John Wayne Gacy

2022 - 4 - 20

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Image courtesy of "Chicago Tribune"

'The John Wayne Gacy Tapes' on Netflix: Nothing new here (Chicago Tribune)

If you're from Chicago, or have lived here for any significant length of time, the three-part Netflix documentary “Conversations with a Killer: The John ...

Convicted in the late ‘60s in Iowa for sexually assaulting a teenage boy (he served 18 months of a 10-year sentence), he was able to shed that past when he relocated back to his native Chicago. Being white and male, with modest political connections, meant he moved through life with the benefit of the doubt — until he didn’t. Berlinger doesn’t examine that too deeply: “Just because somebody looks and acts a certain way doesn’t mean you should trust them,” he recently told Entertainment Weekly. “He was the neighborhood guy who threw all the parties. In the tapes, Gacy tells his defense team, “You weren’t fighting my case, you were fighting society.” And yet Amirante doesn’t really talk about what it means to contend with these kinds of appalling delusions within a professional context. According to his siblings, who spoke to reporters last fall, Alexander was a “fun-loving, sensitive young man whose disappearance after Nov. 1976 was out of character.” “Our only defense was insanity,” Gacy’s attorney Sam Amirante tells Berlinger (who previously made “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”). Though Amirante talks about being disturbed by his client’s crimes, he offers little insight into how this affected him at work or at home — and how (or even if) it shaped his thoughts about his career going forward. Nearly half a century later, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if friends and families of the victims are exhausted by the prospect of Gacy having his say once again, as he has so many times before. For anyone else — and especially perhaps for viewers born in the decades after he committed at least 33 murders of teenage boys and young men in his Norwood Park home throughout the 1970s — the horror show that was Gacy might be more obscure, and director Joe Berlinger’s series is as decent a retelling as any.

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Who Is John Wayne Gacy and Is He Still Alive? (Newsweek)

"Conversations With A Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes" is the latest true-crime documentary to land on Netflix about an infamous serial killer and his ...

On the other hand, the prosecution argued Gacy was perfectly sane and intended to kill. He confessed to murdering 30 young men in a formal statement, given in the early hours of December 22, 1978. Gacy was divorced from his first wife, Marlynn Myers in 1969 near the time he was convicted of sodomy of a teenage boy. Gacy's trial began on February 6, 1980, and he was charged with 33 murders in total. He was divorced from his second wife, Carole Hoff in 1976 and embarked on a killing spree for another two years, killing 30 other men. Surveillance police then followed Gacy, who was acting erratically, as they awaited a second search warrant to look for Piest's body. He went on to become a manager within Nunn-Bush Shoe Company in Springfield, Illinois, and later, a manager at KFC. The police also began to monitor Gacy. Before then, he worked as an attendant at a mortuary in Las Vegas and enrolled at Northwestern Business College, graduating in 1963. Gacy had killed his first victim, 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, in January 1972. He employed mainly high school students and young men. He recently served as an executive producer on Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich and Murder Among the Mormons, both hugely popular Netflix documentaries.

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The chilling story behind Conversations with a Killer: The John ... (The Tab)

The true story behind Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy tapes on Netflix. The real case of the serial killer, his crimes and death.

Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes is available on Netflix now. The three-part documentary also features new interviews with key participants – some of whom have never talked before, including gut-wrenching testimony from one of Gacy’s survivors – all in search of answers to a crucial question: How was a public figure like Gacy able to get away with murder for so long? The three-part series is directed by Joe Berlinger and features previously unheard audio from John Wayne Gacy’s discussions with his legal team.

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Wednesday TV tips: The Darwin fraudsters and a 'killer clown' who ... (Irish Examiner)

Born to Kill? profiles serial killer Thor Nis Christiansen; and The John Wayne Gacy Tapes is on Netflix.

This documentary also features new interviews with key participants — including testimony from one of Gacy’s survivors. Features previously unreleased interviews with the murderer and looks at the flawed investigation into his crimes. A seventh series of this popular set of comedic, twisty, dark tales — with Daniel Mays, Jason Isaacs, Sophie Okonedo and Jessica Hynes among the guest stars.

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John Wayne Gacy tapes: who was 'Pogo the Clown' featured in ... (NationalWorld)

Convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy was known for donning a clown costume and performing at events and children's birthday parties. By The Newsroom.

Gacy confessed to his crimes after police searched his home for a second time and found bones in the crawl space. With Berlinger stating to Entertainment Weekly: “Their excavation footage has never been seen before and that’s truly horrifying material. She reported this to the police and Gacy’s home was searched. In 1980, Gacy was found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection. The documentary also includes never before seen footage of police officers excavating the crawl space. He would cruise for vulnerable victims before luring them to his home and tricking them into a pair of handcuffs as part of a magic trick.

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What happened to John Wayne Gacy? What Conversations with a ... (Radio Times)

Netflix's latest true crime documentary Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes looks at one of America's most prolific serial killers.

Gacy was convicted of murdering at least 33 young men and boys, with 26 bodies being found in his crawl space. After being surveilled by police officers and interviewed a second time, Gacy confessed to killing approximately 30 people to his criminal attorney and lawyer, saying that he had been "the judge, jury and executioner of many, many people" and revealing that Robert Piest was dead. When Gacy was named as the contractor who had been in the pharmacy, Des Plaines officers visited Gacy at his home – however, he claimed that he had not offered Piest a job. Gacy served 18 months of his sentence and was granted parole with 12 months' probation in 1970 on the condition that he moved back to Chicago and lived with his mother. Police obtained another search warrant and searched Gacy's home, finding human remains of four victims in his crawl space and arresting Gacy for murder. Born in 1942, Gacy grew up in Chicago and went on to marry his first wife Marlynn Myers in 1964, with the couple living in the Iowa town of Waterloo, where Gacy managed several Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.

