John Wayne Gacy, Jr.: The Killer Clown

This criminal behavior psychological analysis paper is taking a look into the life of a serial killer, who is known as, John Wayne Gacy, Jr. He is best known for dressing up as a clown and committing violent killings of specific targets; the nickname he is known for is the “Killer Clown”. Moreover, Gacy is an important individual to study or analyze due to the many merciless anguish murders he committed and the factors that took place throughout his childhood to adulthood, which may have had influential elements of the actions he performed on his poor and vulnerable victims. Understanding Gacy’s actions and mindset can be quite complex to society as well as how he became one of the most prolific and notorious murders in the United States. The importance I find to be relevant, which played a major role in John Wayne Gacy’s numerous murders in Chicago, Illinois, are the social dysfunctional structures followed as: his father-son relationship, being antisocial in school, and environment. Future professionals in criminology can better understand and go into depth about the psychological theories found in most murderers in correlation to Gacy’s horrendous proceedings as some theorists have already been revealing theories of their own that relate to how Gacy grew up to be a murderer. For example, “Theorists consider moral behavior to be self-regulated through mechanisms of self-evaluation where one can approve or disapprove irresponsible or inhumane behavior. It is clear that Gacy showed a lack of moral behavior and hence, in the act was not able to disapprove his behavior adequately to avoid it completely” (“John Wayne Gacy Jr. | Criminology”, n.d.). The professionals can grasp the insight that there is value perhaps in keeping this...

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