INFAMY: John Wayne Gacy: The Real Killer Clown

Hi. Before today's episode of Crimes of Reddit, we want to tell you about Mother Knows Murder, a new Crime House original hosted by Nisi Nash and her daughter, Dia. For Nisi, true crime is personal. When she was 15, she witnessed her mother become the victim of a violent shooting. Her mom survived. And today, Nisi and Dia bond over true crime together. Now they're inviting you in with comedic relief that lightens things up even when these cases get dark. Follow Mother Knows Murder with Nisi and Dia Nash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or subscribe on YouTube at Crime House Studios. This is Crime House. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crimes of Infamy. Sabrina, shall we begin with a little game of two truths and a lie? Of course we should. Okay. Today, this game is about the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy, known as the Killer Clown. Lovely. Okay. So, number one, because of his charity work and political activism, John once personally met the First Lady of the United States. Okay. Number two, John's clown persona was named Pollywog because he would croak like a frog to make the kids laugh. Okay. Why can you do that so well? I don't know. Okay. And number three, John hosted annual summer parties for his neighbors that were attended by hundreds of people. Okay. So, I'm guessing the lie. Guess the lie. Yeah. Two of these are truths. Okay. Well. If you can believe it. Because I know about John Wayne Gacy. I know he wasn't Polly, the frog croaking clown. Pollywog. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's true. The truth is. That's true. It's a lie. The lie is number two, because in reality, Gacy had two clown personas. So, one was named Patches, and one was named Pogo. And Patches was a little bit more serious, and Pogo acted a little more silly. But obviously, no matter how he dressed up, John Wayne Gacy was no laughing matter. In today's episode, we'll tell you all about John's horrific crimes, how he became known as the killer clown, and the long shadow he cast over pop culture, including his similarities to the character of Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King's It, who is literally nightmare. Nightmare fuel. Yeah, he is. Welcome to Crimes of Infamy, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Every Tuesday, we're exploring a different corner of the true crime universe, examining cases that left a permanent impact on society, and giving you a front seat to every twist and turn along the way. We are your hosts, Corinne Vien and Sabrina DeAnaroga. I will be the one walking you through the chilling narratives of every story. I will be zooming in on the moment and showing you how the very real scenes in these stories played out. If you're loving Crimes of, please follow, rate, and review us wherever you listen. It helps us build this community, and we love hearing from you. To get early access and ad-free listening, subscribe to the Crime House Plus community on Apple Podcasts. You can also catch us on YouTube, where we include visuals that bring every case to life. This season is all about the crimes behind the world's most iconic crime. We'll be right back. We're talking about iconic horror movies, and today we're talking about John Wayne Gacy, whose crimes have a lot of connections to the iconic villain Pennywise from It. A warning before we begin, this episode contains descriptions of murder and sexual assault, so please listen with care. Between 1972 and 1978, John Wayne Gacy murdered at least thirty-three people. He was killed in the middle of the night, and he was killed in the middle of the night, and he was killed in the middle of the night, and he was killed in the middle of the night, young men and boys in Chicago. But before we start talking about him and his crimes, we always want to start with honoring victims and their memories. These crimes affected real people in real tragic ways, and remembering them is especially important for cases like these, where the killer has become this sort of mythological figure. Because out of all of the serial killers out there, John Wayne Gacy stands out, not only for what he did, but for what he wore. Gacy often performed at children's hospitals and birthday parties as a clown, and his charity work helped him avoid suspicion. But once he was exposed, it put him under the spotlight. After his arrest, the press started calling Gacy the killer clown, which has become a popular horror trope over the years. We've seen it many times. The movie It, based on the novel by Stephen King, features one of the most famous examples of a character like this, Pennywise. And I also want to say, like, of his victims, there are still so many of them who haven't been identified. They found so many bodies. And even some of the identifications have only been made recently. Right. Because there were some that, you know, maybe weren't marked as missing people. And he really did prey on innocent people. Yeah. I also read a really disturbing fact that when he was in the crawl space, he ran out of space. And he was like, do I start putting them in my attic? But then he decided to dispose of them in a local river. Okay. So you can see why people are afraid of clowns. Are you afraid of clowns? I'm actually not. Are you? I'm not. Are you indifferent? Because I'm indifferent. I don't like them, but I don't like them. I don't like them. I don't dislike them. Like, I'm not seeking out clowns. Right. But I'm not scared of them in the way that, like, when I go to Halloween mazes and spooky places, I don't run away scared from clowns. And in fact, when Bill Skarsgård played Pennywise in It, Bill Skarsgård, despite all that makeup, I still had a crush on him. Yeah. Yeah. That was definitely a way more attractive Pennywise the clown. Yeah. We want to be afraid of monsters. But not when they're Bill Skarsgård. Not when they're hot. I mean, in addition to Skarsgård being very sexy Pennywise and Tim Curry's being a nightmare, I do love Stephen King. And I have, I mean, he's like a horror icon and a literary genius. And it was like one of the first, I mean, Stephen King was my entryway into especially horror novels. And it is one of the best. And Bangor, Stephen King has his residence is still on our truffle bucket list. Absolutely. We have to. Yeah. But John Wayne Gacy is a clown. Terrifying. And we know people have opinions about clowns. So let us know in the comments or in our Spotify poll. Are you yay or nay? Love them or hate them? One thing is for sure. One of the scariest fictional clowns out there is the monster known as Pennywise. And we should note that Stephen King has not said that John Wayne Gacy directly influenced Pennywise. But Gacy is a clown. And he's a clown. And he's a clown. And he's a clown. Gacy's story is inextricably linked to the killer clown trope. And Pennywise is definitely a part of that legacy. Obviously, there's the clown costume. And like John Wayne Gacy, Pennywise mostly targeted young people. Claims a staggering number of victims. And his innocent, wholesome appearance disguises the real monster underneath. I have to say the similarities are undeniable, whether it was on purpose or not. But the big difference is that John Wayne Gacy was all too real. And his actual crimes were so horrific, they would even send a chill down Stephen King's spine. It's late December 1978. The sun sets over a quiet house in Norwood Park Township, Illinois. Evidence technician Daniel Gentee stands outside the home's crawlspace door. He knows something bad is waiting for him in there, but he isn't sure what he'll find. At first, it seemed incomprehensible that someone like John Wayne Gacy could fall under suspicion. Everyone in town loved him. But people have gone missing, and Gacy himself admitted to hurting them. Now it's Gentee's job to find the evidence. He takes a deep breath, gets on his hands and knees, and enters the crawlspace. He knows where to look. The southwest corner. Gentee starts digging, and finds a human arm bone. Rotting flesh still attached to it. The more he digs, the worse it gets. Gentee's seen a lot in his career, but nothing like this. He calls back to his colleagues, and says they can definitely charge John Wayne Gacy for murder. But that's not all. He adds one more thing. I think this place is full of kids. What a heartbreaking thing to discover. And this discovery was just the beginning, because 29 bodies would be found on John Wayne Gacy's property. It's so sad. On his property. On his property. Yeah, it's almost, it's beyond comprehension, like the scope of this. And I can't even imagine being an investigator. And we'll get into some of the details, but it's quite upsetting that it was even able to get to that number. And that he's doing this in his own home, burying the bodies underneath his own home. He even was hiring some of his, like, potential victims. And sometimes his victims that he didn't fully kill. To help dig out these spaces for bodies under his building. And attempt to mask the smell. And as we'll discuss, there are so many times in this story, and in the real life case of John Wayne Gacy, where it felt like he almost got caught, but he kept getting away. Yes. So it's very frustrating that this was able to happen. Pretty much everyone in his area knew John Wayne Gacy as a really good and decent guy, which maybe played a little bit into why he was able to get away with it so many times. And he was the sort of person that everyone felt helped kids, not killed them, right? He was a clown. He played at parties. But as more information came out, John Wayne Gacy's true self became clear. And to really understand what brought him here, we have