JOHN WAYNE GACY: Real-Life PENNYWISE’s Murders

The most famous work featuring a scary clown is, without a doubt, It by Stephen King. This approximately thousand-page, intricate novel has seen high-profile film adaptations. First, terror was spread by the painted Tim Curry (in 1990), and later in the 2017 film (It), Bill Skarsgård took on the role. The latter reprised his role as Pennywise in the sequel to the hit, It: Chapter Two, which hit the big screens not so long ago. However, I have bad news for all those who left their fear behind in the movie theater, dismissing the fantastic horror with a shrug, consoling themselves with the thought that it’s impossible, clowns don’t kill, they’re friendly people… John Wayne Gacy

“Ha ha ha,” Pennywise might laugh in response. As it turns out, one professional clown—John Wayne Gacy—belongs to the infamous group of America’s worst serial killers. And as we know, serial killers are not lacking in America, so it’s no easy feat to earn a spot in that group. What heinous acts did Gacy commit? What films were inspired by his character? You’ll find out more in the article below.

John Wayne Gacy Behind the Clown Makeup

He was born into a family of Polish immigrants (his grandparents’ surname was Gaca) on March 17, 1940, in Chicago, which many years later would become the witness to all his crimes. His father was an alcoholic, a car mechanic obsessed with “being masculine,” who made it his mission to raise his only son to be a “real man.” Unfortunately for young John, he was a chubby boy with a congenital heart defect, physically weak, and prone to crying. His father believed that beating and humiliating him were the best parenting methods—making John even more fearful, insecure, and neurotic. Thankfully, John found support in his two sisters and his mother. He generally got along better with girls, for which his father called him a “effeminate fag” The fear that his son might grow up to be homosexual kept him awake at night. Little did he know that one of his friends, a truck driver, raped John when he was just 9 years old.

John struggled in school and generally received poor grades. Some doctors and teachers even suspected that he was developmentally delayed. Later, it was discovered that the boy had a large blood clot in his brain for five years. Between the ages of 14 and 18, he spent most of his time in hospitals, but his father still insisted that his fainting spells were faked. After a series of surgeries, his cognitive processes improved; in fact, in adulthood, Gacy boasted an IQ of 118, which placed him well above average.

As a young man, he became interested in politics and, upon reaching adulthood, joined the Democratic Party. He also made his first attempt at independence—he moved out of his parents’ home and began working as a medical assistant in an ambulance service. During that time, frequently being in contact with dead bodies, Gacy began to notice strange urges within himself. On one occasion, when he was alone in the ambulance with the naked corpse of a teenage boy, “something compelled” him to caress and embrace the body. Afterward, Gacy was so shocked by his own behavior that he immediately quit his job and returned to his parents’ house.

Despite not finishing high school, Gacy managed to get into college, where he continued his education in business studies. He had managerial skills and a knack for business, which allowed him to quickly become the manager of several KFC restaurants in Waterloo, where he had moved with his first wife. Despite being married to a woman, Gacy occasionally engaged in homosexual encounters, which left him feeling ashamed and guilty. These incidents were a closely guarded secret, as Gacy made every effort to present himself as overtly heterosexual—almost as though he were still under the critical gaze of his father, whose approval he had never managed to earn. One of Gacy’s habits was to invite attractive young men working at his restaurants to play pool and drink alcohol in the basement of his home. After some time, when his guest was drunk, Gacy would make an explicit proposition. If the young man rejected him, Gacy would claim he had just been joking or testing the guest’s morals.

Other sins of Gacy’s included involvement in the pornography industry and local escort agencies. He regularly cheated on his wife with prostitutes. While his wife stayed home to raise their two children and manage the household, Gacy led a public life as a community leader, holding prominent positions in several organizations. Friends described him as a stocky, jovial, somewhat arrogant man who nonetheless impressed others with his energy and vitality.

After the breakdown of his first marriage, Gacy returned to Chicago and married a divorcee, Carole Hoff, whom he had dated in high school. The woman moved into his house with her two daughters. Gacy started a new business, this time in the construction industry, and quickly became successful. In addition, he became involved in the Democratic Party and… in mobilizing the Polish community in Chicago. For several years, he even served as the supervising director of the annual Polish parade held in the city. At the same time, his second marriage was far from successful and ended in divorce after a few years. His wife discovered his collection of gay pornography, and Gacy admitted to her that he was bisexual, stating that he would no longer have sex with her. She also noticed that her husband was bringing suspiciously young boys into his garage. She never intervened or delved into the matter.

