In January 1980, a month after the crawl space at 8213 West Summerdale was emptied, the chief of police in Hannibal, Missouri wrote to the FBI with a question about an old case. Franklin Neff wanted to know where John Wayne Gacy had been in 1967, because something his department had opened that year was still unresolved and Gacy's name was in every newspaper in the country.
The reply came from the Bureau's St. Louis field office on January 28, 1980, and most of what survives of this file is that letter. The FBI had checked with the police in Des Plaines, Illinois, with the Cook County Sheriff's Department and with the Cook County State's Attorney, and what it told Chief Neff was this: in 1966 and 1967 Gacy had been in Waterloo, Iowa, helping his father-in-law run several Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. He had married in Springfield, Illinois in 1964. He had been a Jaycee in Springfield and then in Waterloo. He had been in "some type of trouble" in Waterloo in 1967 that carried over into 1968 — which is how a federal letter describes the sodomy conviction that sent him to the Anamosa reformatory.
Nothing placed him in Hannibal, Missouri, ever. The letter says so twice. It also declines to interview him, on the ground that prosecution was pending in Illinois, and closes by hoping the information will be of benefit.
Gacy does not speak anywhere in this file and it contains no confession. What the Bureau's 62-5154 holds is correspondence between police agencies about a man other people were investigating: a request for assistance from Missouri, the checks the FBI made in Illinois and Iowa, the answer it sent back, and the routing paperwork that carried all of it between field offices. The letter to Chief Neff is the only substantial document in it.
Everything in this file is the Bureau's own writing - there are no clippings and nothing collected from anyone else - which makes the rights position as simple as it gets: a federal agency's records, released under FOIPA, public domain, reproduced entire. What is not simple is the provenance of our copy. It came from two separate deposits by two people who each scanned the same release, and one of the two had been filed under Manson. For the release as the Bureau issued it, request 62-5154 from the FBI.
The same file was scanned twice by two different people, and one of the two copies was sitting misfiled inside an item labelled as Manson Family FBI files, where it has no business being. We have used both, because different scans of the same paper fail in different places and a word lost in one sometimes survives in the other. One cover sheet gives the number as HQ 62-5154 and the other as 62-5154; they are the same file.
Almost none of it is readable, and the number is worth stating plainly: of roughly 3,987 words across the forty scanned pages, about 425 survive here. Two OCR engines shown the same pages agreed with each other on 29.6 per cent of words, the worst figure of anything in this category, and on three of the four sampled pages they agreed on under ten per cent. That is what an FBI teletype does to a scanner - a grid of abbreviations, stamps, routing boxes and blacked-out blocks, none of which reads as language. What is printed below is what came through as sentences. The rest is on the page as characters rather than words, and a further set of passages was dropped after they had passed the first filters: rows of FD-302 field captions - "Information furnished from File, Serial, and Page Number", "Written Communication ... By Telephone ... Orally", the physical-description row of Sex, Height and Weight - which scan as ordinary English words and read as nothing at all. A form caption has no verb in it, and that is what now separates the two.
The Bureau's own deletion notices are among the few things that scanned cleanly, and they are printed here because they are part of the record of what was withheld: pages removed entirely, material withheld as pertaining only to a third party, and documents referred to another government agency for direct response. They are quoted in the second group below, which comes from the misfiled scan.
Reference is madeto your previous request for investigative assistance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in determiningthe whereabouts of JohnWayne Gacyduring 1967, with regard to his possible involvement in an investigation initiated in 1967 by the Hannibal, Missouri Police 4 Department, the CookCounty, Illinois Sheriff's Department
and States Attorney's Office. Through contact with the Des Plaines, Illinois Police Departmentit was determinedthat I previousinvestigationconducted by that departmentindicated thatGacyhadassistedhis father-in-lawn the operationof I several Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants in the Waterloo, Iowa area during 1966 and 1967, at which time Gacy mother in Little Rock, Arkansas.
affiliated with the Jaycees in Springfield, Illinois and iwaterloo, Iowa, although no information had been developed by 1.1 that artment indicatin that Gacy 1 had ever resided in Hannibal, Missouri. Further, it is believed that an interview of-Gacyis not deemed feasible at this time in view of pending prosecutive proceedings.
I Information which was also provided by the Cook County, Illinois States Attorney's Office indicated that Gacy wasmarried in Springfield, Illinois in 1964 and, following.
fhis moveto Waterloo, Iowa in1966, he was involved in some type of trouble in Waterloo, Iowain 1967, whichcarried over into 1968.
which time he recalled that Gacy had been previously employed at the Roberts Brothers Clothing Store in Springfield, Illinois 1966 at which time Gacymovedto Waterloo, Iowa of threeKent 5 wherehe operation FriedChicken Restaurants his further advised that, to for thenextseveral years.
reis 5 was employed in Hannibal, Missouri.
No other information of that value was developed which indicated Gacy has ever been in Hannibal, Missouri at any time in the past.
II trust that the above information will be of benefit to your department in connection with this investigative matter," and its, indeed, a pleasure to have had the opportunity
By reairtel, Chic ago was re quested to determine if
EXACT DATE OF BIRTH UNKNOWN, SUBJECTS ARREST MADE
Page(s) withheld entirely at this location in the file. One or more of the following statements, where indicated, explain this deletion.
exemptions indicated below with no segregable material Deletions were made pursuant to the available for release to you.
Information pertained only to a third party with no reference to you or the subject of your request.
Information pertained only to a third party. Your name is listed in the title only.
Documents originated with another Government These documents were referred to that for review and direct response to you.
Pages contain information furnished by another Government You will be
advised by the FBI as to the releasability of this information following our consultations with the other