TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.650 --> 00:00:04.610
She waited in the pharmacy for twenty minutes. Then she
2
00:00:04.690 --> 00:00:08.279
waited a little longer. Her son had asked her to
3
00:00:08.359 --> 00:00:10.980
wait just a few minutes while he spoke to a
4
00:00:11.039 --> 00:00:15.039
man about a summer job. Her birthday was that night.
5
00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:19.679
The cake was at home. The boy never came back
6
00:00:19.780 --> 00:00:25.050
out of that store. That mother was Elizabeth Piest. Her
7
00:00:25.149 --> 00:00:29.149
son was Robert. He was 15 years old, and he
8
00:00:29.210 --> 00:00:33.670
worked part-time at the Nissan Pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois,
9
00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:39.179
a quiet suburb northwest of Chicago. The date was the
10
00:00:39.679 --> 00:00:45.740
11th of December, 1978. By midnight, the Piest family had
11
00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:49.359
called the police. By the end of the month, the
12
00:00:49.420 --> 00:00:52.399
whole country would know the name of the man Robert
13
00:00:52.439 --> 00:00:57.469
had gone outside to meet. His name was John Wayne Gacy,
14
00:00:58.060 --> 00:01:01.829
and before that December, almost everyone who knew him would
15
00:01:01.869 --> 00:01:05.290
have told you the same thing. He was a good neighbor,
16
00:01:06.150 --> 00:01:11.349
a hard worker, a man you could count on. This
17
00:01:11.549 --> 00:01:15.030
is Case Files, and this season we are telling the
18
00:01:15.090 --> 00:01:20.430
story of John Wayne Gacy. Thirty-three young men and boys
19
00:01:20.510 --> 00:01:26.829
were murdered between 1972 and 1978. every one of them
20
00:01:26.950 --> 00:01:33.109
died inside one ordinary-looking house in Norwood Park Township. And
21
00:01:33.150 --> 00:01:36.069
for most of those years, the man who lived in
22
00:01:36.109 --> 00:01:43.010
that house was celebrated, not suspected. So, let us start
23
00:01:43.069 --> 00:01:46.650
with the man the neighbors knew, because that is the
24
00:01:46.769 --> 00:01:50.400
first mystery of this case. How does a man hide
25
00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:55.079
33 murders behind a life that looks, from the street,
26
00:01:55.560 --> 00:02:02.480
completely normal? Gacy was born in Chicago in 1942. He
27
00:02:02.540 --> 00:02:06.549
grew up in a working-class family, left school early, and
28
00:02:06.650 --> 00:02:10.610
drifted through a string of jobs. He was a big man,
29
00:02:11.009 --> 00:02:15.650
friendly in conversation, quick with a joke, and hungry for respect.
30
00:02:16.710 --> 00:02:21.430
In Waterloo, Iowa, in the 1960s, he managed a string
31
00:02:21.469 --> 00:02:25.930
of fried chicken restaurants, joined the Jaycees, and became a
32
00:02:26.030 --> 00:02:32.319
local name. People noticed him. That mattered to him. Being
33
00:02:32.419 --> 00:02:37.500
noticed mattered a great deal. But there was already a
34
00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:40.780
conviction in his past, and it is part of the
35
00:02:40.860 --> 00:02:47.150
Load full transcript
public record. In 1968, in Waterloo, Gacy was convicted of
36
00:02:47.189 --> 00:02:51.509
the sodomy of a teenage boy. He was sentenced to
37
00:02:51.509 --> 00:02:55.639
10 years in prison. He served 18 months and was
38
00:02:55.719 --> 00:03:00.860
paroled in 1970. When he came back to Chicago, he
39
00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:04.139
did not come back as a man in hiding. He
40
00:03:04.199 --> 00:03:08.389
came back determined to build a new reputation, bigger than
41
00:03:08.430 --> 00:03:14.300
the old one. And build it he did. He started
42
00:03:14.319 --> 00:03:21.460
a construction company called PDM Contractors. He remodeled kitchens and pharmacies.
