Des Plaines police investigator recalls working infamous Gacy case

For years, when Rafael Tovar and his wife Lynn came home from work they would refrain from engaging in the typical couple banter opening with the words, "How was your day, dear?"

Tovar, a 39-year veteran of the Des Plaines Police Department, was one of the criminal investigators who worked the case of the suburbs' most infamous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy Jr. Lynn, then an Elk Grove Village police officer, specialized in child sex abuse cases.

Recollecting his experience digging up bodies buried in the crawl space under Gacy's Norwood Park Township home, Tovar said, "That's not the kind of crap you want to go home and talk about."

"You've just got to like let it go. You try not to get too involved in it. She knew what I went through. I knew what she went through. We kept it to a minimum."

Tovar, 65, the only detective who worked the Gacy case who was still on the Des Plaines police force, retired Wednesday.

During his career, Tovar worked many high-profile narcotics cases and he has the distinction of being the department's first Spanish-speaking police officer.

Yet, it's always the Gacy case he gets called on to talk about, mostly by students writing papers on serial killers or when he guest lectures at Lewis University where Lynn Tovar now teaches criminal justice.

"It was probably the most infamous case I worked on, with the worldwide attention it got, and continues to be in the news to this day," Tovar said.

Out of the 14,315 days Tovar served with the department, the day that stuck out was when the Des Plaines parents of 15-year-old Robert Piest, Gacy's final victim, came in to ask about their son who disappeared Dec. 11, 1978.

"At that time, a missing person's report wasn't high priority," Tovar said. "It's a little bit more so now. Before, nobody would even do anything for 24 hours. Most of the time the kids would show up within 24 hours. Obviously, this turned out to be very different."

Des Plaines investigators came across Gacy's name while checking into who Piest last had contact with at the Des Plaines drugstore where he worked.

Police ran a criminal-background check which turned up Gacy's 1968 child sodomy conviction for which he served 18 months in an Iowa prison.

"It piqued our interest in him right away," Tovar said.

Tovar could never have imagined what the investigation would unearth in the days that followed. He was among 10 officers who spent their days knee deep in bones digging up decomposing bodies from that crawl space.

"Probably the most disturbing (part) was after the coroner told us that some of these kids were probably alive when they were buried," Tovar said.

Tovar said police officers are trained to separate themselves from even the most gruesome crimes. He consciously developed a habit to mentally turn off the police officer inside.

"I used to have a little trick," Tovar said. "I had a big coin in my pocket. When I got home, I would throw it in the ashtray. That's when work stopped. I didn't want to bring it home where it festers with you."

Still, an experience like the Gacy case "changes you a little bit," he said.

Tovar said upon seeing the bodies of Gacy's young victims being pulled out, a firefighter had remarked "no child is safe."

"That kind of stuck with me," Tovar said. "That's why I'm glad I don't have any (kids) because of what's out there."

Twenty-nine bodies were discovered around Gacy's home, and four more bodies including Piest's were found in the Des Plaines River, Tovar said.

Gacy was convicted of murdering the 33 men and boys and executed in 1994.