John Wayne Gacy Detectives Could Only Uncover Bodies With Their Hands and Gardening Tools

Serial killer John Wayne Gacy left a gruesome trail of bodies behind in his wake of terror. His killings inspired true crime documentaries, series, and a slew of horror movies. However, the real case continues to haunt the victims’ families and the law enforcement that crossed paths with the case. Detective Rafael Tovar recalled his experience uncovering Gacy’s victims’ bodies using gardening tools and his bare hands for a very specific reason.

John Wayne Gacy had 29 bodies around his residence

Gacy reportedly killed at least 33 young boys and men over the course of his rampage. His methods typically included asphyxiation or strangulation. Gacy lured his victims to his house and convinced them to put on handcuffs or to watch him perform a magic trick. He buried 26 victims in the crawl space of his home, but according to The Irish Sun, detectives discovered 29 bodies across Gacy’s Illinois residence in total. This didn’t include the bodies left in other locations.

Law enforcement could only identify 28 of Gacy’s victims’ bodies. Their ages ranged from 14 to 21 years old. However, the identities of the other victims remain unknown as of 2022. After the police obtained a confession from Gacy, they conducted multiple searches, which yielded a staggering number of bodies.

Detective Rafael Tovar was afraid to break the bodies of John Wayne Gacy’s victims

Tovar told The Irish Sun that police followed up on a report that a missing 15-year-old boy named Robert Piest disappeared after going home with Gacy on Dec. 11, 1978. They didn’t initially find anything, but they did catch the smell of decomposition. Des Plaines police returned with another search warrant, discovering the beginning of Gacy’s victims’ bodies.

They found a left femur, but they knew that it couldn’t be Piest because he only disappeared 10 days prior to the search. However, their search continued to yield more femurs that indicated that they walked into something much more grotesque than they expected.

Gacy knew where the bodies were and pointed them out to the officers because he didn’t want them to “dirty up” the carpets. They were in bad condition, as some of the victims’ heads detached as a result of the way that the serial killer strangled them. As a result of their condition, they couldn’t use shovels to dig.

“It was very wet, very moist down there,” Tovar said. “You couldn’t dig with a shovel because we were afraid of breaking a bone or knocking some teeth out because that was the only way we were going to identify them, so you dug with a very small gardening tool, and then you used your hands.”

Tovar continued: “You couldn’t wear gloves because the moment you stuck your hands into the mud, you pulled your hand out and it would suck the gloves right off you. So, by that time, we just decided to go at it. We didn’t have all the equipment we have nowadays.”

The case still haunts detectives

It took six months for them to go through the entire home, which affected them deeply. A couple of the men on Tovar’s team couldn’t handle the emotional toll that it took to excavate the bodies over the course of such a long period of time. Tovar continued to meet up with some of the members of his team as a form of “a bit of therapy” for them.

“It was a case of a lifetime,” Tovar said. “To me, it meant he stopped killing more people and was made to pay for his sins.”