Fall of the House of Gacy

Fall of the House of Gacy is the only authorized biography of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Author Harlan H. Mendenhall spent more than 550 hours in face-to-face interviews with Gacy on Death Row at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois. Gacy was convicted in 1980 of 33 murders of teenagers and young men in the Chicago area, thus ranking as the man convicted of the most murders in the history of the United States. Mendenhall's book, which also contains an analysis by Dr. Tobias H. Brocher, concentrates mostly on Gacy's family history in an attempt to explain how he developed the highly complex psychology behind his criminal acts.

John Wayne Gacy was born in a northwest Chicago middle-class neighborhood on March 17, 1942, the second child of Polish-American John Stanley Gacy and his Danish-American wife, Marion. He was preceded by his sister, Carolyn, and followed by another girl, Nanci. His parents' marriage was very conflictual from the very beginning. John Stanley, who liked to be called Dad not only by his children but also by his wife, was an authoritarian, tendentially violent man, who wanted to have it his own way in all family matters. He was a strict Catholic and resented the fact that Marion was Presbyterian. For many years, she refused to convert to Catholicism, causing him continuous guilt feelings. Their matrimony ceremony had in fact been held at a Presbyterian Church. Because of this, he considered their relationship as adulterous. Furthermore, Mar

Related Essays

The Fall of the House of Usher In The Fall of the House of Usher, the narrative achieves powerful impact because Poe uses a narrative strategy that reveals plot information only when all .... (1207 5 )

Fall of the House of Usher The purpose of this research is to discuss the formalistic approach to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" ("FHU"). .... (1978 8 )

House Of Usher Poe's The Fall Of The House Of Usher is the story of a man obsessed by intellectual pursuits to the point of social isolation and possible insanity. .... (1232 5 )

Hawthorne vs. Poe In Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" these devices are used abundantly. Interestingly .... (1299 5 )

Three Stories by Poe .... Indeed, several of Poe's stories, including "The Premature Burial," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," feature characters that .... (1127 5 )

goal: to be a millionaire by the age of 36. Quite early in his life, John displayed a great ability to organize as well as to make money. As a teenager, he started working hard at shoving snow off driveways, and, with the help of other kids, he even created his own little business. Later on, he worked regularly at a neighborhood store. After finishing school, he went on to the Northwestern Business School, from which he graduated in 1963. After college, John moved to the nearby town of Springfield where he started working as assistant manager for the elegant Hall-Bell Shoe Store No. 2. He worked very hard at his job and also put a lot of energy into community work for an organization called the Jaycees, a Junior Chamber of Commerce. It was an opportunity for John to obtain public exposure in Springfield. He was very successful both in his work and with the Jaycees, but he had to pay a price. In order to satisfy the enormous load of work - amounting to 12 and often 14 hours per day he started taking speed pills as well as Valium, in order to calm down. This did not fit well with his regular intake of drugs against epileptic attacks. Besides, like his father, John loved Jack Daniel's whiskey. In December, 1964, after having

Category: Literature - F