The Real Killer Clown: John Wayne Gacy

We’ve all seen movies and television shows who have a main subject of a killer clown. Many folks even report having a phobia of clowns. It’s a scary concept, in all actuality. Regular folks just like you or I painted up from head to toe and dressed in odd, brightly colored clothes. It can be scary to think that they look so different underneath all of it. It’s even more scary to think that many clowns take up the profession as an odd job because they’re felons who can’t find work elsewhere. Clowns are predominantly around our children, sitting them on their laps, making them laugh, and we really don’t know who is behind the painted mask.

There is a root for that fear, however- and it’s been the inspiration for Stephen King’s IT as well as other horrific stories—his name is John Wayne Gacy, and he’s the original, real life killer clown. Making children laugh by day, and raping and killing them by night.

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The True Story of John Wayne Gacy

Our anti-hero’s story begins in 1942 in the windy city of Chicago. John Wayne Gacy was born to a devout catholic family with three other siblings, and unfortunately, an abusive alcoholic father. Though he experienced turmoil at the hands of his father, he was seemingly normal. He worked odd jobs as a kid growing up in order to earn spending cash, and even served as an altar boy at weekly mass that his family attended.

However, during his senior year of high school, it appears that something terrible began to develop within his mind. Despite after trying out four different schools, he still ended up not being able to graduate on time. After eventually dropping out, he worked as a custodian for a funeral home. He became lonely and depressed, but within a few years’ time, he married, had a daughter, and began working night and day as a manager in a local restaurant, hoping to take it over after the aging owner would inevitably pass.

When John Wayne Gacy wasn’t being an apparently awesome father, husband, and employee, he was volunteering his free time to local non-profit organizations. He even became the vice president of one. His life really seemed perfect. However, it wasn’t long until rumors began to circulate through town that Gacy always seemed to have little boys around him at his places of employment—especially behind closed doors. It would come to light that these were not merely rumors, but that Gacy was a pedophile, and in 1968, he was imprisoned for sodomy. One of his victims had turned him in, telling authorities the gruesome details of how he was tied up as a captive and fiercely raped for hours within John Wayne Gacy’s home. His wife immediately filed for divorce and took their only daughter with her.

Gacy then moved in with his mother who helped him get a new house of his own. After moving into the suburban ranch style home, he quickly remarried. His new wife knew about his past charges, but being newly divorced with two daughters to raise by herself, she believed that he had changed his ways, and was quick to jump on this opportunity for stability.

In this time, Gacy had created his own painting business and employed nothing but young teenaged boys. As a second job, he was a clown and hosted many different children’s birthday parties over the span of ten years. Over some time, however, the rage behind his clown smile began to overpower him. His moods began to become erratic and unpredictable. In one of his fits of rage, Gacy admitted to his wife that he enjoys the company of young boys over her, and she, too, filed for divorce. However, John Wayne Gacy continued to work even harder through his crumbled marriage. He took on even more jobs, but one day, the disappearance of one of his young employees made folks become leery of him.

Rumors had already been circulating once again about Gacy, and this took the cake. He told police that he knew nothing of the disappearance, but authorities barely took him at his word. They officiated a search warrant of Gacy’s home and found there drugs, handcuffs, child pornography, needles, pieces of hair, and a bloodstained rug. Eventually, he confessed to the brutal rapes and slayings of at least thirty young boys. He admitted that he would lure them to his home, tie them up, drug them, rape them, and then kill them, burying their bodies in the crawlspace beneath his home.

After Gacy’s home was completely tore apart from crawlspace to roof, authorities began to discover even more bodies encased in the cement that made up his driveway. Many of these bodies were unidentified, as Gacy didn’t even know their names. One of the bodies had even appeared to be asphyxiated by having paper towels shoved down his throat.

After a long and rigorous trial in which he had tried to get off by pleading insanity, John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death by lethal injection for these atrocious crimes, and he died in 1994 as a result of such.