John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was an American serial killer and rapist, also known as the Killer Clown, who was convicted of the sexual assault and murder of a minimum of 33 teenage boys and young men in a series of killings committed between 1972 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his Norwood Park Township home; his victims would typically be lured to this address by force or deception and all but one victim was murdered by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a tourniquet. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home; three further victims were buried elsewhere on his property, while the bodies of his last four known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River.