John Wayne Gacy: Film Portrayal
Similarities
- Verbally abusive father
- Gacy lives in Chicago
- Film states Gacy served 18 months in prison for sodomy
- Gacy mentions his heart condition
- Gacy pretends to be a cop when trying to pick up a young boy
- Gacy gets his construction workers to help dig trenches in the crawlspace
- Gacy invited one of his young workers (Tom) to live with him
- Gacy is shown picking up a young prostitute and letting him go
- Show Gacy’s homemade rack
- Gacy dressed as Pogo the Clown while he killed one of his victims
- Sells a young boys (Jimmy) car, a boy whom he kills
- A young boy, whom Gacy sold Jimmys car to, is shown stealing gas, police are overheard talking and they realize there is a connection between Jimmys car and Gacy
- Gacy is shown drowning a boy in the bathtub
- Film mentions that Gacy franchised a chicken restaurant
- Gacy is shown performing the handcuff trick on multiple young men
- Gacy is shown taking a young boy waiting for his mom, Gacy did not have enough room in his crawlspace for the body, so he dumped it in the Des Plaines River
- Gacy goes to his mechanic friend, saying he is escaping to Belgium, he killed probably 25-30 young boys, and that he is going to burn in hell
- In the flashbacks, we see Gacy killing his first victim with a knife
- Police search Gacys home finding belongings of young men and many young mens bodies in the crawl space of Gacys home
- Bugs crawling out and around Gacys home
- Gacy owes a lot of people money
- Treated his construction employees very poorly
- Portrayed Gacy being very obviously attracted to young men/boys
- Gacy gets jumped by a few of his workers
- Gacy killed a lot of the young men with his wife, stepdaughters, and mother living with him
- Not well liked by the community
- A friend of Gacys took a look in the crawl space to help with the smell
- Gacys crawl space reeks and fluid is leaking onto the neighbors property
- Pest control is called to get rid of all of the bugs in Gacys crawlspace
- Officers came to Gacys home to investigate the disappearance of Stevie, a boy who worked for Gacy, same boy who jumped Gacy for money
- The officers could smell the fluid leaking around Gacys home
- Gacys wife found porn magazines, many young boys pants, handcuffs, and a dildo in Gacys chest of drawers
- Portrayed Gacy as hearing voices, very schizoid-esque
- Gacy hit one of his employees with a hammer, when the voices stopped Gacy apologized to the boy and paid him off to not talk
- Gacys wife confronted him and then his wife and two stepdaughters left
- A man named Roy confronted Gacy in the bathroom of a restaurant asking about the money that Gacy owed him
- Gacys mother has lived with him this entire time
- Police come to Gacy asking about Jimmy
- Roger, the young prostitute Gacy picked up, is seen going back to Gacys home, along with two men- these two men ask to search Gacys home, he refuses so they set up camp on the front lawn of Gacys house
- Tom, who tells Gacy he is leaving, is almost killed by Gacy, but Roy (the man whom Gacy owes money) bursts in punching both Gacy and Tom, Tom escapes and is helped by the two men who have been camped outside of Gacys home
- Gacy tries to escape his home via car, but the two men catch him
- At the end of the film, they state that it is estimated Gacy picked up over 2,000 young men, the film also said that 29 bodies were found in Gacys crawlspace and four in the Des Plaines River
Similarities
- The film shows two different clips of parents looking for their young boys that have gone missing, the police don’t help much
- A young boy (Chris) goes missing from the pharmacy he works at, after he tells his mom he is going to meet with someone about a potential job offer; Gacy had visited the pharmacy earlier to talk about a potential remodel and saw Chris, while in earshot Gacy mentioned his construction company paid more than Chris’ current job
- Police went to Gacys home to inquire about Chris, Gacy denied the allegations, said he would go into the police office to talk more, but he was waiting on a call from his aunt, as his uncle has just died, he never went to the station
- After convinced that Gacy killed Chris, police got information on Gacys assault charges in Iowa that were dropped
- Police get a search warrant and search Gacys home; police found Gacys rack (they call board) with handcuffs attached, they also find male porn magazines, lots of young boys underwear, handcuffs, a high school class ring, lots of watches and jewelry too small for Gacy, mens wallets, and various narcotics and drugs
- Trapdoor in closet leads to Gacys crawlspace
- Police also took Gacys car and made two officers follow Gacy around everywhere
- They find the mother of the boy the class ring belongs to
- Gacy has many friends and is very well liked by the community
- Gacy smokes weed in front of the cops on purpose
- The cops that are staking out Gacys home go on a car chase with him
- Gacy performed as a clown in a children’s hospital
- Gacy confronts the police, telling them he is suing for three quarters of a million
- The boy, who owned the class ring, also owned a red Honda hatchback, which he was trying to tell; the cops found out Koslo, Gacys right-hand man, was driving that car
- Police found out that the young boy who owned the class ring had a TV in his car that went missing, one that looked exactly like the TV Gacy has in his room
- The police used dogs in the investigation, when the dogs searched Gacys car, the dogs got in the death position, the position they get in when they smell where death is or used to be, the dog got in this position on Gacys open trunk, but they were not allowed to use this as evidence
- The two cops staking out Gacys home convinced Gacy to let them in for a drink, one of the cops used the restroom as a diversion while he tried to get the serial number on Gacys TV and he found a horrible smell coming from the vent in the bathroom
- Police talk to Gacys ex-wife, who stated that Gacy use to bring young boys to the garage all the time, she said that he had sex with her once on mother’s day but told her that was the last time after confessing he liked boys
- Gacys wife said that she had once gotten a call about a missing boy, last name Miklovich, but Gacy brushed it off
- The police interrogate Koslo again, this time with a polygraph test, Koslo admitted to digging trenches in Gacys crawlspace, but he wasn’t close enough to the mic for this to become evidence
- Gacy performs the handcuff trick on a boy named Billy
- Police learn that Chris had a camera that his girlfriend Cindy was getting the film developed for, the Chief remembered seeing a photo receipt in Gacys kitchen, it happened to be for the same day that Cindy got the photos developed, when the police talk to Cindy, she says that she put it in Chris’ jacket before he put it on to meet Gacy
- Gacy ends up at his lawyers, where he camps out for the night, Gacys lawyer comes out begging the police to not let Gacy get away with this
- Gacy is messed up on drugs and alcohol and slowly getting crazier
- Police go on another high speed chase of Gacy, where they catch him and arrest him for possession of an illegal substance, all while the police are searching Gacys home under the second search warrant
- Police got a second search warrant of Gacys home
- They found the remains of 25 boys under Gacy’s crawlspace, 1 under the garage, and 1 under the floorboards of Gacy’s recreation room, there was evidence of rape and torture, this all happened over a period of six years
- Chris’ body was found in the Des Plaines River months later after the ice had cleared, along with three other victims
- Gacy was found guilty of killing 33 young boys
- Cops staked out Gacys home and Gacy diverted them so that he could dispose of Chris’ body in the Des Plaines River
- Struggled to get extra cops to work the case
- Gacy went to his father’s funeral
- The cops interrogate Koslo
- Koslo admits to seeing Gacy hit on young boys and sometimes “mess them up,” he also admits that he knows Gacy is bisexual and very “liberal minded when it comes to sex”
- Police figured out that Gacy had served 18 months in Iowa for sodomy, they called the chief of police in Waterloo, Iowa to find out more information; the chief said that during the trial Gacy admitted that he would pick up prostitutes and young boys and lure them in with money, then threaten to tell the parents, he’d then tie them up when he got home and have his way
- Dogs continue to search Des Plaines River for evidence
- Police got a psychic involved in the case, she described many things, and said that the man who killed Chris killed many people
- A cop talked to Gacy in a bar dropping names of missing boys, Gacys rack, etc.
- Police struggle to get a second search warrant on Gacys home
- Police catch Gacy trying to pick up a young boy at the Chicago Greyhound Station
- The tactics they used to find and convict Gacy is now the protocol used when trying to catch serial killers
- Psychic correct about everything