May 10th 1994: The Execution of John Wayne Gacy
Born in Chicago on March 17th 1942 John Wayne Gacy was the middle child to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robinson. His father was a mechanic, while his mother looked after the children and kept the family home. John was close to his mother and two sisters but had a difficult relationship with his father. His father had served in The First World War and was prone to drinking a lot. He was physically abusive towards his wife and children but John got a much harder time than the others. As a child he would be called dumb and stupid by his father and be called a sissy when his mother would try to shield him from the harsh beatings. From a young age, his father instilled the beatings with the fact that John was a Mamma's boy and probably grow up to be a queer. The negative connotation to the idea of being gay is something that is believed to have shaped the life that John Wayne Gacy would go on to lead.
In 1949 John and another boy were caught fondling a young girl and when John Stanley found out about this, a brutal beating occurred. Later that year, John Wayne was sexually molested multiple times by a family friend. However, afraid of the beating he would endure from his father, John Wayne never told his father of the abuse. He was terrified to think of the blame and shame his father would put on him.
John Wayne never finished high school, this was largely due to the amount of time he was absent from school. As a teen he would suffer with blackouts, his father presumed that these episodes were a stunt pulled by his son in order to gain sympathy or attention. However, John Wayne did attend business college. John Wayne was a likeable character who could talk and charm, a born salesman. After graduation he began working at a shoe company and was quickly promoted to manager. He became engaged to a co-worker in 1964, Marlynn Myers.
John Wayne joined The Jaycees in 1964. They are an organisation that provide training and opportunities to young men, through mentoring on business and leadership skills. John Wayne claims that another member of The Jaycees plied him with drinks one night in 1964 and performed oral sex on him while he was drunk. This didn't stop John Wayne from staying and rising to vice-president in 1965, just one year later.
Marlynn Myers came from a wealthy family and when she married John Wayne in 1964 her father requested that the couple move to Iowa and John Wayne take over the running of the family chicken restaurants, having bought franchises of KFC. John Wayne obliged and took over the running of the restaurants. Marlynn and John when on to have two children, a son in 1966 and a daughter in 1967. John proclaims that this period in his life was perfect. His father privately apologised for the beatings he was given as a child and John finally felt accepted and at peace in his relationship with both of his parents for the first time in his life. However, during this time John Wayne was using his home as a clubhouse for employees to hang out in, get drunk and play pool. He would get his young male employees drunk before making advances on them, however, if they refused his advances he would laugh and pretend it was a joke.
It was in 1967 that John Wayne Gacy stepped up his method in achieving sexual gratification. He would lure young men to his home under the pretence of conducting homosexual experiments in order to persuade young men into performing oral sex on him. He would tell them that they needed to first have sex with a man before having sex with a woman. Marlynn was also involved in sleeping with one of these young men and John Wayne then used this information as blackmail on the youth. In March 1968 the first of the known sexual assault victims told his father of the assault. As a result, John Wayne was arrested but with the support of the Jaycees, he gathered a lot of public support for his innocence. John was obviously still quite worried about the charges as he asked a young employee to attack the victim of the sexual assault. He was beaten but reported the attack to the police. When asked by police, the attacker admitted that he had done so under the command of John Wayne Gacy. He decided to plead guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Marlynn filed for divorce and although John only spent 18 months of the 10 year sentence, he walked out of prison a divorced man.
In June of 1970 Gacy was released from prison under strict parole conditions. He would need to relocate to Chicago and was ordered to live with his mother, he was restricted to a 10 pm curfew. While in prison he had been described as a model inmate and never caused any trouble. Upon his release he swore he was going to rebuild his life and would never go back to prison. Unfortunately, this would not be the case and within a year, John Wayne Gacy would once again find himself on the wrong side of the law.
