Trivia
NAME: John wayne gacy
BORN: March 17, 1942
died: may 10, 1994. lethal injection
number of victims: 34
span of killing: January 3, 1972- December 11, 1978
sentence: death penalty (lethal injection)
modus operandi: sodomy. blackmailing young boys into performing oral sex. mainly known for deceiving victims into handcuffs.
" I should have never been convicted of anything more serious than running a cemetery without a license."
- John Wayne Gacy
Early life
Born in Chicago, Illinois John Wayne Gacy was the only son to auto mechanic and homemaker John and Marion Gacy. The second of three children, John suffered an extremely abusive relationship from his father which was at times was demonstrated in front of his school friends.
Friends of Gacy said that his father would often times belittle and beat him without any apparent provocation. Gacy's mother often tried to intervene but the abuse was so frequent that she became submissive. The abuse included beating Gacy with a belt, knocking him unconscious with a broom, and severe emotional abuse.
In 1949 Gacy's parents were informed that their son had been caught fondling a girl with his friend. It was also this year that Gacy was molested by a family friend who was a contractor that would take him in rides in his truck and fondle him. Gacy never told his father about this for fear that his father would blame him.
Due to a heart condition, Gacy was unable to participate in sports. He also suffered from frequent "blackouts" and was hospitalized from these seizures. His father suspected that this was to gain attention and called him a "queer" that was just trying to garner sympathy.
Because of his time in the hospital Gacy's grades took a sharp decline and in return he never graduated high school.
Iowa
Despite the fact that Gacy never graduated from high school he was accepted and graduated from Northwestern Business College in 1963. It was after he graduated he was offered a sales position at a shoe company named Nunn-Bush Shoe Company.
It was through the shoe company's department that Gacy worked in that he met Marylnn Myers. After a nine month courtship the couple married in 1964 and moved into Myers' parents' house that had been vacated for them.
During their courtship Gacy had joined the local Jaycees chapter and quickly rose to prominence due to his highly regarded fundraising for the organization. In April 1964 Gacy was named Key Man of the year for the organization.
In 1966 the couple moved to Iowa and Gacy's father-in-law offered him a very lucrative position managing several branches of KFC's that he owned. Gacy also joined the Iowa chapter of Jaycees that was known for their seedy behavior.
Wife-swapping, pornography, drug use, and prostitution were very prominent in the Iowa chapter and Gacy often cheated on his wife with sex workers. Gacy also opened an exclusive "club" in his basement where members of the Jaycees would drink and play pool.
Vorhees
By 1967 Gacy had already had a couple of homosexual experiences but it was in August of 1967 that he committed his first sexual assault. The victim was 15-year-old Donald Vorhees who Gacy lured into his home on the promise that they could watch pornographic films together.
Gacy then forced Vorhees to perform oral sex on him. Gacy would continue to troll for young boys and manipulated a lot of them under the pretense that he was doing homosexual experiments. Gacy would pay up to $50 to blackmail these boys into staying silent.
In March 1968, Vorhees told his father about the rape and his father immediately went to the police. Gacy adamantly denied the accusations and demanded a polygraph test. The test results showed that Gacy was nervous when asked about the rape.
In August of 1968, Gacy paid one of his 18-year-old employees Russell Schroeder to physically coerce Vorhees into dropping his testimony in the upcoming trial. Schroeder jumped Vorhees in a nearby park by spraying him with mace and tackling him to the ground.
Vorhees managed to escape and immediately reported the incident to the police. Schroeder was arrested the next day and the charges were added to Gacy's pending case.
Before the trial, doctors did a psychiatric evaluation of Gacy and concluded that he had antisocial personality disorder and would not benefit from therapy. They also concluded that he would continue to repeat offenses if he was set free. However, they declared him mentally competent to stand trial.
Gacy entered a plea deal of guilty to a felony offense of sodomy. In December he was convicted and sentenced to ten years in Anamosa State Penitentiary. The day that he went to the Penn his first wife petitioned for divorce, alimony, custody of the children, and all their assets. The court ruled in her favor and Gacy never saw his first wife and two children again.
In June 1970, after serving 18 months of his 10 year sentence Gacy was granted parole with one year probation.
In February 1971 Gacy was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy. The charges were dropped when the boy failed to show up in court. The parole board never learned of this and in June Gacy was off probation.
cruising years aka murders
After marrying new wife Carole Hoff and moving in with her and her step daughters Gacy created his own company PDM. Initially created to tackle minor house construction and repair work the company quickly became successful.
Gacy continued to sexually assault young men and raped one of his younger employees on a business trip to Florida. Upon returning home the youth showed up at Gacy's house and beat him in the front yard. Gacy's mother-in-law pulled him off of Gacy and the boy drove away.
