John Wayne Gacy buried 26 victims and was later caught.
John Wayne Gacy . He sexually assaulted , tortured and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County , Illinois ( a part of metropolitan Chicago ) . Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home . Convicted of 33 murders , Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13 , 1980 for 12 of those killings .