Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - True Crime This Week: Serial Killers

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

This week in crime history, we revisit two of the most infamous killers of the 20th century — men whose charm masked unimaginable evil.On December 30th, 1977, Ted Bundy slipped through the ceiling of his Colorado jail cell and vanished into the night, igniting one of the most infamous manhunts in American history. His escape would lead to more murders and cement his place as one of the world’s most notorious serial killers.Then, we travel back to January 3rd, 1972, when John Wayne Gacy — a seemingly ordinary suburban businessman known for his charity work and clown performances — claimed his first victim. Over the next six years, Gacy would lure and murder more than 30 young men, hiding many of their bodies beneath his home.Join Vanessa Richardson as she unpacks the twisted psychology and lasting impact of these two killers who redefined how America sees evil — reminding us that the most dangerous monsters often look just like everyone else. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money and Murder to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Scams, Money and Murder is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House Daily, Killer Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa Richardson. Looking for another Crime House original podcast to add to your rotation, you will love Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelin Moore. Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaelin dig into the world's most notorious crimes, clue by clue, from serial killers to shocking murders. They follow the trail of clues, break down the evidence, and debate the theories. It's like hanging out with your smart and true crime-obsessed friends. Listen to Clues on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This week in crime history, we're covering the stories of two notorious serial killers. We'll start on December 30, 1977, when Ted D.E.

Bundy snuck out of the Garfield County Jail and disappeared onto the streets of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It was Bundy's second prison break, and he was determined to make the most of it. Then we'll jump back five years to January 3rd, 1972, when John Wayne Gacy picked up a teen boy at a Greyhound station in Chicago, took him home, and stabbed him to death. The boy was Gacy's first victim, but definitely not his last. Welcome to True Crime This Week. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Every Sunday we'll be revisiting notorious crimes from the coming week in history, from serial killers to mysterious disappearances or murders. Every episode will explore stories that share a common theme.

Each week we'll cover two stories, one further in the past and one more rooted in the present. Here at Crime House, we know none of this would be possible without you, our community. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Crime House Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. And for ad-free and early access to Crimehouse Daily, plus exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. This week's theme is serial killers. We'll start on December 30th, 1977, when 31-year-old Ted Bundy escaped from police custody in Colorado. At the time, he was on trial for murdering one woman and suspected of killing several more. Now that he was free, his next stop was Florida, where he resumed his rampage and claimed several more lives.

Then we'll go back to January 3, 1972, when 29-year-old John Wayne Gacy began his prolific killing spree. Over the next six years, Gacy would murder at least 32 more young men and boys, many of whom he kept hidden in a growing mass grave beneath his house in the Chicago suburbs. But even as the bodies piled up, no one suspected what Gacy was up to behind Gacy. closed doors. All that and more coming up. Lots of people put on some weight during the holidays, but not Ted Bundy. By late December 1977, he'd lost more than 35 pounds in six months. And it wasn't just because of the prison food available at the Garfield County Jail.

in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Bundy had gotten his hands on a hacksaw blade and spent the last few months cutting a one square foot hole in the ceiling of his cell. He'd purposely slimmed down to make sure he could fit through the opening, and it seemed like he'd finally done it. On December 30th, while his guards were distracted, Bundy piled up a bunch of books under a blanket on his bed to mimic the look of his sleeping body. Then he squeezed through the narrow hole, and wriggled through the ceiling. He landed in the apartment of the chief jailer, who was out for the night. Bundy took the opportunity to change out of his prison jumpsuit and into some street clothes from the jailer's closet. Then he casually strolled out the front door of the prison

and into the frosty Colorado air. Ted Bundy had already abducted and murdered at least 19 women, and he wasn't done yet. Because even after all these years, he still felt like he had something to prove. Ted Bundy, born Theodore Robert Cowell, had a chaotic childhood. He never knew his father, and his mother, Louise, was 21 when she got pregnant with Ted. At the time, giving birth out of wedlock, was not widely accepted. So to avoid the shame and stigma, Louise's parents sent her to a home for unwed mothers in Burlington, Vermont. That's where she gave birth to Ted on November 24, 1946. After that, he spent a few years being raised by his grandparents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

before moving in with Louise. The whole time, Ted thought his grandmother was actually his mother. The family had decided to tell him that Louise was his older sister. The story was supposed to protect Louise and Ted from being looked down upon, but when Ted found out the truth years later, it made him question everything and everyone. Still, it seemed like Louise did try her best to give Ted a stable home life. When Ted was four, Louise married a man named Johnny Bundy in Tacoma, Washington. By this point, Ted was living with them. Although he still thought Louise was his sister, it seemed like he didn't ask questions. And before long,

Johnny adopted Ted. That was the moment he became Ted Bundy. Growing up in Tacoma, Bundy was a shy, emotionally distant boy who preferred to spend his time alone. But all that changed when he got to high school. Over the next few years, Bundy became a charismatic, outgoing young man who dressed well and was popular. Although women thought he was attractive, he didn't date much. Bundy was more focused on his two major passions in life, politics and skiing. As a high schooler, Bundy worked as a volunteer for local Republican political candidates and spent every free moment on the slopes. After graduating, Bundy went on to the University of Washington. There, he veered away from politics and studied a variety of subjects.

including urban planning and Chinese. But it wasn't long until his attention was elsewhere. In 1967, 21-year-old Bundy had his first serious relationship with a fellow student. While the woman's real name has not been released to protect her privacy, she's commonly known by the pseudonym Stephanie Brooks. And to Bundy, she was the whole package, beautiful, wealthy, and a fellow ski enthusiast. They dated for about a year, but Stephanie was never as serious about the relationship as Bundy was. As much as she enjoyed his company, she didn't consider him husband material.

She thought he was immature and lacked direction. Finally, in 1968, Stephanie broke up with him and moved back to California. Bundy was heartbroken and determined to get her back. Over the next five years, Bundy got serious. He went back to school for psychology. He volunteered with a suicide hotline and made powerful friends working on the re-election campaign for Washington's Republican governor. And he started dating a divorced mother who's known by the pseudonym Elizabeth Kendall,

becoming a father figure to her young daughter. On the outside, Bundy was becoming a model citizen. But secretly, he was developing some very disturbing habits. these years, Bundy began creeping through backyards and peering into women's homes near the university, watching them as they slept, bathed, or undressed. And it wasn't long until he was craving more from these late-night adventures. Sometimes he would masturbate while observing these women. As he juggled his light side and his dark side, Bundy kept in contact with Stephanie, who didn't know about his new relationship with Elizabeth. He even met up with Stephanie

during a business trip to California in 1973. She was impressed by how much Ted had matured. Suddenly, her college boyfriend from five years ago seemed like husband material. After a few more meetups, Stephanie and Ted resumed their relationship. And then, just a few weeks later, in February, 1974, Ted abruptly cut off all contact with Stephanie. The truth was, he hadn't wanted her back. He just wanted to be the one to end things. Bundy had decided he always wanted to be in control,

especially when women were involved. For him, that meant escalating his voyeurism to something much worse. Over the next six months, eight female college students between the ages of 18 and 23 went missing in the greater Seattle area. 21-year-old Linda Healy was abducted from her basement bedside. near the University of Washington. 19-year-old Donna Manson vanished while walking to a concert.

18-year-old Susan Rancourt left a school meeting one evening and never made it home. On July 14, two different women, Janice Ott and Denise Nasland disappeared within four hours of each other in broad daylight at Lake Sammamish State Park. More than a year later, many of these women's skeletal remains would be found in a mass grave, mass grave on Taylor Mountain, about an hour outside of Seattle. Throughout the summer of 1974, police tried to get to the bottom of this string of disappearances, and before long, investigators came to believe that a single person was responsible for all of the abductions. Witnesses recalled seeing a man with his arm or leg

in a cast lingering near the crime scenes. Sometimes he was struggling with a stack of heavy textbooks and asking passing women for help. Other times he asked them for help with his car, a beige Volkswagen bug. One witness at Lake Sammamish overheard Janice Ott talking to a handsome young man with an injured arm. He said his name was Ted. During this period, Ted Bundy's girlfriend, Elizabeth, noticed some strange details about him. He often had plaster in his bedroom. And once, she found a hatchet in the front seat of his car, a Volkswagen bug. But she didn't give it too much thought. Elizabeth had other things on her mind.

Bundy had just been accepted at the University of Utah Law School. In August, he moved to Salt Lake City, and they began a long-distance relationship. Throughout October, three teenage girls, including the daughter of a local police chief, went missing from communities around Salt Lake City. Hikers discovered two of the girls' bodies in the wilderness the following month, both strangled, beaten, and sexually assaulted.

Investigators in Utah knew about the string of abductions in nearby Washington. They started to worry that the killer had relocated to their state, but if he had, it seemed like he'd refined his tactics. On November 8th, 18-year-old Carol Durantz was shot. shopping in suburban Salt Lake City when a handsome young man approached her. He introduced himself as an undercover cop named Officer Roseland and told her that someone had been caught breaking into her car. She followed him into the parking lot where her car appeared to be undamaged.

Still, Rosalind insisted that she come to the police station to file a report. She was reluctant, but after Roseland flashed a badge, Carol agreed to get into his Volkswagen bug. Instead of taking her to the station, Rosalind drove to an empty road outside town and stopped the car. Then he slapped a pair of handcuffs onto Carol's wrists. She fought back and scrambled out of the vehicle, but he came at her with a crowbar, pinning her against the side of the Volkswagen. Thinking quickly, she kicked him in the groin and took off running.

Carol managed to make it back to a main road and flagged down a passing car, handcuffs still dangling. The Good Samaritan rushed her to the police station, where she reported the assault from the so-called Officer Roseland, but when police arrived at the roadside where Carol had escaped, her attacker was long gone. By early 1975, detectives in the Seattle area were struggling with a long list of suspects in the previous year's killings.

They were looking at people who were classmates of the victims, drove a Volkswagen and were named Ted. This left police with a list of 26 suspects, one of whom was Ted Bundy. The only reason Bundy was on their list to begin with was because his girlfriend, Elizabeth, had called and reported him as a suspect three times. At first, she couldn't believe

that her longtime boyfriend could be a serial killer, but there were warning signs she couldn't ignore. He'd been at Lake Sammamish, state park on the day Janice Ott and Denise Nasland went missing. He often left the house late at night and didn't say where he'd gone, and Elizabeth had read about women going missing in Utah not long after he moved there for school. But even as she shared these concerns with detectives, she couldn't bring herself to stop dating Bundy. He was sweet and kind to her and her daughter loved him. And while Bundy moved to the top of the suspect list, detectives still couldn't

find any physical evidence tying him to any of the crimes. Because of that, Elizabeth probably convinced herself there was a reasonable explanation for his unusual behavior. Meanwhile, women kept disappearing. In January 1975, 23-year-old Karen Campbell vanished from the hallway of a ski resort near Aspen while vacationing with her husband and children. In May, 12-year-old Lynette Culver disappeared, after leaving her Idaho middle school for lunch. The following month, 15-year-old Susan Curtis vanished from Utah's Brigham Young University

during a youth conference. The abductions finally came to a stop on August 16, 1975. That was the night a Utah Highway Patrol officer spotted a suspicious-looking Volkswagen bug cruising around a residential area of Salt Lake City. After a brief chase, the Volkswagen pulled.

over and the driver got out of the car. His name was Ted Bundy. By mid-1975, 18 girls and women between the ages of 12 and 26 had vanished from schools and public places in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. In many cases, their remains were found months or even years later in rural areas, sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled to death. 28-year-old graduate student Ted Bundy was considered a suspect by the police and even his own girlfriend. But no physical evidence tied him to any of the crimes. That all changed on August 16, 1975,

when a state trooper pulled Bundy over as he prowled a neighborhood in suburban Salt Lake City. city. Standing on the side of the road, Bundy handed the officer his license and registration and tried to talk his way out of trouble, but it didn't work. The trooper searched Bundy's Volkswagen and found rope, handcuffs, a ski mask, a crowbar, and an ice pick. Suspecting that he was a burglar, the officer placed Bundy under arrest. Bundy was happy to let police assume that was all he was, but soon homicide detectives got wind of news. They'd been looking for a killer driving a tan Volkswagen. Now, a man in a tan Volkswagen had been arrested, and there was plenty of evidence in his car. The story from Bundy's one surviving victim was instrumental in getting him

locked up. Bundy's car was the same one that Carol Durantia's abductor had lured her into the previous year. And the handcuffs he had with him were identical to the ones he'd fastened to her wrists during the attack. Two years after the disappearances began, in February, 1976, 30-year-old Bundy was put on trial for Carol Durant's kidnapping. Bundy swore up and down that he was innocent, but when Carol publicly identified him as her kidnapper in a packed courtroom, his defense fell apart.

Bundy was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to one to 15 years at the Utah state penitentiary. Not long after, his relationship with Elizabeth Kendall finally came to an end. But even with Bundy behind bars, investigators weren't satisfied. Everyone working the case knew he was responsible for the murders of at least 18 women, and they were determined to get justice for all his victims. As Bundy began his prison sentence, detectives from Washington, Utah, and Colorado, worked together to find any evidence tying him to the women who'd gone missing and later turned up dead. A forensic analysis of Bundy's Volkswagen found a strand of hair

belonging to Karen Campbell, the woman who'd vanished from a ski resort near Aspen during a family vacation. When detectives re-examined her remains, they found that the damage to her skull perfectly matched the size and shape of the crowbar found in Bundy's car when he was arrested. With this evidence in hand, prosecutors in Colorado charged Bundy with Karen Campbell's murder on October 22, 1976. Several months later, in June 1977, Bundy was transferred to the Pitkin County Jail in Aspen, Colorado to begin his murder trial, and things were looking dire. The evidence against him was strong, and Bundy didn't think his court-appointed defense attorney was up to the task, so he fired him and began to represent himself in court.

Although he only had a few months of law school under his belt, Bundy had come up with a brilliant strategy to secure his freedom. While serving as his own attorney, Bundy was not required to wear handcuffs, leg irons, or a prison jumpsuit during his court appearances. He used this to his advantage. On June 7th, during a break in pretrial motions, Bundy asked to be escorted to the law library at the courthouse to work on his defense. After a few minutes in the library, Bundy ducked behind a bookcase out of view of his guards,

then jumped out a second-story window. Bundy twisted his ankle when he hit the ground, but he was able to limp away from the courthouse and blend in with the locals on the streets of Aspen. Within minutes, guards realized he was gone, and the whole community went on high alert. Police rushed to set up roadblocks on all the roads out of town and organized a search party of 150 people with teams of bloodhounds to bring Bundy back. But Bundy was too fast. He spent the next six days hiking through the wilderness around the city,

stealing food and supplies from vacation cabins as he tried to find a path down the mountain. But eventually, he got lost in the woods. At that point, he returned to Aspen and stole a car. He wasn't on the road for long when two police officers spotted him driving erratically. Bundy was arrested once again, this time at gunpoint, and hauled back to jail. After this escape attempt, he was required to wear handcuffs and leg irons during every court appearance. Not long after, Bundy was transferred to the Garfield County. jail in the nearby town of Glenwood Springs, which officials hoped would be harder to escape

from. They were wrong. Bundy had some help for his second jail break. He'd managed to convince his friend Carol Ann Boone, a former co-worker from one of his post-college jobs, that he was an innocent man being railroaded by the justice system. And so over the course of several visits to the Garfield County Jail, Boone smuggled him $500 in cash. Bundy also managed to get a hacksaw blade from a fellow inmate. He spent several months using it to cut a small hole in the ceiling of his cell. Then on the night of December 30, 1977, he crawled through it. Bundy broke through the ceiling into the jailer's empty quarters, stole some clothes, and walked out the front door of the courthouse. Wondering the empty streets of Glenwood Springs, he stole a car and hit the road.

Prison guards didn't realize Bundy was missing until noon the following day. By then, he was already in Chicago. Traveling by train, bus, and more stolen cars, Bundy spent the next week working his way down to Tallahassee, Florida. After a week of getting the lay of the land, Bundy went back to his old habits. In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, Bundy snuck through the back door of the Kyle Omega Sorority House near the Florida State University campus. Once inside, he brutally attacked four women in their bedrooms. 21-year-old Margaret Bowman and 20-year-old Lisa Levy were bludgeoned to death with a piece of firewood. Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler, both 21, were badly beaten but managed to survive. As residents of the Chi Omega House called the police, Bundy ran to a building

several blocks away. There, he broke into a basement apartment where he beat and sexually assaulted another female student, 21-year-old Cheryl Thomas. Thomas' neighbors heard the commotion from her room and called the police, forcing Bundy to flee before he could kill her. Tallahassee detectives hadn't heard of Ted Bundy yet, but after the damage he inflicted, he was well on his way to becoming infamous there, and his rampage wasn't over. Less than a month later, on February 9th, 12-year-old Kimberly Leach disappeared from the grounds of her middle school in Lake City, 100 miles away from Tallahassee.

One of Leach's friends told police that she'd gotten into a stranger's car but couldn't remember the make or model of the vehicle. As their investigation continued, detectives learned that another young girl had been approached by a stranger outside Jacksonville a day or two earlier. Fortunately, the girl's older brother arrived and scared the man off. Thinking quickly, the siblings wrote down the license plate of the white van as the man sped away. Then they passed it along to their father, who happened to be a detective with the Jacksonville Police Department. Bundy had seen the news. He knew police were looking for his van, so he ditched it

and stole a more familiar car, a Volkswagen bug. He began driving west across the Florida Panhandle, hoping to get it out of the state before the authorities caught up with him. But he didn't make it. Just after 1.30 a.m. on February 15th, a Pensacola police officer ran Bundy's license plate number and saw that the Volkswagen had been reported stolen. He pulled Bundy over on a country road and ordered him out of the car. Bundy attacked the officer and tried to escape, but the cop was able to tackle Bundy, cuff him, and stick him in the back of his squad car. This time, Ted Bundy wouldn't be able to slip away. When he was booked into jail, police realized he was a fugitive serial killer on the FBI's top 10

most wanted list. From then on, he was kept under heavy guard to ensure that he didn't make another dramatic escape. In the months to come, police found the white van Bundy had used to abduct Kimberly Leach with her blood all over the floor. They also matched Bundy's DNA to samples found on Leach's clothes. On July 31st, 1978, Bundy was charged with Leach's murder. Not long after he was also charged with the murders at the Chi Omega House, Bundy continued to insist that he was innocent, but Justice was finally catching up with him. Bundy was tried for the Chi Omega murders first in June of 1979. During the nationally televised trial, Bundy once again chose to act as his own defense attorney. However, his desperate legal maneuvering didn't help him. Witnesses had seen him fleeing

the Chi Omega House, and Bundy's dental records matched bite marks on the victim's bodies. It took only seven hours for the jury to find Bundy guilty and sentence him to death. He didn't do any better when he went on trial for Kimberly Leach's murder in 1980. At the defense table, Bundy grew increasingly agitated as he was confronted with mountains of fiber evidence implicating him in the killing. At one point, he even jumped up and started shouting at a witness who testified against him. Unsurprisingly, he was found guilty of this murder as well. Bundy spent the 1980s in and out of court, unsuccessfully appealing his convictions. Finally, in 1989, as his execution date drew closer, Bundy adopted a new strategy. He reached out to detectives and confessed to 30 murders across Washington, Oregon,

Idaho, Colorado, and Utah. As proof, he told investigators where he'd disposed of some of the bodies and recounted specific details of each one of the killings. Bundy told police he had more information to share, but he wanted to make a deal. He'd only talk about these details if his execution was delayed. Police in Washington, Utah, and Colorado consulted with the families of Bundy's victims about his offer, which could bring them valuable closure, but their response was unanimous. They didn't want to negotiate with Ted Bundy. Investigators rejected his offer, and Bundy died in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989 at the age of of 42. Ted Bundy always wanted to be in control, whether it was in his relationships,

in court, or when carrying out a murder. It's fitting that the families of his victims were the ones who got to choose when his life came to an end. Up next, the story of another infamous killer. fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to the Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts. Five years before Ted Bundy made his second escape from jail,

another notorious serial killer was preparing to claim his first victim. But unlike Bundy, whose murder spree spanned multiple states, John Wayne Gasey did all his killing close to home. It was around 12.30 a.m. on January 2nd, 1972, when 29-year-old John Wayne Gacy decided he wanted to go look at some of the same. ice sculptures. He was at a relative's house party and had had a few drinks, but Gacy didn't let that stop him. He got into his car and drove downtown to Chicago, Illinois to check out the ice sculptures in front of the Civic Center. On his way there, he swung by the Greyhound

bus station, where he spotted a 16-year-old boy with long, shaggy hair lingering on the street. Gacy pulled over, rolled down his window, and struck up a conversation with him. His His name was Timothy McCoy, and he was on his way to Omaha, Nebraska, to visit his father. His bus to Omaha didn't leave until noon, so he had 12 hours to kill in Chicago. Gacy offered to show McCoy around town and let him sleep in his guest bedroom. McCoy accepted the generous offer and got into Gacy's car. By the next morning, McCoy was dead, and his body was in Gacy's crawl space. Boy was Gacy's first victim, but long before that, Gacy was the one with a target on his back.

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago on March 17, 1942. He was named after his father's favorite actor, the swaggering, ultra-masculine cowboy John Wayne. But throughout his middle-class Catholic upbringing, Gacy struggled to live up to his name. Although he was active in his local Boy Scouts chapter, he wasn't the most athletic kid. That wasn't really his fault, though. He had a congenital heart condition that prevented him from doing sports. Gacy's dad took this as a personal affront. He frequently made fun of Gacy and called him a sissy.

Still, Gacy idolized his father and always strived to make him proud. When he couldn't do that out on the field, he tried to do it in his career instead. After high school, Gacy got a business degree and was later hired as a manager at a men's clothing store in Springfield, Illinois. His bosses loved him for his tireless work ethic, and he applied that same energy to his personal life. Gacy took an active role in multiple community organizations around Springfield. He was a board member at the Catholic Interclub Council, a commanding captain in the Chicago Civil Defense, and a membership chairman for the Cairo Club. But he dedicated most of his spare time to a civic organization for men called the JCs, where he excelled at organizing fundraisers for charitable causes.

By 1965, Gacy was so popular within the Springfield JCs that they elected him as their vice president. Even then, Gacy still had time for love. Not long after moving to Springfield, he got engaged to a co-worker named Marilyn Myers, her parents. Parents owned several Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Waterloo, Iowa. After the wedding, Marilyn's father offered Gacy a high-paying job managing the restaurants. Gacy jumped at the opportunity, and in 1966, he and his wife moved to Waterloo so he could embark on his new career in the food service industry. At first, Gacy adapted well to his new life in Waterloo.

He worked 12 or more hours a day, managing the KFC front of course. franchises and threw himself headfirst into the Waterloo chapter of the J.C.'s. But before long, Gacy's dark side came out. He often bragged about cheating on his wife and offered to let his friends have sex with her, claiming that they were swingers. And he had inappropriate relationships with some of the teenage boys who worked for him, often inviting them over to drink and watch porn movies in his basement. Gacey acted like this was all in good fun, right up until it wasn't. In August 1967, when Gacy was 25, he invited 15-year-old Donald Vorhees Jr., the son of a fellow J.C., down to his basement. He got Vorhees drunk,

showed him a porn movie, then sexually assaulted him, a pattern he repeated with several other local boys. A few months later, Vorhees told his father what Gacy had done. The elder Vorhees promptly called the police, who arrested Gacy and charged him with sodomy. Gacy got out on bail, during which time he offered one of his employees $300 to beat the Vohy's boy up and intimidate him into dropping the charges. His employee did as he was told, but Vorhees reported the attack to the police. The employee was arrested and immediately confessed that Gacy had paid him to do the deed. Gacy's plan to make the charges go away had backfired spectacularly.

On December 3rd, 1968, at the age of 26, Gacy was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His wife divorced him and was awarded sole custody of their two children. Gacy never saw any of them again. At Iowa's Anamosa State Penitentiary, Gacy was a model prisoner. He got a job in the cafeteria as a cook and joined the prisons chapter of the JCs, where he recruited nearly 200 new members. He would have recruited even more, but in June of 1970, after serving just 18 months of his 10-year

sentence, the 28-year-old Gacy was released on parole for good behavior. Per the conditions of his parole, Gacy was required to move back in with his mother in Chicago, and stay out of trouble. Gacy honored the first half of the agreement, living at his mother's house and finding work as a short-order cook, but it didn't take long for him to return to his old habits. In February, 1971, Gacy was charged with sexually assaulting a teen boy at Chicago's Greyhound Station.

But the charges were dropped when the boy didn't show up to testify against him. Not long after, Gacy was arrested again, after luring a boy into his car and forcing him to perform oral sex on him. These charges were also later dropped on a technicality. Ordinarily, either of these arrests would have landed Gacy back in prison for violating his parole. But due to poor communication between different agencies, authorities in Iowa never learned about Gacy's arrests in Illinois. This left Gacy free to make a fresh start. In the summer of 1971, with assistance from his mother, Gacy bought a two-bedroom house at 8213 West Somerdale Avenue in the suburban community of Norwood Township.

He reconnected with a girl he'd briefly dated in high school, Carol Hoff, and soon got engaged. And he opened his own business, a small construction firm called PDM Contractors, where he did repair work, remodeling, and landscaping. He was well liked by his neighbors, friends, and clients, none of whom knew about his criminal record. At the start of 1972, it seemed like Gacy was getting his life back together, and then came January 2nd, when he picked up Timothy McCoy at the bus station. Gacy later claimed that on the night of January 3rd, he brought McCoy back to his house, which was empty since his fiancé was sleeping at a relative's home, he made the boy dinner and gave him some liquor. Then, according to Gacy, the two engaged in consensual oral sex.

