An Illinois sheriff hopes to excavate a Cook County backyard in hopes of finding more victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the Chicago Tribune reported. Gacy, convicted of killing 33 boys and young men and then stuffing them in the crawl space beneath his house, was executed in 1994.
But Anita Alvarez, the state’s attorney for Cook County, has so far denied Sheriff Tom Dart’s request, saying the sheriff does not have enough new information to merit a warrant.
The yard was dug up in 1998 after a retired homicide detective tipped off authorities that he had seen Gacy there one early morning in the 1970s, shovel in hand, the Tribune reported. They chatted briefly, and the detective went on his way. That dig produced a glass marble and flattened sauce pan.
Dart started looking into Gacy last year. He also wants to excavate Gacy’s mother’s yard, and the yard where Gacy once worked as a maintenance man, the Tribune reported.
Last year, his office exhumed bodies of victims and identified one, William George Bundy, who went missing at age 17, the Tribune reported.
Gacy reentered the news again in February, when friends of a Gacy victim announced they believe that he had an accomplice in the murder of their roommate, John Mowery, a 19-year-old former Marine who disappeared on the night of Sept. 25, 1977.
Witnesses suggest John Wayne Gacy had an accomplice
Attorney Robert Stephenson told msnbc.com that he conclusively believes that “this individual was involved as an accomplice at least in this one (murder) and we suspect others as well.”
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