Serial killer John Wayne Gacy loved hogging the limelight.
A needy braggart, the killer clown cruelly, heartlessly snuffed out the lives of at least 33 young men and boys, with many being buried under the crawl space of his Des Plaines, Ill., bungalow.
Courtney Lund O’Neil believes it’s well past the time that the monster — executed in 1994 — was dragged off the stage and the focus returned to his victims. She has penned a well-reviewed new book, Postmortem: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders, that moves the spotlight to the victims and survivors.
For her, the Gacy case is very personal.
As a teenager, her mother played a crucial role in ending Gacy’s reign of terror. The murders have cast an ominous spectre over the life of her mom and Lund O’Neil.
“He was the bogeyman. The murders definitely shaped my life,” the writer said from her San Diego home. “Gacy was next-level evil. In my book, he’s a boring character, not the centre of attention. After so many years, we are still focusing on him.”
Lund O’Neil notes the huge “ripple effect” Gacy’s crimes had on Des Plaines and beyond. Murder is different. Its consequences seep from one generation to the next.
“People grieve for generations,” she said.
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On Dec. 11, 1978, Gacy was running out the clock — but didn’t know it — when he made a business call at the Nisson Pharmacy. Part-time clerk Robert Piest, 15, was told he could earn double his pay working for the killer clown.
At the end of Piest’s shift, he went outside to speak with Gacy about the job. Earlier, he had loaned his coat to Lund O’Neil’s mother, Kim Byers.
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Piest was never again seen alive again; his body was later found floating in the Des Plaines River. Cops say Piest left the store at 9 p.m. and was dead within an hour.
A photo ticket Byers left in the pocket of Piest’s coat would help send Gacy to death row.
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“Growing up, my mother would tell me stories, the white van, ‘if someone wants to show you puppies, run’, don’t take candies,” the author said. “I’m sure other parents were telling their kids these things, but because of what my mom went through, it was more real, more exponential. That deep kind of fear.”
Lund O’Neil, who now lives in San Diego and has three children of her own, said her mother was over-protective but that she trusted her judgment.
“She equipped me with the skills to handle the world. Put yourself in her shoes, you’d be hyper-aware, too,” she said.
Lund O’Neil noted that the world is very different today from the freewheeling 1970s when kids stayed out all hours riding their bikes and running around without a care. Oblivious to the evil lurking in the shadows of that golden decade.
“A big part of this book is trying to understand who my mom was when she was 17 and how this shaped her life and also the communal impact in the local community, in Chicago and beyond,” she said.
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In most serial killer tomes, the fascination is with the killer, why they killed and how they were caught. In her book, Lund O’Neill does an about-face and zeroes in on the traumatic tremors that lie in the wake of every homicide.
A steady stream of Gacy books and documentaries has kept the rotund monster in the headlines for 30 years since he caught the night train to Nowheresville. There remain five unidentified Gacy victims, and nearly 50 years later, people still come forward about their terrifying encounters.
“I hope the book finds its readers and widens the story. There are so many layers, but I didn’t want to make John Wayne Gacy the star. It’s my mom as a 17-year-old who really helped end the murders,” Lund O’Neil said.
“For her, everything switched on Dec. 11, 1978, there is the before and then there’s the after.”
@HunterTOSun