March 17th 1942, a little boy was born with a heart defect. As one of three children, this little boy became the victim of his fathers scorn, often being beaten and verbally abused. This little, overweight boy quickly began to feel as though he was not good enough for his father. His mother did her best to protect her little boy from his violent father, however this made the emotional abuse worse. During the ages 14 to 18, he was often hospitalised due to a mysterious seizure causing illness, and even whilst sick in hospital, he was still a victim of his fathers abuse.
This little boy was called John Wayne Gacy. How did this sickly little boy turn into a sadistic killer?
Early Trouble.
When he was just 6 years old, John Wayne Gacy stole a toy truck from a store. His mother, after she realised what he had done, forced him to return it and apologise, his father however, simply beat him for it.
When he was just 7 years old, Gacy and another boy were accused of molesting a young girl.
7 year old Gacy was molested by a family friend, but he suffered in silence in fear of being blamed by his hateful father.
In 1962, Gacy left his abusive home for Las Vegas, where he took a job as a mortuary assistant. In a later interview, Gacy describes how he would sleep behind the embalming room, where one night, out of loneliness, he decided to climb inside a coffin of a teenage male. He spent some time cuddled up to the body, however he states that disgust took over him and forced him out of the coffin. This, along with the accusations of molestation, foreshadow John Wayne Gacy's sick tendencies.
Well Liked.
After his short time as a mortuary assistant, Gacy returned home to Illinois to attend Northwest Business College where he graduated in 1963. Not much time passed before he met Marlynn Myers, they married and moved to Waterloo, Iowa.
Here he became a well liked member of the community. Marlynn's father purchased 3 Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants in the area and Gacy became the manager. It was in Waterloo that Gacy joined the Jaycees, an organisation that teaches leadership and offers civic opportunities for their members. He quickly became vice president.
Despite seeming to be an upstanding member of the community, the Jaycees in fact had a rather dark side. Some members took part in prostitution, wife swapping and drug use. Of course, Gacy was involved in all of this. He even went as far as to open a club with a basement where young people, especially boys, could be plied with drugs and alcohol. Gacy would make sexual advances on these boys who came to his basement club, and when they rejected him, he would pretend like he had been joking. This again foreshadowed what was to come.
His First Crime.
In 1967, John Wayne Gacy has a normal and successful life in Waterloo. He managed 3 KFC restaurants, was vice president of the Jaycees and had a wife and two children. He even appeared to have gained some respect from his father. However this was not enough for Gacy.
His first victim was 15 year old Daniel Voorhees, who was the son of a fellow Jaycee member. Gacy had supplied with him alcohol and forced the boy to perform oral sex. Several other young boys were assaulted by Gacy around this time too, sometimes telling them that they were part of a science experiment and even paying them 50 dollars.
Voorhees told his father about the assault and Gacy was arrested, as well as for the attempted assault of another 16 year old boy. He denied all and even requested a polygraph test, which showed his nervousness whilst denying the assaults. Gacy even stated that the accusations were politically motivated by a power-hungry member of the Jaycees.
Gacy decided to pay an employee to attack Voorhees and to convince him not to testify. For 300 dollars, Voorhees was attacked, sprayed in the face with mace and was beaten. Despite this vicious attack, he went to testify against Gacy anyway.
Gacy was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to 10 years.
His wife filed for a divorce, won, and Gacy never saw her or his children again.
Prison Life.
Gacy, due to his relationship with his father, always strived for praise and acceptance by authority figures. Therefore, unsurprisingly, Gacy thrived in prison and was almost a 'model prisoner'. He became head cook and joined the prison Jaycees club, along side undertaking projects to better life for prisoners, even getting a pay increase for inmates.
After serving 18 months of his 10-year sentence, Gacy was released on parole.
A Second Chance.
Gacy purchased a house in Cook County Iowa and reunited with Carole Hoff, a woman he had dated in high school. Gacy and Hoff eventually married and Hoff and her two children moved into Gacy's new house.
Moderate success was found after he started his own construction company named PDM, but yet again, this success was not enough to satisfy Gacy.
In 1973, during a business trip to look at a property in Florida, Gacy attacked a young employee in their hotel room. After the rape, the employee spent the night at the beach, refusing to share a room after Gacy's actions. Upon returning home the boy waited for Gacy to return home and began to beat him. Gacy's mother in law stepped in, and Gacy told his wife the young boy was simply upset because he had refused to pay the boy for bad work.
The Evil Clown.
John Wayne Gacy began to be a thriving member of the community again, where he joined the Moose Club and the Jolly Joker Clown Club. It was here where he came up with his characters 'Pogo' and 'Patches' the clown.
He performed at Democratic parties, community events and even at children's hospitals. It has been highlighted that Gacy's clown makeup was different to the traditional soft lines and corners, designed to not be frightening to children, as he kept the edges of clown mouth sharp. Even his clown costume was intimidating.
Clown Turns Killer.
In 1972, Gacy picked up 16 year old Timothy Jack McCoy from the local Greyhound terminal. He took him on a tour around the city and offered to let him spend the night with the promise to take him to the bus stop in the morning.
