June 2009 Issue
In 1978, Robert K. Ressler, a criminologist and FBI profiler, came up with the idea to go into prisons and interview violent offenders in order to develop criminal profiles. This initial program involved 36 inmates. During the following years, Ressler participated in more than one hundred more interviews of this type. In the process of profiling these violent offenders, Ressler coined the term "serial killer".
The term serial killer is used to describe an individual who kills 3 or more people in separate incidents, usually within a relatively short interval.
John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy was one of the most notorious serial killers of the 1970s. He was born to Marion Elaine Robinson Gacy and John Wayne Gacy, Sr., on St. Patrick's Day in 1942. He had two sisters, one older and one younger. They were raised in a middle class neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. All three children attended Catholic Schools.
As a young boy, Gacy worked as a newspaper boy, bagged groceries, stocked shelves, and participated in Boy Scout activities. Gacy was not one of the popular kids, though he was liked by his teachers, Boy Scout troop, and co-workers. His childhood appears to have been relatively normal and he was quite close to his mother and sisters. However, his
father was an alcoholic who, at times, physical abused Gacy's mother and verbally abused all three children.
Gacy attended Business College, where he honed his craft as a master salesman. Aftergraduation, he took a position at Nunn-Bush Shoe Company. Not long afterward, he was transferred to Springfield, Illinois in order to manage a men's clothing outlet.
While living in Springfield, Gacy devoted much of his free time toward communityorganizations. Eager and ambitious, he quickly made a name for himself. People likedJohn Wayne Gacy.
In September of 1964, Gacy married Marlynn Myers. Her parents owned a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Waterloo, Iowa. Soon after the wedding, John Wayne Gacy and Marlynn moved to Iowa where Gacy took a position working for his new father-in-law. Gacy would work twelve to fourteen hour days, then find time afterward to do volunteer work for the community. As in Springfield, Gacy was ambitious and well-liked.
Marlynn and Gacy soon had a son and daughter and owned a nice home in the suburbs. By all appearances, they were a normal, loving family.
Appearances are not always what they seem. Rumors soon began to spread throughout town that Gacy was homosexual, with an interest in young boys. Stories circulated about Gacy making passes at the boys he employed at the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Yet his friends stuck by him, refusing to believe the gossip. John Wayne Gacy was simply not that kind of man.
That all changed in May of 1968. A teenage boy named Mark Miller claimed that Gacy had tied him up and violently raped him. Gacy denied this, insisting that Miller had voluntarily had sexual relations with him in exchange for money.
The case lingered, unresolved. Four months later, Gacy was charged with hiring DwightAndersson, an eighteen-year-old boy, to beat up Mark Miller. A judge ordered that Gacy undergo psychiatric evaluation in order to determine whether he was mentally qualified to stand trial.
John Wayne Gacy was found to be mentally competent, though the doctors acknowledged that he suffered from an antisocial personality. Soon after this finding, Gacy pled guilty to the charge of sodomy. He was given a ten year sentence at Iowa State Reformatory for men. He was sent to prison and Marlynn abruptly divorced him .Gacy was 26-years-old at the time.
John Wayne Gacy was a model prisoner. He worked the system, knowing he may be eligible for an early release. On June 18, 1979, only eighteen months after entering the system, John Wayne Gacy was granted parole. He immediately headed back to Chicago, where he temporarily lived with his mother. His father had died while he was in prison and his mother eagerly helped her son get back on his feet. She and Gacy's sisters helped to buy him a home on West Summerdale Avenue in the Norwood Park Township.
In no time, Gacy made friends with his neighbors, often hosting gatherings at his home.His neighbors were completely unaware of Gacy's past. He fit in, a good worker and good friend.
Within a year after moving into his new home, Gacy was charged with disorderly conduct. This misleading charged was based on the fact that Gacy had allegedly forced a young boy to commit sexual acts upon him. His parole had been officially discharged only a few months earlier. For reasons unknown, the boy did not show for the court hearing and all
charges were dropped. Gacy walked away a free man.
On June 1, 1972, Gacy married Carole, a newly divorced mother of two daughters. Carole was aware of Gacy's past, yet she believed he had changed for the better.
