“A CLOWN CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER.”
All of the children are shouting with glee, and the grown-ups can’t resist hooting with laughter. Pogo the Clown is highly talented at turning a garden party into a day at the circus. He’s at it again— goofy red hat, oversized shoes, white makeup. John Wayne Gacy is known throughout the Chicago area for his brilliant portrayal of the clumsy clown named Pogo. What no one suspects: This man in his mid-thirties dons his costume not just to entertain children but also to become acquainted with potential victims. Because Pogo the Clown is always on the prowl…
“I SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF ANYTHING MORE SERIOUS THAN RUNNING A CEMETERY WITHOUT A LICENSE.”
Handcuffs are not part of a clown’s usual equipment, but the trick is still impressive—and Gacy’s procedure works time and time again: He lures a male teenager into his home and asks the young lad to handcuff him. He always manages to free himself within seconds. Then he encourages the teen to try performing the trick himself and puts handcuffs on him. That’s when Pogo the Clown reveals the true nature of the trick and shows his real face: “The trick is, you have to have the key,” he says with a grin— before sexually abusing his helpless victim. Then he strangles the victim or stabs him with a knife in a grisly scene that plays out more than 30 times just outside of Chicago in the 1970s.
Nevertheless, for a long time Gacy managed to maintain his image as a well-liked member of the community. Dressed up as a clown, he’d entertain children and their parents; as a local businessman he’d help young people get ahead in life, and as a Democratic precinct captain in his region, in 1978
he even shook the hand of First Lady Rosalynn Carter. What she couldn’t imagine: She was shaking hands with one of the worst serial killers in U.S. history. For years the police ran into one dead end after another as they searched for more than two dozen missing teenagers. No one would’ve suspected that their friendly neighbor John Wayne Gacy had something to do with the disappearances.
“I KILLED 30 PEOPLE, GIVE OR TAKE A FEW.”
As is often the case with serial killers Pogo the Clown grew overconfident, which caused him to make mistakes. On December 11, 1978, he had used a job offer to lure 15-year-old Robert J. Piest into his home to murder him. What he didn’t realize is the teen had previously told his mother where he intended to go. That suddenly focused investigative attention on 36-year-old Gacy. Two days later a judge issued a search warrant for Gacy’s house, which was chock-full of incriminating evidence. Subsequent searches of Gacy’s home and property turned up the bodies of 29 young men—buried beneath the house and garage and in the garden of the ordinary home in the Chicago suburb of Norwood Park. He later admitted to shoving four other bodies into a nearby river when space to bury them started getting scarce.
Under interrogation the true identity of Pogo the Clown became very clear: Gacy’s sadistic alter ego was entirely divorced from reality. Despite having confessed to the crime of murdering around 30 people, he’d later state: “I should never have been convicted of anything more serious than running a cemetery without a license.” The jury saw things differently, of course: Gacy received 21 life sentences and 12 death sentences. No serial killer has ever received a harsher penalty.
Fourteen years after his conviction, Gacy was executed on May 10, 1994. A malfunction in the IV tube delayed the procedure for several minutes, but Gacy was pronounced dead at 12:58 A.M. If he left one lasting legacy, it’s this: the feeling that you just can’t trust a clown. This became a theme in dozens of Hollywood horror films, including the one based on Stephen King’s novel IT and its new sequel.