Module 6 - Forensic Anthropology and Forensic Entomology (Bones & Bugs)

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Forensic anthropology played a pivotal role in the investigation of one of America’s most notorious serial killers – John Wayne Gacy. Forensic anthropology and other forensic methods helped to identify twenty-two of Gacy’s thirty-three victims. Because only skeletal remains were available for many of Gacy’s victims, forensic anthropology was used to determine exactly how they were murdered.

In 1978, a fifteen-year-old boy named Robert Piest was reported missing by his mother. She had come to pick up Robert from the pharmacy where he worked part-time. Robert had told her that he was going outside to talk to a man who had offered him another part-time job. After three hours of waiting for Robert, Mrs. Piest contacted the local police.

The man who had offered Robert the part-time job was a local contractor named John Wayne Gacy. When police went to Gacy’s house to ask about the whereabouts of Robert Piest, Gacy denied having seen Robert. He told them he was unable to talk to them as there was a recent death in his family and that he had funeral details to arrange. Police asked Gacy to come to the police station later that day. Gacy was questioned several hours later, and he continued to deny having seen Robert Piest. A background check of Gacy revealed that he had a criminal record for sexually assaulting a teenager and that he was awaiting trial for another sexual assault. This led police to obtain a search warrant for Gacy’s house.

In December 1978 when police initially conducted a search of Gacy’s house, they discovered a strong stench in the crawl space below his house. However, the ground in the crawl space looked untouched, so the police initially assumed the smell to be of sewage. Police did find numerous suspicious items in Gacy’s house including two school graduation rings, marijuana, handcuffs, two driver’s licences from two unknown males, police badges, and several articles of teenage boy clothing. In the trunk of one of Gacy’s vehicles, hair matching Robert Piest’s was found.

Finally, after an intense investigation, police discovered that one of the graduation rings found at Gacy's house belonged to a teenager who had disappeared a year earlier. They also discovered that three of Gacy’s former employees had mysteriously disappeared within the last 5 years.

All of this evidence finally led Gacy to confess to police that he did kill someone; however, he initially claimed it had been in self-defence. Gacy told police they could find the body under his garage. Police did find a body under the garage and began finding numerous remains under the crawl space of Gacy’s house. Gacy then confessed to killing Robert Piest and more than thirty other young men.

The search for bodies at Gacy’s house was set up much like an archaeological dig site because the excavation had to be done carefully to preserve the decomposing remains and to keep the remains organized because some of the bodies were piled on top of each other. On the first day of the search, two bodies were found in the crawl space. As time passed, twenty-six more bodies were discovered beneath the crawl space. Some victims were buried so close together that it was hypothesized that they were probably killed or buried at the same time. Gacy told police that on several occasions he had killed more than one person in a day.

During the demolition of Gacy’s property, the body of a young man was discovered preserved in the concrete of Gacy’s patio. Another body was discovered under the recreation room of his house. By the end of December 1978, police removed twenty-nine bodies from Gacy's property. By the spring of 1979, police were able to connect four young male victims found in a local river to Gacy. Gacy confessed he disposed of the bodies in the river because he ran out of room in his crawl space and he had been experiencing back problems from digging the graves in the small crawl space. Fifteen-year-old, Robert Piest was one of the victims found in the local river. Like many of Gacy’s victims, Robert had been sexually assaulted and suffocated after paper towels had been lodged in his throat.

Dr. Clyde Snow, a forensic anthropologist, was hired by police to help identify the victims removed from Gacy’s property. Dr. Snow used missing person reports to help him identify the unknown remains. For example, he identified one set of remains found at Gacy’s property as David Talsma using information from his missing persons report. In December 1977, nineteen-year-old David was reported missing. Records showed that David had fractured his left arm as a child. One set of remains from Gacy’s property showed evidence of a fractured left arm that had healed. Also, the height of the remains matched David Talsma’s height. The last observation that Dr. Snow used to identify these unknown remains was the fact that the left arm was several millimetres longer than the right arm and that the left scapula was bevelled. Both of these observations enabled Dr. Snow to conclude that the remains belonged to a left-handed victim. David Talsma was left-handed.

In the end, investigators used forensic anthropology techniques and dental records to identify all but nine of Gacy’s victims. Gacy was found guilty and convicted of thirty-three murders in 1980. After a long legal battle that he lost, John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994.

Related Case Study Questions

1. Why was forensic anthropology used in the John Wayne Gacy criminal case?
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2. What specific case brought John Wayne Gacy to the attention of police?
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3. Why was the search for bodies at Gacy’s house set up like an archaeological dig site?
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4. In the end, how many of Gacy’s victims were identified with the help of forensic anthropology?
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