John Wayne Gacy and His Victims

[Demgirl]

I'm watching the movie "Gacy" on Showtime tonight.

I remember when he was arrested, read the story, etc., but watching this movie re-enacting the horrible things he did is scaring the heck out of me!

What a horribly cruel, mean, sadistic, sick criminal he was! Those poor boys and young men he victimized! Unlike other serial killers, he knew his victims well. Many of them trusted him. What kind of sick animal would cruelly torture and kill so many people he knew personally?

There must be a special place in hell for him.

[UdbCrzy2]

CHICAGO - More than 30 years after a collection of skeletal remains was found beneath serial killer John Wayne Gacy's house, detectives have secretly exhumed bones of eight young men who were never identified in hopes of figuring out who exactly they were.

The Cook County Sheriff's Department says DNA testing could solve the mystery and they are asking for the public's help in identifying the victims.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_1...18-504083.html

[Missa310]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/gacy-victims-exhumed-auth_n_1006733.html?ncid=webmail14#s404349



Another article. Very interesting.

[Mammy]

As horrible as it must be to have a loved one go missing for nearly forty years with no trace, I can't imagine the additional grief in finding out that the missing person was a victim of someone who was as sadistic and cruel as Gacy. It would haunt a person forever to imagine what their loved ones last moments alive were like.

[TaupinJohn]

Yeah, you know, I've always thought it would be terrible not knowing how it happened if I'd lost a child (God forbid. Really.)

But one can hope (and hope can be very powerful) that he/she went peacefully, at least without fear. But these guys... I heard someone argue (on some forum) that "at least they were out of it", but I just don't know. I get that Haldol could start a great sleep, but someone starts drilling in your farking HEAD... I'm sorry, but that had to have awakened them. I've no idea what that kind of terror would be like, and God knows I couldn't handle knowing it's the last thing my child felt. It would absolutely wreck me.

[midnitelamp]

The bio channels documentary is also sick.

[intothelight]

I watched the Gacy movie. It creeped me out. But the Dahmer movie was more disgusting to me.

[Leasie]

Looks to me like these victims remains were buried in one casket, in small containers. Sad.

[seurtoFW]

UNT lab in Fort Worth helping to identify Gacy victims

Posted Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011Updated Friday, Oct. 14, 20110 Comments PrintReprintsShare

Topics:Fort Worth
Tags:serial killers, DNA

By Alex Branch Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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Sheriff launches new effort to ID Gacy victims
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By Alex Branch
abranch@star-telegram.com

Scientists in Fort Worth are trying to help solve the final mysteries left by notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
The unidentified remains of eight victims are undergoing DNA testing at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification at the request of authorities in Cook County, Ill., where Gacy killed 33 young men and boys.
While most of Gacy's victims have been identified, authorities hope that DNA testing, which was not available during Gacy's murder spree more than three decades ago, will put names to the rest.
The lab has extracted DNA from the remains, but testing will continue for another month or more, said Arthur Eisenberg, co-director of the identification center at the Health Science Center in Fort Worth.
After that will come the potentially difficult task of trying to match the DNA samples to those taken from people who believe a family member was among Gacy's victims.
"We can have all the DNA samples from all the unidentified remains in the world and unless we have something to compare them to, we will never identify a single person," said Eisenberg, also professor and chairman of the department of forensic and investigative genetics.
The Cook County Sheriff's Department asked the Center for Human Identification for help in April, Eisenberg said. In June, authorities sent the lab eight exhumed jawbones.
After some testing, scientists at the center told authorities that "long bones" like femurs would help the process because they generally preserve DNA longer. Most of the remains are about 35 years old.
Authorities sent the center the femurs from four victims in September, he said.
Cook County authorities have set up a hotline and are asking families whose loved ones disappeared around the time of Gacy's murders to submit DNA samples for comparison. The identification lab processes 1,200 to 1,800 samples a year from the families of missing people, and those family reference samples will also be compared with the DNA from Gacy's victims, Eisenberg said.
"We hope we can help provide some answers to the families of these remaining unidentified victims," he said.
The Gacy killings took place between 1972 and 1978. He was a building contractor who also performed as a clown, and he buried many of his victims beneath his house. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
Most of his victims were identified using dental records.
The Center for Human Identification has helped identify over 700 people nationwide.
It also assisted authorities in attempts to identify remains of victims of the Green River Killer, who is believed to have killed more than 40 women around Seattle during the 1980s and 1990s.
Alex Branch,817-390-7689





Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10...#ixzz1asVsH6D5

[luvmypeanut]

I saw another article stemming from this one, where they found plane tickets (Gacy's) in the evidence boxes and they're now checking out similar crimes in the destinations of his tickets. I guess the MO and time frames match up. Would be interesting if they solved some murders for more families......

[pkstracy]

I hope they do solve the murders, give some closure to families whose loved ones are missing.

[Tiger]

I own the DVD Gacy. And while some of the story might have been made up (i dought it) Gacy was a sick individual..and i read he also worked for Colonel Sanders (KFC)...thank god he wasn't into hacking up his victims ala Jeff Dahmer, or someone might have a a real leg in their bucket

[luvmypeanut]

I finally found the article. http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local...132023303.html

Documents uncovered inside dusty boxes of decades-old evidence show serial killer John Wayne Gacy made numerous trips around the country in the years before his arrest, leading investigators to speculate as to whether the man with the house of horrors had more victims.
Among the documents are airline tickets for trips to 13 states and Canada, where the deaths of as many as 27 other young men remain unsolved, said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. The tickets put Gacy in such places such as Colorado and New York, Ontario and Las Vegas, where Gacy once enrolled in Mortuary school.
"How conceivably can you think of a guy that does these horrific acts, but yet he turns it off when he leaves town? Actually, you would think the opposite. He's leaving town he's even more free because people don't know who he is. He can move around even better," Dart told NBC News.
Dart said Gacy was a master manipulator no matter where he was.
"We're running out these leads and we're just finding some intriguing patterns, fo

for lack of a better word," he said.

Investigators can now be more precise in following some of those leads, particularly using DNA technology that didn't exist during the 1970s. Computer databases of missing persons narrowed to the exact dates and places Gacy traveled indicate a match to the profile of Gacy's other victims: white males between the ages of 14 and 22.
Some actually may have been the eight still-unidentified Chicago victims who could have met Gacy elsewhere and traveled here. Dart announced last week that detectives had exhumed the remains
of the eight unidentified victims for DNA testing.
About 70 families who fit the profile of Gacy's known victims have come forward, said Dart. He said DNA tests have been conducted on families of two young men, which have been sent to a lab in Texas.
Sam Amirante, Gacy's attorney during his Chicago murder trial and the co-author of a new book about the monster he defended, commended the cold case effort but doubted the number of victims will climb.
"We grilled him about every single place he went, everything he did, and [there was] never a mention about any other body anywhere," he said. "What really bothers me if a body is found somewhere, and there's a real killer still out there on the loose, that they'll close the cold case and say Gacy did it."
Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space beneath his home. Three others were found beneath other areas of his property. His last four victims were thrown from a bridge into the Des Plaines River.


Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local...#ixzz1b8xPYx62

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local...#ixzz1b8xF3HwU

[slingshot]

Man thought to be Gacy victim found alive in Florida.

http://news.yahoo.com/man-thought-gacy-victim-found-alive-fla-154008426.html

CHICAGO (AP) â?? Siblings who feared that their brother was one of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's eight unidentified victims were amazed and overjoyed to learn that he's been living in Florida for decades.

[Vtwin]

Man thought to be Gacy victim found alive in Florida.

http://news.yahoo.com/man-thought-gacy-victim-found-alive-fla-154008426.html

This doesn't make a bit of sense, He didn't know his family thought he was a victim, he was just an asshole that ran away,and now he's happy being reunited? this dickwad knew where he was all the time and chose to stay away. I'm banging my head on the fucking table trying to understand how this is news!

[slingshot]

This doesn't make a bit of sense, He didn't know his family thought he was a victim, he was just an asshole that ran away,and now he's happy being reunited? this dickwad knew where he was all the time and chose to stay away. I'm banging my head on the fucking table trying to understand how this is news!

Both their middle names are WAYNE, for fuck's sake...... LOL

[Vtwin]

You might be a redneck if you think your kin was killed by a serial killer, but you find him incarcerated in Florida.....

BWAHAHAHAHA!

[havoc]

you might be a redneck if you think your kin was killed by a serial killer, but you find him incarcerated in florida.....

Bwahahahaha!

lol!


.

[Mammy]

Wayne is a very popular middle name for rednecks, as is Ray. For the women folk, there is Lynn and Sue. I know what I'm talking about. My dad's middle name is Wayne. LOL For people who have never set foot in Kentucky, it is like it's own little planet.

[intothelight]

Wayne is a very popular middle name for rednecks, as is Ray. For the women folk, there is Lynn and Sue. I know what I'm talking about. My dad's middle name is Wayne. LOL For people who have never set foot in Kentucky, it is like it's own little planet.

Lmao you are correct. My husband's first name is Wayne supposedly his dad loves John Wayne & his mom loved Wayne Newton at the time. Thankfully my family didn't torture me with a redneck name.

[michihunt]

Wayne is a very popular middle name for rednecks, as is Ray. For the women folk, there is Lynn and Sue. I know what I'm talking about. My dad's middle name is Wayne. LOL For people who have never set foot in Kentucky, it is like it's own little planet.

HAHA! 'Buck' and 'Bubba' would also qualify. My dad's name is Billy Wayne btw.

[ichabodius]

My middle name is Wayne.

[Flowergrrl]

I can understand being a runaway, but to let your whole family go the rest of their lives (and your poor mother dying and not knowing) thinking you're a Gacy victim is horrible... I'm glad they finally found out the truth but, seriously.

I commend them for trying to find out who these victims were. Hopefully their families, if still alive, can find some sort of peace and closure.

[Mammy]

Intothenight, it made me giggle to think of your hubby being named after John Wayne and Wayne Newton. These two guys are polar opposites from each other. I didn't mean to insult your name, Ichabodius. I think Ichabodius Wayne is a lovely name. LOL I can't believe I left out Bubba, Buck, and Junior. I actually know a man named Anthony Anthony, Jr. How's that for a name?

[The Lucky One]

Wayne is a very popular middle name for rednecks, as is Ray. For the women folk, there is Lynn and Sue. I know what I'm talking about. My dad's middle name is Wayne. LOL For people who have never set foot in Kentucky, it is like it's own little planet.

Anna Nicole's middle name was Lynn! How I miss Ky at times!

[Mammy]

I like Kentucky and I like to joke around about redneck things. I cannot even begin to tell you how many of my extended family has Lynn for a middle name and that includes my sister.

[The Lucky One]

I like Kentucky and I like to joke around about redneck things. I cannot even begin to tell you how many of my extended family has Lynn for a middle name and that includes my sister.

Almost 99% of the women in my family have first names that end in "ene" wether it be Merlene, Berlene, Carlene, Darlene, Charlene, Nadine, Pauline, it just goes on and on with the "ene's in my family.....
I have no room to talk! haha

[intothelight]

Lol yeah.. when he told me I about died laughing. I knew a guy named John Johnson but no Anthony Anthony Jr. Poor guy

My grandmother named her last 4 children from the Bible. That's all I got. OH wait my aunt's name is Karen Sue.

