Police Fail to Find Evidence in Suspected Gacy Graveyard

Police dug up a small plot of ground behind an apartment building Monday but failed to find any evidence that executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy had used it for a graveyard during a murder spree that ended 20 years ago.

Police Commander John Thomas said two holes--dug after ground-penetrating radar indicated there might be something unusual--found only such items as a marble, a flattened sauce pan, wire and roots.

Gacy, who was executed May 10, 1994, killed 33 young men and boys, burying most of their bodies in a crawl space beneath his house several miles west of the area that was the subject of Monday’s probe. He also buried some victims in his backyard and dumped others in a nearby river.

Attention was focused on the lot in a far northwest corner of the city after a former Chicago police detective said he remembered seeing Gacy near the building in 1975 with a shovel. At the time, Gacy’s mother lived in the three-story building.

Gacy, who restrained and had sex with his victims before strangling them, was arrested in December 1978.