John Wayne Gacy： The Serial Killer Clown - Serial Killer Docuimentary

John Wayne Gacy： The Serial Killer Clown - Serial Killer Docuimentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
John Wayne Gacy a sadistic serial killer that fooled even
his closest friends and neighbors.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is a hard driving, very hard working individual.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
I was a shounded, a pillar of society with a
shocking secret.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
We took a screwdriver into a little crack in the floor,
and when we did, the whole floor lifted up.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
He would become one of the most prolific serial killers
in American history.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
They asked him, well, why did you do this stuff?
I was afraid they would expose me. He said, they
were all just human trash anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
But was John Wayne Gacy a product of his upbringing
or was he born to kill? Dwayne Gacy was born

(01:01):
in Chicago in nineteen forty two, the only son of
Marion and John Gasey.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
John Gasey was a son of a blue collar worker
a mother who was a pharmacist. His biological father drank
alcohol but continued to work. He was considered a functioning alcoholic.

Speaker 6 (01:24):
From what I understand, he was physically abused by his father,
and his father was often not available or was intoxicated.
His father was also known for abusing Gaysey's mother, in fact,
engaging in physical fights with her that Gaysey must have witnessed.

(01:50):
Now clearly, those sorts of things have an impact on
a person's development and the way they look at the world.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Young John was close to his mother, but to his father,
the overweight, unathletic boy was a disappointment, one that he
made little effort to hide.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
His father would come home, he would go down into
the basement, into his workshop, not interact with anyone in
the family, but had this special thing about his son,
whom he felt should be better, more like the father,
become a business person, become someone who was admired in

(02:32):
the community.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Gase's father regularly called him stupid, a mumma's boy, and
a sissy.

Speaker 6 (02:41):
His father frequently told him that he was a failure,
he wouldn't amount to anything. So again, you think of
how someone growing up with that kind of verbal abuse
and emotional abuse would develop as an adult.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
John entered his teenage years and began to complain of
body problems, headaches, and faintness dizziness, which the father must
have seen as a weakening that this was not a
strong person. This was not a person who could stand
up and be tall and be successful.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
At school. The young Gaycy continued to disappoint.

Speaker 7 (03:34):
He entered serially high schools and to great disappointment to
his father. He tended to fail, and there were reasons
for failure. Perhaps put forward, I mean he was adhd.
He had real problems concentrating.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Despite his failures, John Gasey Jr. Was getting a reputation
as a braggart. He told fanciful stories and could confidently
talk himself out of trouble. At eleven years old, Gasey
was struck on the head by a swing, resulting in
a series of blackouts. His father accused him of faking.

(04:14):
At age sixteen, he began taking medication for a heart ailment.
Gaisey was seen as weaker than other teenagers.

Speaker 7 (04:24):
These conspired for overriding most of these excuses for his
failure was the basic fact that John Wayne Gacy was
very good at producing justifications and excuses for why he failed.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Aged twenty and without qualifications, Gaysey left Chicago and struck
out on his own. He traveled to Las Vegas, where
he found a job cleaning up in a mortuary.

Speaker 7 (04:57):
He entered the world on a once a one bay
he no longer as it where we're living in the shadow.
His family and particularly his father. He kind of fell
a bit of a release working in there and sweeping
up was probably not the kind of high status job,
but it was a job he attained on his own,
and it was a job that he managed to hold down.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
The work was low paid and menial. Gaysey often worked
alone with only dead bodies for company.

Speaker 8 (05:27):
A number of serial killers will go through a variety
of experiences which will mean that they come into close
proximity with dead bodies. In Gaysey's case, we know that
he acted as a janitor in a mortuary. We have
a kind of familiarization with dead bodies, a familiarization that

(05:52):
would take away the taboo of being around a dead body.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
John Wayne Gacy. His new life in Las Vegas didn't
last long. After only three months, he used what little
money he'd saved to return to Chicago. There he enrolled
in a business college, and for the first time, Gaysey
began to flourish. He'd always had the gift of the gab,
and he soon discovered a flare for salesmanship.

