title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy claimed he woke early the following morning to find McCoy standing in his bedroom doorway with a kitchen knife in his hand. He then jumped from his bed and McCoy raised both arms in a gesture of surrender, tilting the knife upwards and accidentally cutting Gacy's forearm. Gacy twisted the knife from McCoy's wrist, banged his head against the bedroom wall, kicked him against his wardrobe and walked towards him. McCoy then kicked Gacy in the stomach, doubling him over. Gacy then grabbed McCoy, shouting, "Motherfucker! I'll kill you!" He then wrestled McCoy to the floor and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest as he straddled him.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: As McCoy lay dying, Gacy claimed he washed the knife in his bathroom, then went to his kitchen and saw an opened carton of eggs and a slab of unsliced bacon on his kitchen table. McCoy had also set the table for two; he had walked into Gacy's room to wake him while absentmindedly carrying the kitchen knife in his hand. Gacy buried McCoy in his crawl space and later covered his grave with a layer of concrete. In an interview several years after his arrest, Gacy said that immediately after killing McCoy, he felt "totally drained", yet noted that as he stabbed McCoy and as he listened to the "gurgulations" and gasping for air that he had experienced a mind-numbing orgasm. He added: "That's when I realized that death was the ultimate thrill."


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy said the second time he committed murder was around January 1974. This victim remains unidentified. Gacy strangled him and then placed the body in his closet before burial. He later stated that bodily fluids leaked from the victim's mouth and nose, staining his carpet. As a result, Gacy regularly stuffed cloth rags, the victim's own underwear, or a sock into the mouths of subsequent victims to prevent such a leakage from occurring.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On July 31, 1975, John Butkovich, an 18-year-old PDM employee from Lombard, disappeared. Butkovich's car was found parked near the corner of Sheridan and Lawrence with his jacket and wallet inside and the keys still in the ignition.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The day before his disappearance, Butkovich had confronted Gacy over two weeks' outstanding back pay. Butkovich's father, a Yugoslav immigrant, called Gacy, who claimed he was happy to help search for his son but was sorry Butkovich had "run away". When questioned by police, Gacy said Butkovich and two friends had arrived at his house demanding the overdue pay, but they had reached a compromise and all three had left. Over the following three years, Butkovich's parents called police more than 100 times, urging them to investigate Gacy further.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy later admitted to encountering Butkovich exiting his car at the corner of West Lawrence Avenue, waving to attract his attention. According to Gacy, Butkovich approached his car, stating, "I wanna talk to you." Gacy invited Butkovich into his car, then invited him back to his home, ostensibly to settle the issue of his overdue wages.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: At his home, Gacy offered Butkovich a drink, then conned him into allowing his wrists to be cuffed behind his back. Gacy later confessed to having "sat on the kid's chest for a while" before he strangled him. He stowed Butkovich's body in his garage, intending to bury the body later in the crawl space. When his wife and stepdaughters returned home earlier than expected, Gacy buried Butkovich's body under the concrete floor of the toolroom extension of his garage in an empty space where he had initially intended to dig a drain tile.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In addition to being the year his business expanded, Gacy freely admitted that 1975 was also when he began to increase the frequency of his excursions for sex with young males. He often referred to these jaunts as "cruising". Gacy committed most of his murders between 1976 and 1978, as he largely lived alone following his divorce. He later referred to these as his "cruising years".


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Although Gacy remained gregarious and civic-minded, several neighbors noticed erratic changes in his behavior after his 1976 divorce. This included seeing him keeping company with young males, hearing his car arrive or depart in the early hours of the morning, or seeing lights in his home switch on and off in the early hours. One neighbor later recollected that, for several years, the sounds of muffled high-pitched screaming, shouting, and crying had repeatedly awakened her and her son in the early morning hours. She identified the sounds as emanating from a house adjacent to theirs on West Summerdale Avenue.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: One month after his divorce was finalized, Gacy abducted and murdered 18-year-old Darrell Samson. He was last seen alive in Chicago on April 6, 1976. Gacy buried him under the dining room, with a section of cloth lodged in his throat. Five weeks later, on the afternoon of May 14, 15-year-old Randall Reffett disappeared shortly after returning to his Uptown home from a dental appointment. He was last seen by his grandmother later that afternoon. Hours after Reffett was last seen by his family, 14-year-old Samuel Stapleton vanished as he walked home from his sister's apartment. He and Reffett were close acquaintances; both were buried together in the crawl space, and investigators believe the two were murdered the same evening.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On June 3, Gacy killed a 17-year-old Lakeview teenager named Michael Bonnin. He disappeared while traveling from Chicago to Waukegan. Gacy strangled Bonnin with a ligature and buried him under the spare bedroom. Ten days later, Gacy murdered a 16-year-old Uptown youth named William Carroll and buried him in a common grave in the crawl space. Carroll seems to have been the first of four victims known to have been murdered between June 13 and August 6, 1976. Three were between 16 and 17 years old, and one unidentified murder victim appears to have been an adult.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On August 5, a 16-year-old Minnesota youth named James Haakenson is last known to have phoned his family, possibly from Gacy's home. Haakenson died of suffocation. His body was buried in the crawl space beneath the body of a 17-year-old Bensenville youth named Rick Johnston, who was last seen alive on August 6.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy is thought to have murdered two further unidentified males between August and October 1976. On October 24, Gacy abducted and killed teenage friends Kenneth Parker and Michael Marino: the two were last seen outside a restaurant on Clark Street in Chicago. Two days later, a 19-year-old construction worker, William Bundy, disappeared after informing his family he was to attend a party. Bundy died of suffocation. Gacy buried the body beneath his master bedroom. He had apparently worked for Gacy.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Between November and December 1976, Gacy murdered a 21-year-old named Francis Alexander. His last contact with his family was a phone call to his mother made sometime in November. Alexander was buried in the crawl space directly beneath the room Gacy used as his office.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In December 1976, another PDM employee, 17-year-old Gregory Godzik, disappeared. His girlfriend last saw him outside her house after he had driven her home following a date. Godzik had worked for PDM for less than three weeks before he disappeared. He had informed his family that Gacy had had him "dig trenches for some kind of (drain) tiles" in his crawl space. Godzik's car was later found abandoned in Niles. His parents and older sister, Eugenia, contacted Gacy about Godzik's disappearance. Gacy claimed that he had run away from home, having indicated before that he wished to do so. Gacy also claimed to have received an answering machine message from Godzik shortly after he had disappeared. When asked if he could play back the message to Godzik's parents, Gacy said he had erased it.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On January 20, 1977, Gacy lured 19-year-old John Szyc to his house on the pretext of buying his Plymouth Satellite. He later confessed to strangling Szyc in his spare bedroom, claiming Rossi was asleep in the house the following morning. Gacy later sold the car to Rossi for $300.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Two months later, on March 15, a 20-year-old Michigan native named Jon Prestidge disappeared. Prestidge was last seen leaving a Near North Side restaurant. He was buried in the crawl space above the body of Francis Alexander. Shortly before his disappearance, Prestidge had mentioned he had obtained work with a local contractor. Gacy murdered one additional unidentified youth and buried him in the crawl space in the spring or early summer of 1977; the exact time of this murder is unknown. On July 5, Gacy killed a 19-year-old from Crystal Lake, Matthew Bowman. Bowman's mother last saw him at a suburban train station; he had intended to travel to Harwood Heights for a scheduled court appointment regarding an unpaid parking ticket.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The following month, Rossi was arrested for stealing gasoline while driving Szyc's car. The gas station attendant noted the license plate and police traced the car to Gacy's house. When questioned, Gacy told officers that Szyc had sold the car to him in February, saying he needed money to leave town. A check of the VIN confirmed the car had belonged to Szyc. The police did not pursue the matter further, although they did inform Szyc's mother that her son had sold his car.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: By the end of 1977, it is known Gacy had murdered six more young men between the ages of 16 and 21. The first of these victims was 18-year-old Robert Gilroy, the son of a Chicago police sergeant, last seen alive on September 15. Gilroy lived just four blocks from Gacy's house; he was murdered and buried in the crawl space. On September 12, Gacy had flown to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to supervise a remodeling project, and did not return to Chicago until September 16. Because Gacy is known to have been in another state at the time Gilroy was last seen, this is cited to support Gacy's claim of assistance from one or more accomplices in several homicides. Ten days after Gilroy was last seen, 19-year-old former U.S. Marine John Mowery disappeared after leaving his mother's house to walk to his apartment. Gacy strangled Mowery and buried his body beneath the master bedroom.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On October 17, 21-year-old Minnesota native Russell Nelson disappeared; he was last seen outside a Chicago bar. Nelson was looking for contracting work. Gacy murdered him and buried him beneath the guest bedroom. Less than four weeks later, Gacy murdered a 16-year-old Kalamazoo teenager named Robert Winch and buried him in the crawl space. On November 18, 20-year-old father-of-one Tommy Boling disappeared after leaving a Chicago bar.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Three weeks after the murder of Tommy Boling, on December 9, a 19-year-old U.S. Marine, David Talsma, disappeared after informing his mother he was to attend a rock concert in Hammond, Indiana. Gacy strangled Talsma with a ligature and buried him in the crawl space, close to the body of John Mowery.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On December 30, Gacy abducted 19-year-old student Robert Donnelly from a Chicago bus stop at gunpoint. Gacy drove him to his home, where he raped, tortured, and repeatedly dunked Donnelly's head into a bathtub until he passed out. Gacy taunted him with statements such as, "Aren't we playing fun games tonight?" Donnelly later testified at Gacy's trial that he was in such pain that he asked Gacy to kill him. Gacy replied "I'm getting 'round to it." After several hours, Gacy drove Donnelly to his workplace and released him, warning him that if he complained to police, they would not believe him.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Donnelly reported the assault, and police questioned Gacy on January 6, 1978. Gacy admitted to having had a "slave-sex" relationship with Donnelly, but insisted everything was consensual, adding that he "didn't pay the kid" the money he had promised him. The police believed him and filed no charges. The following month, Gacy killed 19-year-old William Kindred, who disappeared on February 16 after telling his fiancée, who knew Gacy, that he was to spend the evening in a bar. Kindred was the final victim Gacy buried in his crawl space.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On March 21, Gacy lured 26-year-old Jeffrey Rignall into his car. Shortly after Rignall entered the car, Gacy chloroformed him and drove him to his house, where his arms and head were restrained in a pillory device affixed to the ceiling and his feet locked into another device. Gacy explained to Rignall he had complete control over him and that he intended to do whatever he wanted to him, when he wanted, and how he wanted. He then raped and tortured Rignall with various instruments including lit candles and whips and repeatedly chloroformed him into unconsciousness. Gacy then drove Rignall to Chicago's Lincoln Park, where he was dumped, unconscious but alive.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Rignall managed to stagger to his girlfriend's apartment. Police were informed of the assault but did not investigate Gacy. Rignall was able to recall, through the haze of that night, the Oldsmobile, the Kennedy Expressway and particular side streets. He and two friends staked out the Cumberland exit of the Expressway and, in April, Rignall saw the Oldsmobile, which he and his friends followed to 8213 West Summerdale. Police obtained an arrest warrant, and Gacy was arrested on July 15. He faced trial for battery against Rignall.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: By 1978, the crawl space had no room for further bodies. Gacy later confessed to police that he considered stowing bodies in his attic initially, but had been worried about complications arising from "leakage". Therefore, he chose to dispose of his victims off the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaines River. Gacy stated he had thrown five bodies into this river in 1978, one of which he believed had landed on a passing barge; only four bodies were ever found.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The first known victim thrown from the I-55 bridge into the Des Plaines River was 20-year-old Timothy O'Rourke. He was murdered in mid-June after leaving his Dover Street apartment to purchase cigarettes. Shortly before his disappearance, O'Rourke had told his roommate a contractor on the Northwest Side had offered him a job.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On November 4, Gacy killed 19-year-old Frank Landingin. He was last seen alive by his father walking along Foster Avenue; his naked body was found close to an inlet in the Des Plaines River by two duck hunters in Channahon on November 12. On November 24, a 20-year-old Elmwood Park resident, James Mazzara, disappeared after sharing Thanksgiving dinner with his family. Mazzara had informed his sister the day prior to his disappearance that he was working in the construction industry and "doing all right". He was last seen alive walking in the direction of Bughouse Square, carrying a suitcase.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On the afternoon of December 11, 1978, Gacy visited the Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, to discuss a potential remodeling deal with the store owner, Phil Torf. While he was within earshot of 15-year-old part-time employee Robert Piest, Gacy mentioned his firm often hired teenage boys at a starting wage of $5 per hour—almost double the pay Piest earned at the pharmacy.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Shortly after Gacy left the pharmacy, Piest's mother arrived at the store to drive her son home so the family could celebrate her birthday together. Piest asked his mother to wait, adding that "some contractor wants to talk to me about a job". He left the store at 9:00 p.m., promising to return shortly.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Piest was murdered shortly after 10:00 p.m. at Gacy's home. Gacy later stated that at his house, he gave Piest a soft drink before asking whether there was anything he "wouldn't do for the right price", to which Piest replied that he did not mind working hard. In response, Gacy stated "good money" could be earned by hustling, although Piest was dismissive. Gacy then duped Piest into donning handcuffs before saying, "I'm going to rape you, and you can't do anything about it" as Piest began weeping.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy's subsequent statements regarding the events to unfold varied, although in one of his initial statements, he claimed Piest failed to resist as he removed the boy's trousers. He also stated that as he placed the rope around Piest's neck, the boy was "crying, scared". Gacy admitted to having received a phone call from a business acquaintance as Piest lay dying, suffocating on his bedroom floor.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: When Piest failed to return, his family filed a missing person report with the Des Plaines police. Torf named Gacy as the contractor Piest had most likely left the store to talk to about a job. Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak, whose son attended Maine West High School like Piest, chose to investigate Gacy further. Having spoken with Piest's mother on the morning of December 12, Kozenczak became convinced Piest had not run away from home. A routine check of Gacy's criminal background revealed that he had an outstanding battery charge against him in Chicago and had served a prison sentence in Iowa for the sodomy of a 15-year-old boy.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Kozenczak and two Des Plaines police officers visited Gacy at his home the following evening. Gacy indicated he had seen two youths working at the pharmacy and that he had asked one of them—whom he believed to be Piest—whether there were any remodeling materials behind the store. He was adamant, however, that he had not offered Piest a job, and had only returned to the pharmacy shortly after 8:00 p.m. as he had left his appointment book at the store. Gacy promised to come to the station later that evening to make a statement confirming this, indicating he was unable to do so at that moment as his uncle had just died. When questioned as to how soon he could come to the police station, he responded, "You guys are very rude. Don't you have any respect for the dead?"


