Gacy actually took people who would be missed quite early on, that's the crazy thing about him. Yes, there were runaways and prostitutes mixed in there but his second or third victim had worked for him and the kid's father was begging cops to look into Gacy, and throughout the next few years Gacy employees also disappeared. It's just that it being the seventies, no bodies, and the kids being older than, oh, 12, the cops were all too happy to write them off as runaways. I've seen people say he only got caught because his last victim was a "good kid" but the kid really wasn't that different from plenty of previous victims -- a high school kid living with his parents and looking for part time work. What really got Gacy in trouble was kidnapping the kid as his mother was literally waiting in a drugstore for him to come back from the parking lot so she could drive him home. Even lazy Illinois cops couldn't write that one off as a random runaway.