John Wayne Gacy

Scary -  not Funny

John Wayne Gacy, perhaps one of the most well-known serial killers in the United States, started his life in Chicago, Illinois.  His early years on this planet were not decent ones.  Gacy was overweight, anti-social, and his alcoholic father frequently abused him, his mother, and his two sisters both physically and psychologically. Gacy claims to have been molested by a family friend at age nine and eventually began having seizures. This illness forced him to occupy quite a bit of time in the hospital.

After this shaky beginning, John Gacy became the stereotypical socialite. People who knew him never suspected that a man of his character could be the serial killer that had taken the lives of 33 men and boys, most of which he buried underneath the floorboards inside of his house. Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the "Killer Clown" because he entertained kids at parties as "Pogo - The Clown."

In March 1978, Gacy lured a 26-year-old named Jeffrey Rignall into his car. Upon entering the automobile, the young man was chloroformed and driven to a house on Summerdale, where he was raped, tortured with many different devices including lit candles, and repetitively chloroformed into unconsciousness. Rignall was then driven to Lincoln Park, where he was cast off, unconscious but still alive. Eventually he managed to stumble to his girlfriend's apartment. Rignall was to later learn the chloroform had permanently damaged his liver. He filed a complaint with the police.

Police were unconvinced that the sodomist could be found however Ringall was not giving up and took the situation into his own hands. Remembering one of the exits during his abduction, he staked out the exit on a certain local expressway until he visualized the black Oldsmobile once again. He then followed it to 8213 West Summerdale. Police issued a warrant and took Gacy into custody on July 15. But, he was released on bail pending the trial. However, police took out a second warrant and returned to the house on Summerdale. They soon discovered a trapdoor in a bedroom closet secreting a 40 foot crawl space. A quick trip into the crawl space was all it took for police to uncover human remains. After being duly educated that he would now face murder charges, Gacy declared his ownership to some dozens of killings, telling investigators that most of the victims remains were buried in the basement and on his property, and that after the crawlspace had become full, he chucked the last five bodies off the I-55 bridge and into the Des Plaines River.

In an interview after his arrest, Gacy stated that immediately after killing Timothy Jack McCoy, he felt "totally drained", yet noted that he had experienced orgasm as he killed the youth. In this 1980s interview, he added: "That's when I realized that death was the ultimate thrill. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy)

John Gacy was eventually convicted and sentenced to death. On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Was this “lethal injection” really justice for the murders and mayhem that John Wayne Gacy committed? I think not. Why is one life sufficient for the killing of 33? It’s not. I believe Gacy deserves to die 33 times for his heinous endeavors and not just once. Consider the eighth amendment to the constitution – “cruel and unusual punishment”. The state must maintain a sense of humane consciousness in their justice for these kinds of perpetrators, but the criminals themselves have no set rules to abide by. Maybe this is why justice is so blind. I feel that because John Wayne Gacy had no sense of remorse and totally denied he did anything wrong, he was the most evil incarnate and all we can do as a nation is take his life from him. His eternal reward awaits him on the other side.