CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) -
There's a new effort Wednesday morning to find possible victims of John Wayne Gacy, this time on Chicago's northwest side.
Authorities are hoping for a clue or some kind of evidence that will unlock the mystery behind unsolved identities in the John Wayne Gacy murders, or potentially find new bodies.
The spokesman for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's office confirms the sheriff submitted new requests for a search warrant.
He wants to investigate the yard behind a fence in the 6100 block of West Miami near the corner where Miami meets Elston, on the property where Gacy's mother used to live.
Gacy's mother lived in the apartment building and a Chicago police officer once claimed he saw Gacy digging in the yard in the 1970s, the time period when Gacy killed 33 men and boys.
The yard was dug up in 1998 and investigators found a marble and a saucepan. Apparently, they only excavated two places.
Attorneys involved in the original Gacy case on both sides said this is not likely to produce anything, 14 years later. But the State's Attorney's Office is considering Dart's request.
The current residents said they are well aware of the history of this property, and curious seekers can be a nuisance. But if anything leads to closure for the victims' families, they can understand the renewed interest.
Lynn Vaughn is hoping that authorities will return to the property where she once lived and fully investigate the suspicious activities she says John Wayne Gacy engaged in while he worked there as the landscaper.
"He would dig with the young boys," Vaughn explains. "He would dig trenches. Not holes, they were trenches, along Miami Avenue and Elston Avenue."
Vaughn said three months ago Sheriff's investigators interviewed her at the property, and she showed them exactly where she saw Gacy digging. Three others were interviewed in the process.
"This one time when he did the trenches in front, where they were so large, they were like graves they were very long," Vaughn said. "That was done at night because when I got up in the morning, I looked, I opened my drapes I thought ‘Oh my, God the plants are in there' and he had planted the bushes during the night."
Vaughn lived in the garden apartment and she and her husband, then a Chicago cop, often woke up to noises coming from the adjacent basement and saw Gacy's truck parked outside.
She remembers hoping police would find bodies in 1998 when they brought in experts with ground penetrating radar to search for bodies under the parking lot, which she said Gacy had repaved himself. The search turned up nothing, but has been criticized by former Chicago Police detective Bill Dorsch as a sham effort, who cites a letter from the radar company owner to that effect.
Now, any decision to proceed now rests with the Cook County
State's attorney's
office.
