Of board games and serial killers

Last weekend, between pantomiming movie titles and humming show tunes in a fierce game of Cranium, conversation turned to a rather morbid subject matter. Friends began swapping the monstrous feats of serial killers like trading cards: "No, the kid that ran out into the street naked and bleeding was with Dahmer. Ted Bundy was the law school drop out that picked up women in his VW Bug." The pathology and gruesome methods of these butchers has been a topic of fascination for centuries, but perhaps more so in post-modernity where the wealth and prosperity of our society allows these crimes to be committed behind a veneer of normalcy and upward mobility; the double-lives of killers affording them the authority and trust to undertake their gruesome hobbies without detection.

As I mulled over the breadth of their crimes like so many batting statistics, I couldn't help but think this might be rather heartless given the recent wave of headlines about Canada's own "bright shining lie". But my mind turned to a song that had gripped me some years earlier on Sufjan Stevens' sprawling opus Illinois; his second and apparently final album in a project, which Sufjan has since admitted was a doomed conceit, intended to chronicle all 50 of the United States. Gloriously relating the Land of Lincoln through rich personal and historic narratives, Illinois pays homage to the state's great war heroes, famed poets, world expositions, and UFO sightings. None of these topics is so captivating and dismally engaging, however, as Sufjan's poetic account of the infamous murderer John Wayne Gacy, Jr., on his track of the same name.



A hushed interlude from the flourishing orchestration of the surrounding album, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is a melodious piano ballad laced with rippling acoustic guitar that begins as a biographical account of Gacy's life and transcends hauntingly into a reflection on the storyteller's own soul. Meticulously researched, the song traces the killer's roots from his childhood, opening with the line: “His father was a drinker/ and his Mother cried in bed”.

Critical to Gacy's pathology, his father was a violent alcoholic that abused his children. This abuse alienated young Gacy from his father and made him hopelessly dependent on his mother: "Folding John Wayne's t-shirts/ when the swing set hit his head". Playing in his backyard at 11 years old, a swing violently smacked Gacy in the forehead, forming a blood clot in his brain that would not be diagnosed until years later. Examining him after his arrest, numerous psychiatrists noted the possibility that this injury could have affected his psyche, and ultimately, assisted in developing his murderous tendencies later on in life.

Following a lucrative offer from Gacy's father-in-law to appoint him manager of three KFC restaurants, Gacy and his wife moved from Illinois in their mid-20s and settled in Iowa. During this time, Gacy continued his tireless work as a volunteer with the Jaycees, a leadership and civic training organization for young men. It was in Iowa where he first had a sexual encounter with another man, and this led to multiple assaults for which Gacy was eventually charged to a 10 year sentence.

Gacy served only a year and a half of this sentence due to good behaviour, and moved back to Chicago upon his release. Eventually Gacy would begin his own construction company and become active in Chicago's Democratic Party and various other community organizations. Unaware of his lurid past, Gacy was well-liked by his neighbours and friends who even went as far to elect him precinct captain of the Norwood Township street lighting committee: "The neighbors, they adored him/ for his humor and his conversation”.

Using this cover of a man committed to civic duty, Gacy relied on chance encounters with young men traveling alone. Offering them a ride, food, and shelter, Gacy would target his victims at bus stops and street corners. "Look underneath the house there/ Find the few living things, rotting fast, in their sleep/ of the dead”. After brutally murdering these men, Gacy would pile them meticulously like sacks of grain in the crawl space in his basement.  Either encasing them in concrete or waiting to remove them to a backyard grave once the stench of rigor mortis had set in. “Twenty-seven people, even more/ they were boys with their cars/ summer jobs, oh my God”. Gacy was eventually convicted of 33 murders, though 8 bodies were unclaimed. Some of the young men had even been employed by Gacy at one of his many local businesses.

Through his work as a volunteer for the Democrats, Gacy became aware of a Jolly Jokers' Club in which members would dress as clowns and regularly perform at fund-raising events and parades to raise money for political campaigns. Gacy created a performance character named “Pogo The Clown”, in reference to the fact that he was Polish and he was "always on the go". "He dressed up like a clown for them/ with his face paint white and red". He designed his own costumes and taught himself how to apply clown makeup, opting for sharp corners at the edges of his mouth, contrary to the rounded borders that professional clowns normally employ, so as not to “frighten small children”. In full costume, Gacy would stop in at a local bar called the Lucky Lounge, where he interacted with some of his victims, explaining that he had just come from a performance to have a beer. After gaining their trust, Gacy would bring his victims to a quiet place and subdue them with a chloroform soaked rag before sexually assaulting them.

“And on his best behaviour/ in a dark room on the bed, he kissed them all/ He took off all their clothes for them/ He put a cloth to their lips/ Quiet hands/ Quiet kiss, on the mouth”

Critics have wondered at whether Stevens has gone too far in sympathizing with his homicidal subject, but it is in refraining from demonizing Gacy that Stevens achieves a much more powerful message; by humanizing the rapacious killer, Stevens lays bare the tight wire of morality that separates ourselves from these crimes, and demonstrates that anyone is capable of such monstrosity. In the final stanza, the narrator of the song looks inward at his own soul, and wonders what separates himself from Gacy:

"And in my best behavior/ I am really just like him/ Look beneath the floor boards/ for the secrets I have hid"


It may be presumptive to assume that Stevens is speaking as himself here, as he may have intended to be speaking through a troubled protagonist. What is clear, is that the sentiment of this verse is very much connected to Stevens' own deep Christian faith, which he displays throughout Illinois and his other albums; pride and jealousy alone are shameful, even if not as repugnant as murder and rape. Expounding on the Christian teaching that all sins are created equal before God, Stevens is revealing that while the skeletons in his closet may not be literal like Gacy's, he is still spiritually diminished and in need of the grace of God.

This opens a much larger theological and spiritual debate about whether the true meaning of the gospel is to assign spiritual equality to sins of very different magnitudes, but it does not seem that Stevens' mission is to answer this debate. More simply, Stevens is reconciling his own spiritual guilt with that of Gacy's and is inviting the listener to similarly reflect. And so, at the close of the song, Stevens is heard to take a deep breath and to exhale slowly. When given a final chance to speak by the warden before his execution, Gacy's only reply was to take a deep breath.