Nose and red wig, white make-up, burlesque disguise. A clumsy and touching character, the august is arguably one of the most well-known types of clown in popular culture. His antics have been making spectators laugh in circuses since the end of the 19th century, but also in dark rooms. It inspires big names in cinema, such as Buster Keaton or Chaplin.
But if Charlot made the happiness of young and old, Grippe-sou terrified them. In the novel Thatwritten by Stephen King in 1986, and adapted for television in 1990 (“He came back), this evil and bloodthirsty clown, a mixture of Bozo and Ronald McDonald, reigns terror in a small town in Maine, United States.
The image of a “good man”
A tenacious legend has it that Stephen King used a real serial killer as a model for this Pennywise character. Born in March 1943 in Chicago, John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death for raping, torturing and killing at least 33 young men, between the ages of 14 and 23, in the 1970s. owner of a painting and decorating business, twice divorced… Gacy, in Cook County, is considered “a good man”, explains to 20 minutes the journalist Daniel Lesueur, author of the book John Wayne Gacy, the killer clown*, published in 2008.
In 1975, he was even appointed director of the annual Polish community parade in Chicago. On this occasion, “he is photographed shaking hands with the wife of the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. This brought him a certain respectability, ”he underlines.
John Wayne Gacy therefore leads an uneventful life. He particularly likes to dress up as a clown, twice a month, to entertain sick children in hospitals in the suburbs of Chicago. His character has a name: Pogo.
“Clowning around was a way for me to relax. I loved entertaining children. Some people like to relax in a different way, by going out for a drink. Me, when I made up as a clown, I was relaxed”, he will tell in an interview given in 1992. “When I started, I regressed to childhood. It was fun being a clown because you could be yourself or just let go and fool around. You can be slapstick, funny and have a good time. »
A cemetery under his house
“He had a sort of dual personality,” says Daniel Lesueur. “On the one hand, he’s really nice, he does stuff for kids and he dresses up as a clown. And at other times, he kills people. Clown during the day, he turns into a predator at night. “He had homosexual tendencies, attacked young men who he liked and who often worked for his company,” adds the journalist.
Sentenced in 1968 to ten years in prison for the rape of a minor, Gacy was released on parole from Anamosa penitentiary only two years later. And it was in 1972 that he began to kill. His first victim is Timothy McCoy, a 16-year-old boy whom he meets at a bus station and takes home. The young man is stabbed and buried in the crawl space, under the house of the serial killerin Norwood Park.
It’s the only murder he’ll admit to. And even. According to him, he killed Timothy McCoy while trying to defend himself. The man concedes, again during the interview he gave in 1992, having buried it under his house and covered it with a layer of concrete. But he swears that he did not know that 26 other corpses were there. “I think I was wrongly convicted,” he dares, finally claiming not to know the victims and denouncing a “botched” investigation.
It was in 1978 that the police, who were looking for a 15-year-old young man, finally turned their attention to John Wayne Gacy. At the end of their investigation, they discover the 26 decomposing bodies of his victims, buried under the house. Three others were buried on his property. Finally, four corpses were recovered from the Des Plaines River, near his home. At first, Gacy confesses. He confided to the investigators that he brought his victims to his home – young people to whom he offered odd jobs. He handcuffed them, raped them and strangled them.
“Kiss my ass”
During his trial in 1980, his lawyers, Sam and Robert Motta, pleaded insanity, hoping to avoid capital punishment. Gacy then accuses his evil double, “Bad Jack”, of being responsible for these murders. In court, “he had a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde side,” says Daniel Lesueur. “From one day to the next, it was day and night. He could be absolutely charming, and the next day prove to be ignoble and insulting. Finally, the jury finds him guilty of 33 murders. At 37, he was sentenced to death.
Daniel Lesueur admits that the fact that Gacy liked to dress up as a clown is not the “most important” element of his personality. “It’s even quite anecdotal, but that’s the selling side of the story. »
Gacy, one of the worst serial killers in the United States, will wait fourteen years on death row. The prisoner, who compares himself to Michelangelo, passes the time by painting portraits of clowns, which he sometimes sells for several thousand dollars. He was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994. To the guard who accompanied him, he addressed these last words: “Kiss my ass” [embrasse mon cul].
One question remains: did John Wayne Gacy really inspire Stephen King? In any case, the author never mentioned this serial killer in the interviews he gave about his novel. In November 2013, the writer said he had the idea for this novel when he lived in Colorado in the late 1970s. He wanted “a monstrous, vicious, disgusting, vulgar creature, which one does not doesn’t want to cross paths and makes you want to scream as soon as you see it”. He wondered, “What terrifies children the most?” The answer was the clowns. »
Thus was born the character Pennywise. The ABC channel contacted him a few years later with the idea of adapting his bestseller into a mini-series. “I thought it was a weird idea, but it worked and scared off a whole generation of young people who became terrified of clowns. »
* “John Wayne Gacy, the killer clown”, by Daniel Lesueur, Camion Noir edition, 300 pages, 26 euros