July 8, 2025 • 40 mins
The narrative of John Wayne Gacy, an American serial killer, encapsulates a profoundly disturbing juxtaposition of charm and malevolence. Gacy, a seemingly upstanding member of society, eluded detection while he orchestrated the abduction and murder of at least 33 young men and boys from his suburban home in Illinois. The episode commences with the tragic disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest, whose fate serves as the catalyst for the unraveling of Gacy's heinous crimes. Through a meticulous exploration of Gacy's dual life as both a community leader and a predator, we confront the harrowing reality that the most sinister individuals can masquerade as benevolent figures. This discussion not only delves into the psychological underpinnings of Gacy's actions but also reflects on the societal implications of such monstrosity, ultimately challenging our perceptions of safety and trust in our communities.
Hosts: Michael and Alana are professional historians with a passion for bringing the most captivating and often overlooked criminal events of the past to light. ✨
Connect with Us:
Follow "History's Greatest Crimes" on social media for behind-the-scenes content, historical facts, and updates on future episodes! 👇
- X (formerly Twitter): @podcasthgc
- Facebook: History's Greatest Crimes Facebook 👍
- Instagram: @historys_greatest_crimes📸
Support History's Greatest Crimes:
Love the show and want to dig deeper into history's most infamous crimes? Consider supporting us by subscribing to one of our tiers: 🙏❤️
Detective Tier: Get exclusive access to:
- History’s Greatest Crimes Discord Channel
- Early access to new episodes several days in advance👂🔓
- Shout-outs on the podcast
Special Agent Tier: Unlock all Detective Tier benefits PLUS:
- Special BONUS Episodes⭐
Subscribe here: 👉 https://historys-greatest-crimes.captivate.fm/support
The narrative unfolds within a pharmacy located in Des Plaines, Illinois, on the fateful day of December 11, 1978. It is an unremarkable late afternoon, where we find Robert Piest, a responsible fifteen-year-old, concluding his shift. Anticipating the arrival of his mother, Elizabeth, who is set to pick him up, Robert expresses his intention to briefly converse with a local contractor regarding a potential summer job that promises greater financial reward. This contractor, a well-regarded figure within the community, embodies the trustworthiness associated with a good neighbor. However, as Robert steps out into the frigid December air, he mysteriously vanishes, never to be seen alive again. His disappearance catalyzes a horrifying narrative, one that unveils the monstrous realities lurking beneath suburban facades, challenging the very essence of safety and innocence in American neighborhoods.
The discussion swiftly transitions to John Wayne Gacy, a figure whose seemingly exemplary public persona stands in stark contrast to the grotesque reality of his actions. Gacy, a successful building contractor and an active Democratic precinct captain, was the archetype of a community leader—beloved, respected, and seemingly harmless. His social gatherings, marked by extravagant parties and his role as Pogo the Clown, painted a portrait of an affable neighbor. Yet, this public image served as a façade, ingeniously crafted to mask his predatory behavior. The juxtaposition of Gacy’s jovial clown persona and his...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:23):
The scene is a pharmacy in DesPlaines, Illinois.
December 11, 1978.
It's late afternoon and 15year old Robert Pius is finishing
his shift.
He's a good kid.
Responsible.
He tells his mother,Elizabeth, who's going to pick him
up, that he'll be just a minute.
He's going to talk to a localcontractor about a summer job that
could pay more than hiscurrent gig.
(01:44):
The contractor is a wellknown, friendly man, a pillar of
the community, a man you'dtrust your son with.
Robert Piest walks out of thatpharmacy and vanishes into the cold
December air.
He is never seen alive again.
His disappearance will unravela story so monstrous, so profoundly
evil, and it will define thevery concept of the monster next
(02:06):
door.
It'll shatter the fragilesense of safety in the American suburbs
and give a face to a new kindof national fear.
I'm Michael.
And I'm Elena.
Today on history's greatestcrimes, we're discussing the famous
American serial killer JohnWayne Gacy.
Before the discovery of thecrawl space, before the stench that
(02:28):
neighbors dismissed asmoisture or dead rats, before the
discovery of 33 bodies, JohnWayne Gacy was by all accounts an
exemplary citizen.
He was the man you wanted asyour neighbor.
He was a successful buildingcontractor, owner of PDM Contractors,
a business that grew rapidlyand became a financial success.
(02:50):
He was an active andinfluential Democratic precinct captain
in Norwood Park, a man whoknew how to get things done in the
community, a man who could getyour street paved.
He threw legendary summerblock parties, sometimes for 400
plus people, complete withroasted pigs and horseshoe tournaments.
And most famously, he was Pogothe Clown.
(03:10):
He was a member of the localJolly Jokers Clown club.
And he would don the greasepaint and rainbow suit to volunteer
at children's parties andcharity fundraisers.
He was the man who broughtlaughter to sick kids in hospitals.
This public Persona wasn'tjust a mask.
It was an essential tool forhis crimes.
(03:30):
His construction businessprovided a constant legitimate stream
of the very demographic hepreyed upon.
Teenage boys and young menlooking for work.
He could hire them, get toknow them, and then lure them to
his home under the pretense ofdiscussing pay for a future job.
His political role as aprecinct captain built a formidable
(03:52):
wall of credibility.
He was photographed with firstlady Rosalynn Carter.
He was a man with connections,a man who knew police officers and
politicians.
This status made authoritiesand parents alike hesitant to believe
the scattered complaints thattrickled in over the years.
The clown Persona was theultimate grotesque subversion of
(04:12):
innocence.
A tool that disarmed suspicionand created a nightmarish dichotomy
that would forever brand himin the public consciousness and as
the killer clown.
It was a chillingly effective synergy.
The more he invested in hispublic image as a community leader,
the more effectively he couldoperate as a predator.
(04:35):
The public life wasn't just a cover.
It was his hunting ground.
(04:57):
To understand the monster, wehave to go back to the beginning.
In Chicago, Illinois, JohnWayne Gacy's early life was a blueprint
for violence.
Born in 1942, he was thesecond of three children and the
only son of John Stanley Gacy.
His father, John Stanley Gacy,was a machinist, a World War I veteran
and and a violent, abusive alcoholic.
(05:20):
The elder John Gacy spent muchof his time in the basement of their
house.
His wife and son and twodaughters were prohibited from going
down there.
Through the floor, theysometimes heard him talking in different
voices.
When he emerged, he was oftendrunk and likely to be violent.
One evening, he struck hiswife so hard that he knocked out
(05:42):
some of her teeth.
And then he chased her intothe street and.
And beat her some more towardhis son.
The abuse was both physicaland psychological, a relentless campaign
of degradation.
Gacy recalled his fatherbeating him with a razor strap for
any perceived misbehavior.
One of his earliest and mostvivid memories was being beaten at
(06:03):
the age of four foraccidentally disarranging some car
engine components his fatherwas working on.
But the verbal abuse was aconstant, dripping poison, and his
father called him dumb andstupid, a sissy, a mama's boy, relentlessly
mocking him for his lack ofathleticism and his supposed femininity.
Gacy suffered from acongenital heart condition that prevented
(06:26):
him from playing sports, whichhis father viewed as just another
failure.
As a teenager, he experiencedfrequent blackouts and seizures,
landing him in the hospitalfor extended periods.
His father's reaction was notconcerned, but contempt.
He openly accused his son offaking the ailments for attention.
(06:47):
Compounding this, Gacy wasmolested as a child by a family friend,
a secret he kept locked away,terrified his father would blame
him for that too.
This environment created whatpsychologists call a profound frustration,
aggression complex.
Gacy was trapped, constantlyseeking approval of the man who was
(07:08):
incapable of giving it, a manwho Gacy would later tell his mother,
would have killed him if heever found out his son was gay.
The hatred and violence weredirected at the very core of Gacy's
emerging identity.
In 1960, at the age of 18,Gacy became involved in politics,
working for a Local Democraticparty candidate.
(07:30):
That led to more criticismfrom his father, who called him a
patsy.
That same year, Gacy's fatherbought him a car.
He he kept the vehicle's titlein his own name until Gacy had paid
for it, which took several years.
In the meantime, his fatherwould confiscate the keys if Gacy
did not do as he said.
When Gacy purchased an extraset of keys, his father removed the
(07:54):
distributor cap and kept itfor three days.
Hours after his fatherreplaced the cap, Gacy left home
and drove to Las Vegas, Nevadawith $136 in his pocket.
In Las Vegas, he first workedfor an ambulance service for a bit.
Then he changed to working asa mortuary attendant for three months,
observing morticians,embalming bodies, and occasionally
(08:16):
serving as a pallbearer.
He slept on a cot behind theembalming room and later confessed
that one evening he actuallyclimbed into the coffin of a teenage
boy.
There, he embraced andcaressed the dead body before seemingly
coming to his senses.
And this experience promptedGacy to return to Chicago.
(08:36):
Back home, Gacy startedworking as a department manager for
a shoe company.
There, he met and married hisfirst wife, Marilyn Myers, a co worker,
in 1964.
Shortly after, John andMarilyn welcomed a son and then a
daughter.
In the meantime, Marilyn'sfather purchased three Kentucky Fried
(08:56):
Chicken restaurants inWaterloo, Iowa.
The company moved there sothat Gacy could manage the restaurants.
John Wayne Gacy would laterdescribe this period of his life
as perfect.
When Gacy's parents visited in1966, his father privately apologized
for the abuse he had inflictedbefore happily saying, quote, son,
(09:17):
I was wrong about you, as heshook Gacy's hand.
Gacy opened a sort of club inhis basement where his employees
could drink alcohol and play pool.
No one seemed to pay too muchattention to the fact that although
Gacy employed both male andfemale teenagers, he only socialized
with the boys.
But in hindsight, it's nowclear that Gacy was experimenting
(09:40):
during this time with just howfar he could go.
When teenage male employeescame to his home to socialize, he
gave many of them alcoholbefore he made sexual advances.
If the employees respondednegatively, he, Gacy, would claim
his advances were jokes or atest of morals.
Around the same time, Gacyjoined the local Jaycees chapter.
(10:02):
If you don't know, theJaycees, also known as the United
States Junior Chamber, is aleadership training service organization.
And being part of the Jayceeswas good professionally for John
wayne Gacy.
In 1967, he was namedOutstanding vice president of the
Waterloo Jaycees, and heserved on the board of directors.
But behind closed doors, Gacyand other members were heavily involved
(10:25):
in drug abuse, pornography,prostitution and wife swapping.
But even beyond his wildsocial behavior, John Wayne Gacy
lived an even more duplicitouslife that his friends didn't know
about.
In August of 1967, Gacysexually assaulted the 15 year old
son of a local politician andfellow JC member.
(10:48):
Gacy lured the boy to hishouse with the promise of showing
him some heterosexualpornography that was regularly played
at Jaycee events.
While watching it, Gacy pliedthe boy with alcohol and persuaded
him to engage in mutual oral sex.
Gacy apparently told the boythat you have to have sex with a
man before you start havingsex with women.
(11:09):
End quote.
Over the next few months, Gacyabused several other teenage boys.
Another boy who was anemployee who washed floors and cleaned
the kitchen at one of Gacy's restaurants.
The employee later explainedthat Gacy had offered to drive him
home after work.
One evening they ended up atGacy's house.
(11:29):
Gacy's wife was absent thistime because she was in the hospital
actually giving birth to theirsecond child like before.
Gacy served the employeealcohol and while they were watching
pornography and Gacy attackedhim and strangled him until he nearly
passed out.
When the boy woke up, Gacysaid that he hadn't meant to hurt
him.
He then drove him home and afew days later, he fired that employee.
(11:52):
Word of the boy's storiesspread through the town and eventually
other boys came forward whotold similar accounts.
In an effort to clear hisname, Gacy asked if he to be given
a lie detector test and hefailed it.
He.
He asked to be given anotherone and he failed that one too.
And in the county attorney'soffice, it was said that the only
(12:13):
answer that he got right washis name.
In August of 1968, Gacyoffered one of his employees $300
to intimidate the politician'sson Gacy had previously assaulted.
Gacy didn't want the boy totestify at his upcoming trial.
The employee drove the boyinto the woods outside of town and
and sprayed mace into hiseyes, then beat him up and told him
(12:36):
not to testify.
The boy ultimately broke freeand made his way through a cornfield.
When he got back into town, hewent to the police and gave them
the name of his attacker.
And of course the employeevery quickly then named John Wayne
Gacy as the man behind it all.
The police quickly arrestedGacy and charged him with sodomy
(12:57):
and for hiring someone toassault the witness in a court case.
Gacy was also ordered toundergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Two doctors concluded that hehad an antisocial personality disorder,
he was unlikely to benefitfrom any treatment, and that his
behavior pattern was likely tobring into repeated conflict with
(13:18):
society.
However, and perhaps mostimportantly, they also concluded
that Gacy was mentallycompetent to stand trial.
In November of 1968, Gacypleaded guilty to one count of sodomy
in relations to thepolitician's son, but not guilty
to the charges related toother youths.
And in a true act of victimblaming, Gacy claimed that the boy
(13:42):
had offered himself to gacyand that Gacy had simply acted out
of curiosity.
His story was not believed bypretty much anyone and he was convicted
and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
The judge said that theseverity of the sentence was intended
to make certain that, quote,for some period of time, you cannot
seek out teenage boys tosolicit them for immoral behavior
(14:02):
of any kind.
At the same time, Gacy's wife,perhaps understandably, filed for
divorce, requesting that shebe awarded the couple's home and
property, sole custody oftheir two children, as well as alimony.
The court ruled in her favor,and after the divorce was finalized,
Gacy never saw his first wifeor children again.
(14:24):
This should have been the endof his story as a free man, a decade
behind bars that might haveprevented the slaughter to come.
But it wasn't.
Gacy, the master manipulator,became a model prisoner.
He worked in the prisonkitchen, organized events, charmed
the guards and administration,and after serving only 18 months
of his 10 year sentence, hewas granted parole.
(14:47):
And in a final catastrophicfailure of the system, his criminal
records in Iowa were sealed.
One year later, he was given aclean slate and sent back to Chicago,
a walking time bomb that thejustice system had primed.
Wounded and released back intothe world.
(15:25):
John Wayne Gacy didn't operatein a vacuum.
The 1970s in America was adecade of profound anxiety.
The optimism of the post warboom had curdled, replaced by the
lingering trauma of theVietnam war, the deep seated cynicism
of the watergate scandal andthe economic misery of stagflation.
(15:45):
High inflation coupled withhigh unemployment.
The stock market lost about athird of its value from the beginning
of the decade to around late 1974.
The unemployment rate remainedabout 7% and mortgage rates climbed
into double digits, ultimatelyreaching 18.45% in 1981.
(16:06):
And gas prices themselves rosedramatically, with prices more than
doubling in some places.
All of this was part of whatwould become known as the Great inflation.
In July of 1979, PresidentJimmy Carter went on national television
to deliver a speech.
He said, quote, it is a crisisof confidence.
(16:27):
It is a crisis that strikes atthe very heart and soul and spirit
of our national will.
The erosion of our confidencein the future is threatening to destroy
the social and the politicalfabric of America.
End quote.
This was the world Gacy moved through.
A world where trust ininstitutions, in the government,
the police, even in yourneighbors, was quite low.
(16:49):
The idyllic image of theAmerican suburb, once seen as a safe
haven from the chaos of theurban city was beginning to crack.
The social fabric Carter spokeof was fraying.
And through those tears,monsters could slip through unnoticed.
Gacy's ability to commitdozens of murders from his suburban
(17:12):
home is a terrifyingembodiment of this crisis.
The parole board's decision torelease him early represents a failure
of the justice system.
The initial police inaction oncomplaints against him represents
a failure of law enforcement.
And the fact that he couldbury a legion of the dead pretty
much in his crawl spacewithout detection for years represents
(17:33):
a catastrophic failure ofcommunity awareness.
He exploited the very idea ofthe trustworthy neighbor at a time
when the nation was wasfundamentally questioning what and
who it could trust.
After his parole, Gacy usedmoney from his mother to buy a ranch
style house in Norwood, justoutside Chicago.
(17:54):
This unassuming suburban homewould become his abattoir.
Between January 1972 and hisarrest in December of 1978, he murdered
at least 33 boys and young men there.
His method was chillinglyconsistent and relied on deception.
And he'd lure victims with thepromise of a job at PDM Contractors.
(18:15):
PDM Contractors stood forpainting, decorating and maintenance.
