Robert Piest was murdered on December 11, 1978. At 15 years old, he was the last victim of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Gacy resided in the Chicagoland area. He lived at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, in Norwood Park Township, approximately four miles from O’Hare Airport. 29 bodies of young men and boys were found buried under his house. Four additional bodies, one of which belonged to Piest, were discovered in the Des Plaines River.
17-year-old Kim Byers and a receipt became, respectively, the key witness and evidence in Gacy’s conviction. Byers and Piest worked together at Nisson Pharmacy. It was a cold December day at work when Byers borrowed Piest’s jacket. Working the register, she developed a roll of film. Not yet understanding the importance of the moment, Byers tucked the receipt into the pocket of Piest’s jacket.
Later that evening, Piest requested the jacket back to take out the garbage. This was the last moment Byers saw him alive. While out back, Piest found Gacy waiting. After police surveillance and search warrants had been executed, the receipt Byers had stowed away in Piest’s pocket was found in Gacy’s home.
Postmortem: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders is narrated by the daughter of Kim Byers, Courtney Lund O’Neil. The book weaves together the past and the present as O’Neil journeys to Des Plaines to visit sites central to the John Wayne Gacy murders. She meets with those who experienced the tragedy firsthand and ultimately tells a story about people who have been neglected in the mainstream Gacy narrative, alternating her chapters between her mother’s teenage years, Gacy’s rampage, and O’Neil’s own visits to Illinois to research for the book. This choice allows the author to not only capture the impact of Gacy in the ’70s but the waves the saga continues to create.
In her voyage, O’Neil learns that “everyone [in Des Plaines] has a Gacy story.” The event runs through the mind of the whole community. She witnesses how the true crime genre is fascinated by the serial killer but pushes her readers to see more than the sensational story.
This is not a book about a murderer. It is about Piest, Byers, their families, friends, classmates, teachers, the people of Des Plaines, and even those of Illinois. This book is invested in bringing to the surface a narrative different from that most true crime novels tell. O’Neil tells a story about the people involved in a true crime case, while trying to keep Gacy’s story from being the main subject, platforming someone like Byers to tell her story.
O’Neil’s choice is both ambitious and important. She recognizes the intrigue serial killers have always had and attempts to direct this intrigue to emphasize instead the names that are often left unknown. O’Neil endeavors to balance discussing Gacy in the past with conversations with her mother in the present. However, in a book largely devoted to the John Wayne Gacy murders, it is a difficult task to push him to the side.
True crime reads like a mystery. Despite knowing how the narrative would end, I found myself captivated by the story O’Neil was relaying. The discussion about Gacy’s organization of bodies under his home proving him to be sane, and deserving of the death penalty, complicates the simple belief that serial killers are crazy. Details such as these draw readers into the inner workings of a true crime case.
My love for mystery comes from a desire to be shocked. Mysteries’ twists tend to come at the end. True crime, however, often intrigues not because of an unknown ending but as a result of shocking twists accompanying real stories. It sheds light on the overlooked details: the serial killer’s home, his victims, methods of killing, and even where bodies were hidden. Gacy was polite to neighbors but showed up to the police station covered in mud, refusing to speak. Reading these stories feels like creating a personal connection to something evil, with enough degrees of separation to feel safe. Attempting to understand the killer is intriguing. O’Neil gives us some details, but diehard true crime fans might be disappointed at the sparseness of these insights. This is a result of O’Neil’s choice to bring to light other names. In fact, I would argue this book shouldn’t entirely be classified as a true crime. It has some elements of the genre but reads instead as a memoir.
This narrative choice adds to O’Neil’s success in her mission to provide new insights to a well-known story. Giving the reader some of the classic true crime–style Gacy story is an important contextual addition, as well as an aid to the pace of the book. Her ability to weave the victims’ narratives with the murderer’s, allowing both to compete for the reader’s attention, is part of what makes this book resonate as well as what keeps the pages turning.
O’Neil’s memoir focuses on a specific set of events not in her own life but in her mother’s. Still, the connection O’Neil seems to feel to these events remains strong. She understands that murder and tragedy do not act by affecting singular people. They spread. She experiences their rippling effects. Her identity as Byers’s daughter gives her this unique perspective, allowing her to relay an intimate account of the emotional turmoil both she and her mother experienced. She describes the connection she feels to Piest without ever having known him, a maternal love, established through her mother. Having a son herself, O’Neil feels the pain of all 33 mothers who lost a son to Gacy.
The divergence from the typical genre bounds is one of the triumphs of this book. Packaging itself as a true crime novel brings the appeal of mystery and intrigue, while the memoir widens the scope that we use to look at the Gacy murders. The emotions in this book are potent. More than a simple fascination with a serial killer, I found myself sharing in the fear and sadness of Byers and the Piest family.
O’Neil’s ultimate success in Postmortem is in bringing the human element into the true crime genre. She reminds us of tragedy’s effect. In doing so, she reworks the genre altogether. O’Neil observes that too often, the names of the killers are the ones that live on, while the victims and their loved ones soon fade from the public eye. Her book makes central the stories and grief of real people impacted in Des Plaines. It adds an emotional depth that we know is there but often forget to truly consider. O’Neil reminds us of an important truth: each victim deserves to be remembered.
