He said clowns can get away with murder — the Gacy case

This piece describes the kidnapping, torture and murder of young men and boys. It is written plainly, without relish — but it is not softened.

On 21 December 1978, police in Chicago were urgently searching for a missing teenager. The investigation led them to the home of a local maintenance contractor. When they executed the search warrant they went into the crawl space, and with the very first shovel of earth they uncovered human remains.

The man in custody was 36-year-old John Wayne Gacy: a well-known community figure who spent his weekends dressed as a clown, entertaining children. At one point he told detectives, "You know, clowns can get away with murder."

And he had. Between 1972 and 1978 he tortured and killed 33 young men. Twenty-seven of them were buried beneath his own house.

The making of him

Gacy's story begins decades earlier.

He was born in Chicago on 17 March 1942, the second of three children. His upbringing was difficult. His father, an alcoholic, was reportedly both mentally and physically abusive to his wife and children. Gacy spent his childhood being demeaned, beaten, and told he was stupid, worthless and effeminate.

Barry Boschelli, a childhood friend, remembered the abuse. If Johnny was two minutes late, he would not be fed. He often ate and slept at Barry's house. Barry remembered Gacy's father hitting him in the face while he sat at the kitchen table.

That father was central to the formation of his son's violent pathology. Gacy seemed desperate to earn his approval and never could. He was beaten with belts and brooms, and once knocked unconscious. People who grow up in that kind of environment often develop a warped view of human relationships — seeing them not as built on love or trust, but on exploitation and cruelty.

He was a sickly child as well. A heart condition kept him out of sports, which isolated him further from his peers. At eleven, a playground accident left him with recurring blackouts and frequent hospital visits after he was struck in the forehead by a heavy wooden swing and knocked to the ground.

Waterloo, Iowa

By 1966 Gacy was 24, married, and living in Waterloo, Iowa — 300 miles west of Chicago. From the outside, life looked normal. A good job, a wife, two children. He was active in the local Chamber of Commerce and well regarded in the town.

Beneath that, he was hiding something. He had developed an unhealthy sexual interest in young boys. One of his first known assaults was on the son of a fellow member of the Jaycees. Gacy lured the boy to his home and sexually assaulted him, abusing his position of trust.

When the boy told his father, Gacy was arrested. He then hired another teenager to intimidate the victim — luring him to a remote location, spraying mace in his eyes, beating him, and warning him not to testify. The boy testified anyway. But with limited evidence, Gacy was charged with a single count of sodomy involving the 15-year-old.

He pleaded guilty, expecting a light sentence. Instead the judge gave him ten years. On 3 December 1968 he was sent to Anamosa State Penitentiary. While he was inside, his wife divorced him. Then his father died, and Gacy was refused permission to attend the funeral.

True to form, he manipulated his way into favour. Within months he was head cook, had convinced the staff he was reformed, and had persuaded the parole board he posed no threat. He served 18 months of the ten years.

Back to Chicago

In June 1970, now 28, Gacy returned to Chicago. His criminal past was unknown to friends, family and neighbours. He started his own business — no background checks, no scrutiny. He married again, and moved to 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in the suburbs. That house would become one of the most infamous addresses in America.

Six years later, in December 1978, a 15-year-old named Rob Piest disappeared ten miles from Gacy's home. Rob had told his mother he was going to speak to a contractor about a job. That contractor was John Wayne Gacy.

The boy who did not come home

Detectives Mike Albrecht and Dave Hachmeister took the case. Rob was a standout kid — bright, responsible, never in trouble. His disappearance was completely out of character. No drugs, no girlfriend trouble, no reason to run. He was the kind of kid anyone would be proud to call their son.

That is what made it so alarming.

Rob worked at a pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois. He had mentioned to a coworker, and to his mother, that he planned to speak to a contractor about a job. He stepped out of the back door of the store and was never seen again.

It was as though he had vanished into thin air. The detectives needed to identify the contractor he had gone to meet — likely the last person to see him alive. Their search led them to a 36-year-old named John Wayne Gacy. Recently divorced, he ran a successful business called PDM Contractors, and he hired teenage boys regularly. One of them was Tony Antonucci.

Tony was 16 when he met Gacy. Like most teenagers he wanted money, in his case to help pay for a car. His first impression was positive — Gacy seemed jovial, approachable, even fun. He came across as the kind of boss who might suggest knocking off early on a sunny afternoon. It all felt normal. Harmless.

But Rob Piest had also gone to see Gacy about a job, and he had not come back. The detectives started digging into Gacy's background, and what they found was alarming: a prior conviction for sodomy in Iowa, involving a minor.

They secured a warrant on three facts. Gacy had been at the pharmacy the night Rob disappeared. Rob had told people he was meeting a contractor. And Gacy had a record of sexual offences against children.

The first search

On 13 December 1978 police carried out their first search of the house. What they found raised serious red flags. Pornographic material. Books with titles like Pretty Boys Must Die. And several driving licences belonging to young men — many of whom had been reported missing.

Among the items was a high school ring belonging to 19-year-old John Szyc, who had disappeared in January 1977. Further investigation showed that two of Gacy's former employees, 17-year-olds John Butkovich and Gregory Godzik, had also gone missing, in 1975 and 1976.

Detectives began to suspect Gacy was connected to at least five or six disappearances. But without physical evidence — without bodies — they could not arrest him. So they did the only thing left. They watched him, round the clock.

The surveillance

Wherever Gacy went, they followed. If he walked into a public place, they walked in behind him. Over time a strange dynamic developed. Gacy knew he was being watched, and he leaned into it — starting conversations, trying to charm them.

He toyed with them. Once he came up to their car and casually asked whether they wanted some marijuana. Another time he went into the Moose Lodge and the detectives followed, sitting at a separate table. Moments later a waitress brought them two beers, sent by "that gentleman over there". Gacy raised a hand in greeting. They waved back.

He was confident. Cocky. Always bragging about his business, his properties, his connections. Underneath the bravado, the walls were closing in.

Gacy had a psychopathic personality. He craved power, thrived on control, and enjoyed manipulating the people around him. He was, in many ways, a puppet master — pulling strings, playing roles, hiding behind charm. That need for dominance seems to have driven everything he did.

Everyone had nothing but praise for him. Neighbours, coworkers, associates — they all liked him. He was friendly, engaging, genuinely likeable on a surveillance tape. The two detectives had to keep reminding each other: this man is dangerous.

The clown

In the community he was a model citizen. Active in local politics, well connected, popular. And on weekends he dressed as a clown — Pogo the Clown — and performed at children's parties and hospitals.

There was something deeply unsettling about that persona. Most clowns paint soft, rounded smiles. Gacy's was sharp, winged, almost bat-like. It gave Pogo a sinister edge and turned the entertainer into something monstrous. That image is a large part of why he became a mythic American villain.

At one point he told detectives, "You know, clowns can get away with murder." And he had. It took investigators a long time to grasp the scale of what he was capable of.

While Mike and Dave kept up the surveillance, detectives at the station were working on a second warrant. New information had come from his employees.

Several young men, aged 17 to 19, remembered being ordered into the crawl space under the house to dig trenches. Gacy said it was for a sewage problem. But they said it happened more than once — and that the smell down there was overwhelming.

That is when the question shifted. Could he have buried someone down there?

Gacy had a way of involving other people in his crimes without their knowledge. That seems to have been part of the thrill — control over people who had no idea what they were part of. He hid in plain sight, and nobody connected the dots.

The night he came apart

The surveillance continued, but so did the pressure. Gacy had a strong support network — friends, family, coworkers — and that loyalty was shielding him. So investigators started working on the circle, peeling people away slowly. At the same time they let it be known that another warrant might be coming.

He began to unravel.

On the final night of surveillance, around midnight, Gacy contacted his attorneys and met them at their office in Park Ridge. Mike and Dave were outside when the attorneys waved them in — an unusual thing to do, and a signal that something had shifted.

The instruction that came to them was blunt. Park in front of his house and do not let him leave. If he tries to run, shoot out his tyres. That was when they understood that something serious had just happened.

Inside the office the attorneys were visibly shaken. Pacing, tense, eyes fixed on Gacy. It was obvious they were terrified, and that told the detectives everything: Gacy had confessed to them. At least two or three murders.

They followed him when he left. He drove erratically, speeding through the streets until he reached a Shell station where he did regular business. Inside, they watched him with the staff — hugging, shaking hands, unusually emotional. It was a great deal of contact, even for Gacy.

When he drove off, the two detectives went in. The employees handed them two bags of marijuana. "We didn't buy this. We didn't ask for it. Gacy just gave it to us."

He was spiralling. That drug transaction gave them the opening they needed, and they took it — arresting him at Devon and Milwaukee. That was the last moment of Gacy's freedom.

They pulled him out of the car. He whined, "Why are you doing this to me?" It was over. Technically he was arrested for possession and delivery of marijuana, and taken to the station.

In custody he complained of chest pains and was taken to hospital as a precaution. It was a delay tactic. While he was there, the second warrant came through.

The crawl space

On 21 December 1978 police returned to West Summerdale Avenue. This time they went straight into the crawl space, and the first shovel of earth turned up human remains.

Gacy's secrets, buried for years, had finally been unearthed.

Mike got the call straight away. They had found bodies. Gacy was then arrested for murder.

He said he wanted to confess — but not to the detectives. He wanted to confess to the surveillance team. He wanted an audience again. He knew the game was up, and now he was ready to talk.

He offered to draw a map of the burial sites under his house. He was handed a pen and he began sketching: doubles, triples, single graves, an X where each body lay. Investigators dug with spoons and anything else they could find. When his diagram was laid over the actual sites, it matched perfectly.

In total, 27 bodies were recovered from the crawl space. The news spread fast, and the papers filled with the number pulled out of that basement.

With the scale exposed, Gacy entered the record books as America's most prolific serial killer at the time. The idea that this pudgy, ordinary man had been living in a house full of death — torturing boys in the middle of a suburb and then going to work the next morning — was almost impossible to take in.

When he was booked for murder he was asked where he was born. He looked at the officers and said, "I was born in a state of confusion." Then he smiled.

What he did

Gacy confessed to killing 33 boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. He chose victims who were vulnerable — runaways, homeless teenagers, kids with nobody to miss them. In the late seventies many of those boys were reported missing and very little followed.

Twenty-seven went into the crawl space. One into the backyard. When he ran out of room he put five more in the Des Plaines River.

One of those, found floating in April 1979, was Rob Piest — the 15-year-old whose disappearance had started all of it.

Gacy was disturbingly detailed about Rob. Rob's mother had been waiting for him in the pharmacy car park. He told her, "I'm just going to talk to a contractor about a job. I'll be right back." He walked in, and Gacy was waiting in the alley behind the store. As Gacy started to leave, Rob went up to him. "Excuse me, sir. I heard you hire young guys. I'm really interested in getting a job."

Gacy invited him into the car to fill out an application. Rob got in willingly. Gacy drove him home.

Once there, he showed Rob a few clown tricks — card tricks, sleight of hand. Then the handcuff trick. Gacy cuffed himself, turned around, struggled, turned back holding up the cuffs. Rob was impressed. "That's neat. How'd you do that?"

Gacy handed them over. "Here, you try. I'll show you."

Rob locked the cuffs on himself and struggled. "What's the trick?"

Gacy reached into his pocket, took out the key, and said, "The trick is — you've got to have this."

That trick was part of a calculated method, refined over 33 murders. Lure them in — some employees, most of them teenage runaways. Bring them home, offer drinks, get them handcuffed.

He used chloroform to subdue them. It is an old anaesthetic: once inhaled it renders a person unconscious very quickly.

