Postmortem

In the vein of the bestselling I'll Be Gone in the Dark, this compelling work of truecrime explores the aftershocks of "Killer Clown" John Wayne Gacy's crimes with auniquely intimate slant, as the daughter of a key witness probes her mother's personalexperiences and the legacy of murder within a family, a community, and the Americanpsyche. On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O'Neil's mother, teenager Kim Byers,saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacywhere they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractornamed John Wayne Gacy about a possible job. That night Rob became Gacy's final victim; his body was later found in the Des PlainesRiver. Kim's testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy's house,proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer whoassaulted and killed over thirty young men and boys. Though she grew up far from Des Plaines, Courtney has lived in the shadow ofthat nightmare, keenly aware of its impact on her mother. In search of deeperunderstanding and closure, Courtney and Kim travel back to Illinois. Postmortem transforms their personal journey into a powerful exploration of theever-widening ripples generated by Gacy's crimes. From the 1970s to the presentday, his shadow extends beyond the victims' families and friends--it encompassesthe Des Plaines neighborhood forever marked by his horrific murders, generations ofthe victims' families and friends, those who helped arrest and convict him, fandomcommunities, and many others. Layered and thought-provoking, Postmortem is a complex story of loss and violence,grief and guilt, and the legacy that remains long after a killer is caught.