John Wayne Gacy (born March 17, 1942, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died May 10, 1994, Statesville, Illinois) was an American serial killer whose murders of 33 boys and young men in the 1970s received international media attention and shocked his suburban Chicago community, where he was known for his sociability and his performance as a clown at charitable events and childrens’ parties.

Gacy was born into a blue-collar family and seems to have had a fairly ordinary childhood. But he exhibited a growing tendency toward sadism, which resulted in several encounters with the law in the 1960s. In 1968, after his conviction for sexually assaulting a teenage boy, he was confined in the Iowa State Men’s Reformatory (Anamosa State Penitentiary) and forced to undergo psychological evaluation. After his release in 1970 and while still on parole, he was aga ...