The Associated Press

CHICAGO Ä A man who once held the record for the most murder convictions in the United States lost a request Tuesday to have the Illinois Supreme Court block his execution next week.

John Wayne Gacy, 52, is scheduled to die Tuesday for the sex killings of 33 young men and boys between 1972 and December 1978.

Appeals have kept Gacy on death row for 13 years. He has other lawsuits pending.

Gacy, a former building contractor who worked as a clown at children's parties, was accused of luring his victims home for sex, then strangling them. Twenty-seven bodies were found in the crawl space under his house. Others were found under his garage floor and in nearby rivers.

He was convicted in 1980 of more murders than anyone else in U.S. history. In 1987, Donald Harvey, an Ohio nurse's aide, was sentenced to life for 37 slayings.

Also Tuesday, Circuit Court Judge Joseph J. O'Brien dismissed an emergency petition filed by doctors who said a state law requiring a doctor be present at Gacy's execution by lethal injection violates their medical ethics. Read Next Article