He grew up in a family where his father was a drunk and was beaten with a razor belt if he and his brothers misbehaved. Growing up he was well liked in his community and even performed as a clown in the neighborhood at children's parties. One day in 1978, a fifteen-year-old named Robert Piest disappeared. His mother said John had called him about a construction job. The police went to Gacy's house and searched his property and what they found was very disturbing. It was discovered that he had killed 33 bad boys and young men and most of them were buried under the house, garage and other places of discovery in the Des Plaines River. Gacy invited his "victims to his house with the promise of construction work and eventually strangled most of them and then raped them ("John Wayne Gacy Biography", 2014). He also dressed in his alter ego “Pose the Clown Although Gacy confessed to the crimes, the trial “focused on the possibility that he could be declared insane and then committed to a state psychiatric facility” (“John Wayne Gacy Biography,” Gracy told police). that the murder was not committed by him but by his alter ego. He was sentenced to 12 death sentences and 21 natural life sentences. While in prison he devoted himself to art and some of his works were exhibited in a gallery of Chicago On May 10, 1994, John Wayne Gacy died by lethal injection at the Statesville Correctional Center on Crest Hill..