A serial killer named John Wayne Gacy was a pleasant man who enjoyed entertaining little children, according to numerous individuals. At parties he gave for his entire neighborhood, he frequently dressed up as he alter ego, Pogo the Clown. By 1978, the public’s image of Gacy had completely changed, and he had earned the terrifying moniker the ‘Killer Clown’.
Young Gacy, like many serial killers in the making, was subjected to a variety of physical torture as he grew up. John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 33 young men in Cook County, Illinois and buried the majority of them under his house. Other bodies were discovered in the Des Plaines River, which is close by.
Career
During the 1960s, Gacy worked as a fast-food chain manager before becoming a self-made building contractor and Democratic precinct captain in the Chicago suburbs.
Gacy was well-liked in his neighbourhood, and he organised cultural events as well as participating in political organisations and the Jaycees civic club. He had two biological children and was twice married and divorced (in addition to two stepdaughters).
How He Got Caught
Gacy’s first red flag arose in 1964 when he was convicted of sodomizing two young boys. Gacy was apprehended and imprisoned for 18 months. Gacy had divorced by the time he was released and had planned to start again in Chicago. Gacy established a thriving construction company in Chicago, went to church, remarried, and volunteered as the Democratic Precinct Captain in his neighborhood. He staged extravagant block parties and established a solid reputation in his neighborhood during this time. Friends, neighbors and police officers all admired and respected Gacy.
An adolescent who worked for Gacy vanished in July 1975. His parents asked for Chicago cops to look into Gacy’s death, but they never did. This would not be the last time concerned parents pleaded with authorities to investigate Gacy as a suspect, but their pleas were ignored. Gacy divorced for the second time in 1976, and it seemed to give him a sense of personal liberation. Gacy began raping and killing young males without anyone else’s knowledge at the time. He murdered 33 individuals in just a few years, 29 of them were discovered beneath Gacy’s house — 26 in the crawlspace and three more in different regions beneath his home.
Picture: Wikipedia
In 1977, a young man appealed to the Chicago police for help, stating that John Wayne Gacy had kidnapped and abused him. Officers filed a report but did not follow up on it. On December 11, 1978 Gacy murdered a 15-year-old child who had gone to Gacy’s house to inquire about a job with his construction company. Initially, Gacy met the boy at a local drugstore while the boy’s mother was told to wait in the car. 20 minutes had passed but the boy never walked out of the store. Later that evening, the mother had a birthday party and once all her guests left, he called the police to inform them about her missing son, Robert.
The contractor was quickly identified as Gacy by the police. When they investigated Gacy, they discovered that he frequently visited the local hospital’s children’s unit. To entertain very ill children, he dressed up as Pogo the clown and performed numerous stunts. Handcuffing was a key tactic. He would handcuff a child and claim that he had misplaced the key, telling them that they would be locked up indefinitely. Another tactic was to chase them down and tie them up with ropes. When police interviewed Gacy’s neighbors, they claimed he was a nice guy who had gone through two divorces and didn’t visit his kids as much as he should have. With it, detectives had no doubts about Gacy’s guilt.
Picture: Chicago Magazine
They might have left Gacy alone if he hadn’t denied coming to the drugstore the day Robert vanished. Witnesses claimed to have seen Gacy, prompting the authorities to investigate further. The part-time party clown had already been imprisoned for assaulting a teenager. According to a disturbing police report, Gacy allowed a 28-year-old male to use pot in his automobile in 1978. The victim then informed authorities that Gacy knocked him out with a chloroform-soaked handkerchief. Gacy afterwards returned to his house and assaulted him. The police did not charge Gacy at the time, and the matter was settled for a $3,000 payment. And months later, he was linked to a missing teenager so the police had to investigate it.
The police onbtained a search warrant and they searched Gacy’s residence. A class ring, clothing for considerably smaller people, and other strange objects were discovered. Officers determined the ring with the initial J.A.S belonged to Gacy’s former employee John Alan Szyc, who was a victim himself. The police then started following following Gacy.
Gacy became enraged and walked to the surveillance car, where he urged the cops to come in for coffee while simultaneously looking about because there was nothing to see. While flushing the toilet in the house, one of the cops discovered something. The scent of dead bodies was strong and familiar. The second search warrant, however, was delayed.
Picture: Herald & Review
After that, Gacy became inebriated and went to his lawyer’s office, claiming to have something to say. He took out a newspaper and pointed to an article about a missing youngster named Robert, claiming that the boy was dead and had drowned in a river. He even admitted that some of the bodies were buried beneath the home and others were drowning in the river. He wasn’t even arrested at this time.
The second search warrant was issued on December 21. They discovered a trapdoor while looking around. Because it appeared to be a crawl space, one of the detectives entered and began crawling along the tunnel. There was a heavy stench of decay. Initially, authorities discovered three bodies in various degrees of decay, as well as fragments of bodies. Gacy had been murdering for quite some time, even while living with his second wife. When his wife went out, he would use drink and cannabis as bait to entice young males. He would then use handcuffs to play clown games with them before strangling them. He would put a rope around their neck and gradually fasten it tighter and tighter until they could no longer breath. Often when he does that, he would recite Psalms 23
When Gacy was caught, he pleaded insanity in the hopes of getting a not guilty judgement. The subterfuge backfired, and he was convicted. He was found guilty of 33 counts of murder, as well as rape and torture. John Wayne Gacy was killed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
Sources: The Infographics Show, Crime Museum, Britannica, ABC News