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: At 3:20 a.m., Gacy arrived at the police station covered in mud, claiming he had been involved in a car accident. On returning to the police station later that day, Gacy denied any involvement in Piest's disappearance and repeated that he had not offered him a job. When asked why he had returned to the pharmacy, Gacy reiterated that he had done so in response to a phone call from Torf informing him he had left his appointment book at the store. Detectives had already spoken with Torf, who denied calling Gacy. At the request of detectives, Gacy prepared a written statement detailing his movements on December 11.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Suspecting Gacy might be holding Piest against his will at his home, Des Plaines police obtained a warrant to search Gacy's house on December 13. This search of Gacy's property revealed several suspicious items, including several police badges and a 6mm Brevettata starter pistol inside an office drawer, and a syringe and hypodermic needle inside a cabinet in Gacy's bathroom. Investigators also found handcuffs, several books on homosexuality and pederasty with titles such as "The Great White Swallow" and "Pretty Boys Must Die", seven pornographic films, capsules of amyl nitrite, and an dildo in Gacy's bedroom. A two-by-four with two holes drilled into each end, bottles of Valium and atropine, and several driver's licenses were found in the northwest bedroom. A blue hooded parka was found atop a tool box inside the laundry room, and underwear too small to fit Gacy was located inside a bathroom closet.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In the northwest bedroom, investigators found a class of 1975 Maine West High School ring engraved with the initials J.A.S. Investigators also recovered a Nisson Pharmacy photo receipt from a trash can, alongside a section of nylon rope.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The Des Plaines police confiscated Gacy's Oldsmobile and other PDM work vehicles. Police assigned two, two-man surveillance teams to monitor Gacy on a rotational twelve-hour basis as they continued their investigation into his background and potential involvement in Piest's disappearance. These surveillance teams consisted of officers Mike Albrecht and David Hachmeister, and Ronald Robinson and Robert Schultz. The following day, investigators received a phone call from Michael Rossi, who informed the investigators of Gregory Godzik's disappearance and the fact that another PDM employee, Charles Hattula, had been found drowned in an Illinois river earlier that year.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On December 15, Des Plaines investigators obtained further details of Gacy's battery charge, learning the complainant, Jeffrey Rignall, had reported that Gacy had lured him into his car, then chloroformed, raped and tortured him before dumping him, with severe chest and facial burns and rectal bleeding, in Lincoln Park the following morning. In an interview with Gacy's former wife the same day, they learned of the disappearance of John Butkovich. The same day, the Maine West High School ring was traced to a John Alan Szyc. An interview with Szyc's mother revealed that several items from her son's apartment were also missing, including a Motorola TV set.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: By December 16, Gacy was becoming affable with the surveillance detectives, regularly inviting them to join him for meals in restaurants and occasionally for drinks in bars or at his home. He repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with Piest's disappearance and accused the officers of harassing him because of his political connections or because of his recreational drug use. Knowing these officers were unlikely to arrest him on anything trivial, he taunted them by flouting traffic laws and succeeded in losing his pursuers more than once. That afternoon, Cram consented to a police interview, in which he described Gacy's hard-working lifestyle, and "open-minded" attitude about sex between men. Cram also revealed that, because of his poor timekeeping, Gacy had once given him a watch, explaining he got it "from a dead person".


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Investigators conducted a formal interview of Rossi on December 17. He informed them Gacy had sold Szyc's vehicle to him, explaining that he had bought the car from Szyc because he needed money to move to California. A further examination of Gacy's Oldsmobile was conducted on this date. In the course of examining the trunk of the car, investigators discovered a small cluster of fibers they suspected to be human hair. That evening, officers conducted a test using three trained German shepherd search dogs to determine whether Piest had been present in any of Gacy's vehicles. One dog approached Gacy's Oldsmobile and lay on the passenger seat in what the dog's handler informed investigators was a "death reaction", indicating Piest's body had been present in the vehicle.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: That evening, Gacy invited detectives Albrecht and Hachmeister to a restaurant for a meal. In the early hours of December 18, he invited them into another restaurant where, over breakfast, he talked of his business, his marriages and his activities as a registered clown. At one point during the conversation, Gacy remarked: "You know ... clowns can get away with murder."


