The schism between the public and private John Wayne Gacy being gay and his personalities are one of the most terrifying in true crime history.
Gacy, who lived and died in Illinois in the 1970s, was the life of the party, a Democratic precinct captain, and the occasional birthday clown who organized home parties and ’employed’ many local young men.
Gacy, however, was a self-loathing narcissist and psychopath whose kindness was bait for sex with adolescent boys, and once he had what he wanted, the prospect of revealing his sexuality drove him to cruelly torture and murder them.
Some of their bodies were discovered buried behind the outdoor fire pit where he entertained them. Others were found in his basement.
Was John Wayne Gacy Gay?
John Wayne Gacy was not technically gay, but one of his other supposed personalities is. Gacy sought to persuade the physicians that he had multiple personality disorders.
He claimed to be four people: a hardworking, civic-minded contractor, a clown, an active politician, and a police officer named Jack Hanley, whom he referred to as “Bad Jack.”
When Gacy confessed to authorities, he claimed to be repeating Jack’s crimes, as he despised homosexuality and considered male prostitutes to be “weak, ignorant, and degraded trash.”
Gacy’s attorneys chose to have him plead not guilty because of insanity to the allegations against him.
The defense used psychiatric specialists who had examined Gacy to portray him as a Jekyll-and-Hyde persona.
At Gacy’s trial, three psychiatric experts testified that he was a paranoid schizophrenic with several personalities.
Was John Wayne Gacy Married?
John Wayne Gacy’s first wife was Marlynn Myers. They met as coworkers at a Nunn-Bus Shoe Company store in Springfield, Illinois, and married in September 1964 after six months of dating.
Following their marriage, they relocated to Waterloo, Iowa, where Gacy worked as a manager at multiple KFC locations owned by Myers’ father. Gacy gave birth to first child, a boy, in February 1966. In March 1967, their daughter was born.
Carole was the second wife of John Wayne Gacy. They married in 1972 and were married till 1976. Hoff was a friend of Gacy’s sister Karen, and they had even gone on a date as adolescents.
When their relationship became amorous, Hoff and her kids moved into Gacy’s house, and Gacy’s mother left, according to The New Yorker.