And it was Gacy's construction business.
It started as a small parttime business, but quickly evolved
into something full time and lucrative.
Gacy would often discuss wagesand hours with potential employees,
building a sense of legitimacy.
And then occasionally, hewould also use a red light and police
(18:37):
radio to impersonate anofficer and pull over young men.
Once inside his house, thetrap was sprung with what he called
the handcuff trick.
He would claim to be anamateur magician and persuade his
victims to put on handcuffs,promising to show them an escape
trick.
One survivor, Tony, laterdescribed how Gacy used it as a test.
(18:59):
Gacy put the cuffs on him andTony, a wrestler, managed to take
Gacy down and cuff him instead.
Gacy, who was shocked, toldhim, you're the only one that not
only got out of the handcuffs.
You got them on me.
Tony was lucky.
For those who didn't pass thetest, the handcuffs were the beginning
(19:20):
of hours of unspeakable rapeand torture.
The final act was often therope trick.
After the victim was subdued,Gacy would take a piece of rope,
place it around the victim'sneck as if to demonstrate another
trick, and then use it as agarret, twisting it with a stick
for maximum leverage until thevictim was strangled.
(19:41):
The first boy that Gacy killedwas 16 year old Timothy McCoy.
Gacy met him at Chicago'sGreyhound Bus Terminal in January
1972.
And since Timothy's next buswasn't due until the next day, Gacy
offered to take him on asightseeing tour of Chicago and then
drove him to his home.
He made the boy a few drinks and.
(20:01):
And they engaged in sexual activity.
Gacy claimed that early in themorning he woke and saw the boy in
the doorway of his room with akitchen knife in his hand.
Gacy allegedly charged the boy.
They wrestled, Gacy gotcontrol of the knife and stabbed
him several times.
He then dumped the body intothe crawlspace through a trapdoor
of his closet.
And a few days later, he wentback and buried the boy there.
(20:25):
For years after Gacy's arrest,no one learned the boy's name.
Whenever police spoke of him,they referred to him as the Greyhound
busboy.
But this was an importantmoment for Gacy's evolution into
a serial killer.
During that first murder, Gacysaid that he realized that death
was the ultimate thrill.
(20:46):
This wasn't just about sexual gratification.
It was about absolute power.
Gacy's entire life had been abattle for control against the backdrop
of a childhood where he had none.
His father dominated himphysically and emotionally.
The murders were the ultimatetwisted act of seizing control.
He controlled the lure, therestraints, the torture, the method
(21:08):
of death, and even the finaldisposal of the body.
His public life as asuccessful businessman and a respected
precinct captain was anothermanifestation of this desperate need
for control and authority.
The murders were simply thedark, private expression of the same
psychological drive thatfueled his public ambition.
(21:31):
Gacy committed his secondmurder around January of 1974.
Two years later, that victimremains unidentified.
He was strangled and placed inGacy's closet before burial.
Gacy later stated that bodilyfluids leaked from the victim's mouth
and nose, staining his carpet.
And after that, Gacy regularlystuffed rags, socks, or the victim's
(21:53):
own underwear into the mouthsof subsequent victims to prevent
it from happening again.
In July of 1975, Gacy murderedone of his 18 year old employees
named John Butkovic.
Gacy apparently owed theemployee back pay, and when he confronted
Gacy about it, Gacy invitedhim back home, ostensibly to settle
(22:13):
the issue of his overdue wages.
At his home, Gacy offered hima drink, then conned him into allowing
his wrists to be cuffed behindhis back.
Gacy later confessed tohaving, quote, sat on the kid's chest
for a while before hestrangled him.
And we should note that manyof Gacy's victims had families who
looked for them afterwards,and many of them strongly suspected
(22:35):
Gacy.
John Butkovich's family calledthe police more than 100 times over
the next three years, urgingthem to investigate Gacy further.
And throughout the 1970s, Gacycontinued to assault young men.
In 73, Gacy and a teenageemployee traveled to Florida to view
a property Gacy had purchased.
(22:55):
While there, Gacy raped theemployee in their hotel room.
After returning to Chicago,the same employee drove to Gacy's
house and beat him in hisfront yard.
Gacy told people that he hadbeen attacked for refusing to pay
the employee for poor qualitypainting work.
In 1976, Gacy picked up 18year old David Cram and offered him
a job.
(23:16):
The next day, Cram and Gacyhad several drinks to celebrate his
19th birthday.
To make the moment even moreunbelievable, Gacy did this while
dressed as Pogo the Clown.
Seemingly in connection to thecelebration, Gacy conned Cram into
donning handcuffs.
And when Gacy told Cram thathe intended to rape him, Cram kicked
(23:36):
Gacy in the face and managedto free himself.
At another time, a 26 year oldman said that Gacy had offered him
a ride to a bar.
As he was driving, Gacysuddenly covered the man's face with
a rag soaked in chloroform andthe man passed out.
He said that Gacy took himhome and tortured and raped him for
several hours while he driftedin and out of consciousness.
(23:57):
He woke the next morning atthe base of a statue in a park near
where he had been picked up.
His pants were unzipped, hisbody was in pain from sexual assault,
and his face was burned fromthe chloroform.
In the hospital, he learnedthat the chloroform had caused severe
damage to his liver.
The man identified Gacy'spicture from among a collection the
police had shown him, but thepolice didn't pursue a charge.
(24:20):
Gacy settled with the man for $3,000.
Over the years of the 1970s,and neighbors also noticed some Strange
behavior at Gacy's house.
They saw him keeping companywith young males, hearing his car
arrive or depart in the earlymorning, or seeing lights in his
home switch on and off in theearly hours.
(24:40):
One neighbor later recollectedthat for several years, muffled high
pitched screaming, shoutingand crying coming from Gacy's house
had repeatedly awakened herand her son in the early morning.
So as we mentioned before,between 1972 and 1978, John Wayne
Gacy murdered 33 that we knowof, boys and young men.
(25:01):
But what's really crazy isthat Gacy continued to mostly look
very normal on the outside.
He began performing athospitals and parades and store openings
as Pogo the Clown.
Pogo had a white face, batshaped red lips and wide blue eyes
in the shape of beehives.
Gacy also married, now for asecond time.
(25:23):
In 1972, not long after he gotout of prison for the first time,
Gacy married Carol Hoff.
Gacy and Carol had dated for ashort time in high school, and at
the time, Carol alleged thatshe felt that Gacy was more like
a brother than a romantic interest.
So there wasn't much of aspark between the two.
But Gacy was kind to Carol'stwo daughters, which seemed to have
(25:44):
convinced her.
Apparently, Gacy actually toldCaril about the trouble he had been
in back in Iowa, and he alsotold her that he was bisexual.
But Carol said that shethought he was kidding.
Quite frankly, Carol seemed tohave some blinders on because just
nine days before they gotmarried, Gacy had been arrested again.
The police report had saidthat Gacy told a boy that he was
(26:07):
a deputy sheriff and orderedthe boy into his car.
He sexually assaulted the boy,who was eventually able to jump out
of the car.
Gacy subsequently tried to runhim over.
For some reason, the chargesthere were dropped.
It's unclear whether hesucceeded in keeping Carol from knowing
about the arrest or convincedher that it was a mistake and that
he was innocent.
(26:28):
At one point during theirmarriage, Carol claimed that she
found some magazines featuringnaked men.
She also found photos, one ofwhich appeared to be a young man
with blood on his body.
Throughout the summer of 1972,Carol noticed a smell that seemed
to come from something decaying.
In the crawl space.
In a back room was a swarm offlies, which she thought might be
(26:49):
feeding on whatever was downthere, but she assumed it was dead
mice, not actual human bodies.
Gacy told her that the odorwas the result of a runoff from a
broken sewer pipe.
At the same time, Gacysecretly dug graves in the cramped
4 foot high crawl space underhis house.
He packed the bodies in,sometimes one on top of another,
(27:11):
using hundreds of pounds ofquicklime to try and accelerate decomposition
and manage the ever worsening smell.
The sheer audacity is breathtaking.
He even had one of his futurevictims, 17 year old PDM employee
Gregory Godzik, dig some ofthe trenches, telling the boy it
was for a plumbing issue.
Gacy murdered Gregory Godzikin December of 1976.
(27:34):
In 1976, Carol and John WayneGacy divorced.