The Gacys continued to entertain their friends and neighbors. Soon, though, friends,family members, and neighbors began complaining about the horrible odors when they'd visit. He brushed it off, claiming the stench stemmed from a problem with moisture build-up beneath the crawl space of his home. No one pursued the issue.
Gacy soon set up his own contracting business. He hired young teenage boys to work for him, which, he told friends, was to help keep his business costs low. He continued to be a hard worker, involved in his community, and well-liked by friends.
Yet Gacy was no longer fooling everyone. His homosexuality and tendency to be drawn to young boys was slowly becoming apparent to those around him. This was especially true with Carole. She began finding magazines in their home, featuring naked men and boys. Distressed, she soon filed for a divorce, which became final on March 2, 1976.
Despite the pressure of divorce, John Wayne Gacy's dream of being involved in politics was beginning to come true. He had all the right connections and was, oddly enough, still well liked. However, the cracks in Gacy's fa�ade were beginning to show. While cleaning the Democratic Party headquarters, Gacy made sexual advances toward a sixteen-year-old
boy. The boy fought back and the incident went unreported.
About a year later, Robert Piest, a fifteen-year-old boy, disappeared. The police soon learned that Gacy has offered Priest a job. Lt. Kozenczak questioned Gacy at the police station, where Gacy claimed to know nothing about the boy's disappearance.
The next day, Lt. Kozenczak ran a background check on Gacy and was shocked to find that Gacy had served time for sodomy of a teenager. On December 13, 1978, Lt. Kozenczack arrived at Gacy's home armed with a search warrant. Gacy was not at home when the police arrived.
The police removed many bags of items, including marijuana and Valium, from Gacy's home. Eventually they entered the crawl space, instantly struck by a rancid odor they believe to be raw sewage. On this initial visit, they found nothing of significance linking Gacy to Piest's disappearance. They returned to headquarters to run forensic testing on the items they removed.
Frustrated with the lack of evidence, police decided to arrest Gacy on the charge ofpossession of marijuana and Valium. While Gacy was locked away, the forensic work and police investigation began to pay off. One of the rings found at Gacy's home belonged to John Szyc, a teenager who had disappeared a year earlier. Police also discovered thatthree former employees of Gacy's had also mysteriously disappeared. And a receipt for a roll of film found at Gacy's home had belonged to a coworker of Robert Piest. The coworker claimed to have given it to Robert the day of his disappearance.
Confronted with this information, Gacy confessed that he had, in fact, killed someone but that it was in self-defense. He told police that he had buried the body beneath his garage. Before digging beneath the garage, investigators went to the crawl space beneath Gacy's house. A more thorough search revealed a suspicious mound of earth. Within minutes
of digging, investigators discovered the remains of a body.
On Friday, December 22, 1978, John Wayne Gacy finally confessed to killing at least thirty people. On December 28, police removed a total of twenty-seven bodies from beneath Gacy's home. Two more bodies found in the Des Plaines River were attributed to Gacy. That brought the body count to twenty-nine. Gacy told the police that he dumped the bodies in
the river because he had run out of room beneath his house.
Soon afterward, two more bodies were found while breaking up concrete at Gacy's home and another two turned up in the river. John Wayne Gacy's murder total for the time between 1972 and 1978 stood at thirty-three.
John Wayne Gacy's murder trial began on February 6, 1980 in the Cook County Criminal Courts Building in Chicago, Illinois. On March 12, 1980, after just two hours ofdeliberation, the jury found Gacy guilty. On March 13, he was sentenced to death.
Fourteen years later, just after midnight on May 9, 1994, John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection. His last words were, "Kiss my ass".
John Wayne Gacy's ability to function as a "productive" citizen for so long, while quietly committing atrocities, is not unique. Early in his life he'd been given a 10 year sentence that was quickly commuted to 18 months.
After his release, rumors swirled around him. Yet 33 boys and men had to die before Gacy was arrested once again.
What does this say about our society, that is so easy for us to ignore what eventually seems so obvious, simply because we like a person? Or because he or she is a "respectable" member of society? And what does Gacy's crime spree say about our Justice system?
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