The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases (15 page)

THE RISE OF THE SERIAL KILLER

As the 20th century entered its final decades, the incidence of serial murder dramatically increased, particularly in the United States. In 1984, President Reagan described the perpetrators as ‘repeat killers’ and the FBI made the startling announcement that there were approximately 35 such murderers active in the country at any given time. Before Reagan’s administration left office, a new term, ‘serial killers’, was in common usage.

JOHN WAYNE GACY

John Wayne Gacy devoted a great deal of time and effort to the betterment of his community. He served on the board of the Catholic Inter-Club Council and was commanding captain of the Chicago Civil Defense. In his immediate neigbourhood, he organized elaborate, themed block parties, at which he would entertain as Pogo the Clown. Active within the Democratic Party, he once had his photograph taken with future-First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Gacy hoped that one day he would make a name for himself by running for political office – but as Christmas 1978 approached, he became famous for entirely different reasons.

Born in Chicago to Irish parents on St Patrick’s Day 1942, Gacy was the first son in the family. While growing up on the city’s north side, he was bullied by his father, the man after whom he had been named, who would accuse him of being a sissy. Despite this, Gacy junior looked up to his father with something amounting to hero-worship. He seemed entirely capable of turning a blind eye to the old man’s alcoholism and violent outbursts.

Among John Gacy Sr’s many complaints was that his namesake was a sickly child. At 11 the young Gacy was hit on the head with a swing. For the next five years, he suffered from recurring blackouts. The condition was left undiagnosed until the age of 16 when a blood clot was discovered on his brain. It was later dissolved with the use of medication. The following year, Gacy was hospitalized with a heart ailment, the cause of which was never determined. Though he never once suffered a heart attack, Gacy complained about the pain for the rest of his life.

Conscientious and hard-working, as a boy Gacy held several after-school jobs. Although he wasn’t a particularly bad student, he moved from high school to high school before dropping out in his senior year. After graduation, he left home for Las Vegas, where he was certain well-paying jobs awaited. Gacy ended up as a janitor in a funeral home, saving desperately for a return ticket to Chicago. This bitter lesson taught him the value of education. Upon his return, Gacy enrolled in a business college. He soon learned he had a talent for sales and before long was manager of a men’s clothing store in Springfield, Illinois. Although his health again began to suffer, he became active in a number of civic organizations, including the Jaycees (Junior Chamber of Commerce), who named him ‘Man of the Year’.

In September 1964, he married a co-worker, Marlynn Myers. The couple relocated to Waterloo, Iowa, nearly 500 kilometres west of Chicago, where Gacy managed three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by his new father-in-law. The couple had two children. For a time, it seemed that Gacy was well on his way to establishing himself as one of the pillars of the community. However, rumours began to circulate that he was making sexual advances to his young employees.

In May 1968 he was arrested after he’d raped one of his workers, a 16-year-old named Mark Miller. The teenager claimed that while visiting the Gacy home a year earlier, he had been tied up and forcibly sodomized. Gacy maintained that members of the Jaycees were framing him and that the sexual encounter had been consensual.

As he waited for his case to come to trial, he hired a man named Dwight Anderson to beat up Miller. The victim was taken to a wooded area and sprayed with mace, but managed to escape after breaking Anderson’s nose. Miller later identified his assailant who, in turn, revealed that he had been provided with $310 to perform the beating. In the end, Gacy pleaded guilty and was handed a ten-year sentence.

While he was behind bars, Gacy’s wife divorced him – he never saw her or his children again. Equally damaging, his father died, fully aware of the crime of which his son had been convicted.

Gacy was a model inmate, and on 18 June 1970 managed to obtain parole after having served only 18 months. He returned to Chicago and lived with his mother. With her help, in 1971 he bought a bungalow in Norwood Park Township, just outside Chicago, and quickly set out to establish himself in the community. By autumn, Gacy was no longer under parole. He had made many friends in the neighbourhood, none of whom were aware of his criminal record. Christmas was spent with a local family whom he had invited to share in the festivities. It may have appeared that Gacy had been reformed – and yet less than two months into the New Year he was charged with disorderly conduct after having forced a boy at a bus terminal into sexual acts. The case was dismissed when the accuser failed to show at the court proceedings.

On 1 June 1972, Gacy remarried. His second bride, Carol Hoff, was a divorcee with two daughters; they had known each other since high school. Carol was well aware of her husband’s past incarceration, but shared in the opinion that he was a reformed man and joined him in his active social life. Together they helped host and organize street parties, including one event that was attended by over 300 guests. She watched as her husband toured children’s wards in hospitals, dressed in a clown costume of his own design.

In 1974, Gacy established a painting and decorating business. His employees were invariably teenage boys. He was particularly drawn to those who were fair-haired and well-built. As in Iowa, rumours again began to circulate concerning Gacy and his employees. When Carol Gacy began finding gay pornography in their house, her husband nonchalantly explained that he simply preferred adolescent boys to adult women. The couple were divorced in March 1976.

Incredibly, neither criminal record nor rumour prevented Gacy from having political aspirations.

He began volunteering for a number of community projects and offered to clean the local offices of the Democratic Party. Though he rose slowly through the ranks, rumours continued to grow concerning his private life.

All began to be revealed following the disappearance of a 15-year-old boy named Robert Piest. On 12 December 1978, Piest had emerged from the pharmacy where he had a part-time job. He told his mother, who had come to pick him up, that he would be right back after speaking with a contractor who was looking to hire him. He never returned.

Piest’s mother remembered the name of the contractor and several hours later a police officer was at Gacy’s front door. Gacy told the man that he was unable to leave the house as there had been a recent death in the family and he had phone calls to make. He later appeared at the police station and provided a statement to the effect that he knew nothing of the disappearance.

After a background check revealed that Gacy had once been convicted of sodomy with a minor, a search warrant was issued for his property. Hundreds of objects were removed from Gacy’s house and three vehicles were seized. Items were shown to belong to Piest and several other missing boys. An excavation of the crawl space under Gacy’s house revealed the remains of 27 boys and young men. Gacy later said that the crawl space had become so crowded that he was forced to dispose of some of his victims’ bodies in the Des Plaines River.

Fully aware of what had been discovered at his home, on 22 December Gacy confessed to killing at least 30 people – it was clear that he had lost count. He said that many of the victims had been invited to his home. The first murder had taken place in January 1972, 18 months after he’d been released from prison. He’d killed for the second time in January 1974, while still living with his second wife. After their separation, the murders had taken place with increasing frequency. In most cases, Gacy admitted, he would invite boys and young men into his home, where he would offer to show them a magic trick using fake handcuffs which were part of his clown act. The handcuffs would prove to be all too real. Gacy would then chloroform and rape his victim. After many hours of torture, death would come through either strangulation or asphyxiation.

Most of the victims were young male prostitutes or teenage runaways, but Gacy had also been so reckless as to prey upon boys he’d hired through his own contracting company. At least four boys went missing while in his employ, yet the local police failed to recognize the significance of this commonality.

Although some corpses were so badly decomposed that they could not be identified, it is thought that his youngest victim was just less than ten years old. Nine unidentified corpses were buried under separate headstones bearing the words ‘We Are Remembered’.

Gradually, it became apparent that there had been other victims; young men who had not been killed, but had been set free by the murderer. Among these was Jeffrey Ringall, whom Gacy had enticed into his car with the promise of marijuana. Not long after they began sharing their first joint, Ringall had a chloroform-doused cloth shoved in his face and lost consciousness. Ringall spent the rest of the car journey drifting in and out of consciousness, but didn’t truly regain his senses until he was in Gacy’s home.

By this point Gacy had removed all his clothes and was standing naked in front of him demonstrating a number of sexual toys. During the next several hours, Ringall was sodomized, tortured and drugged. He awoke the next morning, fully clothed, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. The next six days were spent in hospital. When reporting the assault, Ringall was told by the police that it was doubtful they would ever be able to identify his assailant.