Interestingly, Carol filed fordivorce based on the false grounds
of Gacy's infidelity with women.
As noted, she had seen hintsof Gacy's secret life.
She later explained that shehad seen Gacy bringing teenage boys
into his garage in the earlyhours and also found men's wallets
(27:57):
and identification inside the house.
But when she had confrontedGacy about these items, he informed
her angrily that it was noneof her business.
In 1977, Gacy was again engaged.
His fiance moved into hishouse in April, but they argued often
and after a few months he toldher he was leaving for a week on
business and wanted her goneby the time he got back.
(28:19):
The complete absence of anyoneelse at home made it much easier
for Gacy to continue acting onhis violent compulsions.
Within months of his divorcefrom Carol, Gacy had killed six more
boys who he buried under his house.
Gacy was, in effect, livingdirectly on top of his own Private
Cemetery.
26 bodies were eventuallyrecovered from the crawl space.
(28:42):
Three more were found buriedelsewhere on the property, one under
the garage floor.
The house was no longer a home.
It was a mass grave, amonument to a secret history of unimaginable
suffering.
By late 1978, the crawl spacewas full.
There was no more room for his secrets.
(29:03):
So Gacy, ever the pragmatist,started using the nearby Des Plaines
river as his new dumping ground.
This is where he disposed ofhis final four victims.
It was a chillingly practicalsolution to a logistical problem,
and it would ultimately be hisown undoing.
(29:36):
The investigation into thedisappearance of Robert Pius, John
Wayne Gacy's last victim, wasdifferent from the others.
For years, parents of themissing boys had pointed fingers
at Gacy, only to be dismissedby police who were swayed by his
high community standing.
But this time, the Des Plainespolice, led by a determined lieutenant
named Joseph Kazenczic, were relentless.
(29:59):
They quickly learned Piast waslast seen with Gacy.
And crucially, they unearthedhis 1968 sodomy conviction in Iowa.
The conviction, whose recordshad been sealed, Cosenzak put Gacy
under 24.
7 surveillance.
His teams, including officersMike Albrecht and Ronald Robinson,
followed Gacy's every move,documenting his erratic behavior.
(30:22):
As the pressure mounted, onDecember 13, 1978, the police executed
the first search warrant onGacy's house.
They didn't find a body, butthey found a trove of deeply disturbing
items.
Multiple police badges,handcuffs, books about pederasty,
and a 2x4 with holes drilledinto it consistent with a torture
(30:44):
device.
Most importantly, in the trashcan, they found a photo receipt from
Nissan Pharmacy, the verystore where Robert Pius worked and
was the last seen.
The net was tightening.
On December 21st, policearrested Gacy.
The next day, after hours ofinterrogation, he finally broke.
(31:05):
But he didn't confess in thefirst person.
He tried to create a legalshield for from the very beginning.
He created an alter ego, adark personality he called Jack.
He told the stunneddetectives, john didn't do it.
Jack did it.
He claimed this otherpersonality, a product of his abusive
(31:26):
upbringing, would take overduring the murders.
It was a desperate,transparent attempt to build an insanity
defense.
He then drew a map, a diagramof his house with X's marking the
approximate locations of thebodies buried in the crawl space.
What followed was a scene ofunimaginable horror broadcast to
(31:46):
a stunned nation.
Investigators in protectivegear and respirators began the slow,
grim work of excavating thecrawl space.
Before the 1970s, whilemurderers who committed multiple
murders certainly existed, theconcept of the serial killer as a
distinct cultural figuredidn't exist to the same extent.
(32:07):
The decade of the 1970srepresented what many historians
and criminologists call thegolden age of serial killer murder.
It included the subject ofthis episode, John Wayne Gacy, but
also others like Ted Bundy,the Son of Sam, the Zodiac Killer,
among others.
These cases received intense,sustained and sensational media coverage,
(32:29):
which helped create a new andterrifying archetype of the serial
killer.
Gacy's killer clown monikerwas a media friendly hook that made
the story both horrifying andgrotesquely fascinating, transforming
a banal, pathetic man into afigure of mythic evil.
But in addition to mediacoverage, serial killers also became
(32:52):
more prevalent in the 1970sbecause of other factors.
The first was the rise of theinterstate highway system in the
US that allowed killers totravel greater distances faster and
remain anonymous.
Distance also made it harderfor local enforcement to track them
and and link the crimescommitted in different jurisdictions,
(33:13):
something we saw in ourepisodes of Bonnie and Clyde in the
1930s.
In addition, the 1970s saw therise of FBI's Behavioral Science
Unit, which began to study thepsychology of serial killers.
This period marked a turningpoint in criminal investigation and
understanding the nature ofserial murder.
That's right.
(33:33):
This was the early stage ofcriminal profiling, which would ultimately
help law enforcementunderstand and identify serial offenders.
But at this point, it wasstill a work in Progress.
And the 1960s and 1970s saw arise in crime in general, including
homicides.
Concerning the serial killerportion of those murders, it was
(33:53):
partially due to changes insociety that created an environment
where predators could moreeasily find vulnerable victims.
Increased drug use,hitchhiking, and the hippie movement
contributed.
So did changes in familydynamics, with more women entering
the workforce and livingalone, which increased opportunities
for certain types of offenders.
(34:14):
Furthermore, the United Statesexperienced a loosening of societal
norms around casual sex in the1960s and 1970s that may have expanded
the pool of potential victims.
For some killers, the rise inviolent crime in the 1970s directly
contributed to the strangerdanger panic that swept America.
(34:34):
Milk cartons began featuringthe faces of missing children.
Parents became terrified ofthe man in the white van, the stranger
that offered candy.
Gacy became the face of that fear.
Even though the vast majorityof children and child abductions
are committed by family.
Members and not strangers,Gacy's legacy is not just his staggering
(34:55):
body count.
It's the cultural fear hehelped to create, a fear that reshaped
American parenting andchildhood for a generation.
In fact, the Gacy murderseventually led to the creation of
the Missing Child Recovery Act.
At the time of the murders,Illinois police had to wait 72 hours
(35:16):
before initiating a search fora missing child or teenager.
After Gacy, the waiting periodwas removed and a national network
aimed at locating missingchildren was gradually formed.
This has since developed intothe Child Abduction Emergency, commonly
known as an Amber Alert.
The trial of John Wayne Gacybegan on February 6, 1980, with his
(35:38):
confession and the mountain ofphysical evidence.
29 bodies unearthed from his property.
Guilt was not really in question.
The only question was sanity.
The defense argued that Gacywas not guilty by reason of insanity.
They put psychologists on thestand who testified that Gacy suffered
from schizophrenia and apersonality disorder, a Jekyll Hyde
(36:02):
sort of type of personality.
They argued that his abusivechildhood created a compulsion to
kill, projecting the hatredfor his father onto his victims.
The prosecution painted a verydifferent picture.
They argued that Gacy was ameticulous, calculating predator
who stalked his victims, hadgraves dug for their burial, used
(36:23):
an intricate rope trick tokill almost all of them.
And then plotted his owninsanity defense.
Forensic psychologists for theprosecution testified that Gacy's
crimes were premeditated anddeliberate, not the result of a psychotic
break.
Chief Prosecutor WilliamKunkel, Jr. Told the jury, quote,
if you think you can excusethis man of these crimes, they then
(36:46):
every hitman and everycriminal must be excused too.
End quote.
The jury of seven men and fivewomen deliberated for less than two
hours.
They found him guilty on all33 counts of murder.
The next day, they sentencedhim to death.
John wayne Gacy spent 14 yearson death row at Menard correctional
(37:07):
Center.
He showed no remorse.
In one interview from prison,he said, quote, how can you feel
relief about something youstill don't understand?
Because they say, I'm guilty,I'm supposed to feel guilty.
Now I don't.
I have no remorse, end quote.
In another infamous quote, hestated, quote, I should never have
been convicted of anythingmore serious than running a cemetery
(37:29):
without a license, end quote.
He spent his time in prisonpainting bizarre, crude paintings
of clowns, skulls, Elvis, evena self portrait as pogo.
This, what they would callmurderabilia became a source of morbid
fascination and controversy,with galleries exhibiting his work
for thousands of dollars,while victims families protested,
(37:52):
forced to see the man whodestroyed their lives celebrated
as some kind of twisted artist.
John Wayne Gacy didn't justkill 33 people.
He killed an idea.
