The Gacy Execution – Young, Male and Mostly Missed

by Chicago (AP)

John Wayne Gacy’s final mistake in his murder rampage was killing Robert Piest. It’s a myth that Gacy’s 33 victims were all runaways, male prostitutes and street kids whose families wouldn’t have noticed if they were gone. Most had families and led normal lives, but there was something special about Gacy’s final victim that particularly interested police. Robert was 15 and living at home in suburban Des Plaines with his close-knit family. The night he disappeared, December 11, 1978, was his mother’s 46th birthday, and she drove to the drugstore where he worked to take him home for her party.

He asked her to wait a few minutes so he could talk to a man about a construction job paying $5 an hour, double his drugstore pay. Robert never returned. His mother knew he wasn’t the kind of boy who would leave her stranded. Mrs. Piest became alarmed, checked at home for the boy, then called the police. She and her husband. Harold. franticly searched through the night with the family dog. “Anyone with a brain knew this was not a runaway,” William Kunkle, one of the original prosecutors in the case, recalled Monday.

Police learned it was Gacy who had been at the drugstore and had offered the boy a job. A day after Piest disappeared, Gacy was told to report to the police station for questioning. Piest was Gacy’s final victim in a series of murders that began in 1972. Investigators found out that some of the young men and boys Gacy had picked up were runaways or youngsters who had been kicked out of their homes. But others appeared to be average, Kunkle said. When John Szyc, 19, disappeared Jan. 20, 1977, he had only recently moved out of the family home in Des Plaines into a Chicago apartment.

Police were notified after Szyc failed to show up for his job. Robert Gilroy, 18, came from a family of law officers. His father was a Chicago police officer, and an uncle was an investigator for the county state’s attorney. The victim, a student at the University of Illinois in Chicago, was reported missing after failing to show up for a scheduled day of horseback riding. John Butkovich, 18, lived with his family in Chicago and did construction work for Gacy. When he disappeared July 25, 1975, his family directed police to Gacy because they were aware of a recent fight between their son and Gacy.

Rick Johnston, 17, of Bensenville, disappeared after his mother dropped him off at a Chicago theater for a concert. When she went to pick him up after the concert, he wasn’t there. Gregory Godzik, 17, lived at home in Chicago with his family. He disappeared on his first day working construction for Gacy. Gacy was able to get away with the killings, Kunkle said, partly because of the casual way, police treated reports of missing youths. “At that time, there was a 48-hour rule that was common around the country,” he said.

Police waited two days before doing any investigation because so many children reported missing turned out to be runaways. Investigators at the time of Gacy’s killings also lacked computers, and it wasn’t a simple matter for police departments to share information and recognize patterns. But with the murder of Piest, investigators got their break. On December 14, 1978, they discovered handcuffs, a wooden stockade used to restrain victims and other suspicious items in Gacy’s home and began following him.

A week later, they uncovered the remains of 27 of Gacy’s victims in a crawl space under his house. Two more bodies were found buried nearby, and four more were pulled from nearby rivers. Here is a list of those victims in estimated chronological order of their deaths and the dates when they disappeared (the body numbers for the unidentified victims refer to order in which they were found):

1. Timothy Jack McCoy, 16, January 3, 1972
2. Body 28, unidentified.
3. John Butkovich, July 31, 1975
4. Darryl Sampson, 18, April 1976
5. Samuel Todd, 14, May 14, 1976
6. Randall Reffett, 15, May 14, 1976
7. Michael Bonnin, 17, June 3, 1976
8. William Carroll, 16, June 13, 1976.
9. Rick Johnston, August 6, 1976
10. Body 24, 1976
11. Body 26, 1976
12. Body 21, 1976
13. Body 13, 1976
14. Michael Moreno, October 1976
15. Kenneth Parker, October 25, 1976
16. Greg Godzik, 17, December 12, 1976
17. John Szyc, 19, January 20, 1977
18. Jon Prestidge, 20, March 15, 1977
19. Body 5, 1977
20. Body 10, 1977
21. Body 19, 1977
22. Matthew Bowman, 19, July 5, 1977
23. Robert Gilroy, 21, September 15, 1977
24. John Mowery, 19, September 25, 1977
25. Russell Nelson, 20, October 17, 1977
26. Robert Winch, 16, November 11, 1977
27. Tommy Boling, 20, November 18, 1977
28. David Talsma, 19, December 9, 1977
29. William Kindred, February 1978
30. Timothy O’Rourke, June 1978
31. Frank Landingin, 19, November 4, 1978
32. James Mazzara, 20, November 29, 1978
33. Rob Piest, 15, December 11, 1978

Information from Reuters was used in this report.