The Terrifying True Story of “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy

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It’s not always the quiet ones.

John Wayne Gacy appeared to be a friendly, ordinary man – a contractor and active in politics – but he secretly led a double life as a party clown.

When John Wayne Gacy was revealed to be a serial killer of at least 33 young men, the fact that he was a well-known and respected businessman in his community made the case particularly shocking. After his arrest on December 21, 1978, the remains of 26 victims were discovered in the crawl space beneath his home in Norwood Park Township.

The location wasn’t isolated,” explained Michael Chernus, who portrays John Wayne Gacy in the new Peacock series *Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy*. “It was a typical suburban neighborhood – houses close together, near the airport.”

The show, *Devil in Disguise*, retells the story of John Wayne Gacy, but with a focus on his victims and the police work that ultimately caught him. It also explores how Gacy was able to hide his crimes for so long, operating openly in public.

Chernus explained to TV Insider that what fascinated them was the contrast between a person capable of terrible acts and someone who generally seems completely harmless. They believe that this hidden capacity for darkness is ultimately more frightening than someone who is openly and obviously evil.

Gacy immediately admitted to the crimes but later tried to retract his confession, claiming in a 1992 interview with CBS 2 News, just two years before his execution, that the portrayal of him as a monster who casually preyed on young boys was ‘ludicrous.’

He stated he’d been given a large dose of truth serum, and according to Gacy, this proved he knew nothing about the crime.

However, the facts revealed a much different and disturbing picture. Here’s a look at the frightening real story behind *Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy*.

I’ve always been fascinated by true crime, and learning about John Wayne Gacy’s early life is truly chilling. He was born in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, 1942. He grew up with two sisters, and was the only boy in the family – his parents were John Wayne Stanley and Marion Elaine Robison.

John Wayne Gacy had a difficult childhood. His father was a violent alcoholic who often put him down for being close to his mother. Gacy also suggested he was sexually abused as a child by a family acquaintance. In a 1994 manuscript he shared with the *New Yorker* magazine, he described a sexual incident that occurred when he was eight years old, involving a contractor.

In 1962, Gacy had a short stint working at a funeral home in Las Vegas before he moved back to Illinois and studied at Northwestern Business College.

John Wayne Gacy met his future wife, Marlynn Myers, while he was working as a shoe salesman, and they married in September 1964. They moved to Waterloo, Iowa, where Gacy managed several Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by Marlynn’s father. They had a son in February 1966 and a daughter in March 1967.

In August 1967, John Wayne Gacy was accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. He was then charged with paying someone else to attack the boy, likely to stop him from giving evidence in court.

Then 25, Gacy pleaded guilty to a count of sodomy in 1968 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The day John Wayne Gacy was sentenced, Marlynn filed for divorce and requested to be the sole guardian of their children. He never saw them again after that.

After behaving well in prison for a year and a half, Gacy was released on parole and returned to live with his mother in Chicago, as required by his probation. While he was incarcerated, his father passed away, but his request to attend the funeral was not granted.

In 1971, he was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a child, but the case was dismissed when the alleged victim didn’t show up for court. The following year, another teenager accused him of sexual battery, but those charges were dropped after he claimed the teen was attempting to blackmail him regarding a mutually agreed-upon encounter.

His mother assisted him in purchasing a home on West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park, a Chicago suburb. He quickly became involved in local politics as a Democratic Party precinct captain and launched his own construction company, PDM Contractors. To earn extra income and bring joy to others, he also performed as Pogo the Clown at birthday parties and community gatherings.

A picture of Gacy, fully dressed as a clown and standing on his porch, became a deeply disturbing and well-known image from the case, solidifying his nickname, “the Killer Clown.”

John Gacy married his high school sweetheart, Carole Hoff, who had two daughters, in July 1972. During his murder trial, she stated that Gacy had told her he was bisexual, but she didn’t consider it significant because she felt she knew him well.

They divorced in 1976.

Hoff testified that she smelled a terrible odor after moving into Gacy’s house. This smell was later determined to be the body of Timothy Jack McCoy, a 16-year-old who was Gacy’s first identified victim. McCoy disappeared from a Chicago bus station on January 3, 1972.