Then came what he called the rope trick. A knotted loop around the neck, a stick pushed through at the back like a tourniquet, twisted slowly. He claimed he had perfected it and knew exactly how the body would respond to each half turn.

Medically, a ligature like that cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is painful, disorienting, and can cause unconsciousness within seconds.

He described how he tortured them. Sometimes he would incapacitate two or three at once, killing one in front of the others before carrying on. He seemed proud of it. That pride kept him talking, and he described every murder in detail. All 33.

The one who got out

As the news spread, one viewer was more shaken than most: Tony Antonucci, a former employee who had survived Gacy's method without ever knowing it.

While working for PDM, Tony injured his foot on a nail. Gacy took him for a tetanus shot and then brought him home. Later that evening he came back with wine. They drank and joked around. It was late, around half past ten. Tony was a high school wrestler, and Gacy teased him — "you're a big wrestler guy" — and started playfully grappling with him.

He got Tony's left arm behind his back and locked on a handcuff. Tony fought, swinging his right arm, but Gacy got both wrists and forced him to the floor. Then he left the room.

Tony realised he could pull his right hand free. He did — and then pretended he was still cuffed.

When Gacy came back, Tony turned it around. He cuffed Gacy's wrist, reached into his pocket for the key, and locked both of Gacy's hands behind his back. Gacy said, "You're the only one who not only got out of the handcuffs — you got them on me."

Tony did not know what that meant. He thought it was some kind of test. He left Gacy cuffed for ten or fifteen minutes and then let him go. Gacy had agreed to leave, and he did.

Tony had no idea how close he had come. He said later, "I didn't fear for my life. And not panicking probably saved me. If I'd tried to run, he could've overpowered me. He was 33, strong. I was just 16 or 17."

He carried on working for PDM for a few months afterwards. He only reported it after Gacy was arrested.

The trial

The forensic scene was a nightmare — bodies in different stages of decomposition, some of them buried for years. Excavating that crawl space was a huge and complex operation, and it took time, manpower and precision.

By the time the case reached court most of the dead had been named. Not all of them were. Some never have been, and there are families who have waited nearly fifty years for an answer that has not come.

The community on the edge of Chicago was stunned. Nobody could believe that such a monster had lived among them. For many people it triggered something childlike — middle-class families watching authorities carry decomposed bodies out of a neighbour's crawl space.

The reaction to the crimes was horror and outrage. A man the community had held in high regard had done things that defied belief, and as the State prepared its case the prosecutors were determined that he would be held fully accountable.

The trial opened on 6 February 1980 at the Cook County Criminal Courts building in Chicago. Illinois still had the death penalty then, and Gacy's defence entered a plea of insanity.

It was a complicated trial. Psychiatrists testified one after another with different diagnoses, and their conflicting opinions painted a fragmented picture of a man whose mind seemed broken into pieces.

Over five weeks the prosecution worked to prove he was fully responsible for what he did. There is a critical difference between mental illness and psychopathy. Psychopaths are rational. They understand what they are doing, they know it is wrong, and they choose to do it anyway. Gacy fitted that profile: calculated, vicious, and entirely aware.

He did not kill on impulse. He killed to protect his image. Politically and professionally he was well liked, and he could not afford to be exposed as a man who preyed on vulnerable boys. So he silenced them.

One of the prosecution's key witnesses was Tony Antonucci. He remembered seeing Gacy in court, sitting at the defence table, staring straight ahead. Their eyes may have met once or twice. Tony was nervous — he was in his early twenties, testifying in one of the most significant trials of the decade.

On 13 March 1980 the jury reached its verdict. It took less than three hours to find him guilty, which was striking even then. In his closing remarks the prosecutor, William Kunkle, called Gacy a "ruthless, sadistic killing machine". It was a fitting label.

Judge Louis B. Garippo sentenced him to death. He was moved to Menard Correctional Center, where he would spend the next fourteen years on death row.

Death row

Even inside, Gacy kept manipulating. He took up painting — clowns, skulls, grotesque subjects — and sold the work for profit, maintaining a twisted kind of legacy through it. He still had influence. He still had control.

