Gacy, the murderer of 33 young men and adolescent boys between 19, somehow had time for his side hustle as “Pogo the Clown,” a party entertainer for young children in Norridge, Illinois. (The buyer’s name has not been disclosed.) On October 31, Material Culture, an auction house in Philadelphia, sold the self-referential painting “ Pogo the Clown” (1985), which it claims is a Gacy original, for $12,800 in its spooky-themed “ Dark Shadows” sale. Gacy produced at least 2,000 paintings and began selling them with the help of his lawyer and an outside collector named Andy Matesi until he received his lethal injection in 1994. “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy, one of America’s notorious serial killers of the 1970s, developed a penchant for painting when he was locked up on death row for 14 years. Six of his dead victims have yet to be identified.Gacy’s “Pogo the Clown” (1985) (all images courtesy Material Culture) Fourteen years later, on May 10, 1994, Gacy was put to death by lethal injection in his home state of Illinois. While on death row, he produced morbid paintings of his Pogo the Clown alter ego and sold them to external collectors, giving the public a jarring take on what looked like a beloved children’s character. On March 12, 1980, Gacy was found guilty on 33 counts of murder. The second time, police found bodies in the crawl space.
He was arrested 10 days later after two search warrants were executed on his home. Gacy was spotted by plenty of witnesses talking to the young boy before his death, and police soon zeroed in on him. Gacy’s last victim was 15-year-old Robert Piest on December 11, 1978. He remarried to a woman with two daughters, ran a successful contracting business, was the precinct captain in a local Democratic Party, and chillingly performed at children’s charity functions as “Patches” or “Pogo the Clown.” However, after his divorce from his second wife in 1976, Gacy took advantage of his empty home and went on to murder 30 more young male victims, including runaways, male prostitutes, and his own employees - all between the ages of 15 to 21 years old. Throughout Gacy’s murder spree, “the killer clown” positioned himself as a devoted, upstanding citizen in Chicago. Gacy claims to have killed another victim in 1974, although they have never been identified the following summer, one of his employees went missing - he, too, would eventually be found in the crawlspace. McCoy would be the first of 26 male victims to be buried in Gacy’s now-infamous crawl space. While he was a model prisoner, Gacy resumed his old lifestyle of rape and assault once back in the outside world and eventually turned to even darker deeds - his first known murder was on January 3, 1972.Gacy picked up 15-year-old Timothy McCoy outside of a Greyhound Bus station and proceeded to stab the teenager to death before stuffing him under his house. Gacy’s father died while he was incarcerated, and he moved into his mother’s home in Chicago after his release from prison. His wife divorced him and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison however, Gacy was released after just 18 months for good behavior. However, things would soon go wrong: His first run in with the law was in May 1968, when he was accused of forcing two teenagers to perform oral sex on him. Gacy worked as a manager for his father-in-law’s Kentucky Fried Chicken chains and was a member of a national civic group. He attempted to pursue a “normal” life, Gacy married in 1964 and moved to Waterloo, Iowa, where he had two children. His father was allegedly an alcoholic who physically and verbally abused Gacy throughout his childhood. John Wayne Gacy’s Early Run-Ins with the Lawīorn and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Gacy was part of a working-class family of factory workers. He entertained children’s parties dressed as a clown named “Pogo,” a side gig that led to his nickname “the Killer Clown.” John Wayne Gacy was one of the most prolific serial killers in the United States, having raped, tortured, and murdered more than 33 young male victims in a six-year spree.
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