Court Bars Gacy for His Own Safety
SIX MORE bodies were discovered Friday in the crawl space under the house of accused murderer John Gacy, bringing the number of corpses linked to him to 28. This is the greatest number of killings traced to one man in the nation’s history. It exceeds by one the 27 murders attributed to Elmer Henley of Houston in 1973. Henley’s victims, like those linked to Gacy, were young men and boys. “Gentlemen, I have horrible news,” Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner, told reporters when he emerged from the Gacy house Friday night. “Six more bodies were exhumed today.” Stein said there is evidence of still more bodies buried under Gacy’s bungalow at 8213 W. Summerdale Avenue in an unincorporated area of Norwood Park Township east of O’Hare International Airport.
SHERIFF’S POLICE plan to continue searching the home Saturday. Gacy, 36, a husky building contractor, reportedly told police that he killed 32 boys and young men in the last three years after engaging in sexual relations with them. Some officials believe the total will be higher than that. Gacy reportedly provided authorities with a diagram of his property showing where 27 bodies were buried and told them that he threw 5 others into the Des Plaines River in Will County south of Joliet. So far police have recovered 26 bodies from the crawl space and one from under the concrete floor of a garage-storage building on the property. Another body, recovered from the Des Plaines River last month, was traced to Gacy this week.
THE BODY of a young white male recovered from the river in Will County Thursday has not yet been identified according to Robert Tezak of Will County. Officials said they do not know if this body can be linked to Gacy. One of the bodies recovered Friday was so well preserved that fingerprints can be made in hopes for quick identification. The other bodies were described as skeleton remains, some with pieces of clothing clinging to them. Stein said there is “some evidence of other remains in the trenches along the south wall” in an area that has not yet been excavated. About one quarter of the crawl space has yet to be examined.
A MAN AND a youth have told police that in the summer of 1977 they were hired by Gacy to dig trenches under his house along the south wall. They reportedly have passed lie-detector tests on their statements that Gacy told them the trenches were for drainage tile to solve a flooding problem. Authorities said no drainage tile can be seen in the area. The trenches have been filled in, but there are depressions in the soft soil similar to those that existed in other areas where bodies were found.
