Inside the Mind of a Killer: John Wayne Gacy's Terrifying Legacy
The narrative of John Wayne Gacy, an American serial killer, encapsulates a profoundly disturbing juxtaposition of charm and malevolence. Gacy, a seemingly upstanding member of society, eluded detection while he orchestrated the abduction and murder of at least 33 young men and boys from his suburban home in Illinois. The episode commences with the tragic disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest, whose fate serves as the catalyst for the unraveling of Gacy's heinous crimes. Through a meticulous exploration of Gacy's dual life as both a community leader and a predator, we confront the harrowing reality that the most sinister individuals can masquerade as benevolent figures. This discussion not only delves into the psychological underpinnings of Gacy's actions but also reflects on the societal implications of such monstrosity, ultimately challenging our perceptions of safety and trust in our communities.
Hosts: Michael and Alana are professional historians with a passion for bringing the most captivating and often overlooked criminal events of the past to light. ✨
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The narrative unfolds within a pharmacy located in Des Plaines, Illinois, on the fateful day of December 11, 1978. It is an unremarkable late afternoon, where we find Robert Piest, a responsible fifteen-year-old, concluding his shift. Anticipating the arrival of his mother, Elizabeth, who is set to pick him up, Robert expresses his intention to briefly converse with a local contractor regarding a potential summer job that promises greater financial reward. This contractor, a well-regarded figure within the community, embodies the trustworthiness associated with a good neighbor. However, as Robert steps out into the frigid December air, he mysteriously vanishes, never to be seen alive again. His disappearance catalyzes a horrifying narrative, one that unveils the monstrous realities lurking beneath suburban facades, challenging the very essence of safety and innocence in American neighborhoods.
The discussion swiftly transitions to John Wayne Gacy, a figure whose seemingly exemplary public persona stands in stark contrast to the grotesque reality of his actions. Gacy, a successful building contractor and an active Democratic precinct captain, was the archetype of a community leader—beloved, respected, and seemingly harmless. His social gatherings, marked by extravagant parties and his role as Pogo the Clown, painted a portrait of an affable neighbor. Yet, this public image served as a façade, ingeniously crafted to mask his predatory behavior. The juxtaposition of Gacy’s jovial clown persona and his heinous crimes creates a chilling narrative of deception, where the very traits that garnered community trust enabled his horrific actions.
Delving deeper into Gacy's psyche, we explore his tumultuous upbringing, marked by a violent and abusive father who instilled in him a complex web of aggression and frustration. As Gacy navigated through his formative years, he internalized the brutality he experienced, culminating in a profound desire for control and power. This drive manifested itself in his heinous acts, where the murder of his victims provided him with an illusion of dominance that had eluded him throughout his childhood. The chilling reality is that Gacy's criminal endeavors were not merely acts of violence; they were a twisted expression of a lifelong struggle for control and acceptance, depicting the terrifying potential that lies within the façade of normalcy.
Takeaways:
- The tragic disappearance of Robert Piest serves as the catalyst for uncovering John Wayne Gacy's heinous crimes, profoundly altering perceptions of safety in suburban America.
- Gacy's facade as a respectable community member enabled him to conceal his predatory nature, illustrating the dangers of misplaced trust in seemingly benign individuals.
- The psychological impact of Gacy's abusive upbringing played a significant role in shaping his violent tendencies and insatiable need for control over his victims.
- The investigation into Gacy's crimes highlighted systemic failures in law enforcement, emphasizing the dire consequences of ignoring community concerns and complaints.
- John Wayne Gacy's trial and subsequent conviction marked a pivotal moment in American criminal justice, spotlighting the complexities surrounding the insanity defense in murder cases.
- The aftermath of Gacy's actions led to significant legislative changes, including the establishment of the Missing Child Recovery Act, reshaping how missing children's cases are handled by authorities.
Transcript
The scene is a pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:It's late afternoon and 15 year old Robert Pius is finishing his shift.
Speaker A:He's a good kid.
Speaker A:Responsible.
Speaker A:He tells his mother, Elizabeth, who's going to pick him up, that he'll be just a minute.
Speaker A:He's going to talk to a local contractor about a summer job that could pay more than his current gig.
Speaker A:The contractor is a well known, friendly man, a pillar of the community, a man you'd trust your son with.
Speaker B:Robert Piest walks out of that pharmacy and vanishes into the cold December air.
