By Adelaide Liddel
12 fried shrimp, a bucket of Kentucky fried chicken, and a pound of strawberries. This is John Wayne Gacy's last meal. Certainly not a generic choice as far as these go. Certainly appetizing, I'm hungry just thinking about that chicken. Usually people go for burgers and French fries. He ate this last bucket of chicken and rather excessive amount of strawberries and shrimp, on May 9 1994. On a picnic, on prison grounds with his family. The gloom that must have hung over that family gathering. It was the price that had to be paid for the 33 rapes and murders Gacy committed during his reign, while also dressing up as a clown for children's parties, which certainly gives you enough cause to hate clowns.
Gacy was found guilty fourteen years before this cheery last picnic. He had attempted to plead insanity, but this defence obviously fell flat. He famously joked about only being guilty “of running a funeral parlour without a license.” He also attempted to say all thirty three killings were the result of erotic asphyxiation, again not fooling anyone, since he'd probably learn to stop “accidentally” choking people after the third time at the very most. He was executed at Stateville Correctional Centre, in Illinois. It caused a minor stir in the public consciousness, reminding this Canadian of hockey riots, people throwing parties, getting arrested for rude behaviour and being drunk in front of people. People even sold Gacy themed t shirts, really getting in the spirit.
John Wayne Gacy also gave us another excecution blunder story, which are always fun to hear. The iv tube through which the drugs were being injected lethally became clogged. The chemicals solidified. This actually lead the state of Illinois to make changes in their method of lethal injection. There's even a course called IV 101, the skills taught in which could have prevented this mishap. It took all of eighteen minutes to put Pogo to death. Chief prosecutor on the case, William Kunkle said that “he still got a much easier death than any of his victims.” After he kicked the bucket, his brain was removed by a doctor who had interviewed both him and other violent offenders during his life. No abnormalities have been found in the brain. Take this information as you will. Oh, and his last words? “Kiss my ass.”
Sources supplied by the author: People vs Gacy 468 N.D. 2nd 1171, verdict pages, excecution records, crime.about.com, clarkprosecutor.org, the Chicago Tribune.
Editor's note: this piece ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is published as the author wrote it, spelling and tone included. The tone is glib about an execution and about a man's last meal, and it is hers rather than this archive's; the piece is kept because the factual spine of it holds up, which is more than can be said for most writing about that night. What it gets right, checked against the record. The last meal on May 9, 1994 and the family picnic on prison grounds are documented. He was convicted in March 1980, fourteen years before, and he was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois shortly after midnight on May 10, 1994. The insanity defence failed. The funeral-parlour line and the erotic-asphyxiation argument are both his. The intravenous tube did clog because the chemicals solidified, Illinois changed its lethal-injection procedure afterwards, the process took about eighteen minutes, and the prosecutor William Kunkle did say the death was easier than his victims'. His brain was removed after death by Dr Helen Morrison, who had interviewed him and other violent offenders, and no abnormality was found. The last words are as reported. Two things to correct. The count is 33 murders, which is what he was convicted of on 33 counts; “33 rapes and murders” conflates two different charges. And the citation should read 468 N.E.2d 1171, the North Eastern Reporter, not N.D. One thing the piece leaves out entirely, and it is the thing worth adding. The victims were young men and boys, most of them between fourteen and twenty-one, killed between 1972 and 1978, and twenty-six of them were buried in the crawl space under his house on West Summerdale Avenue. Several were not identified for decades: Cook County reopened the identifications in 2011 and named William Bundy, James Byron Haakenson, Michael Marino and Francis Wayne Alexander in the years that followed. At least five remain unidentified. An article about the manner of his death is a reasonable thing to write, but the count in it is thirty-three people and none of them are named here.