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John Wayne Gacy, Jr. by Mitch D. Meredith April, 2003 Admired by most that met him, John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was a well-respected man in his community. He was a sharp local businessman who owned his own contracting company and he also dressed as “Pogo the Clown” to entertain children at the local hospitals. Most saw him as a hard working man who was devoted to his family and community (www.crimelibrary.com, 2001). Underneath this front, unspeakable crimes were being committed. Crimes so gruesome and horrid that they live in infamy among some of the worst in history. Gacy had a dark secret--A secret many came to fatally find out. Gacy’s Biography Growing up for Gacy held many tough times. Chicago and the world welcomed John Wayne Gacy, Jr. into this world on March 17th, 1942 (Linedecker, 1980, p. 11). Gacy was brought up in a neat, clean house with a loving mother and two sisters. His father, on the otherhand, was a mean drunk who often beat his family. In contrast, Gacy deeply loved his father and greatly wanted to be accepted by him. Gacy was hungry for praise from his father, but was never quite good enough for the Old Man (Cahill, 1986, p.21). John knew he was different from a very young age. He took his mothers underwear when he was six and hid them under his front porch (Cahill, 1986, p.19). Gacy grew up scared of other kids and was horrified at the sounds of fire engines. As a teenager, Gacy attended four high schools but never graduated (Linedecker, 1980, p.18). Upon returning home to Chicago after spending a few months in Las Vegas, Gacy enrolled at Northwestern Business College where he graduated. Around this time period health problems started becoming an issue of concern for Gacy. He had been born with an enlarged bottleneck heart, a serious condition, which made him very weak as a child and ruled out any possibility of playing sports in school (Cahill, 1986, p.33). His weight had also become a problem. In a period of about three years he was hospitalized several times with heart trouble. Gacy was twenty-one and had a steady job as a shoe-salesman. The company he worked for soon transferred to Springfield. While at Springfield, Gacy became an established community leader and married a fellow employee by the name of Marlynn Myers (Cahill, 1986, p.52). Myers family had purchased a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken stores and offered Gacy and his new wife a piece of the action. Myers father offered Gacy a job in Waterloo, Iowa and he accepted. John and Marylnn Gacy were living the American Dream. Marylnn gave birth to a perfect son in 1966, and a year later presented her husband with a perfect baby girl (Cahill, 1986, p.57). Things started turning for the worse here though. Gacy was earning a reputation for telling far-fetched stories about the years he served as a Marine and as an ambulance driver in Las Vegas. He was also well known for his road rage and flamboyant driving (Linedecker, 1980, p.23). John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was twenty-six years old when the police came to his residence on the night of May 10th, 1968 and arrested him for the crime of sodomy (Cahill, 1986, p.58). Gacy, the loved community leader and family man, was apparently a pedophile. To fit the image of a pedophile one has to have a preference for sexual experience with sexually immature people (Meyer, 1992, p.94). The Allegations Start Gacy had been involved in several encounters of paying a fifteen-year-old male to perform sexual acts on him. Of course, Gacy denied the charges he faced. He stated that his political enemies had framed him because he was running for President of a local community organization (Linedecker, 1980, p.32). Something odd in this case involved the fact that Gacy hired another boy to beat up the boy who was accusing him of molestation (www.crimelibrary.com, 2001). This pretty much sealed the case and forced Gacy to plead guilty to the charge of sodomy. Gacy was sentenced to serve ten years, but was out by 1971. By the time he got out his wife had divorced him and his father had died. Gacy had not been allowed to attend his father’s funeral and it devastated him. Returning home and moving back in with his mother, Gacy started working again. He soon remarried and started his own construction business. Eight months after his release from prison, Gacy was once again arrested in 1971 and charged with assault on a teenage boy (Linedecker, 1980, p.53). Apparently, Gacy had found the young boy at a Greyhound Bus Terminal and took him home and tried to force him to perform sexual acts. The case was dismissed though when the young boy never showed up for court. Suspicion Arises Things went sour with Gacy’s second marriage. Strange things were going on in Gacy’s