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Associated Press

John Wayne Gacy poses in a clown costume in front of his home in 1976.

Behind the mask something terribly wrong

Evidence ignored till bodies found

By Marc Wilson

CHICAGO (AP) Behind the masks of a clown, of public service, of fatherhood, was evidence of something terribly wrong with John Wayne Gacy Jr. all ignored until skeletons were found in his home.

He was convicted of practicing sodomy with a 16-year-old boy in 1968, of attempting to rape a teen-age boy in 1971 and of raping a 27year-old Chicago man last March.

At least three times, parents gave Gacy's riame in filing missing persons reports on their teen-age sons. His former mother-in-law said she had complained to Gacy that his house smelled "like dead rats."

But until last Thursday when the 36year-old construction company owner reportedly confessed to sexually molesting and murdering some 32 boys and young men Gacy lived a prosperous, prestige-filled life with ambitions of running for elective office.

Since then, 15 bodies have been found buried in Gacy's home in an unincorporated area, northwest of Chicago. Another body found in a river has been linked to the Gacy investigation.

The Chicago Tribune reported that Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein and sheriff's investigators are using a map drawn by Gacy to locate the bodies. The map, a rough floor plan of the house reportedly drawn last Friday, indicates that 27 bodies are on Gacy's property, the Tribune said. Five other bodies were reportedly thrown in a river.

"So far, the map has been completely accurate,” said one investigator quoted by the Tribune. "We have no doubt that we will find 27 bodies in the places he has shown us."

"He was very hard-working and popular in his community always giving (block) parties and dressing up like a clown," said Robert F. Martwick, the Democratic township committeeman who nominated Gacy in 1975 to an appointed job as secretary-treasurer of the Norwood Park Township Lighting Commission.

The commission maintains street lights in the unincorporated areas of the township, which is just northwest of Chicago...

Martwick said he urged Gacy for the job "based on his activity in the neighborhood. He said he wanted to make it a better place to live and said that some day he wanted to run for elected office."

Martwick told Gacy that to run for office he should become "well known in the community, to help people out." As part of that campaign, Gacy designed a clown outfit, had himself photographed in it, and entertained at parties and children's hospital wards.

'Gacy passed out cards saying he was a

Democratic precinct captain which Martwick

said Gacy never was. But Martwick said he 6 more bodies found didn't stop Gacy from using the cards "because he was such a good worker."

Martwick said he was impressed when Gacy offered to bring in a crew of young construction workers to clean up the township Democratic headquarters free. "You don't find people like that every day.”

Martwick, also a prominent Chicago lawyer, said he made no background check on Gacy. "We can't fingerprint everybody we appoint to officealthough maybe we should."

Martwick said he "wouldn't even want to guess" if Gacy hoped to gain political stature to shield the darker side of his life. "But nothing would surprise me now," Martwick said. "But I believe he just had two personalities which I never saw."

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Another mask obscuring the homosexual behavior that sent Gacy to the prison world were two marriages and two children.

"John came across very straight," Gacy's first wife told the Tribune. He was a "likable salesman who could charm it right out of you." She asked not to be identified by her current

name.

She bore two children by Gacy; but divorced him in 1969, a year after he was convicted in Iowa on the sodomy charge.

After he was paroled, he married the former Carole Hoff in 1972.

She said "he started bringing home a lot of pictures of naked men" just before they, separated. They divorced in 1976 on grounds that he was seeing other women.

The second Mrs. Gacy's mother, who asked not to be named, had lived in Gacy's home and said it always smelled "like dead rats."

When Gacy was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Dec. 3, 1968, the judge said: "Unsatisleast that will insure for some period of time factory in many respects as imprisonment is, at that you cannot seek out teen-age boys to solicit

them for immoral behavior of any kind."

If he had served the full term, Gacy would have left prison earlier this month. He was paroled in 1970.

An attempted rape charge filed against / him in February 1971 was dropped when the complainant failed to appear in court.

Lt. David Mozee, news affairs director for the Chicago police, said officers follow up every missing person report, but he noted there were 23,000 such reports at the time one of the missing was reported to have disappeared.

"We live in a democratic society and we can't go out making arrests based on what some parents think,” he said.

at John Gacy's home

DES PLAINES, Ill. (AP) The skeletal remains of six more bodies most of them face up with cloth stuffed into the mouths were found yesterday at the home of John Wayne Gacy Jr., who reportedly has confessed to the sex murders of 32 boys and young men, authorities said.

Dr. Robert Stein, Cook County medical examiner, said the six brought to 15 the number of corpses uncovered since last Thursday at the brick two-bedroom home. None of the bodies found in the house has been identified, Stein said.