IT'S been almost three decades since a needle containing a lethal cocktail was jabbed into the chubby arm of 'killer clown' John Wayne Gacy.
But while the Chicago-born mass murderer – responsible for the sexual torture and murders of at least 33 young men and boys – is now dead, the investigation into his chilling crimes has no end in sight.
Gacy terrorised the Chicago area for six years until 1978, and earned his chilling nickname after it emerged that he worked as a clown prior to his crimes.
Most of his victims were buried in a small crawl space underneath his house of horrors, while others were thrown into the Des Plaines River.
Typically he lured victims to his home, duped them into wearing handcuffs as part of a 'magic trick', then raped, tortured and strangled them.
He spent 14 years on death row before he was executed aged 52-year, but questions remain about the the suburban contractor and local Democratic Party player.
Are there more victims? Who are the five young men and boys whose identities remain unknown? Did Gacy have accomplices? And was the Killer Clown part of a cross-country paedophilic sex ring?
Unknown victims
Retired homicide detective Rafael Tovar is convinced there are more victims; he said Gacy told him so.
"I honestly believe that he was honest with me. He was convinced that if you knew the answer or could find out, he'd tell you the truth," Tovar said in 2020.
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10"But he also liked to play mind games. So we're in the car and I ask him, 'John, how many bodies are there?'"
According to the detective, Gacy paused and then replied: "I've told my lawyer and I've told you guys that there's 33, but really, 45 sounds like a good number."
Gacy also travelled a fair bit in the 1970s, always on the hunt for sex with young men, who were hitchhiking in droves during the 'Me' Decade in the US.
His first recorded murder was on January 3, 1972, when he stabbed 16-year-old Timothy Jack McCoy to death after picking him up at the Greyhound bus station in Chicago.
But what about the years from 1972 to 1975 when there were no recorded Gacy murders? Did he change his methodology or hunting territory?
I've told my lawyer and I've told you guys that there's 33, but really, 45 sounds like a good number [of victims]
"That, to me, is the question; from 1972 to 1975 he either didn’t kill or must have had other improvised dump sites," criminologist Michael Arntfield said.
"He doesn't really settle on the crawl space until 1975 or 1976, and when that’s filled, he turns to the water.
“You have to look at that section – 1972 to 1975 – for a specific tally because we don’t have the graveyard that was his house.
"He could have been on the road where he improvised. There could be dozens of unknown victims.”
Inspired by 'Candy Man'
Investigators always believed that Houston serial killer Dean “Candyman” Coryll was the killer clown's template.
Coryll recruited young men who recruited others like themselves to be raped and murdered.
Employees at Gacy's construction firm – P.D.M. Contractors – had a nasty habit of ending up dead in his crawl space or dumped into the Des Plaines River.
One such young man was 25-year-old Charles Antonio Hattula, who disappeared on May 13, 1978.
Ten days later he was discovered drowned in the Pecatonica River. Cops ruled out foul play.
Other suspects
But two of Gacy's employees were never murdered: Michael Rossi and David Cram.
One Chicago detective who wouldn't be named said there was “overwhelming evidence Gacy worked with an accomplice".
As the clock ticked towards his demise, Gacy would tell anyone who would listen there were other suspects.
“At the time of my arrest there were four other suspects – three of the suspects they knew then were Michael Rossi, David Cram and Phillip Paske,” Gacy told Chicago reporter Walter Jacobson in 1992.
“All employees of P.D.M. Contractors, ALL with keys to the [Gacy] house on Summerdale.”
Paedo ring
On death row, Gacy pointed the finger at a former employee named Philip Paske, who was the top lieutenant of a man named John David Norman.
“He’s the paedophile of paedophiles,” Dallas Police Det. Arsie Nelson said of Norman in the 1970s.
From the early to late 1970s, Norman ran a nationwide sex trafficking operation called the Delta Ring, based in Chicago and spanning across the world, that supplied underage boys to paedophiles.
Two of the boys believed to have been slain by Gacy were last seen near Norman’s home.
Gacy, Norman and Paske are all in Chicago around that time… I find it hard for all these things to just be a coincidence
Norman was a violent paedophile who had sexual-related convictions with young boys dating back to 1954 in Houston.
When he was arrested in Dallas in 1973, detectives discovered more than 30,000 index cards in his home with the names of paedophiles who paid for sex with young boys, and their sexual preferences.
Accomplices of Dean “Candy Man” Coryll alleged that he worked with Norman and bought, sold and murdered many boys.
“Gacy, Norman and Paske are all in Chicago around that time,” Tracy Ullman, a producer of The Clown and the Candy Man documentary, told Oxygen.com.
“I find it hard for all these things to just be a coincidence.”
Coded adverts
The producer also claims the sickos were able to find "like-minded men" through coded adverts and meet-ups.
“From years of research, we found that paedophiles – like Norman and Gacy – had lines of communication that tied them together, whether through coded ads in Boy's Life magazine or actual contact to trade pornography or traffic in humans," Ullman said.
One man who refuses to dismiss anything new on Gacy is Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
He was behind renewed efforts to put names to the unidentified bodies unearthed from Gacy’s crawl space more than 40 years ago.
There are still five young men and boys whose grave markers state only their date of death and the words: “We remembered.”
Until those final bodies are identified, Gacy will continue as something of an apex predator of the soul.
Terry Sullivan was one of the prosecutors who sent him to death row.
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“I felt from the very beginning there may be loose ends,” Sullivan told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Gacy investigation remains open – and there appears to be no end in sight.
Inside The Mind of John Wayne Gacy – The Real Life Killer Clown by Brad Hunter is out on August 4th – £9.99 (published Ad Lib).
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