Speaker B:He is never seen alive again.
Speaker B:His disappearance will unravel a story so monstrous, so profoundly evil, and it will define the very concept of the monster next door.
Speaker B:It'll shatter the fragile sense of safety in the American suburbs and give a face to a new kind of national fear.
Speaker A:I'm Michael.
Speaker B:And I'm Elena.
Speaker A:Today on history's greatest crimes, we're discussing the famous American serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Speaker B:Before the discovery of the crawl space, before the stench that neighbors dismissed as moisture or dead rats, before the discovery of 33 bodies, John Wayne Gacy was by all accounts an exemplary citizen.
Speaker B:He was the man you wanted as your neighbor.
Speaker A:He was a successful building contractor, owner of PDM Contractors, a business that grew rapidly and became a financial success.
Speaker A:He was an active and influential Democratic precinct captain in Norwood Park, a man who knew how to get things done in the community, a man who could get your street paved.
Speaker A:He threw legendary summer block parties, sometimes for 400 plus people, complete with roasted pigs and horseshoe tournaments.
Speaker B:And most famously, he was Pogo the Clown.
Speaker B:He was a member of the local Jolly Jokers Clown club.
Speaker B:And he would don the grease paint and rainbow suit to volunteer at children's parties and charity fundraisers.
Speaker B:He was the man who brought laughter to sick kids in hospitals.
Speaker A:This public Persona wasn't just a mask.
Speaker A:It was an essential tool for his crimes.
Speaker A:His construction business provided a constant legitimate stream of the very demographic he preyed upon.
Speaker A:Teenage boys and young men looking for work.
Speaker A:He could hire them, get to know them, and then lure them to his home under the pretense of discussing pay for a future job.
Speaker B:His political role as a precinct captain built a formidable wall of credibility.
Speaker B:He was photographed with first lady Rosalynn Carter.
Speaker B:He was a man with connections, a man who knew police officers and politicians.
Speaker B:This status made authorities and parents alike hesitant to believe the scattered complaints that trickled in over the years.
Speaker B:The clown Persona was the ultimate grotesque subversion of innocence.
Speaker B:A tool that disarmed suspicion and created a nightmarish dichotomy that would forever brand him in the public consciousness and as the killer clown.
Speaker A:It was a chillingly effective synergy.
Speaker A:The more he invested in his public image as a community leader, the more effectively he could operate as a predator.
Speaker A:The public life wasn't just a cover.
Speaker A:It was his hunting ground.
Speaker B:To understand the monster, we have to go back to the beginning.
Speaker B:In Chicago, Illinois, John Wayne Gacy's early life was a blueprint for violence.
Speaker B: Born in: Speaker B:His father, John Stanley Gacy, was a machinist, a World War I veteran and and a violent, abusive alcoholic.
Speaker A:The elder John Gacy spent much of his time in the basement of their house.
Speaker A:His wife and son and two daughters were prohibited from going down there.
Speaker A:Through the floor, they sometimes heard him talking in different voices.
Speaker A:When he emerged, he was often drunk and likely to be violent.
Speaker A:One evening, he struck his wife so hard that he knocked out some of her teeth.
Speaker A:And then he chased her into the street and.
Speaker A:And beat her some more toward his son.
Speaker B:The abuse was both physical and psychological, a relentless campaign of degradation.
Speaker B:Gacy recalled his father beating him with a razor strap for any perceived misbehavior.
Speaker B:One of his earliest and most vivid memories was being beaten at the age of four for accidentally disarranging some car engine components his father was working on.
Speaker B:But the verbal abuse was a constant, dripping poison, and his father called him dumb and stupid, a sissy, a mama's boy, relentlessly mocking him for his lack of athleticism and his supposed femininity.
Speaker A:Gacy suffered from a congenital heart condition that prevented him from playing sports, which his father viewed as just another failure.
Speaker A:As a teenager, he experienced frequent blackouts and seizures, landing him in the hospital for extended periods.
Speaker A:His father's reaction was not concerned, but contempt.
Speaker A:He openly accused his son of faking the ailments for attention.
Speaker B:Compounding this, Gacy was molested as a child by a family friend, a secret he kept locked away, terrified his father would blame him for that too.
Speaker A:This environment created what psychologists call a profound frustration, aggression complex.
