Born on March 17, 1942, he claimed his father was alcoholic and frequently beat both him and his mother. John had an effeminate side and could never seem to earn his father’s approval regardless of the efforts he made. He dropped out of high school in his senior year and left home for a short time, working in a mortuary in Las Vegas. He returned home to attend a local business college and began selling shoes. At the age of 22, he married a woman whose father owned a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Waterloo, Iowa. Gacy became a successful manager of his father-in-law’s business and a socially-active citizen. He joined the local Jaycees and held key offices and received numerous honors as a Jaycee.

In 1968 he began a tortuous ten-year downward journey of criminality that would culminate in his arrest as a serial killer. Although he claimed to have been framed, he was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to molesting a young man who worked for him at the resturaunt he managed. His wife divorced him. Gacy was an exemplary prisoner and was paroled after only 18 months, returning to Chicago to become a cook and later to open a construction and remodeling business and become a small-time local politician.

His next arrest in 1971 involved a teenager’s accusation that Gacy had tried to force him to engage in sex, but the charge was dismissed when the youth failed to appear in court. He remarried but soon ceased sexual relations with his wife. Gacy had become active in community affairs as a Democratic precinct captain and as a clown ("Pogo") at children’s parties and hospitals. He hosted large parties at his home for local dignitaries and neighbors. Gacy answered comments by his wife and others about the peculiar smell in the home by saying that there was a lot of dampness in the crawl space. In fact, he had employed teenagers in his business and had them dig trenches in the crawl space underneath his home. Gacy had been sexually torturing to death some of the young men who worked for him and others that he picked up in downtown Chicago. He lured them by promising them money or employment. One of his favorite routines was to persuade them to participate in his "handcuff trick" in order to incapacitate them. He would then chloroform them and sodomize them. This was followed by his "rope trick" in which he would insert a rope around the victim’s neck, insert a stick in the loop, and twist it slowly like a tourniquet while submerging the head of his victims in his bathtub until the victim drowned or was strangled to death. Gacy liked to read passages from the Bible while doing this.

He buried most of his sexual victims in shallow graves in the crawl space under the house, covered them with lime, and left them to decompose. One potential victim was lured into Gacy’s black Oldsmobile (complete with spotlight to look like an unmarked police car) on the pretense of police questioning, handcuffed, abused sexually and then released for unknown reasons. Enraged by liver damage caused by the chloroform, the victim staked out freeway entrances until he spotted Gacy’s car and then demanded action by authorities. Authorities declined to prosecute Gacy because of lack of evidence.

Gacy’s undoing came in December, 1978 when he visited a pharmacy to do a remodeling estimate, and lured away a 15-year-old boy whose mother had dropped him off at the pharmacy to file a job application. Police learned that Gacy had been there just before the boy’s disappearance and began watching Gacy closely, especially after learning about his previous molestation conviction. A detective asked to use the bathroom during a visit to Gacy’s home and smelled the telltale odor of decomposition when the furnace fan kicked on. A search warrant led promptly to the discovery of rotting corpses in the crawl space. Nationally televised news reports showed heavily-garbed police workers as they went about the grim task of collecting the remains.

Gacy is alleged to have confessed his crimes during interrogation and even to have drawn a map of the bodies’ placement, but Gacy signed nothing. He was convicted of murder and all appeals denied. Execution at just after midnight on May 10, 1994 was greeted by a large, enthusiastic crowd outside the prison, tempered by a small number of death penalty protesters. Audio interviews recorded just after his arrest and aired after his death were extremely incriminating, and video interviews in the years just before his death showed him to be extremely callous.

So theres your history lesson on the animal known as Pogo the clown. Now before anyone passes judgement on me let me explain why I am so interested in this madman. True Crime and Serial Killers have always tweaked my interest, i guess what interests me the most is learning what it actually takes to make a human being's mind snap and go on a murdering rampage. Also let me clarify that i do not condone the actions of Mr.Gacy nor do i think its "Cool", the reason that this man interests me the most is because he was the perfect example of a model citizen, he was active in his community and almost elected mayor at one point and yet he still led a double life as one of the worlds most renown serial killers AND NOBODY HAD ANY IDEA! it is a perfect example of the Jeckel ansd Hyde syndrome but this man didnt have split personalities, he was just plain CRAZY! Also not many serial killers are known for having any artistic abilities whatsoever but John not only created some magnificent pieces while he was in prison but he sold them for quite a bit of money (not that he had any use for it.) so theres my long drawn out explanation on why thats my nickname, and the short version is "CAUSE I WANT IT TO BE FUCK FACE!"