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
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John Wayne Gacy FAQ
When was John Wayne Gacy executed
John Wayne Gacy was executed on May 10 1994
How was John Wayne Gacy executed
John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection
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