In 1971 Gacy was charged with the sexual assault of a teenage boy however the case was dropped when the boy failed to appear in court. Later the same year he was accused of luring a teenage boy for oral sex by impersonating a police officer. These charges were also dropped due to the fact the court learned of a blackmail attempt on John Wayne Gacy. Tragically, the parole board in Illinois and Iowa were not linked and the Iowa parole board never learned of these accusations against Gacy, his parole came to an end in October 1971.
Before his parole came to an end Gacy and his mother moved into a new home at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue. Gacy was an outstanding member of the community and was extremely helpful to those living around him. He would walk neighbours dogs, plow snow, loan tools and host massive neighbourhood parties, expecting nothing in return. Gacy married again, this time to Carole Hoff in July 1972. Shortly before the wedding, Gacy's mother moved out of the home. Carole Hoff was told by Gacy that he was bisexual. He would often work late at his construction company and would frequently bring young men over to the house to have sex with. By 1975, Carole was informed that they would never have sex again. Carole Hoff was understandably frustrated with her husband. She would question him about why he was late home, why was there so many young men around the house, why did he only have gay pornographic images and videos but she was told that it was none of her business. The couple were divorced in early 1976 under the false pretence that John Wayne Gacy was having continued bouts of infidelity involving other women.
By the time John married Carole he had already started to kill. In January of 1972, 6 months before his marriage to Carole, John had picked up a teenage boy at a local bus station. He told the boy that he could spend the night and that he would drop him back tot he bus the following morning. Timothy McCoy was just 16 years old. Timothy woke early the next day and began to make breakfast for him and John. As the breakfast was nearly ready he decided to go into the bedroom where John was sleeping and wake him, without thinking, he carried a kitchen knife that he had been using to prepare the meal into the room. As John woke up to the sight of the boy standing in the room with the knife, he panicked, fearing for his life he fought Timothy. He wrestled the knife out of his hands and began to stab the teenager as he straddled him. Gacy said it was then he experienced a mind numbing orgasm and while he felt drained after it, he realised that death was the ultimate thrill. When Gacy was cleaning up the crime scene he came across the table in his kitchen which had been set for two and the array of breakfast items splashed around the kitchen, only then did he realise he had mistaken the reason for Timothy entering his room.
To his neighbours, John Wayne Gacy was an outstanding citizen. He had given up his part-time job as a cook to run his expanding construction company full-time. He worked at charity events, dressing as Pogo The clown to entertain children. Most who knew him said that they liked him and never would have suspected what would be uncovered.
He would lure his victims under the pretence of being offered a job within his construction company. John was a smooth talker from his days as working in sales and could easily convince the young men he was targeting to come back to his home. Once he had his victims he would pretend to do a magic trick using a pair of handcuffs which he would escape from, telling his victims to try the trick, he would handcuff them. As early as 1975 John was on the police radar. They noted a large number of young men who would come and go from the Gacy residence. However, despite reports that Gacy was cruising the uptown areas at night, police never found a young man they talked to that had anything untoward to say about Gacy.
In March of 1977 Jeff Rignall made a complaint about Gacy, claiming he was kidnapped by him after being offered marijuana. Rignall was chloroformed and when he awoke, he was in the home of John Wayne Gacy with his hands cuffed. He was sexually assaulted before Gacy let him go. Rignall reported the assault to police but there was a hesitancy to investigate the matter. Rignall claimed that he began to feel crazy and like Gacy was infact the model citizen people proclaimed him to be. In a civil court, Gacy was ordered to pay $3,000 and charged with battery.
In December of 1977 another complaint was made about Gacy, alleging that he had kidnapped a 19 year old male. Gacy was arrested but in this instance The Assistant State's Attorney never prosecuted Gacy as there was a statement made by Gacy saying the sexual acts carried out were consensual and that no kidnapping had taken place.
