- Born
- Died
- Nicknames
- The Killer Clown
- Pogo the Clown
- Height5′ 10″ (1.78 m)
- John Wayne Gacy was born in 1942 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. His father, John Stanley Gacy (1900-1969), was an alcoholic and beat him frequently during his violent rages. As Gacy grew up, he began to develop a identity crisis - doubting his own masculinity. At the age of 11, he suffered a blow to the head from a swing. Over the next five years, he had frequent blackouts until doctors found a clot in his brain that was removed with medications. Following that, he would feign 'heart problems' for attention.
He graduated from business college and started to work as a shoe salesman. Gacy married a co-worker worker, whose family owned a KFC in Waterloo, Iowa and began to work there as Manager. He gradually earned the respect of the local Jaycees. In May 1968 he was arrested for sexual misconduct with a young male employee. Gacy actually hired a thug to beat up the witness, which failed, and only increased the charges against him. He plead guilty to sodomy and was sentenced to 10 years. Gacy was a model prisoner and was paroled in 1970 after serving only 18 months.
He then moved to Chicago where he began his life anew as a building constructor. Gacy became popular with his new neighbors and colleagues. He would throw theme parties and often dress up as 'Pogo the Clown' for children's parties and charity shows. Gacy was also involved with the Democratic party and even had his picture taken with then First Lady Rosalynn Carter (wife of former President Jimmy Carter).
On February 12, 1971 he was once again charged with sexual misconduct towards a young man. The witness did not show up in court and the charges were dropped. He finished his parole on October 18, 1971. Gacy committed his first murder on January 3, 1972. His modus operandi would be to drive around town looking for young male runaways, ex-jailbirds or even male prostitutes. Gacy's victims ranged in age from 9 to 20 years. He would flash them a 'badge' or a 'gun' pretending to be an officer of the law and 'arrest' them. Gacy would then befriend them and take take them home where he showed them tricks with 'magic handcuffs'. Once he had subdued his victim he would torture, sodomize and garrote them. Then he would bury them in a crawl space beneath his house. When he ran out of space he began to dump bodies in neighboring rivers. After he divorced his second wife in 1976 the killings escalated as he had the house to himself. On October 25, 1976 he committed a double homicide! In December 1977 he actually let one of his victims leave after he had 'done' with him.
On December 12, 1978 he killed his 33rd and last victim; a 15-year-old boy, named Robert Piest, who lived in his neighborhood. This was Gacy's one big mistake. The victim had told someone he was going to see his "contractor" about a job and was never seen again. The "contractor" turned out to be Gacy. When the police dropped by his house they noticed the smell from the decomposing corpses underneath. When they saw his police record, it wasn't hard for them to get a search warrant of his house. A total of 29 bodies were extracted from the crawlspace and five more from the nearby river, of which 9 remain unidentified. Gacy was judged sane by the court psychiatrists and in 1980 was charged with 21 counts of life for murders committed before June 21, 1977 when Illinois reinstated the death sentence. For the 12 committed since then he got the death sentence.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. Varma
- SpousesCarole Hoff(June 1, 1972 - March 2, 1976) (divorced)Marlynn Myers(April 9, 1964 - November 9, 1968) (divorced, 2 children)
- Parents
- RelativesKaren Kuzma(Sibling)
- Slicked back salt and pepper hair
- Extensive use of ruses, cons, and scams to gain his victims trust and evading law enforcement.
- Notorious for his unpredictable temper and rage issues.
- Heavy Frame
- Thick Chicago accent
- Execution lasted 18 minutes after one of the IV lines clogged.
- On Friday, December 22, 1978, Gacy finally confessed to police that he killed at least thirty people and buried most of the remains of the victims beneath the crawl space of his house. Hist first killing took place in January, 1972. He further confessed that he would lure his victims into being handcuffed and then he would sexually assault them. To muffle the screams of his victims, he would stuff a sock or underwear into their mouths and kill them by pulling a rope or board against their throats, as he raped them. Gacy admitted to sometimes keeping the dead bodies under his bed or in the attic for several hours before eventually burying them in the crawl space.
- Had an IQ of 118, signifying near superior intelligence.
- Soon after Gacy returned home to Chicago from Las Vegas in the early 1960s, he enrolled himself into a business college and eventually graduated. While at business college, he perfected his talent in salesmanship: Gacy was a born salesman who could talk his way in and out of almost anything.
- In the spring of 1968, Gacy was indicted by a grand jury in Black Hawk County for allegedly committing the act of sodomy with a teenage boy named Mark Miller. This was his first known crime.
- 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.
- That one mother [of victim] that gets on television all the time, who thinks I should get 33 injections, I think she ought to take 33 valiums and go lie down.
- GG Allin is an entertainer with a message to a sick society. He makes us look at it for what we really are. The human is just another animal who is able to speak out freely, to express himself clearly. Make no mistake about it, behind what he does is a brain.
- Whether its [David] Berkowitz, whether its [Ted] Bundy, whether its Williams, Wayne Williams down in Atlanta or any of the others, or Charlie Manson-I don't comment about other cases for the simple fact is that I wasn't there.
- 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.
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