Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Killer Clown” Pt. 2 - John Wayne Gacy

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

We continue to look into the conflicted identity of John Wayne Gacy, who terrorized Chicago in the 1970s. Known as the “Killer Clown,” Gacy tortured and then murdered at least 33 teenage boys. But for many years, he appeared to be an outstanding member of his community...all while hiding his victims’ bodies underneath his house.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You in? Must be 21 to enter. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes dramatizations and discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Identity. Something we all struggle with from time to time. Figuring out who we are, what our place is, how to balance our base desires in a world that asks for some level of conformity and productivity. Identity is molded both internally and externally, and rooted in the most fundamental properties that make

as human. It has generated countless questions and riddles about what the individual is and how we should treat its role in society. Nature versus nurture, Descartes' theory of mind-body dualism, Plato's allegory of the cave. For eons, humans have been asking ourselves who we are and what that means in relationship to the world. And over time, we have honed our definitions, sharpened them. Identity is ingrained in us. We encourage people to explore themselves, to find. who they want to be, to refine and master their identity in a way that is personal and individual. But what happens when a person becomes so conflicted with their identity that they reach a point of extreme denial? What happens when someone's pathology becomes so sick and infected that it lashes out in unspeakable ways?

Do we blame their upbringing, genetics, or is it a combination of both? How does that person react to this conflict? Do they try and hide it? Can they recognize the monster within them? Do they pretend to be someone else? Today, we hope to answer those questions as we jump back into our investigation of John Wayne Gacy, the killer clown, who terrorized Chicago neighborhoods in the 1970s.

Gacy struggled with identity his whole life, and this struggle manifested in the most brutal and vicious ways imaginable, as Gacy claimed the lives of at least 33 teenage boys between the years 1972 and 1978. But what is it that forced this monster to emerge? Where in Gacy's fight for his identity? Did this lust for murder live? Hi, I'm Greg Poulson, and this is serial killers.

Today, we continue our deep dive into the life of John Wayne Gacy, the brutal and notorious killer clown of 1970s Chicago. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Vanessa's not a licensed psychologist or psychologist. psychiatrist, but she's done a lot of research for the show. Hi, everyone. We'd like to ask a quick favor. Would you leave a five-star review of serial killers on your favorite podcast directory? It seems so simple, but it really helps us out. And don't forget to subscribe while you're there, because a new episode comes out every Monday.

You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast, and on Twitter at Parcast Network. Last week, we looked at John Wayne Gasey's childhood and the series of events that led him to his first confirmed murder, Timothy McCoy, whom he killed on January 2, 1972. We saw that Gacy had a troubled childhood. There were certain abuses he suffered that caused a genuine self-hatred for his own sexuality. He ended up dealing with his self-loathing and rage by continually assaulting teenage boys. And though he was only caught for one of these violations, it laid the pathway for Gacy to eventually commit his first lust murder. Gacy would later justify his actions by saying his work life was too demanding and that he had to satisfy his urges through

murderous means rather than conventional methods. This type of justification is fairly common and unremorseful serial killers as they pursue their desires relentlessly without much of a moral lens. In March of 1976, Gacy divorced his wife, Carol Hoff, and soon thereafter, she and her daughters moved out of Gacy's house on West Somerdale Avenue in Norwood Park, a township in Cook County Illinois. By this time, Gacy had already started to ramp up his killing spree. He murdered his second known victim, an unidentified teen, in January 1974. Then in 1975, Gacy added several more victims to his tally. His increasing workload from his company, PDM contractors, a contracting company specializing in paint, decoration, and maintenance, gave him reasons to hire more

and more teenagers who often wound up as his victims. Gacy repeatedly put himself in positions of power to take advantage of people. He sought control in every sense of the word. This is a common trait of serial killers to seek control no matter what the cost. This showed up in Gacy's method of killing, using the lure of employment to get teenagers close to him and to rely on him for their financial well-being. John Wayne Gacey was a performer of sorts. He sculpted an amiable, jovial exterior, a man with a job, a house, a political, political stance and a place in the neighborhood.

He created a clown character named Pogo. He even briefly played the part of a dedicated husband and family man, but his performances did not stop there. When Gacy committed his horrific acts of lust murder, he also put on a type of performance. Gacy liked to trick boys into getting into handcuffs. He often did this by getting them drunk and dressing up as Pogo, convincing them that the handcuffs were all part of the clown performance. Then, once subdued, he would rape and torture his victims for hours until finally he killed them with a piece of rope and a stick that made a makeshift tourniquet.

He turned the stick, tightening the rope until the victim suffocated. In fact, Gacy called this method of murder his handcuff trick and rope trick in almost a nostalgic and playful way. It makes you shiver just listening to him explain them. His terminology suggests that he treated rape, torture, and murder with a playful casualness. With the same levity in which he approached dressing up as Pogo for children in the neighborhood, it really highlights his sociopathy and how unremorseful he was about his crimes. Recall in our last episode how Gacy often referred to his victims as degenerates and runaways, excusing his actions because he was an upstanding, respectable citizen.

Yes, Gacy felt this perspective justified as actions and thus did not think he was doing anything wrong. If you add in the clown act that Gacy used, we can see that he felt at least a slight dissociation with his crimes or a separation from his everyday life and his murderous one. Are we saying that there might have been several different versions of John Wayne Gacey? I don't think I would go that far. Multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder, is a severe personality fragmentation in which a person's memories and experience are incapable of living in a single personality. That is, their minds fail to put the pieces of themselves together into one single self.

In Gacy's case, it seems pretty clear that he remembered all of his murders in one form or another and never exhibited clear signs of this fragmentation when he was taken into custody. Though Gacy did try to claim insanity through multiple personality disorder to avoid the death penalty. Tried and failed. While I do believe that Gacy had a certain degree of... dissociation, which is why he came up with an alter ego, his crimes were very much planned and executed with the lucid intent to murder. The years' 1976 to 1978 were the most deadly of Gacy's life, and he unceremoniously

referred to them as his cruising years. PDM contractors was growing significantly, and Gacy found himself working 12 to 16-hour days. But nighttime was a different story. He spent his nights driving around Chicago, looking for unsuspecting boys. He enticed them with the offer of alcohol or marijuana and would bring them back to his home. It was there that he would restrain, rape, torture, and strangle his victims. Then he would bury them in the crawl space underneath his house. Gacy buried body after body under the crawl space until they were layered up to three bodies deep,

and the space was completely filled. However, there were several occasions where Gacy was almost caught. red-handed. On July 29th, 1975, 17-year-old PDM contractor employed John Butkovich disappeared under suspicious circumstances. He was hurt complaining about Gacy not paying him for two weeks and went to Gacy's house to confront him. Gacy tricked him into the handcuffs, strangled him, and buried the youth under the concrete floor of his garage. Police questioned Gacy, who was open about the financial confrontation, but claimed that they had worked it out that day. Investigators assumed the boy had just run away, though the parents were not convinced.

They badgered the police to continue to investigate Gacy, but the police claimed there were no grounds to do so. This is a continuing theme in the life of John Wayne Gacy. The police always seemed to overlook some very suspicious disappearances and encounters. However, it's important to remember it was still the 1970s and law enforcement was not necessarily looking for the patterns of a methodical serial killer, especially when everyone around him saw a chubby, friendly, neighborhood man. Because the police did not have nearly as much information and research about serial killers in the 1970s as we do now. Right. From the 1960s to the 1970s, the number of reported serial killers nearly tripled, meaning that the country was still getting familiar with how common serial killers actually were. And they probably didn't fully understand how to recognize one right away.

That's right. Around the time John Wayne Gacey was prowling the streets of Chicago, the FBI's behavioral science unit was just starting an extensive study into the mind of serial killers. One of the main members of that team, Robert Ressler, even spoke at length with Gacy after he was incarcerated. So the knowledge base needed to catch someone like Gacy had yet to be established. Precisely. And because of this, Gacy continued to duck the police on several close encounters. In December 1976, Gregory Gaudsick, a newly minted employee of PDM contractors, disappeared after informing his parents that his new job entailed digging in Gacy's crawl space on the pretext of adding more pipe. Years later, Gatsick was found buried in the

crawl space of Gacy's house. Potentially, in a grave he had unwittingly dug for himself. Gacy again played innocent to the youth's disappearance. Then things really get fishy. One month later, in January of 1977, 19-year-old John Schitts, disappeared after going to Gacy's house to sell him his car. Gacy resold the vehicle to Michael Rossi, another PDM contractor employee who moved into Gacy's house at the end of 1976. Rossi was caught stealing gas from a station and the car was traced back to Gacy. Gacy told police that Schitt sold him the car to make money to leave town. The police dropped the matter with no further investigation. These close encounters with the police, while unfortunate, shed light on a few

interesting things involving Gacy's character. Like what? Well, first, it reminds us how charismatic Gacy must have been. He was clearly a lead suspect in some of these cases, being the last one to see these boys before they disappeared. But he was able to skirt the questioning without so much as a hiccup. This falls in line with everything we talked about last episode, how Gacy spent so much time and effort building up his reputation based on what he thought an upstanding citizen would look like. That's right. Gacy found a way to make his reputation a type of shield. And secondly? Well, secondly, it shows that Gacy was not altogether meticulous in his killing. He left obvious clues and ways to tie these disappearances back to him,

keeping a victim's car, choosing his employees as victims, settling arguments of pay with murder. On the surface, it seems as though Gacy was never overly concerned with getting caught. And despite these multiple run-ins with the law, he continued to do things carelessly. Is this normal? it seems like most serial killers we encounter are fairly detail-oriented when it comes to their murders. Well, it's not particularly normal, but it does fit in Gacy's case. Remember, he was working long days, and so he had to add a convenience factor to his killing. He picked up PDM contractor employees because they were available and replaceable. But you think after the first couple of police questionings, he might start looking elsewhere for his victims?

Well, famed FBI profiler, Robert Ressler, believes that many serial killers get complacent if they find continued success in their murders. Almost as though their killing becomes so routine they start to overlook the things they might have taken great care with in the beginning. That's fascinating. And I'm sure that Gacy believed he had luck on his side with the amount of times he dodged the law. Though you have to admit that many workers of the same company disappearing over and over ought to have looked suspicious to someone. It did look suspicious to someone. Just not the right people. By the second half of 1978, the crawl space of Gacy's house was so full of bodies he could not fit anymore. He debated storing them in the attic, but worried about fluid leaking through the floor.

Instead, he opted to dump them in the Displains River in Cook County, Illinois, off a bridge about nine miles north of his house. His last five victims were disposed of this way. But as the bodies piled up, so too did suspicion. The smell in his house was getting worse and worse. but that's not what ultimately got Gacy caught. In fact, if not for a series of kidnappings where Gacy showed a type of cruel apathy, a casualness not often seen in serial killers,

it may have taken even longer for the murderer to be caught. We'll return to our story in just a moment from the Pardcast Network. And now back to the story. John Wayne Gacey spent many years perfecting his handcuff and rope trick and claiming victims throughout Chicago. yet the handcuffs trick did not always work. One such case happened in July of 1975 when Gacy visited one of his employees,

15-year-old Anthony Antonucci, at his house. Gacy gave liquor to the boy, and once he was drunk, attacked him. Antonucci was injured, having hurt his foot at work, and Gacy wrestled him to the ground, placing the handcuffs on him. But Gacy made a mistake and left one of the cuffs loose, allowing Anthony to break free.

Anthony, who was a member of the wrestling team at his high school, turned the tables on Gacy and put the handcuffs on his assailant. After an initial violent and intense outburst, Gacy eventually calmed down and talked the youth into releasing him, and Gacy quickly left the house. It's curious how Gacy seemed to just give up and let Anthony go free. It's curious how. Well, one word from Antonucci to the police, and Gacy would have been under investigation, where the bodies underneath his house certainly would have turned up. But Gacy just left it up to Antonucci, trusting in the boy's silence. Remember, though, by this point, Gacy was practiced in assaulting different youths and intimidating them into silence. So perhaps he used these manipulative tactics, like employing threats of violence or public shame on Antenucci,

to silence the 15-year-old after he escaped his clutches. Do we know how often victims are able to escape serial killers? Not exactly, but we do know that it happens on occasion. With Gacy, it is strange that it happens. happened on multiple occasions, perhaps signaling again how casually he treated these murders. Another potential victim to escape the clutches of John Wayne Gacey was named David Cram. Cram, another employee of PDM contractors, lived with Gacy in the latter half of 1976. Gacy had him help with odd jobs around the house, including digging extra room in the crawl space

where Gacy buried the bodies. Don't you think you would have smelled the corpses rotting? Well, it's possible, but Gacy spread quicklime to me. masked the smell and claimed it was a broken sewage line, thus justifying the digging. Then one night, Gacy dressed as Pogo the clown and tricked Cram into the handcuffs. At first, Cram thought it was a joke, but when Cram pushed Gacy to let him go, he said that Gacy's demeanor dramatically changed. Gacy, according to Cram, immediately dropped his jovial attitude.

Cram describes Gacy as growling like a dog and shouting that he was going to rape Cram, with the vicious air that Cramm had never seen before. It was almost as though he was confronting an entirely different person. This interaction leads us to a few very interesting observations. First, it shows that Gacy was easily able to instantly shed the neighborhood nice guy personality he had worked so hard to build. Second, for the first time, we're able to hear how vicious and brutal Gacy could be when acting out on his desire to commit lust murder.

And lastly, it is another unfortunate case. case of an assault by Gacy going unreported. That it is, because though Cram, who spent a year in the army, was able to fight off Gase's attack, he did not report the event. In fact, he kept living in Gacy's house, though he never explained why. I think this highlights the vulnerability of the boys Gacy preyed on. He was hiring teenagers that he could take advantage of because they needed him for something. It was a way of flexing the power and authority he so desired. And then, after a second rape attempt, David Cram finally moved out of Gacy's house. Cram continued to do odd jobs for Gacy over the next few years.

Then there was one more survivor, someone who had something very interesting and peculiar to say. You mean another victim who escaped Gacy's handcuffed trap? He didn't escape. In fact, he suffered what we can imagine John Wayne Gacy put all of his victims through. Except for some reason, instead of killing him, Gacy let him go. And the surviving victim told a tail bow

gruesome and terrifying. On May 22nd, 1978, Gacy lured 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignall into his vehicle. Gacy then chloroform the man repeatedly, keeping Rignall just out of consciousness. When Rignall finally came to, he was strapped to a wooden board. Gacy methodically told Rignall what he was going to do to him, and then he proceeded to rape, drug, and torture the unfortunate victim for hours. When Rignall woke up, he was in Lincoln Park, having been dumped there by John Wayne Gacey. Rignal, in terrible condition, after hours of torture and rape, somehow was able to make it back to his girlfriend's apartment. She immediately got him to the hospital where he stayed for the next six days.

Rignal told the police everything, but they were skeptical and refused to issue an arrest warrant. Once again, Gacy ducks the long arm of the law. Whether this was a product of the violence in 1970s, Chicago or just plain negligence, Gacy continued to walk free. But where the Rignall case gets really interesting is that Jeffrey Rignall claimed that there was another man present during the time he was tortured, which means... Gacy could have had an accomplice. And though we must remember that Mr. Rignall's account was manipulated by the heavy sedation

Gacy put him under, the idea gained traction when they started to look at specific timelines. Meaning Gacy was out of town when some of his confirmed victims went missing. which, when you look at it, does open the door for the possibility of outside help, or even murders committed when Gacy was not even present. It opens the door, sure, but only very slightly. Gacy was very manipulative, but he was also psychotic, and it seems unlikely that he would trust others to help him. But as we've seen on the show,

sometimes serial killers do recruit accomplices, like William Bonnet, who groomed a few young men to be as accomplices at different times. Right. Another big one was Dean Coral, who used two teenage boys to help rape, torture, and murder other teenage boys in Houston, Texas, from 1970 to 1973. In fact, Gacy's and Coral's similarities do not stop there. How so? You know Gacy's method of handcuffing? Coral and his accomplices had a similar tactic of tricking their victims into handcuffing themselves. Even the board Rignall described being attached to was just like the board Coral used for his methods of torture.

