What to know about 'Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy,' your next true crime obsession
If you weren’t already freaked out enough from this past season of “Monster,” all about Ed Gein, Peacock is here to take you inside the life and mind of another notorious serial killer: John Wayne Gacy.
“Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy,” promises to peel “back the twisted layers of Gacy’s life while weaving in heartrending stories of his victims; exploring the grief, guilt, and trauma of their families and friends; and exposing the systemic failures, missed opportunities and societal prejudices that fueled his reign of terror.”
Here’s everything you need to know about the show destined to be your next true crime obsession.
WHO WAS JOHN WAYNE GACY?
John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago in 1942 and worked various jobs in the area, including a short time managing a KFC for his first wife’s father, before returning to his hometown in the early 1970s.
In 1972, he married his second wife and just a few years later, he was a popular member of his community, a seemingly stand-up citizen and family man. He even dressed up as a clown for neighborhood parties and collected clown-themed art, as well as painting some pieces himself.
However, Gacy had a terrifying dark side, to put it perhaps too mildly. In the late 1960s, he was arrested and convicted of sexual assault of a young boy, serving a brief prison sentence, and was later arrested in the early 1970s for another sexual assault complaint, also of a young boy.
According to NBC News, Gacy places his first murder in 1972, when he stabbed a 16-year-old boy to death, beginning a crime spree that would see at least 33 young men dead. A final count has never been established, but many of his victims would later be found in the crawlspace under his home, while other were dumped in nearby bodies of water.
His second wife left him in 1976, and two years later in 1978, he was formally linked to the disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest, who disappeared after seeing someone about a construction job. Gacy’s company was remodeling the pharmacy where Piest worked and a search warrant for Gacy’s home found Piest had visited and left an item behind.
Police obtained another search warrant and began to discover the evidence of human remains. Gacy confessed quickly and his trial began in 1980, lasting about two months. He was sentenced to death and after several years of appeals, including all the way up to the Supreme Court, he was executed on May 10, 1994.
Many of Gacy’s victims remain unidentified to this day, but continual efforts are underway to put names to victims and give answers to grieving families.
WHO IS PLAYING JOHN WAYNE GACY?
“Severance” star Michael Chernus is taking on the daunting task of playing John Wayne Gacy.
Chernus told Vanity Fair in a recent interview he had been hesitant about portraying a real-life serial killer.
"Absolutely in no way did I want to be a part of something that was glorifying John Gacy,” he told the outlet. “[In other true-crime series] the victims, if they’re named at all, only [appear] in their relation to the person who perpetrated the crimes.”
He agreed to take the role after speaking with showrunner Patrick Macmanus, who assured him everything would be handled respectfully, including not showing the violent crimes on screen and focusing on the victims’ stories through flashbacks.
WHO ELSE IS IN THE CAST?
“The Last of Us” star Gabirel Luna plays Detective Rafael Tovar, who worked on the case. Luna told Gold Derby, “I was intrigued by the fact that he exists, that he’s a real man. I was really ready to play somebody who was just a mortal man and an ordinary person and an everyday hero — somebody who doesn’t set out to be a hero, and you don’t immediately see him as that. But through his actions and through his persistence and through his tireless pursuit of the identities of these boys, [he] was just powerful.”
“This is Us” alums Chris Sullivan and Micahel Angarano also star, as prosecutor Bill Kunkle, and Gacy’s defense attorney Sam Amirante, respectively. Greg Bryk and Marin Ireland play Harold and Elizabeth Piest, the parents of Robert Piest.
“We were all really keeping Elizabeth and Rob [her son] and their family at the forefront of our minds,” she told Gold Derby. “It wasn’t just Rob — it happened to so many of these other families. There was something very sacred about the experience, about honoring these people and the suffering they went through.”
HOW CAN I WATCH “DEVIL IN DISGUISE?"
The eight-episode series premieres October 16 on Peacock.