Afterwards, they went to sleep in different bedrooms. Gacy claimed that he woke up in the morning to see McCoy standing over him holding a kitchen knife. The two fought, and Gacy wound up stabbing McCoy to death in self-defense. After killing him, Gacy walked into the kitchen and saw that McCoy had made breakfast for them, which was why he'd been holding a knife. According to Gacy, his first murder had been an accident, but he said that as he killed McCoy, he felt an intense, all-consuming sexual thrill. Over the next six years, Gacy would chase those thrills relentlessly with deadly results. After a brief stint in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy,

John Wayne Gasey was hard at work playing the role of model citizen. He bought a house in suburban Chicago, got engaged, and started a small construction business called PDM contractors. But not everything in Gacy's life was so wholesome. On January 3, 1972, he picked up 17-year-old Timothy McCoy at a Chicago bus station, took him to his house and stabbed him to death. Gacy cleaned up the blood and hid McCoy's body in the crawl space under his house. His fiancé, Carol, had no idea, and Gacy wanted to keep it that way.

He and Carol were married on June 1, 1972, and she and her two daughters from a previous marriage moved into his house. Not long after that, Gacy's business took off, and he started hiring employees. to help handle all the new work. He also volunteered with the local Democratic Party, where he eventually rose to the rank of precinct captain. He also got involved with another charitable civic organization called the Jolly Joker Club.

The Jolly Jokers were a group of local men who dressed up as clowns to entertain children at local hospitals. Gacy became an active member of the group, often performing at charity events and parties in full makeup as his own alter ego, Pogo the Clown. But Gacy was better known for his own gatherings. His annual summer house parties were legendary, sometimes as many as 300 people would attend, including local

politicians, judges, and business leaders. Gacy came up with creative themes, cooked delicious food, and kept the free booze flowing late into the night. Guests only ever had one complaint. Gacy's house smelled terrible. He claimed a rat had died under the house, or moisture had built up and caused the foundation to rot. Even though Gacy was a skilled handyman, these problems never seemed to get fixed as the years went by. If anything, the smell got worse. Nobody ever suspected the real source of the stench, but Gacy could only keep his secrets buried for so long. 75, Gacy was a well-established member of the Norwood Park community, but behind the scenes, his marriage was falling apart. On Mother's Day, he told his wife Carol that he would never

have sex with her again. Soon after, she started finding gay pornographic magazines all over the house, and Gacy started spending most of his evenings out, claiming that he was working late. It was true that Gacy was busy with work. PDM contractors was doing a lot of business. But some of Gacy's associates found it strange that Gacy only ever hired young teenage boys to work for him. Some nights, Gacy brought these employees home with him. Whenever he did, Carol would watch him lead the boys straight to the detached garage in the backyard, which she was never allowed into. Gacy's infidelity, secrecy, and increasingly aggressive mood swings were too much to bear. In October of 19,

In 1775, Carol asked for a divorce. She moved out in March of 1976, taking her daughters with her. One month later, the disappearances began. Between April 1976 and December 1978, dozens of boys and young men between the ages of 14 and 21 were reported missing in the Chicago area. No one knew it yet, but John Wayne Gacey, was responsible. He was methodical about finding his victims. He'd cruise around downtown Chicago

late at night in his car, looking for men near the Greyhound Station or Bug House Park, a known gathering place for male sex workers. When he spotted someone he liked, he'd find a way to get them into his car. Sometimes he'd offer them drugs, alcohol, or a job at PDM contractors. Other times he'd flash a fake badge and claim to be a cop. If a potential victim was reluctant, sometimes he'd threaten them into the car with a gun, then knock them out with chloroform. Back at his house, Gacy followed a similar routine to the one he'd used to abuse boys in Iowa. First, he'd give them alcohol and marijuana to loosen them up, then he'd pull out a pair of handcuffs and invite his guest to put them on, claiming he was going to teach them a magic trick

to get the cuffs off. Once the victim had restrained themselves, Gacy turned off the charm. He would spend hours sexually assaulting and torturing his victims, burning them with cigars, partially drowning them in his bathtub, and forcing them to crawl around the apartment

on all fours as he sat on their backs. Throughout the process, he'd taunt them about their impending death. Then, when he'd grown tired of the games, he'd strangle his victims with a rope tourniquet. Once a victim was dead, Gacy usually kept their body under his bed for a day or so. Then he'd take them down into his crawl space and bury them with the others, periodically spreading quicklime to try and speed up the decomposition process.

