John Wayne Gacy’s disturbingly sly and slippery quotes come to us courtesy of Psychological Autopsy. The commentary following the quotes is by Patrick H. Moore
John Wayne Gacy could have been somebody if his father hadn’t harassed and belittled him over his arguably girlish tendencies to such a degree that — in what turned out to be his fatal defense — he closed off a key part of his emotions to such a degree that the intense pain he felt as a child as a result of his father’s cruel and constant badgering transmogrified into a doubly destructive sexual love and intense loathing for teenage boys (his victims) because THEY REMINDED HIM OF HIMSELF, which is why he both loved and hated them.
John Wayne Gacy lost that part of himself that was most real and authentic and as a result of that — even though he could show great tenderness to his sister and mother — his responses to his hideous crimes, as revealed in the following quotes were fraught with a stubborn denial that substituted cleverness for any real insight into self.
“A clown can get away with murder.” (Although when Gacy acted as a clown for the children, he was reportedly always amiable, his clown figures, as manifested in his notorious “clown paintings” seem to be stripped of all humanity; in short, they are are literally “clowns without pity”.)
“If Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t meet the legal test of insanity, God help the one that does meet it. I mean, it — it has to really be something. If Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t meet it, then nobody does; and for me, it’s a psychological ploy to use…” (Gacy, of course, tried the Multiple Personality Disorder defense which failed. His deepest desire was that he not be thought of as homosexual. Here he appears to be rationalizing his own inability to win on an insanity defense by comparing himself to Dahmer. If Dahmer can’t win with the insanity defense, then nobody can.)
“The whole thing with the State’s case has been a sexual theory, and I have always disagreed with that.” (Gacy cannot accept the fact he was driven to have sex with the boys before murdering them because that would make him a homosexual murderer, a possibility he could not abide. The sad thing is that this is his father’s voice still sounding in his head after all has been lost. His father, of course, could not bear the thought that his son might be gay.)
“No, I would definitely not be homosexual. I have nothing against what they do, and I don’t deny that I engage in sex with males, but that’s — I’m bisexual.” (Gacy was bisexual, he had wives with whom he cohabited, though it’s hard to imagine his desire for the ladies in his life matching the intensity of his desire for the boys).
“The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license.” (This is the hard, cynical John Wayne Gacy; his namesake, the real John Wayne, would be proud. “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”
“…hell, I don’t see how you could have found me insane even with the thirteen doctors. It was like playing a board game of chess.” (Gacy was smart and I suspect that he knew all along that his insanity defense was doomed.)
“My personal opinion is the insanity defense does not belong in the courtroom, not in the legal system at all. I don’t even believe it should be used.” (More sour grapes from a man who, try as he might, had no workable alibi. But wasn’t there some validity in his MPD defense? Didn’t he in a sense dissociate dramatically when the sex-and-bloodlust part of his psyche took over, a twisted sub-set of himself that would appear to have little in common with the real and authentic Gacy, the boy who loved to garden with his sister and cook with his mother.)
“What we’re, what we’ve been dispelling is that the thing of it is, they want you to believe that I, and I alone, committed the murders, and I had nothing to do with the murders of anyone.” (Gacy holding his mud. He simply cannot give in and admit that he killed the boys because they were his doubles and because in killing them, he was in some strange way killing himself and pleasing his father at the same time.)
“Well, the idea that I am a homosexual thrill killer and all that — that garbage; and they painted this image of me that, like, I trawled down the streets and stalked young boys and slaughtered them. Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule, you’d know damn well that I was never out there.” (Gacy was talented and he did work hard. But like anyone with an all-encompassing obsession, he managed to fit sex-and-murder into his schedule. Serial killers are funny that way. Despite all obstacles, they just keep carving notches on the headboard.)