A man that was born in what appeared to be an ordinary family, with regular childhood, ended up being a gruesome teenage boy killer. He wasn’t an outstanding student but ended up being a successful business person, due to his flair towards sales. Gacy also played the role of a responsible community member, throwing barbecues for his neighbors and dressing up as a clown. To cheer up sick children in the hospital. So what triggered his desire to kill? Could it be the fact that he adored a father that was a violent alcoholic, who didn’t appreciate to be around people, used to beat young Gacy and call him names? Or can it be due to his numerous failures of going up on the social ladder, which accumulated a lot of frustrations?
Still, John Wayne Gacy didn’t just kill people, he also enjoyed in raping and torturing his victims before performing the murder. He was a violent murderer, who preferred young boys as his victims. It all started in 1972, on the 2nd of January, when he picked up a young 16-year-old boy, called Timothy McCoy, from a bus terminal, and took him on a tour around Chicago. He took the boy to his house, with the promise to take him back the next day to the bus station. According to Gacy’s statements, the killing of this boy may have been accidental. McCoy came from the kitchen, to wake Gacy up, but had a knife in his hand, which made Gacy think he wants to hurt him. Thus, he decided to hurt him instead and ended up killing McCoy. Gacy admitted that he
This psychopath terrorized the people of Wisconsin and Ohio for thirteen years. This man committed a series of murder, rape, and dismemberment amongst his seventeen 17 victims. This paper will go one to talk about his early life, first victims, killing spree, arrest and imprisonment, and also his death.
Gacy was a well respected man who wouldn’t be suspected of committing multiple murders. “His first known killing was in 1972, taking the life of Timothy McCoy after luring the teen to his home” (Biography 1). Gacy’s strategy into luring kids (mostly boys) into his home was to roam the streets in search for these young kids and force them to go with him. In 1978 Robert Piest who was 15 years old went missing. His mother said Robert had went to Gacy’s home in search of a job but Robert never came back. “This time the Des Plaines police got involved and searched Gacy’s home” (Crime museum 1). When the police got involved they found things that weren’t his and items that were suspicious. Later on, “On December 22, 1978, facing mounting physical evidence against him from subsequent searches of his home, Gacy confessed that he had killed thirty-three young men and boys and buried most on his property” (Luongo 1). Gacy would torture, strangle, and rape these young men. Gacy was found guilty on all of the murders he committed and he was sentenced to the lethal injection.
Jeffrey Dahmer was a fun and active child. He liked to wrestle, run and play with other children. But when his parents started to fight, he felt alone in the world. He began hiding in the woods and collecting the carcasses of dead animals. These carcasses gave him the comfort his family and classmates did not. At the age of 31 he went to jail for the murder of 17 people, where he was killed by a fellow inmate a few years later. What drove such a happy child to become a serial killer?
When you first think of a serial killer or you think of a psychopath you realize that they both have something in common even though they have different words to describe similar characteristics of a “monster”. John Wayne Gacy had an abusive childhood and struggled with his sexuality at a very young age, which these factors helped him become the person he did.
At the age of nine, John recalls being sexually molested on several occasion by a friend of his father; however he never disclosed this information until reaching adulthood. Signs of homosexuality appeared throughout John Wayne Gacy’s childhood, including the incidence of him being caught with his mother underwear, and continued throughout his adulthood, until finally disclosing his preference for men to his second wife, Carole. Upon his first arrest on charges of sodomy, John received a psychiatric evaluation which concluded that he, in fact, suffered from antisocial personality disorder. Subsequently, after sentenced to death for 12 of 33 known murders, Gacy received a secondary psychiatric evaluation which determined that John was a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder. In conclusion, the psychological, biological and genetic factors of John Wayne Gacy are quite alarming. His ability to charm and manipulate many of those around him and his lack of remorse or the slightest bit of guilt for the gruesome crimes he committed, even in his last moments of life, made John Wayne Gacy one of the most dangerous sociopaths of our time (Haggerty,
Jeffrey Dahmer killed and committed acts of necrophilia on 17 males between 1978 and 1991. In the article “Jeffrey Dahmer Biography”, it states that “Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite having confessed to the killings during police interrogation, but he eventually changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity” (Biography.com). His defense then described all the gorey details of his behavior and murders, trying to prove that only someone who had psychopathic tendencies could commit such horrendous acts, but the jury decided to believe the prosecution's statement that Dahmer was fully aware that his acts were evil and chose to commit them anyway. The trial was so complicated that “on February 15, 1992, they returned after approximately 10 hours' deliberation to find him guilty, but sane, on all counts” (Biography.com). He was then sentenced to 15 life sentences in prison, which were going to be run consecutively, with a 16th term added on in May. Another well known serial killer was John Wayne Gacy. Gacy would dress up as “Pogo the Clown” and perform for children’s birthday parties, but no one knew that he would eventually murder and rape 33 boys. He would then hide the bodies in a crawl space in his house and kept them there for years until he was caught. The article states that “the discovery of his murders and subsequent arrest shook the community as he