The idea that the suburbs weresafe, that a friendly neighbor was
just that, that a clown was afigure of joy.
He became a permanent fixturein the American psyche.
(38:13):
The boogeyman who proved thatthe greatest monsters can wear the
most ordinary and sometimeseven the most cheerful of faces.
On May 10th of 1994, JohnWayne Gacy was executed by lethal
injection at Stateville penitentiary.
His last meal, he orderedfried chicken, fried shrimp, french
(38:33):
fries, and fresh strawberries.
A final nod to his time as aKFC manager and what he called the
happiest days of his life.
In the lead up to hisexecution, thousands gathered outside
the correctional center.
A vocal majority were in favorof the execution.
Some wore T shirts bearingsatirical slogans such as, quote,
no tears for the clown.
(38:55):
The procedure took a total of18 minutes.
And as one prosecutor fromGacy's trial said, quote, he got
a much easier death than anyof his victims.
There are conflicting reportsof his last words.
The most infamous version, theone that has entered into legend,
is that he snarled, kiss my ass.
Although his attorney, who waspresent, has stated that those words
(39:16):
were spoken to a prisonofficial and were not part of any
official statement prior tohis execution.
But we'll leave you with adifferent quote, one that Gacy gave
that perfectly encapsulatesthe chilling duality that allowed
him to hide in plain sight forso long.
He once said, quote, a clowncan get away with murder.
(39:38):
End quote.
That's all for now.
I'm Michael.
And I'm Elena.
Until next time.
Stay curious, Sam.
The scene is a pharmacy in DesPlaines, Illinois.
December 11, 1978.
It's late afternoon and 15year old Robert Pius is finishing
his shift.
He's a good kid.
Responsible.
He tells his mother,Elizabeth, who's going to pick him
up, that he'll be just a minute.
He's going to talk to a localcontractor about a summer job that
could pay more than hiscurrent gig.
(01:44):
The contractor is a wellknown, friendly man, a pillar of
the community, a man you'dtrust your son with.
Robert Piest walks out of thatpharmacy and vanishes into the cold
December air.
He is never seen alive again.
His disappearance will unravela story so monstrous, so profoundly
evil, and it will define thevery concept of the monster next
(02:06):
door.
It'll shatter the fragilesense of safety in the American suburbs
and give a face to a new kindof national fear.
I'm Michael.
And I'm Elena.
Today on history's greatestcrimes, we're discussing the famous
American serial killer JohnWayne Gacy.
Before the discovery of thecrawl space, before the stench that
(02:28):
neighbors dismissed asmoisture or dead rats, before the
discovery of 33 bodies, JohnWayne Gacy was by all accounts an
exemplary citizen.
He was the man you wanted asyour neighbor.
He was a successful buildingcontractor, owner of PDM Contractors,
a business that grew rapidlyand became a financial success.
(02:50):
He was an active andinfluential Democratic precinct captain
in Norwood Park, a man whoknew how to get things done in the
community, a man who could getyour street paved.
He threw legendary summerblock parties, sometimes for 400
plus people, complete withroasted pigs and horseshoe tournaments.
And most famously, he was Pogothe Clown.
(03:10):
He was a member of the localJolly Jokers Clown club.
And he would don the greasepaint and rainbow suit to volunteer
at children's parties andcharity fundraisers.
He was the man who broughtlaughter to sick kids in hospitals.
This public Persona wasn'tjust a mask.
It was an essential tool forhis crimes.
(03:30):
His construction businessprovided a constant legitimate stream
of the very demographic hepreyed upon.
Teenage boys and young menlooking for work.
He could hire them, get toknow them, and then lure them to
his home under the pretense ofdiscussing pay for a future job.
His political role as aprecinct captain built a formidable
(03:52):
wall of credibility.
He was photographed with firstlady Rosalynn Carter.
He was a man with connections,a man who knew police officers and
politicians.
This status made authoritiesand parents alike hesitant to believe
the scattered complaints thattrickled in over the years.
The clown Persona was theultimate grotesque subversion of
(04:12):
innocence.
A tool that disarmed suspicionand created a nightmarish dichotomy
that would forever brand himin the public consciousness and as
the killer clown.
It was a chillingly effective synergy.
The more he invested in hispublic image as a community leader,
the more effectively he couldoperate as a predator.
(04:35):
The public life wasn't just a cover.
It was his hunting ground.
(04:57):
To understand the monster, wehave to go back to the beginning.
In Chicago, Illinois, JohnWayne Gacy's early life was a blueprint
for violence.
Born in 1942, he was thesecond of three children and the
only son of John Stanley Gacy.
His father, John Stanley Gacy,was a machinist, a World War I veteran
and and a violent, abusive alcoholic.
(05:20):
The elder John Gacy spent muchof his time in the basement of their
house.
His wife and son and twodaughters were prohibited from going
down there.
Through the floor, theysometimes heard him talking in different
voices.
When he emerged, he was oftendrunk and likely to be violent.
One evening, he struck hiswife so hard that he knocked out
(05:42):
some of her teeth.
And then he chased her intothe street and.
And beat her some more towardhis son.
The abuse was both physicaland psychological, a relentless campaign
of degradation.
Gacy recalled his fatherbeating him with a razor strap for
any perceived misbehavior.
One of his earliest and mostvivid memories was being beaten at
(06:03):
the age of four foraccidentally disarranging some car
engine components his fatherwas working on.
But the verbal abuse was aconstant, dripping poison, and his
father called him dumb andstupid, a sissy, a mama's boy, relentlessly
mocking him for his lack ofathleticism and his supposed femininity.
Gacy suffered from acongenital heart condition that prevented
(06:26):
him from playing sports, whichhis father viewed as just another
failure.
As a teenager, he experiencedfrequent blackouts and seizures,
landing him in the hospitalfor extended periods.
His father's reaction was notconcerned, but contempt.
He openly accused his son offaking the ailments for attention.
(06:47):
Compounding this, Gacy wasmolested as a child by a family friend,
a secret he kept locked away,terrified his father would blame
him for that too.
This environment created whatpsychologists call a profound frustration,
aggression complex.
Gacy was trapped, constantlyseeking approval of the man who was
(07:08):
incapable of giving it, a manwho Gacy would later tell his mother,
would have killed him if heever found out his son was gay.
The hatred and violence weredirected at the very core of Gacy's
emerging identity.
In 1960, at the age of 18,Gacy became involved in politics,
working for a Local Democraticparty candidate.
(07:30):
That led to more criticismfrom his father, who called him a
patsy.
That same year, Gacy's fatherbought him a car.
He he kept the vehicle's titlein his own name until Gacy had paid
for it, which took several years.
In the meantime, his fatherwould confiscate the keys if Gacy
did not do as he said.
When Gacy purchased an extraset of keys, his father removed the
(07:54):
distributor cap and kept itfor three days.
Hours after his fatherreplaced the cap, Gacy left home
and drove to Las Vegas, Nevadawith $136 in his pocket.
In Las Vegas, he first workedfor an ambulance service for a bit.
Then he changed to working asa mortuary attendant for three months,
observing morticians,embalming bodies, and occasionally
(08:16):
serving as a pallbearer.
He slept on a cot behind theembalming room and later confessed
that one evening he actuallyclimbed into the coffin of a teenage
boy.
There, he embraced andcaressed the dead body before seemingly
coming to his senses.
And this experience promptedGacy to return to Chicago.
(08:36):
Back home, Gacy startedworking as a department manager for
a shoe company.
There, he met and married hisfirst wife, Marilyn Myers, a co worker,
in 1964.
Shortly after, John andMarilyn welcomed a son and then a
daughter.
In the meantime, Marilyn'sfather purchased three Kentucky Fried
(08:56):
Chicken restaurants inWaterloo, Iowa.
The company moved there sothat Gacy could manage the restaurants.
John Wayne Gacy would laterdescribe this period of his life
as perfect.
When Gacy's parents visited in1966, his father privately apologized
for the abuse he had inflictedbefore happily saying, quote, son,
(09:17):
I was wrong about you, as heshook Gacy's hand.
Gacy opened a sort of club inhis basement where his employees
could drink alcohol and play pool.
No one seemed to pay too muchattention to the fact that although
Gacy employed both male andfemale teenagers, he only socialized
with the boys.
But in hindsight, it's nowclear that Gacy was experimenting
(09:40):
during this time with just howfar he could go.