Speaker A:Gacy was trapped, constantly seeking approval of the man who was incapable of giving it, a man who Gacy would later tell his mother, would have killed him if he ever found out his son was gay.
Speaker A:The hatred and violence were directed at the very core of Gacy's emerging identity.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:That led to more criticism from his father, who called him a patsy.
Speaker A:That same year, Gacy's father bought him a car.
Speaker A:He he kept the vehicle's title in his own name until Gacy had paid for it, which took several years.
Speaker A:In the meantime, his father would confiscate the keys if Gacy did not do as he said.
Speaker A:When Gacy purchased an extra set of keys, his father removed the distributor cap and kept it for three days.
Speaker A:Hours after his father replaced the cap, Gacy left home and drove to Las Vegas, Nevada with $136 in his pocket.
Speaker B:In Las Vegas, he first worked for an ambulance service for a bit.
Speaker B:Then he changed to working as a mortuary attendant for three months, observing morticians, embalming bodies, and occasionally serving as a pallbearer.
Speaker B:He slept on a cot behind the embalming room and later confessed that one evening he actually climbed into the coffin of a teenage boy.
Speaker B:There, he embraced and caressed the dead body before seemingly coming to his senses.
Speaker A:And this experience prompted Gacy to return to Chicago.
Speaker B:Back home, Gacy started working as a department manager for a shoe company.
Speaker B: arilyn Myers, a co worker, in: Speaker B:Shortly after, John and Marilyn welcomed a son and then a daughter.
Speaker A:In the meantime, Marilyn's father purchased three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Waterloo, Iowa.
Speaker A:The company moved there so that Gacy could manage the restaurants.
Speaker B:John Wayne Gacy would later describe this period of his life as perfect.
Speaker B: hen Gacy's parents visited in: Speaker A:Gacy opened a sort of club in his basement where his employees could drink alcohol and play pool.
Speaker A:No one seemed to pay too much attention to the fact that although Gacy employed both male and female teenagers, he only socialized with the boys.
Speaker B:But in hindsight, it's now clear that Gacy was experimenting during this time with just how far he could go.
Speaker A:When teenage male employees came to his home to socialize, he gave many of them alcohol before he made sexual advances.
Speaker A:If the employees responded negatively, he, Gacy, would claim his advances were jokes or a test of morals.
Speaker B:Around the same time, Gacy joined the local Jaycees chapter.
Speaker B:If you don't know, the Jaycees, also known as the United States Junior Chamber, is a leadership training service organization.
Speaker A:And being part of the Jaycees was good professionally for John wayne Gacy.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:But behind closed doors, Gacy and other members were heavily involved in drug abuse, pornography, prostitution and wife swapping.
Speaker B:But even beyond his wild social behavior, John Wayne Gacy lived an even more duplicitous life that his friends didn't know about.
Speaker A: In August of: Speaker A:Gacy lured the boy to his house with the promise of showing him some heterosexual pornography that was regularly played at Jaycee events.
Speaker A:While watching it, Gacy plied the boy with alcohol and persuaded him to engage in mutual oral sex.
Speaker A:Gacy apparently told the boy that you have to have sex with a man before you start having sex with women.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker B:Over the next few months, Gacy abused several other teenage boys.
Speaker B:Another boy who was an employee who washed floors and cleaned the kitchen at one of Gacy's restaurants.
Speaker B:The employee later explained that Gacy had offered to drive him home after work.
Speaker B:One evening they ended up at Gacy's house.
Speaker B:Gacy's wife was absent this time because she was in the hospital actually giving birth to their second child like before.
Speaker A:Gacy served the employee alcohol and while they were watching pornography and Gacy attacked him and strangled him until he nearly passed out.
Speaker A:When the boy woke up, Gacy said that he hadn't meant to hurt him.
Speaker A:He then drove him home and a few days later, he fired that employee.
Speaker B:Word of the boy's stories spread through the town and eventually other boys came forward who told similar accounts.
Speaker A:In an effort to clear his name, Gacy asked if he to be given a lie detector test and he failed it.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker A:He asked to be given another one and he failed that one too.
Speaker A:And in the county attorney's office, it was said that the only answer that he got right was his name.
Speaker B: In August of: Speaker B:Gacy didn't want the boy to testify at his upcoming trial.
Speaker B:The employee drove the boy into the woods outside of town and and sprayed mace into his eyes, then beat him up and told him not to testify.
Speaker B:The boy ultimately broke free and made his way through a cornfield.
Speaker B:When he got back into town, he went to the police and gave them the name of his attacker.
Speaker B:And of course the employee very quickly then named John Wayne Gacy as the man behind it all.
Speaker A:The police quickly arrested Gacy and charged him with sodomy and for hiring someone to assault the witness in a court case.
Speaker A:Gacy was also ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Speaker A:Two doctors concluded that he had an antisocial personality disorder, he was unlikely to benefit from any treatment, and that his behavior pattern was likely to bring into repeated conflict with society.
Speaker A:However, and perhaps most importantly, they also concluded that Gacy was mentally competent to stand trial.
Speaker B: In November of: Speaker B:And in a true act of victim blaming, Gacy claimed that the boy had offered himself to gacy and that Gacy had simply acted out of curiosity.
Speaker A:His story was not believed by pretty much anyone and he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
Speaker A:The judge said that the severity of the sentence was intended to make certain that, quote, for some period of time, you cannot seek out teenage boys to solicit them for immoral behavior of any kind.
Speaker B:At the same time, Gacy's wife, perhaps understandably, filed for divorce, requesting that she be awarded the couple's home and property, sole custody of their two children, as well as alimony.
Speaker B:The court ruled in her favor, and after the divorce was finalized, Gacy never saw his first wife or children again.
Speaker A:This should have been the end of his story as a free man, a decade behind bars that might have prevented the slaughter to come.
Speaker B:But it wasn't.
Speaker B:Gacy, the master manipulator, became a model prisoner.
Speaker B:He worked in the prison kitchen, organized events, charmed the guards and administration, and after serving only 18 months of his 10 year sentence, he was granted parole.
Speaker A:And in a final catastrophic failure of the system, his criminal records in Iowa were sealed.
Speaker A:One year later, he was given a clean slate and sent back to Chicago, a walking time bomb that the justice system had primed.
Speaker A:Wounded and released back into the world.
Speaker B:John Wayne Gacy didn't operate in a vacuum.
Speaker B: The: Speaker B:The optimism of the post war boom had curdled, replaced by the lingering trauma of the Vietnam war, the deep seated cynicism of the watergate scandal and the economic misery of stagflation.
Speaker B:High inflation coupled with high unemployment.
Speaker A: of the decade to around late: Speaker A: % in: Speaker A:And gas prices themselves rose dramatically, with prices more than doubling in some places.
Speaker A:All of this was part of what would become known as the Great inflation.
Speaker B: In July of: Speaker B:He said, quote, it is a crisis of confidence.
Speaker B:It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
Speaker B:The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A:This was the world Gacy moved through.
Speaker A:A world where trust in institutions, in the government, the police, even in your neighbors, was quite low.
Speaker A:The idyllic image of the American suburb, once seen as a safe haven from the chaos of the urban city was beginning to crack.
Speaker A:The social fabric Carter spoke of was fraying.
Speaker A:And through those tears, monsters could slip through unnoticed.
Speaker B:Gacy's ability to commit dozens of murders from his suburban home is a terrifying embodiment of this crisis.
Speaker B:The parole board's decision to release him early represents a failure of the justice system.
Speaker B:The initial police inaction on complaints against him represents a failure of law enforcement.
Speaker B:And the fact that he could bury a legion of the dead pretty much in his crawl space without detection for years represents a catastrophic failure of community awareness.
Speaker B:He exploited the very idea of the trustworthy neighbor at a time when the nation was was fundamentally questioning what and who it could trust.
Speaker A:After his parole, Gacy used money from his mother to buy a ranch style house in Norwood, just outside Chicago.
Speaker A:This unassuming suburban home would become his abattoir.
Speaker A: Between January: Speaker B:His method was chillingly consistent and relied on deception.
Speaker B:And he'd lure victims with the promise of a job at PDM Contractors.
Speaker B:PDM Contractors stood for painting, decorating and maintenance.
Speaker B:And it was Gacy's construction business.
Speaker B:It started as a small part time business, but quickly evolved into something full time and lucrative.
Speaker B:Gacy would often discuss wages and hours with potential employees, building a sense of legitimacy.
Speaker B:And then occasionally, he would also use a red light and police radio to impersonate an officer and pull over young men.
Speaker B:Once inside his house, the trap was sprung with what he called the handcuff trick.
Speaker A:He would claim to be an amateur magician and persuade his victims to put on handcuffs, promising to show them an escape trick.
Speaker A:One survivor, Tony, later described how Gacy used it as a test.
Speaker A:Gacy put the cuffs on him and Tony, a wrestler, managed to take Gacy down and cuff him instead.
Speaker A:Gacy, who was shocked, told him, you're the only one that not only got out of the handcuffs.
Speaker A:You got them on me.
Speaker A:Tony was lucky.
Speaker A:For those who didn't pass the test, the handcuffs were the beginning of hours of unspeakable rape and torture.
Speaker B:The final act was often the rope trick.
Speaker B:After the victim was subdued, Gacy would take a piece of rope, place it around the victim's neck as if to demonstrate another trick, and then use it as a garret, twisting it with a stick for maximum leverage until the victim was strangled.
Speaker A:The first boy that Gacy killed was 16 year old Timothy McCoy.
Speaker A: hound Bus Terminal in January: Speaker A:And since Timothy's next bus wasn't due until the next day, Gacy offered to take him on a sightseeing tour of Chicago and then drove him to his home.
Speaker A:He made the boy a few drinks and.
Speaker A:And they engaged in sexual activity.
Speaker A:Gacy claimed that early in the morning he woke and saw the boy in the doorway of his room with a kitchen knife in his hand.
Speaker A:Gacy allegedly charged the boy.
Speaker A:They wrestled, Gacy got control of the knife and stabbed him several times.
Speaker A:He then dumped the body into the crawlspace through a trapdoor of his closet.
Speaker A:And a few days later, he went back and buried the boy there.
Speaker B:For years after Gacy's arrest, no one learned the boy's name.
Speaker B:Whenever police spoke of him, they referred to him as the Greyhound busboy.
Speaker B:But this was an important moment for Gacy's evolution into a serial killer.
Speaker B:During that first murder, Gacy said that he realized that death was the ultimate thrill.
Speaker B:This wasn't just about sexual gratification.
Speaker B:It was about absolute power.
Speaker B:Gacy's entire life had been a battle for control against the backdrop of a childhood where he had none.
Speaker B:His father dominated him physically and emotionally.
Speaker A:The murders were the ultimate twisted act of seizing control.
Speaker A:He controlled the lure, the restraints, the torture, the method of death, and even the final disposal of the body.
Speaker A:His public life as a successful businessman and a respected precinct captain was another manifestation of this desperate need for control and authority.
Speaker A:The murders were simply the dark, private expression of the same psychological drive that fueled his public ambition.
Speaker B: cond murder around January of: Speaker B:Two years later, that victim remains unidentified.
Speaker B:He was strangled and placed in Gacy's closet before burial.
Speaker B:Gacy later stated that bodily fluids leaked from the victim's mouth and nose, staining his carpet.
Speaker B:And after that, Gacy regularly stuffed rags, socks, or the victim's own underwear into the mouths of subsequent victims to prevent it from happening again.
Speaker A: In July of: Speaker A:Gacy apparently owed the employee back pay, and when he confronted Gacy about it, Gacy invited him back home, ostensibly to settle the issue of his overdue wages.
Speaker A:At his home, Gacy offered him a drink, then conned him into allowing his wrists to be cuffed behind his back.
Speaker A:Gacy later confessed to having, quote, sat on the kid's chest for a while before he strangled him.
Speaker B:And we should note that many of Gacy's victims had families who looked for them afterwards, and many of them strongly suspected Gacy.
Speaker B:John Butkovich's family called the police more than 100 times over the next three years, urging them to investigate Gacy further.
Speaker A: And throughout the: Speaker A:In 73, Gacy and a teenage employee traveled to Florida to view a property Gacy had purchased.
Speaker A:While there, Gacy raped the employee in their hotel room.
Speaker A:After returning to Chicago, the same employee drove to Gacy's house and beat him in his front yard.
Speaker A:Gacy told people that he had been attacked for refusing to pay the employee for poor quality painting work.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:The next day, Cram and Gacy had several drinks to celebrate his 19th birthday.
Speaker B:To make the moment even more unbelievable, Gacy did this while dressed as Pogo the Clown.
Speaker B:Seemingly in connection to the celebration, Gacy conned Cram into donning handcuffs.
