John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy seemed to have it all, he was a successful business men, he was a member of the Jaycees, politically active in his community, he would dress as a clown for children in the hospital, he was well liked by neighbors, he was known for hosting elaborate street parties. However, he had a dark side, one he kept hidden from all who knew him. John was a brutal killer, he would become one of the most prolific killers in American history. He would gain the trust of his victims by offering them a job with his construction company or drugs or alcohol. He would then bring his victims back to his home, restrain them, rape, torture and drug them. For three years Gacy would go on to viciously torture rape and murder more than 30 young men and boys. He would burry the majority of his victims under is home. The rest were thrown in rivers surrounding Chicago Ill.
Gacy’s young life seemed normal enough, he has not a popular child in school but was liked by his teachers and made friends in school. He was active in the boy scouts and enjoyed the outdoor scouting activities. Everything in his young life seemed normal except for t he relationship he has with is father. John Wayne Gacy Sr. was an alcoholic and abusive both physically and emotionally. Gacy was desperate to please his father but was never able to. Gacy also was the victim of a series of medical ailments. At the age of 11 he was playing on a swing and fell and hit his head. This accident caused a blood clot in his brain that was not discovered until Gacy was 16. Because of the clot between the ages of 11-16, he suffered blackouts. The blackouts finally stopped when he began to take medication for the clot. At age 17 Gacy was diagnosed with a heart ailment. The actual cause of his heart condition was never found.
Although John didn’t graduate from high school, he did graduate from business c ollege. In 1964 he married Marlynn Myers. Then life started to unravel for John. In 1968 he was indicated by a grand jury in Black Hawk county for allegedly committing sodomy with a teenage boy Mark Miller. He tied Miller up and raped him. During his trial the court ordered Gacy to have a psychological evaluation. He was found mentally competent but was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Gacy was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His wife Marlynn divorced him. While in prison Gacy was a model prisoner and was paroled. Not long after his release from parole, Gacy was charged with disorderly conduct when he tried to force a young boy whom he had picked up at a bus terminal to commit to sexual acts. However, the charges against him were dropped.
In 1972 Gacy Married Carole Hoff, a mother of two. They divorced in 1976 after Gacy admitted to her that he preferred sex with boys over sex with women. During this time Gacy was making sexual advance’s toward several of the young men that worked for his construction company.
On December 13, 1978 the police obtained a search warrant for John Gacy’s home, he was being investigated in the disappearance of Robert Priest. Some of the items recovered in Gacy’s home were: a jewelry box containing two drivers licenses and several rings, a box containing marijuana and rolling papers, seven erotic movies made in Sweden, pills including amyl nitrite and valium, a switchblade, a stained rug, hand cuffs, a three foot long 2 x 4 wooden plank with two holes drilled in each end, a police badge, a rubber dildo, clothing to small for Gacy, nylon rope. During this investigation Gacy confessed to friends that he had killed about 30 people because they tried to black mail him. He said that he had killed in self defense.
On December 22, 1978 John Wayne Gacy confessed to killing at least 30 people and burying them in the crawl space under is house. He would lure his victims into being handcuffed then sexually assault them. He would stuff a sock or underwear in their mouth to keep them from screaming. He would kill them by pulling a rope or against their throats as he raped them. He would sometimes keep them under his bed or in the attic for several hours before eventually burying them.
All in all police found 27 bodies buried under Gacy’s home, he said some were put in rivers because he ran out of space in his home.
The trial began on February 6, 1980, Gacy was found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
As Gacy’s case illustrates, he didn’t just one day become a serial killer. It took years for the fantasy of killing and the anger he felt toward his victims to build up enough to kill. He started off by sexually assaulting his victims, when that was no longer enough to satisfy his need he moved on to killing. Gacy once said that he started killing the men because he wouldn’t leave another victim alive that could send him back to prison for sexual assault the way Mark Miller did. I believe that part of the reason Gacy moved on from sexual assault to murder was not only because the sexual assaults were no longer enough to satisfy his fantasy but because he was angry at them (his victim’s) angry that one young man had sent him to prison and angry because many of the men he was picking up he found in predominantly gay areas, he was angry that they were free to express their sexuality in a way he was not. Therefore, he was killing the target of his anger over and over again….himself.
