of dampness in the crawl space. In fact, he had employed teenagers in his business and had them dig trenches in the crawl space underneath his home. Gacy had been sexually torturing to death some of the young men who worked for him and others that he picked up in downtown Chicago. He lured them by promising them money or employment. One of his favorite routines was to persuade them to participate in his "handcuff trick" in order to incapacitate them. He would then chloroform them and sodomize them. This was followed by his "rope trick" in which he would insert a rope around the victims neck, insert a stick in the loop, and twist it slowly like a tourniquet until the victim strangled to death. Gacy likedto read passages from the Bible while doing this.

He buried most of his sexual victims in shallow graves in the crawl space under the house, covered them with lime, and left them to decompose. One potential victim was lured into Gacys black Oldsmobile (complete with spotlight to look like an unmarked police car) on the pretense of police questioning, handcuffed, abused sexually and then released for unknown reasons. Enraged by liver damage caused by the chloroform, the victim staked out freeway entrances until he spotted Gacys car and then demanded action by authorities. Authorities declined to prosecute Gacy because of lack of evidence.

Gacys undoing came in December, 1978 when he visited a pharmacy to do a remodeling estimate, and lured away a 15-year-old boy whose mother had dropped