The story of John Wayne Gacy is
enough to cause even the most hardened serial killer fan to have a hard time
sleeping. This prolific serial killer stacked his victims, in some cases quite
literally, on a scale that is mostly unmatched amongst other serial killers.
The details of his life would make a frighteningly rich novel. Unfortunately
for his 33 victims, John Wayne Gacy was a real life, living, and breathing
monster.
Early Life
Gacy was born March 17, 1942, in
Chicago, Illinois to an alcoholic, often abusive World War I veteran and a
homemaker. He was one of three children. Gacy with born with a heart defect
that made it impossible for him to be active in sports, therefore he was an
overweight child. He was often the victim of his father’s scorn. He reported taking a beating
from a razor strap on more than one occasion. And Gacy would ofter suffer
verbal abuse from his father as well.
His mother did her best to protect
her child from his violent father. This caused his father to call him a momma’s
boy and a sissy. Gacy’s mother knew her son had a heart problem. She did
her best to shield him from his angry father. Gacy reports being hospitalized
for much of his life from the ages of 14 to 18 due to a mysterious seizure
causing illness and a ruptured appendix. In an John Wayne Gacy interview, he
reports his father’s verbal abuse while he was sick in a hospital bed.
According to Gacy, his father had accused him of faking it.
Signs of trouble were present during
Gacy’s childhood. When he was six, Gacy stole a truck from a store. His mother
forced him to take it back and apologize. His father beat him for it. When Gacy
was 7, he and another boy were accused of molesting a young girl. This earned him a beating with the trusty
razor strap. Also during his 7th year, Gacy was molested by a family friend.
Instead of telling his parents, he suffered this in silence out of fear of
being blamed for the act by his father.
The most telling sign of something amiss with Gacy takes
place around 1962 after he left his home for Las Vegas. In the desert city,
John Wayne Gacy took a job as a mortuary assistant. Gacy recalls sleeping
behind the embalming room. He tells of a night where he decided to climb inside
the coffin of a teenage male and spent some time cuddled up with the body
before disgust took over and forced him out.
An Upstanding Member of the
Community
John Wayne Gacy was a man of many
faces. Before giving into his murderous instincts, he played a role
in multiple community organizations. He became an assistant precinct
captain for his local democratic party candidate. Gacy once said he hoped this
decision would gain some acceptance from his father. Instead, his father called
him a patsy.
After his short stint as a mortuary
assistant, Gacy returned home to Illinois and attended Northwest Business
College he graduated in 1963. Not too much time passed before Gacy met his
first wife, Marlynn Myers. After a brief courtship, the couple married and
moved to Waterloo, Iowa. Marlynn’s father purchased three Kentucky Fried
Chicken restaurants in the area and Gacy became the manager. It was in Waterloo
where John Wayne Gacy first joined the Jaycees, an organization that teaches
leadership and offers civic opportunities for their members. Gacy quickly
became vice president. And at this point
in his life, Gacy appeared to be an upstanding member of society. But things weren’t all they seemed.
The Jaycees had a bit of a dark side. Some members took part in prostitution,
wife swapping and rampant drug use. Gacy was involved in all of this. He went
as far as to open a club in his basement where young people, especially boys
could be plied with alcohol and drugs. In what appears to be a step towards the
dark side Gacy will eventually inhabit, Gacy would make sexual advances aimed
at the teenage boys who worked for him and came to his basement club. When the
boys refused him, Gacy played it off like it was a joke. This activity is a
clear foreshadowing of the darkness to come at the hands of John Wayne Gacy.
The First Offense
In 1967, John Wayne Gacy is enjoying
a normal, successful life in Waterloo, Iowa. He managed three KFC restaurants.
He is the vice president of the local Jaycees. His wife has given him two
children. He has even gained some respect from his hardened and cold father.
All this wasn’t enough to keep Gacy’s darkness at bay.
John Wayne Gacy’s first victim was a 15-year-old
son of a fellow Jaycee member named Daniel Voorhees. Gacy had plied him
with alcohol and forced the boy to perform oral sex. Several other young boys
were assaulted by Gacy around this time. Sometimes Gacy would tell the boys
they were part of a science experiment, paying some of them fifty dollars.
Voorhees notified his father of the
assault. Gacy was arrested for the assault of Voorhees as well as the attempted
assault of another 16-year-old boy. Gacy denied any wrongdoing and even
requested a polygraph test, which showed his nervousness when denying the
assaults. Gacy went as far as to say the assault accusations were politically
motivated by a power-hungry member of the Jaycees. An indictment was handed down in the case
brought about by Voorhees against Gacy in 1968. In an attempt to get out of the
charges against him, Gacy paid an
employee to attack Voorhees and convince him not to testify. For
three hundred dollars, Russell Schroeder attacked Voorhees, sprayed him in the
face with mace, and beat him, all while yelling at Voorhees not to testify
against Gacy. Voorhees escaped and went on to testify. Gacy was convicted of sodomy and sentenced
to 10 years. Gacy’s wife filed for divorce, won, and Gacy never saw her or
their children again.
Not surprisingly, Gacy thrived in prison. He was said to
have been a model prisoner. He became the head cook and eventually joined the
prison’s Jaycees chapter. He undertook projects to enhance the lives of
prisoners, going as far as to get a pay increase for the inmates. After serving
18 months of his 10-year sentence, Gacy was released on parole.
A New Lease on Life
After his stint in prison, Gacy
purchased a house at 8213 West Summerdale
Avenue in Cook County Iowa. This is the house where most of his murders
took place. He reunited with Carole Hoff, a woman he had dated in high school.
They eventually married and Hoff and her two children moved into the Summerdale
house with John Wayne Gacy. Gacy started
his own construction company named PDM. Like other parts of Gacy’s life, the
construction business agreed with him. He found some moderate success. And once
again, this success wasn’t enough to keep John Wayne Gacy from straying into
the darkness. In 1973, during a business trip to look into the purchase of
property in Florida, Gacy attacked
a young employee in their hotel room.
After the rape, the employee spent
the night on the beach, refusing to share the room after Gacy’s actions. After
returning home, the boy waited for and beat him. Gacy’s mother in law stepped
in. Gacy told his wife the young boy was upset because he refused to pay the
boy for bad work. Gacy was once again active in his community. He worked for
the Democratic Party. He was appointed the director of the Polish Constitution
Day Parade in Chicago. He served in this office for three years. It was during
this time that he had his picture taken with First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
He joined the Moose Club. He even
joined the Jolly Joker clown club. This is where he came up with his characters “Pogo” and “Patches” the clown. He
performed at Democratic parties, community events, and even children’s
hospitals. It has been noted that by keeping the sharp corners used in the
drawing of the mouth of his clown face, Gacy went against the traditional soft
lines that were thought to not be so scary to children. Even Gacy’s clown was
scary.
The Murders Begin
His first murder could have been a misunderstanding. In
1972, Gacy picked up 16-year-old Timothy Jack McCoy from the local Greyhound
terminal. He took him sightseeing around the city and offered to let him spend
the night with promises to take him to the bus terminal in the morning. Gacy woke
up to find McCoy standing with a knife raised above his head. Gacy tackled
McCoy, eventually killing him.
Gacy buried
McCoy in his crawl space, under a layer of concrete. After killing the
boy, Gacy said he walked into the kitchen to find breakfast laid out and an
uncut slab of bacon. Chances are, the boy was merely coming to wake Gacy for
breakfast while accidentally holding the knife in what Gacy perceived to be a
threatening manner. In an interview after his arrest, Gacy is quoted as saying
he enjoyed a mind-numbing orgasm during
the killing. The experience opened the door for more killings, Gacy always
seeking that initial thrill.
Another Divorce, More Freedom
Gacy honed his murderous skills
while working long hours to expand his construction company. In 1975, John
Wayne Gacy was working 12 to 16 hours days and then spent what little free time
available “cruising” for men. That's the phrase he used to describe his driving
around and picking up young boys to torture and murder.
John Wayne Gacy developed techniques
to make subduing and killing easier for him, and really, the scale Gacy was
killing required a skilled technique. The “Handcuff Trick” involved getting his
intended victim to willingly place
the handcuffs on themselves. The handcuff trick involved plying a young
boy with drugs or alcohol and then employing his clown tricks to get the victim
handcuffed and unable to fight back. The “Rope Trip” came next. This simply
involved Gacy using a rope as a makeshift tourniquet to strangle his victims.
Perhaps it was Gacy’s constant absence that led to Carole
asking for a divorce. Maybe it was an argument. Either way, the couple agreed
to a divorce in 1976. The reason listed for the divorce was Gacy’s infidelities
with other women. Gacy had been actively killing young boys in the house he
shared with Carole and her daughters since 1972.
The Cruising Years
With the divorce and Carole moving
out, Gacy was left to his own devices. It is reported that John Wayne Gacy
tried to stay active in the community, but neighbors talked about changes in
his activities and personality. Neighbors reported Gacy leaving at odd hours of
the night, lights turning on and off, and one neighbor reported hearing screams and sounds of suffering coming
from the Gacy home in the night.
Between the years of 1976 and 1978,
Gacy confessed to murdering 23
teenage boys and then burying them in the crawl space beneath his
house. He had young male employees of his construction company dig trenches in
the crawl space. Some reported spreading lime. Lime is known to help with
decomposition.
In 1978, Gacy ran into a problem. His crawl space was full.
Although he dug trenches and stacked bodies, sometimes three deep, there was no
room left for any more victims. At this point in his spree, Gacy began dumping
bodies along the Des Plains River. One victim was left for dead and actually
survived. Although Jeffery Rignall survived, he couldn’t place Gacy as his
attacker.
The End of a Spree
John Wayne Gacy couldn’t keep this
killing pace up forever. Eventually, he was going to make a mistake, some
careless move and that would lead to his end. At a visit to a local pharmacy,
Gacy offered 15-year-old Robert Piest a job that paid better than his
current job at the pharmacy. Piest informed his mother of the job offer and
headed off to meet Gacy. When Piest failed to return home, his mother filed a
missing person report. Gacy denied meeting with Piest, however, he was seen at
the pharmacy offering Piest a job by more than one witness. The Piest
investigation led to Rignall’s tale of Gacy’s violence as well as other witnesses
to Gacy’s actions. He was placed under constant surveillance. He grew so
comfortable with the surveillance teams that he turned it into a game. He even offered them breakfast at one
point. He went as far as to tell the detectives over breakfast, “You know…
clowns can get away with murder.” The constant surveillance began to really
wear on Gacy. He had his lawyer prepare a civil suit against the Des Plains
police to get them to stop their ceaseless monitoring. Eventually, the
detectives came knocking on Gacy’s door. During the first search, nothing of
note was found. During the second search, a detective noticed a smell coming
from air ducts that could have been the smell of rotting corpses. The only
thing that could explain this discrepancy was that the air was cooler during
the first visit. Once the air had time to warm up, the smell was very much present.
A Killer Tells His Tale
On the morning of December 22, 1978,
Gacy, tired of the constant surveillance and beginning to come apart at the
ends, sat down with detectives to tell his tale. Gacy told of cruising for
young boys, boys he referred to as prostitutes, liars, and hustlers. He would
often pick them up at bus stations.
Gacy said, `he would take them home
to his 8213 West Summerdale home where he would bound them with handcuffs and
strangle them. With some victims, Gacy would partially drown them in
the bathtub before reviving them to begin the torture all over again. He
admitted to stacking bodies in his crawl space. Gacy went as far as to provide
a hand-drawn sketch of the placement of the 23 bodies buried beneath his house.
Detectives were already aware of this fact thanks to a search warrant. When detectives went to search Gacy’s home,
they found a flooded crawl space and a broken sump pump. After replacing the
broken part, detectives simply waited for the water to drain. They were then
met with soaking wet, purified
flesh.
The Trial, Conviction, and His Sentence
The trial against John Wayne Gacy
began on February 6, 1980. He was charged with the murder of 33 young men.
Gacy’s defense predictably entered a not guilty by reasons of insanity plea. He spent countless hours being
interviewed and screened by psychiatrists. Psychiatrists working for the
defense found Gacy to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. The prosecution
claimed the premeditation of Gacy’s crimes prove he was in his right mind at
the time he committed his crimes. Both
the defense and prosecution presented their cases for and against Gacy. On
March 12, 1980, with the jury spending less than two hours in deliberation,
they found Gacy guilty of 33 murders, sexual assault and indecent liberties with a child. The
jury spent a little more than two hours deciding the fate of John Wayne Gacy.
The jury came back with twelve death sentences to be carried out June 2, 1980.
The Interview of John Wayne Gacy
Durning Gacy’s 15-year incarceration
on death row at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois, he kept busy
by filing appeals and giving interviews. John Wayne Gacy filed appeals
arguing that he did not agree with his lawyer entering a plea of insanity
during the trial. He claimed he was merely an accomplice and the police did not
do enough to find the real killers. He appealed all the way to the Supreme
Court of the United States to no avail. The death penalty stood. During a 5 part interview with Walter
Jacobson with Channel 2 News, Gacy vehemently denies the killings.
The video of this interview displays a man who is prone to rambling.
He comes across as cagey. He very much wants the public to know his story,
although this is a completely new story than the one he told detectives 13
years before during his confession.
Gacy begins the interview with some
classic examples of victim blaming. During his original confession, he referred
to his victims as male prostitutes, hustlers, and liars. He builds on this
during the Channel 2 interview 13 years later. Gacy said the media portrays the
dead boys as “altar boys, picked up from the street and I swatted them like
flies.” This was Gacy’s way of blaming the victims, saying if they
weren’t runaways, they wouldn’t have been out there to be killed. Later in the
interview, Gacy says there are more single parents now because of a break down
in the church. This breakdown of the church and the single parents caused these
boys to run away looking for love. Then Gacy
denies committing the murders multiple times and multiple ways throughout the
interview. He talks about being on “the maximum amount of truth serum for five
and a half hours” so surely he would have remembered killing all those young
men.
There is in fact, zero evidence of
Gacy being administered any sort of truth serum. Gacy does admit to having
knowledge of the murders, saying he was forced to bury them for someone else.
He said if the police did their job right, there would be four indictments in
this case instead of just the one. He makes it clear that he believes the police set him up.
The irony of Gacy words during this
recorded interview is nothing short of rich. At one point, he calls himself a
loving father, unable to ever hit his children, a caring father who was the
complete opposite of his own father. The fact that he harmed these 33 young
boys is not lost on the viewer. In an especially chilling point of the
interview, Gacy displays how his rope trick worked. He claims the tourniquet
knot is the only knot he remembers learning from Boy Scouts. Nearly every body
found in his basement was killed via strangulation using the exact tourniquet
knot he shows Walter Jacobson. But, obviously, Gacy still denies having any part in the killings.
John Wayne Gacy's Art
During his stay on death row, Gacy
became a bit of an artist. He shows some of his work during his interview with
Channel 2’s Walter Jacobson. Much of John Wayne Gacy's artwork involved his
clown personas. Gacy named one of these pieces “33 Flavors Clown” in a nod to
the ice cream chain he said he once worked with both in his construction
business as well as performing as a clown. Remember, Gacy killed 33 young boys.
The irony cannot be missed. His artwork
ranges from dark and twisted to more childlike and even peaceful. His most
peaceful work was named “Lou Jacobs”. It appears to be nothing more than a nice painting of a
clown. Gacy explores his dark side with paintings such as “Sex Skull”. This
features a skull made up of phallic symbols and naked bodies of both men and
women. The teeth in this painting are nothing short of haunting. In a series of
paintings featuring the Seven Dwarfs made famous by Walt Disney, Gacy
appears to explore what was lost in his childhood due to his overbearing
father.
Gacy was commissioned
by rock bands to make paintings as dark as they perhaps aspired to
be. After he was put to death, many of his paintings were purchased, some by
victims families, only to be burned in a bonfire. His paintings still fetch a
good price when they go up for sale today.
John Wayne Gacy Quotes
During his trial and subsequent
interviews, Gacy had a lot to say.
Much like his artwork, Gacy’s quotes
cover a range of topics, from his proclaimed innocence to darker, almost
confessions.
Here are a few, especially
rememberable John Wayne Gacy Quotes.
1.
“The dead won't bother you, it's the
living you have to worry about.”
2.
“I don't remember killing anyone, I
could have done it without knowing it. I am not sure if I did it.”
3.
“The only thing they can get me for
is running a funeral parlor without a license.”
4.
“There was no smell. Over the years
time other than when it rained, the musty odor was present. People were in and
out of that house daily for years. And other than when it rained, there was no
odor and certainly not like what some of the books said. That's all fantasy. If
that odor was there somebody would have noticed it sooner.”
5.
“I would definitely not be
homosexual. I have nothing against what they do and I don't deny that I've
engaged in sex with males but that I'm bisexual.”
6.
“The idea that I'm a homosexual
thrill killer, that I stroll down the streets and stalk young boys and
slaughter them... Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule, you
knew damn well that I was never out there.”
The Death of John Wayne Gacy
Gacy, having run out of appeals,
was put to death via lethal injection on May 9, 1994. His last
meal was made up of a bucket of KFC chicken, fried shrimp, strawberries, french
fries, and a Diet Coke to wash it all down.
His Last Words
Some serial killers express emotion
or regret at the end. Some leave last words that are cryptic and make us
wonder. John Wayne Gacy did none of these things. He simply said, “Kiss
my ass.”
John Wayne Gacy Movies
The story of John Wayne Gacy is long
and filled with information. After reading all of this, perhaps you’d like a
movie to sum it all up. There have been numerous films made about his spree.
Summary
John Wayne Gacy’s crimes made him
one of the most prolific
serial killers of our time. In his younger days, he seemed to try to
fight his demons and be a family man, an upstanding member of society. As much
as he tried, his darkness still took over. He is responsible for taking the
lives of 33 young men. 6 victims remain unidentified today. Gacy’s reign of
terror made an impression on pop culture that remains to this day.
We must look at the past to protect
ourselves and those that we love in the present times.
As always, stay safe!
- bird
