Clown Sightings, Pennywise, IT & The Evil Legacy of John Wayne Gacy

Grab a red balloon but avoid storm drains, because today we’re getting a broader understanding of clowns. The early history, the clown sightings of 2016, Pennywise and Stephen King’s IT, why clowns scare us, and how the monster that was John Wayne Gacy paraded around as Pogo. What happens when adults don’t believe kids? What happens when we don’t keep track of the missing and most vulnerable among us? Was it really all just hysteria? Maybe we have good reason to be fearful of clowns but if we’re playing by Stephen King’s rules good will always beat evil in the end. 

Sources:

Pennywise: The Story of IT

https://youtu.be/_kE108SMEWU?s...

1994 John Wayne Gacy Execution

https://youtu.be/B1ter-x2VGY?s...

2016 Clown Sightings

https://youtu.be/0-MJORDa5TQ?s...

https://youtu.be/gWT5h2Nj_is?s...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Creepy clown sidings are happening across the country and it's
no laughing matter.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
There are concerns that the trend will grow as Halloween approaches.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Here's Jamie Yucis.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
It's a trend spooking the nation creepy clown sidings. Now
they're threatening school districts. Police and Homeland Security are investigating
scary Instagram posts in Philadelphia. The post from over the
weekend all used the word clown. Some even talk about
blowing up schools. The unusual reports started surfacing.

Speaker 5 (00:36):
Back in August.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
In Greenville, South Carolina.

Speaker 6 (00:39):
Right had that tree Backdale, children.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
Told police that clowns tried luring them into woods by
offering money. Since then, sightings keep increasing. On New York's
Long Islands, social media threats from anonymous clown accounts kept
elementary children inside during recess second clown. I guess she
was meely khaleque Owens.

Speaker 7 (01:01):
Nobody knows how to defend against it, because we don't
know if it's a brank or if they're really trying
to harm people.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Now, police are using social media to track down the
costumed offenders. In Lagrange, Georgia, police posted about issuing warrants
for four people on charges of making terroristic threats and
disrupting public schools. In Kentucky, this young man was arrested
for trying to scare people in a ditch. Police have
arrested at least twelve people across the United States for

(01:27):
participating in menacing stunts or making false reports. In Houston, Texas,
this Instagram post shows clowns threatening to kidnap students or
killed teachers. Parrott Rochelle Hudson.

Speaker 6 (01:40):
This would make me.

Speaker 8 (01:43):
Drive my dorter to live from school.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
For anyone who thinks this is funny, Police say there
is at least one deadly incident linked to a clown hoax.
In Writing, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 (01:53):
A sixteen year.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Old was stabbed to death in a dispute and he was.

Speaker 9 (01:57):
Wearing a clown mask.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Ran a twenty nine year old now faces first three
murder charges.

Speaker 6 (02:01):
In that case.

Speaker 9 (02:02):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who kind of loses
their mind when they see a floating red balloon. I'm Danielle, Screama,
and this is Broad's next door. Make a paper boat,
but don't get too close to the storm drains, because
today we're getting a broader understanding of clowns, killers and

(02:25):
how grease paint went from goofy to grow tesque, from
clown sighting to penny wise to the monster that was
John Wayne Gacy. Maybe we do have good reason to
be so fearful of clowns.

Speaker 10 (02:40):
They're Chicago.

Speaker 11 (02:41):
A man who served time in prison for sex crimes
was let out today.

Speaker 12 (02:46):
They found the bodies of at least three young boys
buried under his hut.

Speaker 13 (02:50):
He is charged with murder. Here's Jim Cumpany.

Speaker 11 (02:52):
Police have been watching John gacy suburban Chicago home for
the past ten days. They became suspicious when fifteen year
old Robert disappeared after he allegedly was last seen with Gaysey.
This morning, police searched Gaysey's home and found the decomposed remains.

Speaker 13 (03:06):
Of three bodies in a dirt crawl space.

Speaker 6 (03:08):
Under the house.

Speaker 11 (03:09):
They suspect there are several more bodies buried here.

Speaker 6 (03:12):
That's suspected because of the looks of the area.

Speaker 8 (03:14):
Down in the crawl space, there are some of the
mounds and appears abe more there.

Speaker 11 (03:22):
Gaysey is a thirty six year old building contractor who
reportedly dressed like a clown to entertain at children's party.
Prosecutors say he once went to prison for a sex
offense in Iowa. This afternoon, Gaysey was charged with murdering
Robert Peace, and after hearing the remains of more bodies
were found at Gaysey's house, Judge Marvin Peters ordered him
held without bond. At the hearing, Police said Gaysey has
confessed to the Peace murder. He will be examined by

(03:45):
a psychiatrist. Meanwhile, investigators have started to dismantle Gaysey's house
in garage as they continue to search for other bodies
in this quiet suburban neighborhood. Jim Cummins NBC News as Plains, Illinois.

Speaker 9 (04:00):
Hi, Hello, how is everyone? I hope you're doing well.
I hope your October is still spooky in all of
the right ways. It is day seven out of our
thirty one days of horror, and today is all about clowns.
Let's learn why they freak us out so much and

(04:22):
how John Wayne Gacy, penny Wise and a wave of
creepy twenty sixteen sightings turn to kids birthday parties staple
into a global phobia. Clowns weren't always nightmare fuel. They
started out as comic relief court jesters, slapstick performers, cergus,

(04:42):
clowns who were meant to make kids laugh with pratfalls
and pie in the face gags. But there's always been
something a little off about them. Is it the painted
on smiles, those exaggerated features that kind of never really change.
Sigmund Freud would call it the uncanny, Too human to dismiss,

(05:05):
too artificial to trust. By the twentieth century, clowns were
everywhere TV stars like Bozo. You all remember Boso the Clown, right.
I wanted to go on that show so badly before
I ever saw it. Children's birthday parties, even fast food
mascots Ronald McDonald. They were trusted, accessible, safe, And that's

(05:28):
exactly why John Wayne Gacy's crimes hit so hard. He
took that grease paint and turned it into camouflage. His
Pogo the Clown was an entertainment, but also a mask
hiding a monster. Once Gasey was unmasked, the clown never
went back to being harmless or funny, but instead stayed

(05:54):
kind of fearful. Now, let's go forward before we go
back to some recent clown stories. To me, this feels
like it happened yesterday, but it was actually nine years ago,
fall of twenty sixteen. The world is already a little
bit off. Trump is about to win the presidency, and

(06:17):
something equally strange is happening in small towns and suburbs
across the United States. People are seeing clowns. This is
around the time, like Pokemon Go had come out this
summer before, so you have a lot of people going
out in ways that they hadn't. I mean, like something
like ninety bodies were found that summer because people were

(06:43):
going out and exploring in these places trying to find
a shiny Pikachu and ended up finding corpses. So the
vibe is generally weird. And then people start seeing clowns,
not on TV, not at carnivals, but in parking lots,
in cemeteries, outside school, standing in the woods, a lot

(07:08):
of them just lurking, some of them staring into ring cameras.
Usually they were completely silent, but they were sometimes holding
knives or balloons, and worse, sometimes they just run at you.
The phenomenon started in South Carolina when kids reported seeing
a clown trying to lure them into the woods behind

(07:30):
their apartment complex. From there, this spread like urban legend
wildfire across over twenty states and even into other countries.
Some clowns were hoaxes, some were promotional videos for horror movies,

(07:50):
some were real. Some were caught, but many vanished without
a trace. Police departments issued statements, schools went unlocked down,
target literally pulled clown masks off the shelves. No one
knew what was going on, and maybe that was the
scariest part of all. We just accepted that clowns were

(08:13):
here now, and your kid may see one in the woods.
But with all the clown horror we'd grown up with,
this was a pretty unsettling to say the least. Here
are some local news reports from across the United States
during this time.

Speaker 14 (08:31):
Law enforcement tell me they have no reason to believe
that this is not real, but they also haven't found
any trace of these reported clowns. They say they are
taking these calls very seriously for the time being because
of the claim that the clowns are trying to lure
children into the woods. Residents at Emerald Commons apartments off
White Horse Road say they're on edge after kids reported

(08:52):
seeing a man dressed in a clown costume wandering through
the woods. Near these dumpsters Monday night.

