In late April 2024 I requested the files related to the murder of Kathy Devine from the Thurston County Sherrif’s department in Washington state, and they finally got around to getting them to me at the end of June. I shouldn’t be so salty, I’m very thankful they were willing to send them to me. Included in the information was a bunch of newspaper articles about Kathy, and I almost didn’t include them because most of them I found on newspapers.com (and are in my article), but it was important that I release Kathy’s case file in it’s entirety. They did tell me that sometime in August additional information will be ‘made available’ so… that’s also exciting.
Documentation released by the FBI that is related to the John Wayne Gacy murders. In 1979, Gacy was arrested for a series of murders in the area of Des Moines, Illinois and the following year he was convicted of murdering young men ranging in age from 14 to 21; he was given a death sentence.
James Dean Knox was born on April 4, 1955 in Warsaw, NY; he has an older sister named Cynthia and a son named James Dean Knox III. Twenty four year old Knox was last seen on December 11, 1979 and his Grandmother (who saw him two days prior in her home in the southern part of Warsaw) waited ten days to report him as missing to the authorities. All of his clothes, possessions, and money was left behind.
I found very little information regarding this case on the internet, however this is the only instance where quite a few people from local (Warsaw, NY) Facebook groups reached out to me when I asked for more information, offering me their insight and even what they think may have happened to him. Per his best friend, Jimmy’s mother thinks that her son is in the witness protection program, however he feels that he fell in with the wrong crowd, began experiencing money issues and as a result wound up at the bottom of a well on an abandoned farm in nearby Java. Neither theory seems to have any merit to it.
Knox has blue eyes, dark blonde hair, is 5’11” tall, and weighed 150 pounds at the time of his disappearance; he was last seen wearing a red plaid jacket, blue jeans and black boots. He wore corrective lenses with plastic frames and was suffering from unknown health concerns, which he was apparently pretty upset over. Because of these ongoing issues he was on leave from his POE at the Leroy Machine Company.
Knox lived in the heart of Warsaw on Wyoming Street and frequently ate at a local pizzeria. Before his disappearance he served in the US Navy for roughly one month before being honorably discharged due to medical reasons on May 25, 1979.
Per WIVB both of Knox’s parents and his grandmother have passed away, and his sister still resides in Warsaw. As recently as 2021 New York State Police released a statement about Knox asking that anyone with information related to his disappearance come forward and contact Investigator John Neeley at 585-786-7244, referencing case #3029766. As of June 2024 no trace of Knox has ever been recovered.
Works Cited: 13wham.com/news/local/nysp-continues-to-investigate-warsaw-mans-disappearance-41-years-later charleyproject.org/case/james-dean-knox troopers.ny.gov/missing-knox-james-d
James Knox’s second grade picture from the 1963 Warsaw Elementary School yearbook.James Knox’s fourth grade picture from the 1965 Warsaw Elementary School yearbook.James Knox’s fifth grade picture from the 1966 Warsaw Elementary School yearbook.James Knox’s fifth grade picture from the 1966 Warsaw Elementary School yearbook.James Knox’s freshman year picture from the 1971 Warsaw High School yearbook.One of the more commonly circulated photo’s of Knox, it looks like a mugshot. One of the more commonly circulated photo’s of Knox. The only article I could find about Knox published by The Press and Sun-Bulletin on November 26, 2017.Some weather stats in Warsaw, NY from December 1979. The date Knox was last seen (December 11, 1979) it got as warm as 60 degrees… was he taking advantage of a nice day, went for a walk in the woods then got injured?The temperature in Warsaw, NY the week in December 1979 that Knox was last seen. 35 Wyoming Street in Warsaw, NY where Knox was living at the time he disappeared.In 2019 a Redditor going by the handle of ‘unleashthenuge’ posted this blurb about the disappearance of Knox, it’s a pretty interesting theory.A comment about Knox on his ‘WebSleuths’ page about some of his distinguishing characteristics.James’ sister Cindy’s freshman year picture from the 1967 Warsaw High School yearbook.
In 2004 a California jury found Scott Peterson guilty of killing his 27-year-old pregnant wife, Laci and their unborn son, Conner after a five-month long trial. Since then, he’s had multiple (failed) attempts at an appeal but was successful in getting his death penalty conviction overturned in favor of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. However his latest attempt (taken up by the Los Angeles Innocence Project) claims that there is untested DNA evidence that is just sitting out there that could help prove that someone else killed Laci and Connor. Prosecutors disagree with him and came up with this 337-page rebuttal opposing his motion for new DNA testing, describing the ‘overwhelming’ case against him that earned him a guilty verdict in the first place.
Edward Kemper was first eligible for parole in 1979 but was obviously denied. He had additional (unsuccessful) hearings in 1980, 1981, and 1982 but waived his right to one in 1985. He was again denied at his 1988 hearing, where he said, ‘society is not ready in any shape or form for me. I can’t fault them for that.’
In 1991 and 1994 he was again denied parole and waived his right to a hearing in both 1997 and in 2002. His next time in front of the board was in 2007, which he attended but was once again denied. About the decision to keep Kemper incarcerated, Prosecutor Ariadne Symons said, ‘we don’t care how much of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes.’ Kemper waived his right to a hearing again in 2012 and was denied parole in 2017. His next hearing will be later in 2024.
John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942 to John Stanley and Marion (nee Robinson) Gacy in Chicago, Illinois; he was one of three children and had two sisters, Joanne and Karen. Mr. Gacy was born on June 20, 1900 in Chicago, and John’s Mother was born on May 4, 1908 in Racine, WI. As a child, the sickly Gacy was reportedly close with his mom and sisters but had a poor relationship with his alcoholic father, who was verbally and physically abusive and reportedly beat him regularly. He was hospitalized in 1957 for a burst appendix, and when he was eleven was hit in the head with a swing. As a result of the injury he suffered from seizures and blackouts until the age of sixteen, when a doctor diagnosed him with a blood clot on the brain; the condition was corrected with medication. John Stanley made it clear that he thought his son was faking his illness in an attempt to garner attention and sympathy, and strangely enough his conditions were never formally diagnosed (although his mother and two sisters never doubted him). In 1949, Mr. Gacy was told that John and another boy had been caught sexually molesting a young girl, and he whipped him with a razor strop. Later the same year, a friend of the Gacy family began molesting John in his truck; he never told his father about it as he was afraid that he might somehow be blamed for it.
Despite dropping out of high school his senior year, Gacy still managed to have a fairly successful life: in April 1962 he moved to Las Vegas, where he briefly worked for an ambulance company before moving on to employment in a mortuary. John worked there as an attendant for roughly three months, watching morticians preserve bodies and at times serving as a pallbearer. He slept in the embalming room on a cot, and later confessed that one night while alone he got into a coffin with the body of a teenage male inside. He had a few “intimate moments” with the corpse before going into a state of shock. After this, Gacy returned home to Chicago and enrolled in classes at Northwestern Business College. After finishing his studies, he got a job as a shoe salesman at the Nunn-Bush Shoe Company, and in 1964 he was transferred to a store in Springfield, IL where he met bookkeeper Marlynn Myers. The two were wed in September 1964 and had two children together: a son and a daughter. While living in Springfield Gacy became active in the Waterloo Jaycees, and in 1965 became the chapter’s vice-president. Just in case anyone was curious (I kept hearing about the organization in Netflix’s ‘Conversations with a Killer’ and had no idea what it was), the Jaycees are a civic organization for individuals between the ages of 18 and 40. It provides leadership training and its areas of emphasis are business development, management skills, individual training, community service, and international connections.
In 1966 Gacy began his career managing three KFC’s in Waterloo, Iowa owned by his FIL. He said he enjoyed the first few years of marriage but compared it to constantly being in church… big surprise: it didn’t last long, and the couple divorced after he was arrested for sodomyin December 1968 (which was illegal in Iowa until 1976). John was sentenced to ten years at the Anamosa State Penitentiary, and after his arrest Marlynn took the children andleft; the last time Gacy saw them was in 1968.
After serving only eighteen months in prison Gacy was granted parole on June 18, 1970 on the condition he serve a year of probation. As a part of his release he had to move back to Chicago and reside with his mother, and shortly after they bought the infamous murder house located at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue. On February 12, 1971 John was arrested again for reckless conduct and aggravated sexual battery, but the charges were dropped after the victim attempted to blackmail him. In 1971, he established his construction company, ‘PDM Contractors’ (short for ‘Painting, Decorating, and Maintenance’), and with the ‘OK’ of his PO worked nights on side gigs while maintaining his day job as a cook. At first he only took on smaller jobs like minor repair work, but he later expanded to include bigger projects like landscaping, remodeling, and interior design. In August 1971 he got engaged to a divorced mother of two that he briefly dated in high school named Carole Hoff. The couple quickly moved in together (along with her two daughters, Tammy and April) and were married on July 1, 1972; Gacy’s mother moved out shortly before their nuptials.
In 1973, Gacy traveled to Florida with one of his teenage employees to take a look at a piece of property he had recently bought; while there, he raped the young man in their shared hotel room. After returning home to Chicago, the youth drove to John’s house and beat him up in his front yard; he told his wife that he had been attacked after refusing to pay him for a poor painting job. In the middle of the same year, Gacy quit his FT job as a cook so he could fully commit to his construction business. By early 1975 he had shared with his second bride that he was bisexual, and after they had sex on Mother’s Day he informed her that it would be ‘the last time’ he did that with her. After that John started spending most of his time away from the family home, returning early in the morning with the excuse that he had been working late or was preoccupied with ‘business meetings.’ It was also around this time that Carole started to notice her husband was sneaking teenage boys in and out of their garage in the early morning hours of the day. She also found wallets and ID’s amongst his belongings as well as gay pornography, and when she attempted to talk to him about it he told her that it was ‘none of her business.’ By October 1975 Carole had enough of her husband’s shenanigans and after a big blow-up asked him for a divorce, which he agreed to; despite this, she continued to live with him until February 1976 (with his blessing). On March 2, 1976 the couple’s divorce was finalized.
In addition to Gacy’s booming personal business in March 1977 he became a supervisor for a firm specializing in the remodeling of drugstores called PE Systems (remember this tidbit for later), and between the two there were occasions where he was working sixteen hours a day. By 1978, his construction company alone was bringing in over $200,000 annually. Thanks to John’s membership at a nearby Moose Club in late 1975 he became affiliated with a group that called themselves the ‘Jolly Joker Clown Club;’ an organization that regularly entertained sickly children and participated in parades, parties, and other public fundraising events. As he got more and more into clowning, Gacy developed costumes and makeup for different characters such as ‘Pogo’ and ’Patches,’ and described Pogo as a ‘happy clown,’ whereas the latter had a ‘more serious’ side. When performing, John rarely made money and in interviews during his later life he shared that being a clown allowed him to ‘regress into childhood.’
