Killer Clown:The John Wayne Gacy Murders

by Terry Sullivan

It’s

Was

name

to,

Physically we were all burned out, but it was probably the realization of the evil we had uncovered that dispirited us most of all. Not even the triumph of the arrest seemed to mitigate this assault on our sensibilities.

There it is: evil. Is JWG "evil"? Surely his actions were.

One of them reported what a girl at school, an amateur psychic, had said: Rick was underneath a house, where it was very dark. He had no shoes, and his feet were very cold.

By June, 1981, twenty-four of John Gacy’s victims had been identified, most of them through dental comparisons.

Portrait of an Evil Man

Despite the horror of the confessions, I thought his stories were somewhat clinical, somewhat pat, and no doubt sparing of substantial detail. Not until we interviewed some of his still-living victims did we get the other side of the story. In many cases, they contradicted what Gacy had told us, and their narratives made me wonder at times if there was any limit to the man’s brutality.

Beneath the very floor on which they had set up their command center and eaten their noonday meal, they had found the twenty-ninth body buried at 8213 Summerdale. This would be the last, although the excavation would continue until that much was established with certainty.

A. Arthur Hartman, Chief Psychologist of the Psychiatric Institute, the Cook County Court’s forensic clinic, found Gacy to be, at deeper levels, “very egocentric and narcissistic with a basically antisocial, exploitative orientation. One reflection of this is his development of a technique of ‘conning’ (his own use of the term) or misleading others in his business or personal dealings.”

Hartman’s diagnostic impression of Gacy was a “psychopathic (antisocial) personality, with sexual deviation”; he noted also “hysterical personality and minor compulsive and paranoid personality elements.”

Rappaport said that Gacy had a “borderline personality organization with the subtype of psychopathic personality and with episodes of and an underlying paranoid schizophrenia.”

The doctor said that Gacy fit, to a high degree, the following characteristics of borderline personality: “Intense affect (such as angry eruptions in an impulsive manner), usually hostile or depressed ... the depression characterized by loneliness rather than guilt or shame ... a history of impulsive behavior ... a lack of integrated identity or self-concept, difficulty with self-image and gender identity ... superficial interpersonal and chaotic sexual relations ... use [of] primitive ego-defense mechanisms, such as splitting, projective identification and gross denial.”

Rappaport supported his diagnosis of psychopathic personality by attributing these characteristics to Gacy: “Unusual degree of self-reference ... great need to be loved and admired ... exploitative ... charming on the surface, cold and ruthless underneath ... noticable absence of feeling of remorse and guilt ... history of continuous and chronic antisocial behavior.”

For at least the last fifteen years, they said, Gacy had demonstrated a “mixed personality disorder,” which included obessive-compulsive, antisocial, narcissistic, and hypomanic features. He abused both alcohol and drugs. The crimes he committed resulted from “an increasingly more apparent personality disorder dysfunction, coupled with sexual sadistic preoccupations within an increasingly primary homosexual orientation. “Narcissistically wounded in childhood, by a domineering and at times brutal father figure and inability to physically participate in athletics, [Gacy] continued to fail to master psychosocial milestones, in part because of a series of apparent psychosomatic disorders. Increasingly obsessed with his sense of failure (constantly emphasized by his father), he dedicated himself to a career of productive work,” which brought him positive social feedback. “Simultaneously, however, his rage at his presumed powerlessness, due to a pervasive, defective self-image, began to merge with sadistic elements in a slowly unfolding homosexual orientation. [This] began to center upon young men with whom he re-enacted the projected helplessness and sense of failure that he himself continued to experience. His sadistic, homosexual conquests were much more gratifications through the exercise of power than erotic experiences motivated by unmet sexual needs. Murderous behavior became the ultimate expression of power and control over victims rendered helpless.... “With each murder...

“antisocial personality.”

Diagnosing Gacy as a “passive aggressive personality,” Dr. Lee also recommended paroling him. “The likelihood of his again being charged with and being convicted of antisocial conduct,” Lee wrote, “appears to be small.”

Oops

In this kind of Runyonesque atmosphere Gacy came into bloom, first as a rapt listener, then as an ingratiating host.

From the defense’s case in chief would come the showdown on the issue of insanity versus evil.

“In my mind,” Mike told me, “Gacy was a sane man; but he was also pure evil.” Mike said it best when he called Gacy “pure evil.”

Like some of my other colleagues, Finder said the most terrifying part about Gacy was his ability to come across as any other guy. “He was perfectly normal, and if you didn’t know he was pure evil, you’d never know. And that was the scary thing.”

This may sound trite, but I suppose the most important thing the Gacy case taught me was that your time on this earth is limited.

When you start a sentence with "this may sound trite..."

I am reminded of the old Irish saying “You’re gonna be dead a long time.” For me, that’s not a quotation. To me, it is truth.

🙄