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You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader, Spencer Henry. If you're new here, Cult Leader is a podcast about bad things.

Today, as you can tell from the title of the episode, we're going to be talking about John Wayne Gacy, who is notorious for being a major creep.

He was a serial killer that dressed up like a clown and if there is anything more fucking terrifying than that, I don't want to know.

Real quick, merch, all being shipped in the process of being shipped. Everything's going out. I'm not the one who does it. Don't blame me if it's delayed, but it's on its way as far as I know everything's being shipped out.

And I know that a lot of you ask for Cult Leader merch in black because you don't trust yourself wearing white. And I don't trust myself either wearing white.

So I have a special announcement coming on Wednesday, but I mean, fuck it because I just said that right. So it's everything's coming out in black. But on Wednesday, I'll be able to tell you where you can get it and find it and how to order it.

I also have something else really cool coming that you're going to be excited for, especially if you're broke. So growing up, John was a little bit of a weirdo.

He was born on March 17th, 1942 to his parents, John Stanley Gacy. He was an auto repair specialist in his mom, Marion Robinson, who stayed home with John and his two sisters.

Growing up, John was pretty overweight, personally due to eating habits, partially due to a heart condition. And I'll include a picture when I post this episode on the Cult Leader Instagram because I have a really good picture of him as a kid.

He was pretty nerdy and pretty close to his sisters and his mom, but the dad, John Gacy senior was a dick. He was just an asshole, super abusive, both verbally, physically, and he was a really bad alcoholic.

The dad was very much like, I don't know, the guy's guy. He came home, he'd have a glass of brandy, and then he'd just sit there and then he'd yell at everyone and hit them with belts. He liked fishing. He was super resentful towards John because John was as a kid, was more sensitive, artistic. He loved spending time with his mom, helping her out.

It was just like this super toxic environment because his dad just couldn't let that go and was constantly reminding him, you're a wimp, you're a wussy, you're never going to be anything. And most likely because of this upbringing, trouble started pretty young for him.

When he was six, his mom found a toy truck that she knew she had him purchased for John. She found out that he had stolen it from a store, he admits it to her, and she makes him walk it back to the store.

Keep in mind, this is the 40s, so they were probably just like, ah, John, pat him on the head and then off he goes, he's probably like, hey, I also got a pack of Virginia slums for my mom.

Because during those days, every parent, I feel like sent their kid to the store and was like, here, get a pack of smokes, and they just write a little note, this is John's mom, let him buy the smokes.

And so he goes home, he after returning the truck and his dad's there, his dad's really mad because his dad's mad about everything. He takes out a belt, beats John, and then when the mom intervenes, it only makes things worse because the dad's basically like, see, you're a pussy, you're going to grab to be a lady boy, you got your mom in here standing up for you.

I don't know why his dad has that voice, but he does. And okay, this is creepy. John would keep a stash of his mom's underwear in his closet. He would like put them in little bags and put them in the back of his closet.

And one day his sister finds them, she tells his mom, like, what the fuck, he has your underwear in his closet, and the mom's like, ah, boys will be boys. And it's like, no, boys will not be boys.

The boys that are putting their mom's panties in the back of the closet are not good boys. And it just, I don't know, freaks me out. In 1949, John and a friend had been caught fondling a young girl and he was whipped mercifully by a razor strap.

Which sounds terrifying, but it's actually just like pretty much the same thing as a belt. So his dad beats him. And then that same year, John himself was molested by a family friend who would like take him around in his truck and like, do some bad things.

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