John Wayne Gacy

Name at birth: John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

John Wayne Gacy was one of the most famous serial killers to come out of the 1970s, a part-time clown who murdered 33 young men and boys and hid their corpses in the crawlspaces of his house. Between 1972 and 1978 Gacy raped, tortured and murdered mostly teenaged boys he'd encountered in his position as the owner of a construction business or through his various community activities. A married father and step-father, Gacy was active in a variety of civic organizations and performed as Pogo the Clown for charity events, while at the same time leading a secret life as a murdering sadist. His story began to unfold after the December 1978 disappearance of 15 year-old Robert Piest, whom Gacy had encountered at a pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois. Gacy was a suspect in Piest's disappearance, and further investigation revealed that Gacy had been convicted in 1968 of sexually assaulting two teen boys in Iowa and had served 18 months in prison. As police were closing in on Gacy, he confessed to 33 murders, explaining that he'd hidden most of the bodies in his house, then dumped the rest in the Des Plaines River when he'd run out of room. His trial began in February of 1980 and five weeks later he was convicted and sentenced to death. To help pay for his legal costs, Gacy took up painting while in prison, building a portfolio of crude clown portraits for collectors of the macabre. He was executed by lethal injection on 10 May 1994.