Serial Killer Week: John Wayne Gacy


Two horrifying things in one - a rapist serial killer/clown. Known as the "Killer Clown," John Wayne Gacy raped and murdered at least 33 boys in the 1970s. His technique was to lure the boys to his home in Chicago. He tended to asphyxiate them when he was done and bury them in his crawlspace, his back yard, or toss them in the river.

By one of those ironies that isn't so ironic, he tended to want to be around children, even in the service of fundraising and charity, by dressing as "Pogo the Clown." 

  

Where did it all go wrong for John Wayne Gacy? The middle child with sisters and a mother he tended to hang around more than the abusive alcoholic father. He was overweight, not athletic, general outcast. He apparently strove to make his father happy with him and was regularly belittled, compared to his sisters, and told he was stupid and slow, a sissy, a mama's boy....

By 9 years old, he had been molested by an adult male. He was generally bullied at school. His teens were spent having strange blackouts and seizures, going in and out of the hospital for long periods of time. When he was a young adult, he left home to get away from the insanity and got a job in a mortuary where he slept on a cot in the embalming room. He later admitted that he had climbed into the coffin with a young man and fondled him and was shocked that he had done it. This scared him so much that he drove back home to Chicago and signed up for college. 

Gacy graduated, got a job in a shoe company, worked his way up to manager and got married to live the typically expected fate. He joined the Jaycees and was a regular citizen. But, one night when drunk with a colleague, he had his second homosexual encounter with oral sex. He later had become very highly respected in the ranks of the Jaycees.

His wife produced two children and his father even told him he was proud of him, finally. The town he moved to had a Jaycees group that did wife swapping and lots of naughty stuff of which he joined in and relished.  He ran restaurants and plied the young men with drinks and tried to solicit for sex. After being caught and having charges against him, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist and reportedly had antisocial personality disorder. He was put away for a time for sodomy.

He went back to Chicago where his mother was and got a job as a short-order cook. He got caught again sodomizing a boy, but the boy didn't show up in court, so it was dismissed. He became engaged to a new woman who had daughters.  They moved into a house that would later be the one where the bodies were found. 

He started his own construction business and he was known for his work with the Democratic Party, street lighting committee, and block parties. He then adopted a clown costume for charity events. Eventually, but 1975, he admitted to his wife he was bisexual. He also told her they'd never sleep together again. His wife saw him taking teen boys into the garage and found gay pornography. After killing his first victim, he said he realized that death was the ultimate thrill.  He often lured his own construction employees into these situations. 

A teenager tipped the police that Gacy had been offering a job to a missing kid. They began to wonder about him. The police began to compile enough reasons for a warrant. Gacy confessed and the bodies were uncovered. 

He was judged guilty and put to death in 1994. In a bit of disgusting irony, he had been commissioned to paint paintings which were later sold for ridiculous sums of money.

Does it get any creepier than this? 






Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Yeah. It's even creepier because he was a real citizen as far as holding good jobs and being part of charity work and such. Ewwww

      Delete

Post a Comment