Another John Wayne Gacy victim identified

Fucking evil monster. I really wish I believed in hell and that Gacy was enduring horrific torture for eternity.

it had to be horrible to realize that you had been tricked by his little handcuff game. God. knowing that you could do nothing be experience his torture and then die and be buried under his floor boards and covered with lime. does not sound like this boy had a really great family. very sad what some kids have to go through

Sad that some of his victims are still unidentified. You would think someone would have reported a family member missing or at least someone would miss them.

My former partner was a 5 year old when his parents hired a clown for his birthday. It wasn't until 30 years later he figured out the clown was Gacy. *shudder*.

I will always click on links about his victims. This poor gayling never had a chance. RIP, lil ginger...

It's likely that some victims were never reported missing. Gacy would pick up young men at bus stops by offering them a meal and a place to sleep. I would imagine these were gaylings who got thrown out of their homes and their families didn't give a shit.

It's really sad that if Gacy hadn't have gotten them, AIDS probably would have. It was such a dangerous time to be gay in chicago.

The pictures in that article really are heartbreaking to me, especially because we are contemporaries age-wise.

in the late 1970s there were three serial killers , male , killing young men on calif freeways. i was hitchhiking same freeways at that time. scary

I hope his family feels guilt for their part in his murder. The fact that they refer to him as "troubled" because he wore makeup and was probably gay speaks volumes. Had they loved him unconditionally, he would never have run away and thus, would never have been killed. Good job.

its hard to love a son in full makeup. those were different times.

A story from a young marine who survived an encounter with serial killer Randy Kraft.

[quote] its hard to love a son in full makeup. those were different times.

And yet, many families did. These horrible people chose not to and it got their son killed.

R13. true. but some kids go through horrible times. its hard to hear. alot of people should never have kids. but how do you stop them? R12. that story is so good. i have read it a couple times.

R3, it's very possible some or all were reported missing somewhere. But these murders long predated DNA, as well as the reforms that happened after the Adam Walsh case. It may simply be that not enough info has been shared or is available to register a hit on the right database. In this case they just needed a DNA sample and they were able to confirm it immediately.

It's also possible that some were orphans or from another country and there wasn't anyone around to make an issue of their disappearance.

I'm curious to learn more about this case though. He called his mother 40 years ago and then they never heard from him again--did they think that was deliberate or did they suspect something bad had happened? Did they report him missing or try to find him again? It sounds like a nephew started trying to find him on a whim and somehow was able to figure out he was a Gacy victim--how?

A short life. May he be at great peace in the Great Beyond. Bless him.

His last known whereabouts was Chicago in 1976. He was a gay teen runaway so it was logical that Gacy would be the first suspect to come to mind.

....

"... if Gacy hadn't have gotten them, AIDS probably would have"

They didn't necessarily go to his house to have sex. I mean look at him. He promised some of them jobs, preying on hitchhikers and runaways.

[quote]it's very possible some or all were reported missing somewhere.

This undoubtably happened in some cases. The problem back then is that once the missing teen- most of whom were suspected runaways- reached 18, their missing persons files was closed and purged because they were now considered adults and had the right to go "missing" and not contact their families.

More likely the cops wanted to close out the case and so the DNA magically matched.

I don't get wasting money on things like this. Gacy is dead and his victims are dead. Let the dead bury the dead. This closure bullshit, didn't exist 30 years ago and for thousands of years before mankind got along without it.

In the old days people immigrated thousands of miles and never heard from their families again. They did just fine.

For those interested in criminology, Wikipedia's Gacy page provides some documented speculation that he had accomplices. It's a nauseating, but interesting read.

"In the old days people immigrated thousands of miles and never heard from their families again."

That wasn't necessarily by choice

"More likely the cops wanted to close out the case and so the DNA magically matched."

Except they've investigated other runaways who were proven NOT to be victims

R21 is a sociopath with no friends or family. If my brother disappeared I'd spend the rest of my life trying to find out what happened to him.

I agree R21 is a sad sociopath . alone in the world except for datalounge

Were people just more trusting back then, that they would go home with a dude who looked like Gacy? If some complete stranger who was much older than me (never mind completely disgusting-looking) asked me to come back to his house there's no way in hell I would go. But back in the 70s, were people just more clueless about what awful things could happen with a complete stranger? That's something about the Gacy case I've always wondered about - those victims were all young men, and good-looking. Why would they go home with such a man like Gacy?

