John Wayne Gacy: A Dark Profile

[Music] John Wayne Gacy a sadistic serial killer that fooled even his closest friends and neighbors this is a hard driving very hard-working individual I was astounded a pillar of society with a shocking secret we took a screwdriver into a little crack in the floor and when we did the whole floor lifted up he would become one of the most prolific serial killers in American history they asked him well why did you do this stuff I was afraid they would expose me he said they were all just human trash anyway but was John Wayne Gacy a product of his upbringing or was he born to kill to kill [Music] John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago in 1942 the only son of Marion and John Gacy senior John Casey was a son of a blue-collar worker a mother who was a pharmacist his biological father drank alcohol but continued to work he was considered a functioning alcoholic from what I understand he was physically abused by his father and his father was often not available or was intoxicated his father was also known for abusing Gacy's mother in fact engaging in physical fights with her that Gacy must have witnessed now clearly those sorts of things have an impact on a person's development and the way they look at the world the young John was close to his mother but to his father the overweight unathletic boy was a disappointment one that he made little effort to hide his father would come home he would go down into the basement into his Workshop not interact with anyone in the family but had this special thing about his son whom he felt should be better uh more like the father become a business person become someone who was admired in the community 's father regularly called him stupid a mama's boy and a [ __ ] his father frequently told him that he was a failure he wouldn't amount to anything so again you think of how someone growing up with that kind of verbal abuse an emotional abuse would develop as an adult John entered his teenage years and began to complain of body problems headaches faintness dizziness which the father must have seen as a weakening that this was not a strong person this was not a person who could stand up and be tall and be successful [Music] [Music] at school the young Gacy continued to disappoint he entered serially high schools and to great disappointment to his father he tended to fail and there were reasons for failure perhaps put forward I mean he he was ADHD he had real problems concentrating despite his failures John Gacy Jr was getting a reputation as a braggart he told fanciful stories and could confidently talk himself out of trouble at 11 years old Gacy was struck on the head by a swing resulting in a series of blackouts his father accused him of Faking at age 16 he began taking medication for a heart ailment Gacy was seen as weaker than other teenagers these conspired but overriding most of these excuses for his failure was the basic fact that John Wayne Gacy was very good at producing justifications and excuses for why he failed age 20 and without qualifications Gacy left Chicago and struck out on his own travel to Las Vegas where he found a job cleaning up in a mortuary he entered the world on a one-to-one basis he no longer as it were living living in the shadow his family and particularly his father he kind of felt a bit of a release working in there and sweeping up was probably not the kind of high status job but it was a job he attained on his own and it was a job that he managed to hold down the work was low paid and menial Gacy often worked alone with only dead bodies for company a number of serial killers will go through a variety of experiences which will mean that they come into close proximity with dead bodies in Gacy's case we know that he acted as a janitor in a mortuary we have a kind of familiarization with dead bodies a familiarization that would take away the taboo of being around a dead body John Wayne Gacy's New Life in Las Vegas didn't last long after only three months he used what little money he'd saved to return to Chicago there he enrolled in a business college and for the first time Gacy began to flourish it always had the gift of the gab and he soon discovered a flare for salesmanship Gacy suddenly realized that there was something that gave him a steam it's something that made him stand up in the world where he could as it were stand shoulder to shoulder and even beyond that with those individuals around him by the age of just 21 gase's business talents had won him the position of manager at a shoe store he realized that his abilities his acting abilities his his charm and disarm abilities that most kind of inherent Psychopaths seem to have this cold indifference actually works for you in interactions he then found this success and he found his Career Success could even match the expectations of his father in September 1964 Gacy met and married his co-worker Marlin Myers Marlin's father saw promise in his ambitious new son-in-law and appointed him the manager of his three fast food franchises in Iowa John and Marlin began a new life in Waterloo together they had two children Gacy was now a family man a rising star in the local business world and a popular member of the community on the surface it was a storybook existence Casey was a role model he was a role model of what he should be involved in all these political organizations all of these business organizations he should be the upstanding citizen in his small town but it really had no meaning for him otherwise if it had he wouldn't have needed to go into the remainder of what he did for the rest of his life on Wayne Gacy would become would shock his Suburban neighbors to their core [Music] after a childhood plagued by illness and failure John Wayne Gacy now had a wife two children and was the successful manager of a chain of fast food Outlets the gazes appeared the perfect nuclear family [Music] but behind the respectable facade John Wayne Gacy had begun to inhabit a world at odds with the straight-laced image of Midwestern Suburbia he got started abusing teenage boys sexually and there are a few chilling incidents where he actually threatens some of these young men that we didn't injure or kill anyone as far as We Know oh in 1967 Gacy lured 16 year old John tullary to his home they watched pornographic movies drank and played pool then without warning Gacy forced tellery onto a bed at knife Point handcuffed him and started to choke him in the case of John tolerate he followed the usual getting them drunk and showing pornography and then turning suddenly and using violence or threat and in this case a knife to force that person into handcuffs into a power submissive role and then to actually inflict sexual torturous sexual behavior taunting choking threats to that individual who would generally speaking and many occasions not report this but tullary did report his ordeal and other boys would follow Gacy was arrested the 26 year old family man and bright light of the community was charged with sodomy and sentenced to 10 years in Anamosa [Music] it's a high walled institution there are armed guards on the towers and very restricted movement inside the compound of the prison fellow inmate Ray Cornell became gase's close friend it was rigorous as prison I think should be it was dangerous there were numerous murder attempts while I was serving the two years that I was there on at least one occasion I witnessed a person stabbed to death was not a very nice place to be [Music] a convicted homosexual sex offender Gacy should have been high on the prison hit list John told everyone that he was serving time for showing pornographic movies to teenage boys John was very careful never to reveal in the fact that he in fact was in there for molesting or attempting to molest teenage boys with the truth behind his crimes successfully hidden Gacy showed the same ambitious streak as he had as a free man only this time he was striving to be a pillar of a very different community Richard Snavely was a prison counselor at the time he came into contact with inmate Gacy he had a small little sign that he wore that was very much like the name tags that the employees wore which said John Gacy first cook and you're a man of some Authority here what what is your title well I'm first cook in the kitchen and I run the morning meal and the afternoon meal in the kitchen John how long have you been here I've been here now a year and about two weeks he kind of got himself ingratiated uh into the system uh he was very uh responsible very adult in his style he was older than the average inmate he was able to try to develop a position and he was pretty successful in in doing that but his friend Ray Cornell witnessed another side to John Wayne Gacy during an encounter with an openly gay convict known as Mr connect Mr connect and some of his friends were in the lower yard of the prison playing basketball and the ball got loose and went rolling past John and John got the ball and threw it as hard as he could and connect not showing a lot of good judgment then said missed me missed me now you gotta kiss me and John went after it just for a second I think I saw just a glimpse of what his victims saw at the end of their lives because he had every intention of going after Gary connect and hurting him badly or killing I think I saw the monster at Christmas 1969 Gacy received news that would affect him profoundly we were sitting in the lower yard in the card playing area when a guard came down and got jaunt and took him up to the security office Gacy's father had died from cirrhosis and the authorities were not to permit him to attend the funeral when I saw him again the following morning in the chow hall he was a wreck foreign to visit his father and I suppose make amends with him my suspicion is that when his father died that was difficult because what it means is that you can never repair this relationship people always want the approval of their parents no matter how old they are he talked about his father over the next several days and he also talked about how deeply hurt he was at the fact that he would not be going over to Chicago to see his father buried but in 1970 less than two years after his conviction gase's Model Behavior paid off why am I asking how long do you plan to take up residence here well I hope to be getting out sometime in May well good what's interesting about gase's prison experiences as a result of the sodomy charges is firstly he's released very quickly his sentence was 10 years he was out after 18 months he was able to convince people that his behavior wouldn't be repeated but within that 18 months he rises to the top of the prison hierarchy despite the fact as a sex offender one would have expected him to be at the bottom of the prison hierarchy so what we're seeing here is the skills that actually underlie gazes Behavior over a long period of time skills that allow other people to gain confidence in him to see him as responsible to see him as trustworthy of course ultimately he would abuse that responsibility he'd abused that trust [Music] in 1970 Gacy now divorced returned to his home city of Chicago eventually settling into the quiet Suburban neighborhood of Norwood leaving his past in Iowa Gacy continued his Ambitions to be seen as an important valued pillar of the local community he married divorcee Carol Hoff and she and her two children moved into his home there was an indomitable spirit in geising he really did think he was beginning to become invulnerable that he could rise again and simply getting married was just another strategic plan as far as Casey was concerned there was no real sexual intent in this marriage it was convenience as in Iowa Gates's image is the perfect Suburban neighbor was a mere facade in 1971 he was charged by Chicago Police with disorderly conduct after a teenage boy complained that Gacy had picked him up at a bus station and forced him to commit a sexual act the case was dropped when the boy failed to appear in court in 1972 Gacy was charged with battery when a young man complained he had been forced to perform oral sex after Gacy had told him he was a sheriff's deputy the case never went to trial [Music] Timothy Jack McCoy was just 15 years old when he was picked up by Gacy at a Chicago bus station in 1972. after spending the night together Gacy stabbed him to death Gacy would later claim the killing was accidental and in self-defense many murderers commit a murder because of the force of particular circumstances at a particular point in their life but crucially the vast majority of murderers are overwhelmed psychologically by the fact they've taken another person's life and they never want to repeat that experience because they understand how difficult that has been not just for the victim for the victim's family but also for themselves sadly a small number of murderers want to continue to behave like that because they found that experience visceral vital exciting sexy Gacy had his first taste of murder it would be far from his last [Music] foreign in 1970 after serving time in prison for molesting teenage boys John Wayne Gacy remarried and began building a new life in Chicago but his image as a loving family man and generous neighbor was a sham in 1972 he'd picked up fifteen-year-old Timothy McCoy for sex and killed him Gacy would not be arrested for the murder of the teenager as far as the rest of the world was concerned the 15 year old had simply disappeared and to the local community John Wayne Gacy seemed Evermore the perfect Suburban neighbor the neighbors and the black liked him he was a he was a very friendly man he would give these tremendous outside parties for 100 to 200 people Gacy regularly entertained his neighbors by dressing up as a clown and Performing magic tricks Gacy was the kind of person that not knowing how evil he was you would like to have him in your community he was active in the Jaycees which is the junior Chamber of Commerce and he was a volunteer for the political party of his choice and he was very well thought of in a very small world of his community [Music] in 1974 Gacy established his own painting decorating and construction business hiring a string of young men to carry out the work his Charisma and bravado ensured there was no shortage of potential employees the boys knew John Wayne Gacy he was a big name in town and when he walked in he was John he had the big car outside he had the money everybody knew he was wealthy he had a big business and when he approached boys that were 14 15 16 years old making minimum wage and he was promising them almost double salary just to work in a construction site and help him build these boys jumped jumped at the chance gase's upstanding image as generous neighbor successful businessman and do-gooder in the community meant his motives for employing many of the young men went undiscovered I find it very interesting that people have a Hollywood image of the serial killer as being this rather