When teenage male employeescame to his home to socialize, he
gave many of them alcoholbefore he made sexual advances.
If the employees respondednegatively, he, Gacy, would claim
his advances were jokes or atest of morals.
Around the same time, Gacyjoined the local Jaycees chapter.
(10:02):
If you don't know, theJaycees, also known as the United
States Junior Chamber, is aleadership training service organization.
And being part of the Jayceeswas good professionally for John
wayne Gacy.
In 1967, he was namedOutstanding vice president of the
Waterloo Jaycees, and heserved on the board of directors.
But behind closed doors, Gacyand other members were heavily involved
(10:25):
in drug abuse, pornography,prostitution and wife swapping.
But even beyond his wildsocial behavior, John Wayne Gacy
lived an even more duplicitouslife that his friends didn't know
about.
In August of 1967, Gacysexually assaulted the 15 year old
son of a local politician andfellow JC member.
(10:48):
Gacy lured the boy to hishouse with the promise of showing
him some heterosexualpornography that was regularly played
at Jaycee events.
While watching it, Gacy pliedthe boy with alcohol and persuaded
him to engage in mutual oral sex.
Gacy apparently told the boythat you have to have sex with a
man before you start havingsex with women.
(11:09):
End quote.
Over the next few months, Gacyabused several other teenage boys.
Another boy who was anemployee who washed floors and cleaned
the kitchen at one of Gacy's restaurants.
The employee later explainedthat Gacy had offered to drive him
home after work.
One evening they ended up atGacy's house.
(11:29):
Gacy's wife was absent thistime because she was in the hospital
actually giving birth to theirsecond child like before.
Gacy served the employeealcohol and while they were watching
pornography and Gacy attackedhim and strangled him until he nearly
passed out.
When the boy woke up, Gacysaid that he hadn't meant to hurt
him.
He then drove him home and afew days later, he fired that employee.
(11:52):
Word of the boy's storiesspread through the town and eventually
other boys came forward whotold similar accounts.
In an effort to clear hisname, Gacy asked if he to be given
a lie detector test and hefailed it.
He.
He asked to be given anotherone and he failed that one too.
And in the county attorney'soffice, it was said that the only
(12:13):
answer that he got right washis name.
In August of 1968, Gacyoffered one of his employees $300
to intimidate the politician'sson Gacy had previously assaulted.
Gacy didn't want the boy totestify at his upcoming trial.
The employee drove the boyinto the woods outside of town and
and sprayed mace into hiseyes, then beat him up and told him
(12:36):
not to testify.
The boy ultimately broke freeand made his way through a cornfield.
When he got back into town, hewent to the police and gave them
the name of his attacker.
And of course the employeevery quickly then named John Wayne
Gacy as the man behind it all.
The police quickly arrestedGacy and charged him with sodomy
(12:57):
and for hiring someone toassault the witness in a court case.
Gacy was also ordered toundergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Two doctors concluded that hehad an antisocial personality disorder,
he was unlikely to benefitfrom any treatment, and that his
behavior pattern was likely tobring into repeated conflict with
(13:18):
society.
However, and perhaps mostimportantly, they also concluded
that Gacy was mentallycompetent to stand trial.
In November of 1968, Gacypleaded guilty to one count of sodomy
in relations to thepolitician's son, but not guilty
to the charges related toother youths.
And in a true act of victimblaming, Gacy claimed that the boy
(13:42):
had offered himself to gacyand that Gacy had simply acted out
of curiosity.
His story was not believed bypretty much anyone and he was convicted
and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
The judge said that theseverity of the sentence was intended
to make certain that, quote,for some period of time, you cannot
seek out teenage boys tosolicit them for immoral behavior
(14:02):
of any kind.
At the same time, Gacy's wife,perhaps understandably, filed for
divorce, requesting that shebe awarded the couple's home and
property, sole custody oftheir two children, as well as alimony.
The court ruled in her favor,and after the divorce was finalized,
Gacy never saw his first wifeor children again.
(14:24):
This should have been the endof his story as a free man, a decade
behind bars that might haveprevented the slaughter to come.
But it wasn't.
Gacy, the master manipulator,became a model prisoner.
He worked in the prisonkitchen, organized events, charmed
the guards and administration,and after serving only 18 months
of his 10 year sentence, hewas granted parole.
(14:47):
And in a final catastrophicfailure of the system, his criminal
records in Iowa were sealed.
One year later, he was given aclean slate and sent back to Chicago,
a walking time bomb that thejustice system had primed.
Wounded and released back intothe world.
(15:25):
John Wayne Gacy didn't operatein a vacuum.
The 1970s in America was adecade of profound anxiety.
The optimism of the post warboom had curdled, replaced by the
lingering trauma of theVietnam war, the deep seated cynicism
of the watergate scandal andthe economic misery of stagflation.
(15:45):
High inflation coupled withhigh unemployment.
The stock market lost about athird of its value from the beginning
of the decade to around late 1974.
The unemployment rate remainedabout 7% and mortgage rates climbed
into double digits, ultimatelyreaching 18.45% in 1981.
(16:06):
And gas prices themselves rosedramatically, with prices more than
doubling in some places.
All of this was part of whatwould become known as the Great inflation.
In July of 1979, PresidentJimmy Carter went on national television
to deliver a speech.
He said, quote, it is a crisisof confidence.
(16:27):
It is a crisis that strikes atthe very heart and soul and spirit
of our national will.
The erosion of our confidencein the future is threatening to destroy
the social and the politicalfabric of America.
End quote.
This was the world Gacy moved through.
A world where trust ininstitutions, in the government,
the police, even in yourneighbors, was quite low.
(16:49):
The idyllic image of theAmerican suburb, once seen as a safe
haven from the chaos of theurban city was beginning to crack.
The social fabric Carter spokeof was fraying.
And through those tears,monsters could slip through unnoticed.
Gacy's ability to commitdozens of murders from his suburban
(17:12):
home is a terrifyingembodiment of this crisis.
The parole board's decision torelease him early represents a failure
of the justice system.
The initial police inaction oncomplaints against him represents
a failure of law enforcement.
And the fact that he couldbury a legion of the dead pretty
much in his crawl spacewithout detection for years represents
(17:33):
a catastrophic failure ofcommunity awareness.
He exploited the very idea ofthe trustworthy neighbor at a time
when the nation was wasfundamentally questioning what and
who it could trust.
After his parole, Gacy usedmoney from his mother to buy a ranch
style house in Norwood, justoutside Chicago.
(17:54):
This unassuming suburban homewould become his abattoir.
Between January 1972 and hisarrest in December of 1978, he murdered
at least 33 boys and young men there.
His method was chillinglyconsistent and relied on deception.
And he'd lure victims with thepromise of a job at PDM Contractors.
(18:15):
PDM Contractors stood forpainting, decorating and maintenance.
And it was Gacy's construction business.
It started as a small parttime business, but quickly evolved
into something full time and lucrative.
Gacy would often discuss wagesand hours with potential employees,
building a sense of legitimacy.
And then occasionally, hewould also use a red light and police
(18:37):
radio to impersonate anofficer and pull over young men.
Once inside his house, thetrap was sprung with what he called
the handcuff trick.
He would claim to be anamateur magician and persuade his
victims to put on handcuffs,promising to show them an escape
trick.
One survivor, Tony, laterdescribed how Gacy used it as a test.
(18:59):
Gacy put the cuffs on him andTony, a wrestler, managed to take
Gacy down and cuff him instead.
Gacy, who was shocked, toldhim, you're the only one that not
only got out of the handcuffs.
You got them on me.
Tony was lucky.
For those who didn't pass thetest, the handcuffs were the beginning
(19:20):
of hours of unspeakable rapeand torture.
The final act was often therope trick.
After the victim was subdued,Gacy would take a piece of rope,
place it around the victim'sneck as if to demonstrate another
trick, and then use it as agarret, twisting it with a stick
for maximum leverage until thevictim was strangled.
(19:41):
The first boy that Gacy killedwas 16 year old Timothy McCoy.
Gacy met him at Chicago'sGreyhound Bus Terminal in January
1972.
And since Timothy's next buswasn't due until the next day, Gacy
offered to take him on asightseeing tour of Chicago and then
drove him to his home.
He made the boy a few drinks and.
(20:01):
And they engaged in sexual activity.
Gacy claimed that early in themorning he woke and saw the boy in
the doorway of his room with akitchen knife in his hand.
Gacy allegedly charged the boy.
They wrestled, Gacy gotcontrol of the knife and stabbed
him several times.
He then dumped the body intothe crawlspace through a trapdoor
of his closet.
And a few days later, he wentback and buried the boy there.
(20:25):
For years after Gacy's arrest,no one learned the boy's name.
Whenever police spoke of him,they referred to him as the Greyhound
busboy.
But this was an importantmoment for Gacy's evolution into
a serial killer.
During that first murder, Gacysaid that he realized that death
was the ultimate thrill.
(20:46):
This wasn't just about sexual gratification.
It was about absolute power.
Gacy's entire life had been abattle for control against the backdrop
of a childhood where he had none.
His father dominated himphysically and emotionally.
The murders were the ultimatetwisted act of seizing control.
He controlled the lure, therestraints, the torture, the method
(21:08):
of death, and even the finaldisposal of the body.
His public life as asuccessful businessman and a respected
precinct captain was anothermanifestation of this desperate need
for control and authority.
The murders were simply thedark, private expression of the same
psychological drive thatfueled his public ambition.
(21:31):
Gacy committed his secondmurder around January of 1974.
Two years later, that victimremains unidentified.
He was strangled and placed inGacy's closet before burial.
Gacy later stated that bodilyfluids leaked from the victim's mouth
and nose, staining his carpet.
And after that, Gacy regularlystuffed rags, socks, or the victim's
(21:53):
own underwear into the mouthsof subsequent victims to prevent
it from happening again.
In July of 1975, Gacy murderedone of his 18 year old employees
named John Butkovic.
Gacy apparently owed theemployee back pay, and when he confronted
Gacy about it, Gacy invitedhim back home, ostensibly to settle
(22:13):
the issue of his overdue wages.
At his home, Gacy offered hima drink, then conned him into allowing
his wrists to be cuffed behindhis back.
Gacy later confessed tohaving, quote, sat on the kid's chest
for a while before hestrangled him.
And we should note that manyof Gacy's victims had families who
looked for them afterwards,and many of them strongly suspected
(22:35):
Gacy.
John Butkovich's family calledthe police more than 100 times over
the next three years, urgingthem to investigate Gacy further.
And throughout the 1970s, Gacycontinued to assault young men.
In 73, Gacy and a teenageemployee traveled to Florida to view
a property Gacy had purchased.
(22:55):
While there, Gacy raped theemployee in their hotel room.
After returning to Chicago,the same employee drove to Gacy's
house and beat him in hisfront yard.
Gacy told people that he hadbeen attacked for refusing to pay
the employee for poor qualitypainting work.
In 1976, Gacy picked up 18year old David Cram and offered him
a job.
(23:16):
The next day, Cram and Gacyhad several drinks to celebrate his
19th birthday.
To make the moment even moreunbelievable, Gacy did this while
dressed as Pogo the Clown.
Seemingly in connection to thecelebration, Gacy conned Cram into
donning handcuffs.
And when Gacy told Cram thathe intended to rape him, Cram kicked
(23:36):
Gacy in the face and managedto free himself.
At another time, a 26 year oldman said that Gacy had offered him
a ride to a bar.
As he was driving, Gacysuddenly covered the man's face with
a rag soaked in chloroform andthe man passed out.
He said that Gacy took himhome and tortured and raped him for
several hours while he driftedin and out of consciousness.
(23:57):
He woke the next morning atthe base of a statue in a park near
where he had been picked up.
His pants were unzipped, hisbody was in pain from sexual assault,
and his face was burned fromthe chloroform.
In the hospital, he learnedthat the chloroform had caused severe
damage to his liver.
The man identified Gacy'spicture from among a collection the
police had shown him, but thepolice didn't pursue a charge.
(24:20):
Gacy settled with the man for $3,000.
Over the years of the 1970s,and neighbors also noticed some Strange
behavior at Gacy's house.
They saw him keeping companywith young males, hearing his car
arrive or depart in the earlymorning, or seeing lights in his
home switch on and off in theearly hours.
(24:40):
One neighbor later recollectedthat for several years, muffled high
pitched screaming, shoutingand crying coming from Gacy's house
had repeatedly awakened herand her son in the early morning.
So as we mentioned before,between 1972 and 1978, John Wayne
Gacy murdered 33 that we knowof, boys and young men.
(25:01):
But what's really crazy isthat Gacy continued to mostly look
very normal on the outside.
He began performing athospitals and parades and store openings
as Pogo the Clown.
Pogo had a white face, batshaped red lips and wide blue eyes
in the shape of beehives.
Gacy also married, now for asecond time.
(25:23):
In 1972, not long after he gotout of prison for the first time,
Gacy married Carol Hoff.
Gacy and Carol had dated for ashort time in high school, and at
the time, Carol alleged thatshe felt that Gacy was more like
a brother than a romantic interest.
So there wasn't much of aspark between the two.
But Gacy was kind to Carol'stwo daughters, which seemed to have
(25:44):
convinced her.
Apparently, Gacy actually toldCaril about the trouble he had been
in back in Iowa, and he alsotold her that he was bisexual.
But Carol said that shethought he was kidding.
Quite frankly, Carol seemed tohave some blinders on because just
nine days before they gotmarried, Gacy had been arrested again.
The police report had saidthat Gacy told a boy that he was
(26:07):
a deputy sheriff and orderedthe boy into his car.
He sexually assaulted the boy,who was eventually able to jump out
of the car.
Gacy subsequently tried to runhim over.
For some reason, the chargesthere were dropped.
It's unclear whether hesucceeded in keeping Carol from knowing
about the arrest or convincedher that it was a mistake and that
he was innocent.
(26:28):
At one point during theirmarriage, Carol claimed that she
found some magazines featuringnaked men.
She also found photos, one ofwhich appeared to be a young man
with blood on his body.
Throughout the summer of 1972,Carol noticed a smell that seemed
to come from something decaying.
In the crawl space.
In a back room was a swarm offlies, which she thought might be
(26:49):
feeding on whatever was downthere, but she assumed it was dead
mice, not actual human bodies.
Gacy told her that the odorwas the result of a runoff from a
broken sewer pipe.
At the same time, Gacysecretly dug graves in the cramped
4 foot high crawl space underhis house.
He packed the bodies in,sometimes one on top of another,
(27:11):
using hundreds of pounds ofquicklime to try and accelerate decomposition
and manage the ever worsening smell.
The sheer audacity is breathtaking.
He even had one of his futurevictims, 17 year old PDM employee
Gregory Godzik, dig some ofthe trenches, telling the boy it
was for a plumbing issue.
Gacy murdered Gregory Godzikin December of 1976.
(27:34):
In 1976, Carol and John WayneGacy divorced.
Interestingly, Carol filed fordivorce based on the false grounds
of Gacy's infidelity with women.
As noted, she had seen hintsof Gacy's secret life.
She later explained that shehad seen Gacy bringing teenage boys
into his garage in the earlyhours and also found men's wallets
(27:57):
and identification inside the house.
But when she had confrontedGacy about these items, he informed
her angrily that it was noneof her business.
In 1977, Gacy was again engaged.
His fiance moved into hishouse in April, but they argued often
and after a few months he toldher he was leaving for a week on
business and wanted her goneby the time he got back.
(28:19):
The complete absence of anyoneelse at home made it much easier
for Gacy to continue acting onhis violent compulsions.
Within months of his divorcefrom Carol, Gacy had killed six more
boys who he buried under his house.
Gacy was, in effect, livingdirectly on top of his own Private
Cemetery.
26 bodies were eventuallyrecovered from the crawl space.
(28:42):
Three more were found buriedelsewhere on the property, one under
the garage floor.
The house was no longer a home.
It was a mass grave, amonument to a secret history of unimaginable
suffering.
By late 1978, the crawl spacewas full.
There was no more room for his secrets.
(29:03):
So Gacy, ever the pragmatist,started using the nearby Des Plaines
river as his new dumping ground.
This is where he disposed ofhis final four victims.
It was a chillingly practicalsolution to a logistical problem,
and it would ultimately be hisown undoing.
(29:36):
The investigation into thedisappearance of Robert Pius, John
Wayne Gacy's last victim, wasdifferent from the others.
