English: Expose - The Killer Clown: [13,373]

John Wayne Gacy, Jr., an American serial killer, was born on March 17, 1942 and executed on  10, May 1994.  Between 1972 and 1978, Gacy raped and murdered at least 33 young men and boys. He buried 26 of them in the small crawl space underneath the basement of his home and three more elsewhere on his property. He became known as "Killer Clown" because of the popular block parties he would throw for his friends and neighbors, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup under the alias "Pogo the Clown".

Gacy was of Polish and Danish heritage.  Overweight and unathletic, he had a troubled relationship with his father, an alcoholic who was physically abusive and repeatedly called his son a "sissy". He was close to his sisters and mother, who affectionately called him "Johnny."

When Gacy was 11, he was struck on the forehead by a swing. The resulting head trauma formed a blood clot in his brain that went unnoticed until he was 16, when he began to suffer blackouts. He was prescribed medication to dissolve the clot.  After attending four different high schools, Gacy dropped out before completing his senior year and left his family, heading west. After running he enrolled in and eventually graduated from Northwestern Business College. A management trainee position with a shoe company followed shortly after graduation, and in 1964, Gacy was transferred to Springfield, Illinois. There he met coworker Marilynn Myers, and they married in September 1964. He became active in local Springfield organizations, joining the Jaycees and rising to vice-president of the Springfield chapter by 1965. Marilynn’s parents, who had purchased a group of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) franchises, offered Gacy a job as manager of a Waterloo, Iowa KFC, and the Gacys moved there from Springfield.

Imprisonment, divorce, parole:
The Gacy and his wife settled in Waterloo and had two children: a son and a daughter. Gacy worked at his KFC franchise and joined the Jaycees. Rumors of Gacy's homosexuality began to spread but did not prevent him from being named "outstanding vice-president" of the Waterloo Jaycees in 1967. But, there was a unpleasant side of Jaycee life in Waterloo, one that involved prostitution, pornography, and drugs, where Gacy was very deeply involved. Gacy was cheating on his wife regularly. Gacy opened a "club" in his basement for the young boys of Waterloo, where he allowed them to drink alcohol and made sexual advances towards them.  Gacy's middle class life in Waterloo came crashing down in March 1968 when two Waterloo boys, aged 15 and 16, accused him of sexually assaulting them. Gacy claimed innocence, but in August of that year he hired another Waterloo youth to beat up one of his accusers. The youth was caught and confessed, and Gacy's imprisonment was rapidly followed by his wife's petition for divorce,  that  became final in 1969. He never saw his children again. During his incarceration, Gacy's father died from cirrhosis on Christmas Day 1969.   He moved back to Illinois to live with his mother. Where he successfully hid this criminal record until police began investigating him for his later murders.

On February 12, 1971, Gacy was charged with disorderly conduct; a teenaged boy claimed that Gacy picked him up and tried to force him into sex. The complaint was dropped when the boy did not appear in court. The Iowa Board of Parole did not learn of this, and Gacy was discharged from parole in October 1971. On June 22, 1972, Gacy was arrested again and charged with battery after another young man said that Gacy flashed a sheriff's badge, lured him into Gacy's car, and forced him into sex. These charges were dropped.  Then in June of 1972, Gacy married Carole Hoff, an acquaintance from his teenage years. Hoff and her two girls moved into the Summerdale Avenue house. In 1975, Gacy started his own business, PDM Contractors, a construction company. At the same time, his marriage began to deteriorate. The Gacys' sex life came to a halt, and John Gacy would go out late and stay out all night. Carole Gacy found wallets with IDs from young men lying around the house and then John Gacy began bringing home some gay pornography. The Gacys divorced in March 1976.  At that time Gacy became active in the local Democratic Party, first volunteering to clean the party offices. In 1975 and 1976, he served on the Norwood Park Township street lighting committee. He eventually earned the title of precinct captain. In this capacity, he met and was photographed with First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who was in town for the annual Polish Constitution Day Parade, held on May 6, 1978. Gacy was directing the parade that year, for the third year in a row. Carter posed for pictures with Gacy and autographed the photo "To John Gacy. Best Wishes.  Rosalynn Carter."  In the picture, Gacy is wearing an "S" pin, indicating a person who has received special clearance by the U.S. Secret Service. During the search of Gacy's house after his arrest, this photo caused a major embarrassment to the Secret Service.

The murders:
In July 1975, one of Gacy's employees, John Butkovich, disappeared. Butkovich had recently left Gacy's employment after an argument over back pay. Gacy later admitted to luring Butkovitch to his home while his wife and stepchildren were visiting his sister in Arkansas.   Gacy conned the youth into cuffing his wrists behind his back, then strangled him to death and buried his body under the concrete floor of his garage. Butkovich's parents urged police to check out Gacy, but nothing came of it and the young man's disappearance went unsolved, until Gacy’s confession.

Gacy's second wife divorced him eight months later, and Gacy began killing more often. Between April and October of 1976, Gacy killed at least eight young men, all buried in his crawlspace. The crawlspace being approximately three feet from the floor-board and four feet deep, and in places up to five and a half feet deep. Gacy had easy access in several places, though he preferred to use the access panel located in the closet, adjacent to the hallway.

• In December 1976, another Gacy employee, Gregory Godzik, disappeared. As with Butkovitch, Godzik's parents asked police to investigate Gacy, one of the last people known to have spoken to the boy. In neither case did the police pursue Gacy, nor did they discover his criminal record.
• In January 1977, John Szyc, an acquaintance of Butkovich, Godzik and Gacy, disappeared. Gacy later sold Szyc's Plymouth Satellite to another of his employees.  During 1977, Gacy killed eight more young men, including the son of a Chicago Police Sergeant.
• In August of 1977, a clue emerged to the disappearance of John Szyc when the another employee of Gacy came forth with a story of sex abuse. It seems that not all of Gacy's victims died.
• In December 1977, a 19-year-old man complained that Gacy had kidnapped him at gunpoint and forced him into sex. Again the Chicago police department took no action.
• In March 1978, Gacy lured Jeffrey Rignall into his car. Gacy used chloroform to subdue the young man, took him back to the house on Summerdale, raped and tortured him, and dumped him alive in Lincoln Park. Police drew a blank, but Rignall remembered, through the chloroform haze of that night, a black Oldsmobile, the Kennedy Expressway, and some side streets.

He later staked out the exit on the Expressway until he saw the black Oldsmobile, which he followed to 8213 West Summerdale. Police issued a warrant, and arrested Gacy on July 15. He was facing trial on a battery charge for the Rignall incident when he was arrested in December for the murders. By early 1978, following the February murder of nineteen-year-old William Kindred, Gacy began disposing of his victims in the Des Plaines River, since his crawlspace with filled to over-flowing with corpses.

Chicago police finally investigates:
Gacy had visited the Nisson pharmacy to discuss a potential remodeling deal with the owner that evening. Gacy was heard mentioning his firm and had another store employee speaking with him, Robert Piest, who left with Gacy stating "some contractor wants to talk to me about a job." Both left the store, promising to return shortly. When Piest failed to return, his family filed a missing persons report on their son. The owner of the pharmacy named Gacy as the contractor Piest had most likely left the store to talk with.

Another employee gave a statement confirming this, and speaking with Gacy himself,  indicating to Gacy that he was unable to do so as his uncle had just died. At 3:30 a.m., Gacy, covered in mud, arrived at the police station, claiming he had been involved in a car accident. Upon returning to the station later that day, Gacy flatly denied any involvement in Robert Piest's disappearance, and denied offering the youth a job.

Police were convinced Gacy was behind Piest's disappearance and checked Gacy's record, discovering that he had an outstanding battery charge against him in Chicago and had served a prison sentence in Iowa for sodomy. A search of Gacy's house on December 13 turned up several suspicious items: a 1975 high school class ring, drivers' licenses for other people, handcuffs, a two-by-four with holes drilled in the ends, books on homosexuality and pederasty, a syringe, clothing too small for Gacy, and a photo receipt from the pharmacy where Robert Piest worked. Police decided to assign two, two-man surveillance teams to follow Gacy, while they continued their investigation of Gacy into Piest's disappearance. Gacy issued a $750,000 civil suit against the Des Plaines police, demanding the police surveillance cease. The hearing of his suit was scheduled for December 22.

Further investigation into Gacy's background linked him to the disappearance of three other  youths. One of Gacy's employees informed detectives of Gregory Godzik's disappearance, through interviewing Gacy's second wife, they learned of the disappearance of John Butkovich and the high school ring found in Gacy's house was traced to John Szyc.

• On December 18, the Nisson Pharmacy photo receipt found in Gacy's kitchen was traced to a colleague of Piest's who admitted she had placed it in his parka jacket just before he left the store, proving conclusively Piest had been in Gacy's house. Another employee revealed Gacy had made him dig trenches in the crawlspace of his house.
• On December 20, 1978, Gacy invited two of the surveillance detectives inside his house. The police noticed the smell of corpses emanating from a heating duct. The officers who previously searched Gacy's house failed to notice this as on that occasion the house had been cold.
• On December 22, 1978, the same day as the hearing of Gacy's civil suit, police obtained a second search warrant of Gacy's house. To hold Gacy in custody while the search commenced, officers arrested Gacy on a charge of marijuana possession.  Upon digging in the crawlspace of Gacy's Norwood Park residence, police quickly found several human bones and informed investigators they could charge Gacy with murder.

His arrest and confession:
After being informed that he would now face murder charges, Gacy confessed that since early 1971, he had committed approximately 25-30 murders, telling investigators that most victims were buried in the basement or elsewhere on his property. Once the crawlspace was full, he threw five to maybe, eight more bodies off the I-55 bridge and into the Des Plaines River. Then Gacy drew police a diagram of his basement to show the investigators where the bodies were buried.

Gacy told the police that he would pick up male teenage runaways or male prostitutes from either the Chicago Greyhound Bus station or off the streets, and take them back to his house by promising them money for sex, offering them a job with his construction company, and then stuffing clothing in their mouths to muffle their screams.  After this, he would choke them with a rope or a board as he sexually assaulted them, then bury the bodies in his crawlspace. Once in a while, Gacy would pour lime in the crawlspace to quicken the decomposition of the bodies. And load up on baking soda to rid the smell, which he stated, “hardly did no good at all.” He then stated that by keeping his house cold, the smell was somewhat abated and less noticeable.

Police had already gone back to the house to search for more remains, mostly in the basement.  The house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue,  sat in an unincorporated area of Norwood Park Township, Cook County, had a four-foot deep crawl space under the floor.  For the next four months, more and more human remains emerged from the house, as reporters, TV news crews, and astonished onlookers watched. Between December 1978 and March 1979, twenty-nine bodies were found at Gacy's property, twenty-six of them in his crawl-space. Several of the bodies were found with the ligature used to strangle them still knotted around their neck. In other instances, cloth gags were found lodged deep down the victims' throat, leading the investigators to conclude that thirteen of Gacy's victims died not of strangulation, but of asphyxiation caused by gags shoved down their throats. The youngest identified victims were Samuel Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14 years old; the oldest were Russell Nelson and James Mazzara, both 21 years old. Eight of the victims were so badly decomposed that they were never identified. Robert Piest's body was discovered on the banks of the Des Plaines River on April 9.

His trial and the execution:
On February 6, 1980, Gacy's trial began in Chicago. During the trial, he pleaded not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. However, this plea was quickly rejected outright; As Gacy's lawyer, Sam Amirante, said that Gacy had moments of temporary insanity at the time of each individual murder, but regained his sanity before and after to lure and dispose of victims. While on trial, Gacy joked that the only thing he was guilty of was "running a cemetery without a license." At one point in the trial, Gacy's assertion with evidence that Gacy's claim was impossible. Gacy had made an earlier confession to police, and was unable to have this evidence suppressed. He was found guilty on March 13 and sentenced to death thirty times plus 170 years.

Gacy spent the next 14 years studying books on law and filing numerous and exhaustive appeals and motions, all of which unsuccessful. While awaiting execution, Gacy spent his time painting portriats of clowns, and selling the same for several hunderds of dollars each; these paintings, are now worth (today, in 2016) roughly $3,500 to $5,500 each.

The citations for these arguments can be found here:
People v. Gacy, 468 N.E.2d 1171 (Ill. 1984) (Direct Appeal); People v. Gacy, 530 N.E.2d 1340 (Ill. 1988) (PCR); Gacy v. Welborn, 994 F.2d 305 (7th Cir. 1993) (Habeas), and, Gacy v. Page, 24 F.3d 887 (CA 7, 1994) (Habeas/Stay).

His final requested meal:  “A dozen deep fried shrimp, a bucket of original recipe chicken from KFC [Kentucky Fried Chicken Restraunt], one pound of fresh strawberries and ound pound of french fries.”

On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, by lethal injection. His execution was covered by the media, and crowds of people gathered for "execution parties" outside the penitentiary, with numerous arrests for public intoxication, open container violations, and disorderly conduct. Vendors sold Gacy-related T-shirts and other merchandise, and the crowd cheered at the moment when Gacy was pronounced dead.

According to reports, Gacy did not express any remorse for his crimes. His last words to his lawyer in his cell were to the effect that killing him would not bring anyone back, and it is reported his last words were "kiss my ass," which he said to a correctional officer while he was being sent to the execution chamber. Before the execution began, the lethal chemicals unexpectedly solidified, clogging the IV tube that led into Gacy's arm, and prevented any further passage. Blinds covering the window through which witnesses observed the execution were drawn, and the execution team replaced the clogged tube with a new one. Ten minutes later, the blinds were reopened and the execution resumed. It took a total of 18 minutes to complete.

Anesthesiologists blamed the problem on the inexperience of prison officials who were conducting the execution, saying that proper procedures taught in "IV 101" would have prevented the error. This apparently led to Illinois' adoption of a different method of lethal injection. On this subject, one of the prosecutors from Gacy's trial, William Kunkle, said "He still got a much easier death than any of his victims."

After his execution, Gacy's brain was removed. It is in the possession of Dr. Helen Morrison, a witness for the defense at Gacy's trial, who interviewed Gacy and other serial killers in an attempt to isolate common personality traits of violent sociopaths. Examination of Gacy's brain after his execution by the forensic psychiatrist hired by his lawyers revealed no abnormalities.

His final words:   “Kiss my ass.”

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