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: By December 18, Gacy was beginning to display signs of strain from the constant surveillance: he was unshaven, looked tired, appeared anxious and was drinking heavily. That afternoon, he drove to his lawyers' office to prepare a $750,000 civil suit against the Des Plaines police, demanding that they cease their surveillance. The same day, the serial number of the Nisson Pharmacy photo receipt found in Gacy's kitchen was traced to 17-year-old Kimberly Byers, a colleague of Piest at Nisson Pharmacy. Byers admitted, when contacted in person the following day, that she had worn the jacket on December 11 to shield herself from the cold. She had placed the receipt in the parka pocket just before she gave the coat to Piest as he left the store, claiming a contractor wanted to speak with him. This statement contradicted Gacy's previous statements that he had had no contact with Robert Piest on the evening of December 11.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The same evening, Rossi was interviewed a second time. This time he was more cooperative. He informed detectives that in the summer of 1977, at Gacy's behest, he had spread ten bags of lime in the crawl space of Gacy's house.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On December 19, investigators began compiling evidence for a second search warrant for Gacy's house. The same day, Gacy's lawyers filed the civil suit against the Des Plaines police. The hearing for the suit was scheduled for December 22. That afternoon, Gacy invited the surveillance detectives inside his house again. As officer Robinson distracted Gacy with conversation, officer Schultz walked into Gacy's bedroom in an unsuccessful attempt to write down the serial number of the Motorola TV set they suspected belonged to John Szyc. While flushing Gacy's toilet, the officer noticed a smell he suspected could be that of rotting corpses emanating from a heating duct. The officers who had searched Gacy's house previously had failed to notice this, as the house had been cold.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Investigators interviewed both Cram and Rossi on December 20. Rossi had agreed to be interviewed in relation to his possible links with John Szyc as well as the disappearance of Robert Piest. When questioned by Kozenczak as to where he believed Gacy had concealed Piest's body, Rossi replied Gacy may have placed the body in the crawl space, adding that he thought Szyc's car was stolen. Rossi agreed to submit to a polygraph test. He denied any involvement in Piest's disappearance, also denying any knowledge of his whereabouts. He soon refused to continue the questioning, and Rossi's "erratic and inconsistent" responses to questions while attached to the polygraph machine rendered Kozenczak "unable to render a definite opinion" as to the truthfulness of his answers. Rossi did, however, further discuss the trench digging he did in the crawl space and remarked on Gacy's insistence that he not deviate from where he was instructed to dig.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Cram informed investigators of Gacy's attempts to rape him in 1976. He stated that after he and Gacy had returned to his home after the December 13 search of his property, Gacy had turned pale after seeing a clod of mud on his carpet which he suspected had come from his crawl space. Cram said Gacy had grabbed a flashlight and immediately entered the crawl space to look for evidence of digging. When asked whether he had been to the crawl space, Cram replied he had once been asked by Gacy to spread lime down there and had also dug trenches, which Gacy had explained were for drainage pipes. Cram stated these trenches were wide, long and deep—the size of graves.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On the evening of December 20, Gacy drove to his lawyers' office in Park Ridge to attend a scheduled meeting, ostensibly to discuss the progress of his civil suit. On his arrival Gacy appeared disheveled and immediately asked for an alcoholic drink, whereupon Sam Amirante fetched a bottle of whiskey from his car. On his return, Amirante asked Gacy what he had to discuss with them. Gacy picked up a copy of the "Daily Herald" from Amirante's desk, pointed to a front-page article covering the disappearance of Robert Piest and said, "This boy is dead. He's dead. He's in a river."


