John Wayne Gacy. Photo: Des Plaines Police Department, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Wayne_Gacy_1978_mugshot.jpg
School period
College/University
Career
Gallery of John Gacy
Polish Constitution Day Parade. Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Belissarius assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago_Polish_Parade,_1985.jpg)
Polish Constitution Day Parade. Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Belissarius assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago_Polish_Parade,_1985.jpg)
John Wayne Gacy was an American construction contractor and local political activist who was convicted of murdering thirty-three young men and boys in the Chicago area. Known publicly for performing as Pogo the Clown, he was arrested in December 1978, sentenced to death in 1980, and executed in 1994.
Background
John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, the only son and second of three children of John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robison. His father worked as an auto-repair machinist and was a World War I veteran; his mother was a homemaker. The family identified as Catholic and had Polish and Danish ancestry.
Gacy grew up in Chicago with two sisters. Accounts of his childhood describe a close relationship with his mother and a difficult relationship with his alcoholic father, who verbally and physically abused him. Gacy was overweight and restricted from sports because of a heart condition. Recurrent blackouts, hospitalizations, and a burst appendix in 1957 disrupted his schooling; he later estimated that he spent nearly a year in hospitals between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
Education
Gacy attended Prosser Career Academy and Cooley Vocational High School. He later completed high-school courses while imprisoned in Iowa and received his diploma in November 1969.
After returning from Las Vegas, he attended Northwestern Business College and graduated in 1963. The college provided commercial and management-oriented training suited to office and retail employment in the postwar urban economy. The existing education record identifies the institution as Northwestern College.
Career
Gacy entered local Democratic politics in 1960 as an assistant precinct captain. In 1962 he briefly left Illinois for Las Vegas, where he worked in the ambulance service and then for Palm Mortuary as a mortuary attendant. He returned to Chicago, completed business training, and joined Nunn-Bush Shoe Company as a management trainee in 1963. Transferred to Springfield, Illinois, in 1964, he became a salesman and later a department manager.
After marrying Marlynn Myers in 1964, Gacy moved to Waterloo, Iowa, to manage three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by his father-in-law. He operated the restaurants until his 1968 conviction and was active in the Waterloo Jaycees. During his imprisonment at Anamosa State Penitentiary, he became head cook, participated in the inmate Jaycee chapter, and supervised projects intended to improve prison facilities. He was paroled in June 1970 after serving eighteen months of a ten-year sentence.
Back in Chicago, Gacy worked briefly as a short-order cook before establishing PDM Contractors in 1971. The company, whose initials stood for Painting, Decorating, and Maintenance, expanded from repair work into remodeling, interior design, and landscaping. Gacy left restaurant work in 1973 to run PDM full time. From 1977 he also supervised remodeling projects for PE Systems; by 1978, PDM's annual revenue exceeded $200,000.
Gacy joined a local Jolly Joker clown club in late 1975 and performed voluntarily as Pogo and Patches at parties, political events, charitable functions, parades, and children's hospitals. His public clown performances continued during the period in which he murdered at least thirty-three young men and boys. Twenty-six bodies were found in the crawl space of his Norwood Park Township home, three elsewhere on the property, and four in the Des Plaines River.
The disappearance of fifteen-year-old Robert Piest in December 1978 led Des Plaines police to investigate Gacy. He was arrested on December 21 after investigators found human remains beneath his house. Convicted of thirty-three murders in 1980, Gacy was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.
Gacy developed PDM Contractors from a part-time repair business into a construction company handling remodeling, interior design, and landscaping projects, with annual revenue exceeding $200,000 by 1978.
He directed Chicago's Polish Constitution Day Parade from 1975 to 1978 and participated in local civic and charitable events.
While imprisoned at Anamosa State Penitentiary, he expanded the inmate Jaycee chapter and supervised projects including installation of a miniature-golf course and improvements to inmate conditions.
He performed voluntarily as Pogo the Clown and Patches the Clown at community events, political functions, charitable activities, parades, and children's hospitals.
Religion
Gacy was raised in a Catholic family. Catholicism is the largest tradition within Christianity and is organized around sacramental worship, church teaching, and a worldwide ecclesiastical structure.
Politics
Gacy participated in Democratic Party politics in the Chicago area, initially working as an assistant precinct captain and later serving as a precinct captain. He also received an appointment to a township street-lighting committee and directed Chicago's Polish Constitution Day Parade from 1975 to 1978.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States. In the period of Gacy's local political activity, its urban organizations commonly connected neighborhood administration, patronage, civic events, and election campaigning; his documented roles belonged to that local political environment.
Views
Gacy's public self-presentation combined civic service, business ambition, political participation, and clown performance. During his prosecution, he claimed that the murders were associated with an alternate personality named Jack Hanley, but prosecutors argued that the crimes reflected planning and conscious control. The court proceedings therefore centered in part on competing interpretations of his mental state, including the defense claim of insanity and the prosecution's claim that he was legally sane.
Membership
Gacy participated in the Jaycees in Springfield and Waterloo and was active in their fundraising and community projects. He served as a vice-president and board member of the Waterloo chapter, and he later participated in the inmate Jaycee chapter at Anamosa State Penitentiary.
He also belonged to a local Moose Club, through which he learned of the Jolly Joker clown organization. The Jaycees were civic and service-oriented organizations, while the Moose supported fraternal, charitable, and community activities; the Jolly Joker performers volunteered at public events and hospitals.
Served as vice-president of the Springfield chapter and later as vice-president and a board member of the Waterloo chapter.
Jaycees
,
United States
1964 - 1968
Served as head of the chapter and worked on projects concerning inmate activities and facilities.
Inmate Jaycee chapter at Anamosa State Penitentiary
,
United States
1968 - 1970
His participation introduced him to the local Jolly Joker clown club.
Moose Club
,
United States
1975 - 1978
Created and performed the clown characters Pogo and Patches at volunteer public events.
Jolly Joker clown club
,
United States
1975 - 1978
Personality
Contemporary accounts portrayed Gacy as ambitious, sociable, and boastful in civic and business settings. He cultivated a helpful public image in his neighborhood, lending construction tools and clearing snow from walks, while employees and investigators later described coercive and violent conduct.
Physical Characteristics:
He was described as overweight and unathletic as a child. A heart condition restricted his participation in sports, and he experienced recurrent blackouts during childhood and adolescence.
Quotes from others about the person
During his 1968 Iowa prosecution, several fellow Jaycees supported Gacy's account of the allegations. In 1966, his father apologized for earlier abuse and told him, "Son, I was wrong about you."
Interests
Clown performance, magic tricks, pool, and community fundraising.
Connections
Gacy was the son of John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robison. He had two sisters. His first marriage, to Marlynn Myers, began in 1964 and ended in divorce in 1969; they had a son and a daughter, whom Gacy never saw after the divorce.
He married Carole Hoff on July 1, 1972. Hoff had two daughters from a previous marriage, and the family lived in Gacy's house in Norwood Park Township. Their divorce was finalized in March 1976. Gacy's business and political activities also connected him with employees, fellow Jaycees, contractors, and local Democratic Party organizations.
Father:
John Stanley Gacy
He worked as an auto-repair machinist and was a World War I veteran.
Mother:
Marion Elaine Robison
She was a homemaker.
Wife:
Marlynn Myers
They married in 1964 and divorced in 1969; they had a son and a daughter.
