Who Is John Gacy?
Businessman, Clown Faces Murder Charges Today

By Douglas E. Kneeland

In the clean “well-lighted” world of middleclass America, the hardworking, outgoing, community spirited man next door is not supposed to be the suspect in the worst instance of mass killings in the United States in this century. But John Wayne Gacy is that. Today, Gacy, a short, round, 36-year-old remodeling contractor with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, was scheduled to appear in a Cook County courtroom for arraignment in a case that may ultimately involve the deaths of at least 32 young men in the last several years. A grand jury has indicted him in seven murders and the prosecutors are seeking further indictments as more of the 19 bodies recovered so far are identified.

But who is John Wayne Gacy?
Is he the affable businessman, driven, often boastful, but eager to please? The clown, Pogo, who entertained children at picnics and parties? The outgoing man most neighbors, friends and family members knew here, in Springfield, Illinois and in Waterloo, Iowa? Or is he the night wanderer portrayed by investigators, a man who cruised the homosexual scene’s meanest streets in his late model black Oldsmobile with police-like spotlights, picking up young male prostitutes or other willing partners? The man who lured youngsters into his contracting business, brutalized them sexually and killed them? The unreformed former convict who served 18 months in an Iowa reformatory after he was found guilty in 1968 of having engaged a Waterloo teenager in sodomy. Or is he both? A close look at his past does not provide easy answers as to why and at what point John Gacy’s life may have taken the turn that made him the prime suspect in the bizarre sex murders.

Most people who knew him will not discuss him, and those who will seem confused by the charges against him. ‘John Wayne Gacy was born here March 17, 1942. His parents, John and Marian Gacy, were factory workers and he grew up with his sisters, one two years older and one two years younger, in a working-class neighborhood on the northwest side. His father died nine years ago and his mother, 71, lives with his younger sister in Arkansas. The elder sister lives in Chicago. All three family members have desperately sought anonymity. But his younger sister, an articulate mother of three, agreed to an interview if her identity was not disclosed. “He was a normal person like everyone else,” she said, “just a normal person. My mother just can’t believe it. All she does is cry. I hope people know we’re being torn apart by this. We just can’t accept it yet.” The only unusual thing she could recall about her brother’s younger years, she said, was that he occasionally had blackouts.

The problem, she continued, was diagnosed when he was 16 as a blood clot on the brain that was thought to have resulted from a playground accident five years earlier. He was treated and apparently cured, she said. John Gacy went to Cooley Vocational High School, where he took business courses, his sister said. After a year, he transferred to Prosser Vocational High School, then dropped out after a couple of months. Later, he attended Northwestern Business t College of Chicago. Gacy’s sister said he had always been the sort of brother and son who could not do enough for his family, who stayed in close touch by telephone and who visited once or twice a year. “The family knew of his sodomy conviction in Iowa,” she said, but considered it “an incident in his life that he paid for.” Turning to happier memories, such as her brother’s penchant for playing Pogo in clown costumes he had designed for himself, she said he had always enjoyed entertaining children.

In 1964, shortly before he turned 22, Gacy, who had been hired by the Nunn-Bush Shoe Co. here, was transferred to Springfield as manager of the concern’s retail outlet at Roberts. Brothers, a men’s clothing store. There he met Marlynn Myers, who also worked at the store. They were married nine months later and moved into the home left behind by his wife’s parents, who had purchased a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Waterloo. In Springfield, Gacy plunged into ‘his job and community life, joining the Jaycees. He was elected first vice president and chosen as the chapter’s outstanding man of 1965. He was a very bright person, ‘energetic and never displayed any ‘abnormal signs,” recalled Ed McCreight, who worked with Gacy in the Springfield Jaycees. The only unusual incident McCreight said he remembered came when he and Gacy were working on a parade route and Gacy put a flashing red light on the dashboard of his car. Gacy claimed he had a card entitling him to such a light, but McCreight said he responded that “he might be entitled to it in Chicago, but not to use it here.”

Gacy’s former father-in-law, Fred W. Myers sold his fried chicken franchises in Waterloo a year and a half ago and moved back to Springfield. Speaking hesitantly through the door of his home, open a crack, Myers said. “I can’t understand why they would have let him out of prison in Iowa.” In 1966, the Gacy’s moved to Waterloo, where he helped Myers manage the fast-food outlets. Gacy again threw himself into Jaycees’ activities. In 17, he was vice president of the Waterloo Jaycees, chaplain of the chapter and chairman of its prayer breakfast. “He was a real go-getter,” said Charles Hill, manager of a Waterloo motel and a friend of Gacy, “He did a good job and was an excellent Jaycee.” Some others were not as receptive to Gacy’s outgoing ways. “He was” a glad-hander type who would go beyond that,” said Tom Langlas, a lawyer who knew Gacy through the Jaycees. “He’d shower too much attention on you as a way of getting more attention himself.” And Peter Burk, a lawyer who opposed Gacy in 1968 for the local Jaycees presidency, which he subsequently won after Gacy was charged in the sodomy case, said:

“He was not a man tempered by truth. He seemed unaffected when caught in lies.” In May 1968 two teenage boys told a Black Hawk County grand jury that Gacy had forced them to commit sexual acts with him. According to the grand jury records, one of the youths said Gacy had chained him and begun choking him, but that when he stopped resisting, his assailant loosened the chains and allowed him to leave. He was indicted, convicted and sentenced. In December 1968, to 10 years at the state reformatory at Anamosa. One source who was familiar with a report on Gacy by an Iowa City psychiatrist before the sentence for sodomy said that the doctor had concluded that Gacy exhibited antisocial tendencies that could not be medically cured. When Gacy left the reformatory, he returned to Chicago.