John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (March
17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American
serial killer.
Between 1972 and 1978, the year he was arrested, Gacy raped and
murdered at least 33 young men and boys. Although some of his
victims' bodies were found in the Des Plaines River, 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".
Early life
John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was born in Chicago, Illinois, the second of
three children, to John Wayne Gacy, Sr. (June 20, 1900 –
December 25, 1969), a machinist, and Marion Elaine Robinson (May 4,
1908 – December 14, 1989). Cook County marriage records
provide his mother's name as Marion E. Robertson.
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 out of money in
Las Vegas, Nevada, he worked
long enough to earn money to travel back home to Chicago. Without
returning to high school, he enrolled in and eventually graduated
from Northwestern Business College.
A management trainee position with the
Nunn-Bush Shoe Company followed shortly after graduation, and in
1964, Gacy was transferred to Springfield, Illinois
. There he met coworker Marlynn 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.
Marlynn'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 Gacys 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. However, there was a seamier side of
Jaycee life in Waterloo, one that involved
prostitution,
pornography, and
drugs, in which Gacy was 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
professed his 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 was arrested.
Before the year was
out, he was convicted of sodomy and sentenced
to 10 years in the Iowa State Penitentiary
.
Gacy's imprisonment was rapidly followed by his wife's petition for
divorce, which was final in 1969. He never
saw his children again. During his incarceration, Gacy's father
died from
cirrhosis on
Christmas Day 1969. Gacy was
paroled for good behavior in 1970, after serving 18
months. After Gacy was released, he moved back to Illinois to live
with his mother. He successfully hid this
criminal record until police began
investigating him for his later murders.
Businessman and political activist
Gacy moved in with his mother and got a job as a chef in a Chicago
restaurant.
In 1971, with his mother's financial
assistance, he bought a house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, in an
unincorporated area of Norwood Park Township, Cook
County
, which is surrounded by the northwest side Chicago
neighborhood of Norwood Park
. The house had a four-foot deep crawl space
under the floor.
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. Again charges were
dropped.
In June 1972, Gacy married Carole Hoff, an acquaintance from his
teenage years. Hoff and her two daughters 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. John Gacy began
bringing
gay pornography into the
house. The Gacys divorced in March 1976.
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
United States Secret Service.
During the search of Gacy's house after his arrest, this photo
caused a major embarrassment to the Secret Service.
Murders
On January 3, 1972, Gacy, engaged to marry his second wife, picked
up a youth named Timothy McCoy from the Greyhound bus station in
Chicago and drove him to his home where, the following morning, the
youth was stabbed to death and buried in Gacy's crawlspace.
According to Gacy, this killing was unintentional, committed in the
mistaken belief the youth intended to attack him with a knife from
his kitchen.
Three years later, 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.
Gacy's second wife divorced him eight months later, and Gacy began
to kill in earnest. Between April and October of 1976, Gacy killed
a minimum of eight youths, all buried in his crawlspace. 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 a further eight 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 same employee to whom Gacy had sold Szyc's car was
arrested for stealing gasoline from a station while driving Szyc's
car. Upon investigating the theft, Gacy told officers that Szyc had
sold the car to him before leaving town. The police did not pursue
the matter further.
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. Yet again, Chicago police took no action. In March 1978,
Gacy lured Jeffrey Rignall into his car.
Gacy chloroformed 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 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, having filled
up his crawlspace with corpses.
Investigation
Undated photo of Gacy
Robert
Piest, a 15-year-old boy, disappeared on December 11, 1978 from the
Des
Plaines
pharmacy where he worked after school. The
same evening, Gacy, whose firm specialized in pharmacy design and
construction, had visited the store to discuss a potential
remodelling deal with the owner that evening. Gacy was heard
mentioning that his firm hired teenage boys while he was within
earshot of Piest. After Gacy left the store, Piest told his mother,
who had come to collect her son that "some contractor wants to talk
to me about a job". He left the store, promising to return shortly.
When Piest failed to return, his family filed a missing persons
report on their son with the Des Plaines Police. The owner of the
pharmacy named Gacy as the contractor Piest had most likely left
the store to talk with. Gacy denied talking to Piest when Des
Plaines police called him the next day, and promised to come to the
station later that evening to make a statement confirming this,
indicating 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.
Des
Plaines 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.
Mug shot on the day of his final
arrest.
Further investigation into Gacy's background linked him to the
disappearance of three further 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, 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 Township
residence, police quickly found several human bones and informed
investigators they could charge Gacy with murder.
Arrest and confession
After being informed that he would now face murder charges, Gacy
confessed that since 1972, 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 the last five bodies off the
I-55 bridge and into the
Des Plaines River. Gacy drew police a
diagram of his basement to show where the bodies were buried.
Gacy told the police that he would pick up male teenage runaways or
male prostitutes from the Chicago
Greyhound Bus station or off the streets, and
take them back to his house by either promising them money for sex,
offering them a job with his construction company, or simply
grabbing them by force. Once they got back to his house, he would
handcuff them or tie them up in another way. Gacy would often stick
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. Periodically, Gacy
would pour lime in the crawlspace to hasten the decomposition of
the bodies.
Police had already gone back to the house to search for more
remains, mostly in the basement. 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 crawlspace. 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.
Trial and execution
On February 6, 1980, Gacy's trial began in Chicago. During the
trial, he
pleaded not guilty by reason of
insanity. However, this plea was rejected outright; 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 defense tried to claim that all 33
murders were accidental deaths as part of erotic asphyxia, but the Cook
County
Coroner countered this
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.
Gacy spent the next 14 years studying books on law and filing
numerous and exhaustive appeals and motions, all unsuccessful.
While awaiting execution, Gacy was interviewed by
Robert Ressler as the centerpiece of a
documentary about his crimes. The transcripts were published in
Ressler's book,
I Have Lived In The Monster. Gacy, at one
point, claimed that one of them was killed in
self defense.
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
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 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 at 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
sociopath. Examination
of Gacy's brain after his execution by the
forensic psychiatrist hired by his
lawyers revealed no abnormalities.
Victims
Known Gacy victims, with date of disappearance.
- Timothy McCoy, 18, January 3, 1972
- John Butkovich, 17, July 29, 1975
- Darrell Sampson, 18, April 6, 1976
- Randall Reffett, 15, May 14, 1976
- Sam Stapleton, 14, May 14, 1976
- Michael Bonnin, 17, June 3, 1976
- William Carroll, 16, June 13, 1976
- Rick Johnston, 17, August 6, 1976
- Kenneth Parker, 16, October 25, 1976
- Michael Marino, 14, October 25, 1976
- Gregory Godzik, 17, December 12, 1976
- John Szyc, 19, January 20, 1977
- Jon Prestidge, 20, March 15, 1977
- Matthew Bowman, 19, July 5, 1977
- Robert Gilroy, 18, September 15, 1977
- John Mowery, 19, September 25, 1977
- Russell Nelson, 21, October 17, 1977
- Robert Winch, 16, November 10, 1977
- Tommy Boling, 20, November 18, 1977
- David Talsma, 19, December 9, 1977
- William Kindred, 19, February 16, 1978
- Timothy O'Rourke, 20, June, 1978
- Frank Landingin, 19, November 4, 1978
- James Mazzara, 21, November 24, 1978
- Robert Piest, 15, December 11, 1978
Originally, nine of the bodies remained unidentified. One was
eventually identified as Timothy McCoy, leaving eight Gacy victims
unidentified.
In film
Brian Dennehy starred as Gacy in the
television film
To Catch a
Killer, aired in 1992. The feature film
Gacy, starring
Mark
Holton as John Gacy, was released in 2003.
While awaiting execution, Gacy was interviewed by
Robert Ressler in conjunction with a
documentary about the crimes. The transcripts were published in
Ressler's book,
I Have Lived in the Monster.
Gacy as an artist
During his 14 years on
death row, Gacy
took up
oil painting, his favorite
subject being portraits of
clowns. He said he
used his clown act as an
alter ego, once
sardonically saying that "A clown can get away with murder". His
paintings included pictures of
Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs and his fellow serial killers
Jeffrey Dahmer and
Ed Gein. They are among the most famous examples of
serial killer art.
Many of Gacy's paintings were sold at auction after his execution.
Nineteen were put up for sale, prices ranging from $195, for an
acrylic painting of a bird, to $9500
for a depiction of dwarfs playing baseball against the
Chicago Cubs. Some bought Gacy's paintings to
destroy them.
A bonfire in Naperville, Illinois
in June 1994 was attended by 300 people, including
family members of nine victims who watched 25 of the paintings
burn.
The
privately owned National
Museum of Crime & Punishment
exhibits two Gacy paintings including “Baseball
Hall of Fame”, signed by 46 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame
including Duke Snider, Willie Mays, Joe
DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Sandy
Koufax, Yogi Berra, and Roy Campanella. President
Richard Nixon also signed the work. All
signers were unaware that Gacy was the artist.
References
- Linedecker, pp. 16-17
- Linedecker, p. 19
- Linedecker, p. 17
- Linedecker, pp. 18-19
- Linedecker, pp. 20-22
- Linedecker, p. 23
- Linedecker, pp. 24-25
- Linedecker, p. 28
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 263
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 265
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 267
- Sullivan and Maiken, pp. 268-270
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 272
- Peck and Dolch, p. 260
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 274
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 275
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 276
- Linedecker, p. 49
- Linedecker, pp. 50-51
- Linedecker, pp. 51-52
- Linedecker, p. 53
- Linedecker, pp. 61-62
- Linedecker, pp. 55-59
- Linedecker, p. 65
- Linedecker, p. 66
- Linedecker, p. 68
- Linedecker, p. 87
- Linedecker, p. 70
- Linedecker, p. 72
- Linedecker, pp. 142-43
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 248
- Cahill, p101.
- Cahill, p 349.
- Cahill, p 126.
- Linedecker, pp. 83-85.
- Linedecker, pp. 92-93
- Sullivan, p58-60
- Linedecker, pp. 95-97
- Linedecker, p. 150
- Linedecker, pp. 146-150
- Linedecker, p. 153
- Cahill, p219
- Serial Killers. p 73.
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 5-6
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 7
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 17n and Maiken, p. 14
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 23
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 17
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 33
- Murder casebook number 84 ISBN 0-7485-1454-6, p.1915
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 53
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 84
- Sullivan and Maiken, pp. 53-55
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 110
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 143
- Murder casebook number 84 ISBN 0-7485-1454-6, p.1915
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 157
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 167
- Sullivan and Maiken, pp. 171-75
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 193
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 177
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 250
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 213
- Buried Dreams ISBN 1-85702-084-7 p 221
- Sullivan and Maiken, p. 235
- Sullivan and Maiken, 294
- Ressler, Robert K. Interview With A Monster: John Wayne
Gacy, I Have Lived In The Monster.
- Kuczka, Susan and Rob Karwath. "All Appeals Fail: Gacy is Executed. Serial Killer Dies of
Lethal Injection." Chicago Tribune. 10 May 1994.
- Boy Killer: John Wayne Gacy by David Lohr
- TIME Magazine, 23 May 1994
- Sullivan and Maiken, 354
- Sullivan and Maiken, 361
- Sullivan and Maiken, 361-2
- Sullivan and Maiken, 301
- Sullivan and Maiken, 215
- Sullivan and Maiken, 303
- Linedecker, Clifford. The Man Who Killed Boys. St.
Martin's Press, 1986 paperback edition, p. 248. ISBN
0312952287
- Sullivan and Maiken, 54
- Sullivan and Maiken, 55
- Sullivan and Maiken, 303
- Sullivan and Maiken, 304
- Sullivan and Maiken, 305
- Linedecker 141
- Sullivan and Maiken, 219-220
- Sullivan and Maiken, 220
- Sullivan and Maiken, 7
- "All About Forensic Anthropology", Crime
Library
- "Closed Cases", Doe Network
- State: Sale of Chicago serial killer's art draws
protests
Cited works and further reading
- Kozenczak, Joseph R. & Karen Henrikson. The Chicago
Killer. Xlibris Corporation. November 3, 2003. ISBN
1401095321.
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