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy then proceeded to give a rambling confession that ran into the early hours of the following morning. He began by informing Amirante and Stevens he had "been the judge ... jury and executioner of many, many people", and that he now wanted to be the same for himself. He said he had murdered "at least thirty" victims, most of whom he had buried in his crawl space, and had disposed of five other bodies in the Des Plaines River. Gacy dismissed his victims as "male prostitutes", "hustlers" and "liars" to whom he gave "the rope trick", adding he sometimes awoke to find "dead, strangled kids" on his floor, with their hands cuffed behind their back. He had buried their bodies in his crawl space as he believed they were his property.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: As a result of the alcohol he had consumed, Gacy fell asleep midway through his confession. Amirante immediately arranged a psychiatric appointment for Gacy at 9:00 a.m. that morning. On awakening several hours later, Gacy shook his head when informed by Amirante he had confessed to killing approximately 30 people, saying, "Well, I can't think about this right now. I've got things to do." Ignoring his lawyers' advice regarding his scheduled appointment, Gacy left their office to attend to the needs of his business.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy later recollected his memories of his final day of freedom as being "hazy", adding he knew his arrest was inevitable and that he intended to visit his friends and say his final farewells. After leaving his lawyers' office, Gacy drove to a gas station where, in the course of filling his rental car, he handed a small bag of cannabis to the attendant, who immediately handed the bag to the surveillance officers, adding that Gacy had told him, "The end is coming (for me). These guys are going to kill me." Gacy then drove to the home of a fellow contractor and friend, Ronald Rhode. Gacy hugged Rhode before bursting into tears and saying, "I've been a bad boy. I killed thirty people, give or take a few." Gacy left Rhode and drove to Cram's home to meet with Cram and Rossi. As he drove along the expressway, the surveillance officers noted he was holding a rosary to his chin, praying while he drove.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: After talking with Cram and Rossi, Gacy had Cram drive him to a scheduled meeting with lawyer Leroy Stevens on the Northwest Side. As Gacy spoke with Stevens, Cram informed the surveillance officers that Gacy had told him and Rossi that he had confessed to over 30 murders with his lawyers the previous evening. Gacy then had Cram drive him to Maryhill Cemetery, where his father was buried.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: As Gacy drove to various locations that morning, police outlined the formal draft of their second search warrant, specifically to search for the body of Robert Piest in the crawl space. On hearing from the surveillance detectives that, in light of his erratic behavior, Gacy might be about to commit suicide, police decided to arrest him on a charge of possession and distribution of cannabis in order to hold him in custody, as the formal request for a second search warrant was presented. At 4:30 p.m. on December 21, the eve of the hearing of Gacy's civil suit, Judge Marvin J. Peters granted the request for a second search warrant. After police informed Gacy of their intentions to search his crawl space for the body of Piest, Gacy denied the teenager was buried there, but confessed to having killed in self-defense a young man whose body was buried under his garage.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Armed with the signed search warrant, police and evidence technicians drove to Gacy's home. On their arrival, officers found Gacy had unplugged his sump pump, flooding the crawl space with water; to clear it, they simply replaced the plug and waited for the water to drain. After it had done so, evidence technician Daniel Genty entered the crawl space, crawled to the southwest area and began digging. Within minutes, he had uncovered putrefied flesh and a human arm bone. Genty immediately shouted to the investigators that they could charge Gacy with murder, adding, "I think this place is full of kids." A police photographer then dug in the northeast corner of the crawl space, uncovering a patella. The two then began digging in the southeast corner, uncovering two lower leg bones.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The victims were too decomposed to be Piest. As the body discovered in the northeast corner was later unearthed, a crime scene technician discovered the skull of a second victim alongside this body. Later excavations of the feet of this second victim revealed a further skull beneath the body. Because of this, technicians returned to the trench where the first body was unearthed, discovering the rib cage of a fourth victim within the crawl space, confirming the scale of the murders.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: After being informed that the police had found human remains in his crawl space and that he would now face murder charges, Gacy told officers he wanted to "clear the air", adding he had known his arrest was inevitable since the previous evening, which he had spent on the couch in his lawyers' office.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In the early morning hours of December 22, and in the presence of his lawyers, Gacy provided a formal statement in which he confessed to murdering approximately 30 young males—all of whom he claimed had entered his house willingly. Some victims were referred to by name, but Gacy claimed not to know or remember most of the names. He claimed all were teenage male runaways or male prostitutes, the majority of whom he had buried in his crawl space. Gacy claimed to have dug only five of the victims' graves in this location and had his employees (including Gregory Godzik) dig the remaining trenches so that he would "have graves available". One victim hailed from Round Lake; another had been a Michigan native. When shown a driver's license issued to a Robert Hasten which had been found on his property, Gacy claimed not to know him but admitted that this license had been in the possession of one of his victims. In January 1979, he had planned to conceal the corpses even further by covering the entire crawl space with concrete.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: When questioned specifically about Piest, Gacy confessed to luring him to his house and strangling him on the evening of December 11. He also admitted to having slept alongside Piest's body that evening, before disposing of the corpse in the Des Plaines River in the early hours of December 13. On his way to the police station, he had been in a minor traffic accident after disposing of Piest. His vehicle had slid off an ice-covered road and had to be towed from its location.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Accompanied by police, his lawyers, and his older sister, Gacy was driven to the I-55 bridge on December 23 to pinpoint the precise spot where he confessed to having thrown the body of Robert Piest and four other victims into the Des Plaines River. Gacy was then taken to his house and instructed to mark his garage floor with orange spray paint to show where he had buried the individual he had supposedly killed in self-defense, whom he named as John Butkovich.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: To assist officers in their search for the victims buried beneath his house, during his confession, Gacy drew a rough diagram of his basement on a phone message sheet to indicate where their bodies were buried. Twenty-six bodies were unearthed from Gacy's crawl space over the next week; three more were also unearthed elsewhere on his property.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Cook County medical examiner Robert Stein supervised the exhumations. Each victim unearthed from the crawl space was placed in a body bag, which was placed near the front door awaiting transportation to the mortuary.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The crawl space was marked in sections and each body was given an identifying number. The first body recovered from the crawl space was assigned a marker denoting the victim as Body 1. Gacy had buried this victim in the northeast section of the crawl space directly beneath the room he used as his office. No cause of death could be determined.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The body of John Butkovich was labelled as Body 2. On December 23, investigators returned to unearth the three corpses which had been buried in the same trench as Body 1. Body 3 was buried in the crawl space directly above Body 4. Alongside them, Body 5 was buried directly beneath Body 1. This victim was buried 36 inches below the surface of the soil, indicating he was the first decedent to be buried in this common grave.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The search for victims was postponed temporarily over Christmas. Four more bodies were unearthed on December 26. Bodies number 6 and 7 were buried in the same grave. Body 7 was found in a fetal position. A cloth gag was found in the mouth, leading investigators to conclude this victim most likely died of asphyxiation. Body 8 was found with the tourniquet used to strangle him still knotted around his neck. Body 9 was found beneath a layer of concrete and was found to have several stab wounds to the ribs and sternum, suggesting he was Gacy's first victim.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On December 27, eight more bodies were discovered. Body 10 was buried face upwards, parallel to the wall of the crawl space directly beneath the entrance to Gacy's home. Both Body 11 and Body 12 were found face downwards with a ligature around their necks and both were buried beside each other in the center of the crawl space, directly beneath the hallway. Body 13 was found beneath the spare bedroom; Bodies 14 and 15 were recovered from a common grave diagonal to Body 10. Both 14 and 15 were found with their head and upper torsos inside separate plastic bags. Body 16 was found close to Body 13, although in a separate trench further north of the south wall. This victim was found with a cloth rag lodged deep in his throat, causing him to die of suffocation. The seventeenth victim was found with a ligature around his neck.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The following day, four more bodies were exhumed. Body 19 was buried directly beneath Gacy's master bedroom, perpendicular to Body 18, which was located beneath the spare bedroom, and found with a ligature around the neck. Body 20 was buried in the northwest corner of the crawl space perpendicular to Body 19.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: By December 29, six more bodies were unearthed. Bodies 22, 23, 24, and 26 were buried in a common grave located beneath Gacy's kitchen and laundry room, with Body 25 located beneath Gacy's bathroom. Body 22 was found directly beneath Gacy's kitchen with a section of cloth-like material lodged in his throat. Two socks were recovered from the pelvic region. This victim was buried directly beneath Body 21 (recovered the previous day). The bones of victims 23 and 24 were commingled together, and a section of cloth was found inside the mouth of Bodies 24 and 26. Body 25 was found beneath Gacy's bathroom with a section of cloth lodged in the throat. The final victim recovered from the crawl space was also found beneath the bathroom, buried ten inches below the surface of the soil. This victim was found to have a section of cloth lodged deep in his throat.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Operations were suspended due to the Chicago Blizzard of 1979, but resumed in March despite Gacy's insistence that all the buried victims had been found. On March 9, Body 28 was found wrapped within several plastic bags and buried beneath the patio approximately from the barbecue pit in Gacy's backyard. On March 16, Body 29 was found beneath the dining room floor.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: All the victims discovered at 8213 W. Summerdale were in an advanced state of decomposition. Dental records and X-ray charts helped Stein identify the remains. Twenty-three victims were identified via dental records, with two further victims identified via skeletal trauma. These identifications were also supported with personal artifacts found in Gacy's home.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The head and upper torso of several bodies unearthed beneath Gacy's property had been placed into plastic bags. Several were also found with a rope still around their necks. In some cases, bodies were found with foreign objects such as prescription bottles lodged into their pelvic region, the position of which indicated the items had been thrust into the victims' anus.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Stein concluded 12 victims recovered from Gacy's property died not of strangulation, but of asphyxiation. Gacy's vacant house was demolished in April 1979.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The victim found downstream from the I-55 bridge on June 30 was not connected initially to Gacy. In January 1979, this victim was identified using fingerprint records and a distinctive tattoo on his left biceps reading "Tim Lee" (an homage to Bruce Lee) as Timothy O'Rourke. An autopsy was unable to rule out strangulation as the cause of death. This victim was numbered 31. Following Gacy's arrest, investigators discovered he was a further victim.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Frank Landingin's cause of death was certified at autopsy as suffocation through his own underwear being lodged down his throat, plugging his airway and effectively causing him to drown in his own vomit. His body was also identified via fingerprint records. A bond slip issued to Landingin shortly before his death was found at Gacy's home; he was assigned victim number 32.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On December 28, one further body linked to Gacy was found from the I-55 bridge. This victim was identified as James Mazzara, whom Gacy confessed to having murdered shortly after Thanksgiving. Mazzara had been strangled with a ligature.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On April 9, 1979, a man walking along a Grundy County towpath discovered a decomposed body entangled in exposed roots on the edge of the Des Plaines River. The body was identified via dental records as being that of Robert Piest the same evening. A subsequent autopsy revealed that three wads of "paper-like material" had been shoved down his throat while he was still alive, causing him to suffocate.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy was brought to trial on February 6, 1980, charged with 33 murders. He was tried in Cook County, Illinois, before Judge Louis Garippo; the jury was selected from Rockford, because of extensive press coverage in Cook County.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: At the request of his defense counsel, Gacy spent over three hundred hours with doctors at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester in the year before his trial. He underwent a variety of psychological tests before a panel of psychiatrists to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial. Gacy attempted to convince the doctors that he had multiple personality disorder. He claimed to have four personalities: the hard-working, civic-minded contractor, the clown, the active politician, and a policeman called Jack Hanley, whom he referred to as "Bad Jack". When Gacy had confessed to police, he claimed to be relaying the crimes of Jack, who detested homosexuality and who viewed male prostitutes as "weak, stupid and degraded scum". His lawyers opted to have Gacy plead not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges against him. Presenting Gacy as a Jekyll-and-Hyde character, the defense produced several psychiatric experts who had examined Gacy. Three psychiatric experts at Gacy's trial testified they found him to be a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personalities.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The prosecutors presented the case that Gacy was sane and in full control of his actions. To support this contention, they produced several witnesses to testify to the premeditation of Gacy's actions and the efforts he took to escape detection. Those doctors refuted the defense doctors' claims of multiple personalities and insanity. Cram and Rossi testified that Gacy had made them dig drainage trenches and spread bags of lime in his crawl space. Both said Gacy looked periodically into the crawl space to ensure they and other employees they supervised did not deviate from the precise locations he had marked.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On February 18, Robert Stein testified that all the bodies recovered from Gacy's property were "markedly decomposed [and] putrefied, skeletalized remains", and that of all the autopsies he performed, thirteen victims had died of asphyxiation, six of ligature strangulation, one of multiple stab wounds to the chest and ten in undetermined ways. When Gacy's defense team suggested that all 33 deaths were caused by accidental erotic asphyxia, Stein called this highly improbable.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Jeffrey Rignall testified on behalf of the defense on February 21. Recounting his ordeal, Rignall wept repeatedly while describing Gacy's torture of him in March 1978. Asked whether Gacy appreciated the criminality of his actions, Rignall said he believed that Gacy was unable to conform his actions to the law's expectations because of the "beastly and animalistic ways he attacked me". During specific cross-examination relating to the torture, Rignall vomited and was excused from further testimony.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On February 29, Donald Voorhees, whom Gacy sexually assaulted in 1967, testified to his ordeal at Gacy's hands and his subsequent attempts to dissuade him from testifying by paying another youth to spray Mace in his face and beat him. Voorhees felt unable to testify but did briefly attempt to do so before being asked to step down.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Robert Donnelly testified the week after Voorhees, recounting his ordeal at Gacy's hands in December 1977. Donnelly was visibly distressed as he recalled the abuse he endured and came close to breaking down several times. As Donnelly testified, Gacy repeatedly laughed at him, but Donnelly finished his testimony. During Donnelly's cross-examination, one of Gacy's defense attorneys, Robert Motta, attempted to discredit his testimony, but Donnelly did not waver from his testimony of what had occurred.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: During the fifth week of the trial, Gacy wrote a personal letter to Judge Garippo requesting a mistrial for reasons including that he did not approve of his lawyers' insanity plea; that his lawyers had not allowed him to take the witness stand (as he had wanted to do); that his defense had not called enough medical witnesses, and that the police were lying with regard to verbal statements he had allegedly made to detectives after his arrest and that, in any event, the statements were "self-serving" for use by the prosecution. Judge Garippo addressed Gacy's letter by informing him that both counsels had not been denied the opportunity or funds to summon expert witnesses to testify, and that, under the law, he had the choice whether he wished to testify, and was free to indicate as much to the judge if he wished to do so.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On March 11, final arguments by both prosecution and defense attorneys began; they concluded the following day. Prosecuting attorney Terry Sullivan spoke first, outlining Gacy's history of abusing youths, the testimony of his efforts to avoid detection and describing his surviving victims—Voorhees and Donnelly—as "living dead". Referring to Gacy as the "worst of all murderers", Sullivan stated, "John Gacy has accounted for more human devastation than many earthly catastrophes, but one must tremble. I tremble when thinking about just how close he came to getting away with it all."


