John Wayne Gacy: The Crawlspace Under the Smile (1970s Chicago)

He threw block parties, ran a construction company, and visited hospitals as Pogo the Clown. In the 1970s Chicago suburbs, John Wayne Gacy looked like the neighbor everyone could trust. But boys and young men kept vanishing, many last seen near his house or tied to jobs from his company. Each time police asked, he laughed it off.

In December 1978, investigators obtained a search warrant. The house looked ordinary—until they reached the crawlspace. The odor hit first. Digging confirmed the rest: human remains, not one or two, but many. Over the following weeks, the scale came into view: at least 33 victims. The smiling clown at children’s events had been living above a mass grave. Gacy was tried, convicted, and executed in 1994.

This episode keeps to the record vs. rumor, focusing on how a polished persona can mask patterns of harm, how communities miss warning signs, and how investigators followed those signs to the truth beneath the floorboards. No gore, no glorification—just the images that matter: missing-person flyers, a warrant on a winter morning, and ground that refuses to forget.