Speaker B:And when Gacy told Cram that he intended to rape him, Cram kicked Gacy in the face and managed to free himself.
Speaker A:At another time, a 26 year old man said that Gacy had offered him a ride to a bar.
Speaker A:As he was driving, Gacy suddenly covered the man's face with a rag soaked in chloroform and the man passed out.
Speaker A:He said that Gacy took him home and tortured and raped him for several hours while he drifted in and out of consciousness.
Speaker A:He woke the next morning at the base of a statue in a park near where he had been picked up.
Speaker A:His pants were unzipped, his body was in pain from sexual assault, and his face was burned from the chloroform.
Speaker A:In the hospital, he learned that the chloroform had caused severe damage to his liver.
Speaker A:The man identified Gacy's picture from among a collection the police had shown him, but the police didn't pursue a charge.
Speaker A:Gacy settled with the man for $3,000.
Speaker B: Over the years of the: Speaker B:They saw him keeping company with young males, hearing his car arrive or depart in the early morning, or seeing lights in his home switch on and off in the early hours.
Speaker B:One neighbor later recollected that for several years, muffled high pitched screaming, shouting and crying coming from Gacy's house had repeatedly awakened her and her son in the early morning.
Speaker A: we mentioned before, between: Speaker A:But what's really crazy is that Gacy continued to mostly look very normal on the outside.
Speaker B:He began performing at hospitals and parades and store openings as Pogo the Clown.
Speaker B:Pogo had a white face, bat shaped red lips and wide blue eyes in the shape of beehives.
Speaker A:Gacy also married, now for a second time.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Gacy and Carol had dated for a short time in high school, and at the time, Carol alleged that she felt that Gacy was more like a brother than a romantic interest.
Speaker A:So there wasn't much of a spark between the two.
Speaker A:But Gacy was kind to Carol's two daughters, which seemed to have convinced her.
Speaker B:Apparently, Gacy actually told Caril about the trouble he had been in back in Iowa, and he also told her that he was bisexual.
Speaker B:But Carol said that she thought he was kidding.
Speaker A:Quite frankly, Carol seemed to have some blinders on because just nine days before they got married, Gacy had been arrested again.
Speaker A:The police report had said that Gacy told a boy that he was a deputy sheriff and ordered the boy into his car.
Speaker A:He sexually assaulted the boy, who was eventually able to jump out of the car.
Speaker A:Gacy subsequently tried to run him over.
Speaker A:For some reason, the charges there were dropped.
Speaker A:It's unclear whether he succeeded in keeping Carol from knowing about the arrest or convinced her that it was a mistake and that he was innocent.
Speaker B:At one point during their marriage, Carol claimed that she found some magazines featuring naked men.
Speaker B:She also found photos, one of which appeared to be a young man with blood on his body.
Speaker A: Throughout the summer of: Speaker A:In the crawl space.
Speaker A:In a back room was a swarm of flies, which she thought might be feeding on whatever was down there, but she assumed it was dead mice, not actual human bodies.
Speaker A:Gacy told her that the odor was the result of a runoff from a broken sewer pipe.
Speaker B:At the same time, Gacy secretly dug graves in the cramped 4 foot high crawl space under his house.
Speaker B:He packed the bodies in, sometimes one on top of another, using hundreds of pounds of quicklime to try and accelerate decomposition and manage the ever worsening smell.
Speaker A:The sheer audacity is breathtaking.
Speaker A:He even had one of his future victims, 17 year old PDM employee Gregory Godzik, dig some of the trenches, telling the boy it was for a plumbing issue.
Speaker A: Gregory Godzik in December of: Speaker B: In: Speaker B:Interestingly, Carol filed for divorce based on the false grounds of Gacy's infidelity with women.
Speaker B:As noted, she had seen hints of Gacy's secret life.
Speaker B:She later explained that she had seen Gacy bringing teenage boys into his garage in the early hours and also found men's wallets and identification inside the house.
Speaker B:But when she had confronted Gacy about these items, he informed her angrily that it was none of her business.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:His fiance moved into his house in April, but they argued often and after a few months he told her he was leaving for a week on business and wanted her gone by the time he got back.
Speaker B:The complete absence of anyone else at home made it much easier for Gacy to continue acting on his violent compulsions.
Speaker B:Within months of his divorce from Carol, Gacy had killed six more boys who he buried under his house.
Speaker B:Gacy was, in effect, living directly on top of his own Private Cemetery.
Speaker A:26 bodies were eventually recovered from the crawl space.
Speaker A:Three more were found buried elsewhere on the property, one under the garage floor.
Speaker A:The house was no longer a home.
Speaker A:It was a mass grave, a monument to a secret history of unimaginable suffering.
Speaker B: By late: Speaker B:There was no more room for his secrets.
Speaker B:So Gacy, ever the pragmatist, started using the nearby Des Plaines river as his new dumping ground.
Speaker B:This is where he disposed of his final four victims.
Speaker B:It was a chillingly practical solution to a logistical problem, and it would ultimately be his own undoing.
Speaker A:The investigation into the disappearance of Robert Pius, John Wayne Gacy's last victim, was different from the others.
Speaker A:For years, parents of the missing boys had pointed fingers at Gacy, only to be dismissed by police who were swayed by his high community standing.
Speaker A:But this time, the Des Plaines police, led by a determined lieutenant named Joseph Kazenczic, were relentless.
Speaker B:They quickly learned Piast was last seen with Gacy.
Speaker B: crucially, they unearthed his: Speaker B:The conviction, whose records had been sealed, Cosenzak put Gacy under 24.
Speaker B:7 surveillance.
Speaker B:His teams, including officers Mike Albrecht and Ronald Robinson, followed Gacy's every move, documenting his erratic behavior.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:They didn't find a body, but they found a trove of deeply disturbing items.
Speaker A:Multiple police badges, handcuffs, books about pederasty, and a 2x4 with holes drilled into it consistent with a torture device.
Speaker A:Most importantly, in the trash can, they found a photo receipt from Nissan Pharmacy, the very store where Robert Pius worked and was the last seen.
Speaker B:The net was tightening.
Speaker B:On December 21st, police arrested Gacy.
Speaker B:The next day, after hours of interrogation, he finally broke.
Speaker B:But he didn't confess in the first person.
Speaker B:He tried to create a legal shield for from the very beginning.
Speaker A:He created an alter ego, a dark personality he called Jack.
Speaker A:He told the stunned detectives, john didn't do it.
Speaker A:Jack did it.
Speaker A:He claimed this other personality, a product of his abusive upbringing, would take over during the murders.
Speaker A:It was a desperate, transparent attempt to build an insanity defense.
Speaker B:He then drew a map, a diagram of his house with X's marking the approximate locations of the bodies buried in the crawl space.
Speaker A:What followed was a scene of unimaginable horror broadcast to a stunned nation.
Speaker A:Investigators in protective gear and respirators began the slow, grim work of excavating the crawl space.
Speaker B: Before the: Speaker A: The decade of the: Speaker A:It included the subject of this episode, John Wayne Gacy, but also others like Ted Bundy, the Son of Sam, the Zodiac Killer, among others.
Speaker A:These cases received intense, sustained and sensational media coverage, which helped create a new and terrifying archetype of the serial killer.
Speaker B:Gacy's killer clown moniker was a media friendly hook that made the story both horrifying and grotesquely fascinating, transforming a banal, pathetic man into a figure of mythic evil.
Speaker A: became more prevalent in the: Speaker A:The first was the rise of the interstate highway system in the US that allowed killers to travel greater distances faster and remain anonymous.
Speaker A: es of Bonnie and Clyde in the: Speaker B: In addition, the: Speaker B:This period marked a turning point in criminal investigation and understanding the nature of serial murder.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:This was the early stage of criminal profiling, which would ultimately help law enforcement understand and identify serial offenders.
Speaker A:But at this point, it was still a work in Progress.
Speaker B: And the: Speaker B:Concerning the serial killer portion of those murders, it was partially due to changes in society that created an environment where predators could more easily find vulnerable victims.
Speaker B:Increased drug use, hitchhiking, and the hippie movement contributed.
Speaker B:So did changes in family dynamics, with more women entering the workforce and living alone, which increased opportunities for certain types of offenders.
Speaker B: orms around casual sex in the: Speaker A: rise in violent crime in the: Speaker A:Milk cartons began featuring the faces of missing children.
Speaker A:Parents became terrified of the man in the white van, the stranger that offered candy.
Speaker A:Gacy became the face of that fear.
