Rule of Law
When police searched John Wayne Gacy's house on December 13, 1978 they were completely unprepared for the horrors they would uncover. Although police executed a search warrant that they hoped would provide further insight into the mysterious disappearance of fifteen-year-old Robert Piest, they would soon come to discover evidence that would connect Gacy to at least 32 other murders and disappearances. On December 22, 1978, Gacy freely confessed to killing at least thirty boys and men and burying their remains on his property or dumping them in the river nearby (Bell & Bardsley, n.d.). During the course of the investigation, Gacy confessed that he would occasionally murder more than one person in the same day. What flabbergasted investigators, however, was Gacy's nonchalant explanation as to why the bodies were buried so close together in the crawlspace under his house: he "was running out of room and needed to converse space" (Bell & Bardsley, n.d.).
By February 1979, police investigators would recover and remove 27 bodies from Gacy's house and in April, investigators finally recovered the remains of Robert Piest, the missing boy who launched an investigation into Gacy. While the majority of the bodies recovered were found in the crawlspace underneath Gacy's house, remains were also recovered buried in Gacy's garage underneath concrete, as well as under his porch, also encased in concrete. The bodies dumped in rivers were recovered from the Des Plaines River and the Illinois River. Given that many of Gacy's victims were found to have his underwear lodged in his throat, it has been surmised that Gacy's victims died due to asphyxiation (Bell & Bardsley, n.d.).
The identification of Gacy's victims would prove to be a daunting task especially since this was one of the largest crime scenes in
Through forensic analysis, it was determined that the bodies recovered from Gacy's home were males between the ages of fourteen and into their mid-twenties, (The Bones Under Gacy's House, n.d.). While several of Gacy's victims were identified using dental records, by the end of January 1979, only ten of his victims had been positively identified. Furthermore, reluctant parents that could not accept the possibility that their sons had drifted into a lifestyle that they did not approve of hindered the identification of victims. With the aide of forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow and forensic sculptor Betty Pat Gatliff, all but nine victims were identified by the end of 1979 (Smithsonian Institute, n.d.). Identifying the remains of these nine unknown victims is an ongoing process as DNA analysis has helped to identify victims as recently as 2011.
For his crimes, Gacy was ultimately charged with 33 counts of murder of which he was sentenced to death for 12 of them and to natural life in prison for the remaining 19 counts (Office of Clark County Prosecuting Attorney, n.d.). Furthermore, investigators concluded that 12 of the murders that Gacy committed took place before the landmark Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia in which it was determined that a set of consistent parameters be established in the application of the death penalty. Under Illinois Law (720 ILCS 5/9-1), a person can be found guilty of First Degree Murder when: (a) they kill and individual without lawful justification if, in performing the acts which cause the death: (1)…
