John Wayne Gacy’s botched execution last month seemed like a fitting end to a macabre tale. But the confusion and creepiness swirling around the late killer clown isn’t over yet.
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The study of the human brain postmortem as a way to account for abnormal behavior is a murky pseudoscience with a questionable history. Scientists in the former Soviet Union preserved and examined the brains of their dead leaders, including Stalin. Albert Einstein’s brain was also removed and analyzed after his death. But researchers have drawn few useful conclusions from these cases.
There is one exception: the brain of killer Charles Whitman, the University of Texas bell-tower sniper, offered a possible biological explanation for his crime: Whitman was found to have a brain tumor. Yet, the Tribune reported, pathologists and neurologists think the University of Chicago’s study of Gacy’s brain “won’t reveal much.”
According to Gregory Adamski, another of Gacy’s lawyers, the University of Chicago obtained permission from Gacy’s family to take the organ only after agreeing to a condition of confidentiality, which it violated by issuing the press release the day after Gacy’s death. If they already had possession of the brain, says Adamski, after the news flurry they should have returned it to the family.
