Boys Enter the House
The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
"Here is a work that emphasizes the full view of the lives of those young people that Gacy took. . . . It is essentially the Gacy story in reverse. Victims first."
—Jeff Coen, author of Murder in Canaryville
As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown.
But in the winter of 1978–79, he became known as one of many so-called "sex murderers" who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s. As public interest grew rapidly, victims became footnotes and statistics, lives lost not just to violence, but to history.
Through the testimony of siblings, parents, friends, lovers, and other witnesses close to the case, Boys Enter the House retraces the footsteps of these victims as they make their way to the doorstep of the Gacy house itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Nelson debuts with a moving and meticulously researched account of the lives of the victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who brutalized and murdered 33 boys and young men between January 1972 and December 1978, burying most of them beneath his house on the outskirts of Chicago. Drawing on interviews with family, friends, and lovers, Nelson portrays each of the victims in full. Some had criminal records, some were gay sex workers, and many were regular kids. Gacy's first victim, 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, came from an extended family and was taking the bus home from visiting cousins in Michigan when he accepted a ride from Gacy at a Chicago bus station. Nineteen-year-old Billy Kindred had a girlfriend, who to this day still wears his promise ring. And 15-year-old Rob Piest, a theater tech and gymnast, was described as shy and sweet by his co-workers at the Des Plaines, Ill., pharmacy where he met Gacy and became his final victim. (The efforts of the Piest family to find out what happened to Rob helped lead to Gacy's arrest.) Gacy, who confessed to multiple murders, was executed in 1994. Nelson succeeds in giving Gacy's victims a voice. This is a must for true crime fans.