43
00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:26.050
He hired young men, paid them in cash, and worked
44
00:03:26.210 --> 00:03:31.189
long days beside them. He bought a ranch-style house on
45
00:03:31.349 --> 00:03:37.330
Somerdale Avenue in Norridge, just outside Chicago. He married for
46
00:03:37.389 --> 00:03:42.319
a second time. He had two children. He threw summer
47
00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:46.150
parties with the grill going and the neighbors over the fence.
48
00:03:47.689 --> 00:03:52.610
And then there was the clown. Gacy dressed as Pogo
49
00:03:52.650 --> 00:03:56.870
the Clown with a painted face, a bright costume, and
50
00:03:56.949 --> 00:04:02.469
balloons for the children. He performed at fundraisers, at parades,
51
00:04:02.849 --> 00:04:09.219
at hospital visits, at children's parties. He was photographed smiling
52
00:04:09.259 --> 00:04:14.439
in costume. He was the man who showed up. If
53
00:04:14.500 --> 00:04:19.790
a civic group needed a volunteer, Gacy volunteered. If a
54
00:04:19.850 --> 00:04:25.269
politician needed a crowd, Gacy brought one. He even had
55
00:04:25.329 --> 00:04:31.220
himself photographed with a First Lady. Respectability was not an
56
00:04:31.459 --> 00:04:37.709
accident for John Wayne Gacy. It was a project. That
57
00:04:37.790 --> 00:04:42.810
is why the Piest case matters so much. Robert Piest
58
00:04:42.889 --> 00:04:47.019
was not a runaway. He was not a stranger passing
59
00:04:47.079 --> 00:04:51.660
through town. He was a 15-year-old boy with a job,
60
00:04:52.259 --> 00:04:56.740
a family, and a mother waiting in the store. When
61
00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:00.399
he vanished, there was someone who had seen him last,
62
00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:05.470
someone who could describe exactly what happened in those final minutes.
63
00:05:07.029 --> 00:05:11.110
A co-worker named Kim Byers told police what she had seen.
64
00:05:11.129 --> 00:05:16.149
A contractor had come into the pharmacy that evening, twice.
65
00:05:17.300 --> 00:05:22.459
The second time, he stayed until almost nine o'clock. Robert
66
00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:26.139
had told Kim to watch the register because the contractor
67
00:05:26.220 --> 00:05:30.959
wanted to talk to him. He stepped outside. He did
68
00:05:31.019 --> 00:05:36.639
not come back. Des Plaines police moved quickly
The contractor
69
00:05:36.699 --> 00:05:41.220
was John Wayne Gacy, whose company had recently remodeled that
70
00:05:41.339 --> 00:05:46.540
very pharmacy. Officers went to his house. Gacy said he
71
00:05:46.600 --> 00:05:50.879
knew nothing about the boy. He was calm, he was helpful.
72
00:05:51.579 --> 00:05:54.759
He invited them to look around, and then he asked
73
00:05:54.850 --> 00:05:59.889
them to leave. But a background check changed the shape
74
00:05:59.930 --> 00:06:05.379
of the case in a single afternoon. The 1968 Iowa
75
00:06:05.439 --> 00:06:09.920
conviction was there, in the record, and inside the house,
76
00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:14.670
during a search, officers found things that did not belong
77
00:06:14.730 --> 00:06:20.970
to Gacy— a receipt for developing photographs, items that belonged to
78
00:06:21.149 --> 00:06:25.810
other young men, young men whose families had reported them
79
00:06:25.930 --> 00:06:30.310
missing in different years, in different towns, and who had
80
00:06:30.430 --> 00:06:36.350
never been connected to one another until now. Police put
81
00:06:36.449 --> 00:06:41.620
Gacy under surveillance. For days, officers followed him as he
82
00:06:41.699 --> 00:06:46.779
drove around Chicago, as he worked, as he ate, as
83
00:06:46.839 --> 00:06:51.079
he went about the ordinary business of an ordinary contractor.
