John Wayne Gacy - "Killer Clown"

[Michael]

John Wayne Gacy:
John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the "Killer Clown" because he entertained kids at parties as "Pogo The Clown." He was eventually convicted and sentenced to death. On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection.

Gacy's First Known Attack:
The first known account of John Gacy's sadistic behavior began after his marriage to Marilynn Myers in 1964 in Iowa. He was working in management at his father-in-law's restaurant and somehow lured a young boy to the back and tried to sodomize him when he refused to perform oral sex. The boy reported Gacy to the police and he ended up doing 18 months of a 10 year prison sentence on a sexual molestation conviction.

Divorced and Disgraced:
After prison, divorced and disgraced, he decided to return to his hometown Chicago and start a new life. He remarried but the marriage ended quickly, leaving Gacy alone to feed his sadistic fantasies. By 1978 he was actively cruising for homesexual young men and luring them to his home where he would then torture, rape and brutally kill them.

Looking for Work:
Another tactic he used to get young men to his home was through posting jobs at his construction company. He would lure them to his house on the pretext of talking to them about a job. Once the boys got inside his home he would overpower them, knock them unconscious and begin his gruesome crime of torture, rape and murder.

Care for a Cup of Coffee?:
The police became suspicious of Gacy when a mother of one boy who was to meet Gacy about a job never returned home. When the police saw Gacy's criminal record they began to keep a close eye on him. Gacy, in his usual bizarre behavior, invited the police in for coffee. The police accepted the invitation and once inside they became ovrwhelmed by a strong odor which they recognized as possibly coming from a decaying dead body.

Bodies Found Under the Crawlspace:
The police then obtained a search warrant and uncovered 29 bodies in the crawlspace of Gacy's house. The bodies were all male and ranged in age from nine years old to their mid-20s. Later Gacy admitted to more killings in which he dumped the bodies into a nearby river. In searching for all possible victims, the police excavated Gacy's yard and gutted the house, eventually tearing it completely down.
Executed in 1994 by Lethal Injection:
After he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1980, he continued to taunt authorities with different versions of his story about the murders in an attempt to stay alive. Authorities were not swayed and on May 10, 1994 his execution by lethal injection was carried out.

Source

[Heidi]

Paintings by serial killer John Wayne Gacy are going up for sale in Las Vegas.

The pictures show other paintings by Gacy, but not the ones going in the charity auction.

But the exhibit: "Multiples: The Artwork of John Wayne Gacy" is under fire.

The charity that it's supposed to benefit, the National Center for Victims of Crime, says it did not agree to be a beneficiary of the sale.

The organization told CNN that it sent a cease-and-desist letter to the gallery owner.

Among the paintings expected to be displayed is a self-portrait that Gacy gave to pen-pals.

Gacy, known as the 'Killer Clown,' was convicted of raping and killing 33 boys and young men.

He created the 74 pieces of art while he was on death row awaiting his 1994 execution.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/articl...e-in-Las-Vegas

[Heidi]

Judge allows exhumation of John Wayne Gacy victim

A mother who has for decades doubted that her 14-year-old son was a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy may finally learn the truth after a judge on Thursday granted her request that the body be exhumed for DNA testing.

"I hope for her sake it provides some closure for her," Cook County Associate Judge Rita Novak said, as 67-year-old Sherry Marino, her daughter squeezing her shoulder, dabbed her eyes with a tissue in the front row of the courtroom.

The order, which came almost exactly 35 years to the day Michael Marino disappeared, is the culmination of years of Sherry Marino's efforts to find out whether Gacy killed her son. When the body was identified with dental records more than three years later, Marino did not quite believe it, in large part because the clothes on the remains that were pulled from a crawl space at Gacy's house did not match the clothing she remembers seeing him wear the day he disappeared. Nor did she understand why it took more than three years to identify her son, even though she provided authorities with his dental records shortly after the bodies were discovered and Gacy was arrested.

"She visits the grave faithfully and always asks, `Is this you, Michael?'" attorney Steven Becker said after the hearing.

Gacy, a building contractor and amateur clown, was convicted of luring 33 young men and boys to his Chicago-area home and strangling them between 1972 and 1978. Most were buried in a crawl space under the home; four others were dumped in rivers. Gacy was sentenced to death for the 12 killings that occurred after Illinois re-enacted the death penalty in 1977. He received sentences of life in prison for the remaining 21 killings. He admitted the crimes before his trial but later denied having killed all but the first victim.

Since his conviction and his execution in 1994, the case has popped up in the news occasionally. It was after one local television report about Gacy several months ago that Marino, who has over the years hired private investigators and attorneys to help her, tried yet again to find an attorney who might help her find evidence that was overlooked during the initial investigation.

That led her to Becker and his partner, Robert Stephenson, whose own search turned up what they say is a discrepancy in dental records. While one chart created for the teen seven months before he disappeared showed a tooth had either been extracted or had not come in yet, a chart recently located by the dentist who examined the body showed a full set of teeth.

They also found that X-rays taken of the body showed a broken right collar bone _ a fracture that Sherry Marino told the attorneys she did not remember her son ever suffering. Further, the pathological report indicated that boy may have been part American Indian, and the attorneys said Marino said she knew of no American Indian blood in her family.

The attorneys have acknowledged that there is strong circumstantial evidence that the remains that were identified only as "body 14" are, in fact those of Marino. The most obvious is that in 35 years the teen has never surfaced. Also, the remains were found in Gacy's crawl space next to the remains of a friend of Marino's, who disappeared the same day as Marino.

"The best we can actually say to anyone is it could be (Marino) and it might not be," said Becker after the hearing. "For as many reasons there are to believe it is Michael Marino there are just as many reasons to believe that it isn't."

As for the boy's mother, "She still is hoping her son may be alive, he may not be but now at least she'll know," Becker said.

On Thursday, the attorneys listed all the discrepancies that buttressed their argument that the exhumation requests should be granted.

The judge agreed, saying she saw no reason why she should not grant the order, and pointed to the "great advances in science" that could give Marino a definitive answer.

The attorneys said after the hearing that they hoped the exhumation would happen within a month. They said the exhumation and DNA testing would cost a total of about $10,000. Originally their petition asked that the county pay, but at the hearing the attorneys told the judge they were dropping that request. They explained later that they were confident that they could raise the money from the public and that some funeral directors have already contacted them with offers to help defray some of Marino's costs.

Stephenson said he is confident there will be enough left of the remains to allow for DNA testing, explaining that the autopsy report indicates the body was partially mummified, meaning that the testing will likely provide conclusive results.

Marino left quickly after the hearing, declining to speak to reporters. At the elevator of the courthouse, she spoke to Becker and Stephenson and tearfully hugged them before the elevator door opened and she left.

Becker said later her words were not about whether or not her son was alive and what exactly the DNA testing would reveal but about how after 35 years a judge had taken her side.

"What most pleased her is that (the judge said) she had a right to know," said Becker. "To have that confirmation from the judge, that was the thing that was the most significant to her."

Read more: http://azdailysun.com/news/national/...#ixzz1a262AqyV

[Heidi]

John Wayne Gacy suspected victim found alive 34 years later in Florida


Harold Wayne Lovell, right.
Harold Wayne Lovell hadn't been seen by his family since he left their Chicago home at age 19 in 1977. For 34 years, his siblings believed he was one of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's eight still unidentified victims.

According to The Associated Press, Gacy murdered 33 people in the 1970s and Cook County Sheriff's detectives have recently reopened the cases of those eight unidentified remains. They obtained exhumation orders over the past few months for DNA testing, hoping relatives would help track down the victims who went missing in the 1970s.

Lovell's siblings, Tim Lovell and Theresa Hasselberg, volunteered to help and then found out he's been alive and well in Florida for decades. The Sun-Sentinel reports the pair recently discovered a police booking photo online of their brother, who had been arrested for marijuana possession in 2006, and contacted him by phone.

Their brother, who goes by his middle name Wayne, took a bus to Hasselberg's home in Ozark, Alabama where the three were reunited Tuesday for the first time in 34 years.

"I never felt wanted at home, so I left," Wayne, now 53 years old, said. "I've gone from having nothing to having all this," he added, describing the reunion as "awesome."

The circumstances surrounding Wayne's disappearance in May 1977 fit the description of Gacy's victims. Gacy was a building contractor who lured young men to his home between 1972 and 1978 where he strangled and buried most of them in a crawl space under his house.

Coincidentally, when Wayne Lovell had left home, he said he was looking for construction work.

He told the Sun-Sentinel he instead drifted from job to job for three years and partied in Fort Lauderdale. "I feel bad that they had to go through life thinking that I'd been killed like that," he said. "But I was a teenager, and who didn't want to go to Fort Lauderdale, where it's nice, sunny and hot?"

Tim Lovell and Theresa Hasselberg represents one of more than 120 families who have contacted Illinois authorities to help identify the victims' remains. Lovell said he fully expected his brother to be confirmed as one of them until his surprise discovery that Wayne was still alive.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told the Sun-Sentinel about 70 of those are possible matches. Seven families have submitted DNA samples, and four more are being readied, he said. Results are expected in two or three weeks.

Gacy, also an amateur clown and nicknamed the "Killer Clown," was sentenced to death for the 12 killings that occurred after Illinois re-enacted the death penalty in 1977. Though he later denied killing all but the first victim, Gacy confessed to the slayings after his arrest and was executed in 1994.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.s...und_alive.html

[Heidi]

John Wayne Gacy's DNA evidence from blood may solve old murders

Detectives have long wondered what secrets serial killer John Wayne Gacy and other condemned murderers took to the grave when they were executed — mostly whether they had other unknown victims.

Now, in a game of scientific catch-up, the Cook County Sheriff's Department is trying to be creative: They've created DNA profiles of Gacy and others and figured out they could get the executed men entered in a national database shared with other law enforcement agencies because the murderers were technically listed as homicide victims themselves when they were put to death by the state.

The department's hope is to find matches of DNA evidence from blood, semen or strands of hair, or skin under the fingernails of victims that link the long-dead killers to the coldest of cold cases. And they're hoping to prompt authorities in other states to submit the DNA of their own executed inmates or from decades-old crime scenes.

"You just know some of these guys did other murders" that were never solved, said Jason Moran, the sheriffs' detective leading the effort, noting that some of the executed killers ranged all over the country before the convictions that put them behind bars for the last time.

The Illinois testing, which began during the summer, is the latest chapter in a story that began when Sheriff Tom Dart exhumed the remains of unknown victims of Gacy to create DNA profiles that could be compared with the DNA of people whose loved ones went missing in the 1970s, when Gacy was killing young men.

That effort, which led to the identification of one Gacy victim, caused Dart to wonder if the technology could help answer a question that has been out there for decades: Did Gacy kill anyone besides those young men whose bodies were stashed under his house or tossed in a river?


"He traveled a lot," Moran said of Gacy. "Even though we don't have any information he committed crimes elsewhere, the sheriff asked if you could put it past such an evil person."

After unexpectedly finding three vials of Gacy's blood stored with other Gacy evidence, Moran learned the state would only accept the blood in the crime database if it came from a coroner or medical examiner.

Moran thought he was out of luck. But then Will County Coroner Patrick O'Neil surprised him with this revelation: In his office freezer were blood samples from Gacy and at least three other executed inmates. The reason they were there is because after the death penalty was reinstated in Illinois in the 1970s, executions were carried out in Will County — all between 1990 and 1999, a year before then-Gov. George Ryan established a moratorium on the death penalty. So it was O'Neil's office that conducted the autopsies and collected the blood samples.

