end, Gacy admitted to killing roughly thirty individuals.

The Home of John Wayne Gacy

Gacy’s home at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park, Illinois, was demolished in 1979 a few months after his arrest in an attempt to recover additional evidence. The house and every other building on the land were destroyed the next year, and a new home was finally constructed there. One of the laborers doing the demolition of Gacy’s home declared, “If the devil’s alive, he lived here.”

Conviction and Trial

The trial of Gacy started on February 6, 1980. After Gacy admitted to the atrocities, the debates centered on whether or not he could be admitted to a state mental hospital after being deemed crazy. Based on Buried Dreams, Gacy saw doctors for hundreds of hours at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois, and completed a battery of psychological examinations. Gacy attempted to claim that he suffered from multiple personality disorder and that “Bad Jack,” a police officer, clown, contractor, and politician, were all separate personalities in his head. According to Buried Dreams, Gacy claimed that “Bad Jack” detested homosexuality and thought male prostitutes and some of his victims were “scum, weak, stupid, [and] degraded.”

Gacy went on trial for 33 counts of murder after entering a not guilty by reason of insanity plea. By highlighting the extensive measures Gacy used to plan and hide his killings, the prosecution said Gacy was sane and in charge of his acts. Chief prosecutor William Kunkle stated, “These were definitely the actions of a man capable of premeditation, acting in his own best interest under duress, and remembering the specifics of his criminal activities,” according to Killer Clown. Experts in mental health testified regarding Gacy’s mental state on behalf of both sides.

Following a brief jury trial, on March 12, 1980, Gacy was found guilty of 33 murders, solidifying his reputation as one of the most vicious serial killers in American history.

Gacy spent 14 years in prison at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester. During his incarceration, he filed an appeal against his conviction and gave conflicting accounts of the killings in interviews. Despite having previously admitted to the crimes, Gacy later denied his guilt and set up a 900 phone number featuring a 12-minute recorded message claiming his innocence.

Gacy began studying the visual arts, particularly painting, while he was a student at Menard. His paintings were on display for the general public in a Chicago gallery. In numerous works, Gacy is shown as “Pogo the Clown.” Mullock’s Auctions in Shropshire, UK, held an auction in 2017 featuring some of Gacy’s artworks along with photos from the crime scene from Gacy’s trial.

Final Words and Death

Gacy’s final appeal was denied by the US Supreme Court in October 1993, and on May 10, 1994, the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, was scheduled to carry out Gacy’s execution. Gacy claimed the state was responsible for the victim’s murder just before he passed away and said his family would not find solace in his passing. According to reports, Gacy shouted, “Kiss my a––” as he passed away, however the prosecutor who tried the case and saw him executed claimed he was silent during his last minutes. Gacy was put to death by blood injection.

There have been persistent worries in the years following Gacy’s arrest that he may have been accountable for the murders of other victims whose bodies have not yet been located. In addition, eight of the victims that the authorities found in Gacy’s home in 1978 could not be recognized. James “Jimmie” Byron Haakenson, 16, was one of the unnamed victims who was identified in July 2017 by Cook County officials using DNA evidence. Jimmy had been missing since 1976. Another victim of Gacy’s was identified in October 2021 through DNA testing as Francis Wayne Alexander, a 21-year-old who had vanished in 1976.

John Wayne Gacy biopic

The pursuit of information on the fate of the teenage boys who went missing and were eventually identified as victims of John Wayne Gacy was the subject of the 1992 television film To Catch a Killer. Margot Kidder, Michael Riley, and Brian Dennehy appeared in the film. Dennehy, who played Gacy, received an Emmy nomination. Dennehy claims that Gacy protested his representation in the movie and declared his innocence in a letter he wrote to him while he was incarcerated.

Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes became available on Netflix on April 20, 2022. It is the second installment of Netflix’s Conversations with a murderer documentary series, the first of which concentrated on serial murderer Ted Bundy. It includes interviews with individuals connected to the case as well as audio recordings from Gacy’s captivity.