Retiring detective remembers serial killer

DES PLAINES, Ill., Sept. 30 (UPI) -- The last police officer in Des Plaines, Ill., involved with the case of serial killer John Wayne Gacy is retiring.

Detective Rafael Tovar had already been in the department for eight years when Gacy was arrested in late 1978. Investigators found the bodies of 33 boys and young men in Gacy's Norwood Park, Ill., house and the Des Plaines River.

Tovar told the Chicago Tribune he talked to Gacy several times. The last time was when he and two other detectives were taking Gacy to the Cook County Jail in Chicago.

Gacy replied "45 sounds like a good number," when Tovar asked him how many people he had really killed.

"There is no doubt in my mind there are at least 45 bodies," the detective said. Other investigators have put the number as high as 200.

Tovar said he still gets calls about the case 15 years after Gacy's execution.

While Tovar spent much of his police career as a narcotics investigator, some of his experiences were more cheerful. In 1971, he stopped to help a young man whose car had broken down and ended up delivering a baby girl. Years later, after her father died, she walked down the aisle at her wedding on Tovar's arm.

Tovar planned to turn in his shield Wednesday.