[quote]That's something about the Gacy case I've always wondered about - those victims were all young men, and good-looking. Why would they go home with such a man like Gacy?

Horny. Desperate. Naive. Trusting. Dumb. Other.

R26 He was a contractor and offered people jobs. He also had access to a pharmacy at night after it closed and he would steal pills from them. No morals, no principles, no nothing. They killed him with lethal injection whereas Ted Bundy got the electric chair.

IIRC Florida,where Bundy was executed, was the last state to use the electric chair.

This Reddit thread has more info.

R26, people were clueless. Those things just didn't happen.

Gacy attracted cute boys by offering them jobs that paid much more than teens could make at typical teen jobs, or even jobs with other contractors.

And he had a number of young procurers. One victim had a friend who brought him to Gacy, then, when the victim's brothers came to town looking for him, tried to connect them with Gacy by saying he had jobs available.

Another 1970's serial killer Dean Corll, in this case he had two teenage males who would help procure teen boys, including some of their friends.

Also r21, you uneducated, uninformed nitwit, it is s known FACT that the CPD is STILL purposely leaving chunks of this case unsolved because it would expose the vast corruption and incompetence of the CPD in the case. There is a location in the city that all experts agree has bodies but CPD refuses to dig. I could find the address somewhere, but it's a corner lot on a diagnol street that is apartments. He was a handyman there. The corner "yard" is a triangle. One summer he dug it up, and would only work at night. It was trenched deep, deeper than needed for planting bushes. One morning witness waking up and poof! It's filled with all new dirt, bushes, and sod that he planted DURING THE NIGHT.

The CPD made some major errors and are so corrupt they won't dig the sight. They are about as crooked as the LAPD.

Anyway r21, part of why we solve cases isn't just to "bring closure" but also because it helps cops clear cases and fit pieces to other unsolved cases AND by understanding serial killers and how they operate, we are able to stop new ones more quickly. Your post makes you sound young n dumb n full of cum. Dummy.

"In the old days people immigrated thousands of miles ....that wasn't necessarily by choice..."

Both of my maternal grandparents were sent to America at age 16. Alone. They were considered adults and were told, "That's it. There aren't any jobs, You're going to America. Bye." My grandmother begged to be allowed to stay home, but her mother was a widow and wouldn't hear of it. My mother and all of her 8 siblings were forced to drop out of high school and go to work by her father. He thought they had it easy, because they weren't being sent to another country, they just had to have full time jobs.

Ozzie and Harriet type families were not the norm in many parts of the US, especially when the parents grew up in the depression. My grandparents would have put a male child who wore makeup into a mental institution. There's no way they would allow their family to be "pulled down" by such behavior. I can understand why a family of uneducated people back in the 1970s would just figure their kid took off to be free of societal norms. And they were relieved, so they didn't bother looking

Of course it's not right to do such a thing, but we can't look at the past with modern eyes. Even today there are hardscrabble people. There were a lot more in the past. Look at Charles Manson and Steve McQueen. Both were throwaways. They had different outcomes, but McQueen was "lucky" to be in California at the right time. Maybe if Manson had been in Cali as a teen instead of in the Midwest, he many have had more breaks.

My grandfather (born 1900) had an older brother who was mentally challenged; their father was physically abusive to them, but one day my grandfather saw his brother beat so severely that they left in the middle of the night. My grandfather was 13, his brother was 15; they roamed around the Midwest, taking odd jobs on farms and in villages to survive; when his brother got a job at the Ford factory in Michigan in 1917, my grandfather joined the US Army and fought in France in WWI. On his return, he settled in Detroit, where he established his own home construction business. It was a different time.

And r34 is right about the luck; I remember reading in a book about Southern prison with plantations and chain gangs in the early 20th century, a teenager ran away from home in North Dakota, he ended up in Florida, was arrested for vagrancy, was put into a prison where the inmates were forced to work outside; he collapsed, was put into "the box" as punishment and roasted to death.

Throw-a-way Children. Support Runaway Groups. Gay. Straight, Whatever. My favorites include the Trevor Project, Fortune Society and True Colors Fund. List your local or favorite charities that help our youth for your neighbors to consider a donation.