Gacy woke to find McCoy standing in the doorway with a knife. Instinctively, he tackled McCoy and eventually killed him. He buried the boys body in his crawl space under a layer of concrete. Upon entering the kitchen, John Wayne Gacy found breakfast laid out and with an uncut bacon joint. The boy had simply prepared breakfast, and gone to wake Gacy, still holding the knife ready to cut the bacon.
In an interview, Gacy told of how he enjoyed a 'mind numbing orgasm' during the killing. This experience sparked a chain of killings, with Gacy always seeking that first thrill.
Evil Tricks.
In 1975 John Wayne Gacy was working 12-16 hours and then spent his little free time available 'cruising' for boys. Over this time, he developed techniques, or 'tricks' as he called them, to make killing easier for him.
The 'handcuff trick' involved getting his intended victims to willingly place handcuffs on themselves, giving them drugs and alcohol. This left them completely unable to fight back.
The 'rope trick' was next, where simply, Gacy used a rope as a makeshift tourniquet to strangle his victims.
In 1976, Gacy's wife asked for a divorce, possibly due to Gacy's constant absence.
Left Alone.
After the divorce, and being left alone in his house, Gacy was left with more freedom. Gacy tried to keep active within the community, but others noticed a change in his behaviour. Neighbours reported Gacy leaving at odd hours in the night, lights turning on and off, and one neighbour even reported hearing screams and 'sounds of suffering' coming from Gacy's home during the night.
The Crawl Space.
Between the years 1976-1978 Gacy confessed to murdering 23 teenage boys and burying them in the crawl space beneath his house. He had young male employees from his construction company dig trenches in the crawl space, with some reporting spreading lime. Lime is known to help decomposition.
In 1978 Gacy realised that his crawl space was full. Although he had dug trenches and stacked bodies, there was no room for any more victims. He began to dump the bodies along the Des Plains River.
One victim was left for dead but survived, although he could not place Gacy as his attacker.
It Comes To An End...
In 1978, at a local pharmacy, Gacy offered 15 year old Robert Piest a job. Piest informed his mother of the job offer and headed off to meet Gacy. When the boy did not return home, his mother filed a missing persons report. Gacy denied meeting with Piest, despite there being more than on witness at the pharmacy.
The Piest investigation led to stories of Gacy's violence and actions. He was placed under constant surveillance and at first Gacy saw this as some type of game, even offering the team breakfast at one point. However the constant monitoring took its toll on Gacy, who had a lawyer prepare a civil suit against the Des Plains police.
Eventually Gacy's house was searched. During the first search nothing stood out to the detectives. However, during the second search, a detective noticed a smell coming from the air ducts that reminded them of the smell of rotting corpses. Once the house began to warm up, the smell grew stronger.
His Story.
December 22 1978, Gacy, tired of the constant surveillance, sat down with detectives and told them everything. He referred to the young boys as prostitutes, lairs and hustlers, and that he would often pick them up from bus stations. Gacy would then take them to his home, where he would handcuff and strangle them. He admitted that with some of his victims he would partially drown then in the bathtub, before reviving them to restart the torture.
John Wayne Gacy then went on to provide a hand-drawn sketch of the placement of the 23 bodies buried beneath the house. Detectives however were already aware of this due to the search warrant.
After the detectives searched Gacy's home, they found a flooded crawl space and a broken pump. After replacing the broken part, detectives simply waited for the water to drain, where they saw soaking wet, purified flesh.
The Trail.
The trail against John Wayne Gacy began February 6th 1980. He was charged with the murder of 33 young men.
Gacy’s defence entered a not guilty by reasons of insanity plea, which was predictable. He spent many hours being interviewed by psychiatrists and the prosecution claimed the premeditation of the crimes proved that he was of sane mind at the time he committed them. Both the defence and prosecution presented their case for and against Gacy.
March 12, 1980, the jury spent less than two hours in deliberation, and found Gacy guilty of 33 murders, sexual assault and indecent liberties with a child.
The Jury came back with twelve death sentences to be carried out on June 2 1980.
The Interviews.
During his 15 years on Death Row, John Wayne Gacy filed appeals and gave interviews. He began to claim that he was merely an accomplice and the police did not do enough to find the real killers. His appeals, of course, did not work and the death penalty still stood.
During a 5 part interview with Channel 2 news, Gacy denied the killings. The videos show a man who is prone to rambling, comes across as cagey and tells a story to the public which is a completely new story than the one he told detectives.
Gacy also shows some classic examples of victim blaming, where he basically states that if the boys were not runaways, they wouldn't have been there to be killed. Multiple times he denies the murders, however he does say he buried the bodies for someone else. He stated that the police had set him up. Whilst being interviewed, Gacy displays how the rope trick worked, and claimed that the tourniquet knot is the only knot he remembered from Boy Scouts. Yet nearly every body was found in his basement was killed by strangulation using the exact tourniquet knot Gacy showed in the interview.
Last Moments.
John Wayne Gacy was put to death via lethal injection on May 9 1994.
His last meal was a bucket of KFC chicken, fried shrimp, strawberries, French fries and a diet coke.
Gacy did not show any emotion or regret at the end, his last words were simply
"Kiss my ass".
Comments