to go back to the beginning. Yes. John Wayne Gacy's youth, well, I mean, it definitely played a part in contributing to the monster that he would become. He grew up as part of this sort of like perfect nuclear family in Chicago. And his dad was a machinist and a car mechanic. And by day, he was very nice, very friendly, downright charming. But behind closed doors, that man was evil. His father was a monster. Which is very similar to what John grew up to be. Exactly. Yeah. After coming home from work, John's dad would retreat to their basement to drink. And when he emerged, he would take his day's frustration out on his son. And he would mercilessly beat John. He would treat him like not even as a human being with the types of torture that he did. And in 1949, John was only seven years old. Yet by that point, his father had really already given up on him. And John was used to being called things like a thief and stupid and sissy by his dad. And yet his response, John Wayne Gacy's response to this was that he wanted nothing more than to have the approval of his father. So despite all of this mistreatment, he still viewed his dad as this sort of like idol. Which is so heartbreaking because it's like his dad's narrative ingrained in him that he was worthless. But naturally, as kids, like all we want is our parents' approval. Right. Regardless of like. And love. And their love. Yeah. That's all we want. Yeah. And as John got older, he did have a few attempts at trying to like stick up for himself against his dad. But all of those resulted in a beating. So this was like soon realized that John was in this really tough place. And he started to have a lot of resentment for his mother too because his mom wouldn't defend him. And she basically was like creating a, you know, excuses for both of them. She was in the middle, being a mediator, but like the worst mediator that ever existed because she just was basically trying to avoid the problem and getting involved in any way. And she wasn't there to help her child. Though we could argue she probably was experiencing a bit of what John was as well. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, and this goes back to a conversation we talked about in episode one where there are plenty of people who go through really traumatic events during childhood and John had siblings. So you would believe that perhaps they're going through the same thing, but only John turns into the monster we now know him to be. So these traumatic coping mechanisms that John Wayne Gacy developed was basically the perfect target for a predator. And unfortunately, when he was younger, he was taken into a field by a teenage girl and was molested. And later on, a family friend also started molesting John. So. John just had nowhere safe to go and he was really afraid of getting in trouble if he told anyone about what was happening to him, even though he knew that it was wrong. But instead, he chose to keep it a secret. Well, that's also another coping mechanism and defense mechanism. Like if you, because he learned if he tried to stand up for himself or speak up, he'd get beat again. So it was like this really, really toxic cycle that then got built into his psyche of, I will just stay quiet. Which is unfortunate that that happens. But yeah, he had to bottle up all of those negative thoughts growing up. And he felt like this awkward kid who couldn't do anything right. He was mocked for being overweight. He had this congenital heart defect that basically prevented him from being able to participate in all of the activities and sports that other kids participated in. And he just felt like he was fundamentally broken and that there was something deeply wrong with him. And no matter what he did, he was the problem. And his dad made sure to remind him of that. Right. And it's so tough, like having that heart condition, which, like he can't help. No. But that almost adds to the narrative that his dad was giving to him. Right. And like heart condition or not, it didn't matter what he did. Everything was wrong. Yeah. Like if he got sick, he was accused of faking it. If he didn't do well in school, his dad said he was just looking for attention. So no matter what, he was in the wrong. John endured that abuse his entire childhood and even into his adulthood. In 1960, when John Wayne Gacy was just 18 years old, he started to have a heart attack. He started volunteering with a local Democratic politician. And you would think that most people would be like, or most parents would be like, well, oh my gosh, you're so motivated. You're driven. Like what a great thing and celebrate that. But no, instead, John's dad called him a patsy. So basically he was like, you're a wimp. Anything he did. Literally anything. Yeah. He could have done exactly what his own dad did and his dad would find fault in it. Which he does eventually do. He works at his dad's KFCs. Yep. So by 1962, a 20 year old John could not stand it anymore. He took his car and he ran away from his home in Chicago. He drove all the way to Las Vegas, which was a place that he had never been before. And you know, in theory, this is like a great thing, right? You get to start fresh. You have, you can attempt to leave behind all of the trauma and the things that were in your way in the past and start anew in this new place where no one knows you, no one knows your reputation and you can do whatever you want. But he still needs a job and he still needs a job. And he still needs a job. And he still needs money and a place to stay. And that is how he came to find a job listing for a local funeral home that was hiring an attendant. And the job came with housing. Perfect, right? What's the housing, Corinne? Please tell me. Oh, it is a cot downstairs next to the dead bodies in the same room where they're prepped for burial. Great. So this was John's way of making ends meet, but this is one of the contributing moments that would start to completely change the direction of his life. John became totally enamored and fascinated by the embalming process, which I kind of feel like if you're in that career, I hope you are enjoying or curious. Yeah. Curious enough or yeah. But it wasn't, his enthusiasm was different than a lot of other professionals in this career. Correct. One night, according to the book, Hidden Dreams by Tim Cahill, John decided to do what he later told a psychiatrist, was, quote, an experiment. It's dark. Sometime after midnight, John lays on his tiny cot, staring into the blackness. He can't sleep. The bed is thin. It's comfortable enough, but that's not the problem because there's a nameless anxiety eating at him. His thoughts keep drifting to the teenage boy lying beside him, the handsome, muscular youth, resting in an eternal slumber in a silver coffin just a few feet away, and the body inside. He's not afraid of it. He's actually come to feel companionship from the rotating bodies that come through the funeral home. He's been working at the mortuary for a couple of months now, and death has become routine. In fact, he finds a strange sense of peace in the embalming room. No one can hurt him there, and nothing even feels real. So there John is. He slides off his cot and shuffles through the darkness with his arms out, almost like a ghost, reaching for the teenager beside him. Soon enough, he feels the cold top of the coffin in front of him. He extends his hands, caressing the rich velvet interior, his fingers searching for skin. Finally, they graze the body inside, the boy that was taken too soon. John's breath catches in his throat. A longing courses through his body, and he slowly, cautiously, as softly as he can, pulls himself up and into the coffin and presses himself against the cold skin of the deceased. A mixture of fear and excitement consumes him, and not the fear of the body he lays entangled with, but the fear of being caught. He wants nothing more than to stay here, to remain flesh to flesh with the deceased boy beneath him. The taboo excites him. He lays there, soaking in the feeling. In the harsh light of day, reality hits John and he is so ashamed. He's so humiliated. All he did was lay there with the boy, right? But like, that is still not okay. And he knows it's not okay. He knows it's not okay, and he is so filled with shame that it's enough that he decides he can't be here anymore. He's so terrified of how it made him feel that he enjoyed it. Right. There's that duality, right? It's shame and excitement and desire. Like, he wants to do it more, and he knows he should run away from that feeling because it's not correct. Right. It's super scary. Exactly. So he knows what could happen if he stayed in this job any longer. So he calls his mom and asks if he can go home. Home to his mom and his abusive father. Yes. So his dad says yes, but that he has to get his life together, basically, if they agree to house him again. So over the next few years, John decides to become what his father told him he would never be, which is a success. Mm-hmm. He enrolled in a business school, and turned out he had a talent for sales. And so this sort of built up his self-confidence. And he even kindled a romance with a co-worker named Marilyn Myers. And in 1964, they were engaged. So now, at age 22, he's finally having this life that he dreamed of having and that he thought his father would be proud of. He has a partner. He has a successful job. He's doing well. He's gaining confidence. People seem to like him. Yeah. But then his life took a dark turn. Sometime in 1964, after John was engaged, he was out drinking with an older co-worker, a man named Alan Williams. And that night, John and Alan were not just out to drink. They were out looking for women. Never mind the fact that John