John Wayne Gacy

                     D.O.B.: March 17th , 1942
                       D.O.D.: May 10th, 1994

                   

                        Gacy, a middle child, was born in Chicago in 1942. He had two sisters, one older and one younger.  Gacy seemed to have a normal childhood with the exception of his relationship with his father, John Wayne Gacy Sr.   He desperately wanted to gain his father’s attention but failed to win him over.

                        Gacy was struck in the head with a swing at the age of 11.   Until he was 16 he suffered from blackouts, then he was diagnosed with a blood clot on the brain.  His senior year he attended four high schools and never finished school. He left Chicago and headed for Las Vegas . While there, he worked part time as a janitor for Palm Mortuary.  A few months later he returned to Chicago because he was unhappy in Vegas. Gacy  enrolled in a business college and developed a talent for salesmanship.  Upon graduating, he went to work as a management trainee at Nunn Bush Shoe Co. in downtown Chicago . In1964, he married Marilyn Myer, a co-worker.                       

                        In 1968, the future serial killer would be arrested for the first time.  To those who knew him the charge of attempting to coerce a male employee into homosexual acts, came as a big surprise.  Gacy pled guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in Iowa ’s State Men’s Reformatory in Anamosa. His wife filed for divorce and Gacy told her he never wanted to see him or the kids.  He would consider them dead. After serving 18 months, he was paroled on Oct. 18th 1971 .  Eight months after his release, he was arrested again and charged with attempted rape and disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped after the victim appeared in court for a hearing.

                        John Wayne Gacy returned to Chicago and remarried in1975.  A year later his second wife divorced him  because she felt she couldn’t deal with moods and his obsession with homosexual magazines.  In 1978 police forced their attention back on Gacy.  A teenage stock boy at a Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines had come up missing and Gacy was the last person seen with the boy prior to his disappearance. The investigators ran a background check on Gacy and were surprised to find that he had previously served time for committing sodomy on a teenage boy.  The investigators were able to obtain a warrant to search Gacy’s house. Investigators entered a crawl space beneath the home.  Immediately a musty smell was noticed.  They returned without any noticeable incriminating evidence. Soon they realized they had seized a piece of critical evidence.  A ring found at Gacy’s house was said to belong to a teenager who had disappeared a year earlier. A receipt for a roll of film that belonged to a co-worker of the missing teenager was also discovered.

 

Confessions

                        On Dec. 22nd, 1978 , Gacy went to the police to confess.  Shortly into the confession, he revealed that there were four Johns. 1)John the contractor, 2) John the clown, 3) John the politician, and 4)Jack Hanley, the killer.  He on to make voluntary confessions to over two dozen murders and drew a detailed map to the locations of 28 shallow graves under his house and garage.

                        By the end of January, police and construction workers had gutted the entire house and discovered 27 bodies. Also during this time four bodies had been discovered  in the Des Plaines River and were linked to Gacy by personal items found in his home.  

                       To find out more about John Wayne Gacy and his cases visit, http://crimemagazine.com/boykillergacy.htm

 

                                                                                                     

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