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America’s Worst Serial Killer Ever: Pogo the Killer Clown

Recent DNA tests Chicago, Illinois revealed that bones found more than 30 years ago are those of 19-year-old Chicago construction worker William George Bundy, one of the eight unnamed victims of America’s worst-ever serial killer. Their killer, John Wayne Gacy, described as generous, charming and civic-minded, will forever be infamous as Pogo the Clown, a character he dressed up as to entertain local children.

Born in Chicago on 17 March 1942, Gacy was a boy scout who at 16 was found to have a heart condition that caused him to put on weight. Gacy dropped out of school and became involved in community groups, where he met Marlynn Myers. They married in 1964 and had a son and daughter.

But Gacy was always in the company of young boys and in May 1968 he was found guilty of tying up and sexually assaulting a teenager; he was sentenced to 10 years and paroled after serving 18 months. His wife and children left him. Released in June 1970, Gacy worked as a chef and bought a house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in suburban Norwood Park. It would become one of the most notorious addresses in the world. In November, Gacy was charged with disorderly conduct after he picked up a boy at a bus station and forced himself upon him. The charges were dropped when the boy didn’t show up for court.

But Gacy played his double role as a deviant and an upstanding citizen well. When he wasn’t participating in fundraising events for local charities, he was at the hospital or kids’ functions as Pogo, a big jolly clown with a huge painted smile and a rainbow-coloured clown suit. Pogo was such a hit with the locals that he became a regular feature at every function where kids were involved.

In June 1972, Gacy married Carole Huff, a newly divorced mother of two. Carole and her daughters moved into Gacy’s house and would often comment on the strange smells that permeated through the floorboards, like an animal had died under the house.

Gacy started a construction business in 1974, employing mostly teenage boys. His marriage broke up when his wife found pornography featuring naked males in the house.

One of the boys working for Gacy, 16 year-old Tony Antonucci, told friends that Gacy had made advances towards him, but had retreated when Antonucci threatened to hit him with a chair. Weeks later, at his house, Gacy tricked the boy into a pair of handcuffs, but he managed to get out of them. But 17-year-old co-worker Johnny Butkovich wouldn’t be so lucky. After driving two friends home from Gacy’s house, he vanished. Michael Bonnin, 17, was next to disappear, followed by 16-year-old Billy Carroll, 17-year-old Gregory Godzik and 19-year-old John Szyc (Zick), who was last seen driving in his 1971 Plymouth Satellite on 20 January 1977.

Not long after Szyc went missing, the police picked up another teenage boy driving the same car. The youth told them it belonged to John Gacy, who told them he had bought the car from John Szyc. But if the authorities had run a simple title check, they would have noted that the papers were signed over to Gacy 18 days after John Szyc went missing.

The next boy to disappear was 18-year-old Robert Gilroy, who was last seen on 15 September 1977 on his way to catch a bus to meet friends. An investigation was launched but nothing would come of it until a year later, when 15-year-old Robert Piest also disappeared. Piest had disappeared after telling his mum he was meeting a man answering Gacy’s description about a contracting job. It was the beginning of the end for Gacy. An investigation was launched and Gacy became a prime suspect when police checked his record, to find that he had served time for sexual assault on a teenage boy.

Alarm bells rang and a search of Gacy’s home revealed marijuana and amyl nitrate, nylon rope, gay and child pornography, handcuffs, two driver’s licences, several items of clothing that were obviously too small for Gacy and a collection of rings, including one with the initials JAS engraved in it.

With no other options, the police booked Gacy with possession of marijuana while they waited for their experts to come back with the results on the items seized in the search of Gacy’s house. Bingo. The engraved ring belonged to the missing teen John Szyc and hair found in the boot of Gacy’s car was Robert Piest’s.

Then they discovered that three former employees of Gacy’s had also disappeared. Then Gacy admitted that he had indeed killed someone and buried the body under his garage. Investigators marked out the garage but instead they began with the crawlspace below the house, where they uncovered the first decomposing corpse. Gacy confessed to multiple murders, but in their wildest dreams investigators didn’t imagine how many young men he had killed until the bodies just kept coming, and coming and coming out of the house. In all there were 29. Two bodies were also found set in concrete under Gacy’s patio. The remains of another four were found in the Des Plains River.

Gacy confessed that he had committed his first murder in January 1972 and buried it under his house. His second killing was two years later, while he was married to Carole Huff and living there with her and her young daughters. His modus operandi was to trick his victims into being handcuffed, before stuffing their underwear into their mouths and assaulting them while holding a rope or board to their throats until they stopped breathing.

Often he did it in his Pogo outfit. He kept the corpses under his bed for days, often interfering with them, before they were buried under the house.

With Pogo safely behind bars, by the spring of 1979 his house at 8213 West Summerdale, the killing field and graveyard for so many young men, had been reduced to ruin by the locals. They had thrown bricks at it, smashed the windows and even set fire to it. When the remains of the house were finally bulldozed down, a conspicuous vacant block of mud and slush was left that was a constant reminder of the bodies that had been buried there.

And still the onlookers came by the busload, to be reminded of Chicago’s most terrible resident since Al Capone. Grass was planted there as a silent memorial but, despite there being no logical explanation for it, neither grass nor trees would grow. A few weeds, but nothing peaceful would take hold in that horrible place. The lot remained vacant for a few years before it was bought and a new house was built on the spot.

Gacy’s murder trial began on 6 February 1980, with the prosecution painting a chilling picture of a monster that preyed on young men. Gacy’s only defence was that he was insane at the time of the murders, but the jury didn’t buy it and took just two hours to find him guilty of murdering 33 young men and violating them both alive and dead. To this day, it is the most convictions for any murderer in America’s history.

Gacy was sentenced to death and after years of frivolous appeals, on 9 May 1994 he was executed by lethal injection. That certainly took the smile off Pogo the Killer Clown’s face.