Table Of Content
For his part, Gacy's final residence was the Menard Correctional Center, where he sat on death row for 14 years. The lot remained empty for nearly a decade until a new owner bought the property and began to build a new home on it, according to Crain's Chicago Business. Summerdale Ave. to 8215 in the hope of erasing some of the stigma of the property and to attract new buyers of the home. As recently as October 2020, the house (pictured above) was up for sale again for nearly a half-million dollars, per Realtor.com, and had its price slashed three times to attract a buyer for the "must see house!" (via Zillow). Photos of Gacy’s bedroom, with a clown painting on the wall and a TV and a clock radio that had belonged to one of his victims.
Investigation
His wife divorced him and took the children, and Gacy was sent to prison. Though the house itself was torn down, its foundation and the remains of Gacy’s victims had to be thoroughly excavated. This painstaking process took many weeks, as investigators had to ensure they had located every victim’s remains. It wasn’t until the site was completely cleared that the idea of rebuilding could be entertained. Located at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park Township, Chicago, the house was a typical suburban home with a chilling secret. It had a one-story brick ranch structure, with three bedrooms and a detached two-car garage.
First Sexual Assaults and Arrest
'Killer Clown' John Wayne Gacy’s chilling words when asked how many men he actually killed - The Mirror
'Killer Clown' John Wayne Gacy’s chilling words when asked how many men he actually killed.
Posted: Sun, 07 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Considered a model prisoner, Gacy was paroled after serving 18 months of his 10-year prison sentence. While incarcerated, he had been diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder, which limited his ability to empathize or consider the impact his actions had on other people. Now free to roam the streets again, Gacy’s sexual deviancy raged unchecked and he continued assaulting youths. Gacy was born into a blue-collar family and seems to have had a fairly ordinary childhood. But he exhibited a growing tendency toward sadism, which resulted in several encounters with the law in the 1960s.
Murder of John Butkovich
29 bodies in total were found at the John Wayne Gacy home – 26 of which were buried in the crawl space beneath the house and the remaining 3 placed in other areas of the property. Surveillance police then followed Gacy, who was acting erratically, as they awaited a second search warrant to look for Piest's body. They eventually arrested Gacy on charges of possession and distribution of cannabis after he was seen with the drug at a local gas station. Court documents indicated that Peck, who was pen pals with serial killer John Wayne Gacy and kept some of Gacy’s letters in his nightstand, sexually penetrated Drake with a foreign object, among other assaults. During the demo, a Mt. Prospect laborer carried home debris as souvenirs, mortifying his family.
One he left alive was Robert Donnelly, a 19-year-old college student he abducted from a Chicago bus stop. After bringing him to his house, Gacy raped and tortured Donnelly, dunking his head repeatedly in a bathtub until he passed out and performing fake executions with a gun loaded with banks. Donnelly was in so much pain he begged Gacy to kill him, but Gacy let him go and warned him not to tell anybody. When officers investigated, Gacy said it was a consensual “sex slavery” encounter, and the police believed him, according to Buried Dreams. His first wife, Marylynn Myers, he met while the two were working at the same shoe store and married in 1964.
Why was John Wayne Gacy called the "Killer Clown"?
Gacy had technically violated his parole, but somehow his parole officer was never aware of the episode. By 1971, Gacy had settled into a new home in Norwood Park, a neighborhood in northwestern Chicago. His yellow brick ranch house there, at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, would eventually become a graveyard for 29 young men and boys. Voorhees kept quiet about the incident until March 1968, when he told his father and spurred a criminal investigation into Gacy that destroyed the facade of a normal life he’d crafted.
Authorities discovered several suspicious items there, including police badges, a pistol, hypodermic needles, pornographic films, and items that they later learned belonged to some of Gacy’s victims. John Wayne Gacy, often called the “Killer Clown,” was one of the worst serial killers in U.S. history, murdering at least 33 teenage boys and young men. John Wayne Gacy, known as the Killer Clown, was a notorious American serial killer who preyed mainly on young men and boys during the 1970s. Gacy’s gruesome acts were committed inside his own house, a horrifying location that’s been etched into the annals of true crime history. In this section, we’ll delve into the chilling details of the house where Gacy committed his unspeakable crimes. The John Wayne Gacy House, located in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, carries quite a disturbing history.
Unidentified victims
Tim Cahill details how police finally caught the Killer Clown in his true crime book, Buried Dreams. Police discovered the bodies of 29 boys and young men in or near Gacy’s house. Over the next several weeks, investigators would unearth the remains of 29 bodies on Gacy's property and another four in the rivers southeast of Chicago. Already living alone, Gacy has his separation from Carol formalized with their divorce. During this time he begins appearing more frequently around town as his alter ego, Pogo the clown.
Inside John Wayne Gacy Jr.'s Real Life Murder House
Gacy was executed in 1994.In 1971, Gacy started a construction business called PDM Contractors, which grew rapidly and became financially successful. Also that year, Gacy also became engaged to Carole Hoff, who he briefly dated in high school. Most of his employees at PDM Contractors were high school students and young men, who he would proposition for sex, sometimes under the threat of violence. The next morning, Gacy saw McCoy standing in the bedroom doorway with a knife and rushed to attack him, wrestling the knife away and stabbing McCoy to death.
Ultimately, they discovered 26 bodies on Gacy’s property, with additional victims’ remains found in nearby rivers. Five years later, that marriage dissolved when he was sent to prison for sexually abusing a teenage boy. His wife filed for divorce and he never saw her or their two children ever again.
He would lure the victims to his home, typically with the promise of work, before restraining and torturing them. Eventually, he’d strangle them to death and bury them within his crawl space. The chilling tale of John Wayne Gacy’s house serves as a testament to the heinous events that took place there. It’s a stark reminder of the evil that can lurk behind closed doors, even in the most ordinary of homes.
The home was demolished in 1979 during the thorough search for the dozens of victims buried on the property. Under the careful visage of a regular suburban home, however, a mortifying truth was hiding just under the surface. What no one could have ever realized during their visits to the Gacy residence was that they were likely surrounded by tortured murder victims buried just beneath their feet. In all, 26 bodies were discovered in the crawl space of John Wayne Gacy’s house, and three more were discovered on the adjoining property. A handful of other bodies were also discovered in the nearby Des Plaines River, where Gacy had dumped them.
No comments:
Post a Comment