John Wayne Gacy (Killer Clown) | Mental Health & Personality

hello this is dr grande today's question asks if i can analyze the mental health and personality factors that may be at work with john wayne gacy also known as the killer clown just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so here i'll be looking at the background of john wayne gacy moving to the crimes and then a look at the mental health and personality factors starting with the background john wayne gacy was born on march 17 1942 in chicago illinois his father john stanley gacy worked as a machinist and his mother marion was a homemaker gary had two sisters he got along pretty well with them but his relationship with his father was strained as his father struggled with regulating alcohol intake and he was physically violent toward everyone in the house casey's father regularly beat him with his hands and with various objects when gacy was four years old his father beat him with a leather belt after gacy touched some of his father's car parts casey stole a toy truck from a local store when he was six which resulted in another beating at one point gacy's father knocked him unconscious with a broomstick when casey was somewhere around age seven his father found out that gacy along with another boy had played house with a 15 year old girl who had an intellectual disability around that same time it was discovered that gacy was taking his mother's underwear in addition to physical aggression his father would often make demeaning comments toward gacy calling gacy names that suggested he was unintelligent not as good as his sisters and would never be successful in life at some point one of his father's friends a local contractor molested gasey casey never told his father about that in 1953 gacy was on a playground when a swing struck him in the head this caused a blood clot in his brain he would have blackouts periodically for the next five years when he was 18 he started dressing neatly almost at a compulsive level he also attached a blue light to his car and sped to the scene of accents casey started working as an assistant precinct captain for a democratic party candidate in 1960. in 1961 casey drove to las vegas where he briefly worked with an ambulance service before being transferred to a mortuary assistant position he would sleep on a cot that was positioned next to the room where the embalming was done he would regularly watch the morticians as they embalmed bodies later gacy would say that one evening he opened a coffin of a dead teenage male and caressed and embraced the body before feeling a sense of shock he was fired because his boss found clothes of deceased individuals lying next to the caskets after this casey asked if he could return home and he drove back to chicago casey enrolled in college he graduated in 1963 and took a job as a management trainee at a shoe company in 1964 the company transferred him to springfield illinois where he was to work as a salesperson he was eventually promoted to management casey became engaged around the same time he would marry in september 1964. his wife's father bought three kentucky fried chicken restaurants in waterloo iowa casey and his wife moved there so he could manage those businesses casey was to be paid fifteen thousand dollars a year and a cut of the profits a substantial amount of money at that time he started to operate a sort of club in his basement where employees of the restaurant would come over and play pool drink and socialize casey was particularly interested in talking to young men who worked for him tending to ignore the young women he would make frequent sexual advances toward the men and if he was rejected he would play it off as if he was just kidding around or he would say he was just trying to test them and see if they would do it casey and his wife would have a son and a daughter in 1966 and 1967 respectively later gacy referred to this time as perfect in july 1966 casey's parents visited him and his wife his father told him that he was wrong about him and apologized for all the harm he had caused when gacy was younger now when gacy was back in illinois he became a member of the civic organization called the united states junior chamber otherwise known as the jaycees this organization is only for young people at the time gacy was in this the age range was 18-35 now it's 18 to 40. other members of the jaycees found casey to be bombastic obnoxious and ambitious in this particular chapter of the jaycees many of them were active in prostitution illegal substance use and swinging gacy was active in these activities as well starting in august 1967 gacy committed an assault of a sexual nature from this point forward in this video when i used the word assault that is the type to which i am referring he went on to assault a number of young males a few of them were deceived by gacy he would tell them he was conducting scientific research about homosexuality and he would pay them for participating in that research in march 1968 the first victim of his recent assaults reported the crime to his father and eventually gacy was charged casey hired one of his 18 year old employees to attack the victim so that the victim would not testify the victim was able to identify as attacker and this led back to gacy casey was arrested and charged for that attack and intimidation he was ordered to undergo a mental health assessment the mental health professional who assessed him determined he had anti-social personality disorder they basically said he was hopeless they reported that no therapy or medical treatment would be able to help gacy he was destined to be a menace to society now this mental health professional was probably not a member of the optimistic therapist club however in this particular case they seem to be correct casey was offered a plea deal where he would plead guilty to one charge he was sentenced to 10 years in prison his wife divorced him he would never see his wife or children again now in prison casey managed to get along well with the other prisoners he joined the inmate chapter of the jaycees i find it interesting that some organizations actually had inmate chapters back then i can understand why that would happen now because attitudes have shifted a bit but back then it just seems out of place like somebody in the organization was looking at their membership and thought we're going to need an inmate chapter right like these people are going to be arrested i was thinking about other organizations that could have inmate chapters and how that chapter would be different from the one that's on the outside like with the inmate chapter of the girl scouts sell cookies with little files baked into them i don't know we see that gacy increased that membership from 50 to 650 so he was quite successful with the jaycees in prison casey was released from prison in june of 1970 he only served a year and a half of his 10-year sentence as the condition of his release he needed to live with his mother in chicago which is what he did he also started working as a short-order cook in february 1971 he was arrested for assaulting a teenage male when the victim did not appear in court the charges were dismissed the state of iowa never found out about this charge and in october of 1971 his parole in iowa ended casey bought a house with his mother and eventually started his own construction business the annual revenue reached two hundred thousand dollars by 1978. casey would commit his first murder in january 1972 i'll come back to the murders in a moment i need to get through the rest of his background first in june 1972 gacy was arrested again for assault this time the victim tried to blackmail him so the charges were dropped casey married for a second time in july 1972 casey had a number of young males working for him in his construction business he would routinely harass them over the next few years he would attempt to assault and assault several of them in 1975 gacy joined the jolly joker clown club they would perform in various places like children's hospitals parties and political functions so casey would dress up as a clown that's where we get the name the killer clown casey would get divorced from a second wife in 1976 and after he told her that he was bisexual and she observed him bringing teenage males into his garage many people noticed drastic changes in gacy's behavior after his divorce so now moving back to the murders gacy committed at least 33 homicides all of gacy's victims were male and it's believed that all them were young most of them were between the ages of 15 and 21. as i mentioned the first murder was in january of 1972 it was a 16 year old the next murder was in january of 1974 this victim was never identified then there was another murder in july of 1975 an 18 year old then we see that gacy enters into what he referred to as his cruising years which ran from 1976 to 1978. he murdered about 14 victims in 1976 about 11 in 1977 and about five in 1978. if we add the three that i mentioned before this gives us the 33 victims casey's mo varied somewhat throughout his time committing murders but generally he would pick up young men encourage them to drink or use drugs trick them into putting handcuffs on by saying it was a magic trick assault and torture them then strangle them to death all the victims were murdered in gacy's home and all but the last two victims were murdered between 3am and 6am the majority of the bodies were stored in gacy's house mostly in the crawl space he also threw a few bodies in a nearby river casey's last victim was killed in december 1978 casey had visited the victim in a store where the victim worked not long before the murder the police investigated gacy for some time because people had reported that the victim had seen gacy eventually gacy confessed he would be charged with 33 counts of murder casey's trial started in february 1980 the jury deliberated for less than two hours finding gasy guilty of all 33 counts at that time it was the largest number of murder convictions for one person in the history of the united states gacy would be sentenced to death he would remain on death row for 14 years filing and losing a number of appeals he would be executed on may 10 1994 now moving to mental health and personality factors i'll start by looking at his potential personality profile i conceptualize personality using the five factor model i remember the big five traits using the acronym ocean openness to experience conscientiousness extroversion agreeableness and neuroticism so as far as openness to experience we see a high level casey was artistic creative he had a number of fantasies and he was intellectually curious he had high conscientiousness he was hard-working ambitious competent and organized his level of extroversion was high he was outgoing friendly assertive talkative and sensation seeking his level of agreeableness was low he was competitive lacked empathy was arrogant and not straightforward and we see his level of neuroticism was high he was angry he had a limited ability to resist temptation he was depressed and anxious however he was able to remain calm under stressful circumstances there are many different opinions about what was going on with gacy's mental health looking at the testimony from the court proceedings some of the terms that were used by the experts were official mental disorders like what we see in the dsm but others were not just to name a few of the terms that were used borderline schizophrenia borderline personality paranoid schizophrenia anti-social personality disorder multiple personality disorder mixed personality disorder we see who is described as narcissistic obsessive compulsive hypomanic psychotic and atypically psychotic casey attempted to convince the mental health professionals that he had multiple personality disorder this would now be called dissociative identity disorder he claimed to have several personalities including the clown the policeman the politician and the contractor there was no agreement among the experts but most of them believed he did not have multiple personalities i think the best explanation for his behavior was anti-social personality disorder his behavior aligns with all seven of the symptom criteria repeated criminal behavior deceitfulness impulsivity aggressiveness a reckless disregard for safety irresponsibility and a lack of remorse it seems fairly clear that gay c had a number of characteristics of psychopathy and narcissism like being manipulative grandiose having a sense of entitlement failing to take responsibility superficial charm fearless dominance and lacking empathy so why did gasey become a serial killer in some ways gacy is similar to other serial killers and in other ways he is remarkably different looking at the ways he's similar he had a history of progressively more violent crime he escalated from assault to assault and murder he was mistreated when he was young he had an interest in police work and impersonated a police officer he had at least one head injury and he had excessive sexual fantasies looking at the ways he was different he really used a lot of torture and was particularly sadistic now most serial killers are sadistic and involve themselves in torture but gacy took it to a new level this seemed to be a major objective he was trying to complete through his crimes also his victims were men most serial killers target women he kept his bodies in his home i find it interesting that jeffrey dahmer also targeted men and kept bodies in his home many victims did not report attempted assaults this allowed gacy to become prolific he ran his own business he made pretty good money and he generally paid his bills he would sometimes dress as a clown i think casey did more damage to the reputation of clowns than any other single person in history now a typical serial killer tends to be male and tends to target female victims the way we tend to think of serial killing is that the murderer was rejected or mistreated by women sometimes both they internalize that treatment and they start to think poorly of themselves then that resentment and shame turns to anger the killer targets women in order to make women pay for how the killer feels their mission is to completely dominate the victims and make them suffer because it brings the killer sexual gratification and satisfies their desire for revenge in theory a serial killer could have only one of those motives and still commit the murders can john wayne gacy fit into this paradigm can he fit into the way we tend to understand serial homicide i think he can obviously his expression of violence was toward men and not toward women but other than that i think this is one way we could think of this case instead of a poor relationship with his mother casey had a poor relationship with his father he felt rejected by his father in addition gacy was bisexual as part of that orientation he had an interest in men it's not clear if he ever wanted to have a true romantic relationship with a man but it does seem clear that he wanted to have sex with men casey gained more intense sexual gratification from killing males so that heightened his experience that is one of the things that made him pretty dangerous now there's another theory about gacy that could explain his behavior as well this theory says that what gacy was killing he was really playing the role of his father and thinking of the victim as himself so his killings were motivated by self-hatred and to reenact the rage his father had for him like it hurt gacy so badly that he felt like an awful person and he wanted to make himself pay even more this desire gets converted into violence toward these innocent victims this theory really doesn't explain how gacy seemed to be so driven specifically to have sex with his victims although it could explain the extreme level of sadism this is a fascinating theory it's very psychodynamic like dealing with parental love objects and transference but i don't think it explains his behavior as well as the first theory i believe gary is essentially like many other serial killers except he wanted to dominate men instead of dominating women this takes us to the last question was john wayne gacy psychotic well of course he reported hallucinations and delusions but other than the multiple personality theory which not many people believed convincing people that he was psychotic was his only chance of avoiding the death penalty of course i don't know the answer to the question but i haven't seen a lot of support for the psychosis theory again some of the professionals said that he had schizophrenia which of course is associated with psychosis but they said he had paranoia it really doesn't seem like he believed he was being persecuted or pursued by evil forces although he did respond poorly to being under police surveillance now gacy did seem to have obsessive-compulsive traits like for the years he was in prison he kept a log of his daily activity there was also evidence of narcissism like i talked about before he developed stories about co-conspirators when he was in prison i guess to give the court some reason to keep him alive like he could help them catch the other people he said were involved he seemed to honestly believe that he was going to win his appeals considering he confessed and they found the majority of the victims buried in his crawl space it's incredible that he could have believed he would really ever be free but that could just be narcissism he didn't have to be psychotic to have that belief there was one moment in a video recorded interview with a local tv channel in which the interviewer asked gacy about a particular victim now during the entire time he was in prison casey always said he was innocent this interview was no exception when casey went to answer that question he said about that victim that's not one i killed only when the interviewer pointed out what gacy said did he try to correct his mistake he said he didn't mean that that was an unusual mistake for somebody who is psychopathic and narcissistic but again it doesn't point to psychosis i think one of the lessons that we can learn from the gacy case is it's important to report all crimes even though that can be very challenging almost everyone who commits horrible crimes committed only slightly less horrible crimes on prior occasions those are my thoughts on john wayne gacy please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020