Ringside Report Looks Back at Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy

Real life can be terrifying. Make believe can be worse. When the possibilities of the haunts of make believe cross into reality, the fear can become paralyzing.

Imagine you live in a quiet neighborhood in an urban area. Little old ladies feel safe enough to walk their dogs late at night. Everyone knows everyone within a certain radius, and the neighbors gather for outings time after time. There are so many neighborhoods like this in America. Our guard can be allowed to be let down because we feel a safety within our surroundings.

That can change in a New York Minute…

In the village of Norwood, just outside the city of Chicago, one who lived in this basic community experienced exactly that. Norwood was, and is, a burb that has working class families and the basic necessities in life. A community of bungalow houses and typically low crime allowed for little crime and a very traditional way of living in the 1970’s.

One night in 1978, the disappearance of a young man named Rob Piest changed all of that and turned the community upside down. This was so unusual to have something so puzzling happen in the area. And little did anyone know, the search for the missing 15-year-old would turn the whole world on top of it’s head.

Prior to Piest’s disappearance, Piest’s mother had gone to pick him up from work when he told his mother he would be a few minutes because there was a contractor looking to hire people for some jobs. Piest made $2.25 at his current job, where the contractor was willing to pay $5, a somewhat easy area of interest for someone that age. That was the last she ever saw her son again.

Police turned their attention to the owner of PDM Contractors, who consistently hired young men, teenagers, to do jobs for his company. PDM stood for Painting, Decorating and Maintenance.

The owner of PDM Contractors was a man named John Wayne Gacy.

Gacy at the time was the pillar persona to many in the community. He was politically involved, was the go-to guy for help around the neighborhood and generally carried himself in a jovial fashion. Gacy even did events as Pogo the Clown. There would never be reason to suspect him of any wrongdoing on the surface. Frankly, we would come to find out, that multiple coincidences were overlooked on the surface through time.

Gacy, originally from Chicago, was married and divorced twice. His first marriage took him to Waterloo, IA, whereas a local political figure in the Jaycees chapter, he was arrested and sentenced for 10 years on a count of sodomy with a 15-year-old boy. This would lead to Gacy’s first divorce, but Gacy would only spend about 2 years in prison before being released and allowed to migrate back to Chicago. Someone had deemed him re-habilitated, despite actual evaluations noting he was a psychotic sexual predator that there was no cure for.

Gacy would slip through the cracks and upon his return to Chicago, he would become a chef and work on starting his business, PDM. Marrying for a second time to his sister’s friend, Gacy would soon find himself on the track to divorce after homosexual infidelities became apparent and created an undesirable marriage for his second wife in 1975.

Gacy was an overly friendly guy, claiming to be bisexual, would do what he could to lure in his next thrill. His last was Rob Piest. Bringing Piest back to his Norwood home, he would perform magic tricks to gain interest and help draw down his prey’s guard, and then do what became to be known as the rope trick. The rope trick was a basic tourniquet that would go around the victim’s neck and Gacy would twist a few times until the victim passed out or was dead.

An initial search warrant was granted for Gacy’s home; however, nothing was found that could tie him to Rob Piest. However, Gacy clearly had things in his home that were awkwardly there, such as what looked to be a class ring. When nothing turned up, the police began surveillance of Gacy 24/7. Gacy, knowing that he was being watched decided to embrace the police and do what he does best, try and deceive. Gacy would eat and converse with police, invite them into his home on colder Chicago nights to use the bathroom and even cook them dinner.

His arrogance would really end up being carelessness. One night, he invited police in to eat. One had to use the bathroom. The heater kicked on and a smell that was so putrid came through the vents. This would allow for the police to get a second warrant with new probable cause and a distinct drive at searching the crawl space underneath the house. This search led to the findings of 26 bodies unearthed in the shallow grave beneath his house and 3 elsewhere on his property and 3 more were fished out of the Des Plaines River.

Gacy would be charged for 33 murders, convicted, and sentenced to death by lethal injection, which would be carried out on May 10, 1994 at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, IL.

How did all of this go unnoticed? How does someone skate on 33 murders for so long? Many believe it was a prejudicial bias against homosexuals. Many believe it was the incompetence of the detectives working each individual case and ignoring the basic connections and taking the face value that their boss (Gacy) claimed they were just runaways when asked in the case of one of his identified victims. Either way, a community had seen a man they thought they knew turn out to be the devil, the greatest mass murderer the country had ever seen living in plain sight.

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