True crime special

I married a serial killer

When Carole Hoff complained to her husband John Wayne Gacy of an “awful stench” rising from the floorboards of their Illinois home, he blamed it on mice.

She accepted the excuse. After all, her husband was a well-respected man in the community, who dressed as Pogo the Clown to entertain children at parties and hospitals.

In 1975, three years into their marriage, Carole was stunned when Gacy told her he was bisexual and would no longer have sex with her.

When he started bringing teenage boys home and leaving homosexual pornography lying around, Carole was horrified and divorced him. She later learned Gacy had been killing people

in the house that they shared with her daughters, and the stench she’d complained of was in fact the dead bodies he’d buried under their home.

The “Killer Clown” was eventually charged in 1980 with the murder of 33 young men, sexual assault and indecent liberties with a child.

When he was put to death via lethal injection in 1994 after 14 years on death row, his parting words were, “Kiss my ass.”

Gacy killed 33 young men, some of whom are pictured right. Carole divorced Gacy and took her daughters away.