After the staunch success of The Ted Bundy Tapes and Crime Scene: Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, Joe Berlinger‘s Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes is taking the internet by storm. In this period docuseries, Joe has once again killed it with his thorough research style and his affinity for true crime. His documentaries are known to aptly depict, in detail the loopholes in the justice system and the investigations that took a course during the crime. While true-crime shows are on an all-time high, the John Wayne Gacy tapes aren’t among the ones that fade away without fame.

John Wayne Gacy: A mystery that continues 50 years later

John Wayne Gacy was a closeted gay man. A pedophile who abducted young boys, raped and abused them, then killed them. The series points out that young and strong guys are prone to rape too. The police at that time didn’t notice this and were in an assumption that they were ‘runaways’. He would lure them by offering them jobs, drinks, smokes, or money for sex and take them to the kill house. He would tie his victims up for days, rape them, kill and finally bury them on his property or discard them in the river.

He killed 33 people who didn’t only consist of strangers. He took in people he knew too, mostly co-workers from his job as a clown at a children’s hospital. One of the reasons why his name was ‘The clown killer’.

The full blow of Gacy’s atrocities is still unknown as police scramble to identify his victims with DNA samples even today, 50 years later. Five of them are still unidentified maybe because he targeted hitchhikers, travelers, and runaways so their disappearance wasn’t known.

Jeffery Rignall: The link that connected all of Gacy’s murders:

The 26-yr-old was walking toward a gay bar when he bumped into Gacy. Gacy offered him marijuana, lured him into his car, and chloroformed him. As he was driven to the kill house, Rignall kept going in and out of consciousness. This is why he knew exactly where Gacy was taking him. He was lucky to not reach the fate of others because he was dumped after his torture, and not killed. He immediately went to the police to report Gacy.

Despite clear signs of abuse, the police paid no heed to the problem. We know of Rignall‘s courage because he went back to the curb where Gacy took him. This time with a car, and waited on Gacy to show up. He wrote down his car number and observed him from a distance which would later help him testify against the guy in court. Rignall’s lead also made other victims come out and speak.

This 3-part Netflix series is sure to give you goosebumps with Wayne’s tapes where he answers all the questions related to the crimes, his reasoning to do so, and how he feels about them now. We are sure most of you have it on the watch-next list already.