Global Courant 2023-05-10 11:00:48
EXCLUSIVE: Illinois serial killer John Wayne Gacy made such grisly demands of a criminal profiler that the psychoanalyst gave up trying to interview him a year before he faced the death penalty in Stateville Prison.
The “Killer Clown” sent a pamphlet maintaining his innocence and demanding that the profiler complete a questionnaire full of personal questions and return it with a photo.
“My policy is simple: no photo, no reply with full bio sheet,” Gacy wrote to John Kelly in April 1993 — just over a year before his execution, which took place 29 years ago today.
Kelly, who has interviewed a number of serial killers, wanted to add Gacy to his list.
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Serial killer John Wayne Gacy posed for the above Des Plaines Police Department mugshot in December 1978. ((Photo by Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images))
There are many types of serial killers, Kelly said. Gacy, already a convicted sex offender prior to his murder spree, was classified as a “sexual serial killer.”
Like other sexually motivated killers, he grew up with an abusive father who was both abusive and an alcoholic, according to Kelly.
“No picture, no answer…”
“This is how serial killers are made,” Kelly told Fox News Digital. However, he hoped to study the killer as an adult, after 15 years behind bars.
However, Gacy had a set of demands for people to contact him.
“If you would like to submit some questions in writing, I am willing to answer them as long as they do not deal with my case,” Gacy wrote. “While I’m talking to someone I like to know who that is and some common facts about them is a bio sheet that you can fill out and send back with a photo.”
John Wayne Gacy’s letter to criminal profiler John Kelly (mobile users go here)
Gacy was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering 33 young men and boys between 1970 and 1978.
“I’m not important to anyone, just a guy caught up in the justice system,” Gacy claimed in the short message, asking to be called John or JW instead of “Mr. Gacy.”
The correspondence with Kelly roughly started when he was on death row at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois.
John Wayne Gacy was an amateur clown in his local community. (Marty Zielinski)
Kelly said he saw the requests as an attempt by the killer to influence him to try and convince him to plead his innocence, so he never completed the questionnaire.
“He was trying to find ways to manipulate me,” Kelly told Fox News Digital. “Based on what he wanted to see, and based on the propaganda he wanted me to peddle for him.”
With his response, Gacy also sent a self-produced pamphlet, questioning the overwhelming evidence used to convict him, which was printed at the prison, Kelly said.
“They Called Him the Killer Clown: But Is JW Gacy a Mass Murderer or Another Victim?” reads the headline.
Read John Wayne Gacy’s self-produced “propaganda” pamphlet (mobile users go here)
Gacy was primarily a contractor, but he earned the nickname “Killer Clown” because he moonlighted as a costumed clown and performed for children.
In his pamphlet, Gacy claimed that a dozen employees of his construction company had the keys to the house.
Police arrested him in December 1978 and recovered dozens of bodies buried at his home. They belonged to men and boys who had been kidnapped, tortured and raped. He strangled most of them and stabbed at least one.
John Wayne Gacy created this self-portrait of himself in his “Pogo the Clown” costume. (Steve Eichner/WireImage)
At least five of his victims have not been identified today, and one was not identified until 2021, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
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The questionnaire asked for personal information such as date of birth and marital status, as well as political orientation, New Year’s resolutions, and the respondent’s “current hero.”
Others were more thought-provoking. “If I were an animal I would be;” “Friends like me because;” “What I think of this country.”
Read John Wayne Gacy’s questionnaire (Mobile users go here)
He wanted to know more about artistic interests, ‘thoughts about sex’ and ‘what are you thinking now’.
Gacy’s letter is dated April 9, 1993. Kelly said he had shown it to friends over the years but never made it public.
The questionnaire itself appears to have been sent to other people who wanted to interview Gacy before his 1994 execution.
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A police car and dumpster outside John Wayne Gacy’s Illinois home on December 26, 1978, days after his arrest. Police found 26 bodies buried in the crawl space under his home, three in the garage, and another four in a river. (Bettmann via Getty Images)
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In a New Yorker profile published a month earlier he was given a lethal injection, interviewer Alec Wilkinson revealed some of Gacy’s own survey responses.
He considered himself a “liberal, with values”, whose greatest fear was “dying before I have a chance to clear my name”.
A month later, he ate his last meal.
Michael Ruiz is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @mikerreports