Speaker 7 (06:24):
Gasey suddenly realized that there was something that gave him
a steam. It's something that made him stand up in
the world where he could as it were, stands shoulders shoulder,
and even beyond that with those individuals around him.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
By the age of just twenty one, Gaysey's business talents
had won him the position of manager at a shoe store.

Speaker 7 (06:47):
He realized that his abilities, his acting abilities, his charm
and disarmabilities that most inherent psychopaths seem to have, this
cold indifference, actually works for you in interactions. He then
found this success, and he found his career success could
even match the expectations of his father.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
In September nineteen sixty four, Gaysey met and married his
co worker, Marln Myers. Marln's father saw promise in his
ambitious new son in law and appointed him the manager
of his three fast food franchises in Iowa. John and
Marln began a new life in Waterloo. Together, they had

(07:37):
two children. Gaysey was now a family man, a rising
star in the local business world, and a popular member
of the community. On the surface, it was a storybook existence.

Speaker 5 (07:50):
Gaysey was a role model. He was a role model
of what a businessman should be. He should be involved
in all these political organizations, all of these business organsations.
He should be the upstanding citizen in his small town.
But it really had no meaning for him, Otherwise, if
it had, he wouldn't have needed to go into the

(08:12):
remainder of what he did for the rest of his life.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
What John Wayne Gacy would become would shock his suburban
neighbors to their core. After a childhood plagued by illness
and failure, John Wayne Gacy now had a wife, two children,

(08:41):
and was the successful manager of a chain of fast
food outlets. The Gayses appeared the perfect nuclear family, but
behind the respectable facade, John Wayne Gacy had begun to
inhabit a world at odds with the laced image of
Midwestern suburbia.

Speaker 6 (09:03):
He got started and abusing teenage boys sexually, and there
are a few chilling incidents where he actually threatened some
of these young men that we didn't injure or kill
anyone as far as we know.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
In nineteen sixty seven, Gasey lured sixteen year old John
Tellery to his home. They watched pornographic movies, drank and
played pool. Then, without warning, Gasey forced Tellery onto a
bed at knife point, handcuffed him and started to choke him.

Speaker 7 (09:41):
In the case of Joel Tollery, he followed the usual
getting them drunk and showing pornography and then turning suddenly
and using violence or threat and in this case a
knife to force that person into handcuffs, into a power submissive,
and then to actually inflict sexual torturous sexual behavior, taunting, choking,

(10:07):
threats to that individual who would generally speaking and many
occasions not report this.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
But Tullery did report his ordeal and other boys would follow.
Gasey was arrested. The twenty six year old family man
and bright light of the community was charged with sodomy
and sentenced to ten years in Animosa.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
It's a high wild institution. There are armed guards on
the towers and very restricted movement inside the compound of
the prison.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Fellow inmate Ray Cornell became Gasey's close friend.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
It was rigorous, as prison I think should be. It
was dangerous. There were numerous murder attempts while I was
suring the two years that I was there, and at
least one occasion I witnessed a person stabbed to death.
Was not a very nice place to.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Be A convicted homosexual sex offender. Gaysey should have been
high on the prison hit list.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
John told everyone that he was serving time for showing
pornographic movies to teenage boys. John was very careful never
to reveal in the fact that he in fact was
in there for molesting or attempting to molest teenage boys.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
With the truth behind his crime successfully hidden, Gaysey showed
the same ambitious streak as he had as a freeman,
only this time he was striving to be a pillar
of a very different community. Richard Snavely was a prison
counselor at the time he came into contact with inmates Gaysey.

Speaker 9 (12:01):
He had a small little sign that he wore that
was very much like the name tags that the employees wore,
which said John Gaycy, first cook.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
And you're a man of some authority here. What is
your title?

Speaker 6 (12:14):
Well, I'm first cook in the kitchen and I run
the morning meal, in the afternoon meal in the kitchen.

Speaker 7 (12:22):
John, how long you've been here?