is literally about to get married. His wife is at or his wife-to-be is at home waiting for him. These men don't seem to care about that, unfortunately. It's also interesting because I read about how John Wayne Gacy was. He was part of the Waterloo JC. And it's said that he and a lot of the other members would drink a lot, use drugs, and kind of have, yeah, they were like wife-swapping. There were big orgies. Yes. In John Wayne Gacy's life. He was an entertainer of all sorts in his, like, daytime. Yeah. He's a very layered person, and every single thing we learn about him feels so. It's so shocking and implausible, and it's just like, how did this person exist? Yes. And again, there are so many people like this that exist. Like, there are people who entertain swinging and that type of lifestyle and don't go on to murder people. Yeah. But in the same way, John Wayne Gacy does remind me a little bit of the BTK killer in that he had this whole entire facade of who he was as a person and a family guy and social with neighbors and just like a normal, normal life. Mm-hmm. And behind closed doors, it is the most sadistic and sick, vile torture and murder that you could think of. 100%. And that is why I think it's so apropos that he then gets into clowning. I don't know if that's the verb you would use for what he does, but it makes sense. It's like this mask that he has to put on. But the mask is scary. He has scary makeup. But he is scary. He is. And that's like the whole, like, it's literally a metaphor that he wears. Yeah. Okay. Well, so. So, Alan and John are out drinking. They're trying to pick up ladies, but they strike out. Alan wasn't really bothered by it, though. And then he sort of makes this advance at John. He said, it doesn't matter. He doesn't need a woman because men are just as good. And then he invites John back to his house. And according to John, Alan made them some drinks. And the next thing he knew, he was naked. And Alan was performing oral sex on John. Yep. Yep. In that moment, despite everything. That was going on. And maybe, like, the way that it happened, John did say it felt good. And so he continued to let it happen. Yeah. And just like that, like that same night that he was in the coffin pressed against that teenage boy, the next morning, he felt so overwhelmed with shame. Not for cheating on his wife, not for doing a thing that he didn't want to do, but because he thought Alan had outsmarted him. That is where the shame came from. And it's almost like that's what he needed to tell himself. But I think deep, deeper and like psychologically, it probably is the shame of, you know, his dad is such a rule follower. Everything that John does is wrong. There's society says, like, you should be if you're a man, you should be with women. And the shame that he must have felt because his desires were for men. Right. Or even just the need for control. Right. And that. Yes. Get you before. You get me because his father was always in control. He never had the upper hand. The second he thought he did, there was a way that his dad could spin it. Yeah. There's so many different layers to this. So many different layers. So after that night, John never told anyone about what happened between him and Alan. And well, he did eventually, but not for a long time anyway. Shortly after he and his fiancee, Marilyn, they get married. And over the next few years, he cheated on her constantly. Yep. Seemingly with men and women. And all the while, he acted like he was this normal, conventional family man hosting parties in their backyard, doing the things that, you know, the house and the white picket fence things you do. Which you can only imagine because clearly he has all these other burning desires that are in the back of his mind constantly. And he's acting on some of them, but there's also a lot of them that he's not acting on, which I imagine that does a lot to him. To someone psychologically. Right. Hey, I'm Niecy Nash. I've spent years playing cops and detectives on TV. Hi, I'm Dia Nash, and I grew up watching her do it. She's my daughter, and fortunately for her, I'm her mother. We love each other, and we both love true crime. Most nights, you'll find us in bed chatting, watching true crime. This is how we unwind after a long day anyway. We get in bed. We get our snacks. And somehow, we end up talking about murder. Somehow, on our new show, Mother Knows Murder, a Crime House original, we're letting you in on our hang. Each week, one of us brings a case, and the other hears it for the first time. We catch totally different details, question every alibi, and lock in on our own verdicts. And once justice is served, baby, we drag the murderer. But most of all, we never lose sight of the people at the heart of these stories. Listen and follow Mother Knows Murder. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. By 1967, he was 26 years old, happily married with two kids, and overall, he was succeeding at keeping up this facade. That's how the town viewed him. During that time, John and his wife had moved to Waterloo, Iowa, and there, John managed three KFC restaurants, and he was elected the VP of a local social club. So this is really, I think, a moment where we can recognize that we're not alone. We can recognize that he's becoming a person in power. Right. And he likes that power. Mm-hmm. But this was not enough for John, because this was not what he really wanted. What he really wanted was that same feeling he got inside that funeral home, inside that coffin, and that continued to haunt him. And the dark desires he repressed for so long finally were rising to the surface. In 1967, 26-year-old John Wayne Gacy was the talk of his tiny Iowa community. He had a good job. Managed. He had a good job managing three KFCs. He had a wife. He had a one-year-old son and a baby daughter. Also, he was having everyone call him Colonel. At his job. At his job. Because he thought he was so great at it. And even in his social settings, he was like, call me Colonel. Call me Colonel. I could just imagine him being this boisterous person in social settings, just pumping his own ego. Yeah. And in his political aspirations that he had, too, he had some really strong opinions about littering and things. Like that. So he was very involved and made his voice heard by a lot of people. Yep. So he had big dreams of becoming the town mayor and maybe even a state senator one day. But one night in August, all of that came crashing down. John smiles as he takes in the scene unfolding in his basement. His wife and kids are away for the night, so he is taking the opportunity to have some fun. On his way home from work, John spotted one of his colleague's kids walking down the road. 15-year-old Donald Voorhees. John pulled over, and the two got to talking. John asked Donald what he was doing out all by himself. And Donald told him he was coming home from his girlfriend's house. So John saw this as an opportunity. Putting on his best fatherly voice, he asked Donald if he and his girlfriend had slept together yet. And it seems like Donald said no, because John then suggested something. He had some dirty movies back then. And he would be happy to show them to Donald, so that Donald could learn a thing or two. Donald went along with it, and now the two of them are on John's couch, drinking and watching porn together. And once Donald was nice and drunk, John made his move. Everything about this is wildly inappropriate. Absolutely. It's like abusing your role of power, which is all a common theme with John. And this is also something that he does with multiple of his victims. He invites them over to his home, gets them drunk, and then makes them move on them. Yeah. And many of his victims are kids that are runaways or don't have good family lives. And so he's supposed to be this figure who has more power, who seems to have life together, and maybe they're seeing a little bit of a friend or a mentor in him. And he totally takes advantage of that. 100%. 100%. And especially if someone like Donald Voorhees, his dad works with John. So he knows John. He recognizes him. He trusts John in the sense that he's like, I've seen him around. I know he's not a stranger. Yeah, it's totally fine. He certainly couldn't have ever thought of what would come next. So that night, John forced Donald into oral sex. And over the next few months, he did the same to several other local teenagers. Using a mixture of blackmail, manipulation, and shame, he kept them away from each other. He made them quiet about the abuse. Which is also so sad because when you think about the cycle of abuse. abuse and how john was abused and molested growing up and silenced yeah and now he's doing it to others and it just breaks my heart and even the neighbors after the fact after everything came out they said that they would see in the middle of the night young men teenage boys going into the house with john and they would hear screaming at times but they didn't think much of it because i don't think they wanted to accept what they were seeing because it was so starkly different from who they thought john was yeah it's like the bystander effect it is so all of these boys kept quiet about what happened to them about john's abuse until march of 1968 when donald told his father what happened and then john was arrested and would you want to be like who he got arrested but no we're gonna be upset about what happens because well so john saw himself as the victim twisted sort of way that he had created his mind he blamed donald for setting him up no matter what he did it was always someone else's fault that he did this or whatever so once he was out on bail john bribed one of his employees to get revenge and for three hundred