scary man that's going to pop up from behind a bush and attack and kill whereas in fact serial killers by and large are very well socialized into their Community often holding down very responsible jobs within the community often seen as being pillars of the community and indeed Gacy is almost living out a fantasy that he must have had about being a pillar of the community so here's somebody living out the fantasy of normality albeit all the time we know he's also a closet homosexual who's engaging in sodomy with young man that he's able to convince to engage in sexual activity with him perhaps through the status that he had buying those sexual services by the mid 70s behind closed doors gase's wife began complaining of his violent mood swings he'd lost interest in marital sex and was keeping homosexual pornography around the house she divorced him and moved out Gacy began actively cruising Chicago's city streets looking to pick up young men from gay districts known pickup spots and areas where waves and Strays would congregate Casey was able to actually use one of his roles that of a pseudo-police officer he had the wherewithal in terms of you know a radio and he would often hide behind a badge and have you know bits of what looked like police paraphernalia you would pick them up here cruising the streets in a car that had a very large light on it as the police often did and he would be able to stop people using that as if he were a police officer picking up Strays taking them home torturing them [Music] in 75 boys began to end some had been selling sex on the streets some were young Runaways some were connected with his construction business Casey's technique of of charming and disarming his victims was pretty much similar to the way he actually engaged people in a legitimate business way he would keep them entertained with his verbal Rapport and be able to actually charm them quickly and rapidly into situations that they could not escape from and once he had got them into a position where he felt that he was totally in power he would change he would change very quickly and the twinkling of an eye you would become the commanding frightening torturous monster [Music] the young men would frequently be drugged handcuffed subjected to repeated rapes and terrifying ordeals of torture then they would be strangled he always picked the kind of attractive guy that he could never be himself but these individuals became less individualistic as far as he's concerned they became more and more objects I mean the more they became simply objects for him to do with as he wish the more horrific and torturous their experience was within his company Casey seems to me to fall into the criteria of the hedonistic serial killer in other words the person who kills simply for the sexual thrill of killing in particular strangling his young victims and sodomizing them rumors circulated amongst the gay community about the dangers of a large man with a liking for violent sadistic sex but despite an ever-increasing number of Disappearing young men they were simply assumed to have left town or run away with no bodies discovered they were chalked up as just another of the thousands of missing persons reported in the city each year the police tend to call young kids of that kind blue dross they tend to call them that as a way of saying they don't matter as much as kids from a normal background so we don't give them as much attention we also know because of their sexuality that often that means the police don't take enough notice of the violence in gay men's lives even when police were alerted to gase's sadistic Behavior they failed to act on a night in March 1978 27 year old Jeffrey rignal was lured into gase's car by his offer to share a joint he was chloroformed driven to gase's house and subjected to prolonged agonizing sexual torture after being repeatedly drugged he eventually awoke sprawled under a statue in Chicago's Lincoln Park despite reporting the incident Gacy remained at Large Gacy's protection from investigation and prosecution was this established good citizen that he'd managed to fabricate in the community where he felt to some degree he was pretty much invulnerable from accusations from Young lads who are probably not thought of very well in the community he also knew that it was pretty difficult for someone to make accusations of homosexual nature and of of someone who would suddenly want to torture someone this was out of context particularly out of context given his standing but John Wayne Gacy was about to make a fatal mistake when Gacy stopped targeting young gay homeless men who weren't really part of the community but instead targeted Robert peast who was an All-American high school kid with a good family who were going to report him as missing who were going to say how is the police investigation going it was only by choosing that type of victim that really was the unraveling of Gacy foreign Robert piste was considered the archetypal clean-cut All-American boy popular with his peers and loved by his close family on December the 11th 1978 he was working his regular job in a pharmacy saving money towards College he was looking forward to joining his mother's birthday celebrations that evening [Music] when she came to collect him at 9pm he asked her to wait for a moment while he went to talk to a man who was in the parking lot about an offer of a construction job he did not return [Music] chief of detectives Joseph kozenzak received the missing persons report this is where Robert peace worked the boy's mother came here to pick him up and when she arrived the boy told her that she wanted her to wait inside so he could go outside to talk to someone about summer work and once the boy went out the the front door he was never seen again the owners of the drugstore told us that they had a contractor who was to do repair work inside of their their Pharmacy they supplied us with some information pertaining to his telephone number and through the phone number we were able to determine his full name and address and that's that's the first time we ever knew the name John Wayne Gacy detectives headed to the businessman's home to question him hoping they would find the missing 15 year old safe and unharmed Casey had a diamond-shaped window in his front door in the front part of his house was dark but there was a street lamp on the sidewalk in front of his residence and it's I stood in front of his door knocking on it with the reflection of the light into the window I could see a face staring back at us foreign [Music] to the darkness of the house [Music] he walked alongside of the house and looked inside of a window we could see Casey sitting in a chair watching television drinking a beer [Music] it was an uncomfortable feeling being inside his residence and he was belligerent uncooperative and seemed to you seemed nervous suspecting Gacy knew more than he was revealing detectives obtained a search warrant and discovered a concealed void beneath the house the crawl space was actually hidden by a secret trapdoor in a closet in one of my investigators found that and pointed that out to me [Music] we took a screwdriver into a little crack in the floor and pried it up and when we did the whole floor lifted up and that led us into the crawl space and I went down there with a flashlight and looked around and everything was dry and solid there was no evidence teenager Robert peast was nowhere to be found detectives placed Casey under 24-hour surveillance when we started our surveillance JC initially responded by telling many of his friends that we were FBI agents that we were bodyguards But ultimately what happened is he really started to break down psychologically in a sense that he couldn't maintain his day-to-day facade of being Mr Nice Guy or a businessman because every time he went on his front door there was a police cars sitting there waiting to follow him around despite finding no bodies at his house the police had discovered a stash of personal possessions that appeared to have been collected as trophies we had started to find case reports based on pieces of ID we found on the first search warrant and identified those little pieces of identification as being missing persons who were former employees of Casey's hunting evidence convinced detectives that they should begin digging in the crawl space under gase's house prosecuting attorney Robert Egan was one of the first on the scene the first body was excavated and everyone was kind of standing around waiting for the excavation there was a lot of water in the crawl space as a matter of fact the body had to be taken up literally out of water the evidence technician had to reach down and feel a rib cage and then pull the rib cage up out of the water the parts were put into a body bag and as that was taking place the evidence technician that was doing the excavation was feeling down under the water and he he yelled out to us and we everybody kind of turned around it see what he was worthy and he said I've got another rib cage down here beneath the unassuming Suburban home detectives had made a discovery that would see it become one of the most infamous houses in American history foreign 1978 the search for 15 year old Robert peast had led detectives to the home of John Wayne Gacy the businessman and pillar of the local community there they discovered the remains of a decomposing body in a hidden crawl space beneath the house but that was only the beginning the evidence technician that was doing the excavation he yelled out to us he said I've got another rib cage down here the second set of remains was merely the tip of the iceberg body after decomposing body was being Unearthed [Music] Gacy kept the bodies of his victims under the house it's an ideal way to remember where his victims were it's an ideal way of keeping control over those victims even after they've died foreign young men were discovered buried on Casey's property 27 of them in the crawl space beneath his home in police custody Gacy began to confess he admitted to strangling all but his first victim he would choke them with a tourniquet as they were sexually assaulted he referred to this as his rope trick he claimed some victims convulsed for an hour or two before dying when the investigation started the neighbors essentially were to shock beyond belief because most of the neighbors even at that point in time still said John John would never do anything to harm anybody my son played by his house he's always had parties for the neighborhood he was a nice guy a good businessman so the neighbors were the totally shocked I was astounded this is a hard driving very hard-working individual this is a guy who appeared to have the social norms and the social values of the average middle American right down to the ground I certainly did not anticipate anything like that when I found out I was stunned but none of the bodies under the house was 15 year old Robert peast his whereabouts were finally discovered in April 1979. Robert had been killed on the night of his abduction with no space left under his house Gacy had thrown the teenager's body from a bridge into the Des Plaines River three other boys had suffered the same fate on February the 6th 1980 37 year old John Wayne Gacy stood trial for the murder of 33 young men while the defense argued that he was insane because he couldn't control his actions I mean obviously he could control his actions he'd killed 33 people that we know of but as an insanity defense in a legal courtroom that's not going to hold up [Music] prosecutor William Kunkel was convinced he could prove Gacy had been sane and fully aware of his wrongdoing he had underlined passages in red in his family bible uh indicating his knowledge of his own guilt as a Catholic uh the blasphemers the idolaters the abusers of themselves with mankind shall not inherit the kingdom of God he had that underlined he had the Illinois statute book with the paper clips and underlining on the sexually dangerous persons Act you know exactly what he was doing and even knew what the consequences of it was so he never showed any remorse never any Contrition no emotion and it's what psychiatrists call a flat affect [Music] very narcissistic well he was all that mattered on March the 13th 1980 John Wayne Gacy was found guilty and sentenced to serve 12 death sentences and 21 natural life sentences [Music] they asked him well why did you do this stuff and he said well there were several reasons with some of the kids I was afraid they would expose me others threat ened to expose me so I had to kill that he said and they were they were all just human trash anyway was this reason on May the 10th 1994. after 14 years on death row John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection [Music] Gacy remains one of America's most prolific serial murderers but what drove him to Snuff out the lives of 33 young men [Music] italing and abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father the catalyst was the blood clot on his brain from his childhood accident with a swing the trigger or was John Wayne Gacy simply Born To Kill I don't think there's anything in Gacy's background that suggests that he was born to kill my sympathy for gaseous circumstances is that homophobia is a very difficult cultural phenomenon to overcome and as a gay man Gacy must have felt it was very difficult to be open about his sexuality and whilst we must never accept responsibility for the deaths that Gacy caused what we should do is analyze cultures that regards one gender as Superior to another and one sexuality are superior to another he clearly lacked a conscience had no feeling towards others that he was very careless and cold and calculating I can only conclude that people are born with this deficit and there's no way we can change that we can't teach someone to develop a conscience if it's not there so just imagine yourself if you lacked a conscience the sorts of things that you could get away with without feeling bad it's a conscience that makes most of us behave because we'd feel bad if you were suddenly freed of that think of what you might do forensic psychologist Dr Helen Morrison spent 600 hours in the company of the serial killer and after his death was given permission by gase's family to have his brain examined there were no obvious abnormalities to him those men and those boys were Vermin they just needed to be extinguished for no reason other than the fact that they needed to be gotten rid of 99 of Serial murderers are male and this is around the world it covers all cultures it covers all socioeconomic groups it covers all religious groups it covers any type of place that you can imagine in the world and yet they are so like they've been cut out with a cookie cutter they are so exactly the same so we have to assume that there is some genetic Foundation it has to be a mutation John Gacy was definitely Born To Kill [Music] foreign [Music]