But there was bigger obstacle.

While the state does send to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System the profiles of homicide victims no matter when they were killed, it will only send the profiles of known felons if they were convicted since a new state law was enacted about a decade ago that allowed them to be included, Moran said.

That meant the profile of Gacy, who received a lethal injection in 1994, and the profiles of other executed inmates could not qualify for the database under the felon provision. They could, however, qualify as people who died by homicide.

"They're homicides because the state intended to take the inmate's life," O'Neil said.

Last year, authorities in Florida created a DNA profile from the blood of executed serial killer Ted Bundy in an attempt to link him to other murders. But officials there, where the law allows profiles of convicted felons be uploaded into the database as well as the phase-in of profiles of people arrested on felony charges, don't know of any law enforcement agency reaching back into history the way Cook County's sheriff's office is.

"We haven't had any initiative where we are going back to executed offenders and asking for their samples," said David Coffman, director of Florida Department of Law Enforcement's laboratory system. "I think it's an innovative approach."

O'Neil said he is still looking for blood samples of the rest of the 12 condemned inmates executed between 1977 when Illinois reinstated the death penalty and 2000 when then-Gov. George Ryan established a moratorium. So far, DNA profiles have been done on the blood of Gacy and two others; the profile of the fourth inmate has not yet been done.

Among the other executed inmates whose blood was submitted for testing was Lloyd Wayne Hampton, a drifter executed in 1998 for his crimes. Not only did Hampton's long list of crimes include crimes outside the state — one conviction was for the torture of a woman in California — but shortly before he was put to death, he claimed to have committed other murders but never provided details.

So far, no computer hits have linked Gacy or the others to any other crimes. But Moran and O'Neil suspect there are investigators who are holding DNA evidence that could help solve them.

That is exactly what happened during the investigation into the 1993 slayings of seven people at a suburban Chicago restaurant, during which an evidence technician collected a half-eaten chicken dinner even though there was no way to test it for DNA at the time.

When the technology did become available, the dinner was tested and it revealed the identity of one of two men ultimately convicted in the slayings.

Moran says he wants investigators in other states to know that Gacy's blood is now open for analysis in their unsolved murders. He hopes those jurisdictions will, in turn, submit DNA profiles of their own executed inmates.

"That is part of the DNA system that's not being tapped into," he said.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.s..._evidence.html

[Moh]

Search for Gacy victims on Northwest Side property ends

CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) -

A search of a Northwest Side property where serial killer John Wayne Gacy once worked found no bodies, the Cook County Sheriff's office announced Friday.

New information was developed that Gacy was engaged in "suspicious activity" outside the building in the 6100 block of West Miami Avenue, where he worked maintenance and his mother once lived, the sheriff's office said.

Chicago Police searched the property in 1998, but new information brought to the sheriff's department and improved technology resulted in a new search warrant, the sheriff's office said.

Sheriff's police searched the property March 20 with the FBI and Infrared Diagnostics, Inc., and included three Victim Recovery Canines capable of detecting the scent of human remains, ground penetrating radar and infrared thermographic imaging techniques, the sheriff's office said.

The investigation found two abnormalities inconsistent with concealed grave sites and the canine unit did not detect any human remains, the release said.

Infrared imaging conducted after sunset also did not find any evidence of concealed graves.

Investigators also examined the floor of the laundry room, but there was no indication the floor had been disturbed since the building was constructed.

Gacy was convicted of murdering 33 men and boys in the 1970s. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994. Many of his victims were buried in the crawl space of his former house in the 8200 block of West Summerdale Avenue.

Dart jumped back on the Gacy case in 2011, when his office exhumed skeletons of unidentified victims to determine their identities, leading to the identification of William George Bundy, who was 17 when he was killed.

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/22...#ixzz2T3KKSmql