---
category: "City"
tags:
  - Place
  - Illinois
  - JohnWayneGacy
summary: "Norwood Park is a community area on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, where John Wayne Gacy lived and committed at least 33 murders between 1972 and 1978, burying most of his victims beneath his house at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue."
created: 2026-05-14
updated: 2026-05-17
location: "Cook County, Illinois, USA"
---

Norwood Park is a Chicago community area (Community Area 10) on the city's northwest side, originally an 1870s railroad suburb whose village incorporated on July 25, 1874 and voted on November 7, 1893, by 124 to 27, to be annexed to Chicago. Its homes include Victorian, Tudor, bungalow and ranch styles. The separate Norwood Park Township, created in 1873 and 1874, survives as the unincorporated part of the township together with the villages of Harwood Heights and parts of Norridge and Park Ridge, which share some government services.[^1]

### John Wayne Gacy

[[John Wayne Gacy]] lived at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, in the unincorporated part of Norwood Park Township with a Norridge address, and the murders for which he was convicted were committed there.[^2] He operated a construction contracting business, PDM Construction Company.[^2]

Gacy was charged with 33 counts of murder. The Illinois Supreme Court recorded that he told police he had killed about 30 people, that excavation of the crawl space and the area around the house recovered 29 bodies (from the crawl space, under the driveway and under the garage), and that four bodies were recovered from the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers, downstream from where he said he had thrown them. The record describes a "rope trick" with a rosary used to strangle victims and testimony that victims were tricked into handcuffs; six bodies were found with ligatures around the neck and 13 with cloth or other material in the mouth and throat.[^2]

Gacy was arrested in December 1978 following the disappearance of 15-year-old [[Robert Piest]], the final victim, who had told his mother he was going to see a building contractor about a summer job. Police traced the last known contact to Gacy, and the subsequent investigation uncovered the bodies in the crawl space. He was convicted of 33 counts of murder, with death sentences on 12 counts and natural-life terms on the other 21, the death verdict returned on March 13, 1980; the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed on June 6, 1984.[^2] He was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.

The house at 8213 West Summerdale was demolished after Gacy's arrest. A new structure was built on the lot.[^3]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Norwood Park Historical Society, "Defining Norwood Park" and "History of Norwood Park," https://norwoodparkhistoricalsociety.org/defining-norwood-park/ and https://norwoodparkhistoricalsociety.org/about-chicagos-norwood-park-neighborhood/
[^2]: People v. Gacy, 103 Ill. 2d 1 (1984) (Illinois Supreme Court, No. 53212, opinion filed June 6, 1984), https://static.case.law/ill-2d/103/html/0001-01.html
[^3]: "What Happened to John Wayne Gacy's House?" *Newsweek,* 2022. https://www.newsweek.com/john-wayne-gacy-house-now-what-happened-location-1701023