On a cold December day in 1977, a young man full of life and with a future ahead of him vanished after heading out for a night of music. Nineteen-year-old David Paul Talsma, a United States Marine, told his mother he was going to a rock concert in Hammond, Indiana, on December 9th, but he never returned. His family was left to wonder and hope, unaware of the sinister fate that had befallen him.
The search for answers would stretch on for nearly two years, a period of agonizing
uncertainty for his loved ones. It wasn't until November 16, 1979, on what would have been his 21st birthday, that a grim discovery brought the search to a close. David's remains were found buried in the crawl space under the Norwood Park Township home of one of the nation's most infamous serial killers, John Wayne Gacy.
Investigations into Gacy's horrific crimes revealed that he had lured David Talsma to his home and strangled him with a ligature. David was just one of at least 33 young men and boys who fell victim to Gacy's campaign of terror between 1972 and 1978. Investigators were able to positively identify David's body, which Gacy had designated as 'Body #13,' through the use of dental records and X-rays of his left arm.
John Wayne Gacy was arrested in December 1978, and the full scope of his atrocities began to come to light. He was subsequently charged with numerous counts of murder. In March 1980, a jury found Gacy guilty of 33 murders, including that of David Talsma. He was sentenced to death for twelve of the murders. After years of appeals, John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, closing a dark chapter in American history and bringing a measure of justice for David Talsma and the many other young lives he so brutally cut short.