Speaker 2 (12:23):
I've been here now a year and about two weeks.

Speaker 9 (12:27):
He kind of got himself ingratiated into the system. He
was very responsible, very adult in his style. He was
older than the average inmate. He was able to try
to develop a position and he was pretty successful in

(12:48):
doing that.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
But his friend Ray Cornell witnessed another side to John
Wayne Gacy during an encounter with an openly gay convict
known as mister Connect.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Mister Connect and some of his friends were in the
lower yard of the prison playing basketball, and the ball
got loose and went rolling past John. And John got
the ball and threw it as hard as he could,
and Connect, not showing a lot of good judgment, then

(13:27):
said me, missed me. Now you got to kiss me,
and John went after it. Just for a second. I
think I saw just a glimpse of what his victims
saw at the end of their lives, because he had
every intention of going after Gary Connect and hurting him
badly or killing I think I saw the monster.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
At Christmas nineteen sixty nine, Gacy received news that would
affect him profound.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
We were sitting in the lower yard in the card
playing area when a guard came down, got Jaunt and
took him up to the security office.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Gase's father had died from serrosis, and the authorities were
not to permit him to attend the funeral.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
When I saw him again the following morning in the chowhaw,
he was a wreck.

Speaker 6 (14:28):
He requested permission to visit his father, and I suppose
make amends with him. And my suspicion is that when
his father died, that was difficult, because what it means
is that you can never repair this relationship. People always
want the approval of their parents, no matter how old

(14:49):
they are.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
He talked about his father over the next several days,
and he also talked about how deeply hurt he was
at the fact that he would not be going over
to Chicago to see his father buried.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
But in nineteen seventy, less than two years after his conviction,
Gayse's model behavior paid off.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Why am I asking how, I'll do you plan to
take up residence here?

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Well, I hope to be getting out sometime in May.

Speaker 8 (15:23):
We good. What's interesting about Gayse's prison experiences as a
result of the sodomy charges is firstly, he's released very quickly.
His sentence was ten years. He was out after eighteen months.
He was able to convince people that his behavior wouldn't
be repeated. But within that eighteen months he rises to

(15:45):
the top of the prison hierarchy, despite the fact as
a sex offender, one would have expected him to be
at the bottom of the prison hierarchy. So what we're
seeing here is the skills that actually under why Geis's
behavior over a long period of time, skills that allow

(16:06):
other people to gain confidence in him, to see him
as responsible, to see him as trustworthy. Of course, ultimately
he would abuse that responsibility. He'd abused that trust.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
In nineteen seventy Gaysey, now divorced, returned to his home
city of Chicago, eventually settling into the quiet suburban neighborhood
of Norwood. Leaving his past in Iowa. Gaysey continued his
ambitions to be seen as an important, valued pillar of
the local community. He married devorce Carol Hoff, and she

(16:48):
and her two children moved into his home.

Speaker 7 (16:51):
There was an indomitable spirit in Gaysey. He really did
think he was beginning to becoming vulnerable. That he could
write and simply getting married was just another strategic plan.
As far as Gaysey was concerned, there was no real
sexual intent in this marriage. It was convenience.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
As in Iowa, Gaysey's image as the perfect suburban neighbour
was a mere facade. In nineteen seventy one, he was
charged by Chicago police with disorderly conduct after a teenage
boy complained that Gaysey had picked him up at a
bus station and forced him to commit a sexual Act.

(17:33):
The case was dropped when the boy failed to appear
in court. In nineteen seventy two, Gaysey was charged with
battery when a young man complained he had been forced
to perform oral sex after Gaysey had told him he
was a sheriff's deputy. The case never went to trial.

(17:53):
Timothy Jack McCoy was just fifteen years old when he
was picked up by Gaysey at a Chicago bus station
in naineteen seventy two. After spending the night together, Gaysey
stabbed him to death. Gaysey would later claim the killing
was accidental and in self defense.