84
00:06:52.220 --> 00:06:56.319
Gacy knew he was being watched. He played to it,
85
00:06:56.899 --> 00:07:01.500
He waved at the officers, he bought them coffee, he
86
00:07:01.689 --> 00:07:05.550
acted like a man with nothing to hide, because acting
87
00:07:05.629 --> 00:07:09.009
like a man with nothing to hide was something he
88
00:07:09.069 --> 00:07:14.949
had practiced for years. And yet, inside that house on
89
00:07:15.069 --> 00:07:20.329
Summerdale Avenue, there was something the officers could smell before
90
00:07:20.389 --> 00:07:24.939
they could see it. On a later visit, Two officers
91
00:07:25.069 --> 00:07:29.060
noticed an odor in the house that Gacy explained away
92
00:07:29.199 --> 00:07:34.600
as a blocked sewer, as damp, as moisture under the floor.
93
00:07:35.699 --> 00:07:39.519
The officers wrote it down. They did not forget it.
94
00:07:40.439 --> 00:07:43.490
A smell like that in a house where a missing
95
00:07:43.569 --> 00:07:48.089
boy's photograph receipt has been found is not a detail.
96
00:07:49.250 --> 00:07:53.160
It is a warning. So here is where we leave
97
00:07:53.240 --> 00:07:57.759
this first episode. A mother waiting in a pharmacy on
98
00:07:57.819 --> 00:08:02.089
her birthday. A boy who stepped outside to talk about
99
00:08:02.149 --> 00:08:06.769
a summer job. A contractor in a clown costume who
100
00:08:06.850 --> 00:08:11.870
seemed to be everybody's friend. And a house, quiet from
101
00:08:11.910 --> 00:08:17.470
the street, with something wrong underneath its floor. In the
102
00:08:17.550 --> 00:08:21.680
next episode... The police stop watching from the street and
103
00:08:21.759 --> 00:08:26.730
go inside. They get a second search warrant. They lift
104
00:08:26.819 --> 00:08:31.250
the boards. And what they find in the crawlspace beneath
105
00:08:31.329 --> 00:08:35.629
that house will end the argument about who John Wayne
106
00:08:35.710 --> 00:08:42.590
Gacy really was forever. But before we get there, remember
107
00:08:42.669 --> 00:08:49.220
the number that frames this whole season. Thirty-three. 33 young
108
00:08:49.299 --> 00:08:54.600
men and boys aged from 14 to 21. Most of
109
00:08:54.659 --> 00:08:57.909
them were lured with the same simple promise that was
110
00:08:57.990 --> 00:09:03.269
made to Robert Piest. Work, a job, a chance to
111
00:09:03.389 --> 00:09:07.149
earn a little money. The promise was real enough to
112
00:09:07.210 --> 00:09:11.149
walk outside for. It was the man making it who
113
00:09:11.190 --> 00:09:16.350
was not. This season is told with the victims first.
114
00:09:17.220 --> 00:09:21.279
We will name them where the record names them. We
115
00:09:21.299 --> 00:09:24.659
will not dwell on the manner of their deaths beyond
116
00:09:24.730 --> 00:09:29.409
what the public record requires to understand the case. And
117
00:09:29.429 --> 00:09:32.769
we will not let the clown suit or the parties
118
00:09:33.190 --> 00:09:37.769
or the photographs with important people distract from the simplest
119
00:09:37.909 --> 00:09:43.669
fact of all. Thirty-three families waited for sons and brothers
120
00:09:44.009 --> 00:09:49.960
who never came home. Robert Piest's family waited that December night,
121
00:09:50.980 --> 00:09:54.600
and then they waited through Christmas, and then they waited
122
00:09:54.679 --> 00:09:59.029
for answers that would take weeks to arrive. The answers,
123
00:09:59.769 --> 00:10:03.440
when they came, were worse than anything they had feared.
124
00:10:04.559 --> 00:10:08.919
But the waiting itself is where this story starts. A mother.
125
00:10:09.980 --> 00:10:15.259
In a pharmacy. Watching the door. Willing her boy to
126
00:10:15.330 --> 00:10:20.789
walk back in. I am Marcus. This is Case Files.
127
00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:26.230
The next episode is called The Search Warrant, and I
128
00:10:26.269 --> 00:10:27.129
will see you there.