Blog#3 John Wayne Gacy

                    The Killer Clown
                    by Samara Osburn

Gacy's clown persona 'Pogo'

Born on March 17th 1942, John Wayne Gacy seemed like a normal man compared to most outsiders. Many of his neighbors knew him as 'Pogo the Clown', as he frequently entertained at children's parties in his neighborhood. Gacy was also known to be an extremely friendly man, often throwing parties. He was also moderately successful as the owner of a construction company. However, underneath the neighborly exterior of John Wayne Gacy was a darker past. According to Biography.com, as a child, John was frequently beaten by his father and often witnessed his mother being assaulted. During his childhood, he also suffered a heart condition that separated him from his peers.

Pictures of various known victims 

Killer of 33 from 1972 to 1978, Gacy's victims were all males who were either teenagers or young adult men. He killed and disposed of most of the bodies all in one place: his suburban home. Reported by the Chicago Tribune in a 1978 article titled John Wayne Gacy, the country's worst serial killer, Gacy originally started killing homeless male prostitutes but eventually chose to kill suburban teenagers. He lured his victims with the promise of construction work but eventually chloroformed them and moved them to his house. Sometimes he would torture his victims, occasionally taking on the persona of Pogo the Clown while doing so. All his victims were sexually assaulted but were killed in various fashions which included stabbing and garroting.

Mugshot of Gacy

CrimeMuseum.org's article on John Wayne Gacy claims that the first warning sign of his serial killer and rapist potential was a case in 1964, when he was convicted of raping two young boys. Gacy served 18 months in prison and after he was released Gacy moved to Chicago as a newly divorced man. In Chicago, his serial killer personality grew and in January of 1972 he murdered his first victim: a 16 year-old boy named Timothy Jack McCoy, who was on a sightseeing tour of Chicago. In 1975, a teenaged employee of Gacy's went missing but when the child's parents pleaded for an investigation into Gacy they were ignored. This would later prove to be a repeating pattern in cases concerning missing teenagers. Divorced for a second time, in 1976, accusations against John Wayne Gacy began to rise.

It wasn't until 1978 that police finally looked into the multiple accusations, including an accusation by a teenager in 1977 who claimed that he had been sexually assaulted by Gacy. Police decided to begin investigating Gacy when a 15-year-old who worked for Gacy went missing. When police entered Gacy's house they discovered articles of clothing belonging to someone with a smaller stature, a class ring that was later found to belong to another missing teen, and other items that seemed out of place in Gacy's home. On December 21, police found various traces of evidence that suggested criminal activity in his house, later they found 29 bodies; 26 in the crawlspace and 3 others buried in various places in his yard. When four bodies were recovered from a nearby river, Gacy admitted he had disposed of 5 victims over the bridge, the 5th body has never been recovered.

During his criminal trial on February 6th 1980, Gacy attempted to claim insanity to avoid a guilty verdict after confessing his crimes; however, his attempts failed. A jury of his peers found him guilty of 33 counts of murder and John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to 21 life sentences and 12 death sentences. However, after a long debate about the death penalty, Gacy was given a lethal injection on May 10th, 1994.

Today, police are still trying to identify the various victims buried underneath his home. In 2017, after using DNA samples, a young man named 'Jimmie' Byron Haakenson, who went missing in 1976, was identified as Victim #24. This was 38 years after his mother had originally called the police to learn if her son was murdered by Gacy. She died before she could learn the truth about her son's disappearance.

Works Cited

Biography.com Editors. (2017).  John Wayne Gacy Biography.com. The Biography. Com Website. Retrieved from: https://www.biography.com/people/john-wayne-gacy-10367544

John Wayne Gacy. Crime Museum.org Website. Retrieved from: https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/john-wayne-gacy/

Smith, Sid. (1978, December 22) John Wayne Gacy, the country's worst serial killer. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi-chicagodays-gacy-story-story.html