Speaker A:Even though the vast majority of children and child abductions are committed by family.
Speaker B:Members and not strangers, Gacy's legacy is not just his staggering body count.
Speaker B:It's the cultural fear he helped to create, a fear that reshaped American parenting and childhood for a generation.
Speaker B:In fact, the Gacy murders eventually led to the creation of the Missing Child Recovery Act.
Speaker B:At the time of the murders, Illinois police had to wait 72 hours before initiating a search for a missing child or teenager.
Speaker B:After Gacy, the waiting period was removed and a national network aimed at locating missing children was gradually formed.
Speaker B:This has since developed into the Child Abduction Emergency, commonly known as an Amber Alert.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:29 bodies unearthed from his property.
Speaker A:Guilt was not really in question.
Speaker A:The only question was sanity.
Speaker B:The defense argued that Gacy was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Speaker B:They put psychologists on the stand who testified that Gacy suffered from schizophrenia and a personality disorder, a Jekyll Hyde sort of type of personality.
Speaker B:They argued that his abusive childhood created a compulsion to kill, projecting the hatred for his father onto his victims.
Speaker A:The prosecution painted a very different picture.
Speaker A:They argued that Gacy was a meticulous, calculating predator who stalked his victims, had graves dug for their burial, used an intricate rope trick to kill almost all of them.
Speaker A:And then plotted his own insanity defense.
Speaker B:Forensic psychologists for the prosecution testified that Gacy's crimes were premeditated and deliberate, not the result of a psychotic break.
Speaker B:Chief Prosecutor William Kunkel, Jr. Told the jury, quote, if you think you can excuse this man of these crimes, they then every hitman and every criminal must be excused too.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A:The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for less than two hours.
Speaker A:They found him guilty on all 33 counts of murder.
Speaker A:The next day, they sentenced him to death.
Speaker B:John wayne Gacy spent 14 years on death row at Menard correctional Center.
Speaker B:He showed no remorse.
Speaker B:In one interview from prison, he said, quote, how can you feel relief about something you still don't understand?
Speaker B:Because they say, I'm guilty, I'm supposed to feel guilty.
Speaker B:Now I don't.
Speaker B:I have no remorse, end quote.
Speaker A:In another infamous quote, he stated, quote, I should never have been convicted of anything more serious than running a cemetery without a license, end quote.
Speaker B:He spent his time in prison painting bizarre, crude paintings of clowns, skulls, Elvis, even a self portrait as pogo.
Speaker B:This, what they would call murderabilia became a source of morbid fascination and controversy, with galleries exhibiting his work for thousands of dollars, while victims families protested, forced to see the man who destroyed their lives celebrated as some kind of twisted artist.
Speaker A:John Wayne Gacy didn't just kill 33 people.
Speaker A:He killed an idea.
Speaker A:The idea that the suburbs were safe, that a friendly neighbor was just that, that a clown was a figure of joy.
Speaker A:He became a permanent fixture in the American psyche.
Speaker A:The boogeyman who proved that the greatest monsters can wear the most ordinary and sometimes even the most cheerful of faces.
Speaker B: th of: Speaker B:His last meal, he ordered fried chicken, fried shrimp, french fries, and fresh strawberries.
Speaker B:A final nod to his time as a KFC manager and what he called the happiest days of his life.
Speaker A:In the lead up to his execution, thousands gathered outside the correctional center.
Speaker A:A vocal majority were in favor of the execution.
Speaker A:Some wore T shirts bearing satirical slogans such as, quote, no tears for the clown.
Speaker B:The procedure took a total of 18 minutes.
Speaker B:And as one prosecutor from Gacy's trial said, quote, he got a much easier death than any of his victims.
Speaker A:There are conflicting reports of his last words.
Speaker A:The most infamous version, the one that has entered into legend, is that he snarled, kiss my ass.
Speaker A:Although his attorney, who was present, has stated that those words were spoken to a prison official and were not part of any official statement prior to his execution.
Speaker B:But we'll leave you with a different quote, one that Gacy gave that perfectly encapsulates the chilling duality that allowed him to hide in plain sight for so long.
Speaker B:He once said, quote, a clown can get away with murder.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A:That's all for now.
Speaker A:I'm Michael.
Speaker B:And I'm Elena.
Speaker A:Until next time.
Speaker A:Stay curious, Sam.
