This program contains graphic violence and sexual situations. Viewer discretion is advised.
Dozens of teenage boys taken, tortured for hours, then killed in cold blood. The killing for him is very arousing.
They’re victims of a power-hungry sadist that can’t get enough. He is obsessed, and there’s times when he actually is killing two individuals on the same night.
A plot of a Hollywood horror film. This is a terrifying true story. He actually had something that most killers don’t: he had a graveyard underneath his house. The original killer clown, the real monster that came before the movies, “It,” “Clownhouse,” and many others. Behind the screams.
Chicago, Illinois. Norwood Park is a quaint neighborhood just a short drive from O’Hare International Airport.
It’s a sunny day in 1975 when 18-year-old Johnny Buukovich and two of his friends arrive at the residential office of PDM contractors.
“Let’s go.”
The owner often hires young, unskilled workers to keep costs down. Sometimes, he doesn’t pay them anything at all. Johnny’s had enough.
“Open up! Come on, man! I know you’re in there. Johnny, you need to pay me right now.”
The two men argue for hours.
“I keep telling you, I have the money. It’s just been an accounting problem.”
“You have it. You have it now!”
“No, I haven’t.”
Johnny threatens to expose his boss’s sketchy business practices.
“You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry this has happened. Listen, I’ll tell you.”
But in the end, he realizes he’s not getting what he came for.
“Johnny, I’ll give you every penny I owe you.”
He leaves with his friends. This should be the end of the story. But after leaving his boss’s home, young Johnny Buukovich suddenly disappears.
The next morning, his parents suspect something terrible has happened. Johnny’s father comes across his son’s car only a few blocks away from his home. And the key is still inside.
“Johnny loves his car. He’d been saving up to race it. He’d never leave it that way.”
Chicago precinct 14. The local police receive an urgent call from Mr. Buukovich. He frantically alerts them to his son’s disappearance. Arriving at the scene, Officer Burkhard of Chicago PD approaches the driver’s side door. Peering in through the window, he sees a key in the ignition. But there’s more inside. The young man’s checkbook has been left in the glove box. His wallet is in the center console, and it’s filled with cash. It’s undeniably suspicious. Still, these abandoned items aren’t proof of foul play. Burkhard heads back to the station to file a report.
Weeks later, the police still have no leads, but Johnny’s parents won’t give up. His father keeps calling the police over and over.
“Chicago precinct 14.”
He remembers his son had a wage dispute and had gone to see his boss. Then he vanished. But Johnny’s boss is someone the police would never suspect. He’s a respected businessman and a prominent member of the local community. Still, Officer Burkhard contacts him about the young boy. The contractor tells him Johnny Buukovich did come to his house with two friends. He says those witnesses can confirm the boy left his place just fine. Where he went from there is a mystery.
Over the next 3 years, this same mystery plays out again and again in Chicago. Young men keep going missing. The ones reported to police remain unsolved.
“This is the 1970s. This is a period of time when hitchhiking was still very popular. It wasn’t unusual for people to travel distances, to go periods of time without actually identifying where they were. So it’s hard to go back and determine where someone goes missing if you’re not sure precisely where they should have been.”
For a predator that stalks human prey, ’70s Chicago is the perfect hunting ground. Street after street of young boys willing to ride with nearly anyone who offers to get them high.
“Generally, there’s a preference for a certain type of victim. They want victims that are vulnerable, victims that aren’t going to be sought out quickly by police. So you choose high-risk victims, which is why prostitutes are such an easy target for offenders. Or you get young men engaged in prostitution activities, or you get drifters, uh, people wandering around looking for a job that, you know, they’re not from the area. You know, these are very vulnerable individuals, people that will go missing and people won’t be looking for them.”
Then, 3 years after Johnny Buukovich goes missing, 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignall rushes into another Chicago police precinct.
“There’s a guy trying to kill me, and I think he almost did.”
He’s clearly traumatized from the bruises on his face. Detectives expect the worst.
“I need to know where you were.”
“I was leaving Williams. There’s this dude in a black sedan.”
Rignall tells his horrifying story. Two days earlier, he’s walking home when he notices a big black car cruising right behind him.
“Hey.”
The driver invites him to hop in and smoke a joint.
“You want to get high?”
The man seems friendly enough.
“All right, right on.”
So Rignall doesn’t hesitate to hop in.
“All right. All right, let’s go.”
“When we’re looking at serial offenders and how they select their victims, often times they’re picking very vulnerable individuals. They’re reading individuals. They’re very good at reading people and what they want. So if this individual is looking for drugs, I’m the individual that can supply those drugs. Then they need to disarm the individual, and they need to get them alone. They need to get them vulnerable.”
But as soon as the car pulls away, the man pounces, shoving a rag over his nose and mouth. It’s soaked with a sweet-smelling liquid, probably chloroform. He wakes several times during the ride, briefly catching glimpses of street lights on the expressway and signs. Then the kidnapper puts the rag back over his mouth, and everything goes black. And the worst is yet to come.
When he regains consciousness, he finds himself inside the predator’s home. He’s been stripped naked. His hands are locked in some sort of torture restraint, and the man from the car looms over him ominously. His face, so friendly and innocent before, now twists into a maniacal, obscene grin. He slowly steps forward, picks up a short, blunt object from the floor, and attacks.
“I think you need to kill me.”
For hours and hours, he’s raped, whipped, and beaten. All at the hands of the brutal sadist.
“Don’t cry.”
Over and over, the assailant uses chloroform to knock him out. And each time he wakes up, the nightmare begins again. Then, after countless hours of pain, in a rare and inexplicable moment of mercy, the sadistic monster dumps Rignall in a park. Alive, but unconscious. Battered and disoriented, the tortured young man goes straight to the police.
“Can you tell me…”
“Nothing. He’s a white guy. He’s a white guy.”
The detectives believe Jeffrey Rignall’s frightening story.
“Okay. So, sir, right now all I know is that he was a white man with a mustache.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell…”
But without a name, an address, or a solid description of his abductor, there’s very little they can do. The one unique detail Rignall does remember: the car, a black Oldsmobile. Also, he remembers seeing an exit sign on the expressway as he drifted in and out of consciousness. The leads are insignificant for the detectives; it’s not enough information to open an investigation. Investigators know they’re looking at a serious offender.
“The problem, of course, is if you look at the history of how he did these murders, the methodical way. He’s got a very consistent pattern. He does things the exact same way. Only when he makes small changes in his pattern does he expose himself to risk. These are the maneuvers of somebody who’s clever, not crazy.”
In just two hours, jurors returned a verdict.
“We, the jury, find the defendant John Wayne Gacy guilty on all 33 counts of first-degree murder.”
“What’s fascinating about Gacy, like other serial killers, is, um, the fact that no one suspected him until investigators actually did an investigation. It’s really hard for people to imagine that guy could do that. Really? You’re telling me that this guy who I know and I go to business meetings with, and I’ve been involved in political fundraisers with, I know this guy pretty well, he’s capable of that? No way. It shocks us.”
“What people really want is when we have a serial killer, when we have this really disturbing series of murders, we want the behavior in that crime to match the complexity of the offender. We want to see the monster. We want to be able to recognize that we are dealing with a serial killer. The fact is that almost never happens. It almost never happens.”
“The reason that these individuals are so successful is that they look just like you and I. They aren’t the monster. They’re your next-door neighbor who has that secret life. They’ve got the public life, and that’s the life they let you see. That’s why neighbors are always talking about on television shows, ‘He seemed like the nicest guy. He always said hi to me in the morning. He was always walking his dog, took care of his garden.’ That’s the public face that we get to see for these guys. We never get to see the private life or the secret life for these individuals. And it’s very disturbing for people. They want to know that if I see a serial killer, I can recognize him. It’s never going to happen. That’s what makes serial killers successful is that they don’t look like the monster. They just look like you and me. And sometimes, really, you know, they’re they’re the antithesis of what we would think a serial offender should be like.”
“Is hereby recommended that the defendant be executed.”
John Wayne Gacy, considered one of the most vicious serial killers in US history, was sentenced to death.
“Even when they’re pushing the cocktail, the deadly cocktail into his arm, he’s being executed, he still is taking control. He still tells them, ‘Kiss my ass.’ He still thinks that he’s in control. And that really was the hallmark of his entire career.”
Gacy’s vile acts, his unquenchable appetite for young men and murder, and his bizarre fascination with a favorite children’s entertainer—clowns—has completely changed the way we see these previously innocent, painted performers. And this new face of horror continues to inspire countless villains, each one more disturbing than the last.
“There’s something horrific about the clown figure that Gacy represents, and our culture has kind of exploited that. You’ll see costumes now on Halloween that are evil clown costumes. That all stems and starts with Gacy. That’s what makes serial killers successful is that they don’t look like the monster. And sometimes, really, you know, they’re they’re the antithesis of what we would think a serial offender should be like.”
A mass grave of missing boys, sadistic sexual torture, and a clown-obsessed murderer behind it all. These things shouldn’t be real, but they are. It’s the true story of John Wayne Gacy, the original killer clown. Behind the screams.
