Born
17th March 1942
Sibling
2 sisters
Father
John Wayne Gacy Sr ( 20/6/1900 - 25/12/1969)
Mother
Marion Elaine Gacy (nee Robinson) (4/5/1908 - 14/12/1989)
Heritage
danish/polish
Victims
Known Gacy victims, with date of disappearance.
* Timothy McCoy, 15, January 3, 1972
* John Butkovich, 17, July 29, 1975
* Darrell Sampson, 18, April 6, 1976
* Randall Reffett, 15, May 14, 1976
* Sam Stapleton, 14, May 14, 1976
* Michael Bonnin, 17, June 3, 1976
* William Carroll, 16, June 13, 1976
* Rick Johnston, 17, August 6, 1976
* Kenneth Parker, 16, October 25, 1976
* Michael Marino, 14, October 25, 1976
* Gregory Godzik, 17, December 12, 1976
* John Szyc, 19, January 20, 1977
* Jon Prestidge, 20, March 15, 1977
* Matthew Bowman, 19, July 5, 1977
* Robert Gilroy, 18, September 15, 1977
* John Mowery, 19, September 25, 1977
* Russell Nelson, 21, October 17, 1977
* Robert Winch, 16, November 10, 1977
* Tommy Boling, 20, November 18, 1977
* David Talsma, 19, December 9, 1977
* William Kindred, 19, February 16, 1978
* Timothy O'Rourke, 20, June, 1978
* Frank Landingin, 19, November 4, 1978
* James Mazzara, 21, November 24, 1978
* Robert Piest, 15, December 11, 1978
TOP
Childhood
Gacy was unhealthy as a child, he was overweight and did not partake in excercise. He was known to his mother
and sisters as "johnny"he was very close to the female members of his family, but not his father as he dealt with the
discipline. Gacy's father was an alcoholic and was abusive to his wife and children, usually physically and with a belt.
Gacy regularly sought acceptance from his father and strived for his attention instead all he recieved was constant rediculing
with words like "sissy", "Mama's boy" and "stupid".
At the age of 9 gacy was sexually molested by a family friend.
When he was 11 Gacy was took a blow to the head from a swing which caused a blood clot to form, which lay
undetected till Gacy was 16. At this point Gacy began to have blackouts , his father defined this as attention
seeking, After being seen by a doctor gacy was given medication to dessolve the blood clot.
Gacy attended four different high schools but never managed to graduate.
Adulthood
at the age of 20 after an arguement with his father Gacy left the family home and moved to Las Vegas nevada, while
there he began work in a mortuary, he worked there for 3 months before returning to Chicago.
Gacy decided against going back to high school and instead graduated from the northwestern business college, followed by becoming
a management trainee with the Nunn-Bush shoe company in 1964. this is where he first met marlynn myers and they married in the
september of that year.
After completing his Training, Gacy was promoted and became manager of his department. He became involved in local Springfield
organizations, joining the Jaycees and rising to vice-president of the Springfield chapter by 1965.
Following a generous offer from Gacy's father-in-law to make him manager of three KFC restaurants, Gacy and his wife
moved from Illinois and settled in Waterloo, Iowa and had two children a son and a daughter.
In 1965, Gacy had his first sexual experience with a same sex partner a colleague of the Waterloo Jaycees ,whom Gacy had joined
upon his arrival in the city , who performed fellatio upon him while Gacy was drunk.
Gacy worked with great enthusiasm for the Waterloo Jaycees, Giving his all and working hard on several fund-raising projects.
In 1967, they named Gacy "outstanding vice-president" of the Waterloo Jaycees. There was a much steamier side of Jaycee
life in Waterloo,that involved wife-swapping, prostitution, pornography and drugs. Gacy was deeply involved in the majority of
these activities, and cheated regularly on his wife.
