John Wayne Gacy Execution Of A Serial Killer

John Wayne Gacy was executed by the State of Illinois for a series of murders

According to court documents John Wayne Gacy would lure young men to his home with the promise of work. John would sexually assault and then murder the young men and boys beneath his crawl space. Police believe that John would murder at least thirty three and the remains of twenty six of them would be found on his property

John Wayne Gacy would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

John Wayne Gacy would be executed on May 10 1994 by lethal injection

John Wayne Gacy FAQ

John Wayne Gacy Case

In indictments returned in the circuit court of Cook County, defendant, John Wayne Gacy, was charged with 33 counts of murder, one count of deviate sexual assault, one count of indecent liberties with a child, and one count of aggravated kidnaping. The circuit court allowed defendant’s motion that one trial be held on all pending indictments. Following a jury trial during which the charge of aggravated kidnaping was dismissed, John Wayne Gacy was found guilty on all of the other counts. In a hearing requested by the People concerning the 12 murders committed subsequent to the enactment of the death penalty provision of section 9-1 of the Criminal Code of 1961 (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 38, par. 9-1), the jury found that one or more of the factors set forth in section 9-1(d) existed, and found that there were no mitigating factors sufficient to preclude a sentence of death. Defendant was sentenced to death on 12 counts of murder and to terms of natural life on each of the remaining murder counts. The sentences were stayed (87 Ill.2d R. 609(a)) pending appeal to this court (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, sec. 4(b); 87 Ill.2d R. 603).

The testimony shows that on the evening of December 11, 1978, Robert Piest, a 15-year-old boy, worked at the Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines. His mother had driven to the pharmacy to pick him up after work and he told her that he was going to see a building contractor about a summer job and would be back in a few minutes. He was never again seen alive. Defendant was a building contractor and had spent much of the evening in the Nisson Pharmacy. At about the time Piest disappeared, *19 defendant’s truck was seen outside the pharmacy. The Des Plaines police department suspected that defendant was involved in Piest’s disappearance. The police learned that he had a record of sexually assaulting young men and had been convicted in Iowa for an assault on a teenage boy. A more detailed review of the facts surrounding the investigation and the issuance and execution of several search warrants will be set forth in the discussion of the issues.

In the course of the investigation defendant admitted that he had killed approximately 30 individuals, some buried in the crawl space under his home and five thrown into the Des Plaines River. Excavation of the crawl space and the area surrounding defendant’s home recovered 29 bodies. In addition, four bodies were recovered from the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers, downstream from the place where defendant had told the police that he threw the bodies.

https://law.justia.com/cases/illinois/supreme-court/1984/53212-6.html

John Wayne Gacy Execution

AFTER a grisly day-long carnival – capped by a partial failure of the lethal injection execution device – John Wayne Gacy was finally put to death early yesterday, 14 years after being convicted of murdering 33 young men and boys in one of the US’s worst serial murder cases.

As the execution hour of one minute past midnight approached, a muted crowd gathered in expectation outside the prison in Joliet, Illinois, after four last-ditch appeals by Gacy’s lawyers, including one to the Supreme Court, were rejected. Earlier, hundreds of people staged a rally in Chicago, where Gacy went on his killing spree between 1972 and 1978.

As a local radio talk show host led proceedings, cheering demonstrators carried banners proclaiming ‘Gacy – stick it to him’, and chanted ‘Goodbye Gacy’ to the tune of Hello Dolly. On a nearby pavement, 33 body bags had been laid out in memory of his victims, most of whom Gacy buried beneath his suburban home. To this day, eight remain unidentified.

The macabre revels extended to a local art gallery which auctioned off paintings done by Gacy during his years on death row. ‘He killed better than he painted,’ was one comment. But that did not prevent a dollars 50,000 ( pounds 35,000) asking price for a portrait of Jesus Christ which had once hung in his cell. Gacy, 52, was the 237th person to be executed in the US since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976, but only the second in Illinois in 30 years. In the event his death took more than twice as long as scheduled.

Under the lethal injection procedure, now the most common form of capital punishment in the US, a prisoner is sedated before being strapped to a stretcher trolley and wheeled into the death chamber. His arm is attached to an intravenous device, which delivers three drugs at one minute intervals: the anaesthetic sodium pentathol, then a chemical to halt breathing, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart. However, in Gacy’s case, one of the two poisons failed to flow into his body, in what a prison spokesman said appeared to be ‘a problem with chemicals gelling or blood clotting in the needle’.