dollars the employee beat donald in the middle of the night in the woods to try to stop him from testifying it didn't work thank goodness but how horrific yeah poor donald it's like he can't get away from this guy yeah so in may john was convicted and in december he was sentenced to 10 years in prison his wife marilyn filed for divorce and john never saw her or his kids ever again and i will say i'm very proud of marilyn in this moment for just getting out of there right like props to her it's really hard in abusive relationships to walk away and she did yeah and she saved herself and her kids in that situation because i can't even imagine having the children grow up in that house when they get to a certain age too talking about it's hard to even think about yeah but the cycle continues yeah so john didn't fall into a deep depression like you would think he would after losing his wife and losing his kids no he is in denial it's everyone else's fault right so he lied to his fellow inmates about his conviction telling them that he was framed for being part of a grand political conspiracy not for raping a child right and that kept him from falling apart until a year into his sentence when his father died of cirrhosis a liver disease caused from prolonged alcohol abuse yeah and john wasn't allowed to go see him because he was incarcerated right and john was a little bit surprised at how much this loss devastated him but it really did affected him so deeply to his core because i don't think he recognized how much his father basically played a huge role in his life which role in who he was and also we're not psychological professionals but i can imagine that that loss is complicated on many levels because now that his dad is gone well you're freed from your abuser in a way but he can also never get the approval he always sought true oh my gosh yeah so in his grief john's internal battle grew and there he sat in prison for a crime that he knew he committed but swore he didn't but swore he didn't his wife is gone children gone and his father was right john was useless he was a broken man who would never amount to anything sitting here in prison caught for his crimes he felt his father had seen it in him since childhood and that was a feeling he could no longer ignore that was his truth he was useless and these feelings plagued him and he continued to do what he did best he would bottle them up he would ignore them and he would blame everyone else yeah but no matter how hard john tried these feelings were still there always lurking beneath the surface driving every decision he would make so he kept his head down he did the best that he could trying to stay out of trouble in prison and in 1970 his efforts were awarded after serving just 16 months of his 10-year sentence john is released on parole for good behavior how is that allowed it's also upsetting because shortly after being released he was released on parole for good behavior and he was released he broke his parole like he did attack another young boy who reported it and it went it went nowhere it went nowhere but wasn't it wasn't it because they thought that john would be more believed than the kid the kid and so they thought that it wasn't worth yeah there's a there's a lot of negligence in this case because because again john was so charming and beloved by his town yeah so now 28 he returned to his hometown of chicago and he got a job as a cook at a local bar and he told the people that were closest to him that he would never go back to jail that he was turning over a new leaf he was going to be exactly who they always thought he was right where do we think this is going well i think we all probably recognize his name so i think we all know where this is going yep his records were eventually sealed keeping his crimes hidden from prying eyes which is again really upsetting right because it's not like he was a minor like how how did that happen no i have questions it wasn't really clear why they were sealed but this can be done to help people with criminal convictions turn their lives around which john seemed to be doing but he didn't stay on the street and narrow for very long because almost immediately he assaulted several male sex workers several about two years after his release his crimes escalated and in january of 1972 john picked up a young runaway named timothy mccoy at the bus station and he and john invited timothy back to his house under the guise of letting timothy get some rest until the bus arrived and then just like he did with so many of his other victims john gave timothy alcohol and forced him into oral sex yep and after that john passed out on his bed and according to john the next thing he remembers is that he woke up to the sight of timothy standing over him with a butcher knife in his hand and so now john says that he is reacting instinctively right he thinks timothy is about to attack him and so he struggles over the weapon he drags him onto the ground and in the chaos john stabbed timothy to death multiple times timothy had not been trying to attack john and john only realized this after brutally killing timothy he walked into the kitchen and saw that there was food being made and realized that timothy had been making them breakfast and had just come with the knife to go wake up john i mean there's so much to unpack here but i think he says right it's all so he says like timothy is now deceased murdered by john so the story gets to be spun and told from john and as we can tell as we've talked about in this episode john is really really good at lying to himself right lying to everyone around him so we'll never really know what happened we don't john claims this was an accident but whether it was intentional or an accident this was the very first life that he took yeah and he wasn't about to call police and confess to it right so instead he put timothy's body in a shallow grave in the house's crawl space the police never came looking for timothy nobody knew that john had been with timothy and so he went about life as normal right like everything is just normal in john's life there's not a dead body that he murdered underneath his house and also this is common with killers after they do commit their first murder there's this like fear of are they going to get caught and then when they don't the control the excitement the cockiness exactly just gets even confident yeah yeah and apparently between all of this he has time to start dating again and he finds a new relationship so a few months later after his first murder 30 year old john reconnected with an old named carol hoff and the two planned to marry in july but just nine days before the wedding john's dark side re-emerged it's june 22nd 1972 and john wayne gacy cannot sleep he watches the minutes tick by on the clock as his mind wanders sometime after midnight he leaves his sleeping bride-to-be and climbs into his black oldsmobile and cruises chicago's north side the car rumbles slowly along the streets dotted with seedy nightclubs and dive bars flickering street lamps cast warp shadows on the grubby buildings and this is not the first time he's come out here because by now he is a regular in the area he knows exactly which alleys to go down and which ones to avoid as he drives he forgets all about carol back at home in bed and turns his thoughts to the young men working the streets john heads to a spot he's been to before and pulls over in front of a young man he rolls down his window and flashes some newly installed red spotlights on the roof of his car the sex worker approaches cautiously and john pulls out a phony police badge out of his pocket he threatens to arrest this young man unless this young man climbs into his passenger seat then the two of them take off weaving through darkened roads until john finds a secluded area where he can't find a way out of the darkened roads in the area where the two of them can be alone there under the false threat of arrest He sexually assaults the young man, mocks him, and then kicks him out of the car. This whole time, John has a smile on his face. When he's finished, he goes back home, takes a shower, and crawls into bed with his fiancée. Just one week later, John and Carol tie the knot. They are now married, and these newlyweds, now with two kids, because Carol had two kids from her previous marriage, they live in bliss, right? There's maybe the honeymoon phase, right? I already don't trust men. And this is just really doubling down on that distrust. This is even like there's a little bit of the Ted Bundy pulling into this, too, where it's like there's the people that they date that it's like, do you know what's happening? Do you have suspicions? Right. There's more victims being added to the list, even if they weren't the ones he was targeting to kill. Well, then also just in general, do you know anyone? Can you ever actually know? Do I? I don't even know you. Who are you? Who am I sitting beside? I don't know. I don't know what you do after hours. That's true. I do know you spend a lot of time with Noah. Well, I'm a mom, so I know what I do after hours, which is not get any sleep. But it's crazy to think that you could be living in a home with someone. Right. Yes. Married to someone. And you don't really know them at all. And while you're asleep, they could be slipping out doing God knows what. And if you see them slipping out. I feel like this is something that Carol also had talked about. Like, he was never around soon after the honeymoon phase. Yeah. He was never around. She watched him leave in the middle of the night. He would sleep for like two hours at a time, if that, and just disappear. And she started to just like not care, not want to know. Right. Like, they became so disconnected. And she could probably think like he's just having an affair. Because that's like the worst my mind would want to go to. I certainly wouldn't think he was a man. Like. A serial killer. Right. Exactly. And that he was stuffing bodies in our home. In the basement. Yeah. Yeah. So, after about a year of bliss, Carol started feeling a little bit neglected because John was working really late all the time. He was busy with a new construction company called Painting, Decorating, and Maintenance, PDM for short. And this is a company he owned and launched. So, he was heavily involved in it. But Carol suspected that those late nights that took him away from home were really just an excuse and that he wasn't actually at work. Right. But like you said, she thought that he was just having an affair. And she did poke around a bit and tried to kind of like do her own sleuthing to see who is he having an affair with, what's going on. And she found some dirty magazines hidden in the garage filled with pictures of naked men. And she didn't really know what to think of this discovery, right? Right. Because they were married. And she didn't know what to do. And for a moment, she decided she would just ignore it. But shortly after, she spotted a man in the garage. And she spotted John leaving the house in the middle of the night with a young blonde boy. And this time, Carol tried to confront John and ask, what is going on? I saw you with this kid. Like, what's going on? And he completely dismissed her that it is none of her business. The cycle of abuse continues. Yeah. So, he turned it into a pity party, of course, because everything is, he's the victim here, right? And he was insisting that he was working around the clock to pay for their house and to take care of his family. His mother and them and the kids. And deep down, Carol knew that this was a lie. But she was like, oh, my gosh, this is like very scary. I don't know what's going on. And he's very passionate about whatever excuse he's giving me. Or emotionally volatile. Right. And so, she backs off. She leaves John free to do whatever he wants. She doesn't pay attention to it. She ignores it. She doesn't ask questions about it. John hires teenage boys for his construction business. He was already working. Working with teenage boys at the KFC. So, his whole career is surrounded by teenage boys. Plus. Which is not a mistake. He worked as a clown with kids. He has children around him constantly. So, he hired teenage boys for his construction business only to manipulate and sexually assault them. So, this was basically like his stomping grounds. And again, he's in a position of power. He is their employer. A lot of these kids, they are desperate for money and they don't have the solid homes to go home to. And so, they kind of. Have to stay in a way. Or they feel that they do. Yeah. If they refuse his advances, he pretends that this was all a big joke. This was the test. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Aren't I so funny? With all of John's extramarital endeavors, he became less interested in playing the part of the perfect husband. And actually, he had pitched to Carol that they stop having sex entirely. And Carol was like, wouldn't be happier to stop having sex with you. You gross, gross man. So, John slept on the couch most nights. If he was eating. Even at home, which oftentimes he wasn't. And usually, he was out on the streets cruising for sex workers, cruising for his next victim. He posed as a homicide detective at gay bars. He called himself Jack Hanley. He doesn't look like a Jack. No. On the side, he continued to hire desperate young men and continued to attack them and sexually assault them. Yeah. By 1975, John was now 33 years old. He already had so many victims at this point. And it had been three years since. He killed Timothy McCoy. Throughout that time, he continued to assault the boys that he hired at his company. And though it didn't escalate beyond that, like it had with Timothy, that changed. July 31st of that year, when a familiar rage overtook him. It's early in the morning, and John is driving home, drunk and disappointed. After hours of cruising his usual spots, he is returning empty-handed. Woozy from too many glasses of scotch, he sways in and out of his lane. And he's almost back home when he notices a familiar face on the side of the road. It's one of his employees, 18-year-old John Bukovic, who goes by Little John. That makes Gacy Big John, a nickname he liked a lot. He pulls over and Little John lumbers up to his car. It's clear that he is just as drunk as Big John, if not more. And now that he's full of liquid courage, he's got a bone to pick with his boss. He demands back pay that he says he needs to pay back. He says he's owed. So John invites him to come sit in the passenger seat and says they'll sort it all out. And he says his wife and kids aren't home, so they can deal with it back at his place. Little John agrees, but he seems to get angrier with each passing minute. And by the time they're at John's house, he's threatening to beat Big John to a pulp. When they get inside, John gets the boy even more drunk and tries to defuse the situation. When that doesn't work, he says, When that doesn't work, he drunkenly restrains Little John. Calling it a magic trick, he pulls out handcuffs that he carries when he's posing as a homicide detective, and he tricks Little John into putting them on, swearing up and down he's just trying to show the young man something. Once the young teenager has his hands behind his back, there is no need for John to keep up the facade. He throws the boy to the floor and sits on Little John to restrain him. The last thing John remembers is laying down next to his victim and blacking out. And when he wakes up the following morning, there's a rope wrapped tight around Little John's neck, and he's no longer breathing. And this would become John's M.O., right? There was a lot of sitting on his victims, doing this sort of magic trick to get them in a position where they couldn't fight back. Yeah, that's horrible. It's really horrible. And on July 31st, 1975, 33-year-old John Wayne Gacy claimed his second victim, 18-year-old John Bukovic. He buried Little John in his garage and covered the evidence with concrete. Which also, like, I just am still so stuck on how is he doing all of this work under his house, and people are not calling it in or suspicious of it. People didn't want to accept, I think, what they knew was happening. Yeah. Or maybe, I don't know. Because he kept saying that he was, like, digging holes to lay pipework for his sewage system. That was, like, the lie he kept spinning to people. And to his own family, because they were like, what is this rancid smell in our house? And he was like, oh, don't worry about it. It's just sewage. And then he would hire more boys to come. Cover it with lime. And try to cover. Some of them to dig their own graves. Yeah. So though police questioned him after the murder, he was never considered a serial killer. He was never considered a serious suspect. Well, because I'm pretty sure little John Bukovic's parents knew that John was going to go confront Big John at some point about the money he was owed. And so John's parents were like. Check his employer. Yeah. Because we know that he was going to go ask for the money. Right. And John's like, oh, we figured that out. And he went on his way with his money. It's just so wild that the police were so close, right? I know. He would take so many lives, but after just two lives, the police were alerted. They were alerted of him being a potential killer. Yeah. And yet nothing came of it. Nope. So getting away with it, that really made John just feel even more confident. And he became even bolder with his actions. Yeah. And he started to indulge in his sadistic desires and it gave him a really big rush. One like nothing else. So he started going out more than ever and he paid even less attention to his wife and her two kids. And it was like he basically gave up on that part and was just giving care. Carol Excuses. if she ever did ask though i don't think she asked often because they were not in a good place at this point because it's clear carol was just playing a part for john like yeah he wanted to look like this normal even though he was clearly attracted to men although i men is not even the right word because he was attracted to boys and murder and and kids and then once he was getting so confident with his crimes he was like oh i don't need carol right i can do this without anyone getting in the way yeah luckily carol even if she had started to see things that were going on and maybe having some suspicions uh she in october said she wanted a divorce from john and once she was out of the house john really embraced his dark side wholeheartedly because he had no one to sneak around in the dead of night yeah so he spent nearly every night either looking for sex or looking for another victim at the same time though he was very careful with keeping up appearances during the day and he joined a new social group called the moose lodge to make connections and that is how he got involved with the jolly joker clown club so this was a small organization within the moose club that mostly performed for kids at holiday parties and there was a lot of demand for it actually there were hundreds of kids who would show up at these events and ever the public servant right john he's such a community guy he agrees to join the jolly joker's rinks but he wasn't just doing it for them john took to clowning almost immediately and he said that it acted almost like a tranquilizer for him so it was a way of him being able to like hide beneath a costume and