Gacy was born on March 17th 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. His father was an abusive alcoholic who degraded him, but he got along well with his mother and two sisters. He developed a blood clot on the brain stemming from an accidental head injury as a child and suffered from blackouts.
John was a poor student and dropped out of high school and roamed around, ending up in Las Vegas until his financial situation forced him to return home to Chicago. He eventually enrolled at Northwestern Business College and worked for Nunn-Bush Shoe Company where he prospered and was transferred to Springfield, Illinois in 1964, where he would meet and marry his first wife.
Sexual Predator
Over the next couple of years the Gacy's lived the semblance of a normal life. John fathered two children and was active in the community and accepted a position as manager of his one of his in-laws KFC stores and moved to Iowa.
Rumors began surfacing that John was homosexual because of inappropriate behavior around young men and boys. The rumors soon became fact when Gacy was accused of sexual assault by several young men and would be convicted in 1968 and sentenced to ten years in prison.
During his time in prison Gacy’s wife divorced him and he never saw his children again. He served only 18 months of his sentence before being paroled in 1970 and returned once again to Chicago upon his release.
Serial Killer
Gacy returned back home and lived with his widowed mother for four months before moving into his own house (with the help of his mom and sisters) and there were several complaints filed against Gacy over the next several years with the Chicago police with accusations of sexual assaults and attacks reported by young men in the community.
The complaints against him were dismissed and Gacy’s past conviction in Iowa was overlooked by law officials and he never served any time for the assaults and all charges were dropped. Gacy married again in 1972 and by 1975 the marriage was over and his obvious preference for young men became known to his wife who divorced him in 1976.
Unbeknownst to his wife he had began picking up and murdering young men in the community in 1972. Some were prostitutes and others were drifters and several were young men he had hired to work for him doing general labor for his construction company.
He tortured, sexually assaulted, and then murdered and buried the remains in the crawl space underneath his house until he ran out of space and began dumping the bodies in the river to dispose of them.
Pogo the Clown
What made Gacy so hard to catch was his involvement in the community and his alter ego “Pogo” that he used to mask his dark crimes and entertain children at functions, hospitals, and block parties. He was considered a model citizen and was well liked and respected in society.
One of the infamous statements that he made after his conviction was “A clown can get away with murder” Well, he was wrong! Gacy, as in almost all serial cases got careless and witnesses placed him near or with some of the missing young men who police were searching for.
He became a prime suspect and the odor that was evident from the crawl space beneath his home was discovered and investigated. The majority of his thirty-three murder victims were found in varying states of decomposition underneath his house. The killer clown was exposed and brought to justice.
The Clown’s Last Curtain Call
Gacy was brought to trial in February of 1980 and pleaded not-guilty by way of insanity. He joked his only crime was “Running a cemetery without a license” but the judge and jury were not amused and on March 13th he was found guilty of 33 murders and sentenced to death.
The end came for Gacy on May 10th 1994 when prison officials at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois administered a lethal injection that sent “The Killer Clown” to his doom. Gacy showed no signs of remorse for his crimes and reportedly his last words to the world were ”Kiss my ass.”
Gacy’s Artwork
During his 10 year prison stay on death-row Gacy took up oil painting as a hobby and many of his works are still on display in galleries and in private collections. Although Gacy is dead and gone and punished for his horrendous crimes many of his artworks still remains, although some people bought his art work simply for the satisfaction of destroying it.
Be sure to read about THE NIGHT STALKER by clicking here!
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