True Crime Tuesday: Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy

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John Wayne Gacy, one of the most infamous serial killers in history, raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and teenage boys in his home in Chicago. He buried most of his victims in his crawlspace.

Gacy was known in his community for frequently dressing up as his alter ego, Pogo the Clown, at parties that he hosted for his entire neighborhood. By 1978, public perception of Gacy would change when police searched his house and discovered several trenches filled with human remains in the crawlspace. Gacy confessed to murdering “at least thirty” victims and was arrested. He would become known as the “Killer Clown”.

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Eventually, Gacy was found guilty and was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980. He was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.

Karen Conti was in high school when she watched the bodies being removed from John Wayne Gacy’s crawlspace on the news. Fifteen years later, Conti, now an attorney, was called upon to defend Gacy during his final death row appeals.

Conti joins Kendall & Casey for True Crime Tuesday to recount this experience, which she wrote about in her book Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy: Defending America’s Most Evil Serial Killer on Death Row.