The following year in December of 1978 Elizabeth Piest arrived to the Nisson Pharmacy to collect her 15 year old son Robert from work. Unfortunately Gacy had an appointment at the pharmacy that evening, he had been called in to look at the premises as a potential contractor for a planned remodelling job. While there, Gacy mentioned that his company often employed young men to work and offered a very good starting wage. Robert was smitten with this idea and agreed to meet with Gacy after his shift ended with the prospect of getting a new, better paying job. Robert went out to his mother, telling her exactly what was going on and asking permission to go, promising to be back soon.
Robert Piest never did return and his family filed a missing person report with police, just before 11.30 pm that very evening. Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak had a son who, like Robert Piest, attended Maine West High School. He was hit particularly hard by the disappearance the teen and decided to investigate the case to the best of his ability. He wasn't long looking before he found the name John Wayne Gacy as the possible contractor who was at the pharmacy talking to Robert. Gacy was phoned about coming into the station to answer some questions and said he could be there within 30 minutes, this was only 24 hours after The Piest family had reported Robert missing. Gacy showed up at 3.20 am with mud covering his clothes and shoes, he was sent away and told to come back when Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak was there. Lieutenant Koxenczak had gone home after Gacy had failed to show up after a length of time.
Finally on December 13th Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak questioned Gacy and also obtained a warrant for his home. While holding Gacy in custody a search was carried out. During which they seized a several items including a receipt that The Piest family claimed belonged to Robert. However, this only proved that Robert was at John Gacy's house and was not proof of any crime occurring. Gacy was released from custody later that night but upon his release, he was shadowed by two police officers, 24/7. Gacy was aware of the officers tailing and watching. He would joke that they were his body guards and make light of the situation, enjoying their attention at times. He would offer them coffee and let them know where he was going in an attempt to gain their trust and in return make himself seem innocent. One of the officers claims that Gacy once told him that clowns could get away with murder.
By December 15th 1978 police were beginning to close in on some leads in their investigation. The identified a class ring from Maine West High School to that belonging to missing John Szyc who had gone missing in January 1977. They found it among the items that they had seized from Gacy's house. Employees of Gacy told officers of two co-workers that had suddenly vanished.
Feeling the pressure from the surveillance team, Gacy paid a visit to his lawyer on December 20th. Authorities believed that Gacy was a suicide risk at this point as he appeared to be stressed. On the following day, he was arrested for giving marijuana to an employee at a gas station. While police wanted Gacy in custody, they had little interest in the small drug charge he had been brought in on, the arrest was made to prevent him from killing himself before the could solve the investigation involving a growing number of young teens and men. The same day, police obtained a second search warrant for the home of John Wayne Gacy.
This time police pressed Gacy, questioning him on where the body of Robert Piest was, telling him that they were prepared to dig up floors if they needed to. Gacy admitted that he had once killed a man in self defence and buried the body under the garage, cooperating with officers that he even drew a map to exactly where they would find the body.
While executing the search warrant this time, officers were far more thorough and found a trapdoor that led to the crawl space beneath the home. They initially found evidence of three different bodies. The search continued for several days and authorities found 29 bodies, nearly all found within the crawl space. Gacy admitted to 32 murders. He claimed that he was not responsible for the murders as he had an alter ego who carried out the crimes, Jack Hanley. By early January Robert Piest had still not been found, though Gacy had already admitted to killing him. Gacy told police where to find a jacket belonging to Piest. Four more victims were found in a nearby river and Robert Piest's body was one of them found in April 1979. The reason that the bodies were dumped in the river is because the crawl space beneath the house had become too full to put any more bodies down there and Gacy had to resort to finding alternative ways of disposing of the bodies.
On April 10th 1979, the house of John Wayne Gacy was torn down.
Charged with 33 counts of murder, Gacy died at 12.58 am on this day 1994, after stating one last time that he was innocent.
Following his death his brain was extracted and is currently owned by Dr. Helen Morrison who hopes that one day science will be able to give us a way to examine a brain and establish if there is an underlying reason that some people become killers.
Comments
Post a Comment