Speaker 15 (08:58):
As someone else says, actually scared to clowns too, you know.

Speaker 6 (09:01):
So it's just it's.

Speaker 9 (09:02):
Freaky, it's creepy, and it's got our kids character where
they don't anyone to sleep in their beds and go
to school in the morning.

Speaker 16 (09:08):
I feel like they go on to different complexes to
pick up peas that's not been lunch.

Speaker 14 (09:14):
Cops say residents reported seeing the clown after they also
received a report of a man taking pictures of children
at the complex.

Speaker 17 (09:21):
As a result of that, we've increased patrol in the
areas in anywhere that we've received these complaints.

Speaker 14 (09:26):
Master Deputy Ryan Flood with Greenville County Sheriff's Office says
they are taking these calls about the clowns seriously. Last week,
children claimed two people dressed in clown costumes tried to
lure them into the woods with money at Fleetwood Manor apartments,
prompting management to send out a warning to parents. Deputies say,
so far, there is.

Speaker 9 (09:44):
No true that would have destroyed us as children, because
I would have done it for the money, not candy.
But if cash was being offered, Okay, okay, brace of
the clowns.

Speaker 17 (09:55):
Nothing to corroborate the allegations.

Speaker 14 (09:57):
As of the many are reminded of the horror movie
It and playing on many people's deepest phobias. The story
has made national headlines, leading some to wonder if the
latest calls could be made up.

Speaker 9 (10:15):
Thank you somebody, this plan jokes.

Speaker 14 (10:17):
Which cops say is a crime.

Speaker 17 (10:19):
And we want to make sure that our resources are
being used legitimately.

Speaker 14 (10:22):
And still law enforcement says, claims of attempted child abduction
is nothing to clown around with.

Speaker 6 (10:27):
You don't do that. That's something you don't do.

Speaker 17 (10:29):
This type of call in particular where people are alleging
that the clowns are being used to lure children, and
then of course we're going to take that series.

Speaker 14 (10:38):
Greenville Police also responded to a possible clown sighting at
Shemwood Crossing apartments last night.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
That many have turned out to be hoaxes, others more
serious as threats on social media. We're talking about the
wave of creepy clown sightings across the United States.

Speaker 15 (10:53):
Going back to late August, there have been dozens of
reports of threatening clowns, largely centered around schools and colleges.
Many have been dismissed by law enforcement as pranks, but
more than a dozen people have been arrested in connection
with the sightings. Don Taylor is here with more on
this troubling trend.

Speaker 6 (11:11):
Don, good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Well, whether they are pranks, threats, or actual sightings, police
and other officials have to take them seriously as a
potential threat to safety, and that's starting to drain resources
from law enforcement agencies who are also concerned about feeding
into hysteria.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
There are concerns tonight that these creepy clowns and threats
online will continue to grow.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
A woman claims she was attacked by a man in
a clown suit just this morning.

Speaker 6 (11:36):
It seems as.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
If a new report of a threatening clown pops up
by the hour.

Speaker 18 (11:40):
The police have their hands full with these possible.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Siding clown reportedly appeared inside these woods this week. A
fourteen year old in California was arrested when he threatened
a middle and high school on an Instagram page called
Fontana's Killer Clowns.

Speaker 10 (11:56):
We've heard that people are going to show up on.

Speaker 6 (11:58):
Campus, but we haven't seen anything.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Police say the team wanted to scare people and gained
social media followers. Police in Connecticut dealt with a similar
social media threat targeting several schools in the New Haven area.
While they dismissed it as a hoax, they're still taking
it seriously.

Speaker 19 (12:15):
At this time, we're considering this to be nothing more
than a prank and harassment fueled by social media an
upcoming Halloween. Working with the police department on our own
security team, we have no evidence that there is a
credible threat to students or schools in the district going.

Speaker 20 (12:33):
To be a blue hat, blue cilly hair focn on
his rainbow colored outfit.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
It appears to have been much more than a scare.
Near San Francisco on Wednesday, a mother says she fought
off a person dressed as a clown who grabbed her
one year old daughter.

Speaker 6 (12:48):
I know I was going to kiss her hand.

Speaker 19 (12:49):
Instead, he caught her arms literally, so I caught her
arm back and I kicked him right that tree Backdale.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
The phenomenon started in late August when children in South
carol reported seeing a clown beckoning them into the woods,
but those sightings were never confirmed.

Speaker 6 (13:05):
The clown scare was even.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Brought up in a White House press briefing this week,
though I'm.

Speaker 14 (13:10):
Wondering if the president's aware of this phenomenon and the
White House.

Speaker 5 (13:13):
Wants to say anything to discourage these types.

Speaker 9 (13:15):
Of friends, Wellbama was still president. That's how far back
this was, And to me this feels like it was
last year.

Speaker 15 (13:23):
Yeah, I don't know that the president has been briefed
on this particular situation.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Some are so upset by the perceived threats they're ready
to take the law into their own hands. Hundreds of
students at Penn State University launched a late night manhunt
after a clown was reportedly seen on campus. It's that
type of behavior that's put some professional clowns on edge.

Speaker 16 (13:49):
I've been flipped off, I've been mooned, I've had trash
thrown out my car. I've been experienced successive profanity while performing.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
So why are so many PEO people playing into the panic?

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Hoaxes and attempts to frighten people and people buying into
it have happened throughout history. But we're right for this
right now because of social media, which allows a fear
to propagate globally very quickly, and because right now we
are a country very anxious about otherness.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
In addition to the suspects accused of making online threads.
Some of those who have been arrested are charged with
making false reports, making this whole situation even more frustrating
for police officers all over the country.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
You think about the resources we hear the n will
one call in there. If it's not resources that are needed,
they're being wasted.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
It's true, but I tell you I have two kids
in middle school and they are scared to death. There
was a high school in New Jersey just last week
that went on lockdown because a clown was reported on
the campus.

Speaker 9 (14:48):
So why are clowns so unsettling in the first place.
Fear of clowns is so common that it has a name,
coal rephobia. And while clowns were originally meant to entertain
those court gestures, the Comedia del art buffoons, the circus
performers with painted faces, the modern clown has taken a

(15:13):
darker turn. Psychologists chalk this up to the uncanny valley
that we talked about before. When something looks human but
not quite right, our brains sound the alarm. It's the
same reason old animatronics, porcelain dolls, or CGI that seems
too realistic kind of freaks us out. But really what

(15:35):
cemented clowns as harbingers of horror, Stephen King, Pennywise, and
one deeply, deeply disturbed man named John Wayne Gacy. Clowns
were supposed to be silly, unassuming circus acts, birthday parties,
kids show a guy juggling rubber chickens, but that un

(16:00):
any thing about them. The smile pointed on two wide,
the frozen expression, the way you can't really tell what's
going on under the mask. There was always something to that.
And then came John Wayne Gacy, a contractor, neighbor, local
Democrat volunteer, and a serial killer who dressed as Pogo

(16:21):
the Clown. Between nineteen two, nineteen seventy two and nineteen
seventy eight, Gaysey murdered at least thirty three boys and
young men or if you ask souf Yon Stevens on
his album Come on Field, Illinois, then he killed ten
thousand of them, but literally he buried most of them

(16:42):
in the crawl space beneath his house. That's not folklore
or a folk album. That's fact. Gaysey ruined clowns forever.
Before him, clowns were weird, yeah, like sure, After him,
clowns were dangerous, were dangerous. His paint was his camouflage,

(17:04):
and that smile was covering one of the most dangerous predators.
Gacy wasn't just any clown. He was Pogo, a larger
than life self invented alter ego which he used to
entertain children at birthday parties, community events, and even hospital visits.
He twists balloons, crack jokes, and paint on that trademark smile,

(17:29):
one that will later become iconic for all the wrong reasons.
But underneath the rainbow wig was an absolute monster, something methodical,
something that made him to this day, one of the
most disturbing serial killers in American history. I mean he

(17:50):
was also a family man at the time. FBI profilers,
I'm reading the mind Hunter book right now sidebar because
I'm going to do a whole episode about the psychology
of serial killers and the FBI Behavioral Unit. But they
were expecting this to be some single dude. I mean,