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Killer clown John Wayne Gacy refers to his victims as 'inhuman ... (Daily Mail)

New doc reveals never-before-heard recordings of John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer clown who raped, tortured and strangled 33 young men before buying them ...

Antonucci was one of the lucky few who managed to slip the shackles in a wrestle with Gacy. 'And then he said this quote which will always stick with me. Gacy told his lawyers that he thought homosexuals were 'sick and weak' and said that he was open with Carole about his bi-sexuality. He committed most of his crimes between 1976 and 1978, and referred to this time as his 'cruising years.' Gacy's first killing was a boy he picked up at the Greyhound bus station and brought back to his house in January 1972. 'Pogo was John's own creation, from the style of the makeup to the way he acted. After the two tussled, Gacy fatally stabbed the teenager and left him to die in the bedroom. During that time, he became a powerful inmate in his position as head cook, and increased the prison's Jaycee chapter from 50 to 650 members. Eventually Vorhees reported the incident to his father and Gacy was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison. Gacy retells the story of how he picked up the hitchhiking teenager and brought him back to his house. He buried 29 bodies in the crawl space beneath the house he shared with his wife and kids and dumped four in a nearby lake when he ran out of space. Gacy was a gregarious and boastful pillar of his community. As a perpetual disappointment to his father, Gacy was constantly beaten and ridiculed as a 'sissy,' who would 'probably grow up queer.'

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Netflix's 'John Wayne Gacy Tapes' Is a Revelatory Look at the Serial ... (IndieWire)

The split between the public John Wayne Gacy and the private one is among the most chilling in true crime history. Gacy, who lived and killed in Illinois in ...

There’s a period, from Gacy to Dahmer, of angry white men going on a serial-killing spree in a reaction to the social values of the time. He took advantage of the fact that when these crimes were reported to the police, they didn’t listen, or they didn’t understand the concept that a man could rape another man. There were serial killers who didn’t have these kinds of patterns or upbringings, and I don’t think it explains everything. I think it’s very important for the audience — so that it’s not just another story — to be grounded in the horror, the fact that there were 26 bodies under the crawlspace and three other bodies on the property, and four bodies in the river. We think we can protect ourselves because we can see that serial killer across the street. Gacy took advantage of the fact that a lot of young gay men had to leave their homes because they weren’t accepted. You know, I think they acted heroically so it’s not those cops in the show, criticizing per se, but law enforcement in general just had a terrible attitude towards this case. Back then, to be gay, in the ’70s, it was still being talked about as if it was a sickness. The 60 hours of audio footage comes from a recorded conversation between Gacy and a member of his defense team, whose family came forward with the materials following the success of Berlinger’s “Ted Bundy Tapes” documentary. IndieWire: There’s been a number of John Wayne Gacy specials and books. The split between the public John Wayne Gacy and the private one is among the most chilling in true crime history. Berlinger, who also helmed the “Cecil Hotel” and “Times Square Killer” specials for the streamer, gains access to an astounding trove of new archival materials and shares that audio and video in his latest Netflix serial killer X-ray series.

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Netflix 'Conversations with a Killer: John Wayne Gacy': True crime ... (Yahoo Sports)

True crime documentary series on Netflix, Conversations with a Killer: John Wayne Gacy, publicizes recordings of U.S. serial killer John Wayne Gacy who ...

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John Wayne Gacy Tapes Netflix review: 'Conversations With a Killer ... (CNN)

John Wayne Gacy remains the stuff of nightmares, a symbol of evil with the dress-up-like-a-clown twist to ensure his enduring place in the true-crime genre.

There are also interviews with relatives of those killed, and one survivor of Gacy's attacks. In a 1994 New Yorker article He merely defends himself.

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Who is John Wayne Gacy: New Netflix docuseries recounts horrific ... (WLS-TV)

Just hearing Gacy's voice doesn't really add much to an understanding of what motivated him or the hideous nature of his crimes.

In a 1994 New Yorker article (the year Gacy was executed by lethal injection), writer Alec Wilkinson summed up the challenge of interviewing him, noting, "Talking to Gacy requires patience. Otherwise, there's not much that's really new here, with Peacock's "John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise" having covered similar territory just last year. There are also interviews with relatives of those killed, and one survivor of Gacy's attacks.RELATED: John Wayne Gacy victim No. 5 identified by Cook County Sheriff In a 1994 New Yorker article (the year Gacy was executed by lethal injection), writer Alec Wilkinson summed up the challenge of interviewing him, noting, "Talking to Gacy requires patience. But Netflix provides both a wider platform, and the project comes with a somewhat more contemporary hook amid ongoing efforts continue to identify Gacy's victims, some of whom remain unknown. "Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes" finds the wispiest hook to add to that filmography, drawing from 60 hours of unearthed audio sprinkled throughout this three-part Netflix docuseries.

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John Wayne Gacy: Who was Rob Piest, How to watch Netflix serial ... (The Scotsman)

Get all of the latest Crime news from The Scotsman. Providing fresh perspective online for news across the UK.

When asked about Robert Piest at this time, the serial killer confirmed he had lured him to his house and strangled him before alongside sleeping Piest's body that evening. Shortly after the remains of his victims were found in the crawl space, he was arrested. The store owner, Torf, informed police it was likely to be Gacy who had offered the boy a role, and Gacy was later interviewed by police. During the search, a receipt which indicated the victim had been inside of the property was uncovered. It was his Mother’s birthday on the day the teen was reported missing, and it is said she had arrived to drive her son home so the family could celebrate her birthday together at approximately 9pm. though the killer is best known performing at events and children’s parties as ‘Pogo’ in his infamous clown costume.

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