A Malden man’s guilty pleasure of investing in murderabilia has come back to haunt him thanks to a “cursed” clown painting by serial killer John Wayne Gacy, which the collector claims turned his life into a three-ring circus.
“I just want to get rid of it,” said musician Nikki Stone about the late Gacy’s signed self-portrait of his terrifying alter ego, ‘Pogo the Clown’.
Since he plunked down $3,000 in 2001 to buy the framed oil Stone said his beloved dog has died and his mother found out she had cancer.
When a friend offered to store the painting at his house, the friend’s neighbor was killed in a car crash. A second friend who kept the painting for Stone attempted suicide, Stone said.
“I’ve never even hung it,” said Stone, who hopes a less superstitious buyer will at least cover the $3,000 he blew - even if only to burn the true-crime artifact.
The creepy conversation piece is now in the care of Stone’s pal Shawn McCarron, a consignment art dealer and owner of Kaleidoscope Tattoo & Art in Cambridge.
McCarron has had his own share of bad luck: His mother, Maureen, 58, was murdered in Malden in 1999.
“I’m not afraid of it,” McCarron said of the painting. “I don’t believe in the hocus-pocus and the bad mojo that comes with it.”
And if McCarron should pocket a buck or two from the oil’s sale, as he sees it, “Every murderer in the world should be rolled into one. They all owe me.”
McCarron keeps the Gacy under wraps, but said, “People do ask to see it. They get a chill through their body. I’ve had people say, ‘Oh my God, put that back in the box’.”
John Wayne Gacy, (aka Pogo) a suburban Chicago contractor and former shoe salesman, was executed in 1994 at age 52 for the torture and murders of 33 boys and men. Gacy, who also performed as Pogo the Clown at children’s parties, would kill his victims while raping them, then bury the bodies in a crawl space in his home.
Stone admits he once thought it would be ’super cool’ to own a Gacy original. “It’s the most evil of bastards who are most in demand”, he reasoned at the time.
And after all, actor Johnny Depp invested in a Gacy clown painting. Then again, Depp reportedly became so weirded out by the piece that he developed a pathological fear of clowns and unloaded the artwork.
