Gacy Pleads Innocent To 7 Murders
by Chicago (AP)
John W Gacy, Jr. who reportedly has confessed to 32 sex-related slayings Wednesday entered innocent pleas to each of seven murder charges contained in a grand jury indictment. Gacy, 36 stood silent and expressionless as his attorney Sam Amirante pleaded innocent in his behalf before Circuit Court Judge Richard J Fitzgerald. Gacy a contractor stood flanked by four sheriff’s deputies in Fitzgerald’s courtroom. The judge ordered that Gacy be examined to determine his competency to stand trial and whether he was sane at the time the slayings occurred. But he did not rule on a defense motion to quash the indictments. Amirante argued that the grand jurors’ Judgment must have been tainted by news accounts of the slayings.
Amirante also asked that searches be discontinued at Gacy’s house in an unincorporated residential area just northwest of Chicago. Cook County sheriff’s investigators have found the bodies and skeletal remains of 26 young men beneath the floor of Gacy’s house in excavations begun Dec 21 when the stocky building contractor was arrested. A 27th body was found buried beneath Gacy’s garage and two more bodies which investigators say are linked to Gacy have been pulled from the Des Plaines River. A 30th body may also be linked to Gacy authorities say. The body of Timothy O’Rourke 20 of Chicago was found in the Illinois River near Morris on June 30.
The area is about 3 miles west and downstream from where the other two bodies linked to Gacy were pulled from the water. Grundy County Sheriff’s Lt Ronald Fox said O’Rourke’s death may be related to those of the other victims because of where the body was found and because it was naked. Police investigators reportedly have said Gacy told them that during six years he killed 32 young men and teenagers after having sex with them. They said Gacy has helped them find bodies buried beneath the home and that he directed officers to look in the river where five victims allegedly were left. Gacy investigators have said admitted strangling most of the victims in some cases handcuffing or chaining them first One victim was stabbed they said The 29 bodies so far linked to Gacy are the largest total of any mass murderer in the nation this century.
So far 10 of the bodies have been identified mostly through dental records. The indictment charges Gacy with killing seven youths aged 15 to 20. In one case the death of Robert Piest, 15. Gacy is charged with aggravated kidnapping, deviate sexual assault, indecent liberties with a child and murder during commission of felony in addition to the murder charge. He is being held in the Cook County Jail complex hospital unit.
