Boys Enter the House

by David Nelson

The bar sat perched on the corner of Elston, less than a ten-minute walk from her home on Springfield. Inside, the blue-collar men and women of Albany Park—many of Polish descent—would gather to drink or play pool.

  MaryJane often went with a friend, Laura, and her husband for a drink, as she did on an evening in November 1978 during a visit back to Chicago from California. They were together when a man came up to them and handed over a sketch he’d drawn of Laura and her husband while he sat watching them from the bar.

  MaryJane’s memory has worked hard over the years to blur and block specific moments that now seem almost like they never really happened. It’s possible there were two encounters with the man; one where he sketched her picture, one where he sketched Laura and her husband. At the time, MaryJane had been employed by Bresler’s Ice Cream company working in the computer room. Looking back, she believes she mentioned this to the man, who quickly bragged he knew the owners of the company, who’d hired him to perform as a clown at their upcoming holiday party. In return, he claimed to have invited them and many other “important” people to his own holiday dinner party, to be held on December 21 at his house near the airport.

  He asked if MaryJane would like to attend.

  “I didn’t want to go,” MaryJane would later say. “So I didn’t pay any attention.”

  Although she didn’t give this man much thought, she remembered his name because he signed the sketch: “Gacy.”

  Mr. Gacy left MaryJane and her friend to their drinks. But he’d never get to have his dinner party.

  On December 21 Mr. Gacy would be in handcuffs.

  Lisa Heath ran into her friend Dale Landingin on the street one morning. They hadn’t known each other long, just a few weeks that summer when they’d partied at the coach house in New Town with her ex-boyfriend, Donnie Belle.

  Despite not being close, they agreed to get some breakfast together. They walked through the neighborhood catching up and ending at a small diner under the tracks at the Berwyn station in Edgewater, not far from where Dale lived with his girlfriend at the time.

  At the diner, they continued talking, though Lisa doesn’t remember specifics, or even what they ate. It was just a pleasant chat between two friends. Nothing had ever happened between the two of them, but they had a fondness that seemed mutual. They finished their meals, paid, and got up to go. They walked out of the diner together, but when they turned to say good-bye, Lisa got a funny feeling. “When we parted ways, it was kind of like we knew we probably wouldn’t see each other again.”

  Whether it was because the only link between them was Donnie, who had just broken her heart, or because of something else, Lisa did not know at the time. The moment they left each other had a permanence that Lisa felt acutely. Over their heads the El train rattled past. They said good-bye. “I remember parting ways and us walking in two separate directions,” Lisa said. “It was the last I saw of him.”

  Denise Landingin hadn’t seen her brother as often in the years following their parents’ divorce. The family had essentially gone in different directions. He was doing his own thing trying to survive, and she was doing hers.

  Denise and her husband, Raul, had briefly lived at Forty-Fifth and Ashland on the South Side, where things were no better than life in Uptown. Denise eventually got pregnant with her first child. With a baby on the way and no steady work, Denise did what she had to do. She asked her father if she and Raul could come and live with him on Marshfield Avenue. Francisco agreed.

  About a week into their stay, while Raul was out looking for work, Denise stood at the kitchen sink doing dishes. Her father, drunk, wandered into the kitchen and saw her there. Almost instinctively, he went to her and began touching her. “I had my belly out,” she said, “I was like eight months pregnant.”

  As a child, she’d been powerless to stop him. This time she was able to fend him off, pushing him away and standing her ground. He stumbled off to bed, and soon after, Denise and Raul left Marshfield.

  For a time, they made ends meet, but it was never easy, especially after her son’s birth in 1977. Raul struggled with drugs, and often had no job prospects.

  In the fall of 1978 she was pregnant again when her brother came to visit her with a girlfriend, Stephanie.* They sat together in Denise’s apartment, while her son, Dale’s nephew, played at their feet.

  Things were no better for Dale and Stephanie. They needed a place to stay. But with one child and another on the way, Denise couldn’t afford to have Dale, now nineteen, and Stephanie, whom she didn’t know, both living with her. She didn’t hesitate to turn them down, something that troubled her deeply later on.

