Dylan Ammlung & Kayla Hill Pd:6 John Wayne Gacy Jr.

AKA Pogo the Clown

Stats Born: Died: Cause of Death: Victim Count: Last words: March 17, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois Died: May 10, 1994 in Crest Hill, Illinois Cause of Death: Executed by lethal injection Victim Count: 33-34 Last words: “Kiss my a**”

Background When he was 11, he had a swinging accident. It caused a brain tumor. They didn’t find the tumor until he was 16. John had 2 older sisters, whom which he had a strong relationship with, along with his mother. His father was an alcoholic and abusive. He ran away to Las Vegas and started working as a janitor. He saved up enough money to go back to Chicago.

Background Cont. First offense was a sexual assault on a 15 year old boy in Iowa First victim was 15 year old Jack McCoy, who Gacy let spend the night at his house. Jack was making breakfast for the two of them and went to wake Gacy, but Gacy misunderstood McCoy standing in his bedroom doorway with a kitchen knife in his hand and proceeded to attack McCoy and stab him in the chest multiple times. Later burying McCoy in his crawl space.

General Serial Killer Profile White male, 20-30, residing in US? Yes Main motive sex? No, although he did sexually abuse some of his victims Months or years before being caught? Victims from same group? Yes, children, mainly boys age 14-21 Strangulation, suffocation, or stabbing? Yes, mainly strangulation

Serial Killer Phases Trolling: Wooing: Capture: Murder: Totem Searched for boys age 14-21 Wooing: Lured his victims usually by promise of money or a job offering for his construction company Capture: Handcuffing and occasionally sexual assault Murder: Multiple stabbings Totem Sometimes kept victims bodies under his bed or in his attic for up to several hours before burying them in his crawl space

Transient/stable? Organized/disorganized? Gacy was a stable serial killer because he committed all of his murders in his house after luring his victims there. Gacy was an organized killer because he took the time to plan out how he is going to attract his victims to his house. He killed all his victims the same way with the exception of his first victim which he stabbed repeatedly.

Conviction The disappearance of 15 year old Robert Piest in 1978 led the police to Gacy’s home. The police obtained a search warrant for his home using his previous conviction of sodomy and searched his home on December 13. The police didn’t find any bodies in Gacy’s home, so they proceeded to confiscate a number of items including his drivers license and a handful of college rings. After this, Gacy was placed under 24 hour surveillance.

Conviction cont. Through the use of forensic science, investigators eventually linked one of the rings to a missing boy named John Szyc. With this discovery, police and investigators conducted a much more elaborate search of Gacy’s home, which eventually revealed the approximate 30 bodies hidden in Gacy’s crawl space. Gacy was then arrested and put to death with lethal injection on May 10, 1994 at Stateville Correctional Center.

Works Cited Taylor, Troy. Weird and Haunted Chicago. 2003. Web. 3 May 2014 Wikipedia. 2014. Web. 3 May 2014 Bell, Rachael. Bardsley, Marilyn. Crime Library. Turner Entertainment Networks. 2014. Web. 3 May 2014. Crime Investigation. AETN UK. 2014. Web. 3 May 2014.