NEED TO KNOW
Your next true-crime obsession has arrived.
The trailer for Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy offers a chilling look at Severance star Michael Chernus as the titular John Wayne Gacy — a serial killer who kidnapped, murdered and buried 33 young men in a crawl space beneath his Illinois home in the 1970s.
Gacy, dubbed the “Killer Clown,” was sentenced to death in 1980 after being found guilty of luring, sexually assaulting and murdering his many victims.
He was executed by lethal injection in 1994 at just 52 years old.
Brooke Palmer/PEACOCK
We first meet Gacy in the trailer as he lures an unsuspecting young man, 15-year-old Robert Priest, into his car while “Dead of Night” by Orville Peck plays.
We then see the Priest family — presumably the aforementioned young man — sitting around the table looking solemn, with the young woman saying, “The detective said missing kids usually come home. What happens when they don’t?”
Later, Gabriel Luna’s Rafael Tovar shows up at Gacy’s door to question him about a missing boy. “Kid’s missing, reported last seen with you,” he tells Gacy, who claims, “I don’t know who that is.”
Brooke Palmer/PEACOCK
The next chilling scenes show the police discovering the bodies of young men under Gacy’s house, with Luna’s character questioning another detective, saying, “His teenage male employees start disappearing, and nobody in your department looks into the guy?”
“The things he did to those kids, he’s sick,” Michael Angarano’s Sam Amirante, one of Gacy’s attorneys, says.
After a montage showing more of Gacy’s past and his numerous crimes, the trailer ends with someone asking Gacy how many young men he killed, to which he replies, “Up to you to find out.”
Brooke Palmer/PEACOCK
Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is helmed by Patrick Macmanus, who serves as showrunner, writer and executive producer of the limited series.
The show seeks to ask the question of why and how no one knew a monster like Gacy lived among them.
“He was charming and funny. Had a good, All-American job. Was a community leader. He even volunteered to entertain sick kids… while dressed as a clown,” the synopsis reads.
The synopsis adds that the show “peels back the twisted layers of Gacy’s life while weaving in heartrending stories of his victims; exploring the grief, guilt, and trauma of their families; and exposing the systemic failures, missed opportunities, and societal prejudices that fueled his reign of terror.”
Joining Chernus, Luna and Angarano as series regulars are James Badge Dale, Chris Sullivan and Marin Ireland.
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All eight episodes of Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy drop Thursday, Oct. 16, on Peacock.