One of Gacy's last victims was a 15 year old kid named Rob Piest. It's heartbreaking to look at photos of him; he was a handsome kid, and a good kid, devoted to his family and a hard worker. In fact, that's how he came to come in contact with Gacy; Gacy led him to believe he had some kind of construction job available and he wanted to apply for it. It's appalling to think of what he must have went through after being captured by Gacy.

Gacy was evil incarnate. Some crazy people (like Johnny Depp) have bought the killer clown's artwork, or have bought artwork depicting the killer clown. How sickening.

I broke up with someone because he had one of Gacy's paintings (of Malificent). I cannot stand people who buy that stuff.

[quote]In the old days people immigrated thousands of miles

Imagine a serial killer targeting young Hispanic illegal immigrant males today. Who would file a missing person report, much less offer DNA? A Gacy could pick up guys in Home Depot parking lots for years without ringing any alarm bells as long as he had a way to dispose of the bodies.

[quote]This closure bullshit, didn't exist 30 years ago and for thousands of years before mankind got along without it.

Mankind also got along thousands of years without fire, medicine and ways of purifying water. That doesn't mean we should chuck it all out the window because who cares, we'll still survive as a species.

r39, I bet that it's already happening. We don't know yet.

More on Gacy's unidentified victims. Number 24 was James.

1976 was well after the height of the runaway era, as the draft was over and boys were no longer running off to Canada en masse. But kids were still leaving home, to join cults or to be movie stars or to get on drugs or whatever, or in the desperate hope that there would be some place on Earth where being gay wouldn't make them a target for abuse. It was a different time then as a footloose young person wasn't automatically unemployable, and that their parents were more likely to write them off. Many of the parents of that era had grown up in WWII or the Great Depression, experiences that didn't exactly teach them universal kindness and forgiveness - some of them really were willing to throw their own kids out of the house and never see them again.

But really, if kids vanished in those days and were never seen again, I think it's because Law Enforcement wasn't looking for them. There were so many kids who left home voluntarily or whose parents didn't want them back, that the police weren't interested in looking for them.

At least two parents of suspected victims refuse to give their DNA. Which is their right but still heartbreaking they don't even care.

r44, have they said why they won't give their DNA? Aren't there any other relatives (siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins) who would be willing to help?

For those wondering how Gacy lured them, it wasn't charm and good looks. Gacy gave them some of them drugs or alcohol, and most were offered jobs or actually did work for his company. Rob Piest, mentioned by R37, was a teenager working on a pharmacy. Gacy is there one day about a construction project, and deliberately tells the owner in front of Piest that he hires a lot of kids and pays them some sum of money that is way more than the pharmacy paid. Later that day Piest tells some friends he's going to see a guy about getting a new job, and that was the last anyone heard from him. He also approached kids who looked lost at bus or train stations and either straight up forcibly kidnapped them or posed as a police officer trying to arrest or help them.

Years ago one of the forensics experts involved wrote that he had received several anonymous calls from people who thought their son or brother might be one of the unidentified victims. He said each caller refused to give a name or identifying details, because they said they didn't want people knowing their relative was gay (or straight and raped by a gay/bisexual man).

I hate the world.

The Gacy era is not the world we live in now, R48. Thank God.

R49.... dumb statement. its happening. its just criminals are smarter now.

His sister and her family lived just a few blocks from my family in North Little Rock, Arkansas. His two nieces went to school with me from elementary to high school. When the news broke about the murders we were young about 8th grade. I remember reading in the paper about the murders and it mentioned his sister by name and where they lived. He actually lived with them for a year or two in the mid 70's right before he started the killings. Like I said we were pretty young when it happened but I don't remember anyone saying anything about their uncle at school even to them. Kids can be really cruel but I don't remember any cruelty towards them about Gacy.

I read a long article about the case mentioned at R32. Fascinating but I regret reading it now. Just horrible details.

In other news, new DNA testing not only identified the Lindbergh baby but also established conclusive evidence he too was one of Gacy's victims.