Gacy concealed the boy’s body in the crawl space beneath his home. When his wife detected an odor, he covered the remains with concrete.

One of John Wayne Gacy’s victims – a teenage boy killed in January 1974 and found buried on Gacy’s property – remains unidentified. He is one of five victims whose identities are still unknown. Initially, authorities had nine unidentified bodies, each marked with a headstone bearing a version of the phrase “We Remember.”

 

John Butkovich, an 18-year-old who worked for John Gacy’s construction company, was the third victim. When he went missing on July 31, 1975, his parents consistently urged the police to look into his employer.

In the end, Gacy was accused of murdering 33 young men and boys between the ages of 14 and 21. While some had worked for him, most were either runaways or hitchhikers he tricked into his car with false promises or by offering them money for sexual acts.

John Wayne Gacy’s final victim was 15-year-old Robert Piest, who worked at a pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois. Before Gacy killed him on December 11, 1978, Piest had told his parents a man claiming to be a contractor had offered him a part-time job. The pharmacy owner believed this contractor was likely Gacy.

Police in Des Plaines began monitoring John Wayne Gacy, who then contacted his lawyer, Sam Amirante, for help. Gacy said the police were bothering him and asked Amirante to discover the reason for their attention.

Amirante at first didn’t believe his new client could have anything to do with a missing boy.

On the night of December 20, 1978, Gacy confessed to his lawyer after the lawyer, who had grown suspicious, showed him a newspaper article about Robert Piest. In his 2012 book, *John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster*, the lawyer, Terry Amirante, recalls Gacy saying, “This boy is dead. He is in a river.”

Let me tell you, learning the details of the Gacy case was truly chilling. He confessed to being completely in control – he described himself as the one who decided who lived and died. He shockingly revealed waking up to find young victims, already deceased and restrained, and then taking the horrifying step of burying them. It’s a deeply disturbing image, and one that really highlights the darkness of his crimes.

Police quickly discovered human remains in the crawl space, and Gacy, who had been arrested in a routine traffic stop, was charged with murder on December 21st.

In the months that followed, investigators discovered the remains of 29 victims on Gacy’s property. Most – 26 of them – were found in a crawl space, while three others were buried in different locations. One of the victims, Piest, was among the four young men Gacy disposed of in the Des Plaines River.

Gacy first admitted to the murders when he was arrested, but later changed his story. He claimed he didn’t know anything about the killings, except that he killed one boy while protecting himself. He suggested that anyone who had access to his house could have been responsible for burying the bodies, and ultimately denied ever confessing to anything.

At his trial, his legal team argued he wasn’t responsible for his actions due to mental illness. However, the jury quickly found him guilty on all 33 counts of murder after only six weeks of testimony. The next day, March 13, 1980, he received the death penalty.

He was originally scheduled to be executed on June 2, 1980, but spent the next 14 years on death row at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois, as he went through the appeals process.

While imprisoned, Gacy received and answered thousands of letters, and he became a very active painter, often depicting clowns. His artwork has been shown in exhibitions and sold at auction.

In early 1994, John Wayne Gacy told the *New Yorker* that he used to tape pictures of his victims to the wall near his bed. He’d look at them before sleep, hoping to dream about them or remember if he’d ever known them. He’d ask himself, ‘Who were these people, and how did they die?’ Despite this, he claimed he didn’t have vivid dreams or nightmares.

He was 52 when he died by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.

Both of John Wayne Gacy’s former wives have remarried, and the remaining members of his family have chosen to live private lives.

Following his arrest for murder, his first wife, Marlynn—who preferred not to share her current last name—told the *New York Times* she was shocked. “I honestly couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I never felt afraid of him, and it’s difficult for me to understand how he could do something like this. I was never scared of him at all.”

Hoff, who testified against Gacy in court, told the New York Times that he damaged a lot of her belongings. She now believes that some of the murders likely happened while she was living in the house.

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2025-10-18 15:18