  Dale and Stephanie understood. Dale was unfazed by it; he’d been used to living on his own, trying to find a way to live for a few years now. His entire life had been that way. Although Dorothy and Francisco had always provided for him, they continually lived on the edge of poverty.

  The Landingin siblings spent the rest of the visit talking about other things. Dale played with his nephew, and Denise got to know Stephanie a little bit. To Denise, they seemed very much in love. At the end of the visit, they stood together saying good-bye. Dale reached out and touched his sister’s belly. “You’re the most beautiful pregnant woman in the world,” he told her, kissing her stomach. He held his hand there for a moment.

  “He touched my stomach, my baby daughter,” Denise said. “She never met him, but he touched her.”

  Mark Johnson and his partner, Tom, stepped into Nisson’s Pharmacy on Touhy Avenue in Des Plaines for a few supplies. With the holidays approaching, they were in good spirits.

  They lived nearby, so they came to the drugstore often. Sometimes they ran into the young boy, Rob, who stocked shelves. “God, is that kid cute,” they would say to each other.

  This time, though, they ran into someone else Mark knew. At first, Mark didn’t recognize the man wading through the aisles. “He’s kind of creepy,” Mark said to Tom.

  But as they got closer, Mark realized who it was. It was John, the man he’d picked up at the 21 Club and gone home with one evening several years ago, around the time he’d last seen his friend John Szyc.

  The man looked up at Mark. “He recognized me. I recognized him,” Mark said.

  Neither of them said anything, and Mark kept his reaction to himself, fearful to tell Tom who the man was. They got what they needed and quickly left.

  Mark carried the uneasy feeling inside him for a while. It was still with him when they got a knock on their apartment door one day not long after.

  The young man on their doorstep handed them a flyer. “Have you seen this boy?” the flyer asked.

  Underneath these words, they saw the image of the young boy from the pharmacy. Robert Piest, fifteen years old, who was now missing.

  Missing like Mark’s friend John Szyc. Missing like Billy Kindred, like Gregory Godzik, like Billy Carroll, like Sam Stapleton and Randy Reffett, like Timothy McCoy.

  It was time for them all to reveal themselves.

  * This is a fictional name.

  8

  SUMMERDALE AVENUE

  AS CHRISTMAS LIGHTS GLIMMERED inside the store, fifteen-year-old Rob Piest sat in the middle of an aisle at Nisson’s Pharmacy stocking greeting cards. He lingered on the birthday cards. The day was Monday, December 11, 1978, his mother’s forty-sixth birthday.

  Another winter afternoon slid into early evening, as the sun gave an overcast day its last turn of light. Snow had fallen in the previous days. Christmas was approaching, and soon schools like Maine West High, where Rob was a sophomore, or nearby Iroquois High School, where a Christmas dance was underway that evening, would let out for the holiday break.

  Phil and Larry Torf, the brothers who owned the store together, often employed local teenagers as shelf stockers or cashiers. Sometimes they even let Linda Mertes, a manager at the store, drive their Corvette to drop off prescriptions to customers living nearby.

  Working at the pharmacy, Linda recalled, “You knew
whose kid was sick and you knew whose mother, grandmother just died. You knew everything.… Kids would come and try to buy cigarettes and they’d give me this note, because back then they could give me a note from their parents, and I would just look at them and be like, ‘Really? Are you kidding me?’”

  Rob Piest had only been working a few months. By chance he’d gotten the job after his mother had sent him inside for milk one day the previous September. Kim Byers, a cashier at the pharmacy, had asked if he wanted a job. Rob wrote down his name and telephone number. Not long after, he started at the pharmacy, making $2.85 an hour.

  For a while, Rob and his mother had a regular routine. On the evenings Rob worked (which was most evenings), Elizabeth would pick him up from school around 5:30 PM, after he had finished his extracurricular activities like gymnastics or lighting for the school play. Elizabeth would bring a thermos of milk and a hot dinner for Rob, who ate it on the car ride over to Nisson’s Pharmacy, where he worked from 6 PM until 9 PM.

