John Wayne Gacy - Killer Clown

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago in 1942. He grew up doubting his own masculinity and never participating in any sports or activities that were better known as "man things". As a young child, Gacy was struck by a swing at 11 years old and suffered terrible black outs for the next 5 years after the incident. Finally after mulitple tests, a blood clot on the brain was discovered and it was dissolved with medication. Gacy suffered as well with hypochondria which made his life even less active.

After Gacy graduated from business college, he became a shoe salesman until something better came along. He married his co-worker whose parents happen to own a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Waterloo, Iowa. Once married to their daughter, Gacy stepped right into to the comfortable postition of a restaurant manager. He was an excellent worker and he started earning respect with the local Jaycees.

To his family and friends surprise, Gacy was arrested in May 1968 on charges of coercing a young employee into homosexual acts spanning a number of months. While accusations were still pending, Gacy hired a teenage thug to beat up the prosecution's witness and even more charges were filed. Gacy pled guilty to sodomy and all the other charges were dismissed. He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after only 18 months for good behavior.

With permission from the state Gacy moved back to Chicago and established himself as a successful contractor. While in prison his first wife divorced him but it wasnt very long until he remarried once again. Gacy then settled down in a small suburb of Des Plaines where he would host elaborate parties for all his neighbors making him very well known and liked throughout . Gacy was also an active democrat, he even posed with the wife of President Jimmy Carter's wife.The new friends that he had knew nothing of his arrest and conviction and if any had heard about it, they only thought he has done time for porn and nothing else.

Then on February 12, 1971 Gacy once again was charged with disorderly conduct on a complaint that he had attempted to rape a young boy. The boy who was thought to be gay failed to show up at the hearing and all charges were dropped and dismissed. Parole officers in Iowa never knew about the charges and he was off parole by October 18, 1971.

Though Gacy first murder was never identified he claimed to have committed it on January 03, 1972. Gacy said that he had picked him up at a bus station. His death was typical of Gacy's approach. Lots of the time Gacy would fall back on young friends and employees, but often liked to roam the streets of Chicago for runaways and hustlers. Sometimes Gacy would even flash a badge and a gun acting as though he was arresting the victim. Other victims were invited to Gacy's home for drinks or a game of pool. He would also show his victims "special" tricks which involved magic handcuffs and sex toys. Once everything was played out, Gacy would do his last trick with a rope, which would end in strangulation. Gacy would then bury his victims in the crawl space under his house, once the space was full they were dumped in a nearby river.

The smell of death was powerful at Gacy's house, when friends would mention the smell, Gacy would just dismiss it as sewer problems and the conversation would move on to something else.

Being married would start to throw a wrench in his plans to kill. His second wife would get in the way of his nights out prowling the streets of Chicago for his latest victims, but when their marriage fell apart in 1976, Gacy was able to resume his murder spree. Between April 6 and June 13, 1976, at least 5 young boys were strangled and murdered at Gacy's home. October 25, 1976, Gacy killed two victims at once, dumping their bodies in a grave together. Gacy would prey on victims between the ages of 9-20, all who were males.

In December of 1977, Robert Donnelly was kidnapped at gunpoint, tortured for hours, and sodomized by Gacy in his house of horror then let go. Three months later 27 year old Jeffrey Rignall was having a drink with Gacy at his house when he was chloroformed and strapped to "the rack", a homemade torture device made by Gacy hmself. He then raped and tortured Rignall for hours, using chloroform throughout the whole process, then dumping him by a lake by Lincoln Park, luckily Rignall survived the ordeal and called the police immediately. it wasn't until months later that Gacy would be charged with a misdemeanor, the case was still dragging on for 5 months when Gacy was finally picked up on charges of multiple murder.

When the end came it was only because Gacy became sloppy. 15 year old Robert Piest had disappeared from his job at a Chicago pharmacy on October 12, 1978. Gacy's construction company had just remodeled the store and the young man had been offered a job with Gacy. Piest had told all of his co-workers that he had, had an appointment to meet with Gacy the night that he disappeared. Following procedure, police went to the home of John Wayne Gacy and immediately noticed the smell of rotting bodies. By the time the police would be finished digging up Gacy's crawl space, it would bring 28 bodies to rest and 5 more recovered at the nearby river. 9 of Gacy's victims would never be identified.

Gacy finally in custody tried to use the excuse that his alter ego "Jack" had done the murders, but that excuse quickly was dismissed and Gacy was charged and convicted of 33 counts of first-degree murder. In 21 of the cases life sentences were handed down, covering the deaths that occured before June 21, 1977 when Illinois reinstated capital punishment. Twelve death sentences were imposed in the cases of the victims murdered between July 1977 and December 1978.

While in prison Gacy claimed that the bodies that were found in hs crawl space were put there by people who were trying to make him look bad. he even had his own 900 number that people could call and hear 12 minutes of the prosecutions case at $1.99 per minute. He then started painting clowns and selling them for large sums of money while on death row. But none of this changed Gacy fate on May 10, 1994 when John Wayne Gacy was put to death by lethal injection by the state of illinois. Gacy's last words were that of no remorse to his victims or their families he simply told everyone to "Kiss his ass".