Although Gacy has permeated pop culture as the “killer clown,” and his photos in his distinctive costume are among the most recognizable images of serial murderers, he was never a professional clown. This activity was only a small part of his life and was something he did voluntarily. Under the clown persona “Pogo,” he visited children in hospitals and hospices and performed at numerous charity events. He also had a habit of going to his favorite bar in costume, which those around him saw as a harmless eccentricity. Occasionally, professional clowns pointed out that Gacy’s makeup was poorly done because it consisted of too many sharp angles, giving his face an aggressive expression. After his arrest, Gacy repeatedly spoke about his fascination with clowns. These characters symbolized for him carefree joy, happiness, and the childhood that had been taken from him by his toxic father. Gacy also described the clown as one of three personalities that resided in his body (metaphorically—he was not diagnosed with multiple personality disorder). The clown represented his best, deeply hidden qualities. His second internal persona was “the businessman”—the face he showed to society. The third was “the killer,” whom we’ll get to know better on the next page.

The Murderous Pogo

Gacy showed the first symptoms of a dysfunctional personality already in childhood. He was 6 years old when he committed his first theft, and 9 when his father caught him molesting his friend. His first marriage broke up for a very specific reason – in 1968, Gacy was accused of sexually molesting a 15-year-old boy, which he had committed a year earlier in the basement of his house in Waterloo. The victim was his friends’ son, lured to Gacy’s house with the promise of watching an “adult movie.” The teenager was drunk with a large dose of alcohol and then blackmailed into oral sex. After this incident, Gacy harmed other boys, manipulating them more and more skillfully. He told them, among other things, that he conducts research on homosexuality for which he will receive $50. When put on trial, Gacy pleaded not guilty to the crime and claimed that the slander was a political revenge of people who did not like his intention to run for president of Waterloo. However, the evidence of guilt was clear, and the influential father of the injured boy had the rapist sentenced to 10 years – even though Gacy’s no less influential friends interceded for him. And also despite attempts to intimidate the 15-year-old testifying by sending a thug after him (the boy managed to escape and report the matter to the police).

Gacy was examined by prison psychiatrists who diagnosed him with dissocial personality disorder (in other terminology divided into sociopathy and psychopathy). Doctors emphasized that the prisoner showed no remorse and that if released, he would most likely return to his old practices. Despite this, Gacy was released on parole after only 18 months “for good behavior”. Just a few months after his release from prison, he tried to rape another teenager, and the charges were dismissed only because the boy did not appear in court for the hearing. Shortly thereafter, impersonating a policeman, he forced another boy to perform oral sex on the pretext of bribing him for a ticket for running a red light. This time he was not convicted either because he bribed the victim to withdraw the charges. He raped the third teenager in a hotel room during a business trip. However, he did not want to report the matter to the police and instead tried to beat his tormentor in a gesture of despair.

When did raping stop being enough for him? On February 2, 1972, he offered a ride and overnight stay to a 16-year-old named Timothy Jack McCoy traveling alone. According to Gacy, which is difficult to confirm in the absence of other witnesses, he did not touch the boy that night. When he woke up the next morning, he saw the teenager in his bedroom doorway with a kitchen knife in his hand. Without thinking, he rushed at the boy, crushed him with his body weighing over 100 kilograms and stabbed him with a knife torn from his hand. When he went downstairs, he saw a table set for two people – Timothy had prepared breakfast for them, to which he had previously wanted to call the host, forgetting about the kitchen knife in his hand… Gacy buried his body in a recess under the basement (the so-called “crawl space”, built sometimes in American homes), where more bodies were soon to be buried. I’ve never had an orgasm like I had while killing that boy, Gacy said after his arrest. – I realized that nothing gives greater pleasure than someone’s death.

According to official data, Gacy killed 33 boys and young men. However, the actual number of victims is probably higher, because the remains of that many people were found on his estate. Gacy himself claimed to have killed over 45 people. Most of these murders took place between 1976 and 1978, when, after divorcing his second wife, Gacy had the entire house at his own disposal. He was one of those serial killers whom the characters of Mindhunter would call “organized” – he acted according to developed patterns and carefully prepared for crimes. His victims were usually delicate boys with a subtle, almost girlish beauty and longer hair. Psychiatrists described him as an ephebophile – a person with a sexual desire for boys just after puberty, not yet fully developed physically, but no longer children (which distinguishes ephebophilia from pedophilia). Many of the dead teenagers and young men worked on Gacy’s construction sites, and others he met by acting as a clown or offering rides in his car. The youngest of the identified victims was 14 years old, the oldest – 26. Many of the bodies have not been identified to this day.