A curtain was pulled across the plate glass window through which two dozen witnesses were watching the execution, while a tube was replaced. Gacy, who apparently suffered no pain, was officially pronounced dead at 12.58 am.

During his six-year killing spree, Gacy would lure his victims to his house, where he sexually assaulted and strangled them. In 1980, a jury took less than two hours to find him guilty, but appeals and other legal devices kept him alive until this week.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/crowd-cheers-serial-killer-s-execution-1435116.html

John Wayne Gacy Videos

John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown 

John Wayne Gacy is the case every true crime reader thinks they know, until they dig into the paperwork. The clown makeup, the crawl space, the 33 boys, it all sounds like urban legend. It was not. It was a Chicago contractor who spent six years hiding bodies under his house while hosting neighborhood barbecues upstairs.

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Quick Facts

Attribute	Detail
Full Name	John Wayne Gacy Jr.
Born	March 17, 1942, Edgewater Hospital, Chicago, Illinois
Died	May 10, 1994 (aged 52), Stateville Correctional Center, Illinois
Alias	The Killer Clown
Victims	33+ confirmed
Span of Crimes	1972–1978
Location	Norwood Park Township, Chicago suburb
Arrest	December 21, 1978
Conviction	33 counts of murder; sentenced to death March 13, 1980
Execution	Lethal injection, May 10, 1994

Who Was John Wayne Gacy? The Early Years That Did Not Predict a Monster

Gacy was born the middle child and only son of a World War I veteran auto machinist and a homemaker in Chicago. The family was Polish and Danish, and Catholic. 

The home was violent. His father was an alcoholic who beat him and belittled him constantly, calling him “dumb and stupid” and comparing him unfavorably to his sisters. His mother tried to shield him, which only earned him the taunts “sissy” and “mama’s boy” from his father. 

He was overweight, told to avoid sports because of an undiagnosed heart condition, and suffered blackouts starting in fourth grade. He spent nearly a year in hospital between ages 14 and 18. 

At 18 he fled to Las Vegas and took a job as a mortuary attendant. He later confessed that one night alone he climbed into the coffin of a teenage male, embracing the body before feeling shock at his own actions. He quit and came home three months later. 

Back in Chicago he thrived on the surface. He graduated from Northwestern Business College, joined the Jaycees, married Marlynn Myers in 1964, and moved to Waterloo, Iowa to manage three KFC restaurants for his father-in-law at $15,000 a year plus profit share, about $156,800 today. 

Waterloo: The First Conviction Everyone Ignored

In Waterloo, Gacy was Mr. Community. He was named outstanding vice-president of the Jaycees, ran fundraisers, and hosted employees in his basement “club.”

It was also where he started preying on boys. In August 1967 he lured 15-year-old Donald Voorhees Jr. to his house with the promise of stag films, plied him with alcohol, and assaulted him. 

Voorhees told his father in March 1968. Police arrested Gacy. While out on bail, Gacy paid an employee $300 to beat Voorhees to stop his testimony. The plot failed.

Psychiatrists at the University of Iowa concluded he had an antisocial personality disorder, was unlikely to benefit from treatment, and was mentally competent to stand trial. 

On December 3, 1968, he pleaded guilty to sodomy. He was sentenced to ten years at Anamosa State Penitentiary. His wife divorced him the same day. 

Gacy was a model prisoner. He became head cook, grew the inmate Jaycees from 50 to 650 men, and built a miniature golf course. He was paroled on June 18, 1970 after serving only eighteen months. He moved back to Chicago to live with his mother. Iowa sealed his record. Illinois never knew. 

Building the Perfect Cover at 8213 W. Summerdale

Gacy started a construction business, PDM Contractors, and bought a ranch-style house at 8213 W. Summerdale Avenue in unincorporated Norwood Park Township. He remarried in 1972 to Carole Hoff, a divorcée with two daughters.

To the neighborhood he was the hardworking contractor who hosted huge Fourth of July parties, dressed as Santa at Christmas, and volunteered for the Democratic Party. He was even photographed with First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1978.

Behind that, he created Pogo the Clown and Patches the Clown. He performed at children’s hospitals and charity events, characters he had invented himself. The clown suit gave him access, trust, and a perfect alibi. He became known as the “Killer Clown” because of those public performances before his crimes were discovered. 

Carole divorced him in March 1976 after finding gay pornography and smelling the stench of rotting flesh he blamed on a crawl space moisture problem. That divorce removed the last adult witness from the house.

