The Beginning
I have made this blog because I have no one else who would believe me, and rather than be laughed at by my friends and family I have decided to turn to you, anonymous viewers of the internet. Let me preface this by saying all events discussed are real, or at least as real as I want you to believe.
At this point I should probably start from the beginning and tell you my story. After a rough year financially for my family of four, we decided to move somewhere a bit cheaper and more within the means of our budget. So that's where we found ourselves in the summer of 1974, leaving my childhood home in New Jersey and relocating over 800 miles away to Norwood Park Township, an up-and-coming quaint town about 30 minutes outside of Chicago. My sister and I dreaded the move but, our parents appeared more optimistic. That lasted until they met our new neighbor.
From the distance he appeared as an average family man, John, or Mr. Gacy as I would know him lived in the ranch style house next door to us. Him, his wife Carol and their two children had lived in the neighborhood for two years. He was very charming upon our first meeting, and it could clearly be seen how he managed to marry such an attractive woman. After our first brief meeting, him and his family tended to keep to themselves, however I didn't need a one on one encounter for my interest to be piqued by Mr. Gacy. For starters he seemed to be a very prominent man in the community. He always had multiple people coming in and out of his house; high ranking officials, I would later learn from my mother. The community also loved him for his volunteer efforts in the neighborhood such as dressing up as a clown and entertaining the local children. He was admired by all for his kind, charismatic attitude.
It was only when night came that a different side of him arose. Fights could be heard constantly coming from the Gacy residence between John and Carol, he seemed to release his anger in long strung out screaming matches that would last well into the night and progressively sound physical. What I could piece together from the exchanges was sparse but enough, she wanted a divorce from him due to graphic gay pornography found in the house along with Gacy’s alleged infatuation with men. Along with the constant fights happening, other strange occurrences transpired at the Gacy residence such as boys coming into the house and never leaving. I originally thought they were his nephews who were living with him for the long term, but they would have attended the same school as me. By this time I had lived in Norwood Township for a good amount of months and the year was 1975. I decided I couldn't let this go and being the ever curious person I am I decided to do some research on my own and find out what I could about Gacy.
I went down to the library and decided to look up as many newspaper articles I could regarding his past. After finding mostly junk, I did manage to pull up a newspaper article about what I presumed to be Gacy’s first arrest in 1968, when he was 26. He was accused of coercing a male employee of his into homosexual acts which had shocked the community who knew him as a loving husband and father of two children, and sentenced to ten years. After that I found divorce records with him separating from his then wife. Unbelievably, I found another record dating back to 1971 of John Gacy’s arrest on the charge of attempted rape of a young man. How did he only serve two years of a ten year sentence? Never-mind that, I now came to the conclusion that I had a dangerous man living next door. I can write off one arrest as a misunderstanding, or as young rebellion or whatever you want to call it but I could guarantee if their were two allegation there were always two more, and possibly even more than that. And if he had no problem with rape, murder wasn't too far down the line. Could I be living next door to a serial killer?