Initially, Gacy did not connect the murders with the rape. The act of killing itself provided him with sick excitement. Eventually, however, he developed his own modus operandi, perfecting his scheme of action with each subsequent victim. He started by trying to gain the boy’s sympathy, which he could spend weeks doing if he really liked the boy. He usually suggested drinking alcohol together to the older ones, and promised the younger ones that he would teach them his signature tricks, which he performed as a clown. In both cases, he tried to persuade the victims to put handcuffs on their hands, for example under the pretext that he would show them how to free themselves from them if they were ever caught by the police. Once the boy was handcuffed, he began to abuse him. At first, torture and rape lasted several hours. Later – days or even weeks. With each subsequent victim, he became more and more cruel and brutal. He liked to murder disguised as his alter ego, Pogo the clown. When he got tired of the victim, he killed it by strangling it, usually with a rope. Before choking young men, he stuffed their own underwear down the young men’s throats – he claimed he did it because one of his first victims had “some stinking liquid leaking from his mouth” and he didn’t want “another boy to mess up his carpet.” He also raped corpses.

The End of the Circus

It must be admitted that Gacy was exceptionally careless, making it almost surprising that he was caught so late. Many of his victims were connected to him through work, and several young men managed to escape before he could kill them. At least one boy was released after enduring hours of torture when Gacy suddenly decided he didn’t feel like killing him. Robert Donnelly, the so-called “survivor,” reported the rape to the police. However, the authorities sided with Gacy’s version of events, where he claimed that Donnelly had willingly agreed to play the role of a sexual slave in a sadomasochistic game.

Despite his recklessness and the recurring allegations of sexual abuse, Gacy seemed to have extraordinary luck. He behaved with the typical bravado of a psychopath, exhibiting a belief in his own omnipotence and infallibility, while showing no concern for potential consequences or punishment. With each murder, his arrogance grew. He felt so untouchable that he didn’t even bother to dispose of his victims’ cars, opting instead to sell them. This eventually led police to him when a car dealership employee recognized one of Gacy’s vehicles as belonging to John Szyc, who had been reported missing. The police slowly began piecing the puzzle together. Although Gacy’s criminal history and his connections to missing young men raised suspicions, solid evidence for an arrest warrant or conviction was still lacking.

By 1978, Gacy had run out of space for bodies in his home and started dumping victims’ remains in remote locations. This led the police to discover some of the bodies, confirming that the boys listed as missing had not run away but were victims of a serial killer. One of the victims discarded by the roadside survived because they were discovered in time and hospitalized. The 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignall was the lucky survivor. He reported a horrific case of rape and attempted murder to the police. Rignall had met Gacy outside a gay club and was smoking a joint with him when Gacy pressed a chloroform-soaked cloth to his face. The dose was so strong it permanently damaged Rignall’s liver. He woke up in what could only be described as a torture chamber. He found himself restrained and stretched out on a cross-like contraption while Gacy gleefully showed him the tools and sex toys he would use to torment him. Gacy proceeded to torture and rape him using vibrators and other implements.

Rignall’s testimony coincided with the abduction and murder of 15-year-old Robert Piest. On the fateful day, Piest told his parents he was going to meet Mr. Gacy because Gacy had promised him a part-time job. He never returned. The Piest family quickly reported their son’s disappearance to the police, informing them that the last person he had been seen with was Gacy. Finally, after all these years, a search warrant was issued for Gacy’s property.

The first thing that struck officers upon entering Gacy’s house was the pervasive stench. At that moment, they had no idea that dozens of human bodies in various stages of decomposition were buried, hidden, or bricked up within the building. Gacy stumbled through his statements, denying any knowledge of the situation, attempting to befriend detectives and even offering them bribes. Thankfully, none of it worked: the police combed through his record, filled with accusations of sexual abuse. Inside the house, they discovered numerous suspicious items: sharp tools, men’s clothing far too small for Gacy, and belongings of individuals listed as missing. Eventually, the bodies were discovered. Realizing that punishment was inevitable, Gacy confessed to his crimes. During the trial, he feared public exposure of his homosexuality more than the revelation of his murders.

In 1980, Gacy was sentenced to death and found guilty of 33 murders. While in prison, he became interested in art and painted numerous works, some of which you may have seen while reading this text. Most of these works, seemingly drawn with a child’s clumsy hand but imbued with a subtle aggression, evoke genuine unease in viewers. He painted grotesque erotica, portraits of other murderers, and, most notably, clowns.

Gacy spent 14 years on death row, as his execution was not carried out until 1994. The execution was performed via lethal injection. The killer’s final words? Kiss my ass.

After his death, Gacy’s brain was removed for scientific study. Researchers aimed to determine whether any abnormalities in its structure could explain his twisted impulses. It was speculated that a childhood brain injury, involving a hematoma and brain swelling that required hospitalization, might have caused his disorders. However, the results of the study disproved these theories. John Wayne Gacy’s brain showed no differences from that of an average person.

