The Man Who Killed Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

kidded that he was becoming a borderline workaholic. The jokes were not considered so funny when he was hospitalized for three days with nerve problems.
    Years later, Ed McCreight, one of Gacy's fellow Springfield Jaycees, recalled that he was bright, a rapid talker, and a good family man with a firm handshake. They were all qualities valued by Jaycees. McCreight thought that Gacy looked so much like Eddie Bracken that he could have been the actor's double.
    The only incident involving Gacy that McCreight could recall as being at all unusual occurred when the former Chicagoan put a flashing red light on the dashboard of his car while they were working on a parade route. McCreight asked him why he was installing the light. Gacy replied that he had a card authorizing him to use the device, which is normally reserved for police agencies, the military, or emergency vehicles. McCreight told him to take it off. He might be entitled to use it in Chicago, McCreight said, but that didn't mean it could be used in Springfield.
    The red light on his car, like the Jaycees, helped set him apart from other people, marking him, if ever so slightly, as someone different. He was someone who was going places.
    Gacy liked the limelight. He liked to be seen with important people, doing important things, and he insisted on being noticed. His driving reflected his need for attention, and although he was presumably a responsible married man, he drove like he was a teenager. He liked to burn rubber. He wanted other drivers to notice him, and he could be impatient when he had to stop at intersections or was caught behind slow-moving vehicles.
    He once cut into a funeral procession and joined the mourners as he was driving to work. Police gave him a ticket. He was ticketed for speeding the same year. Prior to that he had picked up a pair of tickets in Chicago for ignoring stop signs. His wife said later that he had a habit of doing "crazy things" every once in a while.
    The troubles with traffic violations were only minor missteps, and they went virtually unnoticed among the more rewarding fruits of his labor with Nunn-Bush and the Jaycees. He had a job he was good at, and he was earning recognition in his community. It looked like John Gacy was building a good future for himself in Springfield.
    Then his father-in-law, Fred W. Myers, offered him a job with the fried-chicken franchise in Waterloo. John and Marlynn Gacy packed up and moved to Iowa.
    Footnotes
    1 Playboy's Illustrated History of Organized Crime by Richard Hammer, Playboy Press, 1975, p. 56.
    2 Las Vegas Review-Journal , January 10, 1979.

 
     
    2...
Waterloo
    The early months in Waterloo added further luster to the promising life of John Wayne Gacy, Jr..
    The young couple settled into a pleasant bungalow on Fairlane Street in a newer, middle-class area of the west side. It was quiet and there was ample room for Gacy to putter with his hobbies of woodworking and gardening in the spare moments he could sneak from other activities.
    From all appearances, the Gacys were developing into a perfect nuclear family. Marlynn Gacy had presented her husband with first a son, then a daughter. The boy's middle name was the same as his father's and grandfather's first names, John. The girl's middle name was the same as that of her father's beloved mother, Elaine. 3
    The life of the Gacys was almost storybook idyllic. Gacy appeared to be happy with his marriage, his work, and his social activities. Even his health was good. There was no more serious trouble with his heart, and no blackouts such as those he had told Marlynn about. Marlynn too was happy. She had two healthy children she loved, a pleasant home, and an industrious husband who was good to her. They fought no more than any other married couple, and he had never hit her.
    John and Marlynn Gacy quickly found that Waterloo was a nice place to live. Situated along the Cedar River in the middle of flat Iowa corn country 108 miles northeast of