For years, parents of themissing boys had pointed fingers
at Gacy, only to be dismissedby police who were swayed by his
high community standing.
But this time, the Des Plainespolice, led by a determined lieutenant
named Joseph Kazenczic, were relentless.
(29:59):
They quickly learned Piast waslast seen with Gacy.
And crucially, they unearthedhis 1968 sodomy conviction in Iowa.
The conviction, whose recordshad been sealed, Cosenzak put Gacy
under 24.
7 surveillance.
His teams, including officersMike Albrecht and Ronald Robinson,
followed Gacy's every move,documenting his erratic behavior.
(30:22):
As the pressure mounted, onDecember 13, 1978, the police executed
the first search warrant onGacy's house.
They didn't find a body, butthey found a trove of deeply disturbing
items.
Multiple police badges,handcuffs, books about pederasty,
and a 2x4 with holes drilledinto it consistent with a torture
(30:44):
device.
Most importantly, in the trashcan, they found a photo receipt from
Nissan Pharmacy, the verystore where Robert Pius worked and
was the last seen.
The net was tightening.
On December 21st, policearrested Gacy.
The next day, after hours ofinterrogation, he finally broke.
(31:05):
But he didn't confess in thefirst person.
He tried to create a legalshield for from the very beginning.
He created an alter ego, adark personality he called Jack.
He told the stunneddetectives, john didn't do it.
Jack did it.
He claimed this otherpersonality, a product of his abusive
(31:26):
upbringing, would take overduring the murders.
It was a desperate,transparent attempt to build an insanity
defense.
He then drew a map, a diagramof his house with X's marking the
approximate locations of thebodies buried in the crawl space.
What followed was a scene ofunimaginable horror broadcast to
(31:46):
a stunned nation.
Investigators in protectivegear and respirators began the slow,
grim work of excavating thecrawl space.
Before the 1970s, whilemurderers who committed multiple
murders certainly existed, theconcept of the serial killer as a
distinct cultural figuredidn't exist to the same extent.
(32:07):
The decade of the 1970srepresented what many historians
and criminologists call thegolden age of serial killer murder.
It included the subject ofthis episode, John Wayne Gacy, but
also others like Ted Bundy,the Son of Sam, the Zodiac Killer,
among others.
These cases received intense,sustained and sensational media coverage,
(32:29):
which helped create a new andterrifying archetype of the serial
killer.
Gacy's killer clown monikerwas a media friendly hook that made
the story both horrifying andgrotesquely fascinating, transforming
a banal, pathetic man into afigure of mythic evil.
But in addition to mediacoverage, serial killers also became
(32:52):
more prevalent in the 1970sbecause of other factors.
The first was the rise of theinterstate highway system in the
US that allowed killers totravel greater distances faster and
remain anonymous.
Distance also made it harderfor local enforcement to track them
and and link the crimescommitted in different jurisdictions,
(33:13):
something we saw in ourepisodes of Bonnie and Clyde in the
1930s.
In addition, the 1970s saw therise of FBI's Behavioral Science
Unit, which began to study thepsychology of serial killers.
This period marked a turningpoint in criminal investigation and
understanding the nature ofserial murder.
That's right.
(33:33):
This was the early stage ofcriminal profiling, which would ultimately
help law enforcementunderstand and identify serial offenders.
But at this point, it wasstill a work in Progress.
And the 1960s and 1970s saw arise in crime in general, including
homicides.
Concerning the serial killerportion of those murders, it was
(33:53):
partially due to changes insociety that created an environment
where predators could moreeasily find vulnerable victims.
Increased drug use,hitchhiking, and the hippie movement
contributed.
So did changes in familydynamics, with more women entering
the workforce and livingalone, which increased opportunities
for certain types of offenders.
(34:14):
Furthermore, the United Statesexperienced a loosening of societal
norms around casual sex in the1960s and 1970s that may have expanded
the pool of potential victims.
For some killers, the rise inviolent crime in the 1970s directly
contributed to the strangerdanger panic that swept America.
(34:34):
Milk cartons began featuringthe faces of missing children.
Parents became terrified ofthe man in the white van, the stranger
that offered candy.
Gacy became the face of that fear.
Even though the vast majorityof children and child abductions
are committed by family.
Members and not strangers,Gacy's legacy is not just his staggering
(34:55):
body count.
It's the cultural fear hehelped to create, a fear that reshaped
American parenting andchildhood for a generation.
In fact, the Gacy murderseventually led to the creation of
the Missing Child Recovery Act.
At the time of the murders,Illinois police had to wait 72 hours
(35:16):
before initiating a search fora missing child or teenager.
After Gacy, the waiting periodwas removed and a national network
aimed at locating missingchildren was gradually formed.
This has since developed intothe Child Abduction Emergency, commonly
known as an Amber Alert.
The trial of John Wayne Gacybegan on February 6, 1980, with his
(35:38):
confession and the mountain ofphysical evidence.
29 bodies unearthed from his property.
Guilt was not really in question.
The only question was sanity.
The defense argued that Gacywas not guilty by reason of insanity.
They put psychologists on thestand who testified that Gacy suffered
from schizophrenia and apersonality disorder, a Jekyll Hyde
(36:02):
sort of type of personality.
They argued that his abusivechildhood created a compulsion to
kill, projecting the hatredfor his father onto his victims.
The prosecution painted a verydifferent picture.
They argued that Gacy was ameticulous, calculating predator
who stalked his victims, hadgraves dug for their burial, used
(36:23):
an intricate rope trick tokill almost all of them.
And then plotted his owninsanity defense.
Forensic psychologists for theprosecution testified that Gacy's
crimes were premeditated anddeliberate, not the result of a psychotic
break.
Chief Prosecutor WilliamKunkel, Jr. Told the jury, quote,
if you think you can excusethis man of these crimes, they then
(36:46):
every hitman and everycriminal must be excused too.
End quote.
The jury of seven men and fivewomen deliberated for less than two
hours.
They found him guilty on all33 counts of murder.
The next day, they sentencedhim to death.
John wayne Gacy spent 14 yearson death row at Menard correctional
(37:07):
Center.
He showed no remorse.
In one interview from prison,he said, quote, how can you feel
relief about something youstill don't understand?
Because they say, I'm guilty,I'm supposed to feel guilty.
Now I don't.
I have no remorse, end quote.
In another infamous quote, hestated, quote, I should never have
been convicted of anythingmore serious than running a cemetery
(37:29):
without a license, end quote.
He spent his time in prisonpainting bizarre, crude paintings
of clowns, skulls, Elvis, evena self portrait as pogo.
This, what they would callmurderabilia became a source of morbid
fascination and controversy,with galleries exhibiting his work
for thousands of dollars,while victims families protested,
(37:52):
forced to see the man whodestroyed their lives celebrated
as some kind of twisted artist.
John Wayne Gacy didn't justkill 33 people.
He killed an idea.
The idea that the suburbs weresafe, that a friendly neighbor was
just that, that a clown was afigure of joy.
He became a permanent fixturein the American psyche.
(38:13):
The boogeyman who proved thatthe greatest monsters can wear the
most ordinary and sometimeseven the most cheerful of faces.
On May 10th of 1994, JohnWayne Gacy was executed by lethal
injection at Stateville penitentiary.
His last meal, he orderedfried chicken, fried shrimp, french
(38:33):
fries, and fresh strawberries.
A final nod to his time as aKFC manager and what he called the
happiest days of his life.
In the lead up to hisexecution, thousands gathered outside
the correctional center.
A vocal majority were in favorof the execution.
Some wore T shirts bearingsatirical slogans such as, quote,
no tears for the clown.
(38:55):
The procedure took a total of18 minutes.
And as one prosecutor fromGacy's trial said, quote, he got
a much easier death than anyof his victims.
There are conflicting reportsof his last words.
The most infamous version, theone that has entered into legend,
is that he snarled, kiss my ass.
Although his attorney, who waspresent, has stated that those words
(39:16):
were spoken to a prisonofficial and were not part of any
official statement prior tohis execution.
But we'll leave you with adifferent quote, one that Gacy gave
that perfectly encapsulatesthe chilling duality that allowed
him to hide in plain sight forso long.
He once said, quote, a clowncan get away with murder.
(39:38):
End quote.
That's all for now.
I'm Michael.
And I'm Elena.
Until next time.
Stay curious, Sam.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.