Eventually the government sued him for the earnings. The attorney Karen Conti represented him in that case. She described him as a terrible painter, but people still paid hundreds of dollars for his work. When she met him she was struck by how ordinary he seemed — he looked and acted like a friendly neighbour, like somebody's uncle. That, she said, was part of the reason he got away with so much. He did not look evil.

Karen was a staunch opponent of the death penalty and represented Gacy through his final appeals. Over the years he exhausted every avenue, state and federal. By the time an execution date was set, there was nothing left.

Some killers are so monstrous that even people who oppose capital punishment will not protest their execution. Gacy was one of them. If he ever felt remorse it was only for himself. He was consumed by malignant narcissism — incapable of empathy, incapable of accountability.

Karen knew the odds. No court was going to commute the sentence; politically it was impossible. Gacy was going to be executed. Even if the legal arguments were strong, nobody was going to listen. Not for him.

In May 1992 he gave a televised interview from Menard. He recanted his confession and claimed he was innocent, a victim of circumstance. It was nonsense. He was guilty. But what stood out was the manner of it — calm, composed, even indignant. "Why am I being put through this?" he asked. "It's not fair. It was a pure accident. I never did it."

It was a last attempt to rewrite the story. His original confession had been clear. He did it, and he did it alone.

He never accepted responsibility. He blamed other people — his victims, their families. He insisted he was not at fault. That refusal to own anything is a hallmark of psychopathy.

The execution

On 10 May 1994 John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Penitentiary.

Outside, it was chaos. Crowds stretched for a mile. People held signs: "Kill the Clown", "Kill Gacy", and even "Kill Karen Conti". There were drums, dancing, clown makeup. It was a spectacle, and it was a celebration.

His last words were: "Kiss my ass."

He remained unrepentant to the end. He showed no remorse for any of his 33 victims.

To use another human being that way — to inflict pain, suffering and torture on someone helpless — is, at its core, the definition of evil.

After

You would think the execution might bring some kind of closure. It does not. Not really. You think about the families. About that 15-year-old boy who was simply a good kid. As much as you want to believe in closure, it never truly comes.

Forty years on, Tony Antonucci still feels lucky to be alive. He is not sure what saved him — luck, something greater, his own ignorance of the danger, or the fact that he did not panic. He just wanted to win the game, if that is what it was, and that may be what kept him breathing.

Tony believes he would have been one of the earlier victims. Before the killer had refined his method. Before he was living alone with the freedom to act without restraint.

Karen Conti, who stood beside Gacy in court, still gets messages from people angry that she ever did. Gacy once told her, "Your obituary will read, 'Karen Conti represented serial killer John Gacy.'" She believes he was right.

For children, monsters are real. As adults we learn that werewolves and vampires are fiction. Then something like this happens and the monster turns out to be real. There is an ogre. And it is transfixing. Horrifying. Fascinating in the worst possible way.

Gacy was the embodiment of evil, and he also knew how to play the part of a great guy. That duality is what made him one of the most dangerous men imaginable. His charm, his standing in the community, his clown persona — all of it helped him hide his crimes for six years. Behind the mask was a sadistic killer who tortured and murdered 33 young men in the most brutal ways available to him, for his own gratification.

And the fact that he never showed a shred of remorse — not for his victims, not for their families — right up to the moment he was executed, leaves no doubt about what he was.

John Wayne Gacy was one of the most evil killers the world has ever known.

His crimes left a permanent scar on the lives of his victims, their families, and the community that lived beside him without knowing. His story is a reminder of how well evil can hide behind charm, and of how justice, however delayed, must never be denied.

If you suspect abuse — in a child, in a teenager, in anyone — report it.

This piece is adapted from the finished script for the Disturbing Truths episode "He Said 'Clowns Can Get Away With Murder' — Then He Did". Narration and scripting are original; the episode was informed by publicly available sources including FilmRise True Crime.