John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown
Serial Killers

Abstract
John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer and rapist. John Wayne Gacy murdered and sexually assaulted young boys. John Gacy killed and hid his victim’s bodies in the crawl space of his home. John seemed like a normal man, he was well-respected in his community. John was a psychopath who had no remorse. When john was captured he was able to give a detailed drawing of where all the bodies could be found. John was sentenced to the death penalty.

The term serial killer was a term no one had heard of until about forty years ago. There are many definitions to the term serial killer. Each definition differs by the number of murders, the serial killers motivation, and the characteristics of the murders. The most known one is the FBI’s definition, which is “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender, in separate events.” Numerous people may confuse the term serial killer with mass murders and spree killers. There are six categories of motive types of serial killers. These categories are visionary, mission-oriented, thrill-orientated, lust, power and control, and gain motivated. The visionary type means they hear voices or have visions and they are psychotic. The mission-oriented serial killers will kill a certain type or person because they think that they are bettering the world. The thrill-oriented type will kill because they have fun doing it. The lust motivated killers will kill because it turns them on. The power and control motivated is the most common type of serial killer, their goal is to gain power over their victims. The gain motivated killers are mostly not considered serial killers; they kill for material gain. Serial killers have three methods. These are the organized types, disorganized types, and mixed. The organized types of killers are extremely intelligent and they plan out their crimes. The disorganized types of serial killers are usually not as intelligent and they act out of impulse. The mixed types of serial killers seem to be premeditated yet disorganized. Most serial killers show certain aspects of organized and disorganized types, however one type will dominate.
There is said to be ten general characteristics of serial killers. Some of these traits are: Most are single white males, they do poorly in school despite their high intelligence, there is a long history of psychiatric problems, and they often feel suicidal as teenagers. These traits became known from a test of only 36 killers, therefore these traits don’t count for every serial killer. The McDonald triad is the three warning signs of a serial killer. These signs include Enuresis which is bedwetting, Pyromania which is fire starting and Precocious Sadism which is animal torture. There is a difference from being a Psychopath, and a Psychotic. A psychopath is the Mask of Sanity. A Psychopath will seem completely normal; you may never know that they are a psychopath. Psychopath are antisocial, they have abnormal and violent behavior. Psychopaths lack the ability to love or feel remorse. However Psychotics suffer from a mental disorder that causes a break from reality. They suffer from delusions, and hallucinations, and they may hear voices in their head. There are many theories as to why these serial killers will kill. The theories are that they may have suffered brain damage, child abuse, mother hate, bad seed, mean genes, adoption, and fantasy. The serial killers who kill because of hatred for their mothers; is usually because of their mother not offering nurture, they will instead dominate and destroy their offspring. The Bad Seed theory is that some people are just born evil. The Mean Genes theory is that some children are born evil because of some inherited factors.
John Wayne Gacy is also known as the Killer Clown, because of his costume he wore to fundraisers. John was born March 17, 1942, in Chicago Illinois. John grew up in a family that wasn’t the best. John was close to his two sisters and his mother however John’s father was an alcoholic and was abusive to John, both physically and emotionally. His father considered John to be a disgrace, and was never good enough in his father’s eyes because of his homosexuality. However, John loved his father deeply, and desperately tried to gain his father’s approval. He failed to win his father over. John was molested as a child by a family friend, he never told anyone because he was afraid that his father would blame him for this incident. He was ridiculed as a kid in school; John was also injured as a kid, from being hit with a swing, which resulted in a blood clot in his brain which wouldn’t be diagnosed until he was sixteen. At that time he was also diagnosed with a heart condition. John attended four different high schools and eventually dropped out to move to Vegas, which he shortly returned to Chicago. John then enrolled in college, majoring in business. After graduating from college, john got a job working as a management trainee. He excelled at this career and was then transferred to Springfield to manage a men’s clothing outlet. Shortly after Gacy’s promotion, he married into a wealthy family, had two children and became a well-liked member of the community.
Everything was not as they seem with John Gacy. John was arrested for his first time in 1968, with a felony charge for attempting to coerce a male employee into homosexual acts. John pledged guilty to Sodomy, and was sentenced to 10 years in Iowa’s State Men’s Reformatory. His wife filed for divorce. John only served 18 months when he was released on parole in 1971. Gacy then moved back to his home town, Chicago. Where he began his own construction business and got remarried. Later that year, John was charged again with attempted rape of a young man; however the charges were dropped because the young man failed to show up to court. John’s second wife divorced him because of his bizarre obsession with homosexual magazines. John was still well-liked in his hometown even with the felony charges. John was a member of the organizations called the JayCee’s, where he was named outstanding vice president. He would often host parties, and would work as pogo the clown at fundraisers and charity events.
Little did people know that the man they admired was also a rapist and a serial killer. During the years of 1972-1978, John was secretly luring boys and young men to his home by promising them sex, grabbing them by force or by making them pass out by covering their face with a chloroform-soaked rag. Where he would then rape and murder them. John Wayne Gacy killed thirty three boys. He would then bury twenty six of his victims in the crawl space of his home, three other of his victims were buried elsewhere on his property, and he discarded the other four victims in the Des Plaines River. His choice of method to kill was sometimes stabbing, but mostly strangulation. Gacy killed because of misplaced anger towards his father. He murdered young boys because he knew from experience of their vulnerabilities and used that against them. He wanted to be like his father so that he could understand his father. He also killed young boys because he was ashamed of his homosexuality. John Wayne Gacy was a highly intelligent man, and was an organized killer, because he had all aspects of the murder worked out beforehand and took extreme precautions. He was a psychopath who felt no remorse for what he had done. John Wayne Gacy fit in with the Brain Damage theory, because of the blood clot in his brain. He also fits into the Child Abuse theory, because of his father. John Wayne Gacy did not exhibit any of the warning signs as a kid. John Gacy’s motive type was Lust.
In 1972, John Wayne Gacy committed his first murder. John saw a fifteen year old boy named Timothy McCoy at a bus stop. John lured Timothy into his car by promising him that he could stay the night and would be driven back to the bus stop in the morning. John claimed that he woke up to Timothy approaching him with a knife. He then said that he wrestled Timothy to the ground when he sliced John’s arm. That is when John stabbed Timothy repeatedly in the chest, then proceeded to bury him in the crawl space of his home. The last known person that John Gacy had murdered was Robert Piest. Robert willingly got into John’s car, where he was chloroformed and taken back to John’s house. John raped and tortured Robert repeatedly. He then strangled Robert to death and buried his body in the crawl space.
In 1978, John Wayne Gacy was under the attention of the police again. A teenage boy had been missing, and reports starting coming in that John was the last person to see the boy. This is when the police ran a background check on John and seen his prior arrest for committing Sodomy on a teenage boy. This information allowed the police to obtain a search warrant for John’s house. While searching his house, the police went into the crawl space where they noticed a horrid smell and ruled it out to be faulty sewage lines. The police didn’t find any noticeable incriminating evidence at the time so they left to run tests on some evidence they gathered. The police soon came to realization that they had seized a piece of crucial evidence, a ring that belonged to another teenager that had disappeared. The investigators then began to put two and two together and realized that this case may be more than they originally thought. With this new evidence, they were able to get a second search warrant for John Wayne Gacy’s home.
On December 22, 1978, John Wayne Gacy knew that the police were closing in on him so he decided to confess to the police of killing thirty three young men over the past seven years. All of them except for nine; were identified. He then drew the police a detailed map of the exact locations of the twenty six bodies he buried in the crawl space, and the three bodies buried under his house, and admitted to dumping the other four in the river. Gacy tried to convince the detectives that he was insane, he told the detectives that “there were four Johns; John the contractor, John the clown, John the politician.” And that the fourth person went by the name Jack Hanley, and that Jack was the evil one who did all the killings.
John Wayne Gacy’s trial began on February 6, 1980. John tried to take back his confession and he did not testify. The prosecution called more than 100 witnesses to testify. The defense tried to say that John was insane and out of control at the time of the killings. However, psychiatrics evaluated him and John was proven to be sane and competent. The trial went on for five weeks, but the jury only took two hours to come to a verdict. The jury found John Wayne Gacy guilty of murdering thirty three young men and charged with twenty one counts of life sentences, and twelve death sentences. John was then sent to Menard Correctional Center in Illinois, where he stayed for fourteen years. John put in a number of appeals. John also painted numerous portraits of clowns while in prison; they were later sold at auction. On May 9, 1994, John Wayne Gacy ate his last meal which consisted of KFC, fries, and a half pound of strawberries. On May 10, 1994 John Wayne Gacy was put to death by lethal injection, and his last words were “Kiss my ass.”

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“Serial Killer Class Notes Spring 2015”