(18:10):
Gaycy wasn't even on the radar. But most of these
serial killers ended up being family men BTK, Dennis Raider,
Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. So here's more nightmare fuel.
Between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy eight, John Wayne
Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered at least thirty three boys

(18:35):
and young men. Most of them were just teenagers. A
lot of them were runaways or more vulnerable populations, which
always end up being targets, and then when the families
do report them missing, police take it all a lot
less serious seriously. It's the whole double life thing too,

(18:59):
because Gaysey was the picture of a regular guy. He
looked non threatening, kind of pudgy. I mean, he was
a big guy, but he wasn't like Ed Kemper. He
ran a construction business, and he actually hired a lot
of the teenagers for that. He was active in Chicago
democratic politics. He organized literal freaking parades and even dressed

(19:23):
up as Pogo for charity events. But behind that civic
friendly mask was a sadistic predator. Gary lured young men
and boys, like I said, often vulnerable runaways or those
just looking for work, by offering them jobs, alcohol, or

(19:45):
wanting to show them a magic trick. His infamous handcuff
trick was the gateway. He'd tend to show them how
to escape handcuffs. He'd act like he was handcuffing himself,
and this was after he'd gained some trust with them,
usually after he'd hung out with them multiple times that
they'd ask how to do the trick, and he'd say

(20:07):
he would show them how to escape, but once they
were locked in and actually handcuffed, they couldn't get free.
He'd also do like some wrestling stuff with them, pin
them down, and his crimes, like with most serial killers,
really started to escalate, not just in frequency but in

(20:28):
the amount of violence. His first victim was stabbed, but
after that he admitted to strangling almost everyone else. He
called his killings parties, and there are hours upon hours
upon hours of him talking about his crimes. Before his execution,
he was unfortunately, really given a platform. This is from

(20:53):
a special called John Wayne Gacy Talks from CBS News
Chicago News Extra.

Speaker 8 (21:00):
The man who committed what may be the crime of
the century. His name is John Wayne Gacy. Convicted of
killing thirty three innocent people and destroying hundreds of lives.
He's never talked to anyone about the case until tonight.
His murder spree was first discovered on a cold December
day that the first of his victims were found in
the crawl space beneath his home. They were taken out

(21:22):
one by one as the world watched. For thirteen years,
Gasey refused to talk, but tonight he's breaking that silence,
walking out from death row in Minard State Prison to
speak one on one with Chatteldo's Walter Jacobson. Walter is
here down to tell us what Gayesy had to say.

Speaker 6 (21:36):
In an exclusive interview of Walter, quite a bit well.

Speaker 18 (21:38):
I spent two and a half hours with John Gaysey
listening to a whole new story about his case. He
was rambling and often inconsistent, but always always very cagy.
Thirteen years ago he told the police how he murdered
his victims. Now he's telling me he never did.

Speaker 6 (22:00):
People don't want to know the truth and the honesty
of it.

Speaker 16 (22:03):
If they want to be convinced of brainwashed into what
they believe them, find the go ahead and kill me.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
But vengeance's mind, say it's.

Speaker 16 (22:10):
The lord, because you will have executed somebody.

Speaker 6 (22:12):
That didn't commit the crime.

Speaker 18 (22:13):
Those are the words of John Wayne Gacy, pleading innocence
from death row at Minard State Penitentiary, thirteen years after
being convicted.

Speaker 6 (22:20):
Of his crimes.

Speaker 18 (22:21):
The most notorious serial killer of our time when they
paint the.

Speaker 16 (22:25):
Image that I was just month through who who picked
up like these aultar boys along the street and swatted
them like flies?

Speaker 13 (22:30):
I said, this is.

Speaker 18 (22:31):
Ludicrous, but the jury didn't find it ludicrous. After barely
two hours deliberation, its verdict was murder by Gaycy thirty
three times twenty nine bodies buried in that house of
his on Summerdale, a crime of horrendous proportions in the
crawl space underneath bodies covered with lime and encased in plastic,
dug up a few days before Christmas and carried into
the December cold, one after another after another. But despite

(22:55):
all this evidence, he says he has proof he didn't
do it. Here's one of dozens of examples of what
he calls proof.

Speaker 16 (23:01):
I've taken five and a half hour three and a
half hours of truth.

Speaker 6 (23:04):
Serum, and under SODI of Amathol, the maximum month that
I could hand.

Speaker 16 (23:08):
It shows that I have no knowledge of the crime whatsoever.

Speaker 6 (23:11):
Never have had.

Speaker 18 (23:12):
But this is where his attempt to change history, which
is what he thinks will get him a new trial.

Speaker 13 (23:16):
Begins to break down.

Speaker 18 (23:18):
There is no proof anywhere that he ever took truth serum.

Speaker 13 (23:21):
Now it's not only.

Speaker 18 (23:22):
A matter of physical evidence, it's a character issue as well.
Many times during our interview he tried to portray himself
as a good guy, an ethical, hard working family man.
Here's how he describes himself as a father.

Speaker 6 (23:34):
Loving and caring.

Speaker 16 (23:35):
I've always looked after my children, even now.

Speaker 18 (23:38):
What kind of values you remember imparting to them?

Speaker 13 (23:40):
The kind of districts were you strict with them too?

Speaker 10 (23:43):
No?

Speaker 6 (23:43):
Not there row not as strict as No. A lot
of things that my dad did. I refuse to do
because I don't see. I don't believe in hitting hitting children.

Speaker 16 (23:50):
I don't believe in in spoiling a child either. My
values are such that if you've given enough love to
your children.

Speaker 18 (23:57):
He used of murdering thirty three kids. And you say
you didn't believe in hitting, I mean.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
Well, anybody that know you say it.

Speaker 16 (24:04):
First of all, you're you're basing this garbage on what
you've heard of me.

Speaker 18 (24:08):
And what the jury said and what the courts of
appeal have said. And the prosecutor who put him in
jail says Gasey is a ruthless and sadistic killing machine.

Speaker 6 (24:16):
He's responsible.

Speaker 21 (24:17):
He knew exactly what he was doing. He planned it
in an advance, and he carried it out, and he.

Speaker 18 (24:21):
Enjoyed it, and he admitted it, in fact, boasted of
it to the police. But now fourteen years later he's
denying it and talking to me about it. What does
prosecutor Uncle think of that.

Speaker 21 (24:30):
He's a desperate man. He's going to die in two
or three years. He's going to be executed when the
law is finally carried out, and he'll clutch it any straw.

Speaker 18 (24:38):
Two and a half hours of clutching at straws. Cunning
and manipulative denials. But if you listen carefully, you catch
him slipping up any of them. About John Bukovitch, for instance,
his second victim, what happened to what happened in the
Bukevic case? Where was he picked up, and how did
he get to the house, and what happened with him?

Speaker 16 (24:57):
I don't want to go into I don't want to
go into the other the five that I know about.

Speaker 6 (25:01):
Just take it that I didn't. Bucker Vich is not
one that I killed, So I don't know nothing about him.
The little bit that I know about him is that
he was an employee of my see when you look
about this recall business.

Speaker 18 (25:12):
And I'm not a prosecutor, John, but I know you're
aquitimus is not one that you killed, which suggests that may,
in fact, were others that you did kill.

Speaker 6 (25:20):
Okay, I'm sorry. If I led you to believe no
strike it, then that is wrong.

Speaker 18 (25:25):
But it's too late to strike it. There are others
he killed children he learned into his home anyway, who
didn't get out a lot. When he was arrested, he
told the police what he did and how he did
it with a rope that he used as a tourniquet.
Now he says he didn't do it, and it shows
me his rope trick. To explain how the police misunderstood that,
and more of what he's twisting into his pleas of innocence.

Speaker 8 (25:44):
Tomorrow and Bill Fascinating Walter look forward to tomorrow.

Speaker 22 (25:49):
Two hours before finding John Wayne Gacy guilty of murdering
thirty three young men and boys, the evidence seemed clear,
Dacy went to death row. But tonight in News Extra
Too Exclusive, John Gaysey speaks out, claiming that he is
a victim of circumstance, and he sets out to try
to prove it.

Speaker 6 (26:06):
To Channel choose Walter Jacobs and.

