The original killer clown

DUBBED “the Killer Clown,” John Wayne Gacy was to become one of America’s most notorious serial killers.

On the outside, Gacy, named after his mother’s favourite Hollywood star, John Wayne, was outgoing and sociable, a successful building contractor, married man and father.

Highly respected in his suburban Chicago community, he was also involved in local politics, even escorting President Jimmy Carter’s wife, Rosalyn, on one of her visits there.

One of his favourite pastimes was dressing as a clown and entertaining children at parties and hospitals. With a full face of make-up, his alter ego was called Pogo.

But behind the mask, Gacy was a twisted, psychopathic sexual predator, who over seven years, tortured, raped and strangled 33 men.

“Gacy gave us the phenomenon coulrophobia, the fear of clowns,” says leading criminologist Prof David Wilson.

His first murder was on January 2, 1972, when he killed 15-year-old Jack McCoy, who was at the Chicago bus station when Gacy was driving past.

He invited the boy to stay at his, but the teenager was never to be seen again.

Gacy stabbed him, poured concrete over his body, and buried him under the crawlspace in his home. Now he had the killing buzz. Bus stations became one of his favourite locations to pick up victims, often drugging those who resisted him.

Once back at his house, he’d often begin by performing a magic trick using handcuffs, ending with the victim restrained to a bed or chair.

Then, after stuffing clothes in their mouths to stop them screaming, he would rape them and force them to perform sex acts until they passed out.

He would then strangle or suffocate them by stuffing the clothes down their throat.

The late FBI profiler Robert Ressler, who interviewed Gacy, said the killer told him that his victims were “worthless”.

The city at large had failed to notice the disappearance of dozens of young men and boys.

But the last of those victims, a teenager named Robert Piest,

PREDATOR Mass murderer Gacy and, top, as a clown

changed everything. His disappearance led officers straight to Gacy’s home.

One of the detectives noticed a smell emanating from a heating duct, and ordered that the floorboards were lifted.

The floorboards shook as forensic scientists attempted to excavate the 29 bodies of his 33 victims, buried in the crawlspace, due to millions of worms feeding on the corpses.

Gacy pleaded guilty by reason of insanity, but was found to be legally sane, and was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980.

Unremorseful to the end, his last words before his execution on May 10, 1994, by lethal injection, were: “Kiss my ass.”

HORROR The crawlspace where Gacy buried 29 of his 33 victims