Gacy, John Wayne
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Wikipedia-Article "John Wayne Gacy"
John Wayne Gacy, Jr., (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer. He was convicted and later executed for the rape and murder of thirty-three boys and men, 28 of whom he buried in his crawl space, between 1972 and his arrest in 1978. He became notorious as the "Killer Clown" because of the many block parties he attended, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup.
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Life
Gacy was born and raised Catholic in Chicago, Illinois. He had a very troubled and distant relationship with his stern, abusive father. He worked briefly in Las Vegas, Nevada, before returning to Illinois. He attended a business college and began a moderately successful career as a shoe salesman in Springfield, Illinois, where he became a prominent member of the Jaycees. In 1964 he married and moved to Waterloo, Iowa, where he managed a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant belonging to his wife's family.
However, Gacy's first marriage fell apart after he was convicted of child molestation. He was sent to prison for this crime; after he was released, he moved back to Illinois. He successfully hid this criminal record until police began investigating him for his later murders.
In 1975, he bought a house in an unincorporated area surrounded by the Chicago neighborhood of Norwood Park, lived there with his widowed mother, and established his own construction business, PDM Contracting. He married a woman he had known since high school, and his and her two daughters moved in with him and his mother moved out. He became a prominent and respected member of the community. In addition to his clown act, he became a committee member for the Democratic Party. In this capacity, he was even able to meet and be photographed with then-First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
It was also during this time that he claimed his first known victim, a teenage boy he picked up at a bus depot. His marriage fell apart and his wife divorced him in mid-1976. Gacy began a double life: respected member of the community by day, sexual predator and murderer by night.
No suspicion fell on him until late 1978, when he was investigated following the disappearance of a teenage boy, Robert Piest, who was last seen with Gacy. A search of his house, by Des Plaines detective Joseph Kozenczak, revealed a number of incriminating items related to other disappearances. In December 1978 Gacy went to the police and confessed. He claimed he had first killed in January 1972. He confessed to 33 murders, indicating where the bodies were in 28 of the cases—buried under his house. The other five he said were thrown into the Des Plaines River. Most of the victims were young male prostitutes. Some victims were also teenage boys whom Gacy had hired through his contracting firm. Bodies were uncovered from December 1978 to April 1979, when the last known victim was found downstream in the Illinois River.
Trial and Execution
On February 6, 1980, Gacy's trial began in Chicago. During the trial, he made a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. However, this plea was rejected outright—his lawyer made the claim that Gacy had moments of temporary insanity at the time of each individual murder, but before and afterwards, somehow regained his sanity to properly lure and dispose of victims. Also, Gacy had made an earlier confession to police, and was unable to have this pulled as evidence. He was found guilty on March 13 and sentenced to death.
On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed in Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet, Illinois, by lethal injection, after finishing his last meal consisting of shrimp, fried chicken, fresh strawberries and french fries. His execution was a minor media sensation, and large crowds of people gathered for "execution parties" outside the penitentiary, with numerous arrests for public intoxication, open intoxicants and disorderly conduct. In a display of what has been called "shocking bad taste," vendors sold T-shirts and Gacy merchandise, and the people cheered at the moment when Gacy was pronounced dead.
Gacy's execution also proved problematic when the chemicals used in the lethal injection were mixed in a way that caused them to solidify, and as a result, he reportedly took 27 minutes to die (afterwards, Illinois adopted a different method of lethal injection). However, since Gacy was so universally hated, this was not investigated. It has even been speculated that officials purposely botched his execution in an attempt to prolong his pain.
According to reports, Gacy did not express remorse. His last words were to the effect that killing him would not bring anyone back, and he is reported to have said "You can kiss my ass," to a guard while he was being sent to the execution chamber.
Some have pointed to his poor relationship with his abusive, alcoholic father, his head trauma and subsequent blackouts in his teenage years as some basis for his acts. There has also been some speculation that murdering men and boys — whom he called "worthless little queers and punks" — was Gacy's subconscious expression of self-hatred for his own homosexuality (Gacy claimed to hate gays and "gay-acting people," and that he was bisexual.)
After his execution, Gacy's brain was removed. It is currently in the possession of Dr. Helen Morrison, who interviewed Gacy and other serial killers in an attempt to isolate common personality traits held by such people. However, an examination of Gacy's brain after his execution by the forensic psychiatrist hired by his lawyers revealed no abnormalities. She has said Gacy did not fit into any psychological profile associated with serial killers, and the reasons for his rampage will probably never be known.
During his time on Death Row, Gacy took up oil painting, and his favorite subject was painting portraits of clowns. He claimed to have used his clown act as an alter ego, once sardonically saying that "A clown can get away with murder." After his execution, his paintings were sold at auction. Reportedly, the main buyer destroyed the paintings after winning the bids. Another of his famous paintings is of transgressive punk rock singer/songwriter/performance artist GG Allin, who had visited Gacy in prison and corresponded with him until Allin's death in 1993; the painting is in the possession of Allin's brother and bassist, Merle Allin, and a black and white reproduction of the painting can be seen on the front cover of the soundtrack to the GG Allin documentary Hated.
Cultural References
Writer Stephen King is speculated to have used Gacy as the template for the killer clown "Pennywise" in his novel It. Macabre have written a song about Gacy titled "Gacy's Lot"; it appears on the Sinister Slaughter album. Sufjan Stevens has a particularly poignant song about the serial killer on his critically acclaimed release Illinois. Fear Factory has also written a song about Gacy titled "Suffer Age" on the Soul of a New Machine album. The American band Dog Fashion Disco has also written a song about Gacy titled "Pogo the clown" featured on their album Committed to a bright future. Bathory has also written a song about Gacy titled "33 Something" featured on their album Octagon. The keyboardist of Marilyn Manson, Madonna Wayne Gacy (Stephen Bier), adopted his last name. Mad Season was called The Gacy Bunch before changing their name.
The large Los Angeles-based pro wrestling federation XPW featured a major wrestling character known as "Pogo the Clown", who dressed like Gacy and was featured in vignettes playing with and abducting young boys.
It has become a running joke that people with the middle name of "Wayne" become criminals. For example, the humorous news column News of the Weird regularly includes a section where it lists off the names of recently convicted criminals, all men with the middle name of "Wayne."
The highly sensationalized case also led to macabre jokes at the time, such as, "Why was it so cold in John Gacy's house? Because of the 28 below in the basement!"
John Wayne Gacy was programmed as one of one-hundred and eighty-three personalities within SID 6.7, the nanotech android from the 1995 film Virtuosity. In a deleted scene from the film, SID 6.7 goes into a costume shop asking for a clown suit. A clip from this scene can be seen in the film's trailer.
Brian Dennehy portrayed John Wayne Gacy in the television miniseries To Catch A Killer in 1992. There was also a Hollywood biopic called Gacy with character actor Mark Holton in the title role, which went straight to video in 2003. The film focused on Gacy near the end of his horrendous crimes, and a young man (a composite character) living under his roof without the knowledge of what his landlord is.
The prison (and even the cell) where Gacy was held is being used as the set for Fox's Prison Break.