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: After the state's four-hour closing, counsel Sam Amirante spoke for the defense. Amirante argued against the testimony delivered by the doctors who had testified for the prosecution, repeatedly citing the testimony of the four psychiatrists and psychologists who had testified on behalf of the defense. Amirante also accused Sullivan of scarcely referring to the evidence presented throughout the trial in his own closing argument, and of arousing hatred against his client. The defense lawyer attempted to portray Gacy as a "man driven by compulsions he was unable to control", contending the State had not met their burden of proving Gacy sane beyond a reasonable doubt.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In support of these arguments, the defense referred to the testimony of the doctors who had appeared for the defense, in addition to defense witnesses such as Jeffrey Rignall and a former business associate of Gacy's named Mickel Ried—both of whom had testified to their belief that Gacy had been unable to control his actions. Amirante then urged the jury to put aside any prejudice they held against his client and asked they deliver a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, adding that Gacy was a danger to both himself and to others, and that studying his psychology and behavior would be of benefit to science.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On the morning of March 12, William Kunkle continued to argue for the prosecution. Kunkle referred to the defense's contention of insanity as "a sham", arguing that the facts of the case demonstrated Gacy's ability to think logically and control his actions. Kunkle also referred to the testimony of one of the doctors who had examined Gacy in 1968 and had concluded he was an antisocial personality, capable of committing crimes without remorse and unlikely to benefit from social or psychiatric treatment, stating that had the recommendations of this doctor been heeded, Gacy would not have been freed.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: At the close of his argument, Kunkle removed photos of Gacy's 22 identified victims from a display board and asked the jury not to show sympathy but to "show justice". Kunkle then asked the jury to "show the same sympathy this man showed when he took these lives and put them "there!"" before throwing the stack of photos into the opening of the trap door from Gacy's crawl space, which had been introduced as evidence and was on display in the courtroom. After Kunkle had finished his testimony, the jury retired to consider their verdict.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The jury deliberated for less than two hours and found Gacy guilty of 33 charges of murder; he was also found guilty of sexual assault and taking indecent liberties with a child; both convictions in reference to Robert Piest. At the time, his conviction for 33 murders was the most for which any person in U.S. history had been convicted.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In the sentencing phase of the trial, the jury deliberated for more than two hours before sentencing Gacy to death for each murder committed after the Illinois statute on capital punishment came into effect in June 1977. His execution was set for June 2, 1980.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On being sentenced, Gacy was transferred to the Menard Correctional Center, where he remained incarcerated on death row for 14 years.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Before his trial, Gacy initiated contact with WLS-TV journalist Russ Ewing, to whom he granted numerous interviews between 1979 and 1981. Ewing later collaborated with author Tim Cahill to publish the book "Buried Dreams". The information Gacy divulged to Ewing regarding the circumstances of his first murder would prove instrumental in establishing the identity of his first victim.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On February 15, 1983, Henry Brisbon, a fellow death row inmate known as the I-57 killer, stabbed Gacy in the upper arm with a sharpened wire as Gacy was participating in a voluntary work program. A second death row inmate injured in the attack, William Jones, received a superficial stab wound to the head. Both received treatment in the prison hospital for their wounds.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: After his incarceration, Gacy read numerous law books and filed voluminous motions and appeals, although he did not prevail in any of them. His appeals related to issues such as the validity of the first search warrant granted to the Des Plaines police on December 13, 1978, and his objection to his lawyers' insanity plea defense at his trial. Gacy also contended that, although he had "some knowledge" of five of the murders (those of McCoy, Butkovich, Godzik, Szyc and Piest), the other 28 murders had been committed by employees who had keys to his house while he was away on business trips.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In mid-1984, the Supreme Court of Illinois upheld Gacy's conviction and ordered his execution by lethal injection on November 14. Gacy filed an appeal against this decision, which was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States on March 4, 1985. The following year, Gacy filed a further post-conviction petition, seeking a new trial. His then-defense lawyer, Richard Kling, argued that Gacy had been provided with ineffective legal counsel at his 1980 trial. This post-conviction petition was dismissed on September 11, 1986.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy appealed the 1985 decision that he be executed. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld his conviction on September 29, 1988, setting a new execution date of January 11, 1989.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: After the U.S. Supreme Court denied Gacy's final appeal in October 1993, the Illinois Supreme Court formally set an execution date for May 10, 1994.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On the morning of May 9, 1994, Gacy was transferred from the Menard Correctional Center to Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, to be executed. That afternoon, he was allowed a private picnic on the prison grounds with his family. For his last meal, Gacy ordered a bucket of KFC, a dozen fried shrimp, french fries, fresh strawberries and a Diet Coke. That evening, he observed prayer with a Catholic priest before being escorted to the Stateville execution chamber to receive a lethal injection.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Before the execution began, the chemicals used to effect the execution solidified unexpectedly, clogging the IV tube used to administer the chemicals into Gacy's arm, complicating the procedure. Blinds covering the window through which witnesses observed the execution were drawn. The execution team replaced the clogged tube. After ten minutes, the blinds were reopened, and the execution resumed. The entire procedure took 18 minutes. Anesthesiologists blamed the problem on the prison officials' inexperience at conducting an execution, saying that had correct execution procedures been followed, the complications would never have occurred. This error apparently led to Illinois' adopting an alternative method of lethal injection. On this subject, one prosecutor at Gacy's trial, William Kunkle, said, "He got a much easier death than any of his victims."


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: According to published reports, Gacy was a diagnosed psychopath who did not express any remorse for his crimes. His final statement to his lawyer before his execution was that killing him would not compensate for the loss of others, and that the state was murdering him. His final spoken words were reported to be "Kiss my ass".


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In the hours leading up to Gacy's execution, a crowd estimated at over 1,000 gathered outside the correctional center; a vocal majority were in favor of the execution, although a small number of anti-death penalty protesters were also present. Some of those in favor of the execution wore T-shirts hearkening to Gacy's previous community services as a clown and bearing satirical slogans such as "No tears for the clown". The anti-death penalty protesters present observed a silent candlelight vigil.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: After Gacy's death was confirmed at 12:58 a.m. on May 10, 1994, his brain was removed. It is in the possession of Helen Morrison, a witness for the defense at Gacy's trial, who has interviewed Gacy and other serial killers in an attempt to isolate common personality traits of violent sociopaths. His body was cremated.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Only 28 of Gacy's victims have been conclusively identified. Of these, the youngest were Samuel Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14; the eldest were Francis Alexander and Russell Nelson, both 21. Five victims have never been identified.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The first victims to be identified were John Butkovich (Body 2), John Szyc (Body 3), and Gregory Godzik (Body 4). Dental records confirmed their identities on December 29, 1978. The thirty-third victim linked to Gacy, James Mazzara, was identified the following day. The twenty-third victim exhumed from Gacy's property was identified as Rick Johnston on January 1, 1979.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Four further victims were identified on January 6, 1979. Body 18 was identified as Michael Bonnin and Body 25 as Robert Gilroy. The first victim exhumed from the crawl space was identified as Jon Prestidge, and the victim labelled Body 16 as Russell Nelson. A fishing license issued to Bonnin had been found previously in Gacy's home. Three days later, the victim recovered from the Des Plaines River on June 30, 1978, was identified as Timothy O'Rourke. On January 27, dental charts were used to identify Body 20 as John Mowery. Two days later, Body 8 was identified as Matthew Bowman.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Two months later, on March 17, 1979, the twenty-second victim recovered from Gacy's property was identified using dental records as William Carroll. The following month, the identity of the seventh victim was confirmed using X-ray records as Randall Reffett, and on May 21, dental records confirmed that Body 27 was William Kindred.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On September 11, 1979, Bodies 11 and 12 were identified as Robert Winch and Tommy Boling, respectively. Winch was identified via X-ray records of a distinctive healed bone fracture. A distinctive brown "tiger's eye" metal buckle with black striping belonging to Winch was also found alongside his body.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Using dental records, the sixth victim exhumed from Gacy's property was identified on November 14, 1979, as Samuel Stapleton. On November 16, Body 17 was identified as David Talsma using radiology images of a healed fracture of the left scapula. Two days later, the final victim recovered from Gacy's property, Body 29, was identified as Darrell Samson.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On March 29, 1980, Bodies 14 and 15 were identified using dental records and radiology images as those of Michael Marino and Kenneth Parker. Their identities were confirmed too late to include among the victims identified before Gacy's trial.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In May 1986, the ninth victim exhumed from Gacy's property was identified as Timothy Jack McCoy, Gacy's first victim. Dental records and a distinctive yellow belt buckle engraved with a Ford Model A car assisted with his identification.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In October 2011, Cook County sheriff Thomas Dart announced that investigators, having obtained full DNA profiles from each of the unidentified victims, were to renew their efforts to identify them. At a press conference held to announce this, Sheriff Dart stated investigators are actively seeking DNA samples from individuals across the United States related to any male missing between 1970 and 1979.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Results of tests conducted thus far have confirmed the identification of three victims, ruled out the possibility of numerous other missing youths as being victims of Gacy, and solved four unrelated cold cases dating between 1972 and 1979.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In November 2011, the victim previously known as Body 19 was identified through DNA testing as William Bundy. Shortly after Gacy's arrest, Bundy's family had contacted his dentist in the hope of submitting his dental records for comparison with the unidentified bodies, but the records had been destroyed after his dentist had retired. In July 2017, 16-year-old James Haakenson, previously known as Body 24, was also identified as a victim using DNA testing. The most recent victim to be identified is 21-year-old Francis Wayne Alexander, previously known as Body 5. Alexander was identified via forensic genealogy in October 2021. He had not been reported missing by his family, who believed he had relocated from Chicago to California shortly after his final contact with his mother in November 1976.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Five victims still remain unidentified, four of whom had been buried beneath Gacy's crawl space, and one buried approximately from the barbecue pit in his backyard. In the fall of 1979, forensic expert Betty Pat Gatliff used the skulls of the remaining unidentified victims to create facial reconstructions.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Based on Gacy's confession, the location of the victims buried in the crawl space, and forensic analysis, police determined the most likely dates for when his unidentified victims were killed.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy's likely second murder victim, Body 28, had brown hair, stood approximately () in height, and is estimated to be aged between 14 and 18. He was buried near Gacy's barbecue pit, possibly in 1975. He wore a silver ring on his left ring finger, suggesting he may have been married.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Body 26 was a man with medium dark brown hair estimated to have been aged between 23 and 30 years old and approximately () in height. This man had two missing upper front teeth, leading investigators to believe he likely wore a denture. He was almost certainly murdered between June 13 and August 5, 1976.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Body 13 was a man likely to have been murdered between August and October 1976. He was between and () in height. He had long, dark brown, wavy hair and was between 17 and 22 years old. This victim suffered from an abscessed tooth and may have injured his left third rib months or years before his disappearance. While Rossi also claimed to have dug this grave in the late summer of 1977, Cram claimed that during his time living at 8213 W. Summerdale, Gacy had him dig a trench in the southwest corner of the crawl space where this victim was recovered. In 2018, an updated facial reconstruction was released to the media.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Body 21 is estimated to have been aged between 15 and 24 years old and approximately () in height. He had light brown hair. This victim was buried directly above the body of William Carroll, indicating his murder had occurred on or after June 13, 1976. It is theorized Cram may not have lived with Gacy at the time of this victim's death, so a possible date for this murder is between August 6 and 20, 1976, although investigators have not discounted the possibility he may have been murdered later in 1976.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Body 10 is estimated to have been aged between 17 and 21 years old and between and (). He had suffered a fractured left collarbone months or years before his disappearance. The two victims murdered on the same day in May 1976 were buried alongside him, yet sequential burial patterns of three victims murdered in 1977 leave an equal possibility he may have been murdered in the spring or summer of 1977. Statements made by Gacy following his arrest also suggest this unidentified victim may have been murdered as early as 1974. In 2018, an updated facial reconstruction was released to the media.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: At the time of Gacy's arrest, he had claimed to both Des Plaines and Chicago investigators that the total number of murder victims could be as high as 45. However, only 33 victims were ever linked to Gacy. Investigators excavated the grounds of his property until they had exposed the substratum of clay beneath the foundations, finding 29 bodies.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Shortly after his arrest, Gacy informed investigators that after he had assaulted and then released Jeffrey Rignall in March 1978, he began to throw his murder victims into the Des Plaines River. He confessed to having disposed of five bodies in this manner; however, only four bodies recovered from the Des Plaines River were linked to him. When asked whether there were more victims, Gacy stated, "That's for you guys to find out."


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Disputed DNA and dental tests conducted between 2012 and 2016 indicate that neither body found in the common grave in Gacy's crawl space and identified as those of Kenneth Parker and Michael Marino in 1980 was actually Marino. Marino's mother had always doubted her son's identification because the clothing found on Body 14 was inconsistent with what he had worn when she last saw him. DNA testing conducted upon the exhumed body of Parker has proven that Marino's body had not been mistaken for his.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In addition, the dental X-ray conducted on the victim identified as Michael Marino had revealed they had all of their second molars; a dental X-ray conducted on Marino in March 1976 revealed one molar had not erupted. The original identification of the body identified as Michael Marino has been disputed because the exhumed body had neither an upper nor lower jaw bone. Nonetheless, the orthodontist who had identified Marino's remains has stated his conviction in the accuracy of his findings, adding he had "compared 32 teeth, probably half a dozen of them had very distinct fillings and every one of them was consistent with Michael Marino".


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On May 23, 1978, 25-year-old Charles Antonio Hattula was found drowned in the Pecatonica River near Freeport, Illinois. He had been missing since May 13. Hattula was an employee of PDM and had been linked to the initial investigation of Gacy after Michael Rossi informed investigators of both Godzik's disappearance and Hattula's death. Moreover, Rossi had stated that Hattula was known to have conflicts with Gacy, and when he had "failed to show up at work", Gacy had informed him and several other employees that he had drowned. At the time of Hattula's death, no more bodies could be stored in Gacy's crawl space, which leaves a possibility he had disposed of Hattula's body in the Pecatonica River. However, Des Plaines authorities had contacted Freeport during their investigation into Gacy, and were told Hattula had fallen to his death from a bridge. Hattula's death has been officially ruled as asphyxia by drowning.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Retired Chicago police officer Bill Dorsch stated he had reason to believe there might be more victims buried in the grounds of the apartment building located at the 6100 block of West Miami Avenue in Chicago—a property where Gacy had been the caretaker for several years before his 1978 arrest. In 1975, Dorsch—then a Chicago police officer—observed Gacy (whom he knew on a casual basis), holding a shovel in the early hours of the morning. When Dorsch confronted him, Gacy said he was doing work that he was too busy to do during the day. Dorsch also said that several other residents of West Miami Avenue stated they had seen Gacy digging trenches in the grounds of the property in the early to mid-1970s; one of these residents also said that Gacy later placed plants in the elongated trenches he had dug. At the time these actions were observed, Gacy was still married to Carole Hoff.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In March 2012, Cook County Sheriff's officials submitted a request to excavate the grounds of this property. The Cook County State's Attorney denied the request, citing a lack of probable cause as the reason, including the results of a 1998 search of the property. However, the sheriff's office noted that in 1998, a radar survey suggested 14 areas of interest within the property grounds, yet only two of these 14 anomalies had been excavated. Of the 12 remaining anomalies, four were described as being "staggeringly suggestive" of human skeletons. Moreover, Bill Dorsch had provided police with a letter from the radar company which confirmed the 1998 search of the grounds was incomplete.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: A second request to excavate the grounds of West Miami Avenue was submitted to the Cook County State's Attorney by Sheriff Tom Dart in October 2012. This request was granted in January 2013, and a search of the property was conducted in the spring. Both FBI sniffer dogs and ground-penetrating radar equipment were used in the second search of West Miami Avenue; however, the search yielded no human remains.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: One of the first things Gacy told investigators after his arrest was that he had not acted alone in several of the murders: he asked whether "my associates" had been arrested. When questioned whether these associates had participated directly or indirectly in the killings, Gacy replied, "Directly". He later claimed Cram and Rossi were involved in several of the murders. Some criminal defense attorneys and investigators researching the possibility Gacy had not acted alone in several of the murders have said there is "overwhelming evidence Gacy worked with an accomplice".


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In the 1980s, Gacy informed FBI profiler Robert Ressler that "two or three" PDM employees had assisted in several murders. Ressler believed there were unexplained avenues to the case and that Gacy had killed more than 33 victims in multiple states. Gacy neither confirmed nor denied Ressler's suspicions. Jeffrey Rignall, who had been assaulted and tortured by Gacy in March 1978, was adamant that at one point during his abuse and torture, a young man with brown hair had knelt before him and watched his abuse. Rignall also said that he saw a light come on in another part of the house.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: On one occasion, three days before his arrest, during their surveillance of Gacy, two officers followed him to a bar where he met two employees—Michael Rossi and Ed Hefner. An anxious Gacy was observed walking with the two out of earshot of the surveillance officers to talk privately before returning closer to the officers. Gacy said to both young men: "You'd better not let me down, you fuckers. You owe it to me." The officers then overheard sections of a hushed conversation between Gacy and the two during which Rossi asked Gacy, "And what? Buried like the other five?"


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In interviews from death row, Gacy said that at the time of his arrest, three PDM employees were also considered suspects in the murders—all of whom he said were in possession of keys to his house. In addition to Cram and Rossi, Gacy named his former employee Philip Paske, who was a close associate of John Norman and an acquaintance of David Cram. In the late 1970s, Norman operated a nationwide sex trafficking ring based in Chicago known as the Delta Project. At least two victims believed to have been murdered by Gacy, Kenneth Parker and Michael Marino, had last been seen alive close to where Norman lived. This led to the theory that Gacy had been connected to this trafficking ring.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Gacy claimed that he was not in Chicago when sixteen of the identified victims had disappeared. In 2012, two Chicago lawyers said travel records show that he had been in another state at the time of three of the murders, implying he was assisted by one or more accomplices. For example, Gacy had flown to Pittsburgh via Allegheny Airlines three days before the disappearance of Robert Gilroy, and returned to Chicago only the day after he disappeared.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Investigators note that Robert Young, the traveling companion with whom victim Russell Nelson was visiting Chicago at the time of his October 1977 disappearance, gave differing accounts of his disappearance to Nelson's family and investigators. Young told Nelson's family he failed to arrive at a bar at a prearranged time, but had told investigators he had last seen Nelson standing in a crowd that had gathered outside a Chicago bar, and when his attention was diverted for a few moments, Nelson had simply disappeared. Investigators contend this could not have happened without Young noticing.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Young filed a missing person's report with Chicago police, before unsuccessfully requesting money from Nelson's parents to finance a search for their son. When Nelson's two brothers arrived in Chicago to search for him, Young offered them a job with PDM. Young was never summoned to testify at Gacy's trial. He died in 1987.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In a third case, travel records indicate Gacy was at a scheduled job site in Michigan at 6:00 a.m. on September 26, 1977—the day following the disappearance of 19-year-old John Mowery, who was last seen leaving his mother's house at 10:00 p.m. on September 25. Mowery's roommate was a PDM employee who formerly lived with Gacy and had moved into Mowery's apartment less than one week before Mowery's disappearance. Two witnesses have stated that this roommate had suggested to Mowery that he meet "a man who is going out of town" two days before Mowery disappeared.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: In 1984, Sam Amirante, one of Gacy's two defense attorneys at his 1980 trial, authored procedures that were incorporated by the Illinois General Assembly into the Missing Child Recovery Act of 1984. Amirante has since said the primary inspiration for this legislation was that at the time of the Gacy murders, Illinois police had to wait 72 hours before initiating a search for a missing child or adolescent.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: The Illinois Missing Child Recovery Act of 1984 removed the 72-hour waiting period. Other states across America subsequently adopted similar procedures. As a result, a national network aimed at locating missing children was gradually formed. This has since developed into the Child Abduction Emergency—commonly known today as an Amber Alert.