  Over the next few months, Linda and her friend Joanne Jerger Rusch, a student at nearby North Central College, got to know Rob a bit. “He was cute,” said Joanne, who’d gotten a job demonstrating makeup and perfume at Nisson’s with Linda’s help. “Really cute.” They often talked to Rob about school or his girlfriends, sometimes playfully teasing him, like big sisters might do.

  “He was a nice kid,” Linda said. “You’d never think he’d pick up a cigarette or smoke or swear. He was a wholesome type of kid.”

  Later that December evening, he would even let Kim Byers wear his coat as she operated the register against frequent bursts of cold coming in from the nearby doorway. In fact, the doorway had been a source of problems, which was why the Torf brothers had called in a local contractor, who’d previously done work for them a few years back.

  John Gacy ran his company, PDM Contractors, out of his house on Summerdale Avenue, not far from the pharmacy. His company had done significant work obtaining and executing upon bids to renovate pharmacies and drugstores all over the country. The work had taken him through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

  That evening around 5:30, Mr. Gacy arrived to shoot the breeze with Phil Torf. After that, he conducted an estimate for the work, stepping around the teenage employees as he took notes and measurements throughout the store.

  Near the end of her shift, Linda Mertes heard Gacy talking loudly about hiring teenage workers for construction jobs and paying them a minimum of five dollars an hour. Nearby, Rob Piest could hear everything Mr. Gacy was saying.

  Linda herself was not interested in construction work, but she was also not interested in having much to do with Mr. Gacy, whom she’d interacted with at the store previously. “He was very short with us,” Linda said.

  She’d been present during the first renovation several years earlier, when Gacy had helped expand the pharmacy into the space next door. Linda remembered coming to work wearing overalls one day, when Mr. Gacy made a remark about her appearance, and she responded, “Oh, you don’t like girls.” Gacy shot her a dark look that still plays in her mind. “I think about that a lot. I think I should have known something then.”

  Joanne Jerger Rusch felt similarly about Mr. Gacy. “When he was there, he was so cold and indifferent and rude and ignored every female,” she explained. “And every male, he was so smiley and personable with.” Linda and Joanne agreed that Mr. Gacy was “an asshole.”

  Not long after Mr. Gacy’s arrival, Linda left home to get ready. That evening, she and Joanne had plans to go Christmas shopping. When she left, Gacy’s Oldsmobile was parked outside the store.

  Linda returned to the store about an hour later to pick up Joanne and saw Mr. Gacy’s car still parked outside. The two girls made small talk with the other employees. Kim Byers was wearing the blue parka that belonged to Rob, who they talked with as well, finding him in the middle of the aisle at the greeting cards. He talked about his mom’s birthday. They teased him about the dance that evening, asking why he wasn’t going. “He was a little shy,” Joanne said. “It’s why Linda and I had so much fun giving him the business.” They spent about twenty minutes in the store. They did not interact with Mr. Gacy.

  Some students who’d been at the Iroquois Junior High School dance passed through not long after, stopping at the 7-11 a few stores down. Before starting at Maine West, Rob had attended Iroquois, where he still knew some friends. One of the girls threw a snowball at him as he took trash out to the dumpster.

  When Rob came back inside, he gave Kim his parka again. She’d been wearing it all evening, using one of the pockets to stash a receipt for photo prints she’d processed during a moment when the pharmacy was slow. She’d put it in Rob’s pocket hoping he might ask her about it later. She wanted a reason to talk to him.

  But Rob had other things on his mind. He’d recently been turned down for a raise at the store. Now, having heard Mr. Gacy talking loudly earlier in the evening about how much he paid young men at his contracting company, the wheels were turning in his head. He was fifteen years old and saving up for a Jeep. He already had $900.

  Later in the evening, Linda and Joanne returned, though neither remember specific time frames or even separate visits. According to police statements, sometime before nine o’clock, Linda went inside to retrieve some medicine. She found Rob working the register and paid him for her purchase.