Speaker 8 (18:11):
Many murderers commit a murder because of the force of
particular circumstances at a particular point in their life. But crucially,
the vast majority of murderers are overwhelmed psychologically by the
fact they've taken another person's life, and they never want
to repeat that experience because they understand how difficult that

(18:34):
has been, not just for the victim, for the victim's family,
but also for themselves. Sadly, a small number of murderers
want to continue to behave like that because they found
out experience visceral, vital, exciting sexy.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Gaysey had his first taste of murder, it would be
far from his last. In nineteen seventy after serving time

(19:12):
in prison for molesting teenage boys, John Wayne Gacy remarried
and began building a new life in Chicago, But his
image as a loving family man and generous neighbour was
a sham. In nineteen seventy two, he'd picked up fifteen
year old Timothy McCoy for sex and killed him. Gaysey

(19:41):
would not be arrested for the murder of the teenager.
As far as the rest of the world was concerned,
the fifteen year old had simply disappeared, and to the
local community, John Wayne Gacy seemed ever more the perfect
suburban neighbour.

Speaker 10 (19:56):
The neighbors on the Black liked him.

Speaker 6 (19:58):
He was a very friendly man.

Speaker 5 (20:00):
He would give these tremendous outside parties for one hundred
to two hundred people.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Gaysey regularly entertained his neighbors by dressing up as a
clown and performing magic tricks.

Speaker 10 (20:13):
Gaysey was the kind of person that, not knowing how
evil he was, you would like to have him in
your community. He was active in the JCS, which is
the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and he was a volunteer
for the political party of his choice, and he was
very well thought of in the very small world of
his community.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
In nineteen seventy four, Gaysey established his own painting, decorating,
and construction business, hiring a string of young men to
carry out the work. His charisma and bravado ensured there
was no shortage of potential employees.

Speaker 11 (20:56):
The boys knew John Wayne Gacy. He was a big
name in town, and when he walked in, he was John.
He had the big car outside, he had the money.
Everybody knew he was wealthy. He had a big business.
And when he approached boys that were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen
years old making minimum wage and he was promising them
almost double salary just to work in a construction site

(21:20):
and help him build, these boys jumped at the chance.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Gasey's upstanding image as generous neighbor, successful businessman, and do
gooder in the community meant his motives for employing many
of the young men went undiscovered.

Speaker 8 (21:36):
I find it very interesting that people have a Hollywood
image of the serial killer as being this rather scary
man that's going to pop up from behind a bush
and attack and kill, whereas in fact, serial killers by
and large are very well socialized into their community, often

(21:56):
holding down very responsible jobs within the community, often seen
as being pillars of the community. And indeed, Gaysey is
almost living out a fantasy that he must have had
about being a pillar of the community. So here's somebody
living out the fantasy of normality, albeit all the time

(22:19):
we know he's also a closet homosexual who's engaging in
sodomy with young men that he's able to convince to
engage in sexual activity with him, perhaps through the status
that he had buying those sexual services.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
By the mid seventies, behind closed doors, Gaysey's wife began
complaining of his violent mood swings. He'd lost interest in
marital sex and was keeping homosexual pornography around the house.
She divorced him and moved out. Gaysey began actively cruising
Chicago's city streets, looking to pick up young men from

(23:00):
districts known pickup spots and areas where waves and strays
would congregate.

Speaker 7 (23:08):
Gasey was able to actually use one of his roles
that of a pseudo police officer. He had to wherewithal
in terms of, you know, a radio, and he would
often hide behind a badge and have you know, bits
of what looked like police paraphernalia.

Speaker 5 (23:28):
He would pick them up here cruising the streets in
a car that had a very large light on it,
as the police often did, and he would be able
to stop people using that as if he were a
police officer picking up strays, taking them home, torturing them.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
In nineteen seventy five, boys began disappearing. Some had been
selling sex on the streets, some were young runaways, some
were connected with his construction business.

Speaker 7 (24:00):
Technique of charming and disarming his victims was pretty much
similar to the way that he actually engaged people in
a legitimate business way. He would keep them entertained with
his verbal report and be able to actually charm them
quickly and rapidly into situations that they could not escape from.

