It is also a David and Goliath saga – the story of a young lawyer fresh from the public defender’s office whose first client in private practice turns out to be the worst serial killer in our nation’s history. org – “I have read a few books about serial killers in the past, out of curiosity – but never anything quite like this. Gacy had everybody fooled, and people don’t like it — they don’t like that they were friends with an evildoer,” Moran said.

After Gacy’s house was razed in April 1979, the vacant lot became a notorious gathering place in the 1980s, drawing everyone from ghost hunters to rowdy neighborhood teenagers who late at night spun their wheels in the dirt lot and dumped beer bottles. This book does not re-enact any of the killings, in fact it lacks the gory details we tend to find in most books about the lives and deeds of serial killers.Gacy committed all the murders in his Norwood Park home, luring his victims there with the promise of construction work or some other ruse, then sexually assaulting and torturing them before killing them, usually by strangulation. The next day, Des Plaines police learn it was John Wayne Gacy whom Piest wanted to speak to about a job. In the shadow of O’Hare International Airport, the winding, looping streets and small-town character of unincorporated Norwood Park Township look much the way they did in December 1978.

Gacy committed his first known murder in January 1972, after luring the 16-year-old Timothy McCoy to his house for sex.One-on-one, or in a group setting, he would be the last person that you’d think was a serial killer and is as devious as he was.

Today, with airliners crisscrossing the skies above, Norwood Park Township, with its small bungalows and two-flat buildings, resembles other neighborhoods at the edges of the city, popular with municipal workers and ethnic whites.Elected officials began passing laws creating sex offender registries, and schools across the country added curriculum teaching youngsters about stranger danger and instructing them to speak out. With Gacy having confessed to the crimes, the arguments were focused on whether he could be declared insane and thus remitted to a state mental facility. He may have been someone who provided them with alcohol and drugs and maybe a place to sleep at night. He’s last seen alive March 15, 1977, meeting a friend for coffee in a restaurant near Bughouse Square.