The latest John Wayne Gacy victims’ search has turned up nothing, according to the local sheriff’s department. The serial killer is known for killing at least 33 men in the 1970s.
The majority of their bodies were found under his house and in a river, but detectives wanted to see if there were any more bodies at his mother’s residence.
The local sheriff’s department used two FBI cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar equipment to search for victims under Gacy’s late mother’s apartment complex. But their search yielded no results .
But despite the disappointing ending to the latest search, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who reopened the Gacy investigation two years ago, has no second thoughts about his hunt for more clues. Dart added, “When do you stop caring about victims and their families?”
He added that the search for more victims “could bring closure, peace, for people,” if the searches yield more results. Eight unidentified victims have been exhumed so far in the hopes that they can be identified by DNA testing. Dart has also sent some of Gacy’s blood to a national law enforcement database to see if his DNA matches other unsolved homicides.
John Wayne Gacy was convicted of 33 murders and sentenced to death for 12 of them in March of 1980. He spent 14 years on death row before being executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994. But despite Gacy’s execution and the murder convictions, detectives are still combing through a massive amount of evidence gathered before Gacy was captured in 1978.
Gacy, a contractor, moved around through “15 to 20 states,” according to one detective. That information could lead to more bodies, if the serial killer murdered outside his home area. The sheriff believes he did. Dart explained, “You’d have to be the most naive person in the world to think those [33 victims] were the only people he killed.”
That thinking brought investigators on their latest Gacy victim search to the serial killer’s late mother’s home. It is not yet known where else detectives could search to uncover more potential victims of John Wayne Gacy.