Speaker 18 (26:08):
Walter Linda Gaysey is, as you noted, I think quite
accurately a minute ago, a man who was found guilty
of all those murders and of being plenty sane enough
to have committed them very quickly. That jury acted in
fewer than two hours. There were half a dozen pieces
of evidence that were just overwhelming. But Gaysey now says
that he refutes that evidence, and all he's owning up
to is having some knowledge of just five of the murders,
and direct knowledge of even fewer than that.

Speaker 20 (26:36):
If you want to charge me.

Speaker 6 (26:37):
With anything, charge me with complicity in two of the murders,
just two. That's all I know about. That's his story.

Speaker 18 (26:44):
That he didn't kill anyone, just an accomplice, he says,
and that he helped dispose of two. One of them
Robert Peaste, who was fifteen years old when he went
to the house on Summerdale. Gaysey owned a construction company
and invited young Peace to apply for a job.

Speaker 16 (26:57):
Robert Piece was killed by another individual in my home.

Speaker 18 (26:59):
How did he get to your home?

Speaker 6 (27:01):
He was transported to the house by another How.

Speaker 18 (27:03):
Did the other whoever he was, kill Robert Peace?

Speaker 6 (27:06):
I believe he was trangle.

Speaker 13 (27:07):
You were there right, not during.

Speaker 6 (27:10):
The cryme, but I was there afterwards, and I watched
the removal.

Speaker 18 (27:12):
Of the body, and what happened to the body afterwards
was one.

Speaker 6 (27:15):
That was that was taken of the river, inducting the
rivers who helped you that. Yes, I'm in complicity with that.

Speaker 16 (27:21):
I've I've always considered don't don't look at me as
an innocent baby of the woods.

Speaker 18 (27:25):
Not for a second when I look at John Gasey
as a babe in the woods. He may be admitting
now only to being an accomplice, but thirteen years ago
when he was arrested, he confessed to almost everything. You
have all the bodies, Gaysey said, and there was even
a killer map showing where twenty seven us were buried.
And in fact, he led police to his garage and
sprayed orange paint on the concrete to mark the spot
precisely where a body was found. No, no, no, no no, Now,

(27:46):
he says, he was simply marking a spot where some
new concrete had been poured.

Speaker 6 (27:51):
In regards to.

Speaker 16 (27:52):
Going out into the garage, yes I know I went
to the house, and yes I know I walked in
the garage and asked me where the last section of
concrete was bored. Okay, I said, there's a last section
where the last section of concrete was poored.

Speaker 6 (28:02):
Okay.

Speaker 16 (28:03):
They are the ones that took the orange can of
paint and said, here, put a mark there.

Speaker 6 (28:06):
So I put an XT there.

Speaker 18 (28:07):
So the paint was not to identify the place of burial.

Speaker 13 (28:10):
No, no, it never was me.

Speaker 18 (28:12):
But according to authorities who were with Casey that morning,
he made more than just an X on the floor.

Speaker 21 (28:17):
He sprayed a stick figure with the orange spray can
in the garage, Not just a mark, a stick figure
showing the orientation of the body right underneath that stick
figure exactly where he drew it, pointed in the direction
he drew it was the body of John Budkovisi.

Speaker 18 (28:33):
And then there's the Gaycy confession about how he killed
his victims, strangled them with his now infamous rope trick
that police say he demonstrated to them with a rosary beat.
He says he was simply discussing nuts in general. Catch
his sense of humor.

Speaker 16 (28:47):
Cue Leston, Huh, you're in trouble now, Your afraid sitting
that close to what the hell?

Speaker 6 (28:51):
Oh this is too long. I just don't need it
this long. Okay.

Speaker 16 (28:56):
I had a rosary which I carried in my pocket.

Speaker 6 (28:58):
I've away carried a rosary. It was my communion uh rosary.
They said, what what kind of a knot to you use?

Speaker 16 (29:04):
They said, what do you mean not when I tie
things up? I says, depending on what I'm using it for.
I said, the only thing I ever learned was from
boy Scouts is a tourniquet not. He said, well, show
us what that is. So I took at that time
and again it's together. But in order to demonstrate it
here I took the rosary and I said, well, here, you.

Speaker 6 (29:20):
Put it around. This is how you're trying to do this.
Let's just put your hand out. Okay. Here what I
told him, I says, Harold hard.

Speaker 16 (29:30):
And I said, then you put a second knot in it. Okay,
I says, And then you take a stick and stick
it in here, and you just turn this And I says,
because it's an a tourniquet, I said, that's the only
knot I ever learned.

Speaker 18 (29:40):
Precisely the kind of knot found on the ropes wrapped
around the necks of the victims found under the house
on Summerdale. And there was other compelling evidence, including wallets
and rings of the victims found in Casey's home, that
leave no doubt whatever he was the killer, but what
is it that made him do what he did? A
look at the mind of a serial killer Tomorrow and
Walter Thank You.

Speaker 22 (30:02):
Tonight on News Extra, a portrait of a killer, paintings
and diaries that provide a frightening view inside the mind
of the worst mass killer in American history.

Speaker 9 (30:11):
John Wayne Gacy.

Speaker 22 (30:12):
Tonight, Gaysey talks exclusively to our Walter Jacobson and reveals
a part of his life that most of us have
never seen.

Speaker 6 (30:18):
Walter and There are.

Speaker 18 (30:19):
Personality traits that are common to mass killers, including arrogance
and cunning and enough cleverness to kill many times without
getting caught. John Gasey has all those traits and then some.
He was a Kentucky colonel and a husband and a

(30:39):
father of five children, and an actor dressed as a clown.
John Gasey loves clowns.

Speaker 6 (30:46):
To me, clowning was a way of relaxation for me.
You regress in the childhood.

Speaker 16 (30:50):
You were able to relax, and you could be goofy
if you wanted. To and still you had the sound
of your face being covered.

Speaker 18 (30:57):
The clown suit hid his face and his evil crimes
as well. Even today on death Row he's painting portraits
of himself as a clown, the thirty three flavors clown
and the convicted killer of thirty three can't help but
chuckle at the irony.

Speaker 6 (31:08):
But he used to new clowning. And I don't know
if you want to mention the name for an ice
cream company in Chicago who had thirty three flavors.

Speaker 16 (31:14):
I used to I'm serious, PRSA ice Cream Company. I
was their contractor and I was also their clown.

Speaker 6 (31:19):
And Pogo the clown was the clowning that I.

Speaker 16 (31:21):
Did for charity hospital work for the Democratic Party. And
Pogo the clown is originally Pogo comes from being Polish
and on the go all the time.

Speaker 6 (31:29):
So it's Pog on the go for Democrats.

Speaker 18 (31:32):
As Norwood Park Committeemen, a visit with roseland Carter, the
first Lady during the Carter administration. Casey right here is
hiding the fact that there are bodies buried under his house.

Speaker 6 (31:40):
He's the great deceiver.

Speaker 16 (31:42):
I always felt that service, community and community service to others.

Speaker 6 (31:46):
You know, in my religious background, if.

Speaker 16 (31:48):
You serve other people, it'll come back to serve you.

Speaker 6 (31:50):
You know. I've always believe that way with generosity.

Speaker 18 (31:53):
So if he looks for good and he's generous, why
do you kill thirty three people? Nobody knows, but the
psychiatrists talk about how upset and meticulous he is, enough
to kill repeatedly and to stack his victims in a
careful and ordered manner like courtwood under his house. Even now,
he's obsessed and meticulous with his life.

Speaker 6 (32:10):
What's your life like day to day? I live at
day to day. What do you mean if you want
to know what my life is like?

Speaker 16 (32:16):
I log it every day for the last twelve years.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
All you got to do is ask. I can tell
you everything I can tell you. It's the first mutiately
served me.

Speaker 16 (32:24):
Everything, every phone call, everything that I do, every time
an officer's around me is lag.

Speaker 6 (32:30):
Every movement that I make is in the book here.

Speaker 18 (32:33):
And he and his lawyers have a log on his
victims too, everything they did before they were killed.

Speaker 16 (32:38):
You know when I tell you, I've got background information
on it. We took each each one of them by uh.
We took each one of the victims and this is
by their names or by their indictment numbers.

Speaker 6 (32:50):
And what we did with each one of them, we
did profile sheets out of them.

Speaker 16 (32:53):
We wanted to know what this kid was into, what
his background was.

