Would You Buy Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy’s Property?

Bettmann / Contributor

The Chicago-area property where serial killer John Wayne Gacy, known as the “Killer Clown,” lured his victims to their death is now on the market.

Gacy buried 29 bodies underneath and around his home, which was subsequently torn down in 1979. The cheerful, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that’s currently for sale was erected in its place in 1986. The brick, 2,500-square-foot home, in suburban Norwood Park Township, IL, is listed for $459,000.

The home features a two-sided fireplace and a second-story loft that can be transformed into an office or extra bedroom.

But is that enough to allow potential buyers to overlook the property’s grisly history? After all, this is the place where Gacy, who would dress up as Pogo the Clown and entertain children at local birthdays and charity events, committed terrible atrocities in the 1970s.

Gacy killed at least 33 boys and men, and buried the majority of his victims underneath and around his house. Four of the bodies were thrown into the Des Plaines River when the psychopath ran out of room on his own property.

He was arrested in 1978, and a year later, the home was torn down. Gacy was put to death in 1994.

In 1986, a woman bought the property for $30,544 and put up a new home there for her aging parents, according to TMZ. That is the home that is currently for sale.

Although the original house has been demolished, the crimes are still so memorable, even more than 40 years later, that the house is likely to sell at a discount of 10% or more, in the opinion of real estate appraiser Orell Anderson. He’s the president of Strategic Property Analytics in Laguna Beach, CA.

“The stigma runs with the land,” Anderson says, adding that tearing the house down and rebuilding it on a site as notorious as this one remains an issue. “Most people don’t like to live in a place where such things have happened.”

The fact that so many of the victims were young leaves a stigma that may be difficult to forget in the eyes of many prospective buyers. And that often leads to fewer offers and lower prices.

“It doesn’t get any worse than this,” Anderson says.

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