Think Pennywise is scary? The true story of John Wayne Gacy, a real-life killer clown who murdered 33 people during his six-year reign of terror
TO most people who knew him, John Wayne Gacy was an upstanding member of the community known for performing as a clown to entertain sick children and raise money for charity.
But the clown make-up was just a front, hiding the true face of a depraved and remorseless killer.
One of America's most twisted murderers, Gacy was a rapist and torturer convicted of killing 33 teenage boys and young men between January 1972 and late 1978.
The real-life killer clown, whose story is far more chilling than any horror film, would lure his young victims to his home in Norwood Park, Illinois.
Once he had them there, the killer would trick them in to putting on handcuffs, leaving them defenceless against the predator's torture and sexual attacks.
Dubbed the "Killer Clown", Gacy's six-year reign of terror was marked by unimaginable cruelty and relentless abuse.
All his victims were strangled or choked - bar his first, who he stabbed - before their bodies were bundled into his home's crawl space, buried on his property or dumped in the local Des Plaines River.
But the whole time, Gacy was living a double life, presenting himself as an upstanding member of the local community and doing charity work in character as "Pogo the Clown".
Born on March 17, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, Gacy suffered severe childhood abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father.
The killer went on to find success as a businessman, managing three KFC restaurants before starting his own construction firm.
Gacy's first marriage, to Marlynn Myers, saw him father a son and a daughter, but she divorced him after he was convicted of sexually abusing a 16-year-old in 1968.
It was after Gacy's release on parole, in 1970, when he started his own business and threw himself into his community, marrying divorcee Carole Hoff in 1972.
In his free time, Gacy would don his clown costume and pretend he was Pogo, a chirpy clown who helped the murderer "regress into childhood".
A keen Democrat, Gacy served on a local organising committee, even meeting First Lady Rosalynn Carter through his community work on May 6, 1978.
But nobody had any idea that the sick man beneath the clown mask was a sadistic killer responsible for a spate of disappearances in the area.
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Gacy deceived many of his victims by telling them he needed their help with "scientific research", for which he would pay them up to $50 each.
After luring the boys to his house, through lies or at gunpoint, Gacy would then ply them with alcohol and trick them into putting on handcuffs, occasionally as part of his clown routine.
Then, once they were defenceless, Gacy would torment his teenager victims, before raping them and finishing with what he called "the rope trick": strangling the boys with a length of rope.
Gacy's second marriage collapsed after wife Carole started finding gay pornography in the house and saw her bisexual husband bringing teenage boys into his garage.
The pair divorced in March 1976, starting what Gacy called his "cruising years".
With the house to himself and no more questions to answer from his wife, Gacy started killing more frequently, committing most murders in the years between 1976 and 1978.
The vile murderer was only caught out in December 1978, after a pharmacy owner heard him offering a 15-year-old employee Robert Jerome Piest a lucrative job working with him.
Piest had told his mother about the offer before he went missing, ending up in the Des Plaines river after being suffocated at Gacy's hands.
The pharmacy owner led police to Gacy, starting an investigation which eventually saw the killer clown break down and confess to his vile crimes, leading to his arrest on December 22, 1978.
After 14-years on Death Row, Gacy was killed by lethal injection in 1994.
However, not all of his victims have been identified, with six of his victims still unnamed - decades after they were killed.
Previously, we brought you the chilling true story of ‘the pitchfork murder', one of Britain’s most gruesome unsolved crimes.
We also told how Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired Psycho and Silence of the Lambs, butchered his victims and made clothes, furniture and trophies from their remains.