[Music] John Wayne Gacy a sadistic serial killer that fooled even his closest friends and neighbors this is a hard driving very hard-working individual I was astounded a pillar of society with a shocking secret we took a screwdriver into a little crack in the floor and when we did the whole floor lifted up he would become one of the most prolific serial killers in American history they asked him well why did you do this stuff I was afraid they would expose me he said they were all just human trash anyway but was John Wayne Gacy a product of his upbringing or was he born to kill to kill [Music] John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago in 1942 the only son of Marion and John Gacy senior John Casey was a son of a blue-collar worker a mother who was a pharmacist his biological father drank alcohol but continued to work he was considered a functioning alcoholic from what I understand he was physically abused by his father and his father was often not available or was intoxicated his father was also known for abusing Gacy's mother in fact engaging in physical fights with her that Gacy must have witnessed now clearly those sorts of things have an impact on a person's development and the way they look at the world the young John was close to his mother but to his father the overweight unathletic boy was a disappointment one that he made little effort to hide his father would come home he would go down into the basement into his Workshop not interact with anyone in the family but had this special thing about his son whom he felt should be better uh more like the father become a business person become someone who was admired in the community 's father regularly called him stupid a mama's boy and a [ __ ] his father frequently told him that he was a failure he wouldn't amount to anything so again you think of how someone growing up with that kind of verbal abuse an emotional abuse would develop as an adult John entered his teenage years and began to complain of body problems headaches faintness dizziness which the father must have seen as a weakening that this was not a strong person this was not a person who could stand up and be tall and be successful [Music] [Music] at school the young Gacy continued to disappoint he entered serially high schools and to great disappointment to his father he tended to fail and there were reasons for failure perhaps put forward I mean he he was ADHD he had real problems concentrating despite his failures John Gacy Jr was getting a reputation as a braggart he told fanciful stories and could confidently talk himself out of trouble at 11 years old Gacy was struck on the head by a swing resulting in a series of blackouts his father accused him of Faking at age 16 he began taking medication for a heart ailment Gacy was seen as weaker than other teenagers these conspired but overriding most of these excuses for his failure was the basic fact that John Wayne Gacy was very good at producing justifications and excuses for why he failed age 20 and without qualifications Gacy left Chicago and struck out on his own travel to Las Vegas where he found a job cleaning up in a mortuary he entered the world on a one-to-one basis he no longer as it were living living in the shadow his family and particularly his father he kind of felt a bit of a release working in there and sweeping up was probably not the kind of high status job but it was a job he attained on his own and it was a job that he managed to hold down the work was low paid and menial Gacy often worked alone with only dead bodies for company a number of serial killers will go through a variety of experiences which will mean that they come into close proximity with dead bodies in Gacy's case we know that he acted as a janitor in a mortuary we have a kind of familiarization with dead bodies a familiarization that would take away the taboo of being around a dead body John Wayne Gacy's New Life in Las Vegas didn't last long after only three months he used what little money he'd saved to return to Chicago there he enrolled in a business college and for the first time Gacy began to flourish it always had the gift of the gab and he soon discovered a flare for salesmanship Gacy suddenly realized that there was something that gave him a steam it's something that made him stand up in the world where he could as it were stand shoulder to shoulder and even beyond that with those individuals around him by the age of just 21 gase's business talents had won him the position of manager at a shoe store he realized that his abilities his acting abilities his his charm and disarm abilities that most kind of inherent Psychopaths seem to have this cold indifference actually works for you in interactions he then found this success and he found his Career Success could even match the expectations of his father in September 1964 Gacy met and married his co-worker Marlin Myers Marlin's father saw promise in his ambitious new son-in-law and appointed him the manager of his three fast food franchises in Iowa John and Marlin began a new life in Waterloo together they had two children Gacy was now a family man a rising star in the local business world and a popular member of the community on the surface it was a storybook existence Casey was a role model he was a role model of what he should be involved in all these political organizations all of these business organizations he should be the upstanding citizen in his small town but it really had no meaning for him otherwise if it had he wouldn't have needed to go into the remainder of what he did for the rest of his life on Wayne Gacy would become would shock his Suburban neighbors to their core [Music] after a childhood plagued by illness and failure John Wayne Gacy now had a wife two children and was the successful manager of a chain of fast food Outlets the gazes appeared the perfect nuclear family [Music] but behind the respectable facade John Wayne Gacy had begun to inhabit a world at odds with the straight-laced image of Midwestern Suburbia he got started abusing teenage boys sexually and there are a few chilling incidents where he actually threatens some of these young men that we didn't injure or kill anyone as far as We Know oh in 1967 Gacy lured 16 year old John tullary to his home they watched pornographic movies drank and played pool then without warning Gacy forced tellery onto a bed at knife Point handcuffed him and started to choke him in the case of John tolerate he followed the usual getting them drunk and showing pornography and then turning suddenly and using violence or threat and in this case a knife to force that person into handcuffs into a power submissive role and then to actually inflict sexual torturous sexual behavior taunting choking threats to that individual who would generally speaking and many occasions not report this but tullary did report his ordeal and other boys would follow Gacy was arrested the 26 year old family man and bright light of the community was charged with sodomy and sentenced to 10 years in Anamosa [Music] it's a high walled institution there are armed guards on the towers and very restricted movement inside the compound of the prison fellow inmate Ray Cornell became gase's close friend it was rigorous as prison I think should be it was dangerous there were numerous murder attempts while I was serving the two years that I was there on at least one occasion I witnessed a person stabbed to death was not a very nice place to be [Music] a convicted homosexual sex offender Gacy should have been high on the prison hit list John told everyone that he was serving time for showing pornographic movies to teenage boys John was very careful never to reveal in the fact that he in fact was in there for molesting or attempting to molest teenage boys with the truth behind his crimes successfully hidden Gacy showed the same ambitious streak as he had as a free man only this time he was striving to be a pillar of a very different community Richard Snavely was a prison counselor at the time he came into contact with inmate Gacy he had a small little sign that he wore that was very much like the name tags that the employees wore which said John Gacy first cook and you're a man of some Authority here what what is your title well I'm first cook in the kitchen and I run the morning meal and the afternoon meal in the kitchen John how long have you been here I've been here now a year and about two weeks he kind of got himself ingratiated uh into the system uh he was very uh responsible very adult in his style he was older than the average inmate he was able to try to develop a position and he was pretty successful in in doing that but his friend Ray Cornell witnessed another side to John Wayne Gacy during an encounter with an openly gay convict known as Mr connect Mr connect and some of his friends were in the lower yard of the prison playing basketball and the ball got loose and went rolling past John and John got the ball and threw it as hard as he could and connect not showing a lot of good judgment then said missed me missed me now you gotta kiss me and John went after it just for a second I think I saw just a glimpse of what his victims saw at the end of their lives because he had every intention of going after Gary connect and hurting him badly or killing I think I saw the monster at Christmas 1969 Gacy received news that would affect him profoundly we were sitting in the lower yard in the card playing area when a guard came down and got jaunt and took him up to the security office Gacy's father had died from cirrhosis and the authorities were not to permit him to attend the funeral when I saw him again the following morning in the chow hall he was a wreck foreign to visit his father and I suppose make amends with him my suspicion is that when his father died that was difficult because what it means is that you can never repair this relationship people always want the approval of their parents no matter how old they are he talked about his father over the next several days and he also talked about how deeply hurt he was at the fact that he would not be going over to Chicago to see his father buried but in 1970 less than two years after his conviction gase's Model Behavior paid off why am I asking how long do you plan to take up residence here well I hope to be getting out sometime in May well good what's interesting about gase's prison experiences as a result of the sodomy charges is firstly he's released very quickly his sentence was 10 years he was out after 18 months he was able to convince people that his behavior wouldn't be repeated but within that 18 months he rises to the top of the prison hierarchy despite the fact as a sex offender one would have expected him to be at the bottom of the prison hierarchy so what we're seeing here is the skills that actually underlie gazes Behavior over a long period of time skills that allow other people to gain confidence in him to see him as responsible to see him as trustworthy of course ultimately he would abuse that responsibility he'd abused that trust [Music] in 1970 Gacy now divorced returned to his home city of Chicago eventually settling into the quiet Suburban neighborhood of Norwood leaving his past in Iowa Gacy continued his Ambitions to be seen as an important valued pillar of the local community he married divorcee Carol Hoff and she and her two children moved into his home there was an indomitable spirit in geising he really did think he was beginning to become invulnerable that he could rise again and simply getting married was just another strategic plan as far as Casey was concerned there was no real sexual intent in this marriage it was convenience as in Iowa Gates's image is the perfect Suburban neighbor was a mere facade in 1971 he was charged by Chicago Police with disorderly conduct after a teenage boy complained that Gacy had picked him up at a bus station and forced him to commit a sexual act the case was dropped when the boy failed to appear in court in 1972 Gacy was charged with battery when a young man complained he had been forced to perform oral sex after Gacy had told him he was a sheriff's deputy the case never went to trial [Music] Timothy Jack McCoy was just 15 years old when he was picked up by Gacy at a Chicago bus station in 1972. after spending the night together Gacy stabbed him to death Gacy would later claim the killing was accidental and in self-defense many murderers commit a murder because of the force of particular circumstances at a particular point in their life but crucially the vast majority of murderers are overwhelmed psychologically by the fact they've taken another person's life and they never want to repeat that experience because they understand how difficult that has been not just for the victim for the victim's family but also for themselves sadly a small number of murderers want to continue to behave like that because they found that experience visceral vital exciting sexy Gacy had his first taste of murder it would be far from his last [Music] foreign in 1970 after serving time in prison for molesting teenage boys John Wayne Gacy remarried and began building a new life in Chicago but his image as a loving family man and generous neighbor was a sham in 1972 he'd picked up fifteen-year-old Timothy McCoy for sex and killed him Gacy would not be arrested for the murder of the teenager as far as the rest of the world was concerned the 15 year old had simply disappeared and to the local community John Wayne Gacy seemed Evermore the perfect Suburban neighbor the neighbors and the black liked him he was a he was a very friendly man he would give these tremendous outside parties for 100 to 200 people Gacy regularly entertained his neighbors by dressing up as a clown and Performing magic tricks Gacy was the kind of person that not knowing how evil he was you would like to have him in your community he was active in the Jaycees which is the junior Chamber of Commerce and he was a volunteer for the political party of his choice and he was very well thought of in a very small world of his community [Music] in 1974 Gacy established his own painting decorating and construction business hiring a string of young men to carry out the work his Charisma and bravado ensured there was no shortage of potential employees the boys knew John Wayne Gacy he was a big name in town and when he walked in he was John he had the big car outside he had the money everybody knew he was wealthy he had a big business and when he approached boys that were 14 15 16 years old making minimum wage and he was promising them almost double salary just to work in a construction site and help him build these boys jumped jumped at the chance gase's upstanding image as generous neighbor successful businessman and do-gooder in the community meant his motives for employing many of the young men went undiscovered I find it very interesting that people have a Hollywood image of the serial killer as being this rather scary man that's going to pop up from behind a bush and attack and kill whereas in fact serial killers by and large are very well socialized into their Community often holding down very responsible jobs within the community often seen as being pillars of the community and indeed Gacy is almost living out a fantasy that he must have had about being a pillar of the community so here's somebody living out the fantasy of normality albeit all the time we know he's also a closet homosexual who's engaging in sodomy with young man that he's able to convince to engage in sexual activity with him perhaps through the status that he had buying those sexual services by the mid 70s behind closed doors gase's wife began complaining of his violent mood swings he'd lost interest in marital sex and was keeping homosexual pornography around the house she divorced him and moved out Gacy began actively cruising Chicago's city streets looking to pick up young men from gay districts known pickup spots and areas where waves and Strays would congregate Casey was able to actually use one of his roles that of a pseudo-police officer he had the wherewithal in terms of you know a radio and he would often hide behind a badge and have you know bits of what looked like police paraphernalia you would pick them up here cruising the streets in a car that had a very large light on it as the police often did and he would be able to stop people using that as if he were a police officer picking up Strays taking them home torturing them [Music] in 75 boys began to end some had been selling sex on the streets some were young Runaways some were connected with his construction business Casey's technique of of charming and disarming his victims was pretty much similar to the way he actually engaged people in a legitimate business way he would keep them entertained with his verbal Rapport and be able to actually charm them quickly and rapidly into situations that they could not escape from and once he had got them into a position where he felt that he was totally in power he would change he would change very quickly and the twinkling of an eye you would become the commanding frightening torturous monster [Music] the young men would frequently be drugged handcuffed subjected to repeated rapes and terrifying ordeals of torture then they would be strangled he always picked the kind of attractive guy that he could never be himself but these individuals became less individualistic as far as he's concerned they became more and more objects I mean the more they became simply objects for him to do with as he wish the more horrific and torturous their experience was within his company Casey seems to me to fall into the criteria of the hedonistic serial killer in other words the person who kills simply for the sexual thrill of killing in particular strangling his young victims and sodomizing them rumors circulated amongst the gay community about the dangers of a large man with a liking for violent sadistic sex but despite an ever-increasing number of Disappearing young men they were simply assumed to have left town or run away with no bodies discovered they were chalked up as just another of the thousands of missing persons reported in the city each year the police tend to call young kids of that kind blue dross they tend to call them that as a way of saying they don't matter as much as kids from a normal background so we don't give them as much attention we also know because of their sexuality that often that means the police don't take enough notice of the violence in gay men's lives even when police were alerted to gase's sadistic Behavior they failed to act on a night in March 1978 27 year old Jeffrey rignal was lured into gase's car by his offer to share a joint he was chloroformed driven to gase's house and subjected to prolonged agonizing sexual torture after being repeatedly drugged he eventually awoke sprawled under a statue in Chicago's Lincoln Park despite reporting the incident Gacy remained at Large Gacy's protection from investigation and prosecution was this established good citizen that he'd managed to fabricate in the community where he felt to some degree he was pretty much invulnerable from accusations from Young lads who are probably not thought of very well in the community he also knew that it was pretty difficult for someone to make accusations of homosexual nature and of of someone who would suddenly want to torture someone this was out of context particularly out of context given his standing but John Wayne Gacy was about to make a fatal mistake when Gacy stopped targeting young gay homeless men who weren't really part of the community but instead targeted Robert peast who was an All-American high school kid with a good family who were going to report him as missing who were going to say how is the police investigation going it was only by choosing that type of victim that really was the unraveling of Gacy foreign Robert piste was considered the archetypal clean-cut All-American boy popular with his peers and loved by his close family on December the 11th 1978 he was working his regular job in a pharmacy saving money towards College he was looking forward to joining his mother's birthday celebrations that evening [Music] when she came to collect him at 9pm he asked her to wait for a moment while he went to talk to a man who was in the parking lot about an offer of a construction job he did not return [Music] chief of detectives Joseph kozenzak received the missing persons report this is where Robert peace worked the boy's mother came here to pick him up and when she arrived the boy told her that she wanted her to wait inside so he could go outside to talk to someone about summer work and once the boy went out the the front door he was never seen again the owners of the drugstore told us that they had a contractor who was to do repair work inside of their their Pharmacy they supplied us with some information pertaining to his telephone number and through the phone number we were able to determine his full name and address and that's that's the first time we ever knew the name John Wayne Gacy detectives headed to the businessman's home to question him hoping they would find the missing 15 year old safe and unharmed Casey had a diamond-shaped window in his front door in the front part of his house was dark but there was a street lamp on the sidewalk in front of his residence and it's I stood in front of his door knocking on it with the reflection of the light into the window I could see a face staring back at us foreign [Music] to the darkness of the house [Music] he walked alongside of the house and looked inside of a window we could see Casey sitting in a chair watching television drinking a beer [Music] it was an uncomfortable feeling being inside his residence and he was belligerent uncooperative and seemed to you seemed nervous suspecting Gacy knew more than he was revealing detectives obtained a search warrant and discovered a concealed void beneath the house the crawl space was actually hidden by a secret trapdoor in a closet in one of my investigators found that and pointed that out to me [Music] we took a screwdriver into a little crack in the floor and pried it up and when we did the whole floor lifted up and that led us into the crawl space and I went down there with a flashlight and looked around and everything was dry and solid there was no evidence teenager Robert peast was nowhere to be found detectives placed Casey under 24-hour surveillance when we started our surveillance JC initially responded