Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV, Entertainment, Crime, True crime
Tom Fenton
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV, Entertainment, Crime, True crime
Horrifying revelations in Netflix's documentary about John Wayne Gacy, one of America's most notorious serial killers, have left plenty of viewers feeling sick to their stomachs.
The three-part series titled the John Wayne Gacy Tapes explores the grizzly details of his killings, as well as his subsequent arrest.
The former entertainer, who often dressed as a clown at birthday parties, would eventually confess to murdering 33 men and boys between 1972 and 1978, making him one of the most prolific serial killers of all time.
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The new documentary landed on Netflix this Wednesday (20 April), and it provoked an immediate reaction online from those who have already started watching the series.
Directed by Joe Berlinger, the official synopsis of the series gives an insight into what viewers can expect: "He dined with the powerful. He preyed on the vulnerable."
"Beneath a smiling exterior was the horrifying darkness of a sadistic serial killer."
What makes this particular documentary stand out is the inclusion of newly acquired prison audio recordings that highlight just how depraved Gacy was.
The tapes make for grim - if fascinating - listening; as at one point, he explains why he simply couldn't stop killing.
“After I got away with the first, I just kept getting away with them,” we hear in a voice-over from Gacy’s recorded conversations with the police. “That’s why I didn’t stop.”
Such chilling statements certainly left a lasting impression on some of its audience, judging by the tweets below:
One viewer concluded: "This John Gacy Netflix doc shook me... That’s probably one of the most disturbing documentaries I’ve seen."
A different user wrote: "I was not prepared for this Netflix doc series on John Gacy. I know something of him, obviously. But oof. I didn’t know all this. Heartbreaking."
Gacy was arrested for his crimes in 1978, before being executed by lethal injection almost 16 years later.
The bodies of 26 young boys were found in the crawl space under his home.
All in all, 28 of Gacy's victims were identified, with all of them being between the ages of 14 and 21.
According to Terry Sullivan and Peter T Maiken's book Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders, Gacy would 'lure many of his victims off the streets, from the Greyhound Bus station or Bughouse Square, with the offer of a job at his contracting company'.
They wrote: "When at his home, he would offer to show his victims a magic trick that he learned as a clown, before handcuffing them."
In the new documentary, we hear Gacy breakdown his reasoning for storing so many bodies in his home.
He says in the newly aired audio recordings: "The saving of the corpses and storing them in the basement. It was a hiding place. It was a secret place.
“Those are my bodies. That’s where I wanted to keep them. They had no right to touch ‘em.”
With this revelation in mind, its hardly surprising that so many viewers were impacted by the series - which certainly doesn't shy away from the sickening nature of Gacy's crimes.
The John Wayne Gacy Tapes is just the latest serial killer documentary to arrive on Netflix over the past year.
It's a follow-up to 2021's The Ted Bundy Tapes, another multiple episode series directed by Berlinger.
In addition, he was the man behind Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile - a biopic about Bundy which included Zac Efron in the starring role.
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