In Memoriam: John Wayne Gacy
Executed by the State of Illinois on May 10, 1994
John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, the second
of three children. All of the Gacy children were raised Catholic and all
three attended Catholic schools near where they lived on the north side
of Chicago. Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood, John kept himself
busy with many after-school jobs and activities such as a newspaper route,
Boy Scouts and working as a bag-boy in a grocery store. He had many friends
and was well liked by his teachers.
But his life was not as normal as it may have appeared. There is strong
evidence that John was sexually abused by his uncle. There are also claims
that he and his mother were frequently beaten by his alcoholic father.
His father had a violent temper and hatred of homosexuals. He regularly
verbally abused his son with harsh criticism about his effeminate nature.
It was reported at John’s trial that his father also made John dress
up like a girl. John adamantly denied any physical abuse, and most of
his childhood was spent trying to win the approval of his father. His
father also taunted him about his health problems (described below).
When John was eleven years old, he was playing by a swing set and was
hit in the head by one of the swings. The accident caused a blood clot
in his brain, which was not discovered until he was sixteen. From the
age of eleven to sixteen he suffered a series of blackouts caused by the
clot. They finally ceased when he was given medication to dissolve the
blockage in the brain. Then, at the age of seventeen, John was diagnosed
with a non-specific heart ailment. He was hospitalized on several occasions
for this problem throughout his life, but nobody was able to find an exact
cause for the chest pain John was suffering. Although he complained frequently
about his heart, he never suffered a serious heart attack.
After attending four high schools in his senior year, John dropped out
of school and left home for Las Vegas. This was where he began his work
experience, as a janitor in a mortuary. Upon returning to Chicago and
attending business school, he went on to sell shoes, manage a clothing
shop, and develop his abilities as a natural salesman. In 1964, John married
a co-worker. Her father persuaded the couple to move to Waterloo, Iowa
where John began running his father-in-law's Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.
In Iowa, John’s wife gave birth to a son and daughter. But John was
weighed down by apparent homosexual feelings. After one of his young male
employees filed a complaint, John was convicted of sodomy and sentenced
to 10 years in the state prison. His wife immediately divorced him. After
the divorce, he never saw his children again.
Released on parole after 3 years, John got a job as a chef in a Chicago
restaurant, bought a house in Norwood Park, and met the woman who became
his second wife. He then started up a successful construction and remodeling
business. During this time, John was very involved in the community. He
worked as a precinct captain for the local Democratic Party and entertained
children at local hospitals as Pogo the Clown while holding offices for
the local Jaycees organization. John and his second wife split up in 1975
when he admitted he was a homosexual.
On March 12, 1980, upon conviction for the crimes he committed, John was
sentenced to death. During his trial, numerous medical experts testified
that he suffered from schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, and
insomnia. But it took the jury only 2 hours to find him sane at the time
of his crimes and guilty of the murder of 33 people.
While sitting on death row for 14 years at the Menard Correctional Center
in Chester, John became an avid writer and painter. He wrote more than
10,000 letters and completed more than 2,000 oil paintings. He also kept
track of every visitor in his logbook since the first day of his incarceration.
Although John could not be a father to his own children, he offered fatherly
advice to many young incarcerated men. The guards at Menard noted that
John was a model prisoner.
On May 10, 1994, when every last appeal was denied, at the age of 52,
John was executed by lethal injection at the Stateville Penitentiary in
Joliet, Illinois. His brain was donated to science, to see if it could
shed any light on issues of human morality (Time, July 11, 1994, p. 64).
Perhaps the study of his brain might explain why John committed these
crimes and make society reconsider executing a man that may have been
physiologically incapable of moral judgment.
Karen Conti, one of John’s lawyers, contributed to this essay.
©2003 Illinois Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty