June Box Story -- Carlock and Gacy

I won't normally post the stories from the subscription boxes anywhere, to keep it something special for the subscribers. But, this being the first box and given the intense emotion I felt researching the victims in these stories, I invite you to read and share. Discretion is advised as the details of these crimes are upsetting.

The Four Johns

John Wayne Gacy, Jr., was born March 17, 1942, to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robinson in Chicago, Illinois. He had two sisters: Karen and Joanne. With the hopes that his son would become a “man’s man”, John Sr. bestowed his son with the name of the manliest man he knew, John Wayne. John Wayne Gacy never did live up to his father’s wishes of being a rugged, sports-playing, “all-American” son.

Despite his disinterest, John Sr. attempted to get his son into sports in his early childhood, practicing with him often and taking him on regular fishing trips. Trying to please him, John Wayne Gacy would accompany his father but preferred planting flowers and cooking with his mother and sisters. John Sr. would regularly call Gacy a “sissy,” and would comment that he’d rather find his son dead than to learn he was a homosexual.

Along with homophobia, John Sr. was a raging alcoholic, and an abusive father and husband. He beat Marion often with his bare fists and took to the children with a razor strap - a thick strap of tough leather usually used to sharpen and polish straight razors. Karen and Joanne recalled one particular beating when their father was in a dark, drunken rage. Screams and cries for relief typically plagued the air, but during this specific incident, Gacy suddenly stopped crying. It was as if a switch had been flipped and he suddenly didn’t react to the blows, remaining silent through his beating which only made his father angrier, resulting in a more aggressive punishment for young Gacy.

On a normal afternoon, while playing outside with friends, Gacy suddenly passed out. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease he’d had since birth. Doctors recommended severe restriction of physical activity as his heart could give out easily, sealing his father’s fear that his son would never play sports. As a result of his condition, due in part to the restrictions on physical activity, genetics, and swelling of body tissue, Gacy gained weight which led to aggressive bullying in school during his teenage years.

Unlike his relationship with his father, Gacy was always very close with his sisters and mother even into adulthood. Known in their community as a pleasant, friendly family, the Gacy family were also devout Catholics. Marion particularly was known to be a sweet, selfless woman.

In 1954, Gacy joined the Boy Scouts of America where he met his first close friend, Barry Boschell. For the first time, Gacy entrusted another person with a deep, personal secret: he would occasionally steal a bra and a pair of underwear from his mother’s dresser while he was alone, would put them on, and stare intently at himself in the mirror for as long as he knew he’d be alone.

After attending four different schools, Gacy dropped out of high school and moved to Las Vegas in an attempt to get away from the trauma and confusion he’d endured in his hometown. Away from his mother and sisters and working as a janitor at a funeral home, Gacy quickly became depressed and returned to Chicago to be with his mother and sisters once again. There he enrolled in business college and became an incredibly successful salesman at the Nunn Bush Shoe Company. His knack at observing people and learning which behaviors appealed to them helped boost his career and launch his political endeavors.

In 1964, Gacy married Marlynn Myers, a woman from a wealthy family whose father owned several KFC restaurants, where Gacy would later work. Marlynn and Gacy moved to Waterloo, Illinois to start their life together. People in their new community immediately found Gacy likable, and the couple was held in high regard in their community. It was here that Marlynn had their first child and, while Gacy missed most of the labor process due to a drunken sexual encounter with a coworker, he was there for the birth of his child. It was here that Gacy’s father told him, for the first and only time, that he was proud of him.

Utilizing his learned behaviors from watching people interact with each other, Gacy began climbing the political ladder. He found many powerful people in politics were exploring swingers parties as part of the new free-love movement of the time, and built a full-service bar in his home where he convinced his wife to host swingers parties. While she was never completely on board with these parties, they worked, and shortly after his first party, Gacy was elected VP of the Local Council and was voted Man of the Year.

It was his political connections that led to Gacy inviting Donald Voorhees to his home. Voorhees was the fifteen-year-old son of a local senator and knew his father was friends with Gacy. Donald looked up to Gacy as a role model and agreed to go to Gacy’s home alone. Gacy gave the boy alcohol and, once he was drunk, showed him his extensive pornography collection and forced Donald into exchanging oral sex. With threats and promises of violence against Donald and his family if anyone ever found out, Gacy believed his secret was safe. While these threats worked for a time, Donald soon had an emotional break from the trauma. With insane amounts of courage, Donald told his family what had happened and the first charge was brought against Gacy.

It is said that Gacy hired a local boy to beat Donald so he would not be able to appear in court. Some sources say that the hired boy was caught and confessed to what Gacy had paid him to do, which then led to Gacy’s conviction. Other sources, however, report that although the victim was badly beaten, he still showed up to testify against Gacy. Regardless, this brave boy’s actions led to several other young boys coming forward with stories of rape and molestation against Gacy, sealing his conviction of sodomy and a ten-year jail sentence. Marlynn divorced Gacy and moved state with her children shortly following the conviction. Gacy never had any contact with them again, though he explicitly expressed he never wanted any.

John Sr. died shortly after Gacy’s arrest, and Gacy often claimed he “died from shame” - not because his son was a monster, but because he was gay. Learning of his father’s death, Gacy went through a period of intense rage. He would project his anger onto his fellow gay inmates, even going so far as to beat the face of an inmate to a bloody mess. Gacy committed this attack only after observing that inmate engaged in consensual oral sex with another male inmate. Despite the brutal attack, Gacy was appallingly released on good behavior, serving only sixteen months of his ten-year sentence. During his time in jail, Gacy manipulated guards and inmates alike to grow in popularity, he was even given the head chef position in the jail kitchen. These manipulations encouraged people to ignore his faults and justify his violence, ultimately leading to his early release. Later, he would blame his time in jail for his increasing desire to rape young boys, as he claims he was being held away from acting on any of his “natural” impulses to pursue young boys.

Due to “the times”, he was able to keep his criminal past a secret as he moved back to his hometown in Chicago where his mother helped him buy a house. Bolstered by the nostalgia of his community and their memories of him as an innocent little child, Gacy quickly established a new life. It was during this phase that he founded a contracting company named PDM Contractors where, as an initiative to “keep labor costs down,” Gacy hired young boys rather than adult men to work for him.

Gacy’s facade would not hold up for long, as he was charged with battery soon after his release. A young man had accused Gacy of flashing a Sheriff’s badge to lure him into a car where he forced the boy to have sex with him. Unfortunately, the charges were dropped for no known reason.

Victim to his facade, Carole Hoff married Gacy soon after the reported attack. Carole knew him from their teenage years and had two young daughters of her own from her previous marriage. Unsuspecting and unaware of his criminal past, her daughters quickly took to their new stepfather, even going so far as to call him “Dad” shortly after meeting him. Slipping further into domestic comfort, Gacy created Pogo the Clown.

Pogo the Clown got to do things “John” didn’t get to do, as Gacy would later reminisce. Pogo would host children’s parties, act silly, dress up, wear makeup, and play tricks. He would show up - usually unannounced - to local hospitals where he would entertain sick children, and he would do many parties free of charge just for the chance to dress up as Pogo.

But Pogo the Clown didn’t fool Carole. She immediately noticed a change in her husband when he “discovered” Pogo. Trying to maintain their family, Carole stuck around as Gacy became a successful businessman, Democratic Precinct Captain, and even organized the Annual Polish Constitution Day Parade where it is said Pogo made an appearance. It’s worth noting at this point in the story that many of Gacy’s victims were of Polish heritage, as was Gacy himself, adding an unsettling mist over the image of this parade. Unleashing Pogo changed something in Gacy, and while there were many, many victims prior to this point in his life, Gacy used Pogo as a vessel to connect with his disturbed, perverted deeper self.

In 1974, Timothy McCoy, age 16, was visiting Chicago when Gacy approached him at a Greyhound bus station. Gacy flirted with McCoy and offered him a ride, and McCoy accepted. While McCoy may have had “somewhat consensual” sex with Gacy, the interaction did not stop there. Enraged that he had given in to his homosexuality, Gacy stabbed McCoy in the chest repeatedly with a kitchen knife, killing the boy. While he committed this murder “spontaneously”, Gacy admitted to a rush of pleasure as he took the boy’s life and the feeling of control it gave him. Timothy McCoy was Gacy’s first known murder victim and was buried in the four-foot-deep crawl space beneath Gacy’s house.

During the following years, Gacy assaulted several boys, though the number and details of all crimes are still unknown. Because he didn’t find them important enough, Gacy never gave much information regarding the assaults in which he did not kill; he only felt it “necessary” to give details regarding the assaults that led to murder.

One known surviving victim, Anthony Antonucci, age 15, was one of many victims Gacy would manipulate using his “handcuff trick.” Gacy offered to show a magic trick, sometimes performing an escape himself to gain trust then convincing the boys to put on the same pair of handcuffs. With his victims cuffed, he would proceed to rape and torture them. While Anthony managed to escape with his life, the trauma he experienced forever changed him.

In July 1975, John Butkovitch, an employee of Gacy’s, disappeared after telling his family he was going to work to collect money he was owed. After he didn’t return home, Butkovich's family asked the police to keep watch on Gacy because they knew he was causing trouble with the boy at work. The police doubted Gacy’s involvement and the case went unsolved. John Butkovitch’s body was later found buried beneath Gacy’s garage.

Unable to cope with her husband’s unpredictable moods, Carole divorced Gacy the same year John Butkovitch disappeared. Carole later stated that Gacy refused to have sex with her shortly after his first Pogo performance, and his intense obsession with gay pornography magazines along with the random wallets containing young men’s ID’s lying around their home added to her suspicion that her husband was cheating on her with young men. Similar to Marlynn’s story, Carole divorced Gacy and never allowed him to see her or her children again. Unfortunately, this only provided Gacy the room he needed to fulfill his insidious desires.

Tired of digging holes in his crawl space and longing for more space readily available to him, Gacy hired 18-year-old David Cram to dig more space for him under the pretense of making room for pipes Gacy was supposedly going to have installed. David was given a room in Gacy’s home to stay in while he finished the project. He came home one day to find Gacy dressed in his clown costume, drunk. Thinking the costume was some sort of joke, David joined Gacy for a few drinks before Gacy used his “handcuff trick” on David. After cuffing David, Gacy’s demeanor shifted, darkened. He dangled the keys in front of Cram’s face. He began to “playfully” poke David, maniacally taunting, “does this get you mad? Does this get you mad?” Fear flooded Cram as Gacy suddenly started growling like an animal. “Does this get you mad?” Spinning him around the room, Gacy began screaming in a sing-songy way, “I’m going to rape you! I’m going to rape you! I’m going to rape you!” In a panic, Cram kicked Gacy down and escaped with the key to the handcuffs. Cram convinced himself that Gacy had only had a tough day, and the incident was just the result of extreme drunkenness. He did not report the incident, most likely out of fear.

In March 1978, Gacy lured his oldest victim, 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignall, into his car with a promise of a ride and a joint. Smothering Rignall repeatedly with a chloroform-soaked rag, every time he would begin to stir, Rignall drifted in and out of consciousness before awakening locked in a device Gacy called “the rack.” Rignall’s wrists and neck were locked inside a wooden board that was suspended from the ceiling by chains. A naked Gacy stood in front of him; an assortment of tools and sex toys around him. Wood boards, syringes, ropes, dildos, fireplace pokers. Gacy explicitly explained in violent detail what Rignall was going to endure with each tool, and, drugged just enough to keep him lucid but intoxicated enough to be unable to distinguish Gacy’s physical details, Gacy spent hours brutally torturing and raping his victim. When Gacy decided he was done, he dumped Rignall in Chicago’s Lincoln Park under a statue and left him to die. Fighting for consciousness, Rignall dragged himself to his girlfriend’s house nearby where she rushed him to the hospital. Rignall stayed at the hospital for a week to recover, and it was during his hospital stay that he gave the police all the details he could remember. He stated that he remembers a second man in the room during his torture, but this has never been fully confirmed nor looked into any further due to the drugged state he was kept in during the horrific attack. Jeffrey Rignall later published a book about his experience, 29 Feet Below, which detailed his process in trying to find his torturer. During his writing of the book, Rignall forced himself through the trauma again, and his painful efforts paid off when he was able to track down Gacy’s car and give the license plate number to the police. Despite his efforts and the horrors of what had occurred, police did not act on the information Rignall had provided until Gacy had already been charged for other murders.

Months after Rignall’s torture and rape, Rober Piest disappeared after telling a coworker he was going down the street to talk to “some contractor guy” about a potential job. Gacy was at the pharmacy where Piest worked earlier that same day speaking to the owner about a project, looking for any young men who would want to work for pay. After Robert’s disappearance, the police finally took action and looked up Gacy’s record due to witnesses reporting him at the pharmacy the day of Piest’s disappearance. For the first time since his incarceration, police discovered Gacy’s sodomy record which gave them grounds to obtain a search warrant. During their search, they found a 1975 high school class ring which was later determined to belong to a boy who had gone missing a year earlier in addition to multiple pairs of handcuffs, driver’s licenses, a 2x4 with holes drilled in both ends, a syringe, many clothes that didn’t belong to Gacy, and a receipt from the pharmacy where Piest worked. While they noticed a foul odor coming from the crawl space, police assumed the smell was due to sewage and did not investigate any further at that time.

Due to the extensive evidence they found, authorities obtained a federal warrant to investigate deeper. Gacy realized his reign was over when he learned of the warrant and confessed to murdering 33 young men over a span of 7 years. He drew a map of where the bodies were buried, showing every one of the 28 shallow graves under his house and garage. The remaining five bodies had been dumped in the Des Plaines River. It was learned that along with the torture methods described by Rignall, Gacy would pour hot wax on his victims, urinate on them, and hold them underwater in his bathtub for extended periods of time. Gacy would also regularly rape and assault his victims after they were dead, occasionally keeping bodies around for days after the murders to satisfy his necrophilia. On several occasions, Gacy would dress as Pogo during his attacks.

“There are four Johns,” Gacy told investigators. John the Contractor, John the Clown, John the Politician, and Jack Hanley, the one who did “all the evil things.” He claimed Dissociative Identity Disorder, though a psychiatric evaluation proved this to be false. Despite the evaluation, Gacy frequently tried to claim he was mentally unfit to stand trial, using DID as a prominent excuse. In interviews, he often seems rather irritated to be answering questions, shows signs of a massively inflated ego, but speaks in a calm but commanding, matter-of-fact manner. Known to display a wide smirk on his normally dull face, he even laughs a bit during interviews. During one interview, Gacy casually showed an investigator a knot he would use to strangle his victims. He explains how he always kept his communion rosary on him, how he would sometimes use that as “rope,” and how the tourniquet knot is the only knot he ever learned, thanks to his time in Boy Scouts. Casually demonstrating on the investigator, Gacy loops on the first knot, ties a second, and explains how an object is inserted between the two and then twisted, tightening the rope into a tourniquet. Even after years of decay and rot beneath his home, that knot was still found tied to some of his victims.

At his final trial, the jury took only two hours before delivering the guilty verdict, and on March 13, 1980, Gacy was sentenced to death by lethal injection. During his fourteen years on death row, Gacy would sell paintings and sketches of clowns, usually Pogo himself. He would also paint portraits of Jesus, usually with a crown of thorns, and had a number of paintings that featured the Seven Dwarves from Snow White. Gacy would go on to make several desperate attempts to clear his name, regardless of his extensive confession. He would claim accomplices, that he allowed people to live in his house that probably committed the crimes while he was sleeping, and even claimed he was framed so that he could not move up politically. Despite the many poor attempts, he was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994. During his final phone interview, he told a reporter, “There’s been eleven hardback books on me, thirty-one paperbacks, two screenplays, one movie, one off-Broadway play, five songs, and over five-thousand articles. What can I say about it?” Gacy then quickly added in an aggressive tone, “I have no ego for any of this garbage.”

His last meal was a dozen deep-fried shrimp, a bucket of Original Recipe KFC chicken, one pound of fresh strawberries, french fries, and a Coke.

Though Gacy’s sisters had stated they could never forgive his crimes and would ensure he never walked the earth free again, the women spent his final day with him as requested. They were exposed to the crowds of people angrily protesting outside the jail. Cries of, “Kill him! Kill him!” could be heard from inside the walls of the prison.

At just after midnight on May 10, 1994, he was executed in high spirits, described as “chatty” by the guards. A mistake had been made, and the chemicals solidified in the tube, preventing easy passage. Guards had to close the blinds to the witness room while they replaced the tube. Ten minutes later, the execution was resumed.

When the execution was announced completed, cheers filled the empty streets as those forever tortured by Gacy’s actions wept silently in their empty-feeling homes, living with the fact that taking away Gacy didn’t take away their trauma.

Gacy’s final words were: “Kiss my ass.”

---

Dr. Helen Morrison spent years searching for personality traits common between serial killers and violent sociopaths, and how they present physically in the brain’s structure. She had interviewed Gacy during his time in prison and theorized that his brain would follow a pattern of observable abnormalities. Examinations revealed no expected abnormalities in his brain whatsoever. It was indistinguishable from a brain considered healthy emotionally and physically. To researchers, this further confirmed that Gacy’s claims of insanity were just another attempt at hiding.

The found victims, age, year of death:

Timothy Jack McCoy (16), 1972

“Victim No. 28” (14-18 yrs), death estimated between 1972-1975

John Butkovich (18), 1975

“Victim No. 5” (22-25), death estimated between 1976-1977

Darrel Samson (19), 1976

Samuel Stapleton (14), 1976

Randall Reffett (15), 1976

Michael Bonnin (17), 1976

William Carroll (16), 1976

“Victim No. 26” (22-25), death estimated in mid 1976

Jimmy Haakenson (16), 1976

“Victim No. 13” (17-21), death estimated mid-late 1976

“Victim No. 21” (21-27), death estimated mid-late 1976

Rick Johnston (17), 1976

William George Bundy (19), 1976

Michael Marino (14), 1976

Kenneth Parker (16), 1976

Gregory Godzik (17), 1976, Gregory Godzik was an employee of Gacy's, and his family asked the police to look into Gacy's criminal record, but they denied. Godzik’s girlfriend went to Gacy’s house herself to confront him. Gacy’s excuse was that Godzik had told him he wanted to run away. His body was identified in 1979 and Gacy claimed during his trial that Godzik dug his own grave.

John Szyc (19), 1978, who was another employee of Gacy's and a friend to two of Gacy's other victims, Gregory Godzik and Johnny Butkovitch

Jon Prestidge (20), 1977

“Victim No. 10” (17-21), death estimated in mid 1977

Matthew Bowman (18), 1977

Robert Gilroy (18), 1977 whose family lived only four blocks from Gacy.

John Mowery (19), 1977 whose sister, Judith, was murdered six years earlier by an unrelated criminal.

Russell Nelson (21-22), 1977

Robert Winch (18), 1977

Tommy Bolin (20), 1977

David Talsma (20), 1977

William Kindred (19), 1978

Timothy O’Rourke (20), 1978

Frank Landingin (19), 1978

James Mazzara (20), 1978

Robert Piest (15), 1978

Robert Donnelly (19), who was set free after hours of sexual torture. When Donnelly reported his attack to police, Gacy claimed they were in a consensual sex-slave relationship, which was never proven, but police neglected to look into the case.

Jeffrey Rignall (26), detailed above, left for dead after hours of rape and torture.

Anthony Antonucci (15), detailed above, released after rape and torture.

Donald Voorhees (15), detailed above, released after sexual torture.

David Cram (18), detailed above, lived with Gacy under false pretenses and managed to escape an attempted violent rape, which probably would have ended in his tragic death.

Seven of Gacy’s victims remain unidentified.

The true number of Gacy's victims is still unknown.

Klutzo the Clown and Professor Paul the Magician

Amon Paul Carlock, Jr. was an ordained minister formerly with Church of the Nazarene, then with Missionary Church International. Carlock’s specialty? Christian Clowning.

Carlock’s clown persona was named Klutzo the Clown and he and his wife, Mary, performing as Smilee the Clown, began performing together and clowned for 10 years. Carlock also performed a strictly magic act as Professor Paul the Magician. On their website, the couple states, “Parties, picnics, grand openings, reunions, special events AND Vacation Bible Schools, Sunday school emphasis, and children's church are our specialty.” What a wide range of entertainment options. In a section headlined with “Special Programs”, they go on to explain that “Klutzo, for instance, can put on his make-up for a group of small children. For children who are afraid of clowns, this is a great way to break the ice. For the rest, it is a great time of helping decide when Paul goes from being Paul to being Klutzo.”

Smilee would perform with Klutzo in the United States, but often only joined for gigs around their home town of Springfield, Illinois. Klutzo, however, would go on international trips to perform his act. He would often find orphanages in Mexico and the Philippines to offer his sermons to, free of charge. It has never been disclosed how many trips Carlock made to these places, but he had been to El Sazul Orphanage in Mexico at least twice and to the Philippines several times along with his US-based travels, including “Children’s Christian Camping Trips”.

In October of 2007, when Carlock was 57 years old, he was returning from a Christian Clowning trip at House of Joy Orphanage in the Philippeans. As part of routine customs checks, customs officers at San Fransisco Airport asked Carlock a few questions. Because his trip had taken place in an area known for a high risk of sex tourism, customs officers then checked his camera as part of a standard procedure. His digital camera was filled with photos of nude and partially nude children at the orphanage in the Philippeans. Some of the photos were of young children in poses obviously coached by Carlock, and others were photos of children doing everyday activities with their genitals strategically exposed through their clothing, seemingly unaware that they were being photographed. All of the children pictured were between the ages of five and ten years old. The officers proceeded to search Carlock’s laptop and discovered even more photos of the same nature, and multiple child pornography videos. When confronted with the findings, Carlock simply stated, “that’s how they live.” Carlock was arrested on-site for child pornography and the intention of sexual encounters with a minor.

Carlock had worked in law enforcement for twenty years, seventeen of which he spent in youth-related divisions. Mary, Carlock’s wife, told investigators that he had been enrolled in the Springfield Big Brothers Program, and had been assigned a six-year-old boy who he would see once or twice a week for the past couple of months. Officers spoke with this boy who explained to them that Carlock had gifted him two DVDs. One had photos of him and Carlock on a recent fishing trip with nothing out of the ordinary. The other disc exclusively contained photos of nude boys and girls from the Philippeans, around the same age as the boy at the time.

The authorities acted quickly to obtain a search warrant and were soon searching Carlock’s home. They removed three desktop computers, five external hard drives, multiple digital cameras and photo prints, CDs and DVDs. Along with a grotesque amount of photographs, Carlock had a stash of child porn videos, some of which seemed to be webcam captures from very poor areas around the world. After looking further into the videos, they seemed to have been purchased by Carlock through international commerce, which led to a strong suspicion of Klutzo’s involvement in a pedophile ring. Another sign was a program called Evidence Eliminator that had been installed on all of Carlock’s computers. This was a well-known program to investigators of child pornography and sex trafficking cases, as it was used to supposedly “wipe” hard drives clean of any damning evidence when used regularly.

Police were able to track down three boys, all five-year-olds, who had been in many of Carlock’s photos from the House of Joy Orphanage. The owner of the orphanage stated that Carlock had told him he was a police officer and required to stay on the grounds through his entire visit. He had been visiting for two months. Officers asked the owner if he had been shown any photographs Carlock had taken and if he viewed them as appropriate. The owner stated that he had seen Carlock’s photos and that they seemed to be very appropriate. The police proceeded to show him the pornographic photos of the orphans he cared for and he was immediately stricken with fear and anger. It turns out, when the owner asked to see the photos being taken of the children, Carlock was prepared with a sample of appropriate, innocent pictures to share with the owner. Officers explained to the owner that Carlock had made the statement that the people there were “so poor there they can’t even afford clothes”, and repeatedly used the line, “That’s how they live.” Obviously, this was a lame attempt at an excuse, which failed to explain the photos of children’s genitals being exposed through full clothing. The three children were then interviewed and all seemed very confused by Klutzo the Clown and his multiple visits. Though the children enjoyed Klutzo’s clowning tricks, they also recalled Klutzo singing songs as he would lead children into a room the orphans used for prayer, with a large Bible in his hand. Each boy disclosed in individual interviews that at some point during the visit, they had awoken during the night to Klutzo fondling their genitals. When the boys woke up, Klutzo would calmly walk out of the room and proceed to another room where he would stay for the rest of the night.

During the investigation, Carlock would repeatedly insist that he was going to edit all of the photos to be appropriate so he could show them to the children in his church, as an example of conditions in third world countries. Some files had indeed been copied and edited, but the only difference was the edited photos were all magnified by 20%, no nudity had been censored. When asked about this Carlock gave two excuses: his eyesight was so bad he must have missed something, or he “hadn’t had the time to edit them.”

Carlock had a history of mental and physical illness. He was a diabetic and had struggled with depression most of his adult life. In 2004, he was put on suicide watch for a short time. During the time his house was being searched, Carlock’s depression returned and he became nearly unresponsive. He was rushed to St. John’s Hospital and when he regained lucidity, he committed himself to suicide watch. Five days after his arrest, while he was on suicide watch in the hospital, Mary filed for divorce. Carlock broke a plastic spoon and swallowed the pieces in an attempt to end his life. After another few days, he was declared to be in a stable, managed state of health and was transferred to Sangamon County Jail to await his trial. When he was examined by the jail’s physician, he was taken off of Klonopin and his fast-acting Insulin, his Buspar prescription was reduced, and he was prescribed Lithium.

Carlock was regularly causing problems during this period in jail. He would bang his head against his cell door, screaming and yelling at the guards. When he refused to stop, he was tased. One day, this happened twice within a matter of hours. During a struggle to restrain Carlock, he grabbed and used a can of pepper spray from a guard’s belt. He was tased three times during this struggle before he was successfully restrained.

On occasion, Carlock would refuse to eat one or two meals a day, which would prevent the nurses from being able to give him his insulin. Other times, nurses admittedly skipped doses of insulin out of “pure neglect”. Thirty-nine days after his arrest, Carlock was to be taken to a doctor and psychiatrist for follow up exams. When officers entered his cell, he was standing in the center of the room shirtless, his shirt laying on the floor in a corner. Carlock refused to put a shirt on so he would not have to leave his cell. After arguing with guards, Carlock was taken to the ground and an officer was ordered to sit on the shoulders of Carlock until he stopped struggling. The officer hesitated but sat on Carlock’s back anyway. Carlock began to struggle more aggressively and was tased in the thigh by another officer. The struggle finally ended and when the guard stood up, a reported 3 to 4 minutes after initially sitting on him, Carlock seemed to be unresponsive. A jail nurse was present and found there was no pulse in his wrist or neck, but a very faint pulse in his ankle. The officers called for an ambulance, but no CPR was initiated before the EMTs arrived.

Carlock was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.

He had 11 broken ribs, possibly broken during CPR though some suspect a few might have been fractured from the weight of the officer on his shoulders. All of his front teeth had been broken as well. Carlock was 57 when he died. His family has sued Sangamon County for his death and accuses officers of the use of unnecessary and excessive force along with neglect to offer proper medical attention for his diabetes during Carlock’s time awaiting trial.

Due to this ongoing lawsuit, the horrific crimes committed by this man seem to have been hidden to some degree. Which seems to be a passive, subconscious way for those who have knowledge of the crimes to forget the victims. Names and numbers of Klutzo’s victims have never been released, due to their ages and to protect them. Hundreds of children were featured in Klutzo’s collection and one can only assume how many he physically molested in the same way the boys in the Philippines recalled.

When researching Klutzo, the majority of news articles and websites are focused ONLY on the death of Carlock and the supposed fault of the officers. Many articles do not mention the reason Carlock was in jail and paint him as an “innocent old man”. Carlock’s family and friends created a memorial page for him, where they share fond memories and an image they wish Klutzo to be remembered by, an image excluding Klutzo altogether. The website is currently not published, but there is an option for you to choose to donate to the memorial fund, you can keep the post published for a set amount of time. At least nobody has donated for now.

Ignoring crimes like those of Carlock is something that happens all too often. We’ve all heard of Gacy, in some way or another. People know him as a creepy “innocent boy turned killer clown”, Bundy is a “handsome devil”, Dahmer is “the quiet boy next door”, and killing civilians is “just for our freedom”. The victims are briefly mentioned, only to add an element to the story of the killer. Their names are rarely used, their faces not as common as those of their killers, their families neglected by the public as they are forced to be exposed constantly, even years and decades later, to the horror they live with.

A note from The Grand Master:

When you speak of these stories, remember to do so in a way that honors and respects the victims and those directly affected by the acts of Carlock and Gacy. The purpose of sharing true crime stories should be to educate in hopes of changing flawed systems of victim relief and preventing the further warping of the true stories.