The Murders: 1972 to 1978

Gacy raped, tortured and murdered at least thirty-three young men and boys between 1972 and 1978. He murdered his first victim, 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, in January 1972 after picking him up at the Greyhound bus station. He killed twice more by the end of 1975, then accelerated dramatically after his second divorce, murdering at least thirty victims in just over two years. 

His pattern was almost identical every time. He cruised Chicago’s Bughouse Square and bus stations looking for teenage runaways, male prostitutes, or his own employees. He lured them home with the promise of construction work, alcohol, or a magic trick.

Inside the house he would dupe them into putting on handcuffs. He then raped and tortured his captive before killing him by asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. 

Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, three were buried elsewhere on his property, and four were discarded in the Des Plaines River when he ran out of room. 

Inside the House of Horrors

When police finally excavated in December 1978, they found a nightmare of lime and decay. Bodies were stacked, some on top of others, wrapped in plastic, many with cloth ligatures still around their necks. The crawl space was only about 2 feet high, forcing investigators to crawl on their stomachs to recover remains.

Gacy called his rope trick the “tourniquet.” He would loop a rope around the victim’s neck, insert a stick, and slowly twist. He later told investigators he sometimes kept victims alive for hours, repeatedly reviving them.

He buried the first body under the dining room. Later victims went under the spare bedroom, the bathroom, and the patio. The smell was so bad that neighbors complained for years. Gacy blamed it on dead rats and a leaky sewer.

The Victims: Why We Still Say Their Names

Gacy’s victims were aged 14 to 21. Most were from Chicago’s northwest side. Several worked for PDM. At least five remain unidentified today despite DNA advances by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. 

Identified victims include:

• Timothy McCoy, 16
• John Butkovich, 17, PDM employee
• Darrell Samson, 18
• Robert Piest, 15
• Gregory Godzik, 17
• John Szyc, 19
• Michael Bonnin, 17
• William Kindred, 19
• And 25 others

The Cook County Sheriff continues to identify victims using forensic genealogy. In 2011, Victim No. 19 was identified as William George Bundy. In 2017, Victim No. 24 was identified as James “Jimmie” Haakenson. The work continues because Gacy himself said there could be more.

The Investigation That Finally Stuck: Robert Piest

The case broke because Gacy got greedy. On December 11, 1978, 15-year-old Robert Piest disappeared from the Des Plaines pharmacy where he worked after telling his mother he was going to talk to a contractor about a job. That contractor was Gacy.

Des Plaines detectives learned Gacy had a 1968 sodomy conviction in Iowa. They got a search warrant for December 13. They found handcuffs, pornography, a receipt from Piest’s pharmacy, and a strong odor.

Gacy was placed under surveillance. On December 21, after days of cat-and-mouse, detectives confronted him with evidence. He cracked and said, “I think this is going to be the end.” He confessed that night.

His arrest on December 21, 1978, was directly tied to the Piest investigation. 

Trial: The Insanity Defense That Failed

Gacy’s trial began February 6, 1980. The prosecution had the bodies, the confessions, and the physical evidence. The defense argued not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming Gacy had multiple personalities: the contractor, the clown, and “Jack Hanley,” the killer.

It took the jury less than two hours to convict him of 33 murders, then the most homicides in United States legal history for one individual. He was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980. 

Fourteen Years on Death Row

Gacy spent 14 years at Menard Correctional Center. He became a grotesque celebrity. He painted clowns obsessively, selling oil paintings for up to $20,000. He gave interviews, maintained his innocence, and filed endless appeals.

He never expressed remorse. His final words to his lawyer were, “Kiss my ass.”

He was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. The execution was botched. The chemicals solidified and clogged the IV tube, taking 18 minutes for him to die. Outside, a crowd of over 1,000 people cheered. 

Legacy, Myths, and the Cultural Shadow

Gacy did not invent the killer clown trope, but he cemented it. Stephen King’s Pennywise, the 1980s clown panic, and every true crime documentary since owes a debt to Pogo.

Netflix’s 2022 series “Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes” brought new attention. Podcasts and YouTube channels still cover the unidentified victims.

More importantly, his case changed police procedure. It proved the importance of sharing criminal records across state lines, taking missing teenager reports seriously, and using odor and cadaver dogs in searches.

The house at 8213 W. Summerdale was demolished in 1979. A new house was built in 1988. The address was changed to discourage tourists.