Speaker 18 (32:57):
Chicago psychiatrist Daniel Johanna of Northwestern Universe, he spent a
few hours this week screening the interview.

Speaker 23 (33:02):
He's very attentive to all details, and so he's sort
of that's the way that he operates, and that's how
people like him are able to cover up these do
these crimes and cover them up because they are well
planned and organized.

Speaker 18 (33:17):
One thing John Wayne Gacy could not plan was the
way he got that way.

Speaker 6 (33:20):
My dad was dominating in effect.

Speaker 16 (33:23):
He had a different set of values, but also very stern.

Speaker 9 (33:25):
Individual You and literally everyone else born before the year
two thousand, my.

Speaker 6 (33:32):
Guy, my dad drank a lot.

Speaker 16 (33:33):
When he drank a lot, Yeah, he was abusive to
my brother and to me, But I never swung up
my dad because I loved.

Speaker 6 (33:39):
Him for what he stood for.

Speaker 18 (33:41):
Maybe that's where it began to go wrong for John Gasey.
He doesn't know, nor does he seem to care. He
loses himself in his paintings. Why the skeleton this.

Speaker 6 (33:50):
Was done by request.

Speaker 16 (33:51):
Somebody requested a skull clown, and mostly.

Speaker 6 (33:54):
The punk rockers and the undergrounders like that stuff.

Speaker 9 (33:56):
There.

Speaker 16 (33:57):
This is Christ as I see him in myself, and
it's monolithic, because Christ.

Speaker 6 (34:04):
To me is monolithic.

Speaker 16 (34:05):
He's all things to all people. This here is the
High Hose series, and that is self explanatory.

Speaker 6 (34:12):
It's the Seven Dwarfs and they've always stuck.

Speaker 16 (34:14):
To me as a great child painting, and so I've
done a series of High Host series paintings and this
is the nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 6 (34:20):
This is called High around the Campfire. It's an original word.

Speaker 16 (34:24):
Walt Disney is a mentor for me because I've always
enjoyed his great creativetivity. And the seven Dwarfs. If you
actually look at all the faces, they represent the seven
different moods that most people can he get into.

Speaker 18 (34:37):
Moods are important to John Gasey. He has so many
of them himself. Angry ones, mostly toward his father and
his victims, and especially it seems toward the victims' families
who are constantly reminding him of his crimes.

Speaker 16 (34:48):
At one mother that gets on television all the time,
who thinks I should be given thirty three injections. I
think she got to take thirty three volumes and go
lay down. She goes on Heraldus showing all these other shows.

Speaker 9 (34:58):
I think she should have been allowed to be a
love in a room with you for thirty three minutes
while you were strapped to a fucking chair or had
your handcuffs behind your back. Oh, I truly hope he's.

Speaker 6 (35:09):
In hell was talking about. I think it's Maoria. I
think he's a name.

Speaker 16 (35:13):
Her marine son, her marine son, of her marine son
was so great?

Speaker 6 (35:16):
What the hell did you run away from home? T
tow all the time?

Speaker 18 (35:18):
As callous and as cunning is he?

Speaker 9 (35:21):
If her marine son was so great, why the hell
did he run away from home? For the audacity? The
audacity of this guy, and a lot is blamed on
his childhood. His dad was an alcoholic. It doesn't sound
like he was severely beaten. It sounds like he did

(35:42):
get hit. He did try and run away from home.
He when he was older, he went, he left, and
he went to Vegas and he got a job working
in a mortuary. His family doesn't even know what he did,
but his sister says, when he came back from that job,
he was different. And soon after that he committed his

(36:03):
first murder, where of Timothy Jack McCoy, who was sixteen
years old. And it's hard to know if he was
a hitchhiker or what exactly the circumstances were, but that,
according to Gacy, is the only victim that he stabbed.
After that, he strangled everybody. But he loved to be

(36:24):
He loved to talk about being a clown.

Speaker 16 (36:26):
Clowning was relaxation for me. I enjoyed entertaining kids.

Speaker 6 (36:30):
Like some people are, you know, the they.

Speaker 16 (36:33):
Unwined in different ways, either either were going out drinking
or that I could put on clown makeup, and I
was relaxed and I enjoyed doing it.

Speaker 6 (36:39):
It was twice, it was only twice a month that
I did.

Speaker 17 (36:42):
This Was that using for a lure to draw kids
to you?

Speaker 16 (36:46):
No, we would visit different hospitals and entertain the children there,
and we didn't entertain them with handcuffs or anything like that.
All we used was bloon animals and small toys and
stuff like that.

Speaker 6 (36:57):
But we also did parade and in the summertime, like
a fourth of July, I used to be in four
parades in one day.

Speaker 16 (37:03):
I've always told people when I got into clown.

Speaker 6 (37:05):
Makeup, I regressed in the childhood. It was fun being
a clown.

Speaker 16 (37:08):
Because you could you could be yourself or just let
yourself going back to fool. You could be slapstiket and
funny and have a good time. That's why I always
enjoyed clowning. Clowning has taken a bad name because of
what they've used.

Speaker 9 (37:22):
In my case, you don't think you contributed it to
that at all, but not even a little bit. We
are going to take a quick commercial break because somebody
definitely not me, who definitely definitely respects the advertisement overlords
may be getting scolded for not having enough of them.

(37:42):
Despite the way he sounds, Gayzy was horrifyingly charming, local contractor,
successful businessman, involved in politics, friends with police, a man
who'd invite kids over for odd jobs, but then they'd
never be seen again. He'd lure them in with a
promise of work, or show them a magic trick, or
just generally gain their trust. He often strangled as victims

(38:07):
with a rope, sometimes even calling it his rope trick,
before disposing of their bodies in the crawl space the
garage or dumping them into a local river. That's why
the true body count of John Wayne Gacy is still
not known. How his wife and neighbors did not smell
the thirty something decaying corpses underneath his floorboards is a

(38:32):
question A lot of people, myself included, still have. The
impact on families was just immeasurable. You heard him joke
about it and tell one of the mothers to take
thirty three valium, and that's part of the real tragedy.
The real tragedy is how many families were ignored. Some

(38:53):
of these mothers begged police to take missing report persons
reports seriously. Because so many victims were working class kids,
runaways or gay youth, their disappearances didn't get the urgency
they deserved. It wasn't until the plussed case with a straight,
suburban all American boy that investigators really pushed and where

(39:15):
they were really able to make the tie to Gacy.
These are some of his victims. His first known victim,
Timothy Jack McCoy, sixteen years old, murdered in January nineteen
seventy two. John Vudkovich, eighteen years old, murdered in July
nineteen seventy five, Darryl Julius Samson, nineteen years old, murdered

(39:38):
in April nineteen seventy six. Samuel Stapleton, fourteen years old,
one of Gasey's youngest victims, murdered in May of nineteen
seventy six. Randall Refitt, fifteen years old, disappeared in May
nineteen seventy six. Michael Bonnan seventeen years old, disappeared in
June nineteen seventy six. William Carroll, sixteen years old, also

(40:01):
disappeared in June nineteen seventy six. Rick Johnston seventeen years old,
last seen at a concert in August nineteen seventy six.
James Brian Hawgson, sixteen years old from Minnesota, last called
his mother in August nineteen seventy six. William George Bundy,
also nineteen years old, disappeared in October nineteen seventy six.

