Former investigators back on Gacy case

CHICAGO (MCT) — Edward Pavlik’s work on the John Wayne Gacy case more than 30 years ago helped fuel a lengthy career and sealed his reputation. The forensic dentist lectures across the country on identifying victims of the notorious serial killer and uses the case when teaching forensic dentists and police.

“It hasn’t left me,” he said.

Phil Bettiker, on the other hand, does not think often of Gacy. One of the lead Cook County sheriff’s detectives on the case, Bettiker retired from the department in 1988 and went into the hazardous waste disposal business.

“It was a job. I did it,” he said of the investigation.

But decades later their work on the case has brought them, as well as other detectives and prosecutors, right back to Gacy, as the sheriff’s office tries anew to identify the bodies of eight victims who have remained unknown. It is an effort that, in a way, marries old memories and new forensic techniques, as detectives such as Bettiker marvel at how DNA has revolutionized criminal justice.

Pavlik, a south suburban dentist, is helping again with identifications. Bettiker and former Cook County prosecutor Robert Egan, who now works at the sheriff’s office, are offering guidance on the finer points from the original investigation. For all of them, time has shifted, old clues and boxed-up evidence are being reviewed, and Gacy is back.

“I had pretty much put it out of my mind,” said Egan, now compliance officer for the sheriff’s office.

For a time, those who worked on the Gacy investigation shared landmark events: Gacy’s conviction in 1980, the closing of avenues of appeal in the years after and, in 1994, his execution by lethal injection.

Gacy was connected to the murders of 33 boys and young men, all but one of them strangled.

But as they retired or took new jobs — and particularly after Gacy’s death — they scattered. Egan, who had witnessed Gacy’s execution, occasionally dusted off the lecture and slide show that he and former prosecutor William Kunkle have used. The investigation receded even further for Bettiker as he embarked on a second career.

Then, earlier this year, after Sheriff Tom Dart decided to launch his new effort to identify those eight unidentified victims, Egan called Bettiker. The two men had worked together during the original investigation. Bettiker was one of the first detectives to come upon bodies in the crawl space of Gacy’s squat brick home, at 8213 W. Summerdale Ave., in Norwood Park Township, and Egan was one of the prosecutors at Gacy’s trial.

“He said, ‘Gacy’s coming back,’ ” Bettiker recalled.

Pavlik, who for years was the chief of forensic sciences for the county, has a CV dotted with references to Gacy: lectures he has given, panels he has appeared on, articles in which he was mentioned, awards.

Pavlik, too, got a call, although he had an additional issue to deal with: A mother of one victim was challenging the identification that Pavlik and a radiologist made based on dental records and X-rays. Sherry Marino wanted DNA testing to confirm the identification of her 14-year-old son, Michael; a judge granted Marino’s request.

Bettiker said he was the sheriff’s officer who notified Marino of her son’s identification. He said he feels bad for her but, like Pavlik, is confident that DNA testing will show the identification of her son was correct.

So as sheriff’s officials exhumed the skeletal remains of the eight victims, the veterans of the case met with the current detectives to help sort out clues and, when they can, offer advice. For some of them, their inability to identify all of Gacy’s victims was a piece of unfinished business that had long nagged at them.

For Bettiker, who worked in an era when X-rays and dental records were considered state-of-the-art and said his first in-depth knowledge of DNA came during the O.J. Simpson trial, the window into today’s forensics has taught him much. It has also prompted thoughts of other old cases, some of them unsolved.

“I’m learning all kinds of new things about what they can do now,” he said. “I go to bed at night and think, ‘Boy, if I had these capabilities 30 years ago, we might have had some guilties instead of some not guilties.’ ”