John Wayne Gacy was born was an American serial killer born on March 17, 1942, raped, tortured and murdered at least 33 young teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois. All of Gacy’s known murders were committed in his Norwood Park ranch house. His victims were usually brought to his address by force or deception, and all expect one of his victims were murdered by strangulation with a makeshift wire/cord, but his first victim was stabbed. He buried 26 of them in the crawl space of his home. Three other victims were buried in other places on his property, while the bodies of his last four victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River. Convicted of 33 murders, Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980 for 12 of the murders. He spent 14 years on death row before he was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. An interesting, but creepy fact about Gacy is that he become known as “Killer Clown” because of his charitable services at fund-raising events, parades, and children’s parties where he would dress up as “Pogo the Clown” or “Patches the Clown”, characters that he had created (and this is creepy to me because clowns absolutely terrify me!) 

Going into Gacy’s earlier life, he was born in Chicago, Illinois, the second of three children born to John and Marion Gacy. As a child he was overweight and not athletic whatsoever and because of this he was bullied a lot. He constantly sought out his father’s approval, but he was never able to get it. Gacy’s father was an alcoholic who was physically and emotionally abusive to him, his siblings, and his mother. The earliest memory Gacy recalled was when he touched some of his father’s stuff and his father got mad and beat him with a leather belt, then proceeded to hit him on the head with a broomstick rendering him unconscious. This abuse continued for all of his childhood, and while his mother tried to shield him from this abuse, it never worked, and it alway ended with his father calling him a “momma’s boy” or “that he would probably end up queer”. Gacy was molested by a family friend, and never told his father because he was afraid his father would blame him. Even after his arrest and him recounting all the abuse he experienced, Gacy denied having any hate or resentment towards his father. During the fourth grade, Gacy began to experience blackouts. He was occasionally hospitalized because of these seizures, he actually estimated that he spent almost a year in the hospital which attributed to the decline of his grades. His father accused him of having this episodes as a way to gain attention and sympathy, even as he laid in the hospital bed, it was never officially concluded what medical condition Gacy had. In 1966, Gacy accepted an offer from his father-in-law to manage three KFCs in Waterloo, Iowa, which actually earn him a good amount of money. So he relocated with his wife, started the job and had 2 children. Seeing as how he was so successful, his father actually apologized to him, saying “I was wrong about you son.” Gacy said this was the most seemingly “perfect” part of his life, but behind the scenes he involved in activities like wife swapping, drug use and cheating on his wife multiple times. It just went down from there.

Although there are no actual brain scans of Gacy’s brain, there’s something better! A psychiatrist by the name of Helen Morrison was granted permission by Gacy to have his brain and he said he wanted her to study it. Studies of the brain came up entirely normal, she said. “They basically told us that there’s actually nothing abnormal, so no tumor, no growth, no sign of any injury,” she said. “The ventricles are fine; no sign of hydrocephalus.” Usually with analysis of brains of serial killers you rarely see any insight as to why they behave the way that they do. Morrison is going to keep the brain, and hopefully in the future how to analyze brain tissue in a different way that can give some insight as to why Gacy acted as he did. Seeing as so he committed so many murders (33 victims!), serial killers usually take this time to argue some sort of insanity defense, arguing that they were not in their right state of mind so that is why they murdered those people. But Gacy did not. He said that “he was not insane and that he did murder those people, he isn’t insane and that he takes full responsibility. It is a rarity to see criminals, especially serial killers who have killed many people, act like this. Morrison argued that he was unable to psychologically dissociate himself from his mother, disabling him from developing his own identity. Therefore, him killing the parts of himself he didn’t like, like the fact he was homosexual (because he many different experiences with men, which he enjoyed), but he couldn’t come out because of his father. Who would’ve thought the thought that childhood abuse and the inability to be yourself who have caused the deaths of so many innocent people?

Last time we talked about I feel like one of the most well known serial killers, here’s another. The next serial killer we are talking about today is Jeffrey Dahmer, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or Milwaukee Monster. Dahmer was a serial killer and sex offender who raped, murdered and dismembered 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. For one of the reasons that made me pick Dahmer was the fact that while investigating his later murders the police found evidence of necrophilia, which is sexual intercourse or attraction towards corpses, and cannibalism, which is the act of practice of consuming another human’s organs. SO gross! But in a kind of fascinating way!

In order to know him entirely you need to know a little bit about he grew up. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 21, 1960 born to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was described as an energetic and happy child until the age of 4 where he had to have a surgery in order to correct a double hernia, and he was described as not being the same afterwards.  Noticeably different, he became increasingly withdrawn following the birth of his younger brother and the family’s frequent moves. By his early teens, he was disengaged, tense and largely friendless. Dahmer claims that his compulsions toward necrophilia and murder began around the age of 14, but it appears that the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and their divorce a few years later may have been the catalyst for turning these thoughts into actions. By the time of his first killing, Dahmer’s alcohol consumption had spun out of control. He dropped out of Ohio State University after one quarter term, and his recently remarried father insisted that he join the Army. Dahmer enlisted in late December 1978, and was posted to Germany shortly thereafter. His drinking problem continued, and in early 1981, the Army discharged him. Although German authorities would later investigate possible connections between Dahmer and murders that took place in the area during that time, it is not believed that he took any more victims while serving in the Armed Forces. Following his discharge, Dahmer returned home to Ohio. An arrest later that year for disorderly conduct prompted his father to send Dahmer to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin, but his alcohol problem continued and he was arrested the following summer for indecent exposure. He was arrested once again in 1986, when two boys accused him of masturbating in front of them. He received a one-year probationary sentence. And everything went downhill from there.

Now onto the next reason I find Jeffrey Dahmer’s situation so interesting. Dahmer was actually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder, but was found to be find legally sane at trial. Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life, it includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships. Schizotypal personality disorder or schizotypal disorder is a mental disorder characterized by severe social anxiety, thought disorder, paranoid ideation, derealization, transient (or not longing) psychosis, and often unconventional beliefs. People with this disorder feel extreme discomfort with maintaining close relationships with people and avoid forming them, mainly because the subject thinks their peers harbor negative thoughts towards them. Lastly, psychotic disorders are severe mental disorders that cause abnormal thinking and perceptions. Also throughout his trials it was thought that he had anti personality disorder as presented throughout his childhood and through his killings. They thought he did not know right from wrong. Dahmer attempted to make his victims like zombies, that would be unconscious and unresponsiveness but still breathing, which was unsuccessful and ultimately led to his victims deaths. The more he failed the more, the more he attempted it. He had many of the red flag signs in his early childhood which was later accompanied by a young teen drinking problem. People who analyzed Dahmer more ultimately concluded or theorized that due to his childhood, drinking problems, coming out as homosexual when it wasn’t accepted and possibly due to the surgery he had when he was younger he shouldn’t have been held entirely responsible for his actions, but he was. And people also felt like it could have been prevented as well. Maybe if he was accepted when he came out or if he made friends in school and wasn’t bullied he wouldn’t have ended murdering 17 people (and those are the ones that are known about).