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Chicago is famous for many things like delicious Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, Maxwell Street Polish Sauage, hot dogs, jazz music, 1920's gangsters, and the dark, mysterious life of John Wayne Gacy.
“A clown can get away with murder.”-John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy was one of the most notorious serial killers in the history of the United States. He is known for the rape and murder of at least 33 young boys. Gacy was a resident of Chicago, Illinois.
He was a prominent member of the local community and became known as the “The Killer Clown.” A new documentary on Peacock TV titled “John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise” revisits his horrific crimes.
The documentary also highlights how Gacy ingratiated himself within the suburban community, and his affiliations with other influential people in the Chicago area enabled him to continue targeting new victims.
This article reviews the details of Gacy’s personal life, his victims, and how he was able to manipulate the system in his favor. Gacy’s life shows how even seemingly functional community members are capable of things like rape and murder.
Gacy’s early life
John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 — May 10, 1994) was born in Chicago, Illinois. He had an average middle-class family. However, according to some accounts, his father was an abusive alcoholic. He would beat Gacy and his siblings with a razor strap every time he felt they misbehaved and physically assaulted his wife too.
Gacy may also have had health issues in his youth. He had a congenital heart condition, which prevented him from playing with other children at his school. As he grew older, Gacy realized that he was gay and experienced significant turmoil over his sexual orientation.
Gacy got married in 1964 and moved to Iowa with his wife. He assisted his father-in-law in managing his Kentucky Fried Chicken’s restaurants and fathered two children. In 1968, two teen boys accused Gacy of sexual assault, and the police filed charges against him.
His wife divorced him because of the allegations, and the court sentenced Gacy to prison for ten years. However, he only served 18 months of his sentence and was released in 1970 on account of ‘good behavior.’
As the documentary on Gacy reveals, the serial killer used the system to his advantage to get an early release. He quickly established himself as the top cook in the prison commissary and would reserve the best meat cuts for important prison officials, such as the warden, to gain their favor.
He also helped install a miniature golf course inside the prison yard. Gacy was featured in newspaper articles and local newscasts where the press described him as a model prisoner.
Photo Source Police Dept. Des, Plaines, Ill. free use https;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
If Gacy had remained in prison, he wouldn’t have been out and about in the community targeting new victims. Any notions of Gacy reforming while serving his sentence also proved false when the police arrested him for the sexual assault of a teenage boy while he was on parole. However, the charges against him got dropped because the victim could not appear during the trial.
After the incident, Gacy moved back to Chicago, where he became a successful independent contractor and started a company. He also bought a house in suburban Chicago and got remarried.
Photo By Kmusser -CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org
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In June 1978, Gacy began discarding his victims' bodies in the Des Plaines River.
The murders of Robert Piest and other boys
After moving back to Chicago, Gacy continued to target young male victims by raping and murdering them. However, it wasn’t until Robert Piest went missing that Gacy was arrested and tried for his crimes. Robert was only 15 years old when Gacy murdered him. His family had reported him missing on December 11, 1978. According to Robert’s mother, she had seen him at Nisson Pharmacy (Robert’s place of work) before he went to meet Gacy to speak about an employment opportunity.
After ten days, the police secured a warrant to search Gacy’s home in Norwood Park, Illinois. They uncovered the bodies of twenty-nine boys and young men in the crawl space underneath his house and the surrounding area. They also discovered four more bodies near the Des Plaines River. Gacy confessed to dumping Piest’s body in the river too. However, the police didn’t recover it until April 9, 1979.
According to reports, there had been a foul smell around the area surrounding Gacy’s house for several years. However, Gacy would tell everyone that the smell was due to moisture buildup.
The police later discovered that Gacy killed his first victim in 1972. They identified the boy as Timothy McCoy. Timothy was only 16 years old when Gacy lured him into his home and murdered him by stabbing him in the chest.
Most of Gacy’s victims were male prostitutes or teenagers employed at his company. Gacy would invite them to his home and trick them into putting on handcuffs or tying a rope around their necks. He would then use chloroform to render them unconscious and rape and murder them. He would also frequently torture his victims.
When Gacy was arrested and tried for murdering 33 people, he submitted an insanity plea. Several psychologists who had examined Gacy supported his claim. They had diagnosed him with schizophrenia. However, the jury rejected the appeal and declared him guilty of his crimes.
Gacy got the death penalty. The prison authorities at the Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, executed him in 1994 by administering a lethal injection.
A closer look at Gacy’s public life in Chicago
Before his conviction, Gacy was a prevalent member of the local community. He would dress up as “Patches the Clown” or “Pogo the Clown” and appear at charity fundraisers, children’s parties, and other events. He was a member of “Jolly Joker,” a clown club in the Chicago area, and would entertain sick children.
Gacy also got involved in local politics. He helped organize the Polish Constitution Day Parade in Chicago and even met the-then first lady Rosalynn Carter.
Photo By White House photographer -Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia John Gacy with First Lady Rosalynn Carter
The documentary
As per the documentary, Gacy could get away with his crimes for so long because the police would downplay or ignore the missing victims’ reports. They would dismiss them as teen prostitutes, runaways, or hustlers.
Since many of his victims were gay men, the police also ignored their disappearances saying their lifestyle put them at risk and reduced them to second-class citizens, whose disappearances were not worth investigating. If the police had behaved more responsibly at the time, Gacy might not have been able to murder so many people.
The documentary also pinpoints the local media’s role in failing to hold the responsible parties accountable for Gacy’s crimes. Most local journalists relied on police informants and other confidential sources for their stories.
Given the police’s role in unintentionally aiding Gacy in his killing spree, they were afraid to dig deeper into Gacy’s history and demand answers for the lack of due diligence surrounding his missing victims’ investigations.
Wrapping it up
John Wayne Gacy spent 14 years at the Menard Correctional Center before his execution. During this time, he made several paintings of “Pogo the Clown” and other subjects.
Mullock’s Auctions, an auction house in Europe, auctioned many of his paintings in 2017. The organizers sold two of his paintings for £325 and £4,000. Most other works went unsold.
Gacy’s life and his actions go on to show the dangers that often lurk within seemingly ordinary suburban neighborhoods in cities like Chicago. The documentary “John Wayne Gacy: Devil In Disguise” also depicts how criminals can game the system and use it to their advantage by gaining the favor of essential individuals or targeting victims that go unnoticed.
May we take a moment to remember the families that Gacy destroyed and the victims who deserved better than being written off as runaways or hustlers.
Chicago is a great city; not even the actions of Gacy can take that away.
"Chicago is a town, a city that doesn't ever have to measure itself against any other city. Other places have to measure themselves against it. It's big, it's outgoing, it's tough, it's opinionated, and everybody's got a story." -Anthony Bourdain-