  Outside they ran into her boyfriend’s brother and sat talking for a few minutes. Both Joanne and Linda realized Mr. Gacy was still there. His truck with an attached snowplow sat parked nearby. They recognized the lettering on the side: PDM Contractors. Both of them thought it was unusual that he was still there so late into the evening.

  But he’d come back to retrieve an appointment book he’d left behind earlier that evening. When he returned, he continued making measurements and taking notes, sometimes passing near the boy stocking shelves and tending to the store. At a quarter to nine, Gacy finally left, heading out to his pickup, where he continued finishing his quotes.

  Only a matter of minutes later, Elizabeth Piest arrived at the pharmacy to pick up her son. They were going to go home and eat cake for her birthday.

  But Rob hadn’t finished. He had work to wrap up, so Elizabeth wandered the store.

  As he completed his restocking for the evening, Rob Piest saw an opportunity. Mr. Gacy was still outside in his truck. Rob hurried to the register to retrieve his parka. As he put it on, he stepped into the aisle to tell his mother he was going to talk to a contractor about a summer job that paid five dollars an hour minimum. “I’ll be right back,” he told her. Elizabeth Piest said she’d wait. He stepped out of the store.

  As she continued wandering the store, time slipped away. Approaching 9:20 PM, she asked Kim if Rob had come back inside. Kim said no. No one had seen him.

  Unsure what else to do, Elizabeth said she’d go home, but she instructed Kim to call their home if Rob returned so she could head right back to pick him up.

  She stepped out into the parking lot, looking around for a sign of her son. The lot was empty, quiet except for the deep sigh of winter.

  When she got back to their house, just around the corner in a neighborhood off Touhy Avenue, she stopped only to tell her husband and two older children that she could not find Rob. Then she immediately went to the telephone to call the store. Kim answered. But she still hadn’t seen Rob.

  “Who was Rob talking to?” Elizabeth asked.

  Kim replied, “John Gacy.”

  Inside the Piest home, the family quickly forgot about the birthday celebration as they began their own investigation. One of the siblings called a few of Rob’s friends. Though they weren’t sure of the spelling, the other family members scanned the phone book for a listing for Gacy while Elizabeth continued calling the store. It was nearing 10 pm—closing time. They eventually got Gacy’s number from Phil Torf himself. Torf insisted his friend was on the level.

  In his fifteen years, Rob Piest had never do
ne something like this. He was close to his family, and he called home whenever he knew he would be late. His absence in the home was acute, especially as the night wore on.

  Rob’s father, Harold, dialed the number for Gacy’s home. The answering machine picked up. With that, they decided it was time to go to the police.

  Things were quiet that evening at Des Plaines station, just a ten-minute drive north from the Piest house. Des Plaines itself is not a big town, but it is not small or inconsequential either. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, opened one of the first franchises there. Many of its inhabitants found work at nearby O’Hare, where Joanne Jerger Rusch and her friends often went late at night to sit at the twenty-four-hour coffee shop or to make movies on the moving walkways.

  Des Plaines police were often busy, but it was predictably quiet compared to things down in the city, especially overnight. Elizabeth and Harold met with the watch officer inside the station. He told them that a patrolman would be on the lookout for Rob, but it wouldn’t be until a youth officer was assigned in the morning that a real investigation would begin. Most likely Rob would come home by then.

  Her panic continually rising, Elizabeth passed along identifying details for her son, including a photograph of Rob taken the previous winter in downtown Chicago, on a day Harold had bought him a new 35mm camera (off which police would later lift Rob’s fingerprints). In the photo, taken near one of the bridges in the Loop, Rob shrugs inside his blue parka and his tan pants—the same clothes he’d last been seen in.

  Later that evening, a message regarding Rob’s disappearance went out to all police stations in Illinois. Another report was placed on the desk of Lieutenant Joseph Kozenczak, the chief of detectives, who would handle the case as soon as he reported for work the next day.

  This wasn’t enough for Elizabeth and Harold. As soon as they returned to the house, the Piest kids each took one of their German shepherds and began scouring the area. Harold Piest went out on his own, while Elizabeth stayed behind in the empty house, waiting by the telephone.