Such a Nice Man: John Wayne Gacy Jr.

It is with that kind of grotesquerie in mind-and after highlighing a few unsolved gay serial killer cases a couple weeks back-that we are launching this series profiling gay serial killers from the past. As a service to you, dear reader, to keep you from making the same mistake some of their victims did in cuddling up to them, we’ll discuss the evidence of their homo-murderous predilections that was often ignored by the people around them.. 

To inaugurate this weekly series, we have chosen the kindly clown himself, John Wayne Gacy Jr.

John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
1942 – 1994

He’s, like, the whole reason we grew up being told never to get in cars with strangers, and the quintessential “such a nice man” who everyone thought was a real sweetheart until they started pulling bodies out from under his house.  He’s sometimes called a pedophile, though many of his victims were over 18 and he seemed to have a thing for young men between the ages of 16 and 21.  And yes, that’s really him in that clown pic above (he threw popular neighborhood block parties as “Pogo the Clown”), and that’s really him, in his role as Democratic party precinct captain, shaking hands with Rosalyn Carter and looking like he just spotted a twink in the corner he’d like to sodomize and strangle.

Clues That This Guy Was Fucked Up

Appearance: a jolly fat man who liked to surround himself with teenage boys, and um, did you *see* that clown picture?

Relationship History: Married twice, and both women ultimately walked away when his sexual preferences were discovered. The first marriage, which included two kids ended after Gacy was incarcerated for sodomy and child molestation in 1968. The second ended after his wife found gay porn mags lying around the house and Gacy brazenly admitted they were his and that he preferred sex with men. It was right after the second divorce, in April 1976, that his killing spree began in earnest.

Jail Time: Though he was able to successfully hide his earlier criminal record and live on to become a banner member of the community, Gacy was charged with assault and child molestation in 1968, and plead guilty to a sodomy charge for which he served 18 months between 1968 and 1970.

What Got Him Off: Gacy seemed to like over-powering and raping his victims, in addition to torturing and killing them. The boys who got away without being killed describe situations involving marijuana, handcuffs, guns, chloroform, whips, anal penetration and an array of dildos and torture implements which he would use on the incapacitated while jacking off. Jeff Rignall and Robert Donnelly, for whatever reason, got the full treatment before being set free in early December 1977, just before the cops finally homed in on Gacy. 

Not Really That Nice: A psychic at a friend’s pre-Christmas party in 1977, weeks before police started digging up bodies around his house, said she knew immediately upon talking to Gacy that he was a perverted and scary individual, and though she told her hosts about it at the end of the night they refused to believe it. And after all his volunteering for the Jaycees and throwing those block parties in that fucking clown costume, you know what his last words were before being executed in 1994? “Kiss my ass.”

And you wonder why we never trust “nice” as a singularly important character trait.

Now, a creepy video some YouTuber made to Sufjan Stevens’ song “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” using old educational film footage that taught kids about kidnapping: