Chicago Man Reportedly Tells of Killing 32 Youths
Contractor Who Liked to Clown for Children Charged in 1 Death; “Multiple Bodies” Found
by Larry Green
A suburban remodeling contractor who liked to appear as a clown at children’s parties was charged with the murder of a missing teen-age boy Friday and has reportedly told authorities that he killed up to 31 other young men. John Wayne Gacy, 36, of suburban Norridge, an unincorporated area northwest of Chicago, was being held without bond in the Cook County Jail after his arraignment Friday on a single murder charge. Remains of several bodies were found buried under Gacy’s house. In asking that no bond be set, Assistant State’s Attorney Terry Sullivan told Judge Marvin Peters that “multiple bodies” were being recovered.
Gacy is accused of killing Robert Piest, 15, of suburban Des Plaines, who disappeared on December 11 after leaving his job at a pharmacy reportedly to talk to the contractor about employment. Police spent Friday ripping up the floor in Gacy’s brick, single-story house a small section at a time to reach a narrow crawl space under the building where several mounds of dirt were discovered in a search late Thursday night. There they found the remains of at least two bodies and the partial remains of others in shallow graves. The skeleton of a third body was found buried near a garage behind the house in the quiet suburban subdivision about two miles east of O’Hare International Airport. The search for more bodies was to resume today, according to Des Plaines Police Chief Lee A. Alfano.
“He’s giving all kinds of statements, saying there’s a body here, a body there,” Cook County Sheriff Richard J. Elrod said. “It’s my understanding that he gave local police and the state’s attorney a statement,” Elrod added, indicating that the total number of bodies might reach 32. “We have good reason for believing there might be as many as 32 bodies,” one investigator said, “but we may never find them all or even document the number.” One authoritative source said that Gacy had told of not only burying bodies around his house but also of dumping some in the many lagoons and small rivers around the metropolitan Chicago area. “It will be a very slow process,” Alfano said, adding that authorities would reopen investigations into unsolved disappearances of teenage boys and young males over the last several years.
Among those unsolved cases are the disappearances of at least two young men who worked for Gacy, authorities said. Only young males are involved, Alfano said. “There has been no talk of any females.” Twice married and twice divorced, Gacy, who was born in Chicago, returned to the area a few years ago after serving 18 months of a 10-year sentence in Iowa for sodomy. If the reports of up to 32 bodies are correct, this would rank as one of the biggest mass murders in U.S. history. Among other such cases, 27 victims died at the hands of a homosexual torture ring in Houston in 1973. The alleged head of the ring, Dean A. Corll, was killed by Elmer Wayne Henley, who subsequently was convicted of killing six of the victims.
His conviction was overturned December 20 on grounds that the trial court did not give enough consideration to a request for a change of venue. Appeals of that decision are pending, and if they fail a new trial is expected. Juan V. Corona was convicted of killing 25 men in 1971 and burying their bodies in an orchard near Yuba City, California, but his conviction also was overturned on the grounds that his defense was incompetent. He also is awaiting a new trial. A stocky, muscular man, Gacy was described as a good neighbor by residents of the subdivision where he lived and where he operated his remodeling business, which specialized in drugstores. Neighbors said also that he liked to throw big parties for the neighborhood and liked to dress up as a clown and entertain children.
The investigation into the disappearance of the Piest youth began to focus on Gacy about two weeks ago, Alfano said, after Des Plaines detectives learned that the youth was going to apply for a job with a contractor. For the last 12 days, Gacy has been under 24-hour surveillance, prompting him to complain to neighbors that “they are trying to pin a murder rap on me.” Alfano said he had 15 detectives working on 16-hour shifts in the investigation, which involved a search of the Gacy home shortly after he became a suspect and a second search late Thursday night when the first decomposed bodies were uncovered in the narrow crawl space under the Gacy house. During the first search of the house, on December 13, police found a receipt for a roll of film that was being developed. The film belonged to Piest, whose body is not among those that have been recovered, authorities said.
