John Wayne Gacy: Timeline of the suburban Chicago serial killers case and the efforts to recover, name his 33 victims

Table Of Content

• John Wayne Gacy: the never-ending aftermath of a serial killer’s notorious crimes
• Disturbing video shows accused killer NJ dad forcing 6-year-old son to run on treadmill because he was 'too fat'
• John Wayne Gacy’s Victims Receive Justice
• First search warrant
• Timeline of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s life, case

A 1992 television movie titled To Catch a Killer explored the efforts to find out what happened to the missing teenage boys who were later discovered to be among Gacy’s victims. The movie starred Brian Dennehy, Michael Riley, and Margot Kidder, and Dennehy, who played Gacy, was nominated for an Emmy award. According to Dennehy, Gacy wrote a letter to him from prison, protesting his portrayal in the film and proclaiming his innocence. In total, 26 victims were found in the empty crawl space of his home and three others were found around the property. Gacy even drew a diagram to help officers locate the bodies during his confession. He was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois.

John Wayne Gacy: the never-ending aftermath of a serial killer’s notorious crimes

Today, the house includes a big backyard, fireplace, and updated kitchen, according to Patch. Karen Engstrom/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty ImagesInvestigators carry the remains of a body found beneath the garage floor of the home of John Wayne Gacy on December 22, 1978. When he got out less than two years later, John Wayne Gacy outwardly tried to return to normal life. At the dawn of the 1970s, he married his second wife and moved into a new home at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue. But John Wayne Gacy’s house would soon become the scene of dozens of depraved murders. For a period of time, Gacy did not live entirely alone at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue.

Disturbing video shows accused killer NJ dad forcing 6-year-old son to run on treadmill because he was 'too fat'

After bringing the teenager home, where they drink and engage in sexual acts, Gacy stabs him to death and buries him in a crawl space. According to Gacy, all of the murders took place on his property between the hours of 3 a.m. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawlspace of his home, and three others were buried in other spots on his property. After immense pressure and surveillance from the police, according to History.com, Gacy eventually confessed to his crimes in December 1978.

John Wayne Gacy’s Victims Receive Justice

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was promptly served divorce papers from his wife, whom he would never see again. Eventually, Gacy had enough of the abuse, and he picked up and moved out West. While working as a mortuary assistant in Las Vegas, Gacy slept on a cot behind the embalming room. One night, after observing the morticians embalming dead bodies, he crawled into a coffin with one. He laid in the coffin for a time, embracing and caressing the body, a teenage boy.

A Victim of John Wayne Gacy Is Identified 4 Decades Later - The New York Times

A Victim of John Wayne Gacy Is Identified 4 Decades Later.

Posted: Mon, 25 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]

It was during an ensuing interview and a discussion of the crawl space, that Gacy even offered help. "He went into detail on what he had done to Rob Piest," he said. "And Rob Piest and four others were thrown into the Des Plaines River because his crawl space was too crowded."

Timeline of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's life, case - The Associated Press

Timeline of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's life, case.

Posted: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]

First search warrant

Gacy had a congenital heart condition that limited his physical activity and plagued him with lifelong obesity. When he was 11, doctors discovered that he had a blood clot in his brain. They were able to treat it, but even that didn’t spare Gacy from his father’s wrath. But during the 1950s, homosexuality was still taboo, so he pretended to be straight his entire life. Ironically, Moran’s efforts to connect missing persons with Gacy unknowns have turned up living people who simply walked off the grid and disappeared. That seemingly herculean task fell on sheriff’s detective Jason Moran, and in the ensuing seven years, Moran has managed to put names with two of the victims.

Timeline of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s life, case

The front room of the house at 8213 Summerdale was choked with plants, and there were several pictures of sad-faced clowns on the wall. In a rec room, hidden near the pool table, officers found a large vibrating dildo crusted with disagreeable evidence that it had been used in some recent anal penetration. There were a number of books and magazines about homosexuality, and several of them featured older men in congress with young boys. Ominously, in the attic, investigators found some wallets, and the information inside proved that they belonged to young men, teenagers. Five years later, that marriage dissolved when he was sent to prison for sexually abusing a teenage boy.

