Creepy clown craze: How dangerous are clowns really?
It is the craze which is terrifying children and adults alike
on both sides of the Atlantic, whether you like it or not.
Creepy clowns, lurking in dark corners, wielding the odd
weapon, have closed schools, created mass panic and kept police officers in the
US and UK busy.
If you saw one lurking outside your window, you'd have good
reason to be terrified.
But just how dangerous are these red-nosed children's
entertainers really?
Popular culture - from Batman's The Joker to Pennywise in
Stephen King's It - certainly suggests the children's party favourites do give
us something to fear.
And, to be fair, history does have its share of killer
clowns.
The mass murderer
The most notorious - by a long way - was John Wayne Gacy,
otherwise known as Pogo the Clown - or, later, the Killer Clown.
Between January 1972 and December 1978, he murdered 33 young
men and teenage boys - burying most of them in the crawl space under his house.
At the same time, the twice-married Gacy was appearing as
Pogo, the friendly neighbourhood clown, bringing his own brand of humour to
parades, children's hospitals and the odd Democratic fundraiser around
Illinois.
But the former manager of a fast-food franchise, later
executed by lethal injection, doesn't appear to have been dressed as a clown
when committing the killings.
What's more, it is undeniable that his other passion -
politics - has produced far more murderers over the years.
The smiling shooter
More than a decade later, an actual "clown killer"
struck: Marlene Warren was fatally shot by a clown who arrived at her Florida
home holding flowers and two balloons.
When Mrs Warren opened the door, the brown-eyed clown shot
her before fleeing in an unmarked car.
One of the balloons left behind as the killer made their
escape said, "You're the greatest".
More than 25 years later, her murder remains unsolved and
the identity of the gunman behind the white mask is unknown.
And that would be it for the list of actual clown killers,
if not for one more high-profile murder.
The kingpin's assassin
Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix was enjoying his birthday
party in Baja California, Mexico, when he was gunned down by a clown wearing a
pink wig and a round, red nose.
This was no ordinary victim, however.
The 64-year-old man shot dead in front of his family and
friends, as well as politicians and sportsmen, had once controlled the drugs
trade along the US border.
But at the time of his death his cartel had been severely
weakened.
The clown's motive, and choice of costume, remain a mystery.
Should we be scared?
With just a handful of actual clown killers in the past
century, the answer to whether or not this latest craze should have us quaking
in our boots has to be no.
Between 1972 when Gacy began his killing spree and Mrs
Warren's death in 1990, killings known to have been committed by clowns in the
US accounted for just 0.0088% of all murders, nationally.
In fact, in the same time frame there have been at least
double the number of doctors-turned-serial killers.
On top of that, arrests of clowns in the US have tended to
be for minor offences only.
So on balance, you are more likely to be killed by your
kindly local doctor than the slightly creepy crown waiting for you in the
shadows.
Which is good news - isn't it?
Source: BBC US
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