John Wayne Gacy: the ‘Killer Clown’, the crawl space and 33 murders

• Born17 March 1942, Chicago, Illinois
• Known asThe ‘Killer Clown’; performed as Pogo the Clown
• Killings33 boys and young men, 1972–1978, most buried under his house in Norwood Park Township
• ArrestedDecember 1978 (accounts give 21 or 22 December)
• Convicted12 March 1980, Cook County, of 33 murders
• SentenceDeath on 12 counts, natural life on 21
• DiedExecuted by lethal injection, 10 May 1994, Stateville Correctional Center

John Wayne Gacy was a building contractor from the north-western edge of Chicago who, between 1972 and 1978, killed at least 33 boys and young men, most of whom he buried in the crawl space under his house. He was caught in December 1978, after a 15-year-old disappeared from a pharmacy in Des Plaines. Gacy confessed, then pleaded insanity. In March 1980 a jury convicted him of 33 murders and sentenced him to death. He spent 14 years on death row, retracted his confessions, and was executed by lethal injection on 10 May 1994.

What made the case notorious was the distance between the crimes and the man, a sociable local figure who performed as a clown. Several of the dead had worked for his construction firm. As of the most recent identification, in 2021, five of the 33 had still not been identified.

This account rests on the Illinois Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in People v. Gacy, the 1993 federal appeals opinion in Gacy v. Welborn, contemporary reports by United Press International and the Associated Press, later reporting by CNN, and reference entries in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Great American Trials and Biography.com, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the people Gacy killed, their families, the men who survived his attacks and his own relatives are not named.

Chicago and Waterloo

Gacy was born in Chicago on 17 March 1942. Britannica and Biography.com both describe a father who drank and beat him. In 1964 he married and moved to Waterloo, Iowa, to manage Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by his father-in-law, and became active in the local Jaycees.

In 1968 he was convicted in Iowa of sodomy involving a teenage boy and sentenced to ten years in prison. According to testimony at his later murder trial, recorded by the Illinois Supreme Court, and to Biography.com, he had arranged for someone to beat the boy so that he would not testify. His marriage ended in divorce. He was paroled in 1970, after about 18 months, and returned to Chicago to live with his mother. In early 1971 a teenage boy told Chicago police that Gacy had tried to force him into sex; the charge was dropped when the boy did not appear in court.

Norwood Park

With his mother’s help Gacy bought a brick ranch house on West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park Township, just outside the city limits, and started a contracting business, PDM, which did well. Many of his employees were teenagers and young men. He remarried in 1972; that marriage ended in divorce in 1976.

He became a Democratic precinct captain, threw summer parties that drew large crowds and performed in clown make-up as “Pogo”. In December 1978, while under police surveillance, he told the officers following him that “clowns can get away with murder”, according to testimony summarised by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Six years of killings

The killings began in 1972. Britannica and Biography.com both identify his first known victim as a 16-year-old he met at a Chicago bus station and stabbed at his house. Most of the later killings followed a pattern described at trial. Gacy brought young men home with offers of work, money, drink or drugs, persuaded them to put on handcuffs as part of a supposed trick, and then sexually assaulted and strangled them.

Most of the bodies went into the crawl space. Gacy had his employees dig trenches there and spread lime, and he explained away the smell that his wife and visitors noticed. Four bodies were later recovered from the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers.

Complaints did reach the police. In the mid-1970s police questioned him about the disappearances of young men, and other young men accused him of abduction and rape. None of it led to charges.

A summer job in Des Plaines

On the evening of 11 December 1978, a 15-year-old working at the Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines told his mother, who had come to collect him, that he was going to talk to a building contractor about a summer job and would be back in a few minutes. He did not come back. Gacy had spent much of the evening in the shop, and his truck had been seen outside.

Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak of the Des Plaines police questioned Gacy and learned about the Iowa conviction. A search of the house on 13 December turned up a photo-processing receipt from the pharmacy that the boy had been carrying and, according to the Illinois Supreme Court, a high-school class ring belonging to another young man who had been reported missing. Gacy was put under round-the-clock surveillance.

A surveillance officer who was invited into the house reported a smell he compared to decomposing bodies, and shortly before his arrest Gacy was seen handing a bag of marijuana cigarettes to a gas station employee, who passed it to the officers watching him. On 21 December police obtained a second warrant and began digging in the crawl space. Gacy was arrested that day or the next, depending on the account. He gave a long statement admitting to more than 30 killings, some of which he blamed on an alternative personality he called “Jack”. The 15-year-old’s body, he said, had gone into the Des Plaines River.

The crawl space

The digging went on for weeks, and in 1980 the house and everything on the lot were demolished. In all, 29 bodies were recovered from the crawl space, from under the garage and driveway and elsewhere on the property, and four from the rivers.

Identifying the dead was slow. Nine victims were still unknown in June 1981, when they were buried in separate graves. According to Biography.com, one of them was identified from dental records about five years later.

The insanity trial

Gacy was first charged with seven murders. In April 1979 a grand jury added 26 more, for a total of 33. Because of the coverage in Chicago, Judge Louis Garippo had the jury chosen in Winnebago County, around Rockford, and brought to Chicago. The trial opened in February 1980 and lasted about five weeks.

Gacy had confessed and shown police where to dig, so his lawyers argued that he was insane. They called psychiatrists and psychologists who described paranoid schizophrenia or a multiple personality, and relatives who described a violent father. The prosecution, led by William Kunkle, argued that the killings were planned and that Gacy knew exactly what he was doing.

On 12 March 1980 the jury of seven men and five women deliberated for less than two hours before convicting him of all 33 murders. The next day, after about two and a quarter hours, it voted for death. Death could be imposed only for the 12 murders that the prosecution could show had been committed after Illinois enacted its new death penalty law. For the other 21 he received natural life.

Fourteen years on death row

Gacy spent most of the next 14 years on death row at the Menard Correctional Center. He retracted his confessions and in time denied all or nearly all of the killings, arguing that his trial had been unfair and his lawyers inadequate. He also took up painting, often of clowns.

The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the convictions and death sentences in 1984 and rejected a further challenge in 1988. The US Supreme Court declined to hear his case in 1985, and in 1993 a federal appeals court rejected his habeas petition.

Execution

Gacy was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight on 10 May 1994 at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet. He was 52. According to the Associated Press, the procedure was delayed by a clog in the tubing. He protested his innocence to the end; according to the AP, prison officials said his last words were that taking his life would not make up for the other deaths and that the state was murdering him.

Naming the dead

In 2011 Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart had the remains of the eight victims still unidentified exhumed. He asked families of young men who had gone missing in the Chicago area in the 1970s to provide DNA. One set of remains was identified that year and another in 2017. In October 2021 the sheriff’s office announced a third, made with the help of the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses genetic genealogy: a man from North Carolina who was 21 or 22 when he was killed, in 1976 or early 1977. That left five of Gacy’s victims without names.

Where the accounts differ

• Where the bodies were: of the 29 on the property, UPI (1988) puts all 29 in the crawl space; the 1993 federal opinion 28, plus one under the driveway; the AP 27 in 1994 and 26 in 2021, the rest elsewhere on the lot; CNN (2021) 27, plus one under the garage and one in the back yard.
• The rivers: most sources say four bodies came from the rivers. The Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion says four in one passage and, summarising trial testimony, five in another; it also records that Gacy told police he had thrown five into the Des Plaines.
• The arrest: 21–22 December 1978 in Biography.com’s timeline, 22 December in Great American Trials, and “within two days” of the 11 December disappearance in the 1993 federal opinion. Biography.com’s profile says he was arrested in 1979.
• Where the boy was going: to meet a contractor outside the pharmacy, in both court opinions; to Gacy’s house, in Britannica and Great American Trials.
• Where Gacy lived: Norwood Park Township in UPI, Britannica, CNN and Biography.com; Des Plaines in Great American Trials; Norridge in the police warrant complaint quoted by the Illinois Supreme Court.
• The confession of 3 January 1979: to 32 killings, in UPI’s 1994 timeline; to seven, in Great American Trials.
• When the trial began: 6 February 1980 in Great American Trials and Biography.com; 28 January 1980 in UPI’s timeline, which counts jury selection.
• The verdict: 12 March 1980 in UPI’s 1980 report, Great American Trials and Biography.com; UPI’s 1988 retrospective gives 13 March, the day of the death sentence. The jury took an hour and 55 minutes according to UPI, an hour and 50 according to Biography.com.
• The unidentified: 11 unidentified when charges were added in 1979, according to Great American Trials; nine buried unnamed in June 1981 (on 8 June according to UPI, 13 June according to Biography.com); eight exhumed in 2011.
• The execution: 10 May 1994 everywhere except Great American Trials, which gives 19 May.

The portrait

The portrait above is a detail of the coloring page drawn for Bloody America, which gives one killer to each state. The full page shows Gacy in clown costume, with face paint, a pom-pom hat and a star-patterned suit, holding coils of rope in front of a brick wall and shelves of jars. Around him are a map of the United States with Illinois shaded and the word “ILLINOIS”, a hunting knife, a coiled rope in a round frame, a basketball, and a grim reaper beside the number “33”. A plaque edged with small skulls gives his name, the nickname “The Killer Clown” and the years 1972–1978, above round icons of a judge’s gavel and a syringe. For other case files, see Ed Gein, Richard Ramirez and Aileen Wuornos.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. People v. Gacy, 103 Ill.2d 1Supreme Court of Illinois, 6 June 1984
2. Gacy v. Welborn, 994 F.2d 305US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 7 May 1993
3. Victims’ kin applaud Gacy death sentenceUnited Press International, 14 March 1980
4. Gacy, the classic serial killerUnited Press International, 21 December 1988
5. The events leading to Gacy’s executionUnited Press International, 10 May 1994
6. Serial killer executed by injection in IllinoisAssociated Press, in the Deseret News, 10 May 1994
7. Another victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s has been identified using DNAAssociated Press, on NPR, 25 October 2021
8. John Wayne Gacy victim identified through DNA from toothCNN, 25 October 2021
9. John Wayne GacyEncyclopaedia Britannica
10. John Wayne Gacy Trial: 1980Great American Trials, via Encyclopedia.com
11. John Wayne Gacy: A Timeline of the ‘Killer Clown’ Murders, Trial and ExecutionBiography.com, 10 August 2021
12. John Wayne GacyBiography.com, updated 16 October 2025

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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