EXCLUSIVE: Rafael Tovar believes that John Wayne Gacy is responsible for killing more victims than the 33 we know today.
One of America’s most notorious serial killers is the subject of a new series of documentaries about true crimes on the Peacock streaming platform entitled “John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise”. The show follows how the Chicago native was able to manipulate and attract young men and boys before brutally murdering them.
The documentary features rare encounters with investigators, family members, as well as one of his closest confidants and his second ex-wife. In addition, it includes a rare 3.5-hour prison interview with Gacy himself before his execution in 1994, at the age of 52.
Tovar, a former police detective from Des Plaines, participated in the special. He was deeply involved in the investigation and spent days dismantling Gacy’s house, exhuming the remains of the tracking space. Tovar remembered a conversation he had with Gacy as they headed for Cook County Jail.
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John Wayne Gacy was an amateur clown in his local community.
(Marty Zielinski)
“I asked him if there were more victims,” Tovar told Fox News. “I said, ‘How many people have you really killed?’ And he said, ‘Well, I told my lawyer this number – 30 and something. And you got about 32, 33 or 34. But 45 seems like a good number. “
“It surprised me a little,” continued Tovar. “But I kept my cool. Then I said, ‘Well, John, where are they? Let’s get them back.’ And he said, “No, I’m not going to tell you. This is for you to find out. You are the detectives.” He would play this little game with you. But I know there are probably more bodies out there, because he was very real before. “
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Serial killer John Wayne Gacy posed for the Des Plaines Police Department photo in December 1978.
(Photo: Bureau of Prisons / Getty Images)
Jimmy Haakenson was among the dozens found in the crawling space of Gacy’s Chicago area home in 1978. In 2017, the Cook County Sheriff’s Department announced that the 16-year-old’s remains were identified thanks to DNA technology that it was not available at the time.
The teenager was the second person identified by authorities since Sheriff Tom Dart in 2011 ordered the exhumation of the remains of eight unidentified victims. He asked families of young people who disappeared in the 1970s to provide DNA samples. The first was William Bundy, a Chicago construction worker, whose remains were identified weeks after the exhumations.
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Sheriff Tom Dart and Detective Sergeant Jason Moran announce on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Chicago, the identification of yet another victim of John Wayne Gacy, James Byron Haakenson, of Minnesota.
(Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Many of Gacy’s victims were buried under his home. But others were thrown into a river.
“I think the only thing we can probably do now is to identify the six remaining victims,” admitted Tovar. “In the past two years, two of them have been identified. I don’t know how you would link this to Gacy if more remains were found, unless you somehow had your DNA. My sad opinion is that we will probably never know.”
Gacy is remembered as one of the most bizarre killers in history, mainly because of his work as a local amateur clown. The Chicago area contractor convinced boys and boys to come to his home by promising them construction work or sex. There, many of his victims were handcuffed and raped repeatedly. Most were strangled after Gacy tricked them into allowing him to put a rope around their necks.
As Gacy killed so many people, his space to crawl was filled, which led him to pile up the bodies.
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Photos are shown of boys and youth whose bodies have been definitively identified as victims of John Wayne Gacy.
(Getty Images)
“I think he liked the power of killing people, the power of death,” said Tovar. “It made him feel like a god. And I think it affected him. And he was smart. He ran away for a long time. I acted like ‘John, tell me about this guy’. And it worked. He loved to talk. It made him feel powerful. “
The deaths lasted more than five years throughout the 1970s. However, Gacy was not arrested until he became suspicious for the death of Robert Piest, a 15-year-old boy to whom Gacy had offered a $ 5 construction job. per hour. The police executed a search warrant at Gacy’s house and his first victim was found in the vacancy. In 1980, he was convicted of killing 33 and sentenced to death.
Tovar said that Gacy never expressed remorse.
“Obviously, the guy was a person who had no moral compass,” he said. “I mean, killing someone for him was like scaring a fly from his food. It wasn’t something that affected him. When it came time to dig up the basement, I think he was more concerned about our messing up his carpets.”
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Photos are shown of boys and youth whose bodies have been definitively identified as victims of John Wayne Gacy.
(Getty Images)
According to Tovar, there are “several factors” that explain why it took so long for Gacy to finally be caught.
“At that time, in the early 1970s, the gay population did not have the respect they now have,” he said. “So if someone from gay [community] was killed, there was no such overwhelming shouting to try to solve the case. “
“In addition, he chose many street boys and fugitives that no one would miss,” continued Tovar. “So he went unnoticed. His mistake was choosing a boy like Robert Piest, a fully American boy who was about to become a Boy Scout.
“So his disappearance immediately caught the eye. And his parents pressured the police to do something about it at the time, too. I mean, many police officers didn’t care about a missing persons report for at least 24 hours because most children would come back the next day. “
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Investigators carry the remains of a body found under the garage floor of John Wayne Gacy’s home on December 22, 1978, in Chicago.
(Karen Engstrom / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
According to Tovar, investigators initially focused on Piest’s disappearance. It wouldn’t be until the second search warrant when they started to find the bodies.
“There was not much expectation,” he said. “So you were surprised by that. And every day that we were there, we dug up more bodies.”
Tovar also scoffed at theories that Gacy did not act alone.
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John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
(Getty Images)
“I don’t really believe that,” he said. “For Gacy, it wouldn’t have been difficult to attract a young man to his home for a drink or some marijuana. He said to them, ‘Let me show you a magic trick.’ He was handcuffed and released quickly. He offered to show them how to do the trick. Now they are incapacitated. As they struggled to free themselves, he said, ‘The trick is, you have to have the key. ‘And then he would easily throw a rope around their necks and kill them. “
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Arid terrain is an uncomfortable reminder of the “house of horrors”, home to John Wayne Gacy, who used to be there. Prosecutors say he lured 33 young people to his home and killed them, burying 29 in a lining. After weeks of digging for the bodies, the house was demolished.
(Photo: Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
Gacy was executed by lethal injection at the Stateville Correctional Center. Today, Tovar hopes that the documentary will show people how important it is to be aware of the environment.
“John got mixed up,” he said. “People would probably say, ‘This is the guy who throws these parties every summer.’ People don’t pay attention to that kind of thing as they should. People keep asking me how rare serial killers are. Well, in my day, there were actually two serial killers … So you never know where they are. “
The Associated Press contributed to this report.