John Wayne Gacy.

Gacy graduated from business school and went on to work as a star shoe salesman for the Nunn Bush shoe company. Gacy met and then married work collague Marylnn Myres in 1964.

The marrage ended when Gacy was imprisoned for ten years at a correctional institue in Warterloo, Iowa for various sex and violent crimes against young men. In 1971 Gacy was arrested again for trying to rape a teenage boy.

John Wayne Gacy was married for the second time in 1972 to Carol Hoff.  He set up a business as a renovation contractor at this time.

This marrage also ended one of the facts being that Carol was frightened of he husband's temper.  Despite all this Gacy worked very hard at trying to be liked. He was an enthusiastic member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce as "Pogo the Clown" a children's entertainer.

John Wayne Gacy would use his contracting business to attract young men eager for work, many of whom were subjected to rape. Thrity three of whom lost thier lives.

At nine o'clock on the evening of 11 December 1978, fifteen year old Robert Piest went to a chemist's shop in his home town of Des Plaines, Illinois.  He was going to see a building contractor who was working in the shop about a holiday job.

Robert Piest was supposed to go striaght home, where his family were holding a birthday party for his mother.  When Robert had not arrived home by 11.30pm his family contacted the police.

Police investigating the case learned that the contractor hired by the shop was in fact John Wayne Gacy a name not unfamiliar to them.  Gacy had been reported earlier in the year by a 27 year old man named Jeffery Rignall.

According to Mr Rignall's story he had been approached by a plump man with a flashy car. The man invited him to join him in the vehicle to smoke some marijuana.  Once in the car the man pushed a chloroform soaked hankerchief into Rignall's face and drove him, unconscious, to a house where he was beaten with whips and raped.

Rignall regained conciousness then next morning where he had been dumped in Lincoln Park.

In veiw of the fact that Rignall could not give them much information the Police were unable to be of much help.  In fact even when Jeffery Rignell went out into the city and looked and indeed found the car, it was some time before the police went to arrest it's owner - one John Wayne Gacy.

When investigating officers paid a visit to 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, Des Plaines, they followed the unpleasant smell to a trap door which led to the crawl space under Gacy's house.

Seven bodies were found in varying stages of decomposition underneath the house, along with the parts of several others.  Eight more corpses were dug out of lime pits in the garden and the garage.  In all the remains of twenty-eight bodies were found in and around the house.  Gacy confessed to throwing five in the Des Plaines river including that of Robert Piest.

Gacy admitted to killing thirty-two teenage boys before, during, and after sex. He claimed to have lost count - there were thirty-three recovered.

A point of interest is that although Gacy gave several confessions while in costody he never once admitted to being a homosexual. He is said to have stated that he in fact hated homosexuals.

John Wayne Gacy did not gove evidence at his trial and on 12 March 1980 the jury regected his defence of insanity.  John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murder with a recommendation for the death penalty.