The beginning of the crimes
In 1967, gacy began abusing the teenage boys under his management in the restaurants. Gacy opened a "club" in his own basement,
where he would give the youths alcohol before making advances upon them. One teen was encouraged by Gacy to sleep
with Gacy's wife, then blackmailed into giving oral pleasure to Gacy himself. Many impressionable teens were led into falsely
believing Gacy was commissioned into carrying out experiments of a homosexual nature in the interests of 'scientific research',
for which he would pay the youths upto $50
Sexual abuse turns to murder
On January 3, 1972, Gacy, while engaged to what was to be his second wife, picked up 15 year old Timothy McCoy from the Greyhound
bus station in Chicago. McCoy was travelling from michigan to omaha but was offered a sightseeing tour of Chicago by
Gacy, then driven to Gacy's home, The following morning, McCoy was repeatedly stabbed in the chest and buried in Gacy's
crawlspace. According to Gacy, this killing was not intentional, but commited in a moment of panic with a kitchen knife when he
feared the youth was going to attack him.
In July 1975, (Three years later) one of Gacy's employees,John Butkovich,(17 year old) disappeared. Butkovich had recently left
Gacy's employment due to a dispute about back pay. Gacy later admitted he lured Butkovitch to his home (at this point his wife a
nd children were in arkansas visitn gacy's sister) Gacy somehow convinced the youth to let him cuff his wrists behind his back,
then strangled the teen to death and buried his body under the concrete floor of his garage. Butkovich's parents begged the police
to check gacy as there were no other leads, the police returned to the family empty handed.
8 months after the death of Butkovich, Gacy and his second wife seperated and divorced, the killings then began to increase due
to gacy's new amount of privacy. somewhere between the months of April and October, Gacy killed at least eight youths, he then
buried them all in his crawlspace.
In December 1976, yet another employee from the restaurant, Gregory Godzik, went missing. As with Butkovitch, the parents of the
teen requested the police to investigate Gacy,As yet again he was one of the last people known to have spoken to the boy. neither
cases were investigated to the full potential they failed to persue gacy and they failed to uncover his criminal records.
In January 1977, John Szyc, known to be acquainted with Butkovich, Godzik and Gacy, went missing. Gacy later
sold Szyc's Plymouth Satellite to one of his employees. During 1977, Gacy killed a further eight young men, including
the son of a Chicago Police Sergeant. In August 1977, police were alerted when the car that belonged to John had shown
up at a garage Szyc when the same employee to whom Gacy had sold Szyc's car, was arrested for stealing gasoline from a
station while driving the car. Upon investigating the theft, Gacy told officers that Szyc had sold him the car before he
left town. The police did not pursue the matter further.
In December 1977, a 19 year old that had managed to escape gacy's grasp complained that Gacy had kidnapped him at gunpoint and
forced him to perform sexual acts. Chicago police did not act yet again.
In March 1978, Gacy lured Jeffrey Rignall into his car. Gacy used chloroform on the young man, took him back to the house on
Summerdale, raped and tortured him, and dumped him alive in Lincoln Park. the Police had nothing, but Rignall remembered, though
he was chloroformed and the memories were hazy he managed to tell police that he had remembered a black Oldsmobile,which he had
stalked the back streets off the Kennedy Expressway, and some
side streets, until he saw the black Oldsmobile, which he followed to 8213 West Summerdale. Police issued a warrant and arrested
Gacy on July 15. He was facing trial on a battery charge for the Rignall incident when he was arrested in December for the murders
By early 1978, following the February murder of nineteen-yearold William Kindred, Gacy began disposing of his victims in
the Des Plaines River, having filled up his crawlspace with corpses.
Investigation
On December 11, 1978, John Gacy was visiting a Des Plaines pharmacy to discuss a potential remodelling deal with the owner of the
store, (Mr. Phil Torf). While discussing the potential deal with Torf, Gacy was overheard mentioning that his firm hired teenage
boys while he was within earshot of sophomore named Robert Jerome Piest age 15
After Gacy left the store, Piest told his mother, who had come to collect her son - that "some contractor wants to talk to me
about a job." Robert left the store,
promising to return shortly.[64] When Piest failed to return, his family filed a missing persons report on their son with the
Des Plaines Police. The owner of the pharmacy, Phil Torf, named Gacy (whose firm was known to specialize in pharmacy design
and construction) as the contractor Piest had most likely left the store to talk with. Gacy denied talking to Piest when Des
Plaines police called him the next day,[65] and promised to come to the station later that evening to make a statement confirming
this, indicating he was unable to do so as his uncle had just died. At 3:30 a.m., Gacy, covered in mud, arrived at the police
station, claiming he had been involved in a car accident.[66] Upon returning to the station later that day, Gacy flatly denied
any involvement in Robert Piest's disappearance, and denied offering the youth a job.
