KILLER CLOWN: The Real Pennywise

KILLER CLOWN: The Real Pennywise

A killer dressed as a clown? This can only be the warped imaginings of Stephen King, surely? Or a new horror film about Killer Clowns from Outer Space? Or a Batman villain on the rampage?

The idea of a killer clown wasn’t solely the idea of Stephen King but a much darker reality. This is the true story of a children’s party clown called Pogo and a serial killer named John Wayne Gacy.

Clowns have a long history of making us laugh, dating all the way back to Ancient Egypt and featuring in many cultural milestones – from Shakespeare to Kurosawa to Seinfeld.

But somewhere along the journey of clowns, the idea of a friendly fun clown like Ronald McDonald had become bastardised and we now view clowns with fear, repulsion and suspicion.

Pennywise, the killer clown, from Stephen King’s epic novel “It” has done well to further this new trope… The Killer Clown… but the most frightening thing about the motif is the reality.

A real-life rampaging Bozo.

This Killer Clown wasn’t from outer Space.

He wasn’t from any mystical afterlife.

He was a self-employed contractor that lived in American suburbia.

JOHN WAYNE GACY

John’s stage name was Pogo and Pogo brought much joy to the children that lived in John’s Chicagoan neighbourhood – often hosting children’s parties, charity events and entertaining the community.

The man under the clown suit was a well-liked member of the community. A devoted and loving family man, John was said to have been kind, generous and extremely likeable during his time in Chicago. But John had a dark side and a dark past.

John was raised by an abusive alcoholic father that used to taunt him for being “queer” and a “sissy”. John’s childhood punishment ranged from just standard beatings to more cruel and unusual punishment, like being beaten by a razor strop. The young John suffered from blackouts and seizures during his childhood (which his father thought were faked for attention) and Gacy never managed to finish high school.

However; John had tenacity and persistence that saw him enrolling in Business School and working for the Democratic Party at the age of eighteen. Having worked his way up to a management position at an Iowa KFC, John was also a charitable member of the community, involving himself in volunteer work within his community – even at this young age. John Wayne Gacy was an intelligent and hard-working, politically active American.

While in Iowa, John married his first wife Marlynn and fathered two boys. Despite this; it seemed John’s attempts at hiding his sexual depravity were too difficult and John was convicted of sexually assaulting a young employee.

Sentenced to ten years imprisonment in 1968, John subsequently divorced his first wife while in prison and never saw his children again.

John’s life in Iowa was over.

Released after just eighteen months into his ten-year sentence, John relocated to Chicago, where he hoped for a fresh start. While living in Chicago, John remarried bought a ranch and started his own business. It seemed that John had managed to rebuild his damaged life. What the community didn’t know about this loveable clown was that he had a lifelong compulsion toward sexual sadism.

The Crimes – Summerdale Avenue

The warning signs were there about Gacy; there were his previous accusations (multiple accusations) and the conviction for rape in Iowa but it wasn’t until his second wife divorced him that the horrific carnage, that made him so infamous across America, would begin.

Gacy having established himself at Summerdale Avenue and now left to his own devices turned the house into his murder sanctuary:

"One neighbour would later recollect that, for several years, she and her son had repeatedly been awoken by the repeated sounds of muffled screaming, shouting, and crying in the early morning hours, which she and her son had identified as emanating from a house adjacent to theirs on Summerdale Avenue "

And it once again involved the local police missing the warning signs of a known sex offender and refusing to investigate Gacy in the disappearance of one of his own employees.

John Butkovich was an eighteen-year-old employee of Gacy’s, and the son of a Yugoslav immigrant, Butkovich went missing in July 1975.

Having worked for Gacy and being owed backdated wages, John Butkovich confronted Gacy in a car park before being lured to Gacy’s house. While there, Butkovich was ploughed with drink, handcuffed and strangled to death in the house at Summerdale Avenue. Gacy buried Butkovich under the concrete floor of his garage.

The parents of Butkovich called the police over a hundred times urging them to investigate Gacy further. The local police did not respond to Butkovich’s requests.

Gacy would kill time and time again after Butkovich, and no police investigation, at the time, would cast light on the convicted sex offender and local clown Gacy. Gacy would dispose of up to 33 bodies within the crawl space under his house, under the rooms in his home, in trenches covered in quicklime or in the local river. But Gacy had also done such a fantastic job of being so trusted and endeared to the community.

It wasn’t until three years later….

When 15-year-old Robert Piest went missing, the police finally called Gacy in for questioning. When called to meet investigators, Gacy turned up at three in the morning covered in dirt and giving off some ludicrous story about his car being stuck in the mud near his home for six hours.

Investigators knew Gacy was lying when they drove to his home the next day and found no evidence of the car having been trapped. This leads the police into carrying out a background check on Gacy and finally discover Gacy’s previous convictions. They then saw Gacy’s name linked to several other disappearances including Butkovich and fellow teenager Gregory Godzik (another employee of Gacy’s).

While under surveillance by the police, Gacy was so sure of himself that he happily invited police into his home for bathroom breaks. It was while in the house that the unmistakable smell of human composition gave the police all they needed to definitely pinpoint Gacy. A search warrant was drafted and the twenty-nine bodies were uncovered within the walls of the house, including the remains of Piest and Butkovich.

The clown had been caught.

THE INFAMOUS CRAWL SPACE

The Victims

Of the victims found in the crawl space, six could not be identified. And to this day there are appeals to identify those (using facial reconstruction and more modern forensic methodology).

Based on Gacy’s confession, the location of the victims buried in the crawl space and forensic analysis, police can determine the most likely dates of murder for the unidentified victims:

- January 1972 – July 1975. Found in the backyard. Male aged 14-18.

- June – August 1976. Crawl space. Male aged 23-30.

- August – October 1976. Crawl space. Male aged 17-22.

- August – October 1976. Crawl Space. Male aged 22-32.

- March – July 1977. Crawl space. Male aged 17-21.

Unidentified Victims

Twenty-seven of Gacy’s victims could be identified and the youngest victim was fourteen years old (with the oldest being twenty-one years old). However; there are renewed efforts to try to ascertain whether Gacy was killed before 1972 and how far back the reign of terror goes — likely, much further and many more bodies.

LEGACY

Gacy’s crimes were an early inspiration for Stephen King in developing the Pennywise character in the ‘It’ novel. Various films, documentaries and books were written about Gacy and he will forever be listed as one of the worst serial killers in American history (if not the world). Sentenced to death in 1994 – the legacy of Gacy will continue to haunt beyond the grave, particularly for the families of his numerous victims and the ineptitude of the local police during that period.

Gacy was also the inspiration for “Crazy Joe Davola” on Seinfeld and Twisty on American Horror Story. There now is cultural recognition of the psycho-killer clown.

To delve into the psyche of Gacy, one only has to look at the artwork he produced while in prison, and certainly, several psychoanalysts will have no doubt spent many hours looking deep into Gacy’s tormented soul via his dark paintings and drawing their own conclusions into what made this man tick.

Many of Gacy’s artwork (rightly or wrongly) are now on display in Las Vegas and often fetch at auction for thousands of dollars.