Second murder

The documentary also reveals that Drake Bell, former child star of the Nickelodeon show" Drake & Josh," was Peck's unnamed victim in a 2004 case. "I noticed a painting in the room that stuck out to me because it had nothing to do with 'Planet of the Apes,'" Sullivan said. Sullivan went on to describe what he saw in rooms in Peck's house, including vintage toys and comic books, as well as a garage that had been converted into what appeared to be a "Planet of the Apes shrine." "I remember, at the time, I think it was about two-and-a-half years in, everyone went to Brian's house for a barbecue," former 'All That' star Kyle Sullivan says in the clip.

Murder of Timothy McCoy

Only 28 of Gacy's victims have been conclusively identified. The youngest were Samuel Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14; the eldest were Francis Alexander and Russell Nelson, both 21. Little is known about Gacy’s children because, like the rest of the Gacy family, they have tried to avoid the public eye. It’s likely that both Michael and Christine have changed their name at some point in order to avoid being known as the children of the Killer Clown. The lot was so filled with human remains at one point that Gacy disposed of his last 4 victims in the Des Plaines River and Dresden Island Lock and Dam in the Illinois River. Serial killer John Wayne Gacy s home address, aka the site of his murders, was 8213 W.

With the murders, "I think he was trying to almost kill himself over and over," she said. She said he was sexually abused, had head injuries as a kid and had repressed homosexual tendencies. Her final impression of Gacy was that he wanted to be caught by police, and he was "relieved" to be behind bars. During Rignall's testimony, he said Gacy was "aided at one point by an accomplice," which was documented by a West Virginia University research paper on the insanity defense.

Afterward, Judge Louis B. Garippo thanks the jury, noting, "Whatever the cost [of the trial], it was a small price... What we do for the John Gacys of this world we will do for everyone." One month after pleading guilty to sodomy, Gacy earns a 10-year prison sentence, the strict punishment meant to serve as "a further deterrent" to his preying on teenage boys. Gacy subsequently hires a high school senior to intimidate one of the boys into remaining silent, a move that backfires. From Gacy's first sexual assault conviction to his eventual execution, here are the key moments from one of the most notorious murder sprees in U.S. history. Gacy committed his first known murder in January 1972, after luring the 16-year-old Timothy McCoy to his house for sex.

He was convicted of all 33 murders, the highest number attributed to one serial killer in American history. He was given the death penalty for 12 of those murders, with life sentences for the remaining 21. Returning to the bus station, Gacy picks up his first known murder victim, later identified as Timothy McCoy.

Meanwhile, without his wife’s knowledge, Gacy lured several youths to their home, coercing or outright forcing them into sexual acts. Cook County medical examiner Robert Stein supervised the exhumations of the victims buried on Gacy's property.[224] The crawl space was marked in sections and each body was given an identifying number. The first body recovered from the crawl space was assigned a marker denoting the victim as Body 1.[114] He was identified as Jon Prestidge on January 6, 1979.[123] No cause of death could be determined. His first wife, Marylynn Myers, he met while the two were working at the same shoe store and married in 1964. Myers would divorce Gacy following his prison sentence for the sexual assault of 2 boys. When telling the story of a monster like John Wayne Gacy, it’s important not to forget that the bodies found in his home belonged to real people that had families.

"There’s no evidence of any kind I’m aware of, anywhere else, that suggests any additional victims," he said. During closing arguments, Kunkle bristled at defense pleas for mercy. During his own summation for the jury, the prosecutor tore down the photos of the known victims, and strode to a spot in the courtroom where the trap-door to Gacy’s crawl space sat before the jury. Police discovered the bodies of 29 boys and young men in or near Gacy’s house. Four other bodies were found in the nearby Des Plaines River. The wooden entranceway to the crawlspace where John Wayne Gacy hid victims’ bodies was stored along with other trial evidence.

Keep reading for more on the John Wayne Gacy murders, facts about the killer himself, and details on the John Wayne Gacy house. Gacy was born into a blue-collar family and seems to have had a fairly ordinary childhood. But he exhibited a growing tendency toward sadism, which resulted in several encounters with the law in the 1960s.

He offered them paid, part-time work for cash, only to torture and strangle them to death. Born in Chicago on March 17, 1942, John Wayne Gacy had an abusive, tumultuous childhood. His father beat him, berated him as a “sissy,” and whipped him with a belt. When Gacy was seven, a family friend molested him but Gacy stayed quiet out of fear of further punishment. Realtor.comThough it looked like a normal suburban ranch, John Wayne Gacy’s house in Norwood Park, Illinois was actually the site of 33 brutal murders in the 1970s.