Robert Piest, the last victim, was working an after school job at a local pharmacy. As R46 wrote, Gacy was there having been doing some contract work at the store. Piest was a 15 year old honors student, making $2.85 per hour at the pharmacy. Gacy was talking about a summer job paying $5.00 per hour. Piest was saving up to buy a car and the extra money would help.

That night was Piest's mother's birthday and she had come to the store to pick him up to take him home for the birthday celebration. She was waiting in the store for him to finish his time. He put on his jacket and told her he would be right back as he wanted to talk to this guy in the parking lot.

When he never came back, his mother went home and called the police.

It seems pretty clear that he would not have gone willingly with Gacy, nor would he have taken any drugs from him, not with someone waiting for him inside the store.

I shudder but shamefully admit that I jack off to ejaculatia at the thought of Gacy's enormous sizemeat invading my bowels. RIP to the gaylings, but they must have blown some pretty huge wads before their executia.

R10 his siblings didnt deserve to suffer. What did they do? The story says she was troubled but didn't say he was troubled because his family rejected his homosexuality. It may have had to do with their dad being a mean drunk rather than the kid being gay, who knows. His sister just pointed out that he'd begun to wear make up but at the time she and her brother didn't connect it with the possibility of him bring gay. We don't know how old they were when he ran away, they could have been just kids. So, personally, I hope his siblings don't blame themselves. They've missed their brother for a long time and they've probably suffered enough.

I never block anyone, I never ignore anyone.

Not even the likes of you, R55.

Now come here and let me tie up those long sleeves for you. There. All done.

R57 you cum to the realizatia that serial killers are hot.

R21....yes Gacy is dead as are his victims and yes you are correct....however it does matter. Somewhere a parent is reading this story and their kid is about to come out to them.....perhaps they'll think twice before they toss their child out into the streets. Perhaps this will change the course of that parents life and the life of their (gay) child. Just because someone's ancestors moved away and never contacted their family ever again doesn't mean the family left behind doesn't hurt. These victims weren't given a choice....someone stole their life.

R55.....is In need of attention.

R40, I LOVE you lol!

R44 if I threw my kid out only to find he/she was murdered by a serial killer....I would be reluctant to give my DNA. After all, my child was brutally tortured and murdered....because of me. On the other hand if my kid was gay or what have you the LAST place I'm letting them be/sleep/live on are the streets. I don't get it. You give birth to this child (or go through hell to adopt)....but they're gay then you toss them out? I just don't get it.

Apparently this shit runs in the Gacy family. His nephew sexually assaulted a 12 year old girl. Jesus.

r54

Piest is WHY Gacy got caught. Piest had been pestering Gacy for a job for weeks. Gacy had come in the drug store a month or so earlier and tried to hire a girl in the store, for an actual legitimate job for his business. She didn't want to work for him because she was leaving for college soon and found him a bit "weird." Piest overheard how well Gacy paid and was pestering him ever since to hire him.

This is why Gacy got caught. All his other victims basically were cast offs, or pickups or people no one really cared about. Piest would have been immediately missed and he was missed. As soon as he didn't return, everyone and his brother knew the last person he was with was Gacy.

Gacy got sloppy with this, had he not killed off Piest, he could've gone of years more, under the same routine without being discovered.

[quote]Were people just more trusting back then, that they would go home with a dude who looked like Gacy? If some complete stranger who was much older than me (never mind completely disgusting-looking) asked me to come back to his house there's no way in hell I would go.

So...what you’re saying is that if he were hot--or younger--they’d probably find your bones under his house?

[quote]That's something about the Gacy case I've always wondered about - those victims were all young men, and good-looking. Why would they go home with such a man like Gacy?

They should’ve known that a person as disgusting looking as Gacy MUST be a serial killer. If only they were superficial instead desperate, hungry and lonely, they may still be alive.

R21 doesn't come across as a sociopath as much as a nihilist.

[R38] I use to write him in prison for a few years and got a few paintings in the process and had Patches the clown hanging in the hallway of my apt, one day hooked up with a twink and in the morning his dad came to pick him up to take him home and commented on the painting and got him out of there fast. I saw the boy a few days later and he told me his dad didn't want me to see him any more but he was the rebellious shit and spent all his time with me against his father's wishes. The punch line is I'm still with him and going strong and a year later his dad developed a nasty crack habit with all black teeth and half way houses that come with it. Last I heard he was trying to get a job painting houses.