life. His wife also smelled a horrible odor coming from beneath their house. Gacy dismissed it as a broken sewer pipe and claimed to have put lime on it to kill the smell (Cahill, 1986, p.234). Soon after his second divorce in 1976 Gacy was seen in parts of town that were known as homosexual prostitute areas. Gacy didn’t murder all of his victims. Some were beaten while others had various pain inflicted upon them (www.crimelibrary.com, 2001). Neighbors soon grew suspicious when they noticed young men enter and leave his house at all hours of the day. May 22nd, 1978 was the turning point in John Wayne Gacy Jr.’s life. Gacy pulled his black Oldsmobile up beside a 27-year-old male by the name of Jeffrey Ringall and asked him of he wanted to share a joint while they rode around town. Happy for a ride, Ringall jumped in. Shortly afterwards, Gacy shoved a rag over his face soaked in chloroform (www.serialkillers.net, 2001). Brief periods of consciousness soon occurred. Ringall was viciously raped, tortured and drugged by Gacy. The next thing Ringall knew he woke up in front of a statue of Alexander Hamilton in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Ringall filed a police report and spent several days in a local hospital. Police were skeptical though because Ringall couldn’t provide a great deal of information about his assailant. Ringall did remember one very important thing though. The man who abducted him was driving a black Oldsmobile. Armed with this information, Ringall searched the entire Chicago area for a black Oldsmobile that fit his memory. He finally found Gacy’s car and reported it to the police. Gacy was arrested, but a lack of evidence prompted his release (www.crimelibrary.com, 2001). The Discovery Several young males came up missing between the years Gacy had moved back to Chicago. Finally the local police were issued a search warrant to search John Gacy’s residence. Upon entering the house, the police were met by a terrible odor. Further investigation of this foul smell revealed a horrifying secret. A total of twenty-eight males bodies were found in shallow trenches and graves buried beneath the house (Cahill, 1986, p.292). Five more of Gacy’s victims were found in the Des Plaines River. Gacy was arrested and charged with a total of thirty-three murders. Most sexual crimes committed against young people are aimed at boys, however Gacy’s victims ranged from young male homosexual prostitutes to middle aged married men (Rhodes, 1999, p.236). Gacy admitted to these horrendous acts and told police how he had done them. He usually stuffed a sock or underwear into his victim’s mouths to silence their screaming, then placed a rope around their neck and proceeded to rape them (www.crimelibrary.com, 2001). Gacy was also a sadist and necropheliac (Cahill, 1986, p.336). The Trial Thirteen months after his arrest, the trial began. The main question posed throughout the trial was deciding whether or not Gacy was clinically insane at the time he committed all these murders. The state asked that Gacy be given the death penalty for the twelve murders known to have occurred since the Illinois statute of capital punishment became effective in 1977 (Linedecker, 1980, p.237). Finally, in 1985 the United States Supreme Court upheld Gacy’s appeal and he was executed by lethal injection. He had a very nice funeral and was buried in the plot at the head of his father’s tombstone (Cahill, 1986, p.372). It is difficult to imagine how many victims John Wayne Gacy Jr. actually had. He only confessed to the thirty-three bodies that they found at his residence and in the Des Plaines River. Who knows how many else there are? Gacy boasted about how he held the Guinness Book of World Records record for the most murders. He was somehow proud of himself. Was he truly an insane individual? How sick do you have to be to commit the acts that he did? These questions will probably be forever debated. One thing is sure: The legacy and horror that John Wayne Gacy Jr. left behind will be remembered forever and reminds us of how we can all be deceived by a friendly neighbor. Even worse, it shows us how we can be deceived by a friendly clown.
Cahill, T. (1986). Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. New York: Bantam Books.Rhodes, R. (1999). Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist. New York: Random House. Linedecker, C. L. (1980). The Man Who Killed Boys. New York: St. Martins. Meyer, R. G. (1992). Abnormal Behavior and the Criminal Justice System. New York: Lexington Books. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Retrieved October 2001 from http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial/gacy/gacymain.htm John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Retrieved October 2001 from http://www.serialkillers.net/cases/gacy.html This page available at: |