Many of Gacy’s employees were local high school students and men that tended to be on the youngerside. He frequently would proposition them for sex, and traded sexual favors in return for the use of his vehicles, money, or advancement of employment. John also made it known that he owned guns, and on one occasion said: ‘do you know how easy it would be to get one of my guns and kill you, and how easy it would be to get rid of the body?’ After his first stint in prison he became active in the local Democratic Party, and after giving them use of his employees to clean their headquarters (at no charge) he was rewarded with an invite to serve on the Norwood Park Township Street lighting committee, which eventually helped him obtain the title of precinct captain. In addition to being active in local politics in 1975 he was made the director of Chicago’s yearly Polish Constitution Day Parade, and it was directly because of his work with the organization that helped him meet the (former) First Lady, Rosalynn Carter. It’s worth noting, in their pictures together Gacy is wearing a pin with a ‘S’ on it, which gave its wearer a special security clearance with the US Secret Service.
After his intended victim was successfully inside his home, Gacy’s typical MO was to give them alcohol and illicit substances in an attempt to gain their trust. He would then pull out handcuffs and tell them he wanted to ‘show them a magic trick,’ sometimes as part of a routine that began with cuffing his own hands behind his back. After a bit of fussing he would eventually uncuff himself (thanks to a hidden key), and when finished he would offer to show the young man how to perform the illusion. Once they were subdued, John would then procede to assault, torture, and rape them. He would also inflict various acts of torture onto the men, including burning them with cigars, violating them with foreign objects (after sodomizing them), and making them pretend to be a horse while he sat on their backs and rode them (while pulling on homemade ‘reins’ he strung around their necks… WTF?). Gacy frequently bound his victims’ ankles together with the help of a two-by-four, complete with handcuffs attached at both ends. He also taunted most of the young men while he was murdering them, and partly drowned several of them in his bathtub before repeatedly bringing them back to life (only to kill them again).
The Killer Clown typically killed his young victims using what he called his ‘rope trick:’ he put a tourniquet made out of a rope around their neck and using a hammer handle progressively made it tighter and tighter. Additionally, several of his young victims died by asphyxiation from cloth gags stuffed down their throats. Gacy typically kept their remains underneath his bed for up to twenty-four hours before moving them to the crawl space underneath the house. On occasion, he would pour quicklime on them in order to speed up the rate of decomp. Looking into it, quicklime (or calcium carbonate) has been used for centuries to help break down human remains. Strangely enough, Gacy took some of his victims out to his garage and embalmed them before they were disposed of underneath his house.
On the afternoon of December 11, 1978, Gacy went to the Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, to talk about a potential remodeling deal with its owner, Phil Torf. While there he met 15-year-old PT employee Robert Piest, and made a point of mentioning that his firm frequently hired teenage boys at far more than what he was making at the pharmacy. Shortly after John left, Mrs. Piest arrived to bring her son home, but he asked her to wait and said ‘some contractor wants to talk to me about a job.’ He walked away from her at 9:00 PM, saying he’d be right back but never returned; by 10 PM, he was dead. When Rob never came home, his family quickly filed a missing person report with the Des Plaines PD. Torf told them Gacy was the contractor his young employee had most likely left his store to speak with, and a quick look into his criminal background showed an outstanding battery charge as well as his Iowa imprisonment. The evening after Piest disappeared three Des Plaines police officers visited Gacy at his home and questioned him about the missing boy; he said he never offered Rob a job and promised to come in later that evening to make an official statement, and that he was unable to go then because his uncle had just passed away. John got to the station around 3:20 AM completely covered in mud, telling detectives he had recently been involved in a car accident.
Suspecting Gacy might be holding the young man, Des Plaines police got a search warrant for his residence on December 13, which revealed several suspicious items (including ropes, sex toys, and handcuffs). He was quickly becoming friendly with the detectives that were in charge of his surveillance, and by December 16 he was regularly inviting them to join him for meals and drinks (both in bars and at his home).
By December 18, Gacy was starting to crack and was showing visible signs of strain from the constant police surveillance. That afternoon, he drove to his lawyers’ office to file a $750,000 civil suit against the Des Plaines PD demanding that they stop their monitoring of him. Later that same day, LE found a photo receipt from the Nisson Pharmacy was found in his kitchen that was traced back to a colleague of Robs named Kimberly Byers, who told them she had borrowed his blue parka earlier in the evening and had put it in his pocket before returning it. The following day Gacy’s lawyers filed the civil suit, and Cook County detectives started compiling information for a second search warrant for his residence. Later that afternoon, he invited the surveillance team inside his home, and as one of them distracted him the other walked into his room in an (unsuccessful) attempt to get the serial number on the back of his Motorola TV that they suspected belonged to one of his victims (John Szyc). While one of the detectives was using Gacy’s restroom, he noticed a very particular odor coming out of his heating duct that he strongly suspected was rotting corpses. The first time the residence was searched it had been cold, and the officers had failed to notice it.
On the evening of December 20, Gacy went to his attorney’s office for a scheduled meeting, most likely to talk about the progress of the civil suit. When arriving he seemed to be visibly nervous and immediately gulped down two cups of whiskey provided by his lawyer, Sam Amirante. By then Amirante was having serious doubts about his client’s innocence, and it was then that he threw down a copy of The Daily Herald and said: ‘you said you had something new to tell me! Something important!’ John picked up the paper, pointed at the front page story about Piest and dramatically announced, ‘this boy is dead. He’s dead. He’s in a river.’ He then proceeded to give a rambling, hours-long drunken confession claiming that he had ‘been the judge, jury, and executioner of many, many people,’ and that he now wanted to be the same for himself. Gacy also volunteered that he had killed ‘at least thirty’ young men, most of which he dismissed simply as ‘male prostitutes,’ ‘hustlers,’ and ‘liars,’ and said that sometimes he would wake up and discover ‘dead, strangled kids’ with their hands handcuffed behind their backs.
Mid-way during his rambling John passed out. When he woke up a couple of hours later he told his lawyer that he couldn’t talk about the night before, and said ‘I can’t think about this right now. I’ve got things to do’ then left. Gacy later said that his memories of his last day of freedom were ‘hazy,’ and that he knew his arrest was only a matter of time and that he intended to drive around and visit his friends and say his last goodbyes. After leaving, John went to a nearby gas station where he handed off a small baggie of marijuana to an attendant, who immediately gave it to the surveillance officers. He said that Gacy told him, ‘the end is coming (for me). These guys are going to kill me.’ John then drove to the home of Ronald Rhode, a friend and fellow contractor, hugged him then burst into tears while sobbing, ‘I’ve been a bad boy. I killed thirty people, give or take a few.’ From there, he left and drove to former employee David Cram’s home to meet with him and Michael Rossi, and as he drove down the expressway, surveillance officers noted he was holding a rosary to his chin and appeared to be praying.
When investigators heard from the surveillance officers that Gacy was showing increasingly erratic behavior, they became fearful that he may have become suicidal and decided to arrest him on a possession charge (for the weed) in order to put him in their custody. On the night of Gacy’s civil hearing a second search warrant for his residence was granted at 4:30 PM, and when he was informed of their plans to dig up his crawl space to search for Rob Piest’s body he confessed that he killed the boy in self-defense and buried him under his garage. When police and evidence technicians arrived at John’s home they found he had unplugged his sump pump, which flooded the crawl space. After they replaced it and the water drained away, evidence technician Daniel Genty began digging, and within minutes he uncovered a human arm bone as well as rotted flesh. According to Tim Cahill’s novel, ‘Buried Dreams:’ ‘in the northeast corner of the crawl space under John Gacy’s house, the officers found puddles, all swarming with thin red worms. There, two feet from the north wall, they uncovered what appeared to be a knee bone. The flesh was so desiccated that at first they thought is was blue-jean material.’
After Gacy was told that investigators had found remains underneath his house and he was now facing homicide charges, he told them that he wanted to ‘clear the air:’ on December 22, 1978 John Wayne Gacy confessed to murdering roughly thirty young men. He referred to a few of his victims by name, butclaimed not to know the majority of them and volunteered that they were all teenage prostitutes or runaways. Gacy also claimed he only dug five of the graves underneath his house, and that his employees dug the remaining ones so that he would have then ‘available.’ In January 1979 he claimed to have plans to further destroy evidence by covering the entire crawl space with concrete.
Gacy murdered at least thirty-three boys and young men between 1972 and 1978, twenty-six of whom he buried in the crawl space of his house. His victims included young men that he knew as well as random individuals he lured from Bughouse Square, the nearby Greyhound Bus Station, or off the streets with the promise of a job, booze/drugs, or cash for sexual favors. Some were grabbed by force, while others were conned into trusting him. After Cook County LE tore apart his residence they investigated a five-unit apartment building in Chicago about four miles away (located at 6114 West Miami Avenue), where he worked as a maintenance man for many years (apparently his mother even lived there at one point). He also told investigators that in 1978 he dumped five of his victims into the Des Plaines River after running out of room in his crawl space, one of which he believed landed on a barge (it is worth noting that only four were ever found). Interesting fact: on more than one occasion the ‘Killer Clown’ committed what he referred to as ‘doubles,’ or two murders in one night.
On March 13, 1980 John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed by lethal injection at the age of 52 on May 10, 1994 at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. Marion Gacy died on December 14, 1989 and John’s older sister Joanne died on March 23, 2007.
Gacy at roughly the age of three in 1945.Gacy as a child. Photo courtesy of Biography.A young JWG standing in front of a car. Photo courtesy of Biography.A young JWG. Photo courtesy of Biography.A young John Wayne Gacy with his second dog, Prince.A young JWG posing with the scout group he joined as an adolescent; he is on the bottom row, second from the right. Photo courtesy of Biography.A young John Wayne Gacy is to the far left. Photo courtesy of Barry Boschelli (Gacy’s childhood friend).The Gacy family posing with some of the Boschelli’s. Photo courtesy of Barry Boschelli.Another picture of Gacy as a child. Photo courtesy of Altered Dimensions Paranormal.A young JWG wearing a fancy hat. Photo courtesy of Biography.A young Gacy (in the middle wearing the dark suit). Photo courtesy of Boschelli.Some members of the Gacy family; John Stanley is on the far right, and John is in the middle with no shirt on. Photo courtesy of Biography.John in a vehicle. Photo courtesy of Biography.A young Gacy at a gathering, on the far right. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy with one of his sisters. Photo courtesy of Biography.Another pic of a young JWG wearig a suit. A adolescent Gacy. Photo courtesy of Biography.JWG. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy is on the far left.A young Gacy with one of his sisters. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.A younger JWG.Gacy at the age of eighteen, dressed in his uniform for the local civil defense squad. Photo courtesy of the Tumblr account, ‘true-crime-xgirlx.’Another picture of Gacy in his uniform for the local civil defense squad.Gacy standing with Miss Illinois. Another shot of Gacy with Miss. Illinois.John in his chef’s uniform.Another John in his chef’s uniform.Gacy taste testing a dish in his chef’s uniform.An action shot of John dressed in his chef’s uniform. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG’s first wife, Marlynn Myers. Photo courtesy of Biography.John on (I think) one of his sisters wedding day. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy and Marlynn on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG and his first wife, Marlynn . Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy and Marlynn at some sort of banquet. Photo courtesy of Netflix. Gacy and Marlynn posing with one of their children. Photo courtesy of Biography.Marlynn Lee Myers.A shot of Gacy with his father holding his young son. Photo courtesy of Biography.A shot of Gacy playing with his young son. Photo courtesy of Biography.A shot of a younger JWG. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy with a bunch of men possibly some other JC’s; he is the second one in on the left (do I have to keep doing this? We all know who JWG is).A dapper JWG. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy singing in prison after his first arrest. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy worked as the ‘first chef’ during his first stint in prison. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy married his second wife, Carole Hoff on June 1, 1972. She had two little girls, Tammy and April.John with his second wife and Mom on his wedding day.Gacy and his second wife on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of Netflix.John and Carole on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy feeding his second wife cake on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy giving his new wife a kiss. Photo courtesy of Biography.John and Carole on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A picture of Gacy’s and Carole on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of John and Carole, this time posing with some money. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy and his second wife. Photo courtesy of Biography.John and Carole. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy and his second wife Carole posing with her two daughters; the couple eventually divorced on March 2, 1976. Photo courtesy of Netflix.John and Carole. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy and his second wife. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of John and Carole with one of her daughters. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG is on the man on the far left. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A shot of an invite for a party the Gacy’s threw. Photo courtesy of Netflix. John in Carole, dressed in cowboy hats. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy with his second wife Carole in the same home where he hid his victims. Photo courtesy of Netflix.John and Carole. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy hard at work for PDM Contractors. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy is on the right. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy at some sort of political event. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy at a party standing with a friend. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy at a JC event. Photo courtesy of Biography.Another shot of Gacy at a JC event. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy at a JC event. Photo courtesy of Biography.Another shot of Gacy at a JC event. Photo courtesy of Biography.Another shot of Gacy at a JC event (he’s the second from the left). Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy at a JC event (he’s right in the middle). Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy standing on a balcony. Photo courtesy of Biography.Gacy in his days as a contractor. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy posing with friends. I couldn’t find much on this picture if anyone knows more about it please let me know.Gacy and what looks like his sister. Weird.Gacy hosted a bicentennial party on July 4, 1976. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune. His former business associate, Jim Van Vorous is on his right.Gacy (far right) regularly held dress-up parties to throw suspicious neighbors off his scent. Photo courtesy of Rafael Tovar and The Sun.Another shot of Gacy dressed up at a party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy dressed up at a party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy dressed up for a party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy at a party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A commonly used photo of John Wayne Gacy.A young John and his mom.Gacy enjoying a meal with his mother.Gacy with a fake sheriffs badge on at a party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG at a party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG at what looks like another costume party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG at another party. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy at a parade for a Democratic event. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy at a parade, for a Democratic event. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy posing with former first lady Rosalynn Carter on May 6, 1978. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.Another shot of Gacy with Mrs. Carter. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.An older picture of Gacy and an unnamed man before his second arrest. Another shot of Gacy. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG before his second arrest. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A stock pic of Gacy from 1978. Photo courtesy of Daily Mail.A picture of Gacy that was smuggled out of jail by a guard, published by The Chicago tribune in 1978.An older Gacy on death row. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.A picture of Gacy holding one of his paintings he dubbed ‘Pennywise The Clown;’ it was taken just five weeks before his execution. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Gacy during his time on death row. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Gacy in his cell. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Supposedly this is a photo of Gacy awaiting execution. Photo courtesy of finwise.edu.Gacy dressed as Pogo. Another photo of Gacy dressed as Pogo the Clown.Gacy dressed as Pogo.Another photo of Gacy dressed as Pogo the Clown.Another shot of Pogo.A B&W shot of Gacy as Pogo, courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.A younger John Stanley Gacy. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of a younger John Stanley Gacy. Photo courtesy of Netflix.John’s parents.John’s sister Joanne on Oprah. She died in 2007.John Wayne Gacy’s card for the ‘Democratic Precinct Captain’ of Norwood Park Township. Courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.John Wayne Gacy’s business card for his personal business, ‘PDM Contractors.’ Courtesy of Newsweek.Gacy loved flashy belt buckles and frequently wore one with his initials. Photo courtesy of Rafael Tovar and The Sun.Gacy kept items belonging to his victims that he considered ‘mementos’ that he often looked at. Photo courtesy of Rafael Tovar and The Sun.Police found necklaces, bracelets and other jewelry belonging to Gacy’s victims. Photo courtesy of Rafael Tovar and The Sun.Some garters and keys belonging to Gacy’s victims.John Gacy’s clown shoes. Photo courtesy of finwise.edu.Gacy was indicted for 33 murders of young boys and men; these are his victims. Notice some remain unnamed to this day, March 2024. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.A B&W shot of John Wayne Gacy’s completely intact house located at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.A photo taken on March 19, 1979 showing that certain portions of Gacy’s property in Norwood Park Township have been completely picked through and demolished by members of LE. Photo courtesy of Walter Kale from The Chicago Tribune.A picture of Gacy’s tiki-themed bar in his living room. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.The other side of Gacy’s living room. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.A different angle of Gacy’s living room. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.JWG’s kitchen, untouched. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.JWG’s kitchen counter, untouched. Photo courtesy of Biography.Another shot of JWG’s kitchen, in color. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG’s bathroom, untouched. One of the detectives that was tasked with trailing Gacy used it one day and when the heat kicked on he immediately recognized the smell of human decomp. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.One side of Gacy’s bedroom. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.Another shot of Gacy’s bedroom. Photo courtesy of Cook County Court.Another bed in Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Biography.A picture inside of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Netflix.The main hallway in Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Biography.A poster related to Gacy’s contracting company, ‘PDM Contractors.’ Photo courtesy of Netflix.Information related to Gacy’s contracting company, ‘PDM Contractors.’ Photo courtesy of Netflix.Members of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department carrying a piece of floor out of Gacy’s home.Members of LE carrying equipment into Gacy’s residence to remove the bodies of his victims. Investigators bringing out another body from Gacy’s house. Another body being taken out of Gacy’s house. Another body being taken out of Gacy’s house.A body is recovered from John Wayne Gacy’s house in 1979 and transferred to a sheriff’s van. Photo courtesy of Sally Good from The Chicago Tribune.Another body being taken out of Gacy’s house.Another one of Gacy’s victims being taken out of his house.Cook County investigators carrying another body out of Gacy’s house. Members of Cook County LE putting one of Gacy’s victims in the back of a vehicle to be further studied.Police standing in Gacy’s garage. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Investigators opening up Gacy’s garage. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Members of the Cook County Sherrif’s Department removing the floorboards in Gacy’s kitchen in either late 1978 or early 1979. Photo courtesy of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.Members of LE looking through Gacy’s crawl space in either late 1978 or early 1979. Photo courtesy of Netflix.The kitchen cabinets and partially tore up floorboards in Gacy’s kitchen. Photo courtesy of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.After realizing the full extend of Gacy’s atrocities, investigators eventually had to tear up the floors in his house. Photo courtesy of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.A technician cuts carpet in Gacy’s home in either late 1978 or early 1979. Photo courtesy of Cook County.The crawl space underneath Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of tCook County.Another shot of the crawl space underneath JWG’s house. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Another shot underneath Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Numbered stakes show where the remains of Gacy’s victims were discovered in the crawl space underneath his house. Photo courtesy of Tribune News Services.Grids were marked as the crawl space was excavated circa late 1978 or early 1979. Police found the bodies of twenty-nine young men were recovered on his property, and four more were found in Illinois rivers. Photo courtesy of the Cook County Court.A shot of Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Some bones found in JWG’s crawl space.A member of Cook County LE in the crawl space under JWG’s home.A member of Cook County LE in JWG’s home. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE in the crawl space under JWG’s home. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE in the crawl space under JWG’s home. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE in the crawl space under JWG’s home. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE in the crawl space under JWG’s home. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators in Gacy’s residence. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A technician digging in Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators at JWG’s house. Photo courtesy of Cook County.The hallway of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators tearing apart Gacy’s floorboards. Photo courtesy of Cook County.The early stages of the Gacy investigation, when his house was mostly intact. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators at JWG’s house. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Underneath the floors at Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators going through Gacy’s house after his arrest. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators dismantling Gacy’s kitchen floors. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators tearing apart Gacy’s floorboards. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators tearing apart Gacy’s residence. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators tearing apart Gacy’s residence. Photo courtesy of Cook County.LE were forced to remove the floors in Gacy’s house in order to access victims’ bodies. Photo courtesy of Rafael Tovar.A crime scene technician from Cook County digging in Gacy’s basement. Photo courtesy of Cook County.LE excavating the crawl space underneath Gacy’s home in either late 1978 or early 1979. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Investigators digging through Gacy’s basement. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE underneath Gacy’s homes looking for the remains of his victims. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of LE underneath Gacy’s homes looking for the remains of his victims. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A member of Cook County LE underneath Gacy’s homes looking for the remains of his victims. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Cook County investigators going through the crawl space under JWG’s home.A member of LE underneath Gacy’s homes looking for the remains of his victims. Photo courtesy of Cook CountyA member of Cook County LE underneath Gacy’s homes looking for the remains of his victims. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE looking through the bones of one of Gacy’s victims. Photo courtesy of Cook County.One of the skeletons found in Gacy’s crawl space.Another shot of one of the skeletons found underneath JWG’s house. Rafael Tovar remembers stumbling across two left femurs. Photo courtesy of Rafael Tovar.A member of Cook County LE standing up in Gacy’s crawl space, as the floorboards above were removed. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE puling a body out of Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A member of Cook County LE puling a body out of Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A Investigators going through evidence found in Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Cook County.A picture of Gacy’s crawl space; I apologize for the text in the middle, it was the only copy I could find. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.A picture of Gacy’s crawl space; I apologize for the text in the middle, it was the only copy I could find. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Evidence identification marker number eight. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Another view of evidence identification marker number eight. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Evidence identification marker number twelve. Photo courtesy of Supernaught.Evidence identification marker number fifteen. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Evidence identification marker number sixteen. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Evidence identification marker number seveteen. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Evidence identification marker number twenty. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.A pieced together skeleton found under JWG’s house. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Investigators looking into JWG’s crawl space.The entrance to Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Cook County.The entrance to Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Cook County.The frame of Gacy’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.Work continues on removing mud from JWG’s crawl space. Photo taken on on January 5, 1979, courtesy of The Chicago Sun-Times Collection.A member of Cook County LE looking through the bones of one of Gacy’s victims. Photo courtesy of Cook County.Members of Cook County LE removing mud from the crawl space underneath Gacy’s house. Photo taken on on January 5, 1979, courtesy of The Chicago Sun-Times Collection.Investigators taking another body out of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Investigators taking another body out of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.Investigators carring out the remains of a body found beneath the garage floor on JWG’s property. Photo taken on on December 22, 1978, courtesy of Karen Engstrom from The Chicago Tribune.Investigators taking another body out of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.A blurry shot of investigators taking another body out of JWG’s house. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.Evidence techs from the the Cook County Sheriff’s Department taking out of one of the bodies that were found underneath JWG’s property. Photo courtesy of Daily Mail.Investigators and evidence techs taking another body out of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Sun-Times.Sheriff’s officers carry bodies to the county morgue from Gacy’s house. Photo taken on December 22, 1978, courtesy of Quentin C. Dodt from The Chicago Tribune.Investigators carrying out the remains of a body found in JWG’s crawl space.The 28th body that was taken out of Gacy’s property in Norwood Park as members of LE transferred it to a sheriff’s van. Photo taken on on March 9, 1979, courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.A shot of Cook County LE putting one of Gacy’s victims into a transport vehicle. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG’s front yard, (almost) completely empty of Cook County investigators and evidence technicians.Remains found in Gacy’s crawlspace. Photo courtesy of Netflix.More remains found in Gacy’s crawlspace. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another picture of remains found in Gacy’s crawlspace. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A body pulled out of JWG’s crawl space. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Multiple remains uncovered in JWG’s house.(Retired) Cook County Chief ME Robert Stein examines the case tag of victim number eighteen on December 29, 1978 in a crypt set aside specifically for Gacy victims. Photo courtesy of Gerald West from The Chicago Tribune.Cook County employees demolishing Gacy’s home.Workers demolish Gacy’s house in April 1979. Photo courtesy of Daily Mail.The house had to be knocked down the inside was gutted in the search for bodies. Photo courtesy of Daily Mail.The ruins of Gacy’s one-time home. Photo courtesy of Daily Mail.The shell of JWG’s former home. Photo courtesy of Daily Mail.The demolition of Gacy’s house. Photo courtesy of Netflix.The lot where Gacy’s house once stood. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A barren plot of land where the home of John Wayne Gacy once stood. Photo courtesy of Bettmann Archive.The house that was built in the lot where Gacy’s house once stood. The Channahon Fire Department searching for bodies in the Des Plaines River. Photo taken on December 23, 1978, courtesy of Frank Hanes from The Chicago Tribune.In addition to Gacy’s house, after police honed in on him they investigated this five-unit apartment building located at 6114 West Miami Avenue in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.On November 23, 1998 technicians from the Cook County Sheriff’s Department began preliminary work on a possible excavation at an apartment building in the Northwest Side of Chicago in search of as many as five additional victims of JWG. Photo courtesy of The Associated Press.The yard of the apartment building where Gacy’s mother once lived, and at one time he did some construction work there. This information regarding the location was released by retired Chicago police detective and PI Bill Dorsch in late 1998. Dorsch said he had seen Gacy carrying a shovel near the general area at about three in the morning one day in 1975. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Technicians use radar to scan beneath the parking lot at the apartment complex where Gacy once cared for. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Gacy’s car sitting in his driveway. Photo courtesy of Netflix.The back of John Wayne Gacy’s muddy Oldsmobile. Photo courtesy of Netflix.JWG’s contracting van. Photo courtesy of Netflix. The back of JWG’s contracting van. Photo courtesy of Netflix. A picture of the gas station where Gacy passed off the marijuana. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Another shot of the gas station where Gacy passed off the marijuana. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A photo of JWG after his first arrest for sodomy in 1968.A mugshot from Gacy’s 1968 arrest for sodomy in Waterloo, Iowa.Gacy’s mugshot taken on December 21, 1978 at the Des Plaines Police Department. Photo courtesy of the Des Plaines PD.John Wayne Gacy being transported from the Des Plaines Police Station to a hospital on December 23, 1978. Photo courtesy of William Yates from The Chicago Tribune.At the Des Plaines police station, John Wayne Gacy covers his face with his manacled hands as he emerged after an all-night questioning session on December 22, 1978. Photo courtesy of Roy Hall from The Chicago Tribune.Gacy being put in a squad car at the Des Plaines Police Station to be transported to a hospital. Photo taken on December 23, 1978, courtesy of William Yates from The Chicago Tribune.Police floor plans showing location of bodies found in Gacy’s home. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.A hand drawn diagram by Gacy of where he buried the bodies of his victims in the crawl space underneath his home. Photo courtesy of Erin Hooley from The Chicago Tribune.A floor plan drawn by Gacy pointing out the locations of his victims. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.A picture from the memorial service for the nine (then) unidentified victims of Gacy; of that, five remain. Photo taken on June 12, 1981, courtesy of The Berkshire Eagle.The service was held at a cemetery in Hillside, IL on June 12, 1981. The remains will be buried in nine different cemeteries in hopes of preventing a potential tourist attraction. Photo courtesy of The Berkshire Eagle.Items found in the home of JWG. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Some of the ‘tools’ Gacy used in his murders. Photo courtesy of Netflix.A ligature used by Gacy. Photo courtesy of Erin Hooley from The Chicago Tribune.A pair of handcuffs belonging to John Wayne Gacy. Photo courtesy of Erin Hooley from The Chicago Tribune.A blue nylon jacket belonging to Robert Piest that was found in Gacy’s home. Photo courtesy of Erin Hooley from The Chicago Tribune.Porn found in Gacy’s house after his arrest. Photo courtesy of Murderpedia.Some of the pornography themed literature found in Gacy’s house after his arrest. Photo courtesy of Netflix.Some more of the pornography themed literature found in Gacy’s house after his arrest. Photo courtesy of Netflix.One of John Wayne Gacy’s paintings, a ‘self-portrait.’ Photo courtesy of Steve Eichner and WireImage.Original Artwork by JWG. Photo courtesy of Steve Eichner and WireImage.Original Artwork by JWG. Photo courtesy of Steve Eichner and WireImage.Another one of Gacy’s paintings.Gacy’s paints.Technicians from the Cook County Sheriff’s examining containers holding some remains of the unidentified victims of JWG in June 2011. For many years they were kept at the Cook County’s ME’s office and in 2009 were buried in a paupers’ grave. After they obtained a court order, investigators dug up a wooden crate at Homewood Memorial Gardens in June 2011 that contained eight smaller, pail-shaped boxes, each holding a victim’s jaw bones and their teeth. Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.An obituary for John’s sister, published on March 24, 2007.
Leichia M. Reilly was born on October 5, 1963 in West Seneca, NY to Patrick and Suzanne (nee Sharrow) Reilly. Patrick Frances Reilly was born on September 2, 1937 in Buffalo, and Suzanne was born on July 27, 1939 in Lackawanna. The couple were married on August 19, 1961 and had three children together: Brian, Leichia, and Denise. Her first name pronounced ‘Lee-sha,’ Ms. Reilly was raised in a Roman Catholic family in Lockport, NY; her dad was in the banking field, and retired from Marine Midland Bank as a Regional Executive Vice President. A strong student, Leichia excelled at academics and especially loved art, literature, and writing. After graduating from Mount Mercy Academy in 1982 she went on to attend Buffalo State College, and at the time of her disappearance was employed as a server at a pizzeria. She had dreams of one day becoming a writer, and many of her paintings and artwork were on display in the Reilly family home for many years after she disappeared.
Leichia was 5’5, weighed 120 pounds, had brown eyes and dark hair she wore short. She had freckles on her face, moles dotted across her chest, arms, and back and a large scar on her left knee; she also had pierced ears. Reilly was last seen wearing a black waist-length coat with red trim, a sleeveless charcoal-colored cotton jumpsuit with an elastic waistband, a round-necked sweater with multiple colors (including purple and red), and perforated ‘medical grade’ shoes with medium sized heels; she was using a red purse with a shoulder strap. Described by those that loved her as ‘vibrant and full of life,’ Leichia loved art, writing, and books. Like most 21-year-olds, she also enjoyed hanging out with her friends, and enjoyed going to local bars and hangouts like The Pierce Arrow Restaurant, which is where she was last seen before she vanished off the face of the earth. On the frigid, snowy evening of January 30, 1985 Leichia went out dancing with an unnamed girlfriend, and according to eyewitnesses the two danced, had a few drinks, and mingled with other bar patrons.When her friend wanted to leave, Reilly told her to go on without her, and said that she would catch a ride home with someone else. Multiple people reported to investigators that they saw her leaving the establishment at around 3 AM in the company of a white man driving a blue Chevrolet Camaro, an off duty NYS Trooper that she just met named Daniel Rose. Leichia was never seen or heard from again.
There is always the possibility that the young woman may have decided to go home with a guy from the bar that night, especially since she sent her friend home without her…. But according to her family and friends, that was completely out of character for Leichia. Later on in the early morning hours of Thursday, January 31 Mr. and Mrs. Reilly became concerned after their daughter hadn’t returned home, and: ‘in her whole life, Leichia had never been away from our home for any extended period without letting us know where she was. I knew immediately that next morning that something was wrong.’ Reilly didn’t show up for a job interview she was excited about on Friday, February 1st, and didn’t report to the pizzeria for her scheduled shift the following day. Leichia’s distraught Father contacted the West Seneca police and reported her as missing, and they immediately launched an investigation into her disappearance.
A five-year veteran of the NYS Troopers, 28-year-old Rose told investigators that he arrived at the bar at around 11 PM and began drinking with several friends, including Robb Riddick, a one-time running back with the Buffalo Bills. Go Bills. Recently, a reporter reached out to Riddick regarding Reilly’s disappearance, and he told them that he ‘remembers that night well’ because of its tragic outcome. Regarding Rose as a suspect, Riddick said ‘Danny, I considered him my best friend at that time. I know they were investigating Danny for months after that. One time, I went to his place and saw an unmarked police car parked nearby. The police followed me as I left. The police later told me they were tapping my phone for a while, trying to get information about Danny.’ The former NFL player said he is ‘certain’ he remembers his friend leaving the bar with Reilly around 3 AM and if he told investigators that he didn’t it was ‘a lie:’ ‘I saw him leave with her, and other people who were with us saw the same thing. Danny told me, ‘we’ll be right back.’’ The officer came back to the bar by himself roughly 55 minutes to an hour later and immediately went into the men’s bathroom. Investigators spoke with additional, unnamed witnesses that also reported that they saw Rose walk out of the bar with Reilly on the night she disappeared.
According to retired West Seneca Police Captain James Unger, ‘we have a decent timeline of when she was there, when she left, and then essentially after that, there is no sighting of her after that.’ Paul Schwartzmeyer told investigators that he spent the night at Rose’s apartment in Lackawanna the night of Reilly’s disappearance but said that his friend left shortly after they got there to ‘go to some girl’s house.’ When Schwartzmeyer woke up the next morning at around 10:00 AM, Rose told him that the girl he planned on visiting wasn’t home and that the woman he had left the bar with the night before was ‘some blonde’ but wasn’t Reilly. Daniel Rose was let go from the NYS Troopers for poor ‘job performance’ and ‘bad behavior’ related to ‘unrelated charges’ after Reilly disappeared (I’ve seen it reported as taking place two weeks, ten weeks, and a year afterwards). In an interview with The Buffalo News, the retired Director of Public Information for the NYS Police Lieutenant Michael Wright said that Rose had been ‘relieved of duty’ and was no longer employed with them. When asked why he had been terminated and if it had anything to do with Reilly’s disappearance he declined to comment.
The day after Reilly disappeared Rose called into work sick; when questioned by investigators about what he did that day he refused to answer. After the state police were notified of Reilly’s disappearance he was taken off road patrol and was put on desk duty ‘pending further investigation.’ Retired West Seneca Detective Edward A. Tyzcka worked on Reilly’s case for sixteen years, and he pointed out that just a few days after she vanished Rose hired a top defense attorney (the late Harold J. Boreanaz) to represent him and brought the lawyer with him to his interview. ‘That would make you think, well, here’s a guy who could help us. He saw the person we were looking for, why would he not help us?’ … ‘Once he got represented by a lawyer, that put a kibosh on anything we could do.’ Investigators from West Seneca waited two weeks after Reilly disappeared to speak with Rose, and on February 14, 1985 he told investigators that on the evening she disappeared he had been out drinking with buddies and he spoke to several women, including Reilly. During the interview Rose shared he was ‘consistently drinking’ and estimated that he spoke to ‘between six and 10 young women’ that evening. When investigators showed him a picture of Reilly, he said he met her for the first time that night but only spoke with her briefly. He also said that at about 3:00 AM he went out to the parking lot with a young woman named Cathy for about twenty minutes, and specified that it wasn’t with Reilly. Rose told detectives that he didn’t know what happened to Leichia or who she even was, and after giving his initial statement he refused to speak to them again and cooperate any further.
Convinced that Reilly was dead, investigators spent thousands of combined man hours looking for her body, using everything from cadaver dogs to helicopters to aid in their efforts. Beginning on February 4, 1986 and ending on the 26th (in an attempt to be completely accurate, I’ve seen it reported as taking place from the 5th to the 27th), investigators dug through the Chaffee Landfill (located at 10860 Olean Road) during a brutal winter storm after receiving a tip that her body had been disposed of there in a dumpster. The search resulted in nothing.
Even when he was employed with the NYS Troopers Daniel Rose had problems behaving himself and being a law-abiding citizen: inApril 1982 he stood trial after being charged with third degree assault after getting into an altercation with Bradford Burnham at a Lyons Police station after he arrested him at a nearby bar. Apparently Rose and a girlfriend met another trooper and his wife out at The Tom Jones club for a night of drinking, and he was off duty at the time of the altercation. Reportedly nineteen-year-old Burnham was making ‘obscene references to the Newark Police Department, and a shouting match ensued.’ He was arrested by Rose for harassment and resisting arrest and was taken to the local police substation for booking. Burnham said that the officer ‘hit him on the head without provocation as he stepped out of a patrol car near the Lyons police station.’ Additionally, while at the station Lyons LE left the trooper alone with the suspect, and after hearing a scuffle they returned and found him on the floor with blood on his face: Rose had struck him in the head. After reviewing the case, the grand jury dismissed the original charges against Burnham and instead returned an indictment against Daniel Rose. When the case was brought to trial a verdict was made after a Wayne County Jury deliberated for only two hours: he was found not guilty. It was a unanimous decision and Rose was able to keep his job as a NYS Trooper.
After losing his job with the NYS Police Rose briefly operated a pizza parlor in Lackawanna called The Big Cheese. In the early 1990’s he eventually got a new position as a bricklayer, and after branches from Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca and the Southern Tier were merged into one the Bricklayers Local 3 was created; Rose worked his way up to the position of union president. He also has had his fair share of criminal charges, including multiple drunk driving arrests in 1998, 2006, and 2009. In addition to DWI’s in April of 1998 he was involved in a two-car accident in the Town of Wheatfield, and was charged with obstructing governmental administration after Niagara County Sheriff’s deputies said that he became belligerent following the collision and kicked an officer; Rose also threatened him and his family. His license was revoked for six months, hewas ordered to spend 16 days on a county work program, and he was fined $940. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and was directed to appear before a victim-impact panel of relatives of people that were killed in alcohol-related car accidents. In addition to numerous drunk driving arrests, it’s also been reported that he has a lengthy history of abuse toward women.
In March 1985 retired Erie County DA Richard Arkara announced that authorities would be offering a ten thousand dollar reward for information leading to the discovery of the missing woman or the arrest of her suspected killer. Unfortunately, this offer didn’t really go anywhere nor did it seem to encourage anyone that may have been privy to any information about Reilly’s disappearance to come forward. The investigation continued, however without anything substantial coming in there was little detectives could do to advance it and quickly Leichia Reilly faded from the headlines. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years… and the case eventually went cold.
Mr. Reilly spoke very highly of the West Seneca police regarding all of their hard work and dedication in trying to solve his daughters case. Although the Reilly’s mostly preferred to stay out of the limelight, Patrick stepped up as the family’s public representative and when asked about Leichia’s disappearance said: ‘I want justice, not sympathy. I’m convinced that we have a psychotic killer who is loose in this community and it greatly distresses me that he could kill again. I know what my family has gone through, I don’t want anybody else to go through that.’ He went on to say that his family had been incapable of enjoying anything since Leichia disappeared, and: ‘intellectually, we know that Leichia has been killed, but emotionally it’s difficult to accept imagine having an incapacity for joy that’s what we have in Leichia’s case. We’ve all been robbed of her potential, in my biased subjective judgment. She was a special person, a very forgiving soul.’ Mr. Reilly also told the media that he felt all of the evidence pointed towards one individual and he hoped that anyone that had any information regarding what may have happened to his daughter would come forward and end the horrifying situation his family found themselves in.
Retired West Seneca Detective Raymond Slade told the media that even though they lacked evidence he fully believed that Reilly had been murdered the night she disappeared and her killer had managed to successfully dispose of her body in a still unknown location. By July of 1985 investigators were still unable to find any real physical evidence in relation to what may have happened to her, and despite hundreds of hours spent investigating the case, they were unable to produce any solid leads in relation to the missing woman. Since Reilly disappeared, West Seneca police have interviewed and polygraphed over 200 of her friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers, and unfortunately it didn’t result in much helpful information that aided them in their investigation. Police even met with a self-proclaimed psychic from New Jersey, who had reportedly been helpful in other missing persons investigations. In the weeks after she vanished, Detective Tyzcka said the department spent hundreds of combined man hours searching wooded areas, dumpsters, bodies of water, and fields for any trace of her remains. In an interview before his retirement Tyzcka also said that the inability of LE to find the young woman’s body was one of the ‘most frustrating mysteries of his career.’
Multiple members of West Seneca LE said they were ‘99 percent sure’ that Reilly died of foul play the night she disappeared, and that whoever killed her also hid her body. Lieutenant Kevin Baranowski shared with The Buffalo News that: ‘nobody has ever heard from Leichia since she disappeared that night, but we cannot be 100 percent sure that she’s deceased because we never found her body.’ … ‘I am just going to say what our department has stated right along about Daniel Rose… as far as we can determine, he was the last person seen with Leichia on the night she disappeared.’ Although Rose declined to speak to the media directly, his attorney Robert L. Boreanaz shared that he had nothing to do with Reilly’s disappearance or death and that his client is ‘an innocent man. He’s never been charged because there’s no evidence against him, because he didn’t do it. Every district attorney who has been in office over the past 35 years has passed on this case because there is no case, the evidence is not there.’ In Boreanaz’s eyes, none of the witness statements or additional information found by police makes Rose a legitimate suspect, and ‘their witnesses were people who were drinking at a bar in the early morning hours, in the 1980’s, when people weren’t as careful as they are now, because of the enforcement of DWI laws.’ The attorney declined to answer why his client was fired by NYS Police but did say that ‘it had absolutely nothing to do with this matter in West Seneca.’ According to West Seneca police documents, the state agency was heavily involved in the early stages of the investigation but less so as it advanced. Like with the Bundy cases in the early to mid-1970’s, we’ve all seen how rival police agencies frequently (and purposefully) failed to share information and cooperate with one another. A part of me believes that Rose’s status as a member of law enforcement may have interfered with the investigation, at least in the beginning. I mean, the fact they waited two full weeks before interviewing him is pretty significant, in my opinion. I’m sure it took them some time to get their ducks in a row and track him down, but still… that’s a lot of time.
To me, the fact that Rose was a lifelong resident of NYS and patrolled the area for his employment suggests that he was pretty familiar with the area, and would have most likely known plenty of places where he could have disposed of a dead body. I would think he was also at the very least fairly well-versed in the law as well: I know that in 2024 to be a Trooper in New York state you ‘must have completed 60 college credit hours at an accredited college or university’ and had to take a civil service exam as well.
In a 1989 interview with the Buffalo News, retired West Seneca Detective Captain Jack Slade pointed out that Lake Erie was frozen over and there was more than two feet of snow covering the ground on the night Reilly disappeared, which would have further complicated any attempt to dispose of a body. There’s a variety of different wooded areas and waterways in WNY, such as Cazenovia Creek, 18-Mile Creek, and Cayuga Creek (as well as several others), all of which are major tributaries that feed into Lake Erie. About the case Captain Unger said that they ‘do get tips sporadically throughout every year, and we do follow up on them. Unfortunately, to this point nothing has panned out. Not having a body makes it very difficult for prosecution, and secondly, and maybe even more importantly, is that there could be potential evidence that would be on or near her body which could link us to a suspect.’ According to West Seneca Lieutenant Kevin Baranowski, as recently as 2017 investigators searched a local area after getting a tip on where Reilly’s remains might be. He declined to disclose that location, saying ‘I don’t want the killer to know where we looked.’
Reilly’s disappearance continues to be a great source of pain for those that knew and loved her, including her longtime friend and neighbor Jo’Ann Derry-Bernardo. In an interview with The Buffalo News, Bernardo said: ‘we grew up right across the street from each other. Leichia was a special person. I think about her all the time. Leichia was a very creative, very literate and funny person. She was a bright, sweet, spiritual person. I can’t imagine anyone being evil enough to want to hurt her. Her family was devastated’ … ‘I think Leichia would have settled down with someone who loved her, had a couple of kids and would have written two or three books by now.’
As of February 2024 the body of Leichia Reilly has never been recovered, and Daniel Rose has never been charged in relation to the case. He is now 66, retired, and lives in Niagara County. Erie County District Attorney Kevin Dillon told The Buffalo News that Reilly’s case had never been presented to a grand jury due to the fact that there was not enough evidence to show them, mostly due to the fact that they never found her body. Reilly’s disappearance is still listed as active by both the NYS Police and the West Seneca Police Departments. After his daughter disappeared Mr. Reilly became a fierce advocate in her case, and always felt that she was killed after refusing Daniel Rose’s sexual advances. Despite there being no evidence to help back up this theory, authorities agree that Ms. Reilly most likely met her demise through some form of foul play. About the individual that is responsible for the death of his daughter, Mr. Reilly said ‘I don’t even hate the man. What I’m interested in is truth and justice.’ …’I am absolutely convinced she’s dead.’ … ‘It’s profound, it robs your life of the capacity for joy.’ After retiring he spent his golden years serving on numerous charitable boards, which helped the Western New York areas poor and developmentally disabled populations. Unfortunately, he died on July 13, 2016 at the age of 78 before his daughter’s killer was brought to justice.Suzanne Reilly passed away on February 12, 2021. In my opinion, investigators were most likely unable to find the ‘smoking gun’ that was necessary to make a conviction stick, and let’s keep in mind that her disappearance took place in ‘pre-DNA’ days, and the little evidence investigators did have was circumstantial.
Daniel D. Rose is still considered a suspect in Reilly’s case, and Lieutenant Baranowski said that detectives would ‘love’ to sit down and talk to him again sometime and that ‘there are gaps in his story, and we’d like to discuss the gaps with him.’ Investigators did admit that they have some physical evidence related to the case butrefuse to reveal what exactly they have. Captain Unger said that ‘we have been in contact with, you know, state labs, federal labs, trying to see if what we have in evidence could potentially be used with the new technology. And at this point, there hasn’t been a breakthrough for what we have. But we’re hoping that in the near future, that there will be.’ About the case being solved one day Unger said ‘I certainly hope that, you know, even though Leichia’s parents have passed, she still has living relatives, and we just hope that we can give the family some sort of closure of this case.’ Reilly’s brother, sister and other surviving family members are still desperate for answers as to what happened to her, and they are still pushing to make her case a more active investigation. About Mr. Reilly, Detective Tyzcka said that ‘he was a real gentleman, and really broken up about what happened. I never got to call him up and say, we finally made an arrest. He never got closure. I feel bad about that to this day.’
About Reilly’s disappearance, Webslueths’ user ‘WNYer’ said that: ‘Maybe he hid her within an hour of the Pierce Arrow Club, and returned throughout the night (as he did leave his home again THAT night the friend staying with him at the time said) and the next day when he called off of work to finish disposing of her body. Obviously his background in Law Enforcement helped him achieve covering his tracks. They searched the landfill based on a tip she had been put in a dumpster at 7-11. The landfills are huge places and even the best Department could miss something. Perfect place to cover any foul smells bc they already stink. Or there’s the possibility of him having used lye or a fire to finish covering his tracks. Very hard to say where Leichia is and it breaks my heart her Father was never able to give her the proper burial he wanted so badly before passing. I’ll be doing my best to generate tips in the coming year because I’m sure in Niagara County or not, he’s far less intimidating to most people these days than he was back then.’
It’s worth noting, in recent years there have been a couple of local homicide convictions in WNY that were made without a body: on February 13, 1984 thirty-one year old Mark Seifert of West Seneca disappeared after being lured to a deserted country road in Machias. Although his body was never recovered, blood and tissue was found at the scene and in 1987 his brother William was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison after a jury convicted him of murder. To this day Seifert’s body has never been recovered. In 2003 46 year old Town of Tonawanda resident Michael Thuman was sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison for the shooting death of sixteen year old Duane Talmon Jr. on October 30, 1974. Investigators said the murder took place after a marijuana deal went bad, and although Talmon’s body was never recovered Thuman gave police a statement in which he admitted to the slaying. Erie County DA John J. Flynn said he recently spoke to investigators in his department regarding Reilly’s disappearance, and he said that he would not hesitate to pursue charges if new evidence was ever uncovered, but ‘unfortunately, whenever a body cannot be found, that makes it that much more difficult to solve. The deceased body provides us with cause and manner of death evidence. On many occasions, there is DNA evidence from the body. All those potential pieces of evidence are not present when we don’t have a body.’
On January 1, 2014 writer and self-proclaimed numerologist/’graphologist’ Linda Crystal published a book titled ‘Leichia Reilly, Your Family Is Waiting: The Disappearance of Leichia Reilly’ (yes, that’s the actual name). In it, Crystal writes about what she suspected may have happened to Reilly from the viewpoint of a ‘forensic astrologist.’ Not willing to spend the $4.01 on what I’m sure is a piece of hot garbage, Amazon pretty much told me all I needed to know about the text: the five reviews averaged out to 1.8/5 stars, and the general consensus seemed to be that ‘it was mostly about the writer and her ability to use horoscopes to solve murders. The title was deceiving. Not too much about the Leichia Reilly investigation.’
If Leichia Reilly were still alive in February 2024 she would be sixty years old. Anyone that has information that could be helpful in solving her case should contact either the New York State Police at 716-343-2200 or the West Seneca Police Department at 716-674-2280.
Leichia Reilly.Leichia Reilly in a group photo; it was one of only two pictures that I was able to find of her.Leichia Reilly’s missing persons poster.A brief rundown of some facts related to Reilly’s disappearance.An article about Daniel Rose being probed for Reilly’s disappearance published by The Buffalo News on February 14, 1985.An article about the disappearance of Leichia Reilly published by The Buffalo News on July 31, 1985.An article about the disappearance of Leichia Reilly published by The Buffalo News on February 6, 1986.An article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on February 6, 1986.A short article about the disappearance of Leichia Reilly published by The Buffalo News on February 27, 1986.Part one of an article about Leichia Reilly published by The Buffalo News on March 16, 1986.Part two of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on March 16, 1986.An article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on March 21, 1986.Part one of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on January 30, 1989.Part two of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on January 30, 1989.An article about Leichia Reilly published by The Buffalo News on January 30, 1991.An article mentioning Reilly published by The Buffalo News on May 31, 1994.An article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on January 31, 1995.Part one of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on July 5, 2003.Part two of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on July 5, 2003.Part one of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on January 24, 2020.Part two of an article about Reilly published by The Buffalo News on January 24, 2020.A matchbook for the former Pierce Arrow in West Seneca, NY.The former Pierce Arrow Restaurant, most recently ‘The Vault.’ In late 2019 the New York Liquor Authority shut them down after the state found to have ‘trends of violence.’ It soon will be home to a Dollar General.A sign for ‘The Vault.’ The temperatures from January 31, 1985 in nearby Cheektowaga NY. Graph courtesy of wunderground.com.Daniel Rose’s senior picture from the Father Baker Victory High School yearbook.A picture of Daniel Rose from Reilly’s missing persons poster.A picture of Daniel Rose in relation to his time at the BAC Local Union #3.An article about Rose being charged with assault during his time as a NYS Trooper published by The Democrat and Chronicle on April 8, 1982.An article about Rose’s assault trial published by The Democrat and Chronicle on June 17, 1982.Part one of an article about Rose testifying in his own defense published by The Democrat and Chronicle on June 19, 1982.Part two of an article about Rose testifying in his own defense in his 1982 trial published by The Democrat and Chronicle on June 19, 1982.An article about Rose being found not guilty published by The Democrat and Chronicle on June 22, 1982.An article mentioning Rose from his days as a NYS Trooper published by The Buffalo News on April 12, 1984.An article about Rose being assaulted published in The Buffalo News on June 6, 1984.A help-wanted advertisement for the restaurant Rose briefly worked at called ‘The Big Cheese’ published in The Buffalo News on June 2, 1989.The Buffalo News on November 9, 2003.A blurb about Rose being charged with a felony DWI in The Star-Gazette on February 17, 2006.A blurb mentioning Daniel Rose being charged with a felony DWI in The Star-Gazette on July 5, 2007.A blurb mentioning some activity regarding Rose’s activities in the Local 3 Bricklayers Union published in The Buffalo News on March 8, 2010.An article about Patrick Reilly being elected as an officer for Marine Midland Bank published in The Buffalo News on June 14, 1971.Patrick Reilly’s obituary published on The James W. Cannan Funeral Home website.An obituary for Suzanne Reilly published by The Buffalo News on February 14, 2021.An interesting theory from a Redditor about the disappearance of Leichia Reilly… sadly I can’t even give credit to the writer because they deleted their account.A Redditor going by the name of ‘Electronic-Fee-4273’ left this story about an encounter she had with Daniel Rose on a post about the disappearance of Ms. Reilly. What a scary experience.Robb Riddick’s 1988 Topps trading card from his time as a Buffalo Bill.
One of the things that has always gotten under my skin about Ted Bundy (aside from his crimes against humanity) was how little he confessed to during his time on death row. He essentially used his secrets as a bargaining chip to extend his life right up until the very end. So, he could have killed the neat and tidy 30 women he confessed to, or he may have murdered over 100 as he told his attorney John Henry Browne… as I said in a previous article, unless someone discovers his long-lost diary where he candidly spoke of his dastardly deeds no one will ever truly know the full extent of Bundy’s crimes. There’s so many murdered and missing women he could possibly be responsible for but little to no concrete evidence to prove it. In my cross-country tour of anything related to Ted, I’ve already been to Washington and Pennsylvania with hopes of going to Colorado in December (edit, November 2023: I’ve been to Florida and Utah since, I have Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado left).
Whenever you hear the run-down of states Bundy had any possible activity to, New York is usually brought up last and is followed with, ‘but he was quickly ruled out as a suspect.’ The possible murder in question is that of KatherineKolodziej. Kathy was only seventeen-years-old at the time of her homicide in early November of 1974, and was a SUNY Cobleskill student majoring in animal husbandry. The attractive young student was last seen in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 2, 1974 walking out of a local tavern called ‘The Vault’ in the village of Cobleskill. She went out dancing with a few girlfriends but turned down a ride back to campus, saying wanted to stay out a bit longer and was going to be getting a ride home from someone else. According to her cousin Vicki Szydlowski, Kathy spoke to her mother just a few hours before her night out, and Mrs. Kolodziej asked her to stay at her dorm that night and study. Kathy was responsible and a good student, not a partier by any means, but this time she disregarded her moms request because she wanted to go out with her college friends. I probably would have done the same thing when I was 17. About her cousin, Vicki said: ‘she was a good kid, but it was a Friday night and she wanted to go out with her friends to the local bar. It was a small community; everybody knew everybody and that’s just what we all did back then.’
Katherine ‘Kathy’ Kolodziej was an only child born to Andrew and Hedwig (nee Szydlowski) Kolodziej on December 7, 1956 in Ronkonkoma, New York. Hedwig was born on April 10, 1919 in Jamaica, NY; Andrew was born on April 12, 1922 in Wysne Lapse Poland and emigrated to the United States in the early 1940’s. Despite the fact that Kathy’s case went cold nearly 50 years ago, NYS Police investigator David Ayers told Andrea Cavallier from Dateline in December 2020 he isn’t about to let the young girl’s killer get away: ‘it’s a very tough case, and a lot of time has passed. But let’s just say, anything is possible. It’s not hopeless.’ Ayers went on to tell Cavallier that Ms. Kolodziej was last seen at roughly 1:30 AM leaving the bar wearing a red coat and crossing the street, most likely beginning her walk back to campus, which was only about a mile away ( I made the drive myself earlier today and it was indeed very short). It was the last time she was seen alive. It wasn’t until the weekend was coming to an end that her loved ones knew something was very wrong: she’d never just disappear without telling anyone where she was going. After Kathy’s story made the local news, a witness came forward claiming they saw a young woman get into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle around 1:45 AM the morning she vanished; to this day it has not been confirmed by authorities whether or not it was her.
Twenty-five long days went by. Law enforcement, Cobleskill campus security, and volunteers spent thousands of combined man hours combing the area looking for any trace of the missing girl. Finally, on November 23, 1974 law enforcement received a tip that hunters found a single blue shoe at the intersection of McDonald and Cross Hill Road in Richmondville, NY; Police later found its pair up the road. That same day Kolodziej’s remains were found by a group of deer hunters in a field on McDonald Road in Richmondville. Detective Ayers informed Dateline a man (who thankfully was aware of the missing co-ed in the area) had noticed a piece of red cloth in the distance through his binoculars and immediately notified the police. Upon arriving at the scene, state police discovered the badly decomposing body of Kathy Kolodziej discarded on a low rock wall; she was naked from the waist down but the lower part of her body was covered up by her red coat that was draped over her like a blanket. According to an autopsy performed at the Albany Medical Center, she had been stabbed seven times with two different weapons.
There would be no Thanksgiving celebration that year for the Kolodziej family. Instead of gathering together for a happy meal, Kathy’s parents started to prepare to bury their only child. Vicki Szydlowski said of that day: ‘we were supposed to go to Aunt Hattie’s at their home in Ronkonkoma that day for Thanksgiving. But then they got the call about Kathy. Nothing was ever the same.’ She went on to say that she and her siblings were close to her in their younger years however as they grew older and went to different colleges they eventually drifted apart, ‘but we always came back together at family gatherings; we had that cousin bond.’ Vicki described her cousin as a kind, good person who always made them laugh, especially with her different accents: Kathy had perfected her father’s thick Polish accent, which made everyone laugh when she pretended to speak like him.
Vicki shared a story with Dateline that when Kathy begged her parents for a horse her father built a stable in the backyard of their Lake Ronkonkoma home, and that: ‘she loved all animals, was always bringing them home. But she really loved horses, loved riding them, caring for them. It was her passion. And it led to what would have been her career.’ In her senior year of high school Kolodziej attended BOCES, majoring in ‘Horse Care & Horse Training.’ After graduating in 1974, she decided to turn her love for horses into a career and enrolled at the State University of New York at Cobleskill majoring in animal husbandry in hopes of becoming a veterinarian one day.
In a 1979 news interview, Kathy’s uncle Charles Szydlowski (a retired New York State police detective) recalled the phone call he got from his sister about his niece’s disappearance: ‘She said, ‘Charlie, Kathy is laying on the side of the road somewhere dead, I know it.’’ He attempted to tell her that her only child would turn up safe: ‘I said, ‘Heddy, there are 13 million people in New York State. What are the chances this is going to affect us this way? But she was right. Her first thought was that her daughter was dead, and she was right … I told Hattie… I told her that she’ll be all right. But my sister was so upset. She kept saying that Kathy was dead. Dead on the side of the road somewhere. Turns out, she was right.’ In the years that followed Kathy’s death, Andrew and Hedwig Kolodziej tirelessly worked next to law enforcement in hopes of helping them solve their daughter’s murder. Of her aunt and uncle, Vicki said: ‘they mourned their daughter for so many years, but they died before knowing who did this to her. It’s heartbreaking.’ After the death of Mr. and Mrs. Kolodziej, Vicki and Charles have taken on the duty of reaching out to investigators about any developments or updates about Kathy’s case. Mr. Szydlowski said that he’s hopeful his niece’s case will be solved soon: ‘our family would like closure. I would like to know. And one day, I’ll be able to tell my sister what happened.’
In addition to the New York State Police, many other investigating agencies have helped interview thousands of people about Kathy’s murder over the past almost 50 years. Friends, family, classmates, casual acquaintances… if anyone so much as walked by Kathy on Cobleskill’s campus, law enforcement spoke with them. However, with each year that goes by the chances of catching the coed’s killer becomes less and less likely as witnesses (and the killer themselves) are growing old and passing away. Detective Ayers inherited the cold case in 2016 and shared with Dateline that while he is unable to disclose specifics regarding DNA findings in Kathy’s case: ‘it’s an investigative avenue we continue to explore due to the advancements made with DNA technology. I do believe that any developments made with DNA evidence will be a huge step towards getting answers and possibly solving the investigation.’ HE also said that investigating LE agencies have reached out to the public on multiple occasions, encouraging them to report any information that could potentially help lead to an arrest: ‘individuals who may have had information of what happened are older now, some have even passed away, but we’re still hoping to track someone down who we missed before. We received numerous tips over the years, but the more time that passes, the harder it becomes.’
TomCioffi was the NYS Detective in charge of the case before Ayers took over; in 2012 he put up billboards in the Cobleskill area regarding Kathy’s disappearance and made requests for information through the media in an attempt to keep her murder on the public radar. The most recent one was put up in the fall of 2017 by Detective Ayers on Route 7 in Cobleskill: on it was a photo of Kolodziej along with a plea to the public that anyone with information regarding her homicide to call authorities. In addition to the well-placed billboards there’s also a Twitter handle and a police-run Facebook page titled ‘@Justice4Kathy Facebook Page.’ Its purpose is to provide the public with updates on the case and invites those who knew her or lived in the area to share stories and submit information. About the Facebook page, Ayers said that ‘we hope that by sharing Kathy’s story, and photos of the local bar and the area of Cobleskill, it will jog someone’s memory and they’ll have the information we need. There’s always somebody we might have missed, or someone who was reluctant to talk. We hope now is the time they come forward.’ He hopes that the billboards combined with the social media page will help put a renewed buzz in the case, and hopefully Kolodziej’s killer can finally be brought to justice. ‘We’re coming up on 50 years since Kathy’s murder, but we haven’t given up. There’s always a chance for closure. There’s always hope.’
The young student only lived in the area for about two months before she was murdered, which really didn’t give her a lot of time to form a lot of intimate and meaningful relationships (especially ones off campus). This is worth mentioning because Kathy was found in such an intimate way: her assailant was very careful to cover up the lower part of her body (despite being the one responsible for taking her clothes off in the first place). The fact that the killer seemed to know the ins and outs of the close knit area makes me speculate that maybe at one point they lived locally and weren’t just a drifter passing through. If (and this is a BIG if), she was held captive for any amount of time before she was killed then I would think she was murdered by someone that most likely lived alone and away from a lot of people (possibly in the country or a more remote area).
After the grim discovery investigators interviewed not only members of the student body at SUNY Cobleskill but also patrons of the bar she was last seen at. In addition, because of the report that Kathy was last seen getting into a yellow Volkswagen, law enforcement also tracked down and interviewed Bug owners in the area as well as anybody that may have had a connection to the murders of young women in the Northeast area. Despite the countless number of police interviews conducted over the years not a single serious suspect can be identified. Quite a few serial killers were investigated for the murder, including TedBundy, Lewis Lent, DonaldSigsbee, and John William Hopkins but all were eventually cleared.
So, we all know that Bundy didn’t kill this girl. In fact, I (very) briefly spoke with Detective Ayers on the phone and he flat-out told me he wasn’t guilty either (I’m an insurance agent with no police training, I will never pretend I know more than a trained law enforcement officer does). We know that on August 30, 1974 Bundy moved to Utah to start law school (ahem, again), and on October 31st he abducted and murdered Laura Ann Aime after she attended a Halloween party at Brown’s Café with friends in Lehi, Utah. Now, the café is 2,191 miles away from The Vault in Cobleskill and takes well over a full day to drive to (straight through, no stops). This means if Bundy did kill Kathy, he would have had to kill Aime then immediately get in his car to make the one day, nine hour drive to NYS to kill Kathy, who disappeared early in the morning on November 2nd. I mean, I suppose it’s plausible, but I just don’t think it happened. I listened to Dr. Keppels book ‘Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder’ on Audible while driving to Cobleskill and one of my biggest takeaways related to this case was that Bundy apparently made a real attempt to attend a good amount of classes his first semester back at law school. So the idea of him driving to NYS to commit a single murder just doesn’t make sense. Especially since on November 8th, just 6 days after Katherine Kolodziej was abducted, Bundy hit twice in Utah (Carol DaRonch then Debra Kent): The Fashion Place Mall in Murray Utah is 2,170 miles away from SUNY Cobleskill (and a 32-hour drive). We also must keep in mind the fact that law enforcement said that they had evidence that Kathy was most likely kept alive until the day before her body was discovered… I’m sorry, it’s just completely improbable that Bundy made this trip and committed this murder.
The serial killer Donald Sigsbee lived in Madison, NY (roughly 61 miles away from Cobleskill) and in March, 2004 he was convicted on two counts of second-degree murder for the 1975 death of 19-year-old SUNY Morrisville student Regina Reynolds. Ms. Reynolds was last seen hitchhiking at the intersection of Route 20 and 46 in Morrisville, NY. It is also speculated that he is responsible for the death of 21-year-old Martha Louise Allen, whose body was found by a boater on Black Creek on July 25, 1973 in the area of Verona Beach State Park. An index card with Ms. Allen’s name on it was discovered with paperwork related to Sigsbee’s cabinet business two years after her death. Law enforcement briefly considered him as a suspect in Ms. Kolodziej’s murder but he was eventually ruled out. In 2004, Sigsbee was found guilty of second-degree murder for the stabbing death of Reynolds and he died of natural causes on October 26, 2009 in Mohawk Valley Correctional Facility in Rome, NY.
WOW: I never heard of Lewis Lent but boy am I glad I looked him up… he reminds me of the wish.com version of Ed Kemper. I know it’s insensitive to make light of a murderer but come on… it’s a bit obvious. Anyways, Lent was a former Massachusetts janitor that murdered two children (but possibly more). Despite living in a different state at the time of the murders his childhood home was in Newfield, NY which is only about a 2.5 hour drive from Cobleskill. He claimed to be the subject of blackouts and memory lapses, and in one AP interview he blamed it on a close encounter with UFO occupants while in Virginia. It’s worth noting that his victims were much younger than Kathy (two were only twelve years old). It’s speculated that Lent didn’t act alone and that his accomplice(s) are still at large.
JohnWilliamHopkins’ first confirmed victim was the last he was officially linked to: Joanne Pecheone was a 19-year-old St. Francis de Sales School student when she was murdered on January 12, 1972. The school is located in Utica, NY, which is roughly 60 miles away from Cobleskill. Next was 17-year-old Cecelia Genatiempo, who Hopkind killed on July 24/25, 1976 in Gloversville, NY. His third and final confirmed victim was Sherrie Anne Carville, a 17-year-old high school student he kidnapped from a bar in her hometown of Johnstown, NY on October 22, 1978. Because of some striking similarities in the Hopkins murders and Kathy’s case, Tom Cioffi and Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond (also a NYS Trooper) believe Hopkins could have possibly had some sort of role in Katherine’s murder. When he was arrested in 1979, he admitted to the murder of three young women total, but would only name and discuss two of them: for unknown reasons he refused to discuss anything related to his third victim. In relation to the homicide of Kathy Kolodziej, Sheriff Desmond said that ‘three of the victims were the same age as Kathy, and if you look at some of the pictures of these victims, the hairstyle parted in the center, long and combed down, it’s similar. And they were all college students.’ However, NYS Trooper senior investigator William John said evidence linking John to Kathy’s homicide was still minimal, and that: ‘we’re not sure if it was Hopkins. We’re looking at means and opportunities.’ He went on to say that Hopkins raped his victims and there was no evidence that Katherine was sexually assaulted in any way (despite the young girl being found naked from the waist down). I feel it’s worth mentioning that Hopkins appeared to have an unhealthy obsession with knives, and would often carry several of them on him in various sheaths (Kathy was stabbed eight times with two different weapons). The mystery of his third victim was a secret the killer thought he took he took with him to the grave: on June 3, 2000 while incarcerated at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, NY Hopkins committed suicide by slashing the back of his legs and wrists with a razor. After a cold case review, in 2011 the Oneida County DA Scott McNamara announced in a press release that police in Utica finally closed the case of Joanne Pecheone, naming Hopkins as her killer. There have been some speculations that he may have had additional victims on top of the three he was convicted of (including Kathy’s), however authorities have been unable to successfully link him to anything as of November 2023.
Redditor ‘whiskeyandtea’ had a lot of interesting insights regarding Ms. Kolodziej’s tragic murder, saying: ‘I’ve been researching this case for about a year and a half now. Some of my opinions are:
It was probably someone local.
As others have said, this road is not exactly easy to stumble upon.
In a recent interview the investigator assigned to the case said that a forensics report at the time suggested she was killed within a day of her body being discovered. Her body was discovered 3 weeks after she vanished. If this piece of information is true, where was she being held this whole time? Granted this piece of evidence contradicts what previous investigators have suggested (they believe she was killed almost immediately after being taken). Still, it’s a consideration.
It was someone she trusted.
No one reported hearing screaming, to my knowledge. In Cobleskill, at that time of night, if someone forces a person into a car, someone will likely hear the scream. So she probably got into the car willingly.
She turned down a ride home and said she was going to be getting a ride home from someone else. She probably did, and that person is probably the person who killed her. Why would you turn down a ride home from someone you know to catch a ride with some one you don’t?
The way the body was covered and carefully placed on the wall in the field seems like it might be a demonstration of remorse, to a degree, which you might expect from someone who knew her.
It was probably someone from the college, although it may also have been a townie from a bar.
She was only in town for 2 months. That’s not enough time to meet that many people, especially outside of campus, especially when you are acclimating to a new environment. Again, because it seems likely that she took a ride from someone she knows and trusts. How many people would you know and trust after living somewhere for only 2 months. If, and this is a BIG if, she was in fact held captive for a duration of time before being killed: it was probably someone who lived alone. This would eliminate most students, which means this should be cautiously evaluated, because there is probably a decent chance it was a fellow student.’
In a comment on an ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Reddit post about Kolodziej’s disappearance, ‘TheEvilWoman‘ commented that they ‘live only a few miles from where her body was found. McDonald Rd is a really small road. You can hardly see it in the dark. I seriously doubt it was a random murderer. My guess is that it was someone local to the area. Someone she knew from hanging out in the bars. As for the Sheriff’s dept in this county, they are a joke. I ask the state troopers if I need the police. I doubt they will solve Kathy’s murder unless someone confesses. Her killer ‘most likely still lives in the county, probably in Richmondville.’ In response to that, a second Redditor by the handle Amj9412 commented, ‘you’re right it would be a weird spot to leave someone if you didn’t know your way around. Creepy to think he could still live around town!’ I will say, this past weekend I went to Cobleskill and did some exploring in the area and they are absolutely right: McDonald Road is extremely short, and is absolutely located in an odd, secluded spot ‘off the beaten track.’ Therefore, my educated assumption is someone must have known the area fairly well to leave the remains of the young lady in such a particular spot.
In the offices of the Princetown State Police Station located in Schenectady, NY the files related to the Katherine Kolodziej case are split into three cardboard boxes, her last name scribbled on the sides in dark black permanent black marker. Two of them can be found at the Trooper barracks in Rotterdam, and the third at their station in Cobleskill. Inside is information related to the case, including photos of Kathy, her autopsy report, information pertaining to leads, and crime scene photos. Currently, the only consistent phone calls law enforcement receive regarding the cold case are the twice-yearly inquiries from a former college classmate of Kolodziej’s who lives in Florida (Barbara Rose Lanieri). Despite many years going by since the murder took place, NY State Police remain hopeful that Kathy’s case can still be solved. Regarding the murder, Tom Cioffi said, ‘I still think this case can be solved. I really do.’
Andrew Kolodziej passed away on February 13, 2001 in Ronkonkoma at the age of 78; Mrs. Kolodziej died less than a year later on January 9, 2002 in Ronkonkoma at the age of 82. They’re buried in the same plot as their daughter at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York.
New York State Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $2,500 for information that directly leads to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the homicide of Katherine Kolodziej. If you have any information in this case, please contact Investigator David Ayers at (518) 337–1223 and/or 24 hours (518) 234–3131. You can also leave an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers. Use the ‘leave a tip’ tab on the Facebook profile or call their hotline at 1–866–313-TIPS (8477).
A photo of Kathy with her cousins.A photo of Kathy with her cousin, courtesy of Maria Kolodziej.Kathy Kolodziej eating a meal with family. A photo of Kathy with her horse, Sandy.A second photo of Kathy with her horse, Sandy.Another photo of Kathy with her beloved horse, Sandy.Kathy.A photo of Kathy with her cousins.A photo of Kathy, courtesy of Maria Kolodziej.Kathy Kolodziej. A yearbook photo of Kathy.A photo of Kathy with her Cobleskill dorm mates.Kathy.TB’s whereabouts on November 2, 1974 according to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992.’Original missing persons flyer from November 1974.Case information sheet on Homicide Victim Katherine Kolodziej.The house Kathy grew up in located at 2867 Chestnut Avenue in Ronkonkoma, NY.An article about Kathy published by The Glens Falls Post Star on November 29, 1974.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 29, 1974.Part one of an article on Kathy’s death published by Newsday on November 29, 1974.Part two of an article on Kathy’s death published by Newsday on November 29, 1974.Part three of an article on Kathy’s death published by Newsday on November 29, 1974.An article about Kathy published by The Daily News on November 29, 1974.An article about Kathy published by The Glens Falls Post Star on November 30, 1974.An article about Kathy published by Newsday on November 30, 1974.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on December 3, 1974.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on December 9, 1974.An article about Kathy published by Newsday on December 2, 1974.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on January 2, 1975.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on February 15, 1975.An article mentioning Kathy published by the New York Oneonta Daily Star on March 15, 1975.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on March 18, 1975.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on July 8, 1975.An article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Herald Journal on November 2, 1975.An article about Regina Reynolds mentioning Kathy published by the Syracuse Herald Journal on November 13, 1975.An article mentioning Kathy titled ‘Missing Sidney Girl found Dead’ published by The Daily Star on November 20, 1975.Part one of an article mentioning Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 21, 1975.Part two of an article mentioning Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 21, 1975.Part three of an article mentioning Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 21, 1975.Part one of an article mentioning Kathy in high school published by the Syracuse Herald American on November 23, 1975.Part two of an article mentioning Kathy in high school published by the Syracuse Herald American on November 23, 1975.An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on April 27, 1976.An article mentioning Kathy published by The Bangor Daily News on January 4, 1978.An article mentioning Kathy published by The The Journal News on January 4, 1978.An article mentioning Kathy published by The Star-Gazette on January 4, 1978.An article about Kathy published by Newsday on May 19, 1999.An article mentioning Kathy published by Newsday on October 6, 1999.Part one of an article mentioning Kathy’s murder published by Press and Sun-Bulletin on June 12, 2002.Part two of an article mentioning Kathy’s murder published by Press and Sun-Bulletin on June 12, 2002.Part one of an article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on April 4, 2004.Part two of an article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on April 4, 2004.Part three of an article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on April 4, 2004.An article mentioning Kathy published by Newsday on April 25, 2006.An article reexamining Kathy’s case published by Newsday on February 19, 2011.An article reexamining Kathy’s case published by The Daily News on September 9, 2018.An article mentioning Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on May 6, 2021.An article about the 49th anniversary of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej published by The News of Schoharie County on November 9, 2023. Courtesy of my friend, Michelina Serino.An article about the 49th anniversary of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej published by The News of Schoharie County in November of 2023. Courtesy of my friend, Michelina Serino.A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej in November 1974. The scene of where Kathy Kolodziej’s body was found in November 1974.The rock wall where Kathy Kolodziej’s body was found in November 1974.A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.A photo from the crime scene.Kathy’s discarded blue shoe found by hunters.The coffin bearing the body of Katherine Kolodziej is carried from St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Lake Ronkonkoma on December 2, 1974. Photo courtesy of Walter del Toro.The gravesite of Kathy and her parents.Kathy’s uncle Charles Szydlowski, a retired New York State police detective.A memorial close to where Kathy’s remains were found on McDonald Road.A memorial close to where Kathy’s remains were found on McDonald Road.The latest billboard from 2017 regarding Kathy’s 1974 unsolved homicide.Schoharie County District Attorney James Sacket, (front left) Investigator Dave Ayers and New York State Police Captain Richard J. O’Brien speak to reporters in front of a billboard asking for information about the murder of Kathy Kolodziej in Cobleskill.A photo of the original investigators of the Kolodziej case in more recent years.Tom Coiffi with evidence boxes containing information about Kathy Kolodziej’s case.A Google Maps image of the area where Kathy was discovered. View of SUNY Cobleskill during the 1980’s.An aerial shot of SUNY Cobleskill taken in the 1980’s.An older B&W snapshot of ‘The Vault’ in Cobleskill in the early 80’s.An older color snapshot of ‘The Vault’ in Cobleskill.The Vault as it stands today in 2022.Please ignore my dirty car. Another shot of The Vault as it stands today, August 2022.The entrance to SUNY Cobleskill, August 2022.SUNY Cobleskill Equestrian Center.A 2022 map of SUNY Cobleskill.Part of the SUNY Cobleskill campus where Kathy would have taken courses for her major in Animal Husbandry.McDonald Road, where Kathy’s remains were found.The best shot I could get of the rock wall where Kathy’s remains were found without trespassing. 2022.Another shot of the rock wall, 2022.Another shot of the rock wall, August 2022.Some friends gathering at the site of where the remains of Kathy Kolodziej were found at a memorial service on November 13, 2023. Photo courtesy of Michelina Serino.Some friends gathering at the site of where the remains of Kathy Kolodziej were found at a memorial service on November 13, 2023. Photo courtesy of Michelina Serino.A cross marks the spot where the remains of Kathy Kolodziej were found at a memorial service on November 13, 2023. Photo courtesy of Michelina Serino.The Naturalization Records for Andrew Joseph Kolodziej from when he emigrated to the US from Poland. Mr. Kolodziej’s WW2 draft card. Hedwig Kolodziej’s senior picture from the 1938 John Adams High School yearbook.Kathy’s parents, Andrew and Kathy Kolodziej. Lewis Lent, a janitor from Massachusetts, confessed to kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and killing 12 year-old Sara Wood in August 1993, however he refused to tell law enforcement where he buried her body. He had also plead guilty to the 1990 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Pittsfield, MA native Jimmy Bernardo. Lent abducted Jimmy from the Pittsfield movie theater where he worked as a janitor. Lent was sentenced to life without parole for the Bernardo murder and sentenced to 25 years to life for the Wood murder and is currently in prison in Massachusetts. He is also suspected in a number of other child kidnapping cases. Lent recanted his confession and refuses to disclose the location of Sara’s body. Lent has said that he can’t say where her body is because she is not buried alone. It has been speculated that Lent did not act alone and that his accomplice(s) are still at large.Joanne Pecheone.Correspondence between murderer Lewis Lent and reporter Christine O’Donnell discussing the murder of Kathy Kolodziej; he denied any involvement in her murder.Correspondence between murderer Lewis Lent and reporter Christine O’Donnell discussing the murder of Kathy Kolodziej; he denied any involvement in her murder.Donald Sigsbee. He was convicted in March 2004 on two counts of second-degree murder in the death of Regina Reynolds in Onondaga County Court. Reynolds was a 19 year-old SUNY Morrisville student, killed in 1975. She was last seen alive hitchhiking at the intersection of state Route 20 and Route 46 in Morrisville. NY. He died on October 26, 2009 in Mohawk Valley Correctional Facility in Rome, NY.John William Hopkins, AKA The Mohawk Valley Ripper.
Another Bundy Blog. 