The John Wayne Gacy case is the story of a suburban Chicago contractor who murdered 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978, was caught in December 1978 after the disappearance of a 15-year-old pharmacy clerk led police to his house, was convicted on every count in 1980, and was executed by the State of Illinois in 1994. At the time of his conviction, it was the largest murder case against a single defendant in United States history. Twenty-nine bodies were recovered from Gacy’s property, most from the crawl space beneath his home, and four more were pulled from the Des Plaines River. Five of his victims still have no name.
Who Gacy Was and How He Found Victims
Gacy already had a record when the killings began. In 1968 he pleaded guilty to sodomy involving teenage boys in Iowa and received a 10-year sentence, but he was paroled after 18 months and returned to Illinois by June 1970. He committed his first known murder within two years.
He settled in Norridge and later Norwood Park Township and, in 1971, founded a part-time construction business called PDM Contractors. The company did remodeling, painting, and maintenance work, and much of its workforce was made up of high school students and young men. Gacy used the promise of a job to lure many of his victims. He killed his first known victim, 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, in 1972 after meeting him at a Chicago Greyhound station and bringing him home. Over the next six years, his victims ranged in age from 14 into their early twenties. Gacy used physical ruses he later described as a “handcuff trick” and a “rope trick” to restrain them before he killed them.
To neighbors and the community, Gacy presented as a friendly local businessman who volunteered and performed as a clown at children’s parties. That reputation, along with the fact that many of his victims came from working-class families and vanished without generating much media attention, let him keep killing for years.
How the Killings Were Discovered
The case broke open with the disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest on December 11, 1978. Piest worked part-time at Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois. Gacy came to the store that evening to discuss a remodeling job, and Piest told his mother he was going to speak with a contractor about employment. He never came home. His family called police that night.
Investigators quickly identified Gacy as the last person to see Piest. A background check turned up the Iowa sodomy conviction, and police placed him under surveillance. Officers obtained a search warrant on December 13 and entered Gacy’s home, where they found items belonging to other missing young men, including a photo receipt Piest’s family confirmed belonged to a friend of their son. Officers who entered on a later visit also detected the odor of decomposition.
Gacy was arrested on December 21, 1978, initially on a minor drug charge. That same day, investigators obtained a second warrant and found human remains in the crawl space beneath his house. On December 22, Gacy gave a rambling confession that lasted several hours. He told police he had killed more than 30 young men, that he had buried most of them on his property, and that he began dumping bodies in rivers only after the crawl space filled up.
The Victims
Gacy’s 33 victims were boys and young men, the youngest identified at just 14 years old, and most lived in the greater Chicago area. Investigators recovered 29 bodies from the property and four from the Des Plaines River. The remains were badly decomposed, and many had been buried for years in the damp crawl space, which made identification extraordinarily difficult.
In 1978 and 1979, forensic experts relied primarily on dental records, cross-referenced against missing-persons files, together with skeletal analysis to estimate age and height. That approach only works if a missing person’s file exists and contains dental records. William Bundy’s dental records had been destroyed, and his remains went unidentified for more than three decades.1Cook County Sheriff’s Office. Unknown Victim of John Wayne Gacy Is Identified When the initial investigation ended, eight of the 33 victims still had no name.
The Trial and Insanity Defense
A grand jury indicted Gacy on 33 counts of murder, one for each victim killed between 1972 and 1978. At the time, this was the highest number of murder charges ever brought against a single individual in United States history.2Justia Case Law. People v Gacy, 1984, Supreme Court of Illinois Decisions
The trial began in February 1980 in Cook County. Prosecutors presented the physical evidence recovered from the house, personal effects tying Gacy to specific victims, and his own detailed confessions. The defense did not dispute that Gacy had killed the victims. Instead, it entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing that he suffered from a mental illness that prevented him from being held criminally responsible. Gacy had previously claimed that an alternate personality named “Jack” committed the murders while he was unaware. Prosecution experts diagnosed him with antisocial and narcissistic personality types rather than any psychotic disorder and testified that he was fully aware of the nature and consequences of his actions and capable of conforming his conduct to the law.3Justia Case Law. People v Gacy, 1988, Supreme Court of Illinois Decisions
The jury deliberated for one hour and 50 minutes before rejecting the insanity defense. On March 12, 1980, they returned a guilty verdict on all 33 counts.
Death Sentence and Execution
Sentencing began immediately. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for 12 of the murders that occurred after Illinois enacted a new capital punishment statute in 1977. The jury deliberated for roughly two hours before recommending death. On March 13, 1980, the judge formally sentenced Gacy to death for those 12 murders and to natural life in prison on the remaining 21 counts.3Justia Case Law. People v Gacy, 1988, Supreme Court of Illinois Decisions
Gacy spent 14 years on death row, first at Menard Correctional Center and then at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet. He filed multiple appeals during that time, raising grounds that included mental incompetency, the constitutionality of the execution method, and claims that he was out of town during some of the murders. Every appeal was rejected, including last efforts before a federal appeals court and the United States Supreme Court on the day before his execution.
Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011.4Illinois General Assembly. 725 ILCS 5/119-1 Death Penalty Abolished
Ongoing Work to Identify the Remaining Victims
In October 2011, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart reopened the Gacy investigation to try to name the eight victims who were still unidentified. Dart said the young men “deserve dignity and that includes knowing their names.”5Cook County Sheriff’s Office. John Wayne Gacy Victim Identified Since the reopening, 55 people have submitted DNA samples for comparison.
The first identification came the same year. William George Bundy was named in November 2011 after his siblings provided DNA that was compared against the victim’s remains at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.1Cook County Sheriff’s Office. Unknown Victim of John Wayne Gacy Is Identified James “Jimmie” Byron Haakenson was identified in July 2017 through the same process, with detectives confirming the match using his original missing person report, Social Security records, and post-mortem data.6Cook County Sheriff’s Office. Unknown Gacy Victim Identified Francis Wayne Alexander was identified on October 25, 2021, after the Sheriff’s Office partnered with the DNA Doe Project and used investigative genetic genealogy to trace family matches back to him.5Cook County Sheriff’s Office. John Wayne Gacy Victim Identified
Five victims remain unidentified. Usable DNA profiles have been obtained from all five sets of remains, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office continues to ask families of young men who went missing in the greater Chicago area during the 1970s to submit DNA samples for comparison.7Cook County Sheriff’s Office. Unidentified Victims John Wayne Gacy