And I guess we can't ignore the coincidence and timing. Coral was killed and made into a public figure only a year or so before Gacy started fully refining his murder technique. And there's little doubt that Gacy would have heard about these murders. At the time, Coral was the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. So what, are we calling Gacy a copycat killer? Though he killed one boy before, it seems that Gacy started employing the same modus operandi as Coral after the latter man was caught. Well, we can certainly entertain the idea. A copycat killer is a killer who imitates the crimes of another

after seeing their name sensationalized in the media. The term was originally coined in response to a series of crimes meant to imitate Jack the Ripper. It's very possible that Gacy read about Coral's crimes and found some sort of deranged inspiration to go on his own killing spree. And this would have perhaps spark Gacy to refine its techniques around corals, even to go so far as employing outside help? Perhaps.

So it's possible? Even Gacy claimed in prison that other people were involved. Yes, it's possible, but we definitely have to exercise caution. We're not aware of any investigations into possible accomplices, and though Gacy did suggest other people were involved, this was when he was in the midst of an appeal to avoid the death penalty, 13 years after his initial conviction. So I think it's safe to assume he was stretching the truth a little bit.

Well, in any case, those who escaped Gacy's grounds, Give us a glimpse into its terrifying methods and also underline an important part of this case that in hindsight seems achingly frustrating. You're talking again about the lack of police interest? Right. Outside of these three escape cases, there were many reasons to further investigate John Wayne Gacy. Like the repeated disappearance of PDM contractors' employees. Or suspicious behavior seen by the neighbors. Or the frantic parents of John Butkovich who called the police 100 times asking them to keep investigating John Wayne Gacy.

Now, we have to keep in mind that it's easier to be critical in hindsight. So we are no way putting down the work of the police force. Oh, yeah. And this was 1970s Chicago, when crime was running rampant as gangs struggled for power in the vacuum left by the mafia's decline. So perhaps police were just overwhelmed or thought reports of missing teens were just a product of the times. Whatever it was, they never found enough reason to fully investigate Gacey.

And so, left untouched by the police, Gacy was able to get away with murder after murder after murder. That is, until December 1978, when John Wayne Gacy's twisted luck finally ran out. Our story will continue in a moment after a brief message. And now, back to the story. On December 11, 1978, Robert Piest, a 15-year-old with an impeccable track record, went to his job at Nesson's pharmacy and displains Illinois. Robert, a big fan of the outdoors, was saving up to buy a Jeep,

hopefully by the time summer rolled around. The day was just like any other, cleaning and stocking shelves, taking out trash, making sure things were in order. Everything was normal until a pudgy man with a mustache entered. The man took note of the youth and made small talk with the store's owner of Phil Torf. The man with a mustache said he too hired teens, but boasted often about the higher wages he paid them.

him. Then the man left and Rob continued his work as usual. The man returned several hours later on the pretense of retrieving a lost appointment book, and this time he spoke directly to Robert about a position at his company. Just then, Robert's mother arrived to pick him up, and the youth asked her to wait while he talked to the man about a potential job. Robert Pius tetted out back of the pharmacy with John Wayne Gacy and was never heard from again. Pius' parents were adamant in uncovering who this mysterious contractor was. When they found out it was Gacy, they asked the police to look into him, which police did the very next morning.

Once again, we see Gacy putting himself in an incriminating position. Not only was he seen courting the youth with the offer of making more money, but he returned to the scene to reiterate this point, something people would clearly take notice of. And take notice they did. The police questioned Gacy the next day and then asked him to come to the police station. Gacy showed up hours after the agreed upon time, covered in mud. The detectives held in there for a long time,

getting him to talk about his life and business, which Gacy happily obliged to do. All the while, they were digging into the strange man's past. They unearthed quite a few things that had stayed hidden for a long time. They found Wrignell's assault allegation, Gacy's 10-year prison sentence, even that dropped charges from the assault accusations from the early 1970s. The police contacted the parties involved and got their stories about John Wayne Gacy individually.

All the pieces were starting to come together, but they still needed the most important piece, evidence. The Displains Police worked on putting together a warrant while they staked out Gacy's house on December 12th. Because they were worried about Gacy giving them the slip again, they had one car constantly on Gacy wherever he went. On the 13th, the warrant came through. They searched the house and even went down into the crawl space, noting the smell. Though believing it to be sewage, they came up with nothing because the floor was totally covered. They did, however, discover Gacy's torture board, possible blood spots and several trinkets from missing teenagers. It is very common for serial killers to hang on to things from their victims as a type of trophy,

so it's no surprise that these items turned up at Gacy's house. And even though they did not identify the owners of those trinkets until late, the presence of these items, which included a high school class ring, aroused all the more suspicion in the police. Though at that point, they could only call it suspicion and were unable to use it as hard evidence, because the warrant to Serge Gacy's house was for the disappearance of Rob Pist. Which means that the evidence they needed was a DNA match from Robert, like a piece of hair. Anything else they found could be considered inadmissible. However, the Displains Police started to realize that they had something much bigger.

than they thought on their hands. As the police takeout stretched through the week, Gacy started to get a little frantic. He employed his friends to drive him around in dramatic fashion, trying to shake the tail. However, the Displains Police stayed with it, not batting an eye at Gacy's threats or frenetic confusion.

Gacy flip-flop between friendliness and warning, claiming that he had a bodyguard with a gun one moment, then making jokes with the officers the next. It was clear that the constant surveillance was causing him to lose his gun. grip more and more. Then something fell into the police's lap. Michael Rossi, one of the PDM contractor employees who lived with Gacy in 1976 and drove around in the late John Schitt's car, called the police and informed them of two other suspicious PDM contractor disappearances,

including Gregory Godzick. Later, they discovered the relationship of John Schitts' car to Rossi. Recall that Gacy had sold his car to Rossi after having claiming to have bought it, from the missing John Schitts. He said that the boy sold it to him needing money to leave town. In reality, we know that Gacy murdered Schitts, as he was identified later in the crawl space, and then he sold the car to Michael Rossi, who never changed the title.

So when the law enforcement found the title to be still in Gacy's name, they had to consider for the first time that they might have multiple murders on their hands. The police continued to rack up evidence, conducting a full interview with Michael Rossi, in which he mentioned Gacy's several strange comments through the years about finding things off dead bodies. They also brought in David Cram, and both men admitted that Gacy asked them to dig trenches in his crawl space, claiming that he needed room to lay pipe and to spread lime on top to insulate the smell of the, quote,

leaking sewage. Gacy, for his part, was trying to make one last attempt at dodging the surveillance and making friends with the surveillance crew. He even went so far as to invite them for dinner, where he said when talking about his character Pogo, quote, You know, clowns can get away with murder, unquote. Creepy. Two days after this encounter, on December 20th, 1978, Gacy had reached his limit. He tried to file a civil suit against the Displains Police Department for harassment, but the constant surveillance and the knowledge that he might soon be caught for his many awful crimes was too much.

Gacy stopped shaving and took to drinking heavily. In this state, Gacy drove to his lawyer's office, picked up a picture of the missing Robert Pius, and told them that the boy was dead and in a river. It's interesting that this slow mounting pressure got to Gacy in the way that it did. It seems like he worked so hard at keeping an externally low profile that when that was threatened,

it rocked the foundations of everything he worked to build. Rocked them, it did, because their next step was the police station. where John Wayne Gacy would give a verbal confession to all 33 of his murders. On December 22nd, 1978, John Wayne Gacy confessed to what he had estimated as between 25 to 30 murders. Gacy underwent over 300 hours of psychological tests leading up to his trial in 1980. He pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity, claiming both schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. But as we said before, while Gacy certainly suffered from severe psychological conditions,

