This Day in Crime History: DECEMBER 22, 1978 : JOHN WAYNE GACY CONFESSES

On this day in 1978, John Wayne Gacy confesses to police to killing over two dozen boys and young men and burying their bodies under his suburban Chicago home. In March 1980, Gacy was convicted of 33 sex-related murders, committed between 1972 and 1978, and given the death penalty. At the time, he was the worst serial killer in modern American history. George Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, overtook Gacy in November 2003, when he admitted to murdering 48 women in the Pacific Northwest.

Gacy was born in Chicago on March 17, 1942. Outwardly, he appeared to have a relatively normal middle-class upbringing; however, by some accounts, Gacy had an abusive alcoholic father and also experienced health issues in his youth. In 1964, Gacy married and moved with his wife to Iowa, where he managed his father-in-law’s Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. The couple had two children. However, Gacy’s wife divorced him after he was charged with sexually assaulting one of his male employees in 1968. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released due to good behavior after serving only a fraction of his sentence.

Gacy moved back to Chicago, where he started a contracting company and remarried. However, the seemingly respectable businessman, who became involved in local politics and once had his photograph taken with then-first lady Rosalynn Carter, was leading a double life as a sexual predator. He committed his first murder in 1972. Gacy’s victims included male prostitutes as well as teenagers who worked for his company. Typically, he lured his victims back to his home and tricked them into being handcuffed or having a rope tied around their necks. Afterward, he’d knock them out with chloroform and then rape, torture and murder them. As he was a well-known community figure–who sometimes dressed up as a clown to entertain sick children–Gacy’s crimes initially went undetected.

The heavy-set serial killer came under suspicion in December 1978 when authorities investigating the disappearance of Robert Piest discovered that the teen was last seen with Gacy. After learning of Gacy’s sex-crime conviction in Iowa, police searched his Norwood Park home. They noticed a strong stench coming from a crawl space but at first thought it was from a damaged sewage pipe. Several items, including a store receipt, were later found at Gacy’s home that linked him to Piest and other young men who’d been reported missing. After Gacy confessed, investigators recovered 29 corpses buried on his property, as well as four more that he’d dumped in nearby rivers when he ran out of room at home.

After his conviction, Gacy spent 14 years on Death Row, during which time he made paintings of clowns and other figures that sold for thousands of dollars. On May 10, 1994, having exhausted all his appeals, the 52-year-old Gacy, who the media dubbed the Killer Clown, was put to death by legal injection at the Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois.

Article Details:

December 22, 1978 : John Wayne Gacy confesses

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  December 22, 1978 : John Wayne Gacy confesses

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-wayne-gacy-confesses

• Access Date

  December 22, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in Crime History: DECEMBER 18, 1878 : THE DEATH OF MOLLY-ISM

John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires, is executed in Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society that had allegedly been responsible for some incidences of vigilante justice in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, defended their actions as attempts to protect exploited Irish-American workers. In fact, they are often regarded as one of the first organized labor groups.

In the first five years of the Irish potato blight that began in 1845, 500,000 immigrants came to the United States from Ireland–nearly half of all immigrants to the U.S. during those years. The tough economic circumstances facing the immigrants led many Irish men to the anthracite (hard coal) fields in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners worked under dangerous conditions and were severely underpaid. Small towns owned by the mining companies further exploited workers by charging rent for company housing. In response to these abuses, secret societies like the Molly Maguires sprung up, leading sporadic terrorist campaigns to settle worker/owner disputes.

Industry owners became increasingly concerned about the threat posed by the Molly Maguires. Franklin B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate the secret society and find evidence that could be used against them. James McParlan, who later became the most celebrated private detective of the era, took the high-risk assignment and went undercover within the organization. For more than two years, he established his place in the Molly Maguires and built trust among his fellow members.

Eventually, several Molly Maguires confessed their roles in the murder to McParlan. When he was finally pulled out of the society in February 1876, the detective’s information led to the arrest and conviction of19 men.

In June 1877, 10 Molly Maguires were hanged on a single day. In December of the following year, Kehoe was arrested and hanged for the 1862 murder of Frank W.S. Langdon, a mine foreman, despite the fact that it was widely believed he was wrongly accused and not actually responsible for anyone’s death. Although the governor of Pennsylvania believed Kehoe’s innocence, he signed the death warrant anyway. Kehoe’s hanging at the gallows was officially hailed as “the Death of Molly-ism.”

Though the deaths of the vigilante Molly Maguires helped quell the activity of the secret society, the increased assimilation of the Irish into mainstream society and their upward mobility out of the coal jobs was the real reason that protective secret societies like the Molly Maguires eventually faded into obscurity.

Article Details:

December 18, 1878 : The death of Molly-ism

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  December 18, 1878 : The death of Molly-ism

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-molly-ism

• Access Date

  December 17, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks