The website John Wayne Gacy's Other Victims has revealed a bizarre connection that suggests Gacy was given a pass by Chicago Police as his violent crimes continued to mount, that one of his live-in associates was the grandson of the late Chicago City Council leader, Vito Marzullo, and that the connection may have affected investigations into Gacy's crimes.
Even Cook County prosecutor Terry Sullivan wrote, in his book Killer Clown:
Edward V. Hanrahan, the Cook County's state's attorney... immediately sought immunity for his client [the grandson]. I had worked for him. We went back and forth for months. In the end, Hanrahan relented, mostly, I think, because he was willing to trust me when I personally promised him that we'd stick to the questions he and I already discussed and that we'd protect [the grandson] as best we could on cross-examination.
Dolores Nieder, mother of known victim John Mowery, charged that the Chicago Police took Gacy into custody in 1971, aware that he had recently been paroled in Iowa after serving time on a sodomy charge. This should have sent him back to jail, but instead he launched a reign of terror that lasted another seven years. He was detained several times after that, but he was always allowed to go.
Had Gacy been investigated before his final arrest, many lives might have been spared. This was ignored by the media of the day but passionately addressed by the parents of victims. Several lawsuits naming the Chicago Police for inaction were brought by the parents of Gacy's victims -- including Mowery, John Butkovich, and John Szyc.
Parents who believe their sons may have been victims of Gacy have been denied the knowledge of what happened to their children. Why? Perhaps because it was politically expedient. And now, Chicago could be held responsible for ignoring the long-buried remains of even more murders if bodies are discovered this spring at the Miami-Elston apartment building where John Wayne Gacy was a maintenance man.
If we choose as a society to ignore corruption, we inevitably leave ourselves open to falling into these same scenarios, over and over again. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has made the right move to get a warrant to dig at Miami-Elston. He now has an opportunity to correct this terribly sad tale.