it seems that he was very much conscious and aware of his decision-making as evidenced by his full confession. The prosecution thought so as well, as they presented both evidence and witnesses that showed Gacy's premeditation and intention to cover up his crimes. Both Cram and Rossi confirmed these claims. By testifying about the trenches, Gacy had them and other PDM contractors dig on many different occasions. The insanity plea seemed a last-ditch and desperate effort by Gacy and his lawyers. Anyone looking at this case could see that John Wayne Gacy acted with both lucidity and foresight. The jury agreed, and on March 13, 1980, John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to the death penalty for 12 murders brought forth by the prosecution. Gacy was sent to Menard Correctional Facility,

where he spent the next 14 years on death row. However, the question The men surrounding the strange character of John Wayne Gacy did not stop with his incarceration. Through the years in prison, Gacy flip-flopped in the accounts of his crimes, sometimes claiming accomplices, sometimes denying the crimes outright. These interviews shed light on Gacy's absolute hatred toward male teenagers that he frequently categorized as delinquent. It suggested, as we mentioned in episode one, that through his killing, he was lashing out at certain parts of himself that he hated. That's right. Even in his confession, Gacy wrongfully identified each of his victims as a runaway or drifter. This means that Gacy was incapable of seeing the teenager's lives differently than as he pre-categorized them. As far as Gacy was concerned, you could not be a young man and a good person at the same time.

Gacy's obsession with Pogo the clown did not die while he was imprisoned. He continually painted the clown over the years. These paintings are still auctioned off, though Joseph Roth, a businessman, bought 21 of them to burn them. He did so in Chicago in 1994 amongst a cheering crowd. It's very interesting that Gacy never let go of Pogo. This supports our earlier hypothesis that he really felt something for the character, that he was not just an act or a gimmick, but an extension of himself, a part of him that perhaps he sought to desperately understand,

and that's why he continued to paint him over and over again. The clown persona does seem like a good symbol for Gacy. Right, a jovial, painted-on exterior, supposedly lighthearted and caring, but with a hidden, sadistic, maniacal monster on the inside. Perhaps even it helped Gacy feel closer to his childhood, which was lost to him in so many ways because of the abuse suffered at the hands of his father. Gacy even made a painting for Robert Ressler, the FBI profiler we mentioned before.

after spending over 90 hours being interviewed by him. Wrestler reignited some questions in Gacy's case. He postulated that Gacy probably killed more victims than the ones discovered in his home and the Displains River. He cited the fact that Gacy was on the road often for his contracting work, so it was highly likely Gacy took his killing spree with him wherever he went. Wrestler also believed that Gacy had accomplices in his murders. He stated that the overall evidence suggested both knowledge

and complicity of some PDM contract workers. And furthermore, that there was a lot more to the story of John Wayne Gacy that had come out. Though, as we stated previously, we were very skeptical of this theory. Gacy seemed very adamant about avoiding the death penalty. He applied for several appeals. All of them denied. He could have easily revealed the names of those working with him to look for some sort of leniency. And while he stated that he had help on different occasions in prison,

these allegations seemed on par with his outright denial of killing anybody. On the back of the painting that Gacy gave Ressler, he wrote a note that read, quote, Dear Bob Ressler, you cannot hope to enjoy the harvest without first laboring in the fields. Best wishes and good luck, sincerely, John Wayne Gacey, end quote. When pressed about what that meant, Gacy simply replied, quote, well, Mr. Wessler, you're a criminal profiler, you're the FBI, you figure it out, end quote. And so Gacy lived out his days on death row, painting and denying the terrible crimes he committed. At 12.58 a.m. on May 10, 1994, John Wayne Gacey was confirmed dead by lethal injection.

This investigation, however, still remains open. To this day, 40 years after he terrorized Chicago, victims of Gacy are still being identified. Now, only six remain unidentified. Families who had a member go missing at the time of Gacy's killing spree maintain suspicion that they could have fallen victim to the killer clown. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. If you want to listen to any previous episodes of serial killers, you can find them on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Google Play, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Or in our website, parcast. If you like what you hear, please leave a five-star review or tell us what you think on social media. We're on Facebook and Instagram as at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. It seems simple, but it really helps our show. Join us next Monday for another episode of serial killers. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler. It is a production of Cutler media and is part of the Parcast Network.

It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Ron Shapiro, with production assistance by Carrie Murphy. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Drew Cole and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season 2 is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.