R.J. Parker - The Serial Killer Compendium

John Wayne Gacy

The Killer Clown

Victims (33)

Background

John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to John and Marion Gacy. He died May 10, 1994 by lethal injection, at the age of fifty-two.

Gacy’s childhood was an abusive one. His father was an alcoholic who beat his wife and children on a regular basis and he referred to the younger Gacy as a stupid little sissy and a mama’s boy. When Gacy was nine years old he was molested by a family friend. At eleven, he developed a blood clot in his head after being hit in the head by a swing and began to have blackouts. His father believed that his son was faking the blackouts; however, Gacy was eventually treated to dissolve the clot.

At twenty years old, John Gacy left home and headed to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he worked for three months at a mortuary before quitting and returning to Chicago. In Chicago, he enrolled in the Northwestern Business College and got hired by the Nunn-Bush Shoe Company in Springfield, Illinois, as a salesperson. It was there that he met fellow employee, Marlynn Myers. Two years later, in September of 1964, he and Marlynn were wed.

After completing his apprenticeship, Gacy was promoted to manager of his department. He became active in local Springfield organizations, joined the Jaycees, and rose to vice-president of the Springfield chapter by 1965.

Sexual Deviant

Gacy’s father-in-law offered him a position managing three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Waterloo, Iowa. By this time, Gacy had a family: two children, a son named Michael, and a daughter, Christine. Not long after moving to Iowa, Gacy had his first known homosexual experience with a colleague of the Waterloo Jaycees, which he had joined after moving there. Gacy became involved in pornography, drugs, and prostitution on a regular basis, and in 1967 he molested a teenage male employee at one of his restaurants.

Gacy opened a private club in his basement which catered to his employees. He would often encourage his patrons to drink and then make sexual advances towards them. Gacy once permitted a teen to have sex with his wife in order to blackmail the teen into having oral sex with him. However, his little club came to a grinding halt when in March of 1968, two teens – aged fifteen and sixteen – accused Gacy of sexual assault. Gacy was arrested and ordered by the judge to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the Psychiatric Hospital of the State University of Iowa. Over a seventeen-day period, two doctors concluded that Gacy was mentally competent to stand trial, but that he had an antisocial personality and would likely repeat his sexual behavior.

On December 3, 1968, John Wayne Gacy was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to ten years at the Anamosa State Penitentiary in Iowa. That day, his wife filed for a divorce, petitioning for all the matrimonial property and alimony payments. The Court ruled in her favor, and in September, 1969, the divorce was finalized. Gacy never saw his ex-wife or two children ever again.

Gacy was a model prisoner. While in prison, he completed sixteen high school courses, obtained his diploma, helped to secure an increase in the prisoner’s daily pay, and supervised several in-prison projects. He was released on parole with a twelve-month probation period on June 18, 1970. He promptly left Iowa and moved home to live with his mother in Chicago the next day.

Gacy, with assistance from his mother, bought a house in Chicago, and it wasn’t long before he met Carole Hoff, who he married on July 1, 1972. By this time, however, Gacy had already begun his killing spree. Just eighteen months out of prison, Gacy murdered his first victim.

Murder Spree

Timothy McCoy, a boy fifteen years old, was traveling from Michigan to Omaha on January 2, 1972, when Gacy picked him up at Chicago’s Greyhound Bus Terminal. Gacy brought the boy back to his house, reassuring the boy that he’d return him to the bus station the next morning. Timothy ended up being stabbed to death and buried in a crawl space which was then covered in cement.

Three years later, one of Gacy’s employees, John Butkovitch, seventeen years old, disappeared in July. The day before, John had threatened Gacy as Gacy owed him two weeks back pay. According to Gacy, he lured John to his home and then strangled him to death and buried him under the cement floor in the garage. It is interesting to note that John’s parents called the police more than one hundred times over a three year period, urging them to investigate Gacy to no avail.

In March of 1976, Gacy’s wife left him. As he suddenly had the house to himself, this gave Gacy the opportunity to kill more often, and he didn’t waste any time. Between April and October of 1976, Gacy killed a minimum of eight youths between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, seven of whom he buried in his crawl space, and the other beneath his dining room floor. In December of 1976, Gregory Godzik, another employee of Gacy, also went missing. In the time that he worked for Gacy, Gregory had told his family that Gacy had put him to work digging trenches for a drain in the crawl space beneath his house.

John Szyc, nineteen, was a friend of Gregory Godzik and John Butkovich. On January 20, 1977, he too disappeared. Gacy lured him to his house with the pretext of selling his car to Gacy. John was killed and buried in the crawl space above the body of his friend, Gregory. Gacy then sold John Szyc’s car to another of his employees. On March 15, he then killed Jon Prestidge, age twenty, a young man who was visiting friends in Chicago.

Between July and December 1977, Gacy killed another seven young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, including the son of a Chicago police sergeant. In August 1977, a clue emerged to the disappearance of John Szyc. The employee to whom Gacy had sold Szyc's car was arrested for stealing gasoline from a station while driving the car. When questioned by police, Gacy told officers that Szyc had sold the car to him before leaving town. The police did not pursue the matter further.

Robert Donnelly, nineteen, was abducted by Gacy at gunpoint from a Chicago bus stop on December 30, 1977. Gacy brought Robert to his house, tortured him with numerous devices, and raped him. Many times, he dunked Robert’s head in a bathtub of water until he passed out. Then Gacy would revive him and repeat all over again. Robert was not killed, thank God, and he later testified at Gacy’s trial that he was in so much pain that he asked to be killed, to get it over with. Gacy released him after several hours of torture and assault, and Robert went to the police. On January 6, 1978, Gacy was questioned about the crime and admitted to having slave sex with Donnelly, but that it was consensual and guess what, the police believed him, and no charges were filed.

A month later, on February 16, 1978, William Kindred, nineteen, disappeared after telling his fiancée that he was spending an evening at a bar. William was the last victim to be buried in the crawl space as it was getting full. Gacy deposited future victims in the Des Plaines River.

The next month, Gacy lured Jeffrey Rignall, twenty-six, into his car, where he instantly chloroformed him and returned with him to his house. Jeffrey was tortured and repeatedly raped into unconsciousness, then driven to Lincoln Park where he was discarded, unconscious but alive, and managed to stagger to his girlfriend's apartment. Police were again informed of the assault, but did not investigate Gacy because Jeffrey knew few details about his assailant, only remembering later that he’d been taken in a black Oldsmobile.

A few weeks later, in April, Jeffrey and his friends staked out the exit on the Expressway where he knew he had been driven until he saw Gacy's distinctive black Oldsmobile. Rignall and his friends then followed Gacy to his house at 8213 West Summerdale street. Shortly after, Jeffrey went to the police. A warrant was issued, and Gacy was arrested on July 15, 1978.