A contractor came into Nisson Pharmacy in Des Plaines, Illinois, on December 11, 1978. He said he wanted to measure the store for a remodeling project. Kim Byers was working her shift that night with her friend Robert Piest, who was also a high school student. The man who walked in was John Wayne Gacy. He would go on to kill 33 young men and boys around Chicago in the 1970s.
Byers’ daughter, Courtney Lund O’Neil, wrote a book called Postmortem about what her mother went through. “She bumped into John Wayne Gacy the night he took Rob,” O’Neil told Fox News Digital. “He wasn’t a nice guy. It almost seemed like he was there with a plan when you reflect on it, and she wasn’t of interest to him. But I do think he was watching Rob, and that’s why he came back later that night.”
The book talks about how Gacy looked that day. He was “a large man, overweight, his slightly receding brown hair laced with silver.” He ignored Byers completely. When she accidentally ran into him while walking through the store, she looked at his eyes. They were a “dark omen indigo.” She had no idea this would be the last night she would see her friend.
He never made it home for the celebration
Byers asked to borrow Piest’s blue jacket that evening because it was cold. She was wearing it when she filled out a form for developing photos. She put the form in the jacket pocket. When Piest’s shift ended, he asked for the jacket back. Gacy came back to the store later because he forgot his appointment book. He stayed longer than needed and watched Piest while pretending to look at items on the shelves.
Gacy told the 15-year-old about a summer job that paid $5 an hour. This was twice as much as the $2.50 minimum wage back then. Piest wanted to go home quickly because his mother was having her birthday that day. But the job offer sounded good to him. He told his mother he would be back soon to celebrate with her. He left the pharmacy with Gacy and was never seen again.
“Rob was taken on his mother’s birthday,” O’Neil said. “I always thought how horrifying that was for her, being a mother, and for the whole family. Rob loved his family and was excited to celebrate with his mom that night. And this one man destroyed everything. My mom saw her friend Rob leave with Gacy that night, and it changed her life.”
Police searched Gacy’s house and found strange things. They also found the photo receipt from Nisson Pharmacy. Officers called Byers and asked her to give a statement about what she saw. That receipt became very important evidence.
Gacy told police he never talked to anyone named Piest at the pharmacy. But police knew he was not telling the truth because they had the receipt.
Police watched Gacy more closely after that. His story kept changing, and they found more proof he was lying. They did a complete search of his house and found human remains under the home in a crawl space.
Most of the bodies were either there or buried somewhere else on his property. They also found Piest’s blue jacket. His body was pulled out of the Des Plaines River later and identified using dental records.
Gacy was found guilty of all the murders in 1980. He was put to death by lethal injection in 1995 when he was 52 years old.
Published: Nov 10, 2025 04:15 pm