I used to hang out at the video arcade at the time where he picked up victims. Luckily I was too young and the wrong gender.

It was a different world then- As an 11 year old, I used to roam around Chicago all by myself- taking the El everywhere. No one thought it was wrong. I remember a couple years ago a story about a NY mother allowing her son (around the same age) to take the subway by himself and people were yelling for her head.

One 16 year old boy lived to tell the tale. John Gacy invited him over to his home on some pretense. After awhile Gacy threw him on the floor and started to wrestle with him. What he didn't know is that the young man was a wrestling champ at school. Gacy, a big guy, had him in a firm grip but the boy used his wrestling skills, broke free from him and left the house, simply thinking that he was a weird guy.

A few years later he saw Gacy's picture in the newspaper after being captured for the deaths of young men, and the teenager realized how narrowly he had escaped death.

I have a cousin who lived on the next block down from Gacy. Gacy's house is gone now, demolished when they were looking for bodies. There is another house in that spot but with a different house number.

I drove down the street a few years ago just out of curiosity,. It's not far from where I live. Nothing creepy about the street at all. I could see someone feeling safe in entering a house there. Just goes to show.

Take a look for yourself on Google maps. I don't know which lot was Gacy's. The address was 8213 Summerdale. Since the area was unincorporated, it might be listed as Chicago or DesPlaines, IL.

After reading this thread yesterday, I pulled up some old newspaper accounts. The drug store where Robert Piest worked is no longer in business, although the building is still there. I pass it frequently. For Chicagoans, it's on the north side of Touhy Ave, between River Road and Mannheim.

R70 After Gacy killed his last victim, Rob Piest, he stored the body behind the headboard of his bed for the night and then early the next morning he took it out and threw it off a bridge.

Gacy was apprehended shortly after that and thankfully the poor boy's body was retrieved from the river.

I think it took some time to find Robert Piest's body in the river. After Gacy began his confessions, he told police where the bodies were and apparently there was more than one that he threw in the river at the same point.

They found one body fairly quickly but it was only after Piest's body got hung up downstream that he was found in April of 1979.

According to this article, one of the cops who did the excavation of the crawl space said

[quote] “One of the most disturbing aspects of the case was the fact that some of these kids were probably buried alive,” says Rafael Tovar, one of the 10 officers who worked on the excavation team.

I think I feel this surge of empathy for the victim because we were close in age and circumstances, and it is easy to see how that could have been me. The victims seem to be the most vulnerable and the least missable, which is how this went on for so long.

I wouldn't be so hard on the family. It was a different time and most adults were not equipped to handle kids like us. I listened to a CBC interview with the kid's surviving sister, and it was heartbreaking. Their mother went to her grave haunted by the son's disappearance, and the sister was in tears, sad that the mom never found out what happened to her child but also relieved that she never found out that he'd been tortured and murdered like that. I imagine there was more than enough guilt eating away at her, and I really feel for the family.

I watched a documentary about the missing and unidentified Gacy victims. Their families are ignoring or not saying how their relatives are bisexual or even gay.

Gacy was an evil predator, just read what he did to bisexual man Jeff Rignall who was just walking to a gay/LGB bar and who was lured into Gacy's car and lucky to have survived being raped and attacked. Rest in peace.

If you ever want to have a peaceful night's sleep, I will only urge you to never to read the details of the Gacy or Corll murders . Seriously. I was a teenager back then, and ran away and went hitchhiking. I'm so grateful to know that I came to my senses, and returned home on my own.

I don’t find serial killers as fascinating as some. They are pschopathic murderers. The people who support the death penalty can look toward serial killers as their argument in favor.

Are all gay murderers tops? Gacy and Dahmer.

I'm kind of glad I grew up in a slightly more paranoid time. I think the 70s was the last real freedom kids could have. Not sure if it was this case or another, but one family said that their 14 year old son used to just disappear for a few days to the city and come back. It wasn't a big deal to them. Only after he didn't call or come back after weeks did they start to worry. I was like WTH? I've read other cases similar where the parents were fine with there kids roaming around.

I read one story about this female hitchhiker who was picked up by a couple and then taken to their home and kept in a wall storage or something in their basement for years. By the time she could escape, she had Stockholm Syndrome. I think that story was court tv documents. I've actually learned more about serial killers that I care to from DL. Never heard of R32's case.