In Conclusion, John wayne Gacy was charged with 33 murders in February of 1980. Though his defence countered that Gacy was insane, irrational and not responsible for his actions, the jury eventually reached a guilty but sane verdict, and he was sentenced to death for 12 of the murders on March 13, 1980. He spent 12 years on death row and was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. John Wayne Gacy was one of the most infamous and relentless serial killer rapist of his time (“The Famous,”
On Friday, December 22, 1978, Gacy finally confessed to police that he killed at least thirty people and buried most of the remains of the victims beneath the crawl space of his house. According to the book Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders by Sullivan and Maiken, Gacy said that, "his first killing took place in January, 1972, and the second in January, 1974, about a year and a half after his marriage." He further confessed that he would lure his victims into being handcuffed and then he would sexually assault them. To muffle the screams of his victims, he would stuff a sock or underwear into their mouths and kill them by pulling a rope or board against their throats, as he raped them. Gacy admitted to sometimes keeping the dead bodies under his bed or in the attic for several hours before eventually burying them in the crawl space.
No, I do not believe that someone such as John Wayne Gacy who went and cruised for his victims on the streets of Chicago would be able to get away with murdering as many people as he did back in the 70's. I did my paper on Gacy and had learned about about how he would lure his victims to his house and the way he would eventually kill them. Although he was able to fool many individuals I still do not believe he would be able to fool the advancements that have surfaced from science and technology. We currently live in a world where everything is filmed or being recorded if not by a stranger than by a camera on the street. Technology itself has advanced to the point that if you do not have basic computer skills you would most likely not even
Researchers and psychologists are constantly trying to find out what is going on in the criminal mind and how serial killers rationalize aspects in their mind. He began his crime sprees, mostly with small crimes like burglary and stealing cars. Unlike most children his age, Manson was already showing signs of delinquent behavior. Bravin states that Manson was arrested around the age of thirteen and was sent to a detention center in Plainfield, Indiana, where he was raped by another inmate. It was reported that, throughout Manson’s time in confinement, he would burn himself with cigarettes and put needles in himself to build up his pain tolerance (Bravin 49).
For instance, the case of the “Green River Killer” (Hickey, 2010:24) may offer another possible explanation for what caused Jack the Ripper to become a serial killer. Gary Ridgway is America’s most notorious serial killer (Hickey, 2010), he “holds the record for the most serial murder convictions in the history of the United States” (Hickey, 2010:24). Ridgway is responsible for the deaths of 48 women (Hickey, 2010). Like Jack the Ripper, Ridgway selected prostitutes as his intended victims (Paley, 1995).
A boy who killed three boys at Chardon High school in Ohio, felt zero remorse for his act and can be considered a barbaric beast. At his sentencing he is quoted as saying, “This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. Fuck all of you.” He said this while wearing a t-shirt with the word killer across it and holding his middle finger up. T.J. Lane was a boy who faced a premeditated thought and made a
One side of this argument is that all serial killers are raised in such a manner that causes them to commit murders. Donald Henry Gaskins is one serial killer that many believe committed his crimes based on the way his family raised him. Gaskins mother Eulea Parrott otherwise known as Molly got pregnant at the age of fourteen when she has sex with “Mr. Gaskins, a wealthy, well-known neighbor of Molly, who loved to gamble and drink… he paid Molly $1 for sex several times a week” (Donald Henry Gaskins). Later Molly would live on Mr. Gaskins farm and get paid ten dollars by Mr. Gaskins each month. Donald would later in his childhood be known as “Pee Wee because of his small height and weight,” and he was “teased and made
Jimmy Gatz’s schedule reveals that he was very driven and strongly believed that bettering himself everyday was crucial to his life. Mr. Gatz says his son “was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something” (pg 173). With this being said, Mr. Gatz knew that Jimmy wanted to be a somebody in life and to be a wholesome person
Meet Jimmy Lee Gray. In 1968 he murdered his fiancé by cutting her throat, he only served seven years of his twenty year sentence when he was given parole. Not long after this he struck again, this time it was even worse. One June 27, 1976 he kidnapped a girl, took her to the woods where he raped her and attempted to drown her. When drowning did not work he broke her neck with his boot. Her name was Daressa Jean Seales and she was three years old.