Illinois serial killer John Wayne Gacy, also known as the "Killer Clown," made disturbing demands to criminal profiler John Kelly, causing Kelly to abandon his attempts to interview him a year before Gacy's execution at Stateville prison.
Gacy sent Kelly a pamphlet proclaiming his innocence and demanded that Kelly fill out a questionnaire with personal questions and send it back with a photo.
Gacy, who was already a convicted sex offender before his murder spree, was classified as a "sexual serial killer." Like other murderers with a sex motive, he grew up with an abusive father who was both violent and an alcoholic. Kelly, who has interviewed several serial killers, wanted to add Gacy to his list.
Gacy had a series of demands for people, including Kelly, who reached out to him. He wrote, "If you want to submit some questions in writing, then I would be willing to answer them so long as they don't deal with my case." He also requested that Kelly fill out a bio sheet and send a photo. Gacy was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering 33 young men and boys between 1970 and 1978.
Kelly viewed Gacy's requests as an attempt to manipulate him into arguing for his innocence, so he never filled out the questionnaire. Gacy's letter, dated April 9, 1993, also included a self-produced pamphlet questioning the evidence used to convict him.
In the pamphlet titled "They Called Him the Killer Clown: But Is JW Gacy a Mass Murderer or Another Victim?" Gacy claimed that a dozen employees of his construction business had 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.
At least five of Gacy's victims remain unidentified today, according to the Cook County Sheriff's Office, and one was identified as recently as 2021. The questionnaire demanded personal information like date of birth and marital status, political orientation, New Year's resolution, and the respondent's "current hero."
Others were more thought-provoking, such as "If I were an animal I'd be;" "Friends like me because;" and "What I think of this country." Gacy's letter and questionnaire appear to have been sent to other people who wanted to interview him before his 1994 execution.
In a New Yorker profile published a month before he received a lethal injection, interviewer Alec Wilkinson revealed some of Gacy's answers to the survey. He viewed himself as a "Liberal, with values," whose biggest fear was "dying before I have a chance to clear my name." Gacy ate his last meal a month later.
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