Category Archives: Chicago Police
34. FAQ; or the lowdown on new evidence in the case of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy
If you’re having trouble keeping up, this digest might help. Who’s John Wayne Gacy again? He was a Chicago contractor and one of the world’s most prolific serial killers. In 1978 he was arrested, and in short order he confessed to dozens of murders and to having buried most of the victims in the crawlspace […]
33. Our Gacy project featured on Huffpo and WLUW this week
Tracy’s update on the project was featured on Huffington Post this week. And I gave a brief recap of events, past and present, on WLUW radio (at about 20:50 on show 341). Maybe interest in the case is growing? It oughta be.
32. Mike Miner’s Reader story on this project
My old colleague at the Chicago Reader has a piece on the Gacy-Dart situation.
31. Something Stinks.
Sheriff Dart announced last week that he’d done a search at the property at Miami and Elston that Bill Dorsch has identified as the likely location for additional victims of John Wayne Gacy. Gacy was the caretaker at the building for several years, and after he remarried he set his mother up in a ground-floor […]
30. Is it possible for an old case to be “too old” to bother?
A lot of cranky commenters (not here so much, but on other blogs, where this blog’s material is often reposted) say too much time has passed since Gacy’s crimes were committed to justify government spending on continuing investigations. A new old case in Miami is another in a long line of very old cases that […]
29. What Bill Dorsch Wants the “Real” Police to Know
For the last year and half Tracy Ullman and I have been working with Bill Dorsch to make public his pro bono detective work in the ongoing case of John Wayne Gacy. Ever since his suspicions about Gacy were first piqued, when Gacy was arrested in 1978, Dorsch has been gathering evidence that suggests additional […]
28. Photos from the Gacy dig in 1978-79–what it took to uncover the whole horrible truth
More from the Second City Cop blog. He’s posted a link to a Picasa set showing photos from the original excavation at Gacy’s home on Summerdale. Those poor officers must be traumatized still. If Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart does what’s necessary, there’ll soon be a similar investigation at 6114 W. Miami. Core samples, which […]
27. Second City Cop post on Marzullo has some interesting comments
SCC posted with some surprise about the Marzullo revelations. The post is at 12:02 AM today, Monday, March 5. Be sure to read the comments. I especially love the one applauding Bill Dorsch. “Billy was one of the best Gang Crimes Specialist in the city in the real police-old gang crimes unit.” I don’t often […]
26. Vito Marzullo’s Grandson and Gacy: the biggest open secret in Chicago history?
Private detective Bill Dorsch, working at the behest of no one and nothing besides his conscience and his curiosity, has uncovered strong evidence that the number of people John Wayne Gacy murdered doesn’t stop at 33. He’s pinpointed at least one likely location for burials, and he’s gathered witnesses, affidavits, and testimony and turned them […]
25. Reporting Errors in Current Gacy Coverage
When it comes to history and how it’s reported in the news, do you want to know what really happened or do you want to know what public officials want to tell you? There aren’t a lot of staff reporters left these days, so most if not all of the coverage of the continuing saga […]
24. Tracy Ullman Appearance March 4 With Gacy Arresting Officer and Attorney: This Monday in Portage Park
Next Monday, March 4, filmmaker Tracy Ullman, who’s been working with private investigator Bill Dorsch and whose findings I’ve been writing about on this blog, will be making a live appearance to discuss and screen clips from her documentary on unsolved mysteries surrounding the John Wayne Gacy murders. Ullman will talk about her reasons for making […]
23. Norwester’s Tracy Ullman appeals to parents of missing in Huffington Post
What’s the point of all this? Tracy Ullman hits the nail on the head with her piece on Huffington Post. It’s the parents. To receive updates as this investigation unfolds, please subscribe at right.
22. Sheriff Tom Dart on Gacy at the City Club 1/29
Sheriff Dart gives a talk tomorrow at the City Club of Chicago. I wonder if he’ll take questions? The big one is whether or not the investigation at Miami-Elston, for which he applied and received a search warrant, will be thorough. And even more important, whether or not anyone outside law enforcement will be allowed […]
21. Public statements raise doubt about sincerity of Dart’s intentions in search for Gacy victims at Miami-Elston
What a relief it is that Cook County’s sheriff and state’s attorney are both on record agreeing that the property at Miami and Elston deserves investigation. But after Michael Sneed (interesting choice) revealed on a recent Friday night (interesting timing) that SA Anita Alvarez had approved Sheriff Tom Dart’s search warrant application, the sheriff’s spokesman […]
20. A new Gacy investigation or more talk about investigating?
The news that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez finally responded to Sheriff Tom Dart’s request for a search warrant for 6114 W. Miami with a long-overdue thumbs up was welcome indeed. That’s not to say that we’re popping corks around here. There’s ample reason to believe that Gacy got up to no good at […]
18. Is Alvarez too connected to consider search warrant application?
Rob Wildeboer reports on WBEZ that attorneys for victims of police torture under Jon Burge–and other officers who remain unprosecuted–say that Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez is unfit to review these cases. Now a class action petition has been filed seeking new evidentiary hearings in torture cases. This handy who’s who, created by John […]
16. The real story behind Tom Dart’s change of heart: why the sheriff is inching toward searching for more Gacy victims–and what may have held him back
Those of us investigating the many perplexing loose ends in the case of John Wayne Gacy are generally pleased with Sheriff Tom Dart’s announcement this week that he’s submitted an application for a search warrant to State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. He says he hopes to obtain permission to excavate the property at Miami and Elston […]
15. Tom Dart’s baby steps do not satisfy
You’ve probably heard the news about the Peoria teen who went missing in 1978. His parents had long labored under the assumption that he’d been a victim of John Wayne Gacy, but when their DNA was put into a national database, it matched the remains of a person found by hikers in Utah in 2010. […]
14. Video: The view of Gacy from the garden apartment–chilling in hindsight
As I mentioned in our last post, Sheriff Tom Dart’s investigators recently spent a day interviewing people who lived near the intersection of Miami and Elston avenues when John Wayne Gacy had access to a small apartment building there. Bill Dorsch had collected their testimony over the years and presented it to the sheriff in […]
8. Video: “We don’t want no more bodies”: the Chicago Police’s shocking response to the possibility that John Wayne Gacy had buried additional victims at Miami and Elston
When John Wayne Gacy was arrested in 1978 and the excavations began that would reveal the remains of dozens of victims buried in and around his home, an awful realization clicked for Bruno Muczynski. As you saw in the last post, Muczynski lived for a time at 6114 W. Miami, in the small apartment building […]
5. Missing Children, “The Wire,” and the Necessity for Persistence
Today is National Missing Children’s Day, which leads some of us inevitably to thoughts of the parents and loved ones of John Wayne Gacy’s victims: The ones who frantically searched for months, sometimes years, before their boys were found in 1978 in the crawlspace under Gacy’s house or in the Des Plaines River, and the […]
4. Proof the police believed
In the summer of 1998, Bill Dorsch had retired from the Chicago Police Department and was working as a private detective for IFPC, an investigative services company run by Jim Fruin, the commander of detectives whom Dorsch had worked under at Chicago’s Area Five. The Better Government Association was looking into the horrifying robbery/murder in […]
3. Bill Dorsch’s eerie late-night encounter with John Wayne Gacy
Bill Dorsch lived just around the corner from the building at Miami and Elston where John Wayne Gacy worked as caretaker in the mid 1970s. A homicide detective with the Chicago Police Department who’d grown up in the same neighborhood, Dorsch saw Gacy around occasionally and said hello. His wife, who ran the local office […]
2. The property that may hide some of Gacy’s victims
In the 1970s John Wayne Gacy, an independent contractor in Chicago, had a sideline as a caretaker at a small apartment building at the intersection of Miami and Elston Avenues, on the city’s far northwest side. After Gacy was arrested in 1978, and it was revealed that he’d made his home into a makeshift cemetery, […]
1. Why Are We Here?
Are there others? Bill Dorsch believes there are and he’s pretty sure he knows exactly where they’re buried. This site documents the efforts of Dorsch, a career Chicago homicide detective, to find and share new evidence in the case of the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Gacy, who ran a small contracting company in […]