[Mammy]

Lucky One, LOL on the names ending with "ene." There are lots of those around here. I have noticed another naming trend that I don't particularily care for. I know it is common to name a first born son after his father. I have noticed that if the first born is a daughter there are a lot of girls named after their dads and they have boy's names. Some of these names are Stevie, Ricki, Bobbi, Kori, Randi, Tommi, Billie, Joey, Jimmie, Jami, and I am sure there are others. These are just the ones that I have personally ran across. I work with a woman who has three sons by three different dads and all of these boys are named after their dads with a Jr. on the end. You would think that she would have quit doing that after being married and divorced three times and having custody of three boys who are named after ex-husbands. She must be the eternal optomist! LOL

[dstrattenfan]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,4228869.story Man thought to be John Wayne Gacy victim found alive after 34 years Man thought to be John Wayne Gacy victim found alive after 34 years

[slingshot]

DNA identified a victim of John Wayne Gacy:

http://news.yahoo.com/sheriff-dna-id...175128325.html

CHICAGO (AP) — More than 30 years after finding bones beneath John Wayne Gacy's house, authorities have identified a 19-year-old Chicago construction worker who disappeared in 1976 as one of Gacy's eight unnamed victims.

[Hoagie78]

Did anyone see that campy movie about Ted Bundy that came out about 6 or 7 years ago ? Talk about over the top, those scenes were he tied his girlfriend up to the head board and was cursing her as they were going at it and him with the woman in the prison visitation room going at it with kids in there and him slipping the guard a $20 for looking the other way. The most over the top scene was where he had all those women in the shed and the one tied up started screaming as he bashed the one he was raping head in with a rock and was laughing like the joker.

[Finnegan]

maybe someone on the Bundy thread has.
http://www.findadeath.com/forum/show...ight=ted+bundy

[AngryChair]

I must say, Gacy is my least favorite serial killer. I am glad that they found a match to the unknown victim though. I hope the victim's family will be at peace now.

[RiaBrown]

3 Gacy victims identified!
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/justic...html?hpt=ju_c2

[slingshot]

Another presumed Gacy victim found alive.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45751426

Theodore “Ted” Szal, 59, who disappeared in March 1977, was found living in Beaverton, Ore., Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced Wednesday.

“I believe Christmas has come early for the Szal family,” said Dart in a statement. “Being able to tell an 88-year-old father that his son, whose picture he has been carrying around for 34 years in his breast pocket, has been found alive is something special.”

[Mammy]

I'm glad he is alive, but it was exceptionally cruel to disappear that long without a trace and cause that many years of grief and mental anguish to his family. It makes me want to cry to think of his elderly dad still carrying a picture of his son in his shirt pocket for 34 years. I'm assuming that his mom must be deceased since she wasn't mentioned in the article. I'm sure his remaining family is thrilled he is alive, but I couldn't blame them for being somewhat bitter for what he put them through. I wonder if he was ever listed on any missing persons websites?

[RogerV]

A man whose family thought he was a victim of John Wayne Gacy has been found alive and well in Oregon.

http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/..._man_fo_1.html

[DrDeath]

Well I suppose if you want to put permanent distance between yourself and your family, having them think you've been murdered by a deranged serial killer is one way of going about it. However inadvertent the mix up!

[Mammy]

If he didn't want a relationship with his family, he could have told them that and went on his way. It was cruel to let them grieve and think he had been tortured and murdered by one of the most sadistic killers in history. His poor elderly father carried a picture of this son in his shirt pocket for 34 years. There was no reason for his family to suffer for so long.

[Not Fade Away]

He claims he didn't know they thought he was murdered. Still, unless his family did something *beyond* fucked up, he should have attempted contact. He says they didn't try to contact him, but how the hell would they have been able to if they had no idea where he was?

[Pryncis]

Isn't this the 2nd Gacy "victim" to be found alive this year? I could have sworn I posted in a thread about a guy in FL who turned up alive who was once thought to be a victim too...

[Mammy]

Yes, it is the second one. These guys sure don't have much respect for their families to cause them so much pain.

