John Wayne Gacy

At 52 years old, John Wayne Gacy has this physical status:

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942-May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer who murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men in Cook County, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago). All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his Norwood Park ranch house.

His victims were usually lured to his address by force or deception, and none of his victims were assassinated by asphyxiation or strangulation with a homemade garrote, except one of his victims, who was stabbed to death by a makeshift garrote.

Gacy buried 26 of his victims in his house's crawl space.

Three other people were buried on his property, while the bodies of his last four known victims were found in the Des Plaines River. Gacy, a perpetrator of 33 murders, was sentenced to death in 1980 for 12 of those murders.

He spent 14 years on death row before being executed by lethal injection at the Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. Gacy became known as the "Killer Clown" because of his charitable work at fund-raising festivals, parades, and children's parties, where he would dress as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown" characters he had created.

Early life

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 17, 1942, the second son and sole son of John Stanley Gacy (1900-1999) and Marion Elaine Robison (1908–1989). His father, a World War II veteran and auto repairer, was a homemaker, and his mother was a homemaker. Gacy had a Polish and Danish ancestry, and his family was Catholic. His paternal grandparents (who pronounced the family name as "Gatza" or "Gaca") had immigrated from Poland to the United States (then part of Prussia's German state of Prussia).

While Gacy was close to his mother and two siblings, he had a difficult relationship with his father, an alcohol who was physically abused to his family. His father also belittled him, calling him "dumb and stupid" and comparing him unfavorably with his sisters. One of Gacy's earliest memories was his father kicking him with a leather belt for mistakenly disassembling parts of a car engine he had assembled. His mother tried to shield her son from his father's abuse, but only succeeded in allegations that he was a "sissy" and a "mama's boy" who would "probably grow up queer." Despite this mistreatment, Gacy nonetheless loved his father but said he was "never good enough" in his father's eyes, but felt he was "not good enough" in his father's eyes.

In 1949, Gacy's father was told that his son and another boy had been caught sexually fondling a young child. As punishment, his father was whipped with a razor strop. A family friend and contractor would often molest Gacy in his car in the same year. Gacy never told his father about this, afraid that his father would blame him.

Gacy was an overweight and unathletic child. He was told not to participate in any sports at school because of a heart disease. Gacy began experiencing blackouts in the fourth grade. Because of these episodes and also for a burst appendix in 1957, he was hospitalized on occasion. Gacy later said that between the ages of 14 and 18, he had spent almost a year in hospital and attributed the drop in his grades to absence from school. As Gacy lay in a hospital bed, his father suspects these episodes were an effort to gain sympathy and attention and openly accused his son of faking the disease. Although his mother, sisters, and a few close friends all disagreed with his illness, Gacy's medical condition was never definitively diagnosed.

Many instances when his father ridiculed or beat his son without permission were recalled by one of Gacy's friends. He witnessed Gacy's father emerging inebriated from the family basement and then beating his son for no apparent reason on one occasion in 1957. As her son's father simply "put up his hands to protect himself," Gacy's mother tried to intervene. Gacy never struck his father back during these altercations, according to a friend.

At the age of 18, Gacy became involved in politics, serving as an assistant precinct captain for a Democratic Party candidate in his community. His father, who accused his son of being a "patsy," received more criticism. Gacy later argued that his decision to enter politics was to request others's understanding, which he never received from his father.

His father bought him a car the same year as Gacy's political involvement began. He held the vehicle in his own name until Gacy stopped paying for it. He took several years for him to complete his monthly payments. If Gacy did not do as he said, his father would confiscate the keys to the car if he did not do what he said. After his father confiscated the original set in April 1962, Gacy bought an extra set of keys. His father took the distributor cap in retaliation and kept the unit for three days. After this event, Gacy recalled being "fully sick" and "drained."

Gacy stayed at home and drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, hours after his father recovered the distributor cap. He found work in the ambulance service before being transferred to Palm Mortuary as an attendant. Gacy slept on a cot behind the embalming room as a mortuary attendant. He worked there for three months, observing morticians embalming dead bodies and occasionally serving as a pallbearer. Gacy later admitted that he clambered into the coffin of a deceased teenage male alone, embraceing and caressing the body before experiencing a sense of surprise. This prompted Gacy to call his mother the next day and ask if his father would allow him to return home. His father said yes, and the same day he returned to Chicago.

Despite failing to graduate from high school, Gacy enrolled at Northwestern Business College on returning home. He joined Nunn-Bush Shoe Company in 1963 as a management trainee. In 1964, the shoe company moved him to Springfield, Illinois, where he later promoted him to be the boss of his department. In March of that year, he became engaged to Marlynn Myers, a co-worker.

Gacy became a member of the local Jaycees and spent countless hours for them during their incarceration, becoming the Key Man in April 1964. He had his second homosexual encounter in the same year. He asked one of his Springfield Jaycees to spend the evening on his sofa after one of his coworkers pleaded for alcohol and invited him to spend the evening on his couch; the colleague then performed oral sex on him while inebriated. By 1965, Gacy had risen to the position of vice president of the Springfield Jaycees. He was named the third most outstanding Jaycee in Illinois the previous year.

Source