Killer Clown:The John Wayne Gacy Murders

by Terry Sullivan

Not until evening were we able to question Kim Byers, who had been in a swimming meet at Maine North High School. Yes, the photo receipt was hers, and she remembered filling it in on the evening of December 11 at Nisson’s. She explained that she had put on Rob’s parka because she was cold. And with a little embarrassment she told us that she had put the receipt in the pocket of the jacket because she hoped that Rob would notice it and ask her about it. This was the missing piece in the puzzle, and a second search warrant was practically assured. We now had absolute confirmation that Rob Piest had been in John Gacy’s house.

At home, sitting in front of the Christmas tree his children had decorated, Schultz was sipping a beer and thinking about Gray’s story. Suddenly he knew, without a doubt, what he had smelled last night in the waft of air from the register in Gacy’s bathroom. He had smelled that odor many times before, in the Cook County morgue.

Amirante was appalled when he heard their plans. Don’t leave, he implored them. He would send out for breakfast, get them cigarettes and coffee, anything they wanted. Just don’t leave. Why not? they asked. Just don’t leave, he said. The officers went out anyway, if for no other reason than to test his reaction. Looking back through the entrance from the outside, they saw Amirante take up position where they had been sitting—in the hallway.

The appointment book at Nisson’s—that was the rub. Had he not forgotten it, he said, he would not have killed Rob Piest and none of this would have happened.

By June, 1981, twenty-four of John Gacy’s victims had been identified, most of them through dental comparisons. The nine unknown young men were buried on June 12 in separate cemeteries. Burial expenses were paid by the Funeral Directors Association of Greater Chicago, and each stone bore the simple inscription, “We Are Remembered.”

I don’t have much faith in psychics, and I was particularly soured on the subject when I learned that Kozenczak’s “anonymous woman caller,” whose leads we actively—and unsuccessfully—pursued in the week before the arrest was actually a psychic whose help he had requested. I thought Kozenczak’s failure to tell us this at the time was an unforgivable breach of conduct.

Gacy’s letters apparently went unanswered, and the despair he had known in prison returned. He made his mother get rid of all the pictures of his former wife and their children and told her that it was better he just consider them dead.

Greg Bedoe remembered hearing gasps from other witnesses. He did not gasp. In fact, he told me, there was nothing horrifying or shocking about it. Bedoe said, “I lost my father to a heart attack, [and] my mother to breast cancer. If I had my choice, I would choose to die the same way [Gacy died].” Bedoe continued, “Nothing was cruel or unusual about the way Gacy died. Cruel and unusual was the way those kids died.” Gacy’s last words were, “Kiss my ass.”