Ringall was fortunate in that his story had been believed by the police. Another of Gacy’s victims had been raped, urinated on, dunked repeatedly in a bathtub and forced to play Russian roulette. His captor, who was later identified as Gacy, correctly predicted that the police would not believe the story of the assault.

During his trial, beginning on 6 February 1980, Gacy attempted to withdraw his confession, and plead not guilty by reason of insanity. As if to support the claim, Gacy tried to joke with the jury, saying that he was guilty of nothing more than ‘running a cemetery without a licence’. He also claimed to suffer from multiple-personality disorder, and said that an alter-ego named Jack was responsible for the murders.

On 13 March 1980, Gacy was convicted of 33 murders and sentenced to death. He was transferred to Menard Correctional Center, where he was placed on Death Row. As he waited through 14 years of appeals, Gacy took up oil painting. His favourite subject was portraits of clowns, which he painted and sold at great profit. At a 1994 exhibition at the Tatou Gallery in Beverly Hills, California, Gacy’s portraits sold for as much as $20,000.

Gacy was executed on 10 May 1994 at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois. When asked whether he had any last words, Gacy is reported to have snarled, ‘Kiss my ass.’ His death, by lethal injection, was botched. As the execution began, the chemicals solidified and the IV tube that led into the condemned man’s arm had to be replaced. As he died, Gacy struggled against his bonds. The entire procedure took 18 minutes, nearly four times as long as had been intended.

TED BUNDY

An intelligent, charming, good-looking law student, who already had a degree in psychology, Ted Bundy seemed destined for a brilliant future. Some in the Republican party saw him as a potential future governor of the state of Washington, and yet he ended up being sentenced to death in the electric chair.

Bundy was born on 24 November 1946 at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. The identity of his father has always been a matter of speculation. Bundy’s birth certificate is at odds with the name provided by his mother, Louise Cowell. There is some evidence pointing to incest – that Bundy was fathered by his grandfather. As an infant he was adopted by his grandparents, and grew up believing his mother to be his older sister. It wasn’t until his university years that Bundy would learn the truth of the relationship.

His earliest years were spent in Philadelphia, after which he and his ‘sister’ moved to live with relatives in Tacoma, Washington. The year after their relocation, when he was four, Louise met a navy veteran named Johnny Culpepper Bundy at a church singles’ night. Within months they married and Johnny adopted his bride’s ‘brother’.

The Bundy family quickly grew to five children; as the eldest, Ted spent much of his free time babysitting. Despite this contact, he remained emotionally detached from the rest of the family, feeling that they were beneath him.

Bundy was an excellent student. Though an active Methodist, serving as vice-president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, he remained shy and introverted throughout his teenage years. Bundy’s participation in the Church is also at odds with his criminal activity. He had started shoplifting while in high school, and progressed to stealing skis and forging lift tickets. He was twice arrested as a juvenile.

Handsome and articulate, he appeared to be a generous young man. While attending the University of Washington, he gave his time to the Seattle Crisis Clinic on a suicide prevention helpline. One of his co-volunteers, a young Ann Rule, would go on to write
The Stranger Beside Me,
the finest and most famous biography of the serial killer.

In the summer of 1969, Bundy visited Vermont, where he finally learned the truth about his parentage. The news served to create a greater distance between himself and the Bundy clan.

He returned to the University of Washington, and became a psychology major. It was during this year that he met a young divorcee. The two entered into a relationship that would last some seven years.

In 1972, Bundy graduated with honours and soon began working for the Republican party. During a trip to California in the summer of 1973, he also resumed dating another woman, a former girlfriend from university. Though he continued to date the first woman, he proposed marriage to the second. He ended the engagement after two weeks, and later revealed that the engagement had been made so as to hurt his fiancée when rejecting her. Within weeks he would begin the first of two strings of murderous attacks.