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Comparison Of General Strain Theory And John Wayne Gacy

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General Strain Theory and John Wayne Gacy
Mandy Feldbauer
Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

General Strain Theory and John Wayne Gacy
There are many ways that criminological theories can explain the criminal behaviors of serial killers and other types of criminals. There are also plenty of theories and an abundance of criminals. For every criminal, there has to be some theory that could explain his or her behaviors in some way. This is especially true for the serial killer, John Wayne Gacy. General Strain Theory can clearly explain some of his behaviors.
In a lecture to a Theoretical Criminology class in October of 2014, Dr. Ridener stated that Robert Agnew presented General Strain Theory in his landmark article …show more content…

Once the victims were manacled the cuffs were shown to be real, at which point he would overpower them or drug them with chloroform, then strip and gag them, often with their own underwear. Torture and rape followed, then they were asphyxiated by their gags (“John Wayne Gacy: Killer Clown,” 2014).
His fate was to serve 12 death sentences and 21 life sentences for his terrible crimes, and he was imprisoned at the Menard Correctional Center for almost 15 years, before being executed. He was killed by lethal injection on May 10th, 1994 at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. This finally brought an end to the terror, and people could now sleep at night and not have to worry about the killer clown (“John Wayne Gacy Biography,” …show more content…

His birthday was Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17th, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois (“John Wayne Gacy Biography,” 2014). His parents were, John Wayne Gacy, Sr. and Marion Elaine Robinson Gacy as the second of three children (Bell & Bardsley, n.d.). Gacy’s father was a drunk who used to beat him and his sisters for the smallest misbehavior. His father was never proud of him, no matter how much Gacy just wanted his approval. His sister said that all three of them had to toughen up, and act like the beatings and abuse didn’t bother them. Apparently, Gacy would no longer cry as their father took his drunken anger out on them (“John Wayne Gacy Biography”, 2014). His father frequently called him a “sissy” and they never had a good relationship (“John Wayne GACY Jr,”

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John Wayne Gacy Jr. was born on March 17, 1942, to middle-class Marion and John Gacy Senior in Chicago, Illinois. His mother was Danish and his father was Polish. His father was an abusive alcoholic with a violent temper that often led to him beating his wife and children, the beatings were usually with a razor strap. John’s beatings were usually so brutal that he ended up in the hospital most of the time and was suffering from blackouts caused by seizures. Since John’s medical condition was never diagnosed Sr. often accused Gacy of fabricating illnesses even while lying helpless on a hospital bed.

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He learned from his last two victims that a witness who is alive, can get him into trouble which is why I believe that he started murdering his victims and escalated so drastically when he was paroled out of prison. The reason that Gacy was considered a suspect was on December of 1978 when the investigation began into the disappearance of Robert Piest. His last known location was with John Gacy at his home because the boy went to talk to him about a job. After learning of Gacy’s criminal history and him being the last one to see the young man alive, Authorities soon set in for a search warrant to search Gacy’s home. As authorities searched the house, they noticed a strong strange smell coming from below the house.

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Over the span of six years from 1972-1978 John Jr had murdered and raped thirty-three young males. John Wayne Gacy’s first victim he claimed was, “this killing was unintentional, committed in the mistaken belief the youth intended to attack him with a knife from his kitchen” (Cahill, 1986, p. 349). John Wayne Gacy Jr after tasting what it was like to murder someone, continued over the next six years. Except John Jr could not control himself and ended up escalating in his crimes.

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John Wayne Gacy is one of America’s most well-known homosexual serial killers and rapist to date. He was tried and convicted on killings of 33 teenage boys from 1972-1978. Gacy was born on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 22, 1942 in Chicago Illinois. Growing up Gacy had a pretty rough childhood. By the time he was 9 years old he had been molested which he had never told anyone about.

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John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois as the middle child. His mother was a stay-at-home wife while his father was constantly working. When his father wasn’t working, he would drink and become aggressive toward his daughter and wife. As the only male in the household, Gacy would take beatings to defend his mother and sisters. At 7 years old, he was sexually abused by his dad's friend for months.

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During the times of 1972 to 1978, John Wayne Gacy Jr. killed 33 people in the Chicago area. He was known for raping, torturing, then strangling his victims (SC4). Then he would dispose of the bodies by either dumping them into a river or hiding them beneath his house. He wasn't caught until after the murder of his final victim in 1978. Then he became one of the most famous serial killers in American history.

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John Wayne Gacy was a cold-blooded serial killer from the early 1940s until the late 1990s. This cold-blooded killer was a master manipulator, a sex offender that tortured, raped, and murdered young men and boys. All the murders took place in the state of Chicago, Illinois, in the town of Norwood Park. “Over the period of a few years, Gacy murdered 33 people, 29 of whom were found underneath Gacy’s house – 26 in the crawlspace, and 3 other bodies were found in other areas of his house.” (Crime Museum) John Wayne Gacy took on another version of himself that he called Pogo the Clown.

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The other specialists thought that he may even suffer from multiple personality disorder or antisocial behavior. All of the experts found him to be insane at the time of committing the murders. Dr. Helen Morrison studied Gacy and interviewed him several times. Morrison says that the most frightening part about a serial killer is that there is no reason for

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Many people have minor qualities but do not have the label of serial killer. John Wayne Gacy is an excellent example of a human monster because of his actions of murder and rape while demonstrating that nurture can shape a person's personality proving human monsters are more terrifying than those we read about in fiction.       The life of Gacy began in Chicago, Illinois where he and his family lived. He was born on the 17th day of march in 1942. He grew up with

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He obviously carried this violent nature into his adulthood on a much larger scale and thought of his actions as acceptable. The fact that Gacy dressed as a clown clearly portrays that he learned these behaviors from a young age because being a clown is a childhood symbol. This reflects directly on what he was doing as an adult because here he had switched roles in a situation involving the molestation of a child. You can easily see the correlation between his childhood experiences and his reversed role adulthood actions. One personality disorder pertaining to Gacy was sociopathic.

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In 1985 Robert Agnew a sociologist come to an interest of studying the theory and finds a potential for the theory in explaining several causes of crime in society, but due to its limitation he developed and reformulated the theory to widen its dimension or scope. After revising the theory he come up into General strain theory of crime and builds its foundation in 1992. General strain theory argues that frustrations and anger leads someone to deviance and may result into committing a crime (Agnew, 1992). GST defines strains as negative life events and conditions which are commonly disliked by the people who experience it or negative experiences of a person in a given group (Agnew, 1992; 2001; 2006). Strain is often classified in two distinct types, the Objective Strain and the Subjective Strain.

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