John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender convicted of raping, torturing, and murdering at least thirty-three young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in Norwood Park Township, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He committed all of his known murders inside his ranch-style house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue. Gacy typically lured victims to his home and tricked them into wearing handcuffs under the pretext of a magic trick, then raped and tortured them before killing them by asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, three were buried elsewhere on his property, and four were disposed of in the Des Plaines River.

Before the Chicago-area murders, Gacy had been convicted in 1968 of sodomizing a teenage boy, Donald Voorhees Jr., in Waterloo, Iowa, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment but served eighteen months before parole. After returning to Illinois, he established a construction business, PDM Contractors, and became active in local Democratic Party politics and as a volunteer clown performing as "Pogo" and "Patches" at community and charitable events. His first known murder occurred on January 3, 1972, involving 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, described as the "Greyhound Bus Boy" prior to identification. Gacy committed a second, still-unidentified murder around January 1974, followed by the murder of PDM employee John Butkovich in 1975. After his 1976 divorce from his second wife, Carole Hoff, Gacy lived largely alone and murdered at least thirty additional victims between 1976 and 1978, a period he referred to as his "cruising years."

By mid-1978, the crawl space beneath Gacy's house was full, and he began disposing of bodies in the Des Plaines River, including victims Timothy O'Rourke, Frank Landingin, and James Mazzara. The investigation that led to Gacy's arrest began with the December 11, 1978, disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest, a part-time pharmacy employee whom Gacy had approached about construction work. Des Plaines police, led by Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak, identified Gacy as a suspect after learning of his prior Iowa sodomy conviction and an outstanding battery charge. Gacy was arrested on December 21, 1978.

Gacy's conviction for thirty-three murders committed by one individual covered the most homicides in United States legal history at the time. He was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980, and was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. Several of his victims remained unidentified for decades; identification efforts using forensic techniques have continued in subsequent years, including cases tracked through missing-persons databases.