Reason First: The Killer Clown- John Wayne Gacy

With a weekend job like “Pogo the Clown” it would seem as if John Wayne Gacy was just another happy-go-lucky man of the Mr. Rogers variety. Such, however, was not the case with Gacy. He murdered thirty-three boys and teenaged men in Chicago, Illinois from 1972 to 1978. His lust for blood, and complete absence of empathy, led him to continue killing no matter the cost.

Strange smells from a crawl space he claimed was a sewage pipe that had busted somehow. He disputed one boy's rape claim saying they'd just argued over a fee. These lies dominated Gacy’s entire existence. He found it within himself to lie not just to others but to himself. Gacy’s lonesome, weakling in denial status extended itself with every person that he raped and killed. He had to build up lies and have them pile up in his consciousness. The garbage came in like harmful computer data and out as the bloody carnage in his head and reality.

He wasn’t particularly methodical or meticulous. He didn’t have the dashing good looks or the charisma of other serial killers. So he just kept lying in an effort to protect his fragile mentality.

There’s no way of knowing the “reasoning” behind Gacy’s plots. To kill without remorse or regard painted a portrait of someone who just couldn’t deal with reality. Gacy tried to live an upright life, but his urges, devoid of all rationality and therefore morality, pushed him to do his worst.

People who can kill without remorse or regard are usually people who just can't cope with reality. He tried his hand at running a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, selling shoes, and even running his own business, but none of these panned out. In fact, he's best known for his side-gig as a birthday party clown for kids, which only adds to the picture we have of someone seemingly divorced from his own reality. He obviously tried to live an upright life, but his urges pushed him to do his worst.

Scholars and thinkers can only offer conjecture as to the thinking patterns and emotions involved in Gacy’s ugly acts. Ameteur sleuths and those with morbid interest in the case continue to wonder about the macabre nature of it all. Some have even speculated that horror virtuoso Stephen King modeled his clown Pennywise for his book It, after Gacy.

A man who should have been productive, was instead destructive. Instead of building a life for himself grounded in reality, he pursued an obsession with young boys as far as the limits of his capacity for deception would allow. He didn't have to carry out his wicked fantasies with these young men; though creepy, his disposition showed no evidence of psychosis. Whatever he felt compelled to do was a feeling, not a fact. He was analyzed and studied right up to his execution by lethal injection in 1994, and he was never diagnosed with even one psychological disorder. So it's safe to say he chose to act as he did. Perhaps if he'd chosen a rational form of selfishness, wherein at least the threat of being caught was enough to help him make rational choices, he, and those 33 boys and men would still be alive today.

What John Wayne Gacy did contribute to our understanding of serial killers, is the awareness that even people who seem safe and engaging, friendly and sane enough to be the clown at a birthday party, can actually be harboring a dark side, with an impulse to kill they choose not to control.

This monster that should have been productive and selfish was instead destructive and vicious. He has gone down as yet another serial killer who experienced severe trauma as a child. But is this any excuse? Did he have to carry out his wicked fantasies against these boys and young men?