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Isolated in his prison cell, Gacy began to paint. He drew inspiration from a wide range of sources for his artwork, with his paintings depicting subjects as diverse as Christ, birds, skulls, his own home, and John Dillinger. Many paintings were of clowns, including himself as Pogo or Patches. His "Hi Ho" series featured scenes of Walt Disney's versions of the Seven Dwarfs. Although Gacy was permitted to earn money from the sale of his paintings until 1985, he claimed his artwork was intended "to bring joy into people's lives".


title: John Wayne Gacy

text: Many of Gacy's paintings have been displayed at exhibitions; others have been sold at various auctions, with individual prices ranging between $200 to $20,000. Following Gacy's execution, family members of his victims publicly burned several of his paintings.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Eternals is a 2021 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics race of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film is directed by Chloé Zhao, who wrote the screenplay with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo. It stars an ensemble cast including Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie. In the film, the Eternals, immortal alien beings, emerge from hiding after thousands of years to protect Earth from their ancient counterparts, the Deviants.


title: Eternals (film)

text: In April 2018, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced that a film based on the Eternals had begun development, with Ryan and Kaz Firpo hired to write the script in May. Zhao was set to direct the film by late September, and was given significant creative freedom with the film, which resulted in filming on location more than previous MCU films. Zhao rewrote the screenplay, to which Burleigh was later reported to have also contributed. Principal photography took place from July 2019 to February 2020, at Pinewood Studios as well as on location in London and Oxford, England, and in the Canary Islands.


title: Eternals (film)

text: "Eternals" premiered in Los Angeles on October 18, 2021, and was released in the United States on November 5, as part of of the MCU. The film grossed $402 million worldwide. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its themes and visuals, but criticized its screenplay, pacing, runtime, and character development.


title: Eternals (film)

text: In 5000 BC, ten superpowered Eternals—Ajak, Sersi, Ikaris, Kingo, Sprite, Phastos, Makkari, Druig, Gilgamesh, and Thena—are sent by the Celestial Arishem to Earth on their starship, the "Domo", to exterminate the invasive Deviants. The last Deviants are apparently killed in 1521, when the group's opinions differ over their continued relationship with humankind. Over the next five hundred years they mostly live apart, waiting for Arishem's orders.


title: Eternals (film)

text: In the present day, Sersi and Sprite live together in London. After Sersi's partner Ikaris left her centuries earlier, she is now in a relationship with human Dane Whitman who works at the Natural History Museum. When the trio are attacked by the Deviant Kro, Ikaris arrives and chases the creature away. The three Eternals travel to South Dakota to reunite with their leader, Ajak, only to find her dead. Sersi is posthumously chosen by Ajak as her successor, granting her the ability to communicate with Arishem.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Sersi learns that the mission of the Eternals was actually to prepare Earth for the Emergence. Arishem explains that, for millions of years, he has been planting the seeds of Celestials inside planets where the energy from large populations allows new Celestials to be born. The Deviants were sent to destroy the apex predators of each planet to ensure the development of intelligent life, but when the Deviants evolved and began hunting the planets' native populations, Arishem created the Eternals to counter them. With the reversal of the Blip, Earth has reached the necessary population for the birth of the Celestial Tiamut, which will result in Earth's destruction.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Hoping to delay the Emergence, the Eternals reconvene. At Druig's residence in the Amazon rainforest, they are attacked by the Deviants. They kill them all except for Kro, who kills Gilgamesh before fleeing. Phastos proposes the Uni-Mind, a connection between all the Eternals that would give Druig enough power to put Tiamut to sleep with his mind-control powers. However, Ikaris reveals that Ajak told him of the Emergence centuries before. When Ajak told him she wishes to stop the Emergence, he led her to the Deviants who killed her. Sprite joins Ikaris due to her unrequited love for him while Kingo chooses to leave.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Makkari locates the place of the Emergence, an active volcano in the Indian Ocean, where Ikaris and Sprite attempt to stop them. Druig knocks out Sprite, and Phastos restrains Ikaris. Kro arrives and is killed by Thena. Druig is unable to put Tiamut to sleep and Sersi instead attempts to turn him into marble. Ikaris breaks free of his restraints and goes to kill Sersi, but finds himself unable to due to his love for her. Both he and Sprite join with the others in the Uni-Mind and Sersi gains enough power to turn Tiamut into marble. Guilt-ridden, Ikaris flies into the Sun. At Sprite's request, Sersi uses the remaining energy from the Uni-Mind to turn Sprite into a human, ending her permanent childlike state. Thena, Druig, and Makkari depart on the "Domo" to find Eternals on other planets and warn them of the Emergences while Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo remain on Earth.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Dane professes his love for Sersi and is about to reveal a secret about his family history when she, Phastos, and Kingo are lifted into space by Arishem. Displeased with their treason, Arishem says he will spare humanity if the Eternals' memories show that humans are worthy of living. Vowing to return for judgment, he takes the trio with him into a singularity. In a mid-credits scene, Thena, Makkari, and Druig meet the Eternal Eros, Thanos's brother, and his assistant Pip the Troll, who offer their help. In a post-credits scene, Dane opens a case containing the Ebony Blade and an unseen person questions whether he is ready for it.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Additionally, the Deviant Kro is voiced by Bill Skarsgård, while David Kaye voices the Celestial Arishem. Harish Patel appears as Karun, Kingo's human valet. Haaz Sleiman and Esai Daniel Cross portray Ben and Jack, Phastos' husband and son, respectively; and Zain Al Rafeea portrays a villager who comes across the Eternals upon their arrival on Earth. Harry Styles appears in the film's mid-credits scene as Eros / Starfox, the brother of Thanos, while Patton Oswalt voices his assistant Pip the Troll. Mahershala Ali has an uncredited voice cameo appearance as Blade in the post-credits scene, ahead of starring in his own film.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in April 2018 that the studio was actively developing a film based on the Marvel Comics series "Eternals", created by Jack Kirby, to be released as part of their slate of films. Marvel Studios had met with multiple screenwriters, and was believed to be focusing on the character Sersi in the film. Marvel set Ryan and Kaz Firpo to write the script a month later, with their outline including a love story between the characters Sersi and Ikaris. In June, Feige said Marvel was interested in exploring the "ancient aliens kind of sci-fi trope" by having the Eternals be the inspiration for myths and legends throughout the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).


title: Eternals (film)

text: During late August, Marvel's director search for "Eternals" narrowed to a shortlist that included Chloé Zhao—who had also been in the running to direct Marvel's "Black Widow" (2021)—Nicole Kassell, Travis Knight, and the pair of Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra. Zhao approached Marvel Studios about making the film as she had been a fan of the MCU. She wanted to work with the studio to bring her own take and world-building to the franchise, and impressed them with a presentation that Feige described as fascinating, with "reams of visuals". Zhao worked with producer Nate Moore to develop her pitch. The presentation left Marvel concerned that she might take on a different big-studio project instead of "Eternals", forcing them to move quickly to secure her, and Zhao was hired as director in September. Zhao hoped to push the scope of the film further than Marvel's "" (2019), but also wanted it to have intimacy. Zhao described the film as a melting pot of influences, from Kirby's original work, Neil Gaiman's 2006 run, previous MCU projects, Zhao's fandom of the MCU, and her love of science fiction and fantasy films and manga. Speaking specifically to her love of manga, she hoped those influences would create a "marriage of East and West". Zhao cited the TV series "Ancient Aliens", the "Final Fantasy" video game series, the concepts from Yuval Noah Harari's book "", and the films of Terrence Malick as her inspirations for the film.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Marvel considered "Eternals" to be a perfect transition into its next phase of films along with projects such as "Captain Marvel" (2019), allowing the studio to cast a diverse group of actors to portray the various Eternals. Moore's initial planning documents for the project including the swapping of genders, sexualities, and ethnicities of some characters from the comic books, with Zhao further advocating for this approach. In February 2019, Feige reiterated that Marvel was interested in the Eternals due to Kirby's epic, century-spanning story, with the film version spanning 7,000 years and exploring humanity's place in the cosmos. Zhao noted that the Eternals "have lived among us for so long, [they have] the same struggles like identity, purpose, faith, personal freedom versus greater good — all the duality and flaws that make us human". When trying to develop a story that spanned so many years, Marvel realized that the characters would likely be a family unit, with friendship that would "turn into frenemies, and then turn into enemies, and then come back to friendship". Zhao also looked to the Earth as an eleventh character in the film, chronicling its journey alongside the Eternal characters. Marvel also wanted to create more ensemble films that were not crossover films, like "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), while introducing relatively unknown characters to audiences as they did with that film's title characters and the Avengers.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Angelina Jolie joined the cast in March 2019, reportedly as Sersi, with Kumail Nanjiani and Don Lee cast in undisclosed roles the next month. At that time, the film was expected to feature Marvel Studios' first gay superhero. In May, Richard Madden entered negotiations for the role of Ikaris, and Salma Hayek had entered early negotiations for an undisclosed role the following month. In July, "Variety" reported that the cast included Jolie, Madden, and Millie Bobby Brown, but Brown denied that she had been cast.


title: Eternals (film)

text: At the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, Feige officially announced "The Eternals" with a release date of November 6, 2020. He officially announced the casting of Jolie as Thena, Nanjiani as Kingo, Lee as Gilgamesh, Madden as Ikaris, and Hayek as Ajak, along with Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, and Lia McHugh as Sprite. Zhao looked for actors for each role that could "find a bit of themselves in their character". Feige added that one of these actors was portraying an LGBTQ character, with actor Haaz Sleiman later revealing that Phastos is depicted as gay in the film. Sleiman portrays the character's husband, and the pair have a child in the film. Sleiman felt it was important to depict "how loving and beautiful a queer family can be" rather than the "sexual or rebellious" depiction in some previous media. Feige said the relationship was "always sort of inherent in the story" and he felt it was "extremely well done" in the film, while Sleiman said it was a "thoughtful" depiction.


title: Eternals (film)

text: "Eternals" is set around eight months after the events of "Avengers: Endgame", and addresses why the Eternals did not interfere in any past conflicts in the MCU. Both Feige and Moore said the film would have "major ripple effects" on the future of the MCU, and at times, it was "a challenge" to balance the grounded nature of the MCU with the "mythic grandeur" of the Eternals property.


title: Eternals (film)

text: By the film's official announcement in July 2019, principal photography had begun at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England. Ben Davis served as director of photography, after doing so on several previous MCU films. Zhao said Marvel Studios allowed her creative freedom to shoot the film on location, "exactly the way [she] wanted to shoot" it. She was able to use a similar style to her previous films, including 360° shots and working with the same camera and rigs as were used for her film "Nomadland" (2020), which Zhao was set to complete back-to-back with "The Eternals". Zhao felt that she "got lucky in that Marvel wants to take risks and do something different." Zhao cited "The Revenant" (2015) as a primary influence when composing the film's action sequences.


title: Eternals (film)

text: Gemma Chan and Barry Keoghan were in talks to join the cast in August 2019. Chan previously portrayed Minn-Erva in "Captain Marvel", but reports noted that she was potentially being looked at by Marvel to play a separate character in this film. Since Minn-Erva dies in that film, Chan had felt that it was unlikely she would return to the MCU, but after working on the film she was told by Feige that the studio wanted to "make better use" of her in a future project. This led to Chan auditioning for Sersi, one of the last actresses to be considered for the role. Chan later described Sersi as the most difficult role for the film to cast. Chan and Keoghan were confirmed to be cast in the film at the D23 Expo in August, in the roles of Sersi and Druig, respectively, along with Kit Harington as Dane Whitman. Chan said she and Marvel Studios were surprised by how soon after "Captain Marvel" her new MCU role came, with both assuming that it would have been a project further in the future. Harish Patel was cast at the end of August as Karun, Kingo's manager, and filmed his role from September 2019 until January 2020.


title: Eternals (film)

text: By early November, filming took place in the Canary Islands. The filming cast and crew, including Jolie and Madden, had to be evacuated from a shooting location on the island of Fuerteventura when an explosive device was found there. The device was thought to be a remnant armament from a Nazi base. Later that month, Zain Al Rafeea joined the cast. In early January 2020, filming took place outside the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in Oxford, England, as well as Hampstead Heath and in Camden in London, under the working title "Sack Lunch". Chan said the filming process felt very different from what she experienced on "Captain Marvel", explaining that "Eternals" shot more on location and utilized natural light while "Captain Marvel" had more studio work and bluescreen. Filming wrapped on February 4, 2020.


title: Eternals (film)

text: In March 2020, Scanline VFX, one of the companies working on the film's visual effects, confirmed that they would be working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Industrial Light & Magic, Luma Pictures, RISE, and Weta Digital also worked on the film's visual effects. In early April, Disney shifted much of their Phase Four slate of films due to the pandemic, moving "The Eternals" release date to February 12, 2021. In August, the film's title was officially shortened from "The Eternals" to "Eternals", and the next month, the release date was pushed back to November 5, 2021. Reshoots had taken place by mid-November 2020.


title: Eternals (film)

text: In January 2021, Zhao revealed that she was also a writer on the film, with Patrick Burleigh soon revealed to have worked on the script as well. Additional filming occurred in Los Angeles in early February, also under the working title "Sack Lunch". Dylan Tichenor and Craig Wood serve as co-editors of the film. Tichenor said Zhao usually edits her own films and has "strong opinions", but on "Eternals" she was relying on Tichenor and Wood due to the size of the production and the ongoing awards season for "Nomadland". Tichenor added that Zhao respected the pair's editing experience and point of view, and they made their first cut of the film without much input from her. They began adjusting the film based on Zhao's feedback, and were still working on the editing in April 2021. At the end of the month, Zhao said editing for the film was in its "final stretch", and Jashaun St. John was revealed to appear in the film, after previously starring in Zhao's film "Songs My Brothers Taught Me" (2015).


title: Eternals (film)

text: At the end of May 2021, with the release of the first teaser trailer and poster for the film, the official writing credits were revealed: Zhao was credited as the screenwriter, both as a solo contributor and as part of a writing team with Burleigh, while Ryan and Kaz Firpo received story credit. Additionally, Gil Birmingham was revealed to have been cast in the film, although he was absent in the final film. In July 2021, Writers Guild of America West presented the film's final writing credits, awarding Ryan and Kaz Firpo screenplay credit along with Zhao and the team of Zhao and Burleigh, in addition to their story credit. Moore believed the studio had "bit off as much as we could chew" with the film, creating one that "felt urgent and present and had [a fast] pace, but also took time to reflect back over the centuries".


title: Eternals (film)

text: At the film's world premiere, Matt Donnelly of "Variety" tweeted that Harry Styles made an appearance in a post-credits scene as Eros, Thanos' brother in the comics, which was not shown in early press screenings of the film. Zhao later revealed that she "kept tabs on [Styles]" since his appearance in "Dunkirk" (2017), believing that he "makes me think of Eros as a character". WWE wrestler Becky Lynch had a role in the film for a planned post-credits scene that was intended to set up a future project. The scene was removed for being reportedly "too depressing".


title: Eternals (film)

text: Ramin Djawadi composed the score for the film, after previously doing so for Marvel's "Iron Man" (2008). Two songs from the film's soundtrack, "Across the Oceans of Time" and "Eternals Theme", were released as singles on October 22, 2021, while the full album was released on November 3.


title: Eternals (film)

text: The first footage of the film was released in May 2021 as part of a promotional video from Marvel Studios celebrating their films and a return to movie theaters. Though the footage was limited and "vague", Hoai-Tran Bui at "/Film" still felt it was "very exciting". Chaim Gartenberg of "The Verge" felt one of the biggest moments of the footage was seeing Jolie wielding a sword made of light. He was also encouraged that "Eternals" appeared to be one of Marvel's first films to "deliver on [their] years-long promise of creating films with more diverse casts". "Nerdist" Michael Arbeiter said the footage was quick, but felt that it "manages an air of wonderment".


title: Eternals (film)

text: The first teaser for the film was released on May 24, 2021. Gartenberg felt the teaser was light on plot elements, with it instead focusing on the "civilization-spanning scope of the superhero team and its members throughout human history". He also believed the film was "a big swing" from Marvel Studios to entice audiences with a lesser-known comics property, but believed that it would succeed due to its diverse cast of well-known actors and Zhao's status as "one of the most exciting directors around". "io9" Charlies Pulliam-Moore felt the trailer was a "multiple millennia-spanning recap of Earth's history", and said it was unclear how much the larger MCU would impact on the film outside of a brief reference to the Avengers at the end of the trailer. Writing for "Entertainment Weekly", Nick Romano felt the teaser was a combination of "thrilling, goosebump-inducing moments" and some jokes. Erik Adams of "The A.V. Club" felt the spot teased some fresh angles for the MCU in a similar way to "" (2017) and "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), and he enjoyed the images of Kingo's Bollywood dance, Sprite performing karaoke, and the end scene of the Eternals eating together and joking about the Avengers. After seeing the teaser, "Variety" Adam B. Vary described the film as "unquestionably a Chloé Zhao movie", but wished more action set pieces were featured in the teaser to see how Zhao would approach them in the film. Adele Ankers of "IGN" discussed the poster that was released at the same time as the trailer, highlighting how the Eternals appear in silhouette against a sunlit background which she described as "another taste of Chloé Zhao's signature filming style and the use of natural light to illuminate a frame" that would be seen in the film. Upon release, the teaser quickly became the number one trending video on YouTube and amassed 77 million global views in its first 24 hours. Disney's president of marketing Asad Ayaz said the teaser was designed to just be an introduction to the characters and tone and not give much of the film away, adding the marketing team would be "very judicious" on when more material would be revealed, while also using the releases of "Black Widow" and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" before "Eternals" to help expose audiences to the characters.


title: Eternals (film)

text: The final trailer was released in August 2021, with Ethan Shanfeld and Manori Ravindran of "Variety" feeling it was "more serious in tone" than the teaser with the Eternals "grappling with the prospect of emerging after centuries living apart in order to help humans". "Entertainment Weekly" Devan Coggan felt that the trailer was the "best glimpse yet" of the film and gave a "sense of the vast scale and scope of the film", while answering "one important question" about the absence of the Eternals during the conflict against Thanos in "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame". Aaron Couch at "The Hollywood Reporter" said the trailer "reveals much of [the film's] plot as well as its characters' powers, teasing the answers to key questions about who the Eternals answer to, their relationship to Earth and why they ultimately didn't intervene" in the conflict against Thanos.


title: Eternals (film)

text: In October 2021, Lexus released a commercial promoting the film and its Lexus IS 500 sports sedan starring Nanjiani as Kingo, with frequent MCU directors Joe and Anthony Russo guiding its development and Framestore working on the visual effects. Lexus created ten concept cars based on the ten Eternals characters from the film. The LS 500h and NX are featured in the film. Beginning on November 20, 2021, select costumes from the film were part of the "Futures" exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building, which will run through July 2022. Behind-the-scenes content looking at the evolution of the film's visuals as well as an augmented reality experience were also included in the exhibit.


title: Eternals (film)

text: "Eternals" had its world premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on October 18, 2021, and was screened at the Rome Film Festival on October 24. The film was released theatrically in many European countries on November 3, and in the United States and the United Kingdom on November 5 in RealD 3D and 4DX. In September 2021, Disney announced that the film would have an exclusive theatrical release for a minimum of 45 days. "Eternals" was previously set for release on November 6, 2020, before it was shifted to February 12, 2021, and then to the November 2021 date, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is part of Phase Four of the MCU.