KILLER CLOWN

by Terry with Peter T. Maiken Sullivan ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 26, 1983

Simply--but sufficiently for many: the apprehension of John Gacy, freelance building contractor, Polish Day parade supervisor, and part-time clown, who murdered 33 young men from 1974 to 1978 and buried most of them beneath his suburban Chicago home. Sullivan, the prosecutor who handled the case from investigation through trial, concentrates on the intensive policework that led to Gacy's confession ten days after the disappearance of his last victim, 15-year-old Rob Piest, in December 1979. Before he vanished, Piest told a girlfriend he was going to talk to Gacy about a summer job. Police interest in the chubby, 36-year-old contractor increased when a search of his home uncovered school rings and drivers' licenses that weren't his, lots of mens' clothing too small for him, bloodstained carpeting, handcuffs, gay porno books, and an especially foul-smelling crawlspace below the house. A criminal record for forcible sodomy on a teenage boy in Iowa did not enhance Gacy's image, either. While investigators worked feverishly to link Gacy with other young men reported missing and pumped his acquaintances for information, police surveillance teams tried (with only partial success) to track him around the clock--an assignment that tan the gamut from 100-mile-an-hour chases on Chicago's icy streets to chummy drinking sessions (during one of which Gacy explained why he loved dressing up as a clown for parades: ""Clowns can get away with murder""). When a further search of the house turned up hair sticking out of the ground in the crawl space, Gacy decided to ""clear the air"" and confessed to murdering as many as 30 young men (he'd lost count--the real total was three higher), all of them (he said) homosexual or bisexual hustlers, most of them killed by his ""tope trick""--a rope draped around the neck loosely, then tightened like a tourniquet with a piece of wood. It took a jury only two hours to reject an insanity defense and sentence Gacy to death. Not surprisingly for a prosecutor, Sullivan makes virtually no attempt to examine the why of Gacy's crimes, which may disappoint readers interested in more than a police procedural narrative. Just the facts, then--though, given the notoriety of the case, there's bound to be an audience for those.

Pub Date: May 26, 1983

ISBN: 0786026898

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION