model inmate at Anamosa and is granted parole in June of 1970, a mere 18 months after his sentencing. He was forced to relocate to Chicago and live with his mother and observe a 10:00PM curfew. Less than a year later, Gacy is charged again with sexually assaulting a teenage boy but the youth did not appear in court, so the charges were dropped.

Gacy was known by many in his community to be an avid volunteer and being active in community politics. His role as “Pogo the Clown” the clown began in 1975 when Gacy joined a local “Jolly Joker” clown club that regularly performed at fundraising events.

On January 3, 1972, Gacy commits his first murder of Timothy McCoy, a 16-year old boy traveling from Michigan to Omaha. Claiming that McCoy entered his room wielding a kitchen knife, Gacy gets into a physical altercation with McCoy before stabbing him repeatedly in the chest. After realizing that McCoy had absentmindedly walked into the room with the knife while trying to prepare breakfast, Gacy buries the body in his crawl space. Gacy admitted in the interviews following his arrest that killing McCoy gave him a “mind-numbing orgasm”, stating that this murder was when he “realized death was the ultimate thrill” (Cahill and Ewing 349). Almost 2 years later, Gacy commits his second murder of an unidentified teenager. Gacy strangled the boy before stuffing the body in his closet before burying him (Cahill 349).

In 1975, Gacy’s business was growing quickly and his appetite for young men grew with it. Gacy often lured young men under his employment to his house, convincing them to put themselves in hand cuffs, and raping and torturing them before strangling them (Cahill 169-170). Most of Gacy’s murders took place between 1976 and 1978, the first of this time taking place in April 1976. Many of the youths that were murdered during this time were buried in a crawl space under Gacy’s house. For the remainder of the murders, Gacy admitted to throwing five bodies off the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaine