William Carroll

William “Billy” Carroll Jr., a 16-year-old white male from Chicago, Illinois, left his home on June 13, 1976, and was never seen alive again. His sudden disappearance began a long and painful wait for his family. It would be years before they learned the devastating truth about what happened to him.

Two years after he vanished, Billy’s remains were found buried in the crawl space of a house belonging to John Wayne Gacy, a local contractor who would become known as one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. The investigation revealed that Billy had been sexually assaulted before he was murdered. He was one of dozens of young men and boys who fell victim to Gacy.

Investigators learned that Gacy’s victims were typically between the ages of nine and twenty-seven. His method involved luring them to his house, where he would get them drunk or trick them into being placed in handcuffs. To prevent them from being heard, he often stuffed socks or underwear into their mouths to muffle their screams. He would then sexually assault his victims before killing them by strangulation, using a rope or a board pulled tight against their throats.

Gacy later admitted that he would sometimes keep the bodies of his victims for hours, hiding them under his bed or in his attic before burying them in the crawl space beneath his home. This gruesome pattern of violence continued for years until his crimes were finally discovered.

John Wayne Gacy was ultimately found guilty of 33 murders. He was sentenced to death for his crimes and was executed in Illinois on May 10, 1994. With the conviction and execution of his killer, William Carroll's case was solved as of May 1994.