John Wayne Gacy

Further Reading For John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster by Sam Amirante

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Among the world’s most notorious serial killers, few stand as tall as John Gacy, the killer clown. We think of serial killers as the real monsters in this world and in our collective imagination, we twist and corrupt innocent symbols like clowns. So imagine how the world reacted when the fantasy horror of our collective unconscious manifested in the form of a real-world murderer. A dude that killed at least 33 boys and young men and buried 26 of them under the crawlspace of his house.

Gacy exists in the lore of American serial killers somewhere between Jeffrey Dahmer and Dean Corll. His murders lacked the patent cruelty of Corll but almost all of them were motivated by a psychopath’s need to satisfy his sexual needs while desperately covering up the evidence that would otherwise let the world know that he was gay. Rather than square with this fact, Gacy strangled 33 young men and disposed of their bodies like garbage.

What surprised people most about him was how easily he hid among the normies. Gacy was a stone cold monster with no empathy for his victims at all. He viciously took what he wanted from these poor men and then ended their lives by the letter of his secret life while maintaining a perfectly operational mask of sanity among his peers. Neighbors and people in his community reported that he was a great guy and very likable before they learned the truth about him.

Episodes: 105 & 106

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