run away from himself well because for so long he's been trying to hide that dark side of him inside of his you know physical self and to the public but when he puts a mask on like he he literally is a person who's trying to hide from the public and he's hiding yeah he's he gets to be a completely different person yeah who's john not him john spent hours crafting his characters who he called pogo and patches which is also interesting that he had two personas and one was good and one was bad it's literally his day and night yeah it's still him yeah so he got everything that he needed for this costume he had professional makeup detailed puppets balloons special props for his shows and by all accounts he was actually good at it he was a great clown and every time he performed he left kids smiling and laughing and he really loved the limelight he loved to be the center of attention and he got a lot of praise for it and this again just like built up even more confidence in him and allowed him to be more brazen in other areas of his life i don't have a fear of clowns per se but i think if i walked into the jolly joker club i would be afraid like that like a room full of clowns because i'm also imagining like really bright lights like almost like hospital lights i don't know how many clown how many clowns are there i don't know but i just the way i'm picturing it in my mind is way creepier yeah than a halloween horror nights right clowns in mazes well i do wonder despite some of his costume makeup being quite creepy in terms of like what clowns typically look like who perform for children i do wonder if he gave off those vibes because he did say that it made him feel more like he could act like a kid again and kind of like relive some of his youth so i think he was as a clown being this really like wholesome joyous type of character as pogo as pogo yeah not as patches that's it's so bad it's so creepy yeah don't look up pictures of him unless you're watching you're welcome you're welcome for the nightmares but even when he was dressed up in this costume and trying to escape himself and just be the kid and have the childhood that he wish he had those feelings of frustration and loneliness and rage that just still started to fester and bubble to the surface he could not keep it down for long patches and when he felt like that a different side of the clown came out in the summer of 1975 john bounces through a park dressed as pogo the clown he forces a smile onto his painted face taking exaggerated steps so he doesn't trip on his big red shoes the sun beats down soaking his collar in sweat it is just too hot to be wearing all of these layers kids swarm around him screaming and giggling but he doesn't feel the usual sense of fulfillment instead of feeding his ego with their attention they seem more like annoying needy little kiddos he knows they don't want to laugh with him and hear his jokes they only want the candy he has in his pocket he looks at their swollen greedy faces he's already given out treats to most of them but they lie claiming they haven't gotten any yet john laughs in his clown voice teasing them he scampers playfully away while trying to suppress the fury he feels building inside of him as gently as he can he's scolds the children who chase him he doesn't have enough candy for everyone to get an extra share but they plead with him anyway they lie lie lie one of them a particularly persistent six-year-old trails pogo like he's stalking him he tugs on the clown's sleeve begging for candy with glassy eyes meanwhile john can see gumballs and chocolate kisses bulging out of his little pockets it's too much to bear he's not going to let him go he's not going to let him go he's not going to let him go maintaining his forced grin john bends down to the little boy pinches the kid on his cheek not a playful pinch this is meant to hurt and the boy's eyes fill with tears john bends even closer his round nose pressing against the child's face and he whispers get away from me he finishes by cursing the boy out in disgusting detail the kid yelps and scurries away crying and for the first time that afternoon pogo actually has a genuine smile on his face this that reminds me so much of the scene in the more recent it where they're at the park and scars guard as pennywise is under the bleachers and the little girl has like the lollipop yeah it's also i mean it's just this is also just reminiscent of like john wayne gacy's attitude and just the way that he went about so many of his crimes because for as many people as he murdered he also came close to murdering so many more and then randomly would be like oh now i need to care for you it was like this weird thing of like i want to hurt you but now i don't i mean it's the battle that's going on in his head right and i know that when he was first arrested and only spent 16 months in prison he was examined by a psychologist and determined to have antisocial personality disorder and then i know later in life like they looked at him and we can also look at there's plenty of psychological examinations of john wayne gacy and he is riddled with psychological disorders yeah the dsm hates to see him coming oh god well despite the occasional slip up john's performances as pogo the clown became legendary around town and he performed at children's hospitals and he was even a regular fixture at parties so this went beyond his social club he was now the clown of the town and usually he did this without any kind of payment like it was just for his joy i didn't know that part or maybe the enjoyment of the children i don't know but yeah no he didn't ask for payment for this usually interesting he spent so much time clowning that it was hard to see where he actually got the energy for all of his clowning especially given that this man never slept right most of his days he was working long hours in construction managing dozens of projects and he was and in the evenings he had his social club a bowling league dates with friends volunteer engagements for the local democratic party and now he's also clowning and several times a year he also threw these massive massive block parties in his neighborhood and he was in charge of also organizing an official parade so like this guy had a million commitments yeah what i love sleep too much like i can't even i can't even i can't organize my thoughts enough to have three of these not that this is us we're not giving him praise for this we just don't understand it's also just frustrating because imagine what he could have done with that energy right right and in ways he was doing good in many different areas which maybe is why he was doing so much was to make up for what he was doing right outside of that yeah so yeah that alone all of those things would be way too much for most people uh but once night fell he did not fall asleep to recover from his work he instead drank and smoked and partied and killed yeah between 1975 and 1978 he murdered at least 30 boys and young men yeah his mo resembled the way that he killed john bukovich he would invite his victims back to his house he would get them high or drunk and sometimes he offered to pay them for sex then he would pull out a pair of handcuffs sometimes clown toys came out too and he showed his victim a magic trick he would demonstrate how he could break free of the cuffs acting like it was all for fun and then he would say hey you should try this too and convince them to put the cuffs on themselves but once the cuffs were on john would immediately drop the act and then that is when he would sexually assault his victims torturing them in many horrific ways and eventually would strangle them i mean he had one victim that he truly tortured for hours and hours and hours there were a few but who got away yeah are you thinking of the one that had asked to be killed like during the torture because it was so much oh probably and then john his response was i'm getting to it yeah awful when he did kill his victims once they were dead john stashed their bodies under his bed for the night and then he would sleep soundly above them usually in a drunken stupor which is so similar to like part of his origin story that night in the in the morgue in las vegas where he crawled into the casket with that body yeah the next day he would stuff the corpse in a crawl space in the garage he would layer quicklime and cement over the bodies to block the smell although it never really went away entirely people could definitely still smell it and since he owned a construction company and definitely had plenty of access to cement nobody thought it was really weird that he would buy so much of this material or these materials and also since he lived alone at this point there was no one asking him really what he was doing after three years of this he started to feel super invincible and a little more brazen way more confident but it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake on december 11th 1978 he met a 15 year old named robert pest at a local drugstore witnesses overheard him offer robert a job and a job at a john's house to talk more about the work and then the boy was never seen again i'm also pretty sure he met him like at a local store where john wayne gacy had like gone into the store seen him working there left came back talked to him about this job and then robert's mother came to pick him up from work and robert was like hold on i'm going to talk to this guy about a job he has for me and was never seen again right and this was john's big mistake because his previous victims were oftentimes runaways or kids who were very disconnected to their family yeah robert was not right so his mom is like obviously like who was that strange man he talked to because clearly he had people looking for him immediately yeah so for the first time in decades john became a serious suspect authorities finally investigated the 37 year old and discovered his criminal history and when they put him under around the clock search for him he was found dead and he was found dead and he was found dead and he was found dead and he was found dead and he was found dead and he was found dead and he was found dead john started behaving very strangely he drank heavily he acted erratically he actually started hanging out with the officers assigned to follow him which i'm like what was their response are they does he view it as hanging out what are they doing in response to this because this doesn't seem like an appropriate hang session i think they were letting him talk yeah on december 19th he invites the officers into his home i think they were letting him talk yeah on december 19th he invites the officers into his home i do think this is really interesting that now that the heat is on him he's feeling the pressure and it's the first time in years he's really really feeling like oh shit i made a mistake and they're watching me and either he's trying to seduce them in a way just similar to ed kemper who really did outsmart so many authorities yeah or he is just so completely blinded by how many times that he has gotten away with it that he thinks that he's going to be able to that he's he's invincible they can't get him right they can or maybe he even gets off on the idea of them walking around these bodies and not knowing what they're on top of well he invites them into his house officers robert schultz and ronald robinson stand in the cold rain staring daggers at john wayne gacy's back as he unlocks the front door they have a strange relationship but john knows he's a suspect in robert pest's disappearance but he treats the officers like they're his pals and today he's invited them in for a drink so robinson and schultz exchange a knowing look as i head into the living room because they've been planning for this so robinson is going to distract john while schultz takes a look around to see if he can find anything suspicious and when john goes behind the bar to make them drinks the officers bring into action robinson makes small talk while schultz excuses himself to use the bathroom he walks through the hallway passing by a darkened room full of clown paintings and he knows the kids love john's act but he's always found it creepy and it's one thing to perform as a clown and it's a completely other thing to have an entire room dedicated to paintings of them schultz makes it to the bathroom flips on light and the exhaust fan because he wants to make some noise so john doesn't hear him as he looks around to really sell it he flips on the light and the exhaust fan flushes the toilet for good measure and as he finishes up the heater kicks on and that's when he smells it the unmistakable scent of rot at first schultz actually thought that this was just a sewer leak in john's house which is basically the exact same excuse that he was giving to neighbors and to the boys that worked for him that he was hiring to dig in the basement right yes but it did not take schultz very long to realize what he was actually smelling two days later the police got a search warrant and on the afternoon of december 21st 1978 they took a look around john's crawl space and found various objects that made them realize there was a lot more hidden under there and it's tough because with that first search warrant it was specifically in regards to evidence of robert and so when they didn't find any dna evidence of robert but they found all these other objects like a high school ring and driver's licenses they went back and got a second warrant and they were like this is a much bigger thing we think there are who knows what is potentially buried in that crawl space so they got a second warrant which also so scary the time between leaving that house and trying to get a second warrant right from a judge because what if all of that evidence was wiped in that time you can't use it from before oh yeah but so they get the second warrant and they go back to the crawl space and after just a few minutes they found four bodies in the crawl space and that was more than enough to place john under arrest and once he was in custody he actually confessed to everything which i kind of find shocking because he blamed everyone else for everything so i'm shocked that he was able to bring himself to give details of what happened i guess how do you there's okay there's a couple things here that we could discuss one how do you walk your way or talk your way out of this now that all these bodies are found in your crawl space true two i think the pressure was really intensifying on him that there's probably a little bit of relief that he doesn't have to lie anymore and there are a lot of discussions around serial killers and killers in general where is there like a desire to be caught yeah and even the way that he did talk about his crimes in those confessions and in those interviews it was it was almost like casual in a way where maybe he did want to be caught like right you were saying or he just loved attention and now this was a new way of getting attention right he was still the center of attention and there's a lot of commentary on how he remembered so much detail like we talked last week about ed gein and how he had blackouts have memory but with john wayne gacy he is very like i was present i was aware of what i was doing it was premeditated and he would reference old victims oh just like i did to that boy i did to this one too yeah so john provided a formal statement where he admitted to murdering about 30 young men the police had found him just in time because john also admitted that he was planning to cover the whole crawl space in concrete in january basically making them inaccessible and had the police had the search warrant then they probably would have never found these bodies right so the evidence was not sailed away forever like john wayne gacy had planned and instead he waited behind bars while investigators kept digging and digging and digging and by the time john went on trial about a year later on february 6th 1980 he was charged with 33 murders which at the time was the largest murder in the history of crime in number charged to one person in u.s history that's i mean that's a devastating amount yeah he was found guilty for all of them and he was sentenced to death john spent the next 14 years on death row and at first he loved to talk to the press he craved the attention and like ted bundy his story became part of the myth of the american serial killer the unassuming monster next door only with a twist and the killer clown was born but eventually john's old habit of denial returned he started insisting that he had never really confessed to all of those murders right and during the original confession he'd never asked for a court reporter so there was an official record of exactly what he had said at the time which feels like the fault of the court 100 so in his appeals his lawyers claimed that he wasn't mentally competent to stand trial but none of that helped his case on may 10th 1994 john wayne gacy was executed by lethal injection in crest hill illinois there's just so much to unpack with this story and there's also so many elements of it that we like great grazed over but like there is this whole discussion and question of did john wayne gacy have a compote uh an accomplice that's the word i was looking for yes an accomplice oh that did come up because one person who did get away said that they felt like there was someone else in the room with them while being attacked very brutally by john wayne gacy for hours right and then also i think john wayne gacy sent one of his clown paintings to another man and it was someone who was suspected of committing other crimes and like the note on the back was very ominous and vague and when reporters asked him or police asked him what the message meant he was like i don't know you tell me like very very vague and creepy about it which it does make me upset that even once he was in jail awaiting his sentence he was still getting what he wanted which was this praise and this attention because he was drawing these paintings and he was selling them insane to the public and he was also hiring out other prisoners to draw clown paintings for him as him to sell didn't they make a law where criminals and inmates can't make money profiting off of their crimes like writing books and stuff like that i don't know i hope so but i know john wayne gacy that definitely wasn't the case and even at the time defense attorney wrote one of the books about him yeah because why not monetize off of it yeah um am i wrong but we went to the zach bagans museum in vegas does he own a john wayne gacy clown painting i think yes yeah that museum is dark disturbing which actually this just made me think when that man was being attacked by john wayne gacy and felt like there was a second person i do wonder if the second person was truly a second person or if there was some sort of like darkness and dark demonic energy that was following john wayne gacy because he was like what a perfect feast to have this like deeply horrific horrible like energetic vampire but also just like true monster that's killing people if you're this evil entity he's a great partner or is it like the movie split where because his victim might have been unable to see properly is john like personality having these conversations and arguments and yeah well that's so unsettling we didn't even talk about this but there was one person that he invited over and when they came in he was in his clown outfit and i feel like that's what translates a lot to the screen it's that killer in the street that's wearing the clown costume right even though john wayne gacy never did that like he yes maybe the clown costume is this one instance john was dressed up as pogo the clown he wasn't dressed up as pogo the clown for a lot of his other right yeah for a lot of his other crimes so clearly the things that john wayne gacy did to his victims were truly horrific and the way that he maintained this double life is it feels inhuman and impossible the way he used his clown character as a cover to avoid suspicion is terrifying and makes him the realest person in the world life pennywise not just an appearance but an action and so let's talk about pennywise okay let's transition bill scars guard because i'm terrified of the actual like clown figures now i said i wasn't afraid of clowns at the beginning but now i'm thinking of john wayne gacy as a clown yeah i'm like oh yeah sick so you're like inundated with that image yeah and if we do like a side-by-side of like tim curry and then bill scars guard there's tim curry's a terrifying okay so pennywise first appears in 1986 in stephen king's published novel it and that's six years after john wayne gacy was sentenced to death so then the book was adapted into a movie in 1990 with the iconic tim curry playing pennywise in a two-part tv movie and then in 2017 they made the remake with a sequel in 2019 with bill scars guard taking on the part and also they are on hbo max they're making a tv series with scars guard reprising his role as pennywise in a show called welcome to dairy which i am so excited for so excited um there's obviously some differences between all the different versions but when it comes to pennywise this character is very very consistent he haunts the quiet community of dairy main which on the surface seems like a wholesome american small town not quite chicago where john lived although the town where john grew up like the neighborhood's motto was an island in the city because people say it was pretty quiet as well but if you haven't seen or read the book here is what it is about and a little bit more about pennywise he mainly goes after kids and technically he's not a clown but he presents as a clown he's an actual monster like a supernatural entity that can transform and take the form of his victims fears pennywise being one of them and the main character of the film and stephen king has said that he was always pretty terrified of clowns and thought they were really creepy and that was his inspiration which is a sentiment that we all share and that it wasn't directly inspired by john wayne gacy but i feel like the timing and the similarities it's hard to just ignore those right what do you think about have you seen the original and the new yeah what do you think uh i love old movies but i always feel like the scarier ones are the newer ones just because of hollywood's like cgi abilities and just the way because especially when the fears are taking over the screen for those kids you actually or i felt like i actually was experiencing those fears with them yeah so while i wasn't necessarily afraid of scars guard i was afraid of the settings that those kids were in and with like modern technology the way that they can do visual effects and stuff are way more haunting georgie and i will say so tim curry was like a comedic actor so his role in like appraisal and his role of pennywise was a little bit more like jovial and fun and like you gotta lure the kids in right exactly whereas scars guard was like immediately scary right he was a stalker yeah he was so scary in his costume that one of the children was so scared of him like in a particular scene that they hadn't rehearsed so that they could get a true reaction from the kids that's so sad the child immediately started crying and bill had to break character and like console the kid and be like no no it's just me it's just me like this is i it's a mask poor kid that kid probably is in therapy yeah okay but i have a question because we've talked about the tim curry uh pennywise and we've talked about the bill scars guard pennywise but um there's another pennywise we need to talk about it's me oh sabrina dressed as pennywise when we were on tour for our other show two girls one ghost and it was terrifying i'd say yours might be the worst i there is like while i am scared of clowns and i wouldn't say i'm drawn to becoming a clown in any regard there was a comfort in being or just in general there's a comfort in being in costume especially a creepy costume right because i know i'm like your full face paint yeah and like i sat there like like like happy talking about the conjuring house there is something appealing about being in a creepy costume yeah because you get to fall into a character you get to hide behind the mask which is why we love a different person yeah and we love halloween and we love wearing costumes but we're not hiding from from the same things that these monsters are hiding from yeah so i think it's fair to say john wayne casey and pennywise have had a huge impact on how we all view clowns in pop culture but i think people have always found clowns unsettling it wasn't just john wayne casey who put that into our minds because the joker appeared in the first solo batman comic back in 1940 so this villainous clown trope has existed for some time right and we also have a couple friends that collect haunted objects and one of their most common recipients i guess like the things that they receive the most are porcelain clowns from people who are like this has to be haunted this is so creepy take away my porcelain clown they have like a whole box clown box the clowns yeah but after john's crimes came to light clowns suddenly got a hell of a lot scarier and suddenly it wasn't just this vague eerie feeling that you get from them it was that you have no idea who could be lurking behind this makeup and in the case of pennywise and john wayne casey it turned out to be a monster to me that sense of normalcy is probably the scariest part of john wayne casey's story that he could just exist in his community under this mask of being this like normal family guy and the successful business owner and probably a person that a lot of parents even encourage their kids to look up to in many ways because of his successes and his involvement yeah he used his social influence to take advantage of the vulnerable these poor boys these runaways these young men that he felt wouldn't be missed and unfortunately weren't for a really long time which is why he got away with so many murders and because he seemed to be such a pillar in the community people let things slide police were very slow to investigate him were more likely to believe him and i think the big takeaway from all of this is sometimes the most evil people are the ones that we don't expect that is the scariest part often they're exactly the opposite it is the men who masquerade as caretakers confident leaders and even clowns so the takeaway i have from this episode is don't trust men don't trust clowns don't trust anyone don't even trust the person sitting next to you right and remembering that can help not remembering what i said remembering what corinne said no remembering what you said okay sure it can help protect you from the real life monsters true and it could help stop someone like john wayne gacy before they even start thank you so much for listening we are your hosts sabrina diana roga and corinne vn join us next tuesday for another peek inside another crimes of you infamy here at crime house we want to thank each and every one of you for your support if you like what you heard today reach out on all social media at crime house and don't forget to rate review and follow crimes of wherever you get your podcasts your feedback truly makes a difference and if you're watching on youtube subscribe and comment below what you think and i know we said in the last episode we wanted to ask all of you what we should call you and how we should sign off and say goodbye to you last night i was thinking the way that you were saying my my it was so creepy that i almost want to say bye mommies to everyone like you're all our mommies that sounds creepy i know we don't have to but in my mind i'm saying bye let us know what you think we'll let it be a vote we won't we won't make it hates my idea and this is why i don't trust her but yes we'll see you next week and eventually we'll figure out what we're saying to close out our episodes but just know in my mind i'm always saying bye mommies bye mommy see you next week hi everyone we want to tell you about mother knows murder a new crime house original hosted by actress nisi nash and her daughter dia you've seen nisi on reno 911 and in her emmy award winning role on dahmer but for nisi true crime is personal when she was 15 she witnessed her mom become the victim of a shooting her mom survived and today nisi and dia bond over true crime now they're inviting you in every tuesday one of them brings a case and the other hears it for the first time they catch different details and lock in their own verdicts and even when the cases get dark their humor offers comedic relief but most importantly nisi and dia never lose sight of the real people at the heart of these stories follow mother knows murder on apple podcast spotify or subscribe on youtube at crimehouse studios to watch now looking for your next podcast check out mother knows murder a new crimehouse original hosted by emmy award-winning actress nisi nash and her daughter dia new episodes every tuesday on apple podcasts spotify or on youtube at crimehouse studios © transcript Emily Beynon