John Butkovich

John Butkovich was an 18-year-old teenager employed by John Wayne Gacy's construction company, Painting Decorating Maintenance, in the Chicago, area during the mid-1970s. He worked alongside other young employees including John Szyc and Gregory Godzik, both of whom disappeared under suspicious circumstances linked to John Wayne Gacy. His father, Marko Butkovich, served as a church janitor for Rev. John Tilford, an assistant director at the Maryville Academy, who was a former next-door neighbor and personally knew John Butkovich, later presiding over his funeral.¹

John Butkovich went missing on July 31, 1975, after working for John Wayne Gacy at PDM, and his case remained unsolved until connected to Gacy's crimes in late 1978. On December 17, 1978, during the investigation into the disappearance of Robert Piest, Cpt. Joseph Kozenczak interviewed Gacy's ex-wife, Carole Hoff, who provided the name John Butkovich as another missing teenager who had worked for Gacy and vanished in 1975. Gacy confessed to murdering John Butkovich during his interrogation on December 21, 1978, after his arrest, and Butkovich's body was discovered in the crawlspace beneath Gacy's Norwood Park home at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, where 29 other victims were also buried.¹