ILLINOIS MURDER TOLL RISES TO 28: OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER, DECEMBER 30, 1978

By the last Friday of 1978 the suburban house had already given up twenty-seven bodies, and the men digging under it were not finished. When they stopped for the day, the Cook County medical examiner, Dr. Robert Stein, said there were signs of more: "There is loose dirt and what appears to be one trench along the south wall (of the home)." Another body had been dragged from the Des Plaines River, and the total connected with John Wayne Gacy now stood at twenty-eight. The Associated Press report from Des Plaines ran on the front page of Utah's Ogden Standard-Examiner on December 30, nine days after his arrest.

Six bodies came out that Friday. Five were skeletons; the sixth was "wellpreserved," and the authorities hoped to lift fingerprints from it. With them lay two silver chains and an "elephant hair bracelet." The paper describes him as a convicted sex offender, thirty-six, convicted of sodomy in Iowa several years earlier, and passes on, as things he was said to have told investigators, that twenty-seven bodies were beneath the one-story house and five in the river, and that he had confessed to killing thirty-two young men. The only charge so far was a single murder, of Robert Piest, fifteen, of Des Plaines, who had disappeared on December 11. Gacy reportedly had said that Piest's body was in the river too.

The fight over the trial had already begun. At a pre-arraignment hearing that Friday, Circuit Judge John White ordered Gacy examined to see whether he was mentally fit to stand trial for murder. Gacy was not in the courtroom; the judge said he feared for his safety, and police searched everyone who came in. Sam Amirante, his lawyer, said again that his client could never get a fair trial after the news stories and "leaks from the sheriff's department." Later that day White issued an order limiting what officials could tell reporters.

This is a running wire report from the excavation, and its numbers are the numbers of that week, passed on as reported. In the end twenty-nine bodies were recovered from the house and four from the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers, and in March 1980 a jury convicted Gacy of thirty-three murders and sentenced him to death on twelve counts; he was executed on May 10, 1994. Robert Piest's body was found in the Illinois River on April 9, 1979. The thirty-two confessed killings are the paper's "reportedly"; on the night before his arrest he had told his lawyers he was responsible for some thirty-three deaths. The Iowa sodomy conviction dated from 1968.

This issue of the Ogden Standard-Examiner, dated December 30, 1978, came out under the 1976 Copyright Act, which took effect on January 1 of that year. The story is Associated Press copy, credited "(AP)" with no staff byline, and no copyright notice was found on it, on the masthead or on any news matter in the issue. Utah Digital Newspapers, at the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library, holds the scan and rates the issue "No Copyright - United States." Under the law in force from 1978, though, a missing notice could be cured by registering the work within five years, and a registration of this issue or this AP story has not been ruled out. The citation and the library's rights statement are under the scan.

The transcription is complete and exact, and no word on the page was illegible. The story is L-shaped, running the whole length of the first column and across the tops of the next two, so the scan comes in two overlapping crops; read the first column to the end before the others. The paper's own forms are kept: "wellpreserved" with no hyphen, and, in the opening sentence, the name "John Gacy Jr." for the man better known as John Wayne Gacy.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

ANOTHER BODY FIND

Illinois Murder Toll Rises to 28

DES PLAINES, Ill. (AP) — Loose dirt and the possibility of a trench drove investigators to search for more bodies under John Gacy Jr.'s suburban home, where the remains of 27 persons already have been found.

Another body has also been dragged from the Des Plaines River, bringing the total number of bodies connected with Gacy to 28.

Gacy, a convicted sex offender, reportedly told investigators earlier that 27 bodies were beneath the one-story house and five were in the river.

MORE MAY REMAIN

But after searchers ended work for the day Friday, Cook County medical examiner Dr. Robert Stein said there are signs of more bodies.

"There is loose dirt and what appears to be one trench along the south wall (of the home)," he said.

Stein and Edmund Dobbs, chief of the Cook County sheriff's police, said five of the six bodies found Friday were skeletons, while the sixth was "wellpreserved," and that authorities may be able to recover fingerprints for identification.

Stein and Dobbs said two silver chains and an "elephant hair bracelet" were uncovered with the bodies.

Gacy has been charged with murdering 15-year-old Robert Piest of Des Plaines, who disappeared Dec. 11. Gacy reportedly has said Piest's body is in the river.

At Gacy's pre-arraignment hearing Friday, Circuit Judge John White ordered Gacy, who was not in the courtroom, to undergo an examination to see if he is mentally fit to stand trial for murder.

White said the defendant was not in court because he feared for Gacy's safety. Police searched everyone entering the courtroom.

At the hearing, Sam Amirante, Gacy's lawyer, repeated that it would be impossible for his client to get a fair trial because of news stories and "leaks from the sheriff's department."

White later issued an order limiting the information officials could give news reporters.

The 36-year-old Gacy, who was convicted of sodomy in Iowa several years ago, reportedly has confessed to slaying 32 young men after having had sexual relations with them.

Notes, kept as printed: "wellpreserved" (no hyphen). The paper calls him "John Gacy Jr." The story runs down the whole of column 1 and the tops of columns 2 and 3, which is an L-shape. So it is supplied as two crops: `ARTICLE-CROP.jpg` (the kicker, the headline and the tops of all three columns) and `ARTICLE-CROP-PART-2.jpg` (the rest of column 1). Read column 1 in full first, then columns 2 and 3. The crops overlap by a few lines in column 1. No words were illegible.