Mass sex-murders toll rises horrifically

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 6

Mass sex-murders toll rises horrifically

NZPA-Reuter Chicago

The Chicago police said yesterday that they had dug up nine bodies so far underneath the house of an exconvict, strengthening fears that they have discovered one of the biggest mass sex murders in American history.

The police are holding a 36-year-old building contractor, John Wayne Gacy, and have charged him with one murder. He told the police he had sexually molested and strangled 32 young males in a three-year orgy of killing. j “This could turn out to be!

one of the most horrible crimes this century,” said the Cook County Medical Examiner, Dr Robert Stein, as he supervised the removal of skeletons from under Gacy’s modest yellow-brick house in surburban Chicago.

The police said Gacy,| twice-divorced, and once] jailed for sodomy, had told! them he had buried 26 of his I victims beneath his house ini north-western Norridge, just] outside the Chicago city] limits. He said he had dumped some bodies in nearby rivers and lakes. I The remains of five bodies] I were found last week, and'

four more were uncovered yesterday. The police are checking through lists of missing persons, and have received hundreds of telephone inquiries from all parts of the United States and as far away as Britain and Australia from

, | anxious parents trying to ; trace sons who have disappeared. ;l “We have had 50 or 60 11 calls in the first three hours . jthis morning,” said one I police officer. II Gacy at the week-end was i transferred to a prison hosIpital for medical tests after >]his lawyer said he had a I'heart problem.