The first murder that Gacy commited was of 16 year old Timothy McCoy. McCoy was a runaway that Gacy picked up from a Greyhound terminal. He convinced him to come back to Gacy's house and drink.
The following morning Gacy woke up to McCoy standing in his doorway with a butcher's knife. Gacy put his hands up in surrender. McCoy accidentally cut Gacy's arm when he lifted the knife upwards. This was proven later in Gacy's interviews.
Gacy then proceeded to slam his head against the wall, wrestled him to the ground, and strangled him to death. Gacy then walked into the kitchen and saw a place set for two with bacon cut and orange juice. He realized that McCoy was cooking breakfast for them both but Gacy panicked and assumed he was going to attack him.
This is what sparked the beginning of what Gacy later called "the cruising years." This span lasted from 1976 to 1978.
Gacy often would cruise and look for youths. Using his infamous "cuff and rope trick" he would don these young boys into cuffs and strangle them to death. The majority of his victims shared a common grave that was underneath the crawl space of his house and underneath the floorboards of his laundry room.
His finals murders included 5 young men that he told police he threw off the I-55 bridge in Des Moines, Iowa. He told police that he was running out of room to stash bodies and considered putting them in his attic. Gacy was concerned about the leakage that the bodies would cause so resorted to throwing them off the bridge. He even claimed that he believed one of the five bodies landed on a barge that was passing under the bridge.
It was also during this time that he divorced his wife Carole over a heated argument regarding balancing the accounting books for his company PDM. Following the divorce and Carole moving out with her daughters, Gacy's neighbors noticed a major shift in his behavior.
His neighbors noticed him coming and going in the early hours of the morning and one even mentioned that they heard screaming coming from his house often.
Investigation and arrest
In December of 1978 Gacy visited a Des Moines pharmacy. While speaking with the pharmacist he noticed a 15-year-old boy Robert Piest that was working at the pharmacy and was speaking loud so the boy could overhear. Gacy was telling the pharmacist he was looking for a part-time teenager to work at his company that he would pay $5 an hour.
Since this was double what Piest was making at the pharmacy he told his parents that he was meeting with Gacy later to discuss the job.
It was when Piest didn't return home that his parents immediately went to the police and told them who he was meeting with. From the security footage and pharmacist from earlier in the day police narrowed it down to Gacy.
Gacy invited the police into his home and adamantly denied that he ever spoke with Piest. After agreeing to come and leave a statement at the police station Gacy arrived covered in mud and claimed he was in a car accident.
However, due to Gacy's time in prison for sodomy and his assault charges the judge ordered to put Gacy under constant surveillance.
When the police searched Gacy's home they found a class ring from a missing person, a shirt that was much too small for Gacy, and several licenses of missing young men.
On December 17th police conducted an interview with Michael Rossi who informed the police that Gacy sold his car to Rossi. He said that Gacy told him that he needed money quick to move to California.
The police conducted an investigation with a cadaver dog trying to indicate whether Piest had been in Gacy's vehicles. The cadaver dog jumped up onto the front seat of Gacy's Oldsmobile and laid down which the dog handler said was "the signal of death."
Gacy was under severe stress due to the investigation and constant surveillance to the point he asked for it to cease by threatening a $750,000 civil lawsuit against the police. Gacy was visibly stressed and was unshaven, tired, and drinking heavily.
It was on the same day that he threatened the lawsuit that the police traced a receipt to the pharmacy in Gacy's possession that belonged to a colleague of Piest's contradicting Gacy's original statement that he had never had any contact with the boy.
On December of 1978 Gacy drove to his lawyer's office to originally to discuss the civil lawsuit but appeared disheveled. He immediately asked for an alcoholic drink and started rambling. He noticed a copy of Daily Herald that featured the missing Piest. Gacy said "the boy...the boy is dead he's in the river."
It was over the following hours into the early morning that Gacy made a rambling confession where he confessed to over 30 murders. He told of how bodies were hidden in the crawlspace of his home, under the floorboards, and in the Des Moines river.
Police rushed over to Gacy's home and noticed he had unplugged the sump pumps to flood the crawlspace. The police simply plugged it back in and waited for the water to drain. The crawled into the crawlspace and immediately found an arm and rotting human flesh. The investigator yelled "Arrest him!...This is a graveyard of children."
Gacy was arrested and sentenced to death row. On the morning of May 9, 1994, Gacy was transferred from the Menard Correctional Center to Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill to be executed. That afternoon, he was allowed a private picnic on the prison grounds with his family. For his last meal, Gacy ordered a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a dozen fried shrimp, french fries, fresh strawberries, and a Diet Coke.That evening, he observed prayer with a Catholic priest before being escorted to the Stateville execution chamber to receive a lethal injection.