by telling many of his friends that we were FBI agents that we were bodyguards But ultimately what happened is he really started to break down psychologically in a sense that he couldn't maintain his day-to-day facade of being Mr Nice Guy or a businessman because every time he went on his front door there was a police cars sitting there waiting to follow him around despite finding no bodies at his house the police had discovered a stash of personal possessions that appeared to have been collected as trophies we had started to find case reports based on pieces of ID we found on the first search warrant and identified those little pieces of identification as being missing persons who were former employees of Casey's hunting evidence convinced detectives that they should begin digging in the crawl space under gase's house prosecuting attorney Robert Egan was one of the first on the scene the first body was excavated and everyone was kind of standing around waiting for the excavation there was a lot of water in the crawl space as a matter of fact the body had to be taken up literally out of water the evidence technician had to reach down and feel a rib cage and then pull the rib cage up out of the water the parts were put into a body bag and as that was taking place the evidence technician that was doing the excavation was feeling down under the water and he he yelled out to us and we everybody kind of turned around it see what he was worthy and he said I've got another rib cage down here beneath the unassuming Suburban home detectives had made a discovery that would see it become one of the most infamous houses in American history foreign 1978 the search for 15 year old Robert peast had led detectives to the home of John Wayne Gacy the businessman and pillar of the local community there they discovered the remains of a decomposing body in a hidden crawl space beneath the house but that was only the beginning the evidence technician that was doing the excavation he yelled out to us he said I've got another rib cage down here the second set of remains was merely the tip of the iceberg body after decomposing body was being Unearthed [Music] Gacy kept the bodies of his victims under the house it's an ideal way to remember where his victims were it's an ideal way of keeping control over those victims even after they've died foreign young men were discovered buried on Casey's property 27 of them in the crawl space beneath his home in police custody Gacy began to confess he admitted to strangling all but his first victim he would choke them with a tourniquet as they were sexually assaulted he referred to this as his rope trick he claimed some victims convulsed for an hour or two before dying when the investigation started the neighbors essentially were to shock beyond belief because most of the neighbors even at that point in time still said John John would never do anything to harm anybody my son played by his house he's always had parties for the neighborhood he was a nice guy a good businessman so the neighbors were the totally shocked I was astounded this is a hard driving very hard-working individual this is a guy who appeared to have the social norms and the social values of the average middle American right down to the ground I certainly did not anticipate anything like that when I found out I was stunned but none of the bodies under the house was 15 year old Robert peast his whereabouts were finally discovered in April 1979. Robert had been killed on the night of his abduction with no space left under his house Gacy had thrown the teenager's body from a bridge into the Des Plaines River three other boys had suffered the same fate on February the 6th 1980 37 year old John Wayne Gacy stood trial for the murder of 33 young men while the defense argued that he was insane because he couldn't control his actions I mean obviously he could control his actions he'd killed 33 people that we know of but as an insanity defense in a legal courtroom that's not going to hold up [Music] prosecutor William Kunkel was convinced he could prove Gacy had been sane and fully aware of his wrongdoing he had underlined passages in red in his family bible uh indicating his knowledge of his own guilt as a Catholic uh the blasphemers the idolaters the abusers of themselves with mankind shall not inherit the kingdom of God he had that underlined he had the Illinois statute book with the paper clips and underlining on the sexually dangerous persons Act you know exactly what he was doing and even knew what the consequences of it was so he never showed any remorse never any Contrition no emotion and it's what psychiatrists call a flat affect [Music] very narcissistic well he was all that mattered on March the 13th 1980 John Wayne Gacy was found guilty and sentenced to serve 12 death sentences and 21 natural life sentences [Music] they asked him well why did you do this stuff and he said well there were several reasons with some of the kids I was afraid they would expose me others threat ened to expose me so I had to kill that he said and they were they were all just human trash anyway was this reason on May the 10th 1994. after 14 years on death row John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection [Music] Gacy remains one of America's most prolific serial murderers but what drove him to Snuff out the lives of 33 young men [Music] italing and abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father the catalyst was the blood clot on his brain from his childhood accident with a swing the trigger or was John Wayne Gacy simply Born To Kill I don't think there's anything in Gacy's background that suggests that he was born to kill my sympathy for gaseous circumstances is that homophobia is a very difficult cultural phenomenon to overcome and as a gay man Gacy must have felt it was very difficult to be open about his sexuality and whilst we must never accept responsibility for the deaths that Gacy caused what we should do is analyze cultures that regards one gender as Superior to another and one sexuality are superior to another he clearly lacked a conscience had no feeling towards others that he was very careless and cold and calculating I can only conclude that people are born with this deficit and there's no way we can change that we can't teach someone to develop a conscience if it's not there so just imagine yourself if you lacked a conscience the sorts of things that you could get away with without feeling bad it's a conscience that makes most of us behave because we'd feel bad if you were suddenly freed of that think of what you might do forensic psychologist Dr Helen Morrison spent 600 hours in the company of the serial killer and after his death was given permission by gase's family to have his brain examined there were no obvious abnormalities to him those men and those boys were Vermin they just needed to be extinguished for no reason other than the fact that they needed to be gotten rid of 99 of Serial murderers are male and this is around the world it covers all cultures it covers all socioeconomic groups it covers all religious groups it covers any type of place that you can imagine in the world and yet they are so like they've been cut out with a cookie cutter they are so exactly the same so we have to assume that there is some genetic Foundation it has to be a mutation John Gacy was definitely Born To Kill [Music] foreign [Music]

Transcript for:John Wayne Gacy: A Dark Profile

Transcript for:
John Wayne Gacy: A Dark Profile