The Controversy Surrounding John Wayne Gacy’s Paintings

John Wayne Gacy—aka the “Killer Clown”—is widely known as one of the most prolific serial killers of the 20th century, but his passion for art tends to be less well known.

In March 1980, Gacy was convicted of killing 33 boys and young men at his suburban Chicago home, discarding many victims’ bodies in his house and the rest in the Des Plaines River. Gacy, whose terrifying crime spree occurred throughout the 1970s, created thousands of paintings while on death row at Menard Correctional Institute in southern Illinois before his execution on May 10, 1994. 

Much of his art is in the hands of celebrities, private collectors and regular citizens, as well as in galleries like Savannah, Ga.’s Graveface Museum.

A publicly admired business owner with an active social life, Gacy often dressed up as a clown named Pogo for children’s parties and charity events and had another clown alter-ego named Patches. 

He was arrested in December 1978 after a 15-year-old boy went missing who had been seeking a part-time laborer’s job at Gacy’s remodeling company. The investigation into the teenager’s disappearance ultimately led authorities to discover bodies in the crawl space of Gacy’s home and beneath the floor of his garage.

After originally pleading insanity, Gacy confessed to the killings. He was convicted of 33 murders and sentenced to death.

Gacy spent up to six hours per day painting while imprisoned, according to The Los Angeles Times. But Graveface Museum co-owner Ryan Graveface believes Gacy started creating art long before he was put behind bars for the killings. 

“People will say he wasn't [painting before that], but I own two pieces that were from before he was even arrested,” Graveface tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “I have something that's akin to a card that's hand-painted, and that was done in '78 before the arrest. I [also] have a '60s piece from him—a wood block painting that he did the first time he was in jail at Anamosa.” 

Before the murders, Gacy was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy, was sentenced to 10 years in prison at Iowa’s Anamosa State Penitentiary and served two years.

Graveface has amassed one of the largest private collections of artifacts linked to Gacy, including much of his art. 

The private museum's archive includes over 10,000 Gacy-related pieces, among them hundreds of paintings attributed to the killer. To combat the high number of counterfeits in circulation, the museum also offers a service to authenticate Gacy's paintings.

Many of Gacy’s paintings depicted clowns or clown scenes—and he reportedly dressed as Pogo the Clown when he committed some murders. Other subjects Gacy brought to life in his art included Jesus Christ, Elvis, skulls, birds and the Seven Dwarves. 

Gacy also painted portraits of other serial killers, including Ed Gein, Charles Manson and the Zodiac Killer, according to James Sparks, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who developed a connection with Gacy while he was imprisoned.

Sparks tells A&E Crime + Investigation that he visited Gacy numerous times and even helped sell some of Gacy’s art to Sparks’ college friends. 

“He would also do personal paintings of people [who sent in] a photo, and he charged a little more for that,” Sparks says. “He did a sex skull, which was basic male and female sexual parts in the form of a skull. He did Hitler. He did Christ. He did Young Elvis. He did old Elvis. He did all kinds of paintings.”

Sparks estimates that Gacy sold most of his paintings for about $50 each while imprisoned. After his 2013 execution, the paintings began selling for much more. 

According to Graveface, “normal people that were interested in weird stuff, but they [weren’t] showy about it” started buying up Gacy’s works. “Then it became famous people entirely,” he says. “Johnny Depp, all these people that are in a specific circle, a lot of record-label people, a lot of bands and punk people.”

The Los Angeles Times estimated in 1994 that Gacy made about $30,000 from his artwork while incarcerated, which is good money for someone behind bars. State lawyers with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office tried to seize control of Gacy’s bank account to help cover the cost of his incarceration, but eventually gave up.

People still buy and sell Gacy’s artworks, although there are many fakes currently in the market, according to Graveface. 

Graveface says he obtained a logbook from Gacy’s sister that “details every moment of his life on death row” and includes a list of all the paintings he created and how much he sold them for.

Sparks says the killer’s Pogo the Clown paintings are some of  “the most sought-after Gacy pieces” among art dealers and collectors.

“That's his self-image: Pogo,” Sparks says. 

Why Gacy felt so connected to clowns remains unknown, but clowns are typically associated with all things approachable, fun and likeable. For Sparks, Gacy’s likeability proved to be one of his most prominent—and terrifying— traits: “I guarantee you, had you known John Gacy, you probably would have said, ‘He's just John.’ He was just one of those people who never met a stranger.”