(24:20):
And once he had got them into a position where
he felt that he was totally in power, he would change.
He would change very quickly. In the twinkler of an eye.
You would become the commanding, frightening, torturous monster.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
The young men would frequently be drugged, handcuffed, subjected to
repeated rapes and terrifying ordeals of torture. Then they would
be strangled he always.

Speaker 7 (24:54):
Picked the kind of attractive guy that he could never
be himself. But the these individuals became less individualistic as
far as he's concerned, they became more and more objects.
I mean, the more they became simply objects for him
to do with as he wished, the more horrific and
torturous their experience was within his company.

Speaker 8 (25:22):
Gasey seems to me to fall into the criteria of
the hedonistic serial killer, in other words, the past who
kills simply for the sexual thrill of killing, in particular
strangling his young victims and soordomizing them.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Rumors circulated amongst the gay community about the dangers of
a large man with a liking for violent, sadistic sex.
But despite an ever increasing number of disappearing young men,
they were simply assumed to have left town or run
away with no bodies discovered. They were chalked up as
just another of the thousands of missing persons reported in

(26:01):
the city each year.

Speaker 8 (26:04):
The police tend to call young kids of that kind
blue dross. They tend to call them that as a
way of saying, they don't matter as much as kids
from a normal background, so we don't give them as
much attention. We also know because of their sexuality that

(26:25):
often that means the police don't take enough notice of
the violence in gay men's lives.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Even when police were alerted to Gays's sadistic behavior, they
failed to act. On a night in March nineteen seventy eight,
twenty seven year old Jeffrey Rignall was lured into Gays's
car by his offer to share a joint. He was cloroformed,
driven to Gays's house, subjected to prolonged, agonizing sexual torture.

(27:04):
After being repeatedly drugged, he eventually awoke sprawled under a
statue in Chicago's Lincoln Park. Despite reporting the incident, Gaysey
remained at large.

Speaker 7 (27:17):
Gaysey's protection from investigation and prosecution was this established good
citizen that he'd managed to fabricate in the community where
he fell. To some degree, he was pretty much invulnerable
from accusations from young lads who were probably not thought
of very well in the community. He also knew that

(27:39):
it was pretty difficult for someone to make accusations of
homosexual nature of someone who would suddenly want to torture someone.
This was out of context, particularly out of context given
his standing.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
But John Wayne Gaysey was about to make a fatal mistake.

Speaker 8 (28:01):
When Gaycy stopped targeting young gay, homeless man who weren't
really part of the community, but instead targeted Robert Peaste,
who was an All American high school kid with a
good family who were going to report him as missing,
who were going to say, how is the police investigation going?

(28:22):
It was only by choosing that type of victim that
really was the unraveling of Gaycy.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Fifteen year old Robert Peaste was considered the archetypal, clean
cut All American boy, popular with his peers, and loved
by his close family. On December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight,
he was working his regular job in a pharmacy, saving
money towards college. He was looking forward to joining his

(28:53):
mother's birthday celebrations that evening. He came to collect him
at nine pm. He asked her to wait for a
moment while he went to talk to a man who
was in the parking lot about an offer of a
construction job. He did not return. Chief of Detectives Joseph

(29:16):
Cosenzak received the missing person's report.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
This is where Robert Peace worked. The boy's mother came
here to pick him up and when she arrived, the
boy told her that he wanted her to wait inside
so he could go outside to talk to someone about
summer work. And once the boy went out the front door,
he was never seen again. The owners of the drug

(29:45):
store told us that they had a contractor who was
to do repair work inside of their pharmacy. They supplied
us with some information pertaining to his telephone number, and
through the phone number, we were able to determine his
full name and address, and that's that's the first time

(30:08):
we ever knew the name John Wayne Gacy.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Detectives headed to the businessman's home to question him, hoping
they would find the missing fifteen year old safe and unharmed.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Casey had a diamond shaped window in his front door,
and the front part of his house was dark, but
there was a street lamp on the sidewalk in front
of his residence, and Uh I stood in front of
his door knocking on it. With the reflection of the

(30:50):
light into the window, I could see a face staring
back at us. Then the face faded into the darkness.

Speaker 9 (31:00):
Of the house.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
And as we walked alongside of the house and looked
inside of a window, we could see Gaysy sitting in
a chair watching television, drinking a beer. It was an
uncomfortable feeling being inside his residence, and he was belligerent, uncooperative,

(31:28):
and seemed too He seemed nervous.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Suspecting gaycy knew more than he was revealing, Detectives obtained
a search warrant and discovered a concealed void beneath the house.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
The cross space was actually hidden by a secret trapdoor
in a closet, and one of my investigators found that
and pointed that out to me. We took a screwdriver
into a little crack in the floor and cried it up.
When we did, the whole floor lifted up, and that

(32:03):
led us into the call space. And I went down
there with a flashlight and looked around, and everything was
dry and solid. There was no evidence.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Teenager Robert Peaste was nowhere to be found. Detectives placed
Gaysey under twenty four hour surveillance.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
When we started our surveillance, Gaysey initially responded by telling
many of his friends that we were FBI agents, that
we were bodyguards. But ultimately what happened is he really
started to break down psychologically in the sense that he

(32:45):
couldn't maintain his day to day facade of being mister
Niskey or a businessman, because every time he went out
his front door there was a police car sitting there
waiting to follow him around.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Despite finding no bodies at his house, the police had
discovered a stash of personal possessions that appeared to have
been collected as trophies.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
We had started to find case reports based on pieces
of id we found on the first search one and
identified those little pieces of identification as being missing persons
who were former employees of cases.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
The mounting evidence convinced detectives that they should begin digging
in the crawel space under Casey's house. Prosecuting attorney Robert
Egan was one of the first on the scene.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
The first body was excavated and everyone was kind of
standing around waiting for the excavation. There was a lot
of water in the crawl space. As a matter of fact,
the body had to be taken up literally out of water.
The ovidance technician had to reach down and feel a

(34:06):
ribcage and then pull the rib cage up out of
the water. The parts were put into a body bag,
and as that was taking place, the evidence technician that
was doing the excavation was feeling down under the water
and he he yelled out to us, and we everybody
kind of turned around it see what he was worried.

(34:27):
He said, I've got another rib cage down here.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Beneath the unassuming suburban home, detectives had made a discovery
that would see it become one of the most infamous
houses in American history. In nineteen seventy eight, the search

(34:54):
for fifteen year old Robert Peaste had led detectives to
the home of John Wayne Gacy, a businessman and pillar
of the local community. There they discovered the remains of
a decomposing body in a hidden cruel space beneath the house.
But that was only the beginning.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
The avidance technician that was doing the excavation, he yelled
out to us, he said, I've got another root cage
down here.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
The second set of remains was merely the tip of
the iceberg body. After decomposing body was being.

Speaker 8 (35:31):
Unearthed, Gacy kept the bodies of his victims under the house.
It's an ideal way to remember where his victims were.
It's an ideal way of keeping control over those victims
even after they've died.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
A total of twenty nine young men were discovered buried
on gay His property, twenty seven of them in the
cruel space beneath his home. In police custody, Gaysey began
to confess. He admitted to strangling all but his first victim.
He would choke them with a torniquet as they were

(36:18):
sexually assaulted. He referred to this as his rope trick.
He claimed some victims convulsed for an hour or two
before dying.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
When the investigations started, the neighbors essentially were to shock
beyond belief because most of the neighbors, even at that
point in times, still said John John would never do
anything to harm anybody. My son played by his house.
He's always had parties for the neighborhood. He was a

(36:53):
nice guy, a good businessman. So the neighbors were just
totally shocked.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
I was astounded. This is a hard driving, very hard
working individual. This is a guy who appeared to have
the social norms and the social values of the average
middle American right down to the ground. I certainly did
not anticipate anything like that. When I found out, I

(37:25):
was stunned.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
But none of the bodies under the house was fifteen
year old Robert Peaste. His whereabouts were finally discovered in
April nineteen seventy nine. Robert had been killed on the
night of his abduction. With no space left under his house,
Gasey had thrown the teenager's body from a bridge into

(37:49):
the des Plains River. Three other boys had suffered the
same fate. On February sixth, nineteen eighty, thirty seven year
old John Wayne Gacy stood trial for the murder of
thirty three young men.

