John Wayne Gacy



It is no surprise that John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was admired and liked by most who had known him. Gacy was born on March 17, 1942. He raped and killed thirty three teenage boys and buried twenty six of them in the crawlspace of his house and under his house. Most of his murders occurred between 1972 and 1978. He was also known as “Pogo the Clown.” He was a businessman by day and would even dress up as a clown and volunteer at children’s hospital. The people that knew him thought that the Pope was more able to commit a crime before Gacy would. What was the scariest aspect of Gacy was that he was able to function in normal society, something most of the other serial killers lacked. In 1968, he was charged with sodomy and was to spend 10 years in the state penitentiary. He was social and became involved in many activities in the prison. He served only sixteen months of his sentence before he was released on good behavior. He could not control his attraction to teenage boys and on January 2^nd, 1972 he raped and killed his first victim, Tim McCoy. While maintaining his double life, John Wayne Gacy was able to kill 19 young men by 1977. He continued to kill about every two weeks. Investigators eventually found one of the bodies Gacy put in the crawlspace and on December 21, 1978 he was arrested for murder. He was such a complex being that many psychologists could not figure out how his mind worked. Forensic psychologist, Helen Morrison, even examined his brain thinking there would be some sort of abnormality and found nothing. On May 10, 1994, John Wayne Gacy was put to death by lethal injection.