(40:24):
Was identified in through DNA, but not until twenty eleven.
Michael Romino, fourteen years old, one of Gaysey's other youngest victims,
disappeared in October nineteen seventy six. Was buried in a
common grave with his friend Kenneth Parker. Kenneth Parker sixteen
years old, disappeared with Michael October nineteen seventy six. Gregory

(40:48):
Godzick seventeen years old, worked for Gaysey and disappeared in
December nineteen seventy six. John Allan Sizzik nineteen years old,
disappeared in January nineteen seventy seven. John Stephen Prestige, twenty
years old for Michigan, disappeared in March nineteen seventy seven.
Matthew Walter Bowman, eighteen years old, reported missing in July

(41:11):
nineteen seventy seven. Robert Edward Gilroy Junior eighteen years old,
disappeared in September nineteen seventy seven. John Anthony Moury nineteen
years old, last seen by his family in September nineteen
seventy seven. Russell Lloyd Nelson, twenty one years old for
Miss Minnesota, disappeared in October nineteen seventy seven. Robert David

(41:35):
Winch sixteen years old, last scene in November nineteen seventy seven.
Tommy Joe Bailing, twenty years old, also disappeared in November
nineteen seventy seven. David Paul Talsma, twenty years old, disappeared
in December nineteen seventy seven. William Wayne Kindred nineteen years old,
disappeared in February nineteen seventy eight. Timothy David O'Rourke twenty

(41:58):
years old, disappeared in June nineteen six eight. His body
was found in the Deplain's River. Frank William Landigen nineteen
years old, disappeared in November nineteen seventy eight. His body
was also found in the river. James Masero twenty years old,
disappeared in November nineteen seventy eight. His body was also

(42:20):
found in the river. Robert Jerome Pist fifteen years old,
disappeared in December nineteen seventy eight. He was Gaysey's final victim,
and the investigation into his disappearance led to Gaysey's arrest.
Francis Wayne Alexander, a missing man from New York who
was identified through genetic genealogy in twenty twenty one, was

(42:43):
one of Gaisey's victims. There are also unidentified victims. As
of right now, five of Gaysey's victims remained unidentified, with
DNA efforts continuing. These include Victim number ten, white male,
age seventeen to twenty one, buried in the Carl Space
and died between March fifteenth and July fifth, nineteen ninety seven.

(43:05):
Nineteen seventy seven. Victim number thirteen, white male age seventeen
to twenty one, buried in the call space and died
between August sixth and October fifth, nineteen seventy six. Victim
Number twenty six, white male age twenty two to thirty
buried in the crawl space and died between June thirteenth
and August sixth, nineteen seventy six. Victim number twenty eight,

(43:27):
white male age fourteen to eighteen, buried in the backyard
and died between January third, nineteen seventy two and July
thirty first, nineteen seventy five. Victim number twenty nine. The
identity of Victim twenty nine, the victim from Gaysey's property,
is known, but there is some confusion to regarding the

(43:47):
number idea of identified victims. The Cook County Sheriff's Office
stated in twenty twenty one that the investigation into the
five remaining victims is still ongoing. When he was finally
caught in December nineteen seventy eight, police had found twenty
nine bodies under his house. Four more were discovered later
some of them, as I said, are still unidentified. The

(44:09):
frequency of these kids disappearing and being killed, I mean,
the most he went in those years was a month,
and we don't even know that for sure, because for
a lot of them it's just the date of their
disappearance and not when they were murdered. Pogo the clown

(44:30):
wasn't scary because he was a clown. He was scary
because he was John Wayne Gaizy hiding and played in sight.
Gayzy's trial in nineteen eighty was a media circus. He
claimed insanity. He painted in jail lots of creepy clown portraits.
One of them famously said they'll never find them all,

(44:50):
and you know, the piece of shit was right. They didn't.
He was executed in nineteen ninety four, but the fear lingered.
He became the blueprint for the killer clown, for Pennywise,
for twisted birthday party jokes, for every time you saw
a clown and felt a chill instead of a chuckle.
Here's a phone call he had before his execution with

(45:12):
Freakin' Bill O'Reilly of all people, Robert's near.

Speaker 6 (45:15):
Chicago's Oair Airport.

Speaker 7 (45:17):
Gaysey was active in local politics and once had his
photo taken with then first Lady Roslin Carter.

Speaker 21 (45:22):
The STU didn't have warns on him, and you don't
even walked around with a sign that he's a mass murder.

Speaker 24 (45:26):
And he was extremely well liked, verry popular.

Speaker 7 (45:29):
Gasey always liked the limelight, dressed his Pogo the clown.
He'd liked to entertain children, and he loved to throw
lavish parties. Then on December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight, a
local boy, Rob Kease disappeared. He told his mother he
was meeting with John Gasey about a job. A search
of Gasey's home turned up a number of items from
other missing kids, like class rings and other jewelry, but

(45:52):
police couldn't find any sign of vowel play.

Speaker 8 (45:55):
You know, we had maybe a slight idea, but no
real concrete evident said there was a house.

Speaker 7 (46:00):
For Rosemary and Richard Zick. The search of Gaysey's home
brought disturbing news. Some of the jewelry police recovered belonged
to their son John. He'd been missing for almost two
years by then.

Speaker 17 (46:10):
It was my third son.

Speaker 6 (46:12):
He was nineteen when he disappeared.

Speaker 13 (46:13):
He had been out of high school for about a
year and a half.

Speaker 7 (46:16):
Police didn't have enough to charge Gaysey with anything, so
they decided to follow him. After two weeks of constant surveillance,
Gasey cracked, with his lawyer present. Gasey told a room
full of shock policemen that he'd killed dozens of young
men and buried most of them under his house.

Speaker 11 (46:31):
He drew a detailed map of his crawl space, shurey
where the bodies.

Speaker 13 (46:36):
Were so best as he could recall.

Speaker 7 (46:38):
Using the map that Gasey made, police began the brutal
job of excavating.

Speaker 6 (46:42):
The crawl space under Gasey's home. One by one, the body.

Speaker 7 (46:46):
Bags made their morbid parade to the coroner's truck. This man,
who we will identify only as Robert, was one of
the lucky few who got away. Only months before Gaysey's arrest,
he ran into Gaysey in a bar. Gasey brought him
back to his house, where Gaysey asked him to try
a new drug.

Speaker 25 (47:01):
Gave me that and I tried it and while I
was clarifarm and knocked me out.

Speaker 13 (47:06):
Then what happened, well, I woke up him bad with him.

Speaker 7 (47:09):
For some reason, Gaysey didn't kill Robert, he just let
him go. But it wasn't until after Gaysey's arrest for
murder that Robert realized just how lucky he was. Now
he's happy to see Gaysey get his.

Speaker 26 (47:21):
As trial, Gaysey admitted to killing one young man in
self defense, but claim someone else put the other bodies
under his house. He was convicted of all thirty three
murders yesterday. He chose Inside Edition to make his final
public comments.

Speaker 6 (47:31):
I spoke with him on the phone.

Speaker 13 (47:33):
Are you frightened right now? Time not growing very short?

Speaker 20 (47:36):
No, I'm in a good mood by.

Speaker 13 (47:38):
So you're not frightened of losing your life? Bill?

Speaker 20 (47:40):
Do you think about death every day?

Speaker 24 (47:42):
Right?

Speaker 14 (47:42):
Don't?

Speaker 13 (47:43):
But if my death were scheduled tomorrow, I might.

Speaker 20 (47:46):
Well, I'm not, So.

Speaker 13 (47:48):
You're not frightened at all.

Speaker 20 (47:49):
Do you accept the things you cannot change?

Speaker 13 (47:51):
Do you feel any sense of remorse about anything that's
happened here?

Speaker 20 (47:55):
We'll considering I've never had a pair of trial. How
am I cloth to appeal?

Speaker 26 (47:58):
So you're telling me from the art that you feel
no remorse or killed here at all?

Speaker 10 (48:04):
Well, if somebody would have taken the time to look
at the facts, you'll find out that they're not what
they were said to be.

Speaker 20 (48:11):
There's more fantasy on me than there is fact.

Speaker 26 (48:14):
Even at this late date, you still say that you
are innocent.

Speaker 20 (48:19):
I will go to my death that way. Until you
remove the politics from the court system, all we're going
to go ahead is a state executed murder.

Speaker 13 (48:27):
That you feel you're going to be murdered, that's correct.
Is there any possibility that you would change your mind
before the execution and say, yeah, I really did something.
Is there any possibility that that would happen.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
No.

Speaker 10 (48:39):
If you're looking for a Ted Bundy, go talk to
Ted Bundy. They've asked me to give them a final
statement and I haven't issued one yet.

Speaker 6 (48:46):
Oh.

Speaker 20 (48:46):
I told the.

Speaker 10 (48:46):
delC is to arrange for ten minutes, with the time
you will decide whether I'm going to talk or not.

Speaker 13 (48:54):
I strongly suspect you will have something to say. What
could that be?

Speaker 20 (49:00):
I have no idea at this time. I haven't even
thought about it.

Speaker 13 (49:03):
Do you think you'll be very emotional at that moment?