[Linnie]

Really. Even if he had some good reason for never actually meeting or speaking with his family, he could have dropped them a postcard. Plus he deprived them of any opportunity to redeem themselves, if they felt sorry about whatever the hell it was, and I can't believe absolutely EVERYONE in his family was uniformly terrible to him!

I believe it may have had something to do with questions of his sexuality, if they REALLY thought Jeffrey Dahmer had gotten to him. Perhaps they thought he was gay or had been caught in a gay-related incident that might have exacerbated the issues they already had with him.

The odd thing is that he continued to use his REAL NAME, which isn't all that common, But he moved around so much, one can see where a family of average means couldn't afford a lot of detective work in the pre-internet era, and he fell through the cracks. So the responsibility for contact was still on HIM. Once he got his issues worked out, he should have let them know he was okay, however briefly.

[Djen]

Didn't he ever "vanity google" himself and think, "Oh, I'm listed as a possible Gacy victim. Maybe I should drop my folks a line and let them know I'm alive!"

I can think of circumstances under which a person would leave their family behind and never look back. But, IMO, those circumstances are rare. I think that most people who break contact like this are just self-absorbed and childish.

[Mammy]

I think the cop who was trying to figure out who the remains actually were is the one who got to checking into this guy when he found out the remains weren't his and discovered he was alive. In one article, the guy said he left at the time because he and his ex-wife had split up and he thought his mom had sided with the ex and helped her get an abortion. Other family members say that didn't happen, so who knows? Even if he was pissed at his mom, it seems like they could have talked about it and resolved their differences instead of him disappearing for 34 years. If he was only mad at her, there was no reason to abandon the rest of the family and leave them in limbo for years. He sounds really selfish.

[nightdiva]

I'm glad he is alive, but it was exceptionally cruel to disappear that long without a trace and cause that many years of grief and mental anguish to his family. It makes me want to cry to think of his elderly dad still carrying a picture of his son in his shirt pocket for 34 years. I'm assuming that his mom must be deceased since she wasn't mentioned in the article. I'm sure his remaining family is thrilled he is alive, but I couldn't blame them for being somewhat bitter for what he put them through. I wonder if he was ever listed on any missing persons websites?

I didn't know that about his dad and the picture he carried that is just so sad. I don't understand how anyone would do such a mean and cruel thing to their family!

[Mammy]

The article that Roger V linked in post #38 talks about his dad carrying the picture around in his shirt pocket. It also mentions the mom being alive and I had missed that before. It also mentions that the dad said he is glad his son is still alive, but hurt that the son let them suffer all of these years. The son gave me the "self absorbed asshole" vibe, but maybe that's just me.

[radiojane]

People are strange. I can't imagine just walking away from my family. When they piss me off I make sure I'm around to tell them that they're pissing me off. There doesn't even need to be a deep dark monster in the closet to cause it. I have an uncle that won't talk to any of us and it's simply that he doesn't like us. Some people can break connections pretty easily.

[Mammy]

My husband is estranged from his maternal unit and he made sure she knew exactly why. He didn't just take off and never look back nor did he cuts ties with his dad because his mom is a bitch. No need in punishing everyone because you have issues with one person. I had a great uncle (paternal grandpa's brother) who disappeared in the early sixties before I was born. He had a wife and three children plus his mom was still alive and many sisters and brothers. None of them ever heard from him again and assumed he was dead. His mom grieved over him until the day she died, which was several years after his disappearance. He had a son who was shot down in Vietnam. Anyway, several years ago, one of his grandchildren got interested in tracing back their family tree and decided to see if he could find out anything about his missing grandfather. He discovered that his grandfather was deceased, but had actually been alive for many years after abandoning his family and ruining the rest of his mother's life. Nobody knows why he left or why he never even tried to see any of his family again. My grandpa said after finding out the truth that he would have been better off to have not known and just assuming he was dead the whole time. He said he would like to punch him in the face for the misery he caused their mom. I don't understand people who do such things at all because it is cruel to make so many people suffer.