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Pogo the Clown: The Smile That Hid Six Years of Murder
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
John Wayne Gacy buried twenty-six victims beneath his crawl space while neighbors blamed the smell on bad drainage — until fifteen-year-old Robert Piest didn't come home. This chapter follows the evidence hiding in plain sight and the single disappearance that finally unravelled everything.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before you know what John Wayne Gacy did, his neighborhood looks like every other quiet Chicago suburb. Ranch houses.
The house was at eighty-two thirteen West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park Township. A ranch-style property in a settled, working-class suburb northwest of Chicago.
The smell started sometime around nineteen seventy-five. Neighbors along Summerdale Avenue began noticing something unpleasant coming from the property.
Gacy's response to filling the crawl space was methodical. He began wrapping additional victims in plastic sheeting.
On December thirteenth, nineteen seventy-eight, a fifteen-year-old named Robert Piest finished his shift at a pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois. He'd been working there part-time and was well-regarded by his employer.
On December twenty-first, nineteen seventy-eight, officers executed a search warrant at the house on Summerdale. They weren't certain what they'd find.
Gacy went to trial in February nineteen eighty. His defense attempted to argue insanity.
Thirty-three victims. Twenty-five were identified relatively quickly.
The smell is what holds this story together. Not as a metaphor, but as a literal fact that keeps reappearing and being dismissed.
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