Speaker 10 (49:05):
Get in regards to what I just feel that I
feel sorry for the victims' family because they.

Speaker 20 (49:10):
Have not gotten justice in this case.

Speaker 10 (49:12):
I think they have a right to know some of
them have got the remains of bodies that don't even
belong to them.

Speaker 26 (49:18):
Is there any way you can explain at this late
hour how twenty seven bodies were found under nature house.

Speaker 20 (49:22):
I've already told you there's twelve piece to the house.

Speaker 10 (49:25):
We've linked, We've linked sixteen of the bodies to one individual.
We've we've linked fourteen more to another individual. All these
people had keys to the house.

Speaker 13 (49:34):
Yes, you did it, and you do not repent. I'm
sure the confessor will tell you God have mercy on
your soul.

Speaker 20 (49:40):
I have went peace with God.

Speaker 13 (49:43):
Once again.

Speaker 26 (49:44):
Gaysey is set to receive a lethal injection at one
minute after midnight.

Speaker 22 (49:48):
Victorious serial killers John Wayne Gacy is scheduled to die
by legal injection early Tuesday morning, after a legal battle
that has gone on for years more now for Frank.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Courier, it was nineteen when the world first saw the
horrifying images of body bags being pulled from John Wayne
Gacy's house near Chicago, and of Gasey, later convicted in
the torture murders of thirty three young men and boys
and condemned to die.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Nothing is going to stop.

Speaker 6 (50:13):
This execution from Batty it's got to happen.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
After fourteen years on death row in an Illinois prison
fighting to overturn his sentence, Gaysey's time is running out.
His lawyers are scrambling to block Tuesday's scheduled execution.

Speaker 18 (50:26):
Mister Gasey is, unfortunately the person that everybody holds up
to support the idea that capital punishment is right and
that it.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Works, and that it's just what prosecutors say. He's exhausted
his options.

Speaker 6 (50:37):
I don't want to see any last minute delayers.

Speaker 20 (50:38):
The case has been.

Speaker 6 (50:39):
Pending for fourteen years.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
His lawyers had an obligation sometime in the last fourteen
years to bring up whatever they're trying to bring up today.
Most Chicago win's agree and are fed up with paying
millions of tax dollars to keep a confessed serial killer alive.

Speaker 9 (50:52):
Will John Wayne Gacy was executed in nineteen ninety four,
but the fear lingered it lingers because he became the
blueprint for the killer clown. He became the blueprint for
penny Wise, for twisted birthday party jokes. For every time
we see a clown and feel a chill instead of

(51:13):
a chuckle, so enter Pennywise. Stephen King was watching all
of this unfold, and in nineteen eighty six he published
it in Dairy Maine. Children Vanish and an Ancient Predator
takes the form of a clown Pennywise. Pennywise isn't just
scary because he looks like a clown. He's scary because

(51:33):
the cultural wound of gacy had turned supernatural. He's also
scary because adults don't believe children that he's even real.
And this is also a story of good and evil,
a story of bullying, of abuse, of racism. It is

(51:54):
one of my favorite books. Honestly, it's very, very disturbing.
It was a really good documentary that came out in
twenty twenty one about penny Wise and It and the
making of the nineteen ninety nine TV min mini series
that starred Tim Kirk, Tim Curry as penny Wise, Jonathan

(52:19):
Brandis as Bill Seth Green is in it. It's just
I like the mini series more than the twenty seventeen version,
No offense, Bill scars Guard. I think he did a
good job too, but that I mean John Ritter. It

(52:39):
just the cast was so good and it was much longer,
even though the twenty seventeen movie was released in like
multiple parts. I don't know. I don't know if it's
because I saw it as a kid and it was
that traumatizing. Here is a clip from that, and I
will play the whole thing, and I will no, no,
I will not play the whole thing. I will link

(53:00):
to the whole thing in the show note.

Speaker 7 (53:02):
Caared the hell out of millions of people.

Speaker 14 (53:08):
One of the comments is, typically Tim Curry is the
reason why I am terrified of Clown's.

Speaker 6 (53:13):
The portrayal of Pennywise.

Speaker 12 (53:14):
Probably went from yeah, we're gonna have some pounds over
for litt Johnny's birthday party too, probably not well.

Speaker 25 (53:19):
The character that manifests itself in the shape of your
fears is terrified at any age, in any era, and
so I think that's why that concept is so indelible.

Speaker 5 (53:27):
A lot of people have told me that it poisoned
the childhood when they saw it on television, and I
would always think, you shouldn't have been watching it. I

(53:52):
had written Kerry and that had put Steve King Briant,
the Palma, the actors, and me on the map in
a way that I became a go to.

Speaker 20 (53:59):
For horror adaptations.

Speaker 13 (54:01):
I got a call one day.

Speaker 5 (54:04):
From my Asian in Los Angeles who said he'd been
approached by a pair of producers who'd set up a
new Stephen King project at ABC as a novel for television,
and was I interested in that.

Speaker 6 (54:14):
The next day the doorbell.

Speaker 5 (54:15):
Rang, Federal Express at the door and the guy is
carrying the most humongous FedEx package I've ever seen. I
took this unweeling bulky piece from him and was about
to close the door, and he said, hang on a minute,
and he went back to the elevator and came back
with these two giant containers containing the type manuscript of
it in his earliest stages. I sat down and read
the opening with young stuttering Bill.

Speaker 10 (54:37):
Oh oh yeah.

Speaker 6 (54:38):
To seal it first with the paras.

Speaker 5 (54:41):
And baby brother Georgie and what turns out to be
a horrible demise at the hands of Pennywise in the sewer,
I went, I'll do it. We went in for a
first meeting with the network and the executive vice president
of Movies for Television and she looked at me and
she said, so, tell me what is it. I said, well,
it's an interterrestrial beast.

Speaker 10 (55:04):
Bend.

Speaker 6 (55:05):
So I asked D and D where are the other bends?
He said, it's pretty much just you.

Speaker 5 (55:11):
We're looking at a kid in Vancouver, and I think
went in Texas, but I.

Speaker 26 (55:14):
Think right chronic film called Never Ending Story, where ironically
I played a bully.

Speaker 14 (55:20):
I managed to get tight cast and kind of that
bully roll because I was big.

Speaker 13 (55:22):
Just to visit.

Speaker 6 (55:23):
There's a were wolf, which was really cool. That was
done by Norman Corbrera.

Speaker 10 (55:26):
This is an.

Speaker 13 (55:30):
He's like, we're doing an homage to I was a teenage.

Speaker 15 (55:33):
Werewolf the Michael Landon Creature and I was like, uh, yeah,
this is a no brainer.

Speaker 6 (55:37):
Man, I want to do this.

Speaker 25 (55:38):
When I saw this gun guy in the suit the
first time, all I want to do was touch it.

Speaker 15 (55:41):
Wereolves is always my favorite monster in every movie, and
I'm and I'm.

Speaker 6 (55:44):
Just going, can we just shoot this? Can we please
just shoot this?

Speaker 13 (55:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (55:47):
Well we gotta just I said, come on, let's shoot
the fucking thing. I need to get this off. And
then it's like, hi, kids, how do you do it? Yeah?
We all float down here, you know, And I just
I just wanted to kill some gre.

Speaker 12 (56:07):
Alan and I went down to the agency to meet
with Steven and show him the picture. They had a
screening room all set up, and I remember he came
up to us and I put my hand out to
shake Steven's hand, and he had a rat in it,
a rubber rat.

Speaker 20 (56:23):
It was kind of like a shocking thing.

Speaker 12 (56:25):
You know, and I don't know, maybe to break the ice.
We had a few exchange words and then he saw
it privately.

Speaker 13 (56:31):
He didn't want us to be there, but we later
heard that he liked it.

Speaker 17 (56:33):
He was happy.

Speaker 5 (56:34):
I was certain when we got a final cut that
we had a good movie.

Speaker 25 (56:40):
At the premiere, I was really just thinking that I
can't believe I'm actually a part of this film.

Speaker 5 (56:45):
The results were that we got a viewership of thirty
million people.

Speaker 6 (56:49):
It was huge in the ratings.

Speaker 5 (56:50):
It was viewed as a big success, and the press
on it was very positive.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
I think the legacy of the original it was this
brilliant performance on.

