John Wayne Gacy – “The Killer Clown”
John Wayne Gacy was an american serial killer who lived from March 17, 1942, to May 10, 1994. He raped and murdered at least 33 young male victims. All murders took place from 1972-1978.
Growing up
It is unclear what John’s childhood was like. Some say that he grew up with an alcoholic father who would beat him and his siblings with a razor strap if they misbehaved. Some people also suspect that his mother was assaulted by her husband, John’s father. John was often not able to be with or play with other kids at school because of a congenital heart condition. The condition made his father angry and his father used it as a reason to abuse him. Other experts say that he had a ¨fairly ordinary childhood¨ but was interested in sadism which got him in trouble with police in the 1960`s. John revealed that he had struggled immensely with accepting his attraction to men.
Johns victims
In 1968 John was convicted for sexually assaulting a teenage boy and was sent to Iowa State Men’s Reformatory where he had to undergo psychological evaluation. When police went to search his house they found a crawl space under his house. In the crawl space there were 29 makeshift tombs that had a total of 29 bodies, all young males. 8 of the bodies were never identified, and 4 other bodies were found in Illinois rivers. Experts believe the first victim died in 1972 and the last victim died only 10 days before his arrest in 1978. John started his killings with homeless male prostitutes and soon moved to killing suburban teenagers. John often lured young boys into his car. Robert Piest was one of the young boys who was lured into his car. Piest was offered a construction job by John who was the last person Piest was seen with. Ten days after Piest’s disappearance the police searched Gacy’s house. The police found evidence of involvement in many different crimes. The body of Gacy’s firs known victim, Timothy McCoy, was the first body to be found. McCoy was killed in 1972 after Gacy lured him to his home. After an unknown amount of time of investigating the police found numerous trenches with human remains under the crawl space under his house. Gacy admitted to killing ¨about¨ 30 bodies But later denied all of the murders. Gacy died by lethal injection on the 10th of May 1994.
For more information you can go to these links:
https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/john-wayne-gacy
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Wayne-Gacy
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/chi-chicagodays-gacy-story-story.html
