 It is December of 1978, and 15-year old Chris Gant disappears after being observed talking to a contractor about a potential new job. He would never be seen alive again. The man he was talking to was John Wayne Gacy - the worst mass murderer in the history of the United States. Chris s family immediately report him missing to the Des Plaines, IL, Police, and Lt. Joseph Kozenczak starts looking for the missing boy right away. Looking into Gacy s past, they discover he has a history of assaults on young men & boys, and this enables them to get a warrant to search his house. They find several items that belong to other missing people, along with a photo stub that was in the parka Chris was wearing the night he disappeared! Gacy is put under 24-hour surveillance by the police but swiftly reacts by trying to have his lawyer file a lawsuit to shut down the investigation. With time running out, Kozenczak interviews Gacy s old roommate Ted Koslo, who reveals a frightening secret - that Gacy was making him dig holes under the house, supposedly for drainage tiles. In addition, after being invited into the house, a policeman notices a bad smell in the immaculately-kept home - the smell of decomposing bodies! Gacy is later arrested on a drug charge and a second search warrant is obtained. When Kozenczak and his officers re-enter Gacy s house, the house is filled with the odor of death, and within minutes, an officer makes a horrifying discovery; there are bodies in the crawlspace under the house. A long excavation & recovery process begins which reveals 25 bodies in the crawlspace, and 4 others found in various locations on the property. In addition, 4 more bodies are found off the property, dumped in the Des Plaines river. This is the story of how a small-town police department put an end to the career of the worst mass-murderer in U.S. history, and of the detective whose tactics became adopted around the country in the detection & arrest of serial murderers.