Speaker 12 (38:10):
Well.

Speaker 10 (38:10):
The defense argued that he was insane because he couldn't
control his actions. I mean, obviously he couldn't control his actions.
He killed thirty three people that we know of, But
as an insanity defense in a legal courtroom, that's not going.

Speaker 7 (38:23):
To hold up.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Prosecutor William Kunkle was convinced he could prove Gaysey had
been sane and fully aware of his wrongdoing.

Speaker 12 (38:35):
He had underlined passages and read in his family Bible
indicating his knowledge of his own guilt. As a Catholic,
the blasphemers, the idolators, the abusers of themselves with mankind
shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. He had that underlying.

(38:56):
He had the Illinois Statute book with the paper clips
and underlining on the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act. You knew
exactly what he was doing, and he even knew what
the consequences of it was. So he never showed any remorse,
never any contrition, no emotion. It's what psychiatrists call a

(39:18):
flat effect, very narcissistic. Well, he was all the matter.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
On March thirteenth, nineteen eighty, John Wayne Gacy was found
guilty and sentenced to serve twelve death sentences and twenty
one natural life sentences.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
They asked him, well, why did you do this stuff?
And he said, well, there were several reasons. With some
of the kids, I was afraid they would expose me.
Others threatened to expose me, so I had to kill that.
He said, there were are just human trash anyway.

Speaker 7 (40:05):
It was this reason.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
On May tenth, nineteen ninety four, after fourteen years on
death row, John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection.
Gaysey remains one of America's most prolific serial murderers, but
what drove him to snuff out the lives of thirty

(40:30):
three young men was the belittling and abuse of the
hands of his alcoholic father. The catalyst was the blood
clot on his brain from his childhood accident with a
swing the trigger. Or was John Wayne Gacy simply born
to kill?

Speaker 8 (40:52):
I don't think there's anything in Gasey's background that suggests
that he was born to kill. My sympathy for Gaycy's
circumstances is that homophobia is a very difficult cultural phenomenon
to overcome, and as a gay man, Gasey must have
felt it was very difficult to be open about his sexuality.

(41:18):
And whilst we must never accept responsibility for the deaths
that Gacy caused, what we should do is analyze cultures
that regards one gender as superior to another and one
sexuality a superior to another.

Speaker 6 (41:42):
He clearly lacked a conscience and no feeling towards others.
That he was very callous and cold and calculating. I
can only conclude that people are born with this deficit,
and there's no way we can change that. We can't
teach someone to develop a conscience if it's not there.

(42:07):
So just imagine yourself, if you lacked a conscience, the
sorts of things that you could get away with without
feeling bad. It's a conscience that makes most of us
behave because we'd feel bad if you were suddenly freed
of that. Think of what you might do.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Forensic psychologist doctor Helen Morrison spent six hundred hours in
the company of the serial killer, and after his death
was given permission by Jase's family to have his brain examined.
There were no obvious abnormalities to him.

Speaker 5 (42:49):
Those men and those boys were vermin They just needed
to be extinguished for no reason other than the fact
that they needed to be gotten rid of. Ninety percent
of serial murderers are male, and this is around the world.

(43:10):
It covers all cultures, it covers all socioeconomic groups, it
covers all religious groups, it covers any type of place
that you can imagine in the world. And yet they
are so like they've been cut out with a cookie cutter.
They are so exactly the same. So we have to

(43:31):
assume that there is some genetic foundation. It has to
be a mutation. John Gaycy was definitely born to kill

Speaker 6 (44:00):
The