The story of John Wayne Gacy is a curious one but not entirely unprecedented in the context of some of the world’s most famous serial killers. A well-respected member of the community, practically everyone was shocked when it turned out that he was an incredibly prolific serial killer who was also known to the police for sexually assaulting young boys. It is the contention of this paper that he was so successful precisely because of his double life – by becoming such a well-respected member of the community he created the perfect alibi for his behavior and made himself above reproach until the evidence overwhelmingly pointed in his direction.
Gacy had a very troubled childhood, suffering abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father who frequently abused his wife and children, physically and verbally. This environment effected his school work and he spent much of his early life struggling with both money and health issues. (Maiken & Sullivan, 13) However, things took a turn for the turn for the better during the mid-1960s when he met and married a woman named Marlynn Myers. Having recently graduated from business school, he quickly moved onto managing a series of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by her parents in Iowa. He coupled this with helping out at a local chapter of the Jaycees, a leadership training and civic organization. (Sullivan & Maiken, 50-54)
Gacy excelled in both positions, frequently putting in twelve to fourteen hour days in his role at KFC and also managing to find time to contribute extensively to his work with the Jaycees, where he was thought of highly by fellow volunteers and received an award for being “outstanding vice president” in 1967. (Linedecker, 1993, 58) In ’67 and ’68 he also fathered two children and was known as a popular family man around the neighborhood. During this time, he also managed to gain the approval of his father, who had frequently berated Gacy as a young man. . (Maiken & Sullivan, 136)
However, in-keeping with the thesis statement at the beginning of this paper, he used this position as a front in order to cover for the seedier side of his behavior. During this period biographers have described how he frequently engaged in drug abuse, prostitution and cheated on his wife frequently. Furthermore, he would bring underage male employees back to his house and ply them with alcohol before making sexual advances. (Linedecker, 1993, 45) In 1968, a young man named Donald Vorhees came forward, claiming that Gacy had forced him to perform oral sex while another man named Edward Lynch accused him of attempted sexual assault. During this time members of the Jaycees staunchly backed Gacy’s denial of the events – an example of the purpose that getting involved in charitable activities served in order to cover up his other activities. . (Maiken & Sullivan, 223)
However, the evidence proved too great against him and he was forced to plead guilty, losing his job, family and everything else he had built up in the process. Fascinatingly, he set about immediately rebuilding his life almost from the moment he was convicted, becoming a model prisoner who exponentially grew the prison’s Jaycees chapter and oversaw a number of projects. After being paroled he continued the process on the outside, relocating to Chicago and joining the Jaycees chapter there before starting his own, successful construction business. He also started to become involved in politics, even getting to meet the First Lady at the time, Rosalynn Carter (Maiken & Sullivan, 265) (Los Angeles Times). This once again showed Gacy’s desire to shield the outside world from his crimes and also provide a framework to give him access to young men. Due to his position in the community, nobody suspected him at first when young men started going missing. Furthermore, it must have provided him with a huge amount of positive validation as he sought to improve his mindset and convince himself that he was worthy of positive attention.
Infamously, Gacy also did some work as “Pogo the Clown” as part of his charitable and community work, often attending local parties. (Morrison & Goldberg, 143) Once again, when considering his mindset, this is another example of him identifying a potential route further into the community and to make himself known as a “good person’. Once the actual murders began, it would be years before anyone suspected that it was him despite the fact that many of the young men who went missing had some kind of connection to his company – most likely because it would have been ridiculous to accuse this self made businessman, charitable worker and local affiliate of the Democratic Party who held annual parties for his entire neighborhood of such deeds. Nobody, it seems, even thought to make the connection.
Similarly, it is likely that Gacy also struggled when it comes to how he ‘labelled’ himself. Dweck (76) argues that when people are given a positive label – such as when Gacy finally gained the respect of his father or the wider community – that we are afraid of losing it and being given a negative one. His intense fear of losing this (perhaps related to his abusive childhood and the repeated berating by his father) could be viewed as one of the roots of his mindset. Based on my reading of Mindset by Dweck it would appear that Gacy was stuck in a fixed mindset of wanting to be viewed as perfect within the community but by the same token never really believing in growth or that he was ‘better’ than he had been told he was as a child.
Starting in 1972 and continuing until the end of 1978 he is known to have committed 33 murders, making him of the most prolific and notorious serial killers in the history of the United States. (Cantor & Lynch) His dual personality and his ability to create an outward façade as pillar of the community is perhaps the most important factor when considering how he managed to get away with this for so long, despite the seemingly obvious connections in retrospect. It goes to show the cunning nature of someone like Gacy and how their mindset works: he engineered the scenario and identified the right targets to allow him to keep committing crimes for most of a decade.
Works Cited
"First Lady on Witness List in Slaying Case." Los Angeles Times 5 Dec. 1979: n. pag. Print.
Cantor, David, and James P. Lynch. "JOHN WAYNE GACY."
Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House, 2006.
Linedecker, Clifford L. The Man Who Killed Boys: The John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Story. Macmillan, 1993.
Morrison, Helen, and Harold Goldberg. My life among the serial killers: inside the minds of the world's most notorious murderers. New York: William Morrow, 2004.
Sullivan, Terry, and Peter T. Maiken. Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders. Pinnacle Books, 2000.
