Robert Piest

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Norwood Park Township, near Chicago, Illinois.

He became known as the Killer Clown due to his public performances as a clown prior to the discovery of his crimes.

Gacy committed all of his known murders inside his ranch-style house.

Typically, he would lure a victim to his home and dupe them into donning handcuffs on the pretext of demonstrating a magic trick.

He would then rape and torture his captive before killing his victim by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote.

Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, and three were buried elsewhere on his property; four were discarded in the Des Plaines River.

John Wayne Gacy was born at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on March 17, 1942, the second of three children and only son of John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robison.

His father was an auto repair machinist and World War I veteran, and his mother was a homemaker.

Gacy was of Polish and Danish ancestry, and his family was Catholic.

Gacy was close to his mother and two sisters, but had a difficult relationship with his father, an alcoholic who was verbally and physically abusive to his family.

The elder Gacy frequently belittled his son, calling him "dumb and stupid" and comparing him unfavorably with his sisters.

One of Gacy's earliest childhood memories was of his father beating him at age four for accidentally disarranging car engine components.

His mother tried to shield her son from his father's abuse, which resulted in accusations that he was a "sissy" and a "mama's boy" who would "probably grow up queer".

In 1949, Gacy's father whipped him after he and another boy were caught sexually fondling a young girl.

The same year, a family friend began to occasionally molest Gacy.

Gacy never told his father, afraid that his father would blame him.

Despite their challenging relationship, Gacy loved his father, but felt he was "never good enough" in his father's eyes.

Gacy was an overweight and unathletic child.

Because of a heart condition, he was told to avoid sports.

In the fourth grade, Gacy began to experience blackouts.

He was hospitalized on occasion because of these episodes and also, in 1957, for a burst appendix.

Gacy later estimated that between the ages of 14 and 18, he had spent almost a year in hospital; he attributed the decline of his grades to missing school.

Gacy's medical condition was never conclusively diagnosed; his father suspected he was malingering.

On one occasion, he openly accused his son of faking as he lay in a hospital bed.

In 1960, at age 18, Gacy became involved in politics, working as an assistant precinct captain for a local Democratic Party candidate.

This led to more criticism from his father, who called him a "patsy".

The same year, Gacy's father bought him a car.

He kept the vehicle's title in his own name until Gacy had paid for it, which took several years.

His father would confiscate the keys if Gacy did not do as he said.

In April 1962, Gacy purchased an extra set of keys; in response, his father removed the distributor cap, keeping the component for three days.

Hours after his father replaced the cap, Gacy left home and drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, with $136 to his name in the hope of residing with a cousin.

Gacy worked in the Las Vegas ambulance service before being transferred to Palm Mortuary.

He worked as a mortuary attendant for three months, observing morticians embalming bodies and occasionally serving as a pallbearer.

He slept on a cot behind the embalming room and later confessed that one evening, while alone, he clambered into the coffin of a teenage male, embracing and caressing the body before experiencing a sense of shock.

Gacy had previously been convicted in 1968 of the sodomy of a teenage boy in Waterloo, Iowa, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but served eighteen months.

He murdered his first victim in 1972, had murdered twice more by the end of 1975, and murdered at least thirty victims after his divorce from his second wife in 1976.

The investigation into the disappearance of Des Plaines teenager Robert Piest led to Gacy's arrest on December 21, 1978.

His conviction for thirty-three murders (by one individual) then covered the most homicides in United States legal history.

Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980.

He was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.