As Christmas of 1978 fast-approached, there were many in the Chicago land area that were

not filled with the holiday spirit, but instead were filled with worry and dread.

Many of these people had not been in the mood to celebrate much of anything.

Some of them, for years, as they had been heartbroken by their loved one that had gone

missing at various times throughout the years of 1972 through 1978.

Now as of December 22, 1978, the local papers and TV news were reporting nonstop of a man

who had been arrested for murdering young Robert Peast, and they were unearthing remains

from his crawl space on a daily basis.

Every day the number of victims grew.

Those did the number of onlookers that stood outside of his home to watch this macabre

death march of victims' skeletal remains being placed in body bags, and then carried

from the crawl space through the house and out to the waiting vehicles that would transport

the victims to the county morgue, with the hope of being able to identify whose remains.

In fact, they were.

So while Gacy had led the boys of the Delta Unit down to the area of the displayings

river that he had been dumping the victim's bodies, they had not recovered the body

of Robert Peast, and this particular task remained of the utmost importance to the

displayings police.

I can't even begin to imagine just how surreal the last 12 days must have been for the

Peast family, and there must have been some part of them, and all of us for that matter

as parents and as human beings, that until you see your child slain before you with your

own eyes, that you hold out some type of hope that this has all just been a vivid, horrible

...