By the summer of 1978, Gacy had killed so many people that he ran out of room in his crawl space, So he started dumping his victim's bodies off a freeway overpass into the Des Plains River. How was Gacy able to kill so many people without drawing police attention? Part of it was his choice of victims. Many of the boys and young men he killed came from lower-income families and had a history of running away from home. Some were involved in sex work. When these boys were reported missing, police just assumed they'd left town

and didn't bother with a full investigation. Another factor was Gacy's status within the Norwood Park community. While people thought Gacy was a little weird, especially since his divorce, they liked his parties and the odd jobs he did for free around town. This made it easy for people to overlook various warning signs. For years, one of his neighbors heard muffled screams coming from the Gacy house late at night. Once she even called the police about it,

They came by in the morning, had a quick chat with Gacy, and left without incident. For months after, she continued to hear screaming a few nights a month, but assumed it was just something on TV. Gacy was a pillar of the community. He was above suspicion, until December of 1978, when he suddenly wasn't anymore. On December 11, 1978, 15-year-old Robert. Peast disappeared from his part-time job at a local pharmacy. In his last conversation with his mother, he told her he was going to meet with a contractor who'd come into the store and offered him a job. When Peast didn't come home, his family filed a missing person's report. Luckily,

the police lieutenant assigned to the case, Joseph Cozenzac, was a friend of the Peast family, which meant he took the case more seriously than some other officers may have. On December 12th, Cousinsack talked to Pist's boss at the pharmacy, who told him that 36-year-old Gacy had been the one who offered the boy a job. Cousinsack ran a background check on Gacy and learned that he'd been convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in Iowa. Hours later, Lieutenant Cousinsac showed up at Gacy's door with questions about Pist's disappearance. Gacy was evasive, but later showed up at the police station for an interview with detective. where he struggled to answer questions about what he'd been up to on the 11th. On December 13th, police obtained a search warrant for Gacy's house.

Inside, they found fake police badges, handcuffs, books about child molestation, drugs, and multiple driver's licenses belonging to missing men. Gacy was immediately placed under round-the-clock police surveillance, while detectives started questioning his employees at PDM. Gacy's employees told police about all kinds of suspicious behavior. Some of them reported he'd tried to sexually assault them. Others said he'd given them gifts that he claimed belonged to dead people, and several reported that Gacy talked a lot about his crawl space.

Meanwhile, Gacy was feeling the heat from the constant surveillance. He started drinking heavily and sometimes invited the police officers following him to join him for dinner. Over meals, he'd ramble to police for hours about his business and make incriminating statements like, a clown can get away with murder. During one of these conversations at Gacy's house, police noticed the putrid stench coming up from beneath his floorboards. On December 21st, while Gacy was outrunning errands, police arrived at his house with another search warrant, this one for the crawl space.

As soon as detectives started digging in the dirt under the house, their shovels turned up a decomposing arm. Right away, the lead detective yelled up from the crawl space, charge him, murder. After his arrest, Gacy confessed to murdering roughly 30 young men and boys. Over the next six months, police removed 29 bodies from Gacy's property, 26 in the crawl space, and three more discovered buried in the backyard and garage. Four more bodies were found in the Desplains River. To this day, five of the bodies recovered from Gacy's property remain unidentified. In March of 1980, it took a jury less than two hours to convict 37-year-old John Wayne Gasey

on 33 counts of murder. At the time, it was the most murders. ever attributed to a single killer. Gacy was sentenced to death and spent the next 14 years appealing his sentence, but the evidence was stacked against him. Gacy was executed on May 10, 1994, at the age of 52. Throughout his life, he'd used his charm and flattery

to avoid suspicion, but at his final moments, that charm was gone. Reportedly, his last words were, Kiss my ass. Looking back on this week in crime history, we can see how powerful a little charisma can be. Ted Bundy's good looks and easygoing personality helped him avoid suspicion for years,

even as his body count climbed higher and higher. John Wayne Gacy's friends had so much fun at his parties that they never suspected that there were 29, bodies buried beneath their feet. It's a chilling reminder that when somebody shows you a red flag, you should take it seriously, no matter how charming they are. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is True Crime This Week. True Crime This Week is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible.

Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following True Crime This Week, wherever you get your podcasts, your feedback truly matters. And for ad-free and early access to True Crime This Week, plus exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back next Sunday. True Crime This Week is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the True Crime This Week team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pritzofsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Truman Capps, Sheila Patterson, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

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