Evil is not the only mystery that Gacy took to his grave. It remains unclear whether he truly… acted alone. The hypothesis that the “killer clown” had accomplices is supported by strong arguments. One of the first things Gacy said after his arrest was to ask if the police had his accomplices as well. When pressed, he refused to specify who he meant.

It is known that during his bloody spree, Gacy had two young men—construction workers, barely of legal age—staying at his house. One of them was Michael Rossi, a key informant for the police during the investigation, who knew surprisingly much about Gacy’s activities for someone on the outside. Many suspected that these two were aiding the pervert by bringing him their friends, but no evidence was ever found to confirm it. Additionally, the dates of death for three victims from Gacy’s house coincide with times when he was not in Chicago. Survivors of his rapes mentioned memories of other men, either sitting in a car or watching the events unfold, beneath the alcohol-induced haze Gacy had them under.

Jeffrey Rignall was certain that there was someone else in Gacy’s torture room, someone who was beyond his line of sight. On another occasion, Rignall described a dream in which he repeatedly relived the nightmare of his rape. At one point in the dream, he detached from his body and observed the entire room from a bird’s-eye view, including that third person, whose presence had unsettled him. This figure turned out not to be human, but Satan, directing the killer’s actions…

Setting aside the paranormal conspiracy theories, could Gacy have been the scapegoat for a gang of rapists? Did he act out the fantasies of one of his high-ranking acquaintances and then agree to take all the blame as part of a shady arrangement? Investigations uncovered connections between several of Gacy’s victims and John Norman, a criminal who oversaw human trafficking in the Chicago area. Could Gacy have been involved in organized crime? This might explain why, despite his recklessness, he was apprehended so late. We may never know the truth. If the stories of serial killers teach us anything, it is that some questions have no answers, and the last rule by which the world operates is logic.

Movies and TV Shows Inspired by Gacy

To Catch a Killer (1992, directed by E. Till)

This three-hour television film, which debuted in the early 90s on FOX as a miniseries, remains the most reliable production dedicated to Gacy. The plot focuses on the investigation that led to the capture of the murderer. A solid script and skillful tension-building are complemented by an outstanding performance from Brian Dennehy, who portrayed Gacy. If you’re wondering which film about this murderer to watch first, this is the one.

Gacy (2003, directed by C. Saunders)

This low-budget film went straight to VHS. It was marketed as a horror, but that label might be a bit of a stretch. Gacy was almost unanimously panned by critics, although there were some who praised the film. Notably, Mark Holton’s suggestive performance in the title role was appreciated. It’s not a fully successful piece, but Gacy is certainly a decent overview of the life and crimes of “Pogo.” A biographical thriller perfect for a solo evening.

Gacy House (2010, directed by A. Fankhauser)

This low-budget horror serves as an unofficial prequel to Paranormal Entity. Shot in the found footage style, it clearly aimed to ride the coattails of the Paranormal Activity series’ success. However, it’s widely considered a particularly unsuccessful creation, which is a shame because the story had a fair amount of potential. The film follows a group of paranormal investigators who explore Gacy’s abandoned house, believing that a building that witnessed so many horrific crimes must be haunted. What do they find? Unfortunately, not much—though the audience will definitely find disappointment.

Dahmer vs. Gacy (2010, directed by F. Austin)

This film is a must-see for fans of kitsch, excess, and bad taste. If you’re a fan of our B-Movie Cinema section, then Dahmer vs. Gacy is for you. The plot? A secret U.S. government plan to create the perfect killer by combining the DNA of Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer goes awry when the two maniacs escape government custody and embark on a killing spree. The film won the Audience Award at the Bare Bones International Independent Film Festival and has found a following in certain circles.

Dear Mr. Gacy (2010, directed by S. Ristovsky)

The year 2010 brought no fewer than three films about the murderous clown from Chicago, the most popular of which is Dear Mr. Gacy. This TV production is based on the memoir The Last Victim by Jason Moss, a criminology student who corresponded with serial killers as part of his research project. The film focuses on his complicated relationship with Gacy. Moss portrayed himself in the letters as a typical “Pogo” victim – a young, naive boy – in order to get closer to the killer and understand his psyche. While this intriguing premise wasn’t fully explored, the film is still worth watching.

American Horror Story

The popular anthology American Horror Story referenced Gacy twice. First, in the Freak Show season, a clown named Twisty, clearly inspired by Gacy, appeared. Later, in Hotel, the character of John Wayne Gacy himself made an appearance. Both characters were played by John Carroll Lynch, thus joining the ranks of actors who have appeared in various incarnations across different seasons of American Horror Story.

Gacy appearance was somewhat teased in the first episode of the second season of Mindhunter too. As observant fans noticed, in a scene where Wendy talks about other murderers they might study, the camera pauses on an envelope filled with files, labeled Gacy, J. W. It’s a shame the third season of Mindhunter never happened.