Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

Killer Clown: John Wayne Gacy (Part I)

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer who raped, tortured and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois (a part of metropolitan Chicago). All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his Norwood Park ranch house. His victims were typically induced to his address by force or deception, and all except one of his victims were murdered by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a makeshift garrote, as his first victim was stabbed to death. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home. Three other victims were buried elsewhere on his property, while the bodies of his last four known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River.

Convicted of 33 murders, Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980, for 12 of those murders. He spent 14 years on death row before he was executed by lethal injection at Statesville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.

Gacy became known as the "Killer Clown" because of his charitable services at fund-raising events, parades, and children's parties where he dressed as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown", characters that he had created.

Early life

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 17, 1942, the second child and only son of three children born to John Stanley Gacy (June 20, 1900 – December 25, 1969), an auto repair machinist and World War I veteran, and his wife Marion Elaine Robinson (May 4, 1908 – December 6, 1989), a homemaker. Gacy was of Polish and Danish ancestry. His paternal grandparents (who spelled the family name as "Gatza" or "Gaca") had immigrated to the United States from Poland (then part of Germany). As a child, Gacy was overweight and not athletic. He was close to his two sisters and mother but endured a difficult relationship with his father, an alcoholic who was physically abusive to his wife and children.

Throughout his childhood, Gacy strove to make his stern father proud of him, but seldom received his approval. This friction was constant throughout his childhood and adolescence. One of Gacy's earliest childhood memories was of his father beating him with a leather belt at the age of four for accidentally disarranging car engine components that his father had assembled. On another occasion, his father struck him across the head with a broomstick, rendering him unconscious. His father regularly belittled him and often compared him unfavorably with his sisters, disdainfully accusing him of being "dumb and stupid". Gacy, while regularly commenting that he was "never good enough" in his father's eyes, always vehemently denied ever hating his father in interviews after his arrest.

When he was six years old, Gacy stole a toy truck from a neighborhood store. His mother made him walk back to the store, return the toy and apologize to the owners. His mother informed his father, who beat Gacy with a belt as punishment. After this incident, Gacy's mother attempted to shield her son from his father's verbal and physical abuse, yet this only succeeded in Gacy earning accusations that he was a "sissy" and a "Mama's boy" who would "probably grow up queer".

In 1949, Gacy's father was informed that his son and another boy had been caught sexually fondling a young girl. Gacy's father whipped him with a razor strop as punishment. The same year, Gacy himself was molested by a family friend, a contractor who would take Gacy for rides in his truck and then fondle him. Gacy never told his father about these incidents, afraid that his father would blame him.

Because of a heart condition, Gacy was ordered to avoid all sports at school. An average student with few friends, he was an occasional target for bullying by neighborhood children and classmates. He was known to assist the school truancy officer and volunteer to run errands for teachers and neighbors. During the fourth grade, Gacy began to experience blackouts. He was occasionally hospitalized because of these seizures, and also in 1957 for a burst appendix. Gacy later estimated that between the ages of 14 and 18, he had spent almost a year in the hospital for these episodes, and attributed the decline of his grades to his missing school. His father suspected the episodes were an effort to gain sympathy and attention, and openly accused his son of faking the condition as the boy lay in a hospital bed. Although his mother, sisters, and few close friends never doubted his illness, Gacy's medical condition was never conclusively diagnosed.