Have there been no recent serial killers? What happened? Did the world get a little saner or they're just not catching folks anymore? You don't hear about it

"Have there been no recent serial killers?"

There have been. Just type "Bruce McArthur" into the search function

I'd have gone home with JWG. He's just my type.

Please tell me that's a joke

if the dead kids sister in OP's story, had given a shit about him , or their slovenly mother had either. The kid would never had run away , only to be tortured and murdered. Please, don't keep your sob story going. , about it being a different time. love is love , no matter when. Too bad the old bitch is dead, hopefully rotting, and let the poor sorrowful sister rot next to Gacy with her.

Gacy claimed he copied Dean Corll's torture board, i wonder if he also copied the hand cuff trick? I believe Dahmer also used the hand cuff trick.

I remember well when Gacy was caught. It was on the nightly news, or maybe reported live; I remember it being nighttime but Gacy's yard was lit up like daytime by big construction-type lights the cops put up. And the news showed the cops carrying out body bag after body bag after body bag as they dug up the crawlspace. Gacy had been married. His former wife complained to him about the smell from the crawlspace. He would lure boys and young men to his home, some with promises of employment. They'd talk, have a couple beers, relax, and Gacy would offer to show them magic tricks. One involved handcuffs, and that was when things turned ugly. He was also friendly with cops, as I recall. Also was active with the Democratic Party and was photographed with Rosalyn Carter.

[quote]I'd have gone home with JWG. He's just my type.

He's totally my type too. For those Dataloungers who might question those of use who find JWG attractive, ask yourself just why exactly he was able to get so many gay men into his home in the first place. Not everyone is into twinks or male model Brian Bloom types.

"Also was active with the Democratic Party and was photographed with Rosalyn Carter."

Freepers always mention this but neglect to mention that Ted Bundy was a young Republican

I'm not a Freeper, assfuck, just mentioning what I remember about him.

ID is airing a three-episode series right now about Gacy's unidentified victims called "Deadly Legacy." The first episode aired last weekend and profiled Bill Bundy, who was 19 years old when he disappeared after leaving for a party. When Gacy was caught, his sister and mother called the detectives who were working the case and were told they needed dental records. They contacted Bundy's dentist, but he had retired a few years earlier and had trashed all his records!

I like the ID series. They could put the DNA of some of those other victims in those family search DNA databases. They caught the Golden State killer that way.

[quote]This closure bullshit, didn't exist 30 years ago and for thousands of years before mankind got along without it.

Spoken like someone who didn’t have a family member murdered.

R75 that's crazy did anyone try to hurt you or have sex with you? Or did you avoid approaching men? I once got a ride home from a local park with a total stranger when I was 13 or 14, and looking back it was very stupid but I am glad she never hurt me.

R86 also he would lure/kidnap victims with the prospect of just smoking pot or drinking together. For a lot of kids/teens and young adults even during the 1970s they would have gone with him without thinking he might harm them, especially if they were bisexual or gay and closeted or out, and he would invite them for sex.

Apparently Gacy had accomplices. Their names are Rossi and Cram, and Robin Gecht from the ripper crew claimed he knew Gacy. Gacy wanted to imitate Dean Corll. I do wonder if Gacy and serial killer Larry Eyler ever encountered each other in Chicago's gay bars and in the gay bars in the Chicago suburbs?

R75 reading about what Randy Kraft and Albert Fish did to their victims will also do that to you. The X Ray of Albert Fish's body and reading about what he did to his victims gave me nightmares.

R78 I am not sure how old you are but in the 90s and early 2000s before everyone had mobile phones if you followed jam bands it was like that.

Yeah I am wondering if they did that R90?

It's been a year and a half and I still don't get why someone gets angry at the idea of "this closure bullshit." What the hell is going wrong in your life to get upset about that?

:( rest in peace. I would not be surprised if Gacy and his accomplices murdered more victims and hid them in other places besides the house.

An article about Gacy and his victims. He had accomplices.

Very sad. I watched The Case of the Killer Clown on HLN (before and after Forensic Files) and I cried for those kids especially the We Remember slogan on the unidentifiable’s resting place.