Honestly, if you drive down Summerdale Avenue today, you’d probably miss it. It looks like every other quiet, tree-lined street in the Norwood Park area of Chicago. Kids ride bikes. People walk their dogs. The grass is usually pretty well-manicured. But for anyone who grew up in the late '70s or has spent even five minutes on a true-crime wiki, the John Wayne Gacy home address isn’t just a location. It's a scar on the map.
8213 West Summerdale Avenue.
That’s the number that used to be on the mailbox. It was a modest brick ranch-style house. Gacy bought it back in 1971 with a bit of help from his mom. To the neighbors, he was just "John," the guy who threw massive summer parties and did magic tricks as Pogo the Clown. He even ran a construction business, P.D.M. Construction, out of that very house.
But we all know what was actually going on under those floorboards.
The House of Horrors at 8213 West Summerdale
When the police finally raided the place in December 1978, they didn't just find a messy home. They found a graveyard. Gacy had buried 26 young men and boys in the four-foot-high crawl space beneath the house. Three others were buried elsewhere on the property. When he literally ran out of room—when the "earth" couldn't hold any more—he started dumping bodies in the Des Plaines River.
It’s hard to wrap your head around that. People were eating dinner and watching TV in a house while dozens of bodies were rotting just a few feet below them. Gacy’s wife at the time, Carole Hoff, later complained about a "deadly" smell coming from the vents. Gacy, being the master manipulator, blamed it on a moisture problem or a dead rodent in the crawl space. He even spread lime down there to mask the odor.
What happened to the original house?
By 1979, the original house was gone. Completely razed.
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The authorities didn't just want it gone; they had to tear it apart to find everyone. They literally dismantled the structure to ensure no stone was left unturned during the exhumation process. For years, the lot sat empty. It was basically a patch of weeds and dirt that served as a grim reminder for the neighborhood. People would drive by just to stare.
You can imagine the vibe in the neighborhood. One day it's a normal suburban street, the next, it's the center of the world's most horrific news story. Neighbors had to watch as body bags were carried out of that crawl space for days on end.
The New Address: 8215 West Summerdale Ave
Here is where things get a little weird for people who don't follow real estate trends. In 1986, a local woman bought the vacant lot for about $30,000. She built a brand-new home on the site for her retired parents.
But they didn't keep the old address.
To try and shake the "Gacy house" stigma, the official John Wayne Gacy home address was retired. The new house was assigned 8215 West Summerdale Avenue. It’s a completely different style—a two-story brick home with vaulted ceilings and a loft.
- 1971: Gacy buys the original ranch house.
- 1978: The "house of horrors" is discovered.
- 1979: Demolition is completed.
- 1986: A new house is built on the same land.
- 1988: The address is officially changed to 8215.
The new house actually has a basement, which is something true crime fans on Reddit argue about constantly. Some find it deeply unsettling that anyone would want to dig a basement into the same soil where Gacy's victims were found. Others point out that the soil was extensively excavated and replaced during the investigation.
Can you actually buy the property today?
Believe it or not, the house sells every few years. It most recently hit the market in 2019 and sold in March 2021 for $395,000.
That was actually a bit of a "deal" for the area, but it took nearly two years to sell. Why? Because even though the original house is gone, the "stigma" of the land remains. In Illinois, realtors aren't technically required to disclose that a "horrific event" happened on a property unless a buyer asks directly. But let’s be real: in the age of Google, nobody is buying 8215 W. Summerdale without knowing exactly what happened there.
The buyers in 2021 were reportedly a local couple who didn't initially know the history until after they'd started the process, according to some local reports. Imagine that closing meeting.
Is the neighborhood still "haunted" by it?
If you ask the people living on Summerdale today, they mostly just want to be left alone. They get "dark tourists" all the time. People drive slowly by, snapping photos of a house that isn't even the one where the murders happened. It’s a weird kind of fame that no one wants.
Honestly, the most haunting thing isn't ghosts or "bad vibes." It's the fact that five of the victims found at the John Wayne Gacy home address remained unidentified for decades. It wasn't until the 2010s that modern DNA testing started giving some of those "John Does" their names back, like William George Bundy and James Haakenson.
Actionable Insights for True Crime Researchers
If you're looking into the history of the Gacy property or similar "stigmatized" real estate, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Check Property Records: Use sites like the Cook County Assessor's office to see the actual transition of land. You'll see that "8213" essentially vanished from the tax maps to be replaced by "8215."
- Verify the Architecture: When looking at "then and now" photos, remember that the current house at 8215 looks nothing like Gacy's house. Gacy lived in a one-story ranch. The current house is a much larger, modern structure.
- Respect the Living: If you ever find yourself in Norwood Park, remember that real families live there now. They aren't part of the Gacy story, and they're just trying to live their lives in a nice Chicago suburb.
- Understand Disclosure Laws: If you're buying a house in Illinois (or most states), remember that "stigmatized property" laws are tricky. Unless there is a physical defect (like lead paint), the seller often doesn't have to volunteer the dark history unless you point-blank ask them.
The story of the John Wayne Gacy home address is a weird mix of urban legend and suburban reality. It's a reminder that sometimes the most normal-looking places on the map are hiding the darkest secrets. But it's also a story of a neighborhood trying to move on, one new address at a time.