What Did John Wayne Gacy Do? Revisiting the Killer Clown's Chilling Crimes, 31 Years After His Execution

Throughout much of the 1970s, John Wayne Gacy was perceived by his Chicago-area community as an upstanding citizen, but in reality, he was a prolific serial killer.

The owner and operator of a remodeling business, Gacy volunteered at childrens’ hospitals dressed as “Pogo the Clown,” acted as director of the annual Polish Constitution Day Parade and even met First Lady Rosalynn Carter in May 1978.

Months later, in December, he would find himself behind bars, confessing to brutally murdering over two dozen young boys and men. In March 1980, Gacy was convicted of 33 murders, which were committed between 1972 and 1978, and was given the death penalty, per The Chicago Tribune.

As then-Assistant State Attorney Robert Egan remarked, “[Gacy] killed people like he was swatting flies.”

Here’s everything to know about John Wayne Gacy — including his early years and the crimes he committed.

Who was John Wayne Gacy?

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago on March 17, 1942, to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robison, who also shared daughters Karen and Joanne.

According to his 1978 confession and subsequent interviews with his sister, Gacy had a troubled relationship with his father, an auto mechanic and World War I veteran who allegedly verbally and physically abused him throughout his childhood.

“My uncle’s relationship with my grandfather was tough,” Gacy’s niece Sheri Boughner said in an episode of Monster in My Family on A&E. “He wanted him to be a man’s man, and my uncle just didn’t measure up. He wasn’t ever going to be the hunting and fishing kind of guy.”

Their relationship reportedly came to a boiling point when Gacy was 20 years old. After a fight, he ran away from home, eventually ending up in Las Vegas working at a mortuary. The mortuary owner permitted Gacy to sleep in a cot behind the embalming room, and the future killer later confessed to sleeping in a coffin alongside a deceased teenage boy, per The New Yorker.

After this chilling incident, Gacy returned to Illinois, where he worked as a shoe salesman, according to Tim Cahill in his 1986 book Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. There, he met his first wife, Marlynn Myers. They ultimately welcomed two children, Michael and Christine.

Subsequently, the family moved to Waterloo, Iowa, where Myers’ father owned several Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Gacy managed them until 1968, when he pleaded guilty to sodomy after he was accused of sexually assaulting two high school boys. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but served only 18 months, per The New York Times.

Myers filed for divorce from Gacy, requesting that she be awarded sole custody of their children. Their divorce was finalized on Sept. 18, 1969.

After Gacy was released from prison, he married his high school girlfriend, Carole Hoff, in 1972. The marriage disintegrated when she began discovering wallets belonging to teenage boys in his car, according to The New York Times. They had no children, and their divorce was finalized in 1976, midway through Gacy’s murder spree.

Who were John Wayne Gacy’s victims?

In 1971, Gacy launched a business he called PDM Contractors (which stood for Painting, Decorating, Maintenance), which would often find him employing young men. That same year, Gacy was accused of attempted sexual assault of a teenage boy whom he lured into his car from a Greyhound Bus Terminal, per The New York Times. The charges were dropped when the victim failed to appear in court.

Less than a year later, 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, who would soon become Gacy’s first known murder victim, found himself in a similar scenario with Gacy at the bus terminal. Years later, investigators discovered McCoy, who was stabbed to death, in a crawl space beneath Gacy’s ranch-style home. The serial killer buried his victims beneath his home until he ran out of room and began disposing of bodies in the Des Plaines River, according to a Newsweek report.

Between 1972 and 1978, Gacy lured an unknown number of young men and boys back to his home before sexually assaulting and strangling them, per the Associated Press.

In addition to McCoy, Gacy’s victims include John Butkovich, Francis Wayne Alexander, Darrel Samson, Samuel Stapleton, Randall Reffett, Michael Bonnin, William Carroll, Jimmy Haakenson, Rick Johnston, William George Bundy, Michael Marino, Kenneth Parker, Gregory Godzik, John Szyc, Jon Prestidge, Matthew Bowman, Robert Gilroy, John Mowery, Russell Nelson, Robert Winch, Tommy Boling, David Talsma, William Kindred, Timothy O’Rourke, Frank Landingin, James Mazzara and Robert Piest, per The Chicago Tribune. Some of his victims worked for PDM.

Five victims remain unidentified, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office.

In all, prosecutors charged Gacy with 33 counts of murder — the largest number charged to one person in the U.S. at the time of his 1978 arrest, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Bernard Carey, Cook County’s then-state attorney, later admitted, “[This was] one of the most horrendous [cases] I have ever had anything do with.”

Why is John Wayne Gacy known as the “Killer Clown”?

Gacy, who owned a contracting business, was also involved in the Democratic Party and local civic organizations.

“My uncle was the life of the party,” Boughner said in Monster in My Family. “He loved to have get-togethers. Everything was just fun.”

In Gacy’s spare time, he dressed as a character he called “Pogo the Clown” to entertain children at local hospitals.

“The clowning was relaxation for me,” Gacy explained in an interview from prison included in Peacock’s documentary John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise. “When I got into clown makeup, I regressed into childhood. It was fun being a clown because you could be yourself or just let yourself go and act a fool.”

How did John Wayne Gacy get caught?

On Dec. 11, 1978, Robert Piest, a 15-year-old sophomore at Maine West High School, went missing after he told his mother he was meeting with a man about a high-paying construction job, per The Chicago Tribune. When he failed to return, Piest’s family filed a police report.

Investigators learned that Gacy’s business was in discussion to remodel Nisson Pharmacy where Piest worked, and pieced together that the teenager had gone to speak with the contractor before disappearing. After multiple search warrants were executed, police ultimately found at least 26 sets of remains in the crawl space.

Three other victims were found buried on Gacy’s property and another four victims were found in Chicago waterways, per NPR.

Within weeks, Gacy confessed to at least 30 murders and was eventually charged with 33. He was also found guilty of sexual assault and taking indecent liberties with a child in the case of Robert Piest.

A jury convicted Gacy on March 12, 1980, after less than two hours of deliberations. The serial killer sat on death row for 14 years before execution by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, at age 52. Gacy’s last meal request included Kentucky Fried Chicken, the restaurant where he worked when he was convicted of his first crime decades prior, per 9News.