He murdered his first victim in 1972, had murdered twice more by the end of 1975, and murdered at least thirty subsequent victims after his divorce from his second wife in 1976. Gacy was convicted of the sodomy of a teenage boy in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1968 and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but served eighteen months.
Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, and three others were buried elsewhere on his property four were discarded in the Des Plaines River. He would then rape and torture his captive before killing him by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. Typically, he would lure a victim to his home and dupe him into donning handcuffs on the pretext of demonstrating a magic trick. Gacy committed all of his murders inside his ranch house near Norridge, a village in Norwood Park Township, metropolitan Chicago, Illinois. He became known as the Killer Clown due to his public services as a clown prior to the discovery of his crimes. Gacy regularly performed at children's hospitals and charitable events as 'Pogo the Clown' or 'Patches the Clown', personas he had devised. John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and pederast who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys.
