John Wayne Gacy’s Capture Happened Because of a Missing Teen Case

Robert Jerome Piest wanted a job. 

So the teenager told his mom he was going to speak with a contractor he heard hired teenagers and paid them $5 an hour, almost double what he made at a local pharmacy. 

What he didn’t know is that contractor—John Wayne Gacy—had killed 32 young men and boys and buried the majority of their bodies under his house. Gacy, who was known to dress as a clown named Pogo and perform at hospitals and charity events, flew under law enforcement’s radar for almost a decade until he raped and strangled Piest to death. 

Piest’s disappearance sparked a massive effort for his return. His family fought to ensure that Illinois police didn’t dismiss his death. Because of their drive, and crucial evidence found at Gacy’s house, Piest became Gacy’s final murder victim.

Two years later, Gacy was convicted in the murders of 33 young men and boys. Twenty-nine bodies were found buried under or near his home. Some of those remains weren’t identified until as recently as 2021.

Piest first heard of Gacy on December 11, 1978, as he worked his part-time job at Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, Ill., just northeast of Chicago.

During his shift that night, his coworker and classmate, Kim Byers, 17, unknowingly gave police a large piece of evidence when she borrowed Piest’s jacket and stuffed a request form to develop film in the pocket. 

She returned the jacket before Piest clocked out for the night. 

Piest’s mom picked him up around 9 p.m. They were meant to drive back to their home to celebrate her 46th birthday. Piest, however, asked her to divert their plans and wait while he talked to Gacy about the job. After waiting for what seemed like too long, Elizabeth Piest went home and returned to the area with her husband, two other children and their two German shepherds. 

When their search didn’t turn up anything, the family called 911. 

The next day, police learned that PDM Contractors, which Gacy owned, had remodeled Nisson Pharmacy and that he was who Piest had visited. 

Gacy was interviewed by police and insisted he didn’t know anything about the disappearance—but after getting a search warrant, investigators found the film receipt Byers left in Piest’s coat pocket inside Gacy’s house. The search uncovered syringes, drugs and licenses belonging to other boys.

They dug deeper into his history and discovered that Gacy was convicted of sexually abusing a teen boy in Iowa in 1968 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released on parole in 1970, which ended the next year. 

A week later, police started to uncover the bodies hidden below Gacy’s home. Piest’s body was later found with four other Gacy victims in the nearby Des Plaines River.

Gacy had spoken with police about missing boys before—dozens of young men and boys had vanished between 1972 and 1978 in and around Chicago. Teens told police in 1975 that a man named John would drive around and pick up young men. 

Gacy typically lured boys to his house by offering them jobs, then he’d ply them with drugs and alcohol and show them a “magic trick” that would involve handcuffing them before raping and murdering them—usually by strangulation. 

Police surveilled Gacy’s home in 1976, suspecting he was responsible for the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy, but they came up empty and ended their investigation. Then, the same year, police questioned him about missing 17-year-old Gregory Godzik, who had worked for Gacy.

He told police that the boy had simply run away, according to the Chicago Tribune. 

Years later, Godzik’s remains were later found among the 26 bodies that were buried in a mass grave under Gacy’s house. 

The closest police got to nabbing Gacy before Piest’s murder was in 1978. Chicago police arrested him after a 19-year-old reported Gacy kidnapped him at gunpoint and raped him. A police report obtained by the Tribune shows that Gacy admitted to sex acts with the teenager but denied that the young man was unwilling. Gacy was not prosecuted. 

Other victims had been runaways not previously tied to Gacy through his work, including Robert Winch, 16, who got in trouble at his foster home, and James Haakenson, 16, who ran away after he was shunned by his family for being gay.

Gacy admitted to the murders and pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. He was diagnosed during his 1980 trial with schizophrenia. 

Newspapers that covered the trial wrote that prosecutors called Gacy a “madman” and that they “painstakingly reconstructed the gruesome details of how Mr. Gacy lured his victims to his home with the promise of high-paying jobs, engaged in sex with them, then killed them, most by strangulation.”

He was convicted and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, Gacy admitted to other murders, though they were never confirmed. 

Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994.  Five of his victims remain unidentified.