The smell of decomposing flesh is one that is like no other. For those who have ever had a rodent die inside their walls or had a stray animal crawl under the house and die, they know just how putrid this lingering odor can be. When the two officers accepted John Wayne Gacy’s invitation to eat with him, they were thinking that their host was most likely responsible for the disappearance of Robert Piest. After some conversation, one of the officers asked to use Gacy’s restroom. Esquire tells of fate intervening while the cop was using these facilities. The furnace kicked on, blowing warmed air from the ductwork into the bathroom. The officer began to notice a horrid stench coming from the vent, one that he later compared to the smell of bodies in the morgue. The Chicago Tribune reports that Gacy’s excuse for the smell was a problem with sewage that had been seeping underneath the house.
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But that was no sewer smell. The odor was from the 27 bodies that Gacy had buried in shallow graves beneath his floorboards. After police arrested Gacy days later and executed a search warrant on the property, they would spend weeks unearthing the horror that the Killer Clown tried to conceal. It was discovered that Gacy killed at least 33 victims. After he ran out of room in the crawlspace, he used his yard and the Des Plaines River as a dumping ground (via the Chicago Sun-Times).
