John Wayne Gacy, one of America’s most infamous serial killers, murdered 33 young men between 1972 and 1978.
During the day, he was the adored “Pogo the Clown,” bringing joy to kids at parties and hospitals. However, behind his cheerful facade, he was a dangerous predator.
His final words after spending 14 years on death row would also become well-known.
John Wayne Gacy, one of the most notorious serial killers in America, lived a terrifying double life.
John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, as the only son in a Catholic family with Polish and Danish roots. He had a close bond with his mother and sisters but faced a difficult and often abusive relationship with his alcoholic father, who constantly put him down and punished him severely — even for small mistakes.
Gacy grew up feeling the weight of his father’s abuse, who frequently called him a “sissy” and a “mama’s boy.”
Like many kids, Gacy dreamed of becoming a police officer as he grew up.
As a kid, Gacy really wanted his dad to be proud of him, but he always felt like he wasn’t good enough. This made his childhood pretty messed up and hinted at the bad things to come. He went through some tough stuff early on, like getting hit and abused by a family friend, but he kept it all a secret because he was scared.
When he was eleven, a swing hit him in the head, which caused him to have blackouts that nobody really understood until he turned sixteen. That’s when doctors found blood clots in his brain and took care of it right away.
Gacy had a hard time in school and ended up dropping out of four different high schools. In 1962, he decided to leave home and moved to Las Vegas.
In Las Vegas, he got a job as a mortuary attendant and later worked managing a shoe company and some KFC restaurants. He married Marlynn Myers in 1964, and they had two kids together. But in 1968, his life took a really bad turn when he was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. He got a ten-year sentence but only spent 18 months in prison.
His first known murder happened in 1972 when he killed Timothy McCoy and buried him under his house. Over the next seven years, Gacy would go on to murder at least 32 more young men.
Unfortunately, Gacy’s terrible crimes went unnoticed for a long time.
He would trick his victims into coming with him by offering them jobs or favors, sometimes pretending to be a police officer. Some of them managed to escape his attacks, but most were strangled and buried under his house in the suburbs.
Even though he had many run-ins with the police, he was able to avoid getting caught for years because of the fake image he created.
Everything changed in December 1978 when 15-year-old Robert Piest went missing.
Robert Piest worked evening shifts at the Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, which is a suburb of Chicago, and his mom, Elizabeth, usually picked him up at 9 p.m. One night, when she got there, Robert told her to wait because he needed a minute to talk to ‘some contractor’ about a summer job.
Twenty minutes went by, and when he still hadn’t come back, Elizabeth went inside to check — but Robert was gone.
Feeling anxious, she called one of the pharmacy owners. He confirmed that earlier that day, a contractor named John Gacy had come by, offering summer jobs to local high school boys. The pharmacy owner thought Robert might have gone with Gacy, but when he tried to call, Gacy didn’t pick up.
Hours later, Robert’s parents decided to call the police.
Detectives looked into Gacy’s criminal history and found out that in 1968 he had been sentenced to ten years in Iowa for sodomy, but he only served two. The details of the crime weren’t clear, but this information raised a lot of concerns.
During searches of his house and questioning, the police found Gacy’s secret crawlspace packed with bodies and proof of his terrible crimes.
Gacy admitted to murdering many young men, describing his two sides: the nice clown “Pogo” and the evil “Jack,” who did the killings. He drew a map for the police, showing them where to find 27 of his victims, all hidden in the crawlspace under his ranch-style home in suburban Chicago.
He only told the whole story of his crimes after talking to his lawyers, realizing he couldn’t escape from justice.
In a long and rambling speech that went on for hours, Gacy confessed that he had been the judge, jury, and executioner for many people, and now he wanted to do the same for himself. He claimed to have killed at least thirty victims, most of whom were buried in his crawl space, while five others were thrown into the Des Plaines River.
He dismissed his victims as male prostitutes, hustlers, and liars, and shockingly mentioned that he sometimes woke up to find dead, strangled kids with their hands tied behind their backs, thinking their bodies were his property.
In 1980, John Wayne Gacy was found guilty and given a death sentence.
Looking back on the verdict in Netflix’s Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes, he chillingly asked, How can you feel relief about something you still don’t understand?
He continued to deny any sense of responsibility, saying, Because they say I’m guilty, I’m supposed to feel guilty now? I don’t. I have no remorse.
Gacy spent 14 years on death row, where he became really into painting, creating over 2,000 pieces of art — many showing him as Pogo the Clown.
Gacy had joined a local clown group back in 1975, and that’s when he made his two characters: Pogo the Clown and Patches the Clown, complete with his own makeup and costumes. He described Pogo as the happy clown and Patches as a more serious version. Even though he didn’t earn much money from performing, Gacy later said that being a clown allowed him to regress into childhood.
For more than ten years on death row, Gacy took back his confession and only admitted to one murder. He wrote long letters saying that his conviction was part of a political plot, and he filed many appeals that postponed his execution for 14 years.
Gacy was the first person in Illinois to be executed against his will since 1962. His lawyers fought hard to stop it, claiming that lethal injection was a method created by the Nazis that would torture him to death.
However, the state continued with the execution.
On the day John Wayne Gacy was supposed to be executed, about 1,000 people gathered in the courtyard of Chicago’s City Hall, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
The crowd let go of balloons and held signs making fun of Gacy’s well-known clown character.
Footage from Netflix’s Conversations with a Killer showed people chanting “Death to Gacy,” with many in the crowd feeling that while justice was finally being served, his execution should have happened much earlier.
One of Gacy’s survivors, Steve Nemmers, expressed his feelings clearly: “I had no sympathy for him. I had nothing for him.” At the same time, jury foreman Ron Beaver talked about feeling a sense of closure: “The relief came simply knowing that there would be no other children that John Wayne Gacy would kill.”
On May 10, 1994, John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center.
According to ABC News, Gacy was given three chemicals — one to put him to sleep, one to stop his breathing, and one to stop his heart. However, a blockage in the line stopped the second drug from fully entering at first, making the execution take longer. It took 18 minutes for him to die, which was about four times longer than expected.
For his final meal, Gacy asked for a bucket of KFC, some french fries, a dozen fried shrimp, fresh strawberries, and a Diet Coke. That night, he received last rites from a Catholic priest before being taken to the Stateville execution chamber.
Nio Howell, a spokesman for the corrections department, told the AP that he walked through the prison yard with Gacy, who thought about his life while sitting in the death chamber.
Did he say sorry for anything?
“Not at all,” Howell replied.
Just before he was executed, John Wayne Gacy supposedly said his famous last words: “Kiss my a–.” Prosecutor William Kunkle explained in 2020 that Gacy was talking to a prison official and it wasn’t part of any official statement.
Other reports say Gacy’s last words were:
“Killing me won’t make anything right. The state is killing me.”
John Wayne Gacy’s shocking killing spree — which took more lives than any other U.S. killer of his time — made him well-known and the subject of many documentaries, movies, and podcasts that still interest people today.
Besides Netflix’s Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes, Gacy’s terrifying story has been looked at again in several other documentaries. A standout example is Peacock’s six-part series John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, which started airing in 2021.
In June 2024, Deadline shared that Peacock has also approved a limited drama series based on the same case, with Severance actor Michael Chernus chosen to play Gacy.
All eight episodes of Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy will be available to stream on Peacock starting Thursday, October 16.