Speaker 21 (57:00):
Which you would usually seen film in a living room.

Speaker 6 (57:03):
It was just an extraordinary event.

Speaker 5 (57:06):
To have this king first piece for TV as a
mini series, come out and stake that kind of territory
and resonate so strongly with people.

Speaker 6 (57:14):
It became the proverbial water cooler mini.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
Series, and I think it then went on to have
the most unexpected afterlife.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
I think the reason that it was so successful at
scaring people is because these characters don't have the ability
to name what scares them or the forces that oppressed them.

Speaker 27 (57:31):
The high point was growing up and receiving the Emmy.
And I'm told that when they announced my name, Bam,
I was gone, you know, as if I thought they
were going to take it back if I didn't get
up to the.

Speaker 6 (57:41):
Podium quickly enough.

Speaker 12 (57:42):
He just made magic with that score.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
Rocks, rocks, rocks.

Speaker 27 (57:59):
It's a very long ammy sitting in my house.

Speaker 6 (58:02):
But that's all right.

Speaker 27 (58:03):
I credit Tim and Stephen Kane from Miami. It's very
difficult to write music when the story is flawed or
when the acting is poor. When the story is I
mean that great, and the performances are that good, that
all ends up to any departments.

Speaker 6 (58:20):
Emmy.

Speaker 27 (58:21):
You're elevated by those performances in that story.

Speaker 9 (58:25):
And Stephen King picked up that cultural wound left by
John Wayne Gacy and he just stuck his hands in it.
He took us to Dary Mayne, where the town's darkest
fears take form in the Ultimate Predator, pen Wise, the
Dancing Clown. He wasn't just a boogeyman. He was the
embodiment of that lingering suspicion. What if the person in

(58:47):
your kid isn't smiling for them, but at them? And
as you heard Tim Curry's nineteen ninety portrayal in the
minis series cemented Pennywise as a generational trauma who watched
it on VHS or in their living rooms live on
TV still flinch at storm dreams. Bill's Carr's guard came
along and he made it his own, much more over

(59:11):
the top. But the red balloon became an omen see
one floating by itself, and you know something's coming for you.
Let's go back to Darry for a little bit, because
this is where it comes full circle. In kings It,
the real horror wasn't just penny Wise. It was the
silence of the adults. It was the not knowing of

(59:32):
the adults. Just like with John Wayne Gacy, How are
all these horrible things happening and no one else is
picking up on the pattern. How is everyone looking away
while kids go missing? That's the thread that ties it
all together. Gacy got away with murder for years because
nobody wanted to look too closely. At their friendly neighbor.

(59:54):
Pennywise thrives because the grownups of Dairy refused to see
what's right in front of them, And twenty sixteen people
freaked out because clowns had already been cemented as a
symbol for denial. So when kids started saying that there
were some in the backyard yard trying to lure them
into the woods, we believed them for once, and honestly,

(01:00:14):
we should have hysteria. And all that time people weren't
ready to have a smile paint over the horror. At
the art of it. At the art of it, the
town of Dairy pretends nothing wrong. Kids disappear, bodies wash up,
blood stains to sink, and the adults look away. That's
the real horror, not just the monster and the drain,

(01:00:35):
but that willful blindness of a community that would rather
not see. It's why penny Wise resonates so much with
Gaycy's legacy. Both stories remind us that the real danger
isn't only in the clown costume. It's in the silence
that lets monsters thrive. So why are clowns still so
terrifying now? Because they're meant to be safe, Because they're

(01:00:58):
meant to be funny, silly, harmless, and we've learned repeatedly
that nothing is what it seems. They pretend to be happy,
They paint on a smile, they hide the truth. Like
so much of life does. That Uncanny Valley thing. It
plays a part too. Clowns are almost human, but not quite.

(01:01:19):
And then you toss in Gacy Pennywise, the Joker Twisty
from American horror story Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Terrifiers
art the clown pop culture has doubled down on that archetype.
Clowns don't make us laugh anymore. They make us look twice.
They're not the punchline now, they're the warning. So whether

(01:01:41):
you're seeing a rusted circus sign on the side of
the road, catching a red balloon floating in a storm drain,
or swearing you saw someone in full clown get up
at two am outside a gas station, remember sometimes it's
not just a cost to Sometimes the scariest thing about
a clown isn't the makeup. It's what under It's what's

(01:02:02):
underneath it. Clowns, once harmless gestures are now icons of dread.
From Gaysey's crawl Space in the New HBO show that's
coming out about Dairy next month that I can't wait
to watch, though I know it will absolutely terrify me.
Their legacy is cemented. I get why people lost their
minds in twenty sixteen. I would have too been Ronald

(01:02:26):
McDonald is unsettling to me at this point. What about you?
Are you scared of clowns?

Speaker 10 (01:02:31):
Now?

Speaker 9 (01:02:32):
Were you ever? Let me know your thoughts and stay
away from sore drains. And remember, it wasn't fear that
defeated Pennywise We're playing by Stephen king Roles. It was
bravery and good over evil. And that's the same thing
that defeated Gacy two. And that's the same thing that

(01:02:54):
will continue to defeat every kind of monster. Not the evil,
but the good good, not our fear, but our grace.
I know that's cheesy, but I truly believe that in
my heart it's something that's stuck with me my whole life.
That good has to be stronger than evil, that it
has to be, that it must, that it just must.

(01:03:17):
So please remember that too, as scared as clowns or
our country or the world or circumstances are, we can
be good, and we can be so much better than
all of the things that we fear. Thank you for listening.
Send me your clown stories, send me your scary stories.

(01:03:38):
We'll be doing these spooky episodes for all of October,
and it is already taking the toll on me. So
please help me out and share share some of your
own lore with me. I really appreciate it. I'll talk
too soon. Thank you so much for listening to another

(01:04:00):
episode of broad next Door. Things in Portland are nuts
right now, So a combo of that might see my
mom is like texting me NonStop right now. Uh, combo
of Portland energy combined with political climate, combined with all

(01:04:20):
the research I've been doing. I am so stressed out.
I am in just such a state of anxiety. I
leave for Kansas City in two weeks. I'll be there
for Halloween. If you want to hang out in Kansas
City on the Missouri side or the Kansas side, I'll
be on the Missouri side. But I'm excited about that.
I hope the leaves have changed color. It looks like

(01:04:42):
it's been pretty hot there. Looked up the Sally House,
which is in Kansas and was thinking about staying there,
but decided against it because you need to bring sleeping bags.
Hopefully I'll do some other scary things. Gonna do my
Dahmer episode, so while I'm there, he has some minor

(01:05:02):
Kansas City tie in, maybe some other Midwest stuff. Send
me your horror stories, Send me your scary story, send
me your alien stories, doppelgam Ghirst stories, creepy stuff that
happened when you were a kid, anything you got, send
it over for our round up at the end of
the month. I'll be back to you tomorrow with another

(01:05:24):
cursed films, maybe doing those every Wednesday. And tomorrow we
have Poltergeist, which I think is the most cursed personally,
and I don't know what we have the rest of
this week. I have a bunch of outlines for scripts
and research and it's just deciding to do thirty one
episodes in thirty one days. Has been a lot because

(01:05:47):
it's just me here. I research, I write, I edit,
I record, I try and make it not sound horrible.
I'm a one woman show. So if you like this show,
please please please recommend it to a friend. Please get
five stars. Got some bad reviews lately and it really
helps me out. And you can message me online at

(01:06:10):
Tanielaskrima or Broad's next Door on all of the things.
I am going to start in a little Facebook community,
even though people don't really use Facebook anymore. My Facebook
has been getting some more traction, and I'd love to
have a group where everyone can just kind of be
friends with each other and kind of hang out.

Speaker 24 (01:06:30):
I think that's going to come out.

Speaker 9 (01:06:32):
And I am zoning out because it is late here
and I have another day of this tomorrow. I know
you do too. I am still deeply, deeply grateful that
I get to do this as my job. I love you,
Thank you for your support. I'll talk to you very soon.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Send me your stuff,

(01:06:53):
Love you bye.

Speaker 24 (01:07:03):
I think that's gonna come out. I think that's gonna
come out.

Speaker 20 (01:07:28):
Mm hmm