Des Plaines police were convinced Gacy was behind Piest's disappearance and checked Gacy's record, discovering that he had an
outstanding charge of battery against him in Chicago and had already served a prison sentence in Iowa for sodomy. A search on 13th December of Gacy's house turned up several suspicious items: a 1975 high school class ring, drivers' licenses for other people,
handcuffs, a two-by-four with holes drilled in the ends, books on homosexuality and pederasty, a syringe, clothing too small
for Gacy, and a photo receipt from the pharmacy where Robert Piest worked. Police assigned two, two-man surveillance teams
to follow Gacy, while they continued their investigation of Gacy into Piest's disappearance. Gacy issued a $750,000 civil
suit against the Des Plaines police, demanding the police surveillance cease. The hearing of his suit was scheduled for 22nd December.
after looking into gacy's background they were able to link him to the mysterious disappearances of three more youths. one of gacy's employees alerted police to the strange disappearance of Gregory Godzik,[due to interviewing Gacy's second wife, they learned of the disappearance of John Butkovich and the ring found in Gacy's house was traced to John Szyc. On 18th December,
the Nisson Pharmacy photo receipt found in Gacy's kitchen was traced to a colleague of Piest's who admitted she had placed it in
his parka jacket just before he left the store, proving conclusively Piest had been in Gacy's house. Another employee revealed
Gacy had made him dig trenches in the crawlspace of his house.
Finally On December 20, 1978, two of the surveillance detectives were invited inside gacy's house. where the police noticed the smell of decaying corpses which eminated from the heating ducts. the officers that had entered the property previously had failed to notice this, but this was probably due to it being a particularly cold day and the heating being on. gacy was reported to have stated to the police " you know.... clowns can get away with murder" just a few days before his arrest. December 22, the same day as the hearing of Gacy's civil suit, police obtained a second search warrant to search gacy's property. to keep Gacy out of the way while the search was under taken the police arrested gacy on a minor charge for possession of marijuna, Upon digging in the crawlspace of Gacy's Norwood Park Township residence, police quickly found several human bones and informed investigators they could charge Gacy with murder.
Arrest and confession
After being told that police had found human remains on his property, Gacy, was informed he would now face murder charges. he told officers he wanted to "clear the air," adding he knew he was going to be arrested the night before, when he had spent the evening on the couch in his lawyers' office.
In the early hours of December 22, Gacy made his confession that since 1972, he had committed approximately 25-30 murders, all of whom he (knowingly lied) making claims that they were all teenage male runaways or male prostitutes, whom he would typically pick up from Chicago's Greyhound Bus station or off the streets and lure to his house with either the promise of a job with his construction company or with an offer of money for sex. Once back at Gacy's house, the victim would be handcuffed or tied in another way, then choked with a rope or a board as they were sexually assaulted. Gacy would often stick clothing in their mouths to muffle their screams. All but one of his victims had been killed with a tourniquet, which Gacy referred to as his "rope trick." Occasionally, the victim had convulsed for an "hour or two" after the 'rope trick' before dying.
The victims would usually be lured alone to his house, although on approximately three occasions, Gacy had what he called "doubles" - occasions where he killed two victims on the same evening.
Most victims would then be buried in his crawlspace where, periodically, Gacy would pour quicklime to speed up the decomposition of the bodies. Gacy stated he had lost count of the number of victims buried in his crawlspace and had thrown the final five victims - all killed in 1978 - off the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaines River because his crawlspace was "full." He also confessed to police he had buried the body of John Butkovitch in his garage. To assist officers in their search for the victims buried in his house, Gacy drew a diagram of his basement to show where the bodies were buried.
Accompanied by police, Gacy returned to his house on December 22 and showed police where he had buried Butkovitch's body, then police drove to the spot on the I-55 bridge where he had thrown the body of Piest and four other victims (although only four of the five victims Gacy claimed to have disposed of in this way were ever recovered from the Des Plaines river).
Between December 1978 and March 1979, twenty-nine bodies were found at Gacy's property: twenty-six of the victims were found buried in his crawlspace, one victim was found buried beneath the concrete floor of Gacy's garage, a twenty-eighth victim was found buried in a pit beneath a barbecue in Gacy's back garden and a twenty-ninth victim was found buried beneath the joists of Gacy's dining room floor. Three additional bodies which had been found in the nearby Des Plaines river between June and December 1978 were also confirmed to have been victims of Gacy.
Several of the bodies were found with the ligature used to strangle them still knotted around their neck. In other instances, cloth gags were found lodged deep down the victims' throat, leading the investigators to conclude that thirteen of Gacy's victims died not of strangulation, but of asphyxiation caused by gags shoved down their throats. Some victims were identified due to their known connection to Gacy through PDM Contractors; others were identified due to their personal artifacts being found at 8213 Summerdale: one victim, 17-year-old Michael Bonnin, who had disappeared June 3, 1976 while travelling from Chicago to Waukegan was identified because his fishing license was found at Gacy's home; another youth, Tim O' Rourke, was last heard mentioning that a "contractor" had offered him a job. Of Gacy's identified victims, the youngest were Samuel Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14 years old; the oldest were Russell Nelson and James Mazzara, both 21 years old. Eight of the victims were so badly decomposed that they were never identified.
On April 9, 1979, Robert Piest's body was discovered on the banks of the Des Plaines River: during his autopsy, it was discovered that "paper-like material" had been shoved down his throat while he was alive.
Trial and execution
On February 6, 1980, Gacy's trial began in Chicago. During the trial, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. However, this plea was rejected outright; Gacy's lawyer, Sam Amirante, said that Gacy had moments of temporary insanity at the time of each individual murder, but regained his sanity before and after to lure and dispose of victims.
While on trial, Gacy joked that the only thing he was guilty of was "running a cemetery without a license." At one point in the trial, Gacy's defense tried to claim that all 33 murders were accidental deaths as part of erotic asphyxia, but the Cook County Coroner countered this assertion with evidence that Gacy's claim was impossible. Gacy had made an earlier confession to police, and was unable to have this evidence suppressed. He was found guilty on March 13 and sentenced to death.
Gacy spent the next 14 years studying books on law and filing numerous and exhaustive appeals and motions, all unsuccessful. While awaiting execution, Gacy was interviewed by Robert Ressler as the centerpiece of a documentary about his crimes. The transcripts were published in Ressler's book, I Have Lived In The Monster. Gacy, at one point, claimed that one of them was killed in self defense.
On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, by lethal injection. According to reports, Gacy did not express remorse for his crimes. His last words to his lawyer in his cell were to the effect that killing him would not bring anyone back, and it is reported his last words were "kiss my ass", which he said to a correctional officer while he was being sent to the execution chamber.
Before the execution began, the lethal chemicals unexpectedly solidified, clogging the IV tube that led into Gacy's arm, and prevented any further passage. Blinds covering the window through which witnesses observed the execution were drawn, and the execution team replaced the clogged tube with a new one. Ten minutes later, the blinds were reopened and the execution resumed. It took 18 minutes to complete. Anesthesiologists blamed the problem on the inexperience of prison officials who were conducting the execution, saying that proper procedures taught in "IV 101" would have prevented the error. This apparently led to Illinois' adoption of a different method of lethal injection. On this subject, one of the prosecutors at Gacy's trial, William Kunkle, said, "He still got a much easier death than any of his victims".
After his execution, Gacy's brain was removed. It is in the possession of Dr. Helen Morrison, a witness for the defense at Gacy's trial, who interviewed Gacy and other serial killers in an attempt to isolate common personality traits of violent sociopaths. Examination of Gacy's brain after his execution by the forensic psychiatrist hired by his lawyers revealed no abnormalities.