I’ve spent years on the Hannibal missing boys story. It’s generated two books that have been embraced by readers. I experienced the drama in May 1967 as the race-against-time cave search unfolded in south Hannibal. In fact, it was this event that led me to become a television journalist and, later, a writer and author.
As a thirteen-year-old I watched, not fully able to fathom the tragedy in its full measure. Suddenly friends had vanished. The woods and hills that were our playgrounds suddenly turned ominous and foreboding.
This has been a difficult story given the dark and deadly facts. I want to thank some folks for helping along the way with expertise, insight and knowledge. FBI-trained Gina Bradshaw, Former LA Police Officer Steve Sederwall, Missouri Deputy State Geologist and expert caver Jerry Vineyard, now deceased. Dozens of cavers and speleohistorians were helpful and encouraging as I pursued the first book, Lost Boys of Hannibal.
My latest book, Souls Speak, brought three psychics into the investigative fold and they saw astonishing things, much of which was later confirmed by John Wayne Gacy’s confession on May 9, 1994, just hours before he was executed by lethal injection. And thanks to Shawn Jackson for stepping forward and revealing Gacy’s stunning deathbed confession, he heard.
We know the lost boys’ shared fate, and with that we can have a measure of closure on this decades-old mystery.
Many thanks to the readers for your support, encouragement and prayers.
We finally have closure in the vexing half century mystery about the disappearance of three Hannibal boys in the spring of 1967. The new edition of Souls Speak, now available on Amazon, has the astonishing conclusion of this terrible tragedy.
Serial killer John Wayne Gacy revealed his just-discovered confession to a friend the evening of May 9, 1994 just a few hours before he was executed in Illinois. It’s a riveting read about the sad final hours of the boys lives.
We pray this news brings some closure in the case. Alas, the boys were not lost in a cave beneath their southside neighborhood. Evil came to town and took them.
My second book, Souls Speak, fingered serial killer John Wayne Gacy as the likely killer of the three boys in Hannibal, who vanished on May 10, 1967. Gacy was convicted and put to death for the Chicago-area murders of thirty-three young men and boys, most of whom were buried beneath his suburban Chicago home between 1972 and 1978.
The initial story about the boys’ disappearance is documented in my book Lost Boys of Hannibal, about the frantic race-against-time search for the trio in a cave network beneath their Hannibal neighborhood. No evidence of the boys was ever found, despite a month-long search by hundreds of people, including the nation’s top cavers.
Later, my second book, Souls Speak, details the extraordinary supernatural story about how Gacy met the boys, abducted them and killed and buried them south of Hannibal, according to three experience psychics across the country who all essentially tell the same story.
Now, some never-before-heard audio clips of John Gacy talking about his murders are being shared on a Chicago-based podcast, developed and hosted by Bob Motta, the son of one of Gacy’s defense attorneys, Robert Motta. Son Bob Jr. received the box of audio cassettes as a gift on his 21st birthday.
In the tapes, Gacy discusses his crimes and feelings for the victims, often contradicting himself while trying to mislead his own attorneys.
The podcast and the Gacy audio clips can be heard at Defensediaries.com.
The tapes are chilling as you hear Gacy matter-of-factly discuss his evil deeds devoid of any emotion or sense of wrong-doing, often blaming his alternate personality – Jack Hanley – for some of the killings.
Stay tuned. I’ll be writing more about this new development in coming days.
What a journey it has been. My first book, Lost Boys of Hannibal: Inside America’s Largest Cave Search, chronicled one of the nation’s most vexing mysteries. In May of 1967, three Hannibal, Missouri boys, two of whom were childhood friends of mine, went missing after being seen near caves exposed during highway construction. Missouri is the Cave State, with nearly 5,000 identified caves, and Hannibal’s underside is criss-crossed with many dark, narrow passages. Despite a month-long search by the nation’s top cavers, the three boys were never found.
We fast forward to 2018.
I wrote a follow-on book, Souls Speak: Missing Children Reveal their Serial Killer from Beyond, after three evidential psychics identified the boys as the abductees and victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. My year-long investigation revealed that all three psychics independently identified the precise location in Ralls County Missouri where they say the bodies of the three boys are buried. Gacy went on to be put to death in the 1990s for the murders of 33 young men and boys in the Chicago area between in 1972 and 1978. Souls Speak laid out a credible theory that placed Gacy in Hannibal in May 1967. He lived in Waterloo, Iowa and drove through Hannibal to visit his mother and sister in Little Rock Arkansas on Mother’s Day.
Now, new information in this remarkable paranormal, true crime story.
We discovered more evidence about Gacy’s travels to Hannibal, and his possible role in the boys’ murders, during a conversation with Shawn Jackson, a cousin to Gacy’s nephew Ray Kasper. In February 2021, while in Hannibal for a family medical matter, New Mexico resident Steve Sederwall, a retired law officer and a childhood friend of Craig Dowell’s, tracked down Jackson who lived in Hannibal for several years in the 1980s and 1990s, and now resides in a small-town west of St. Louis.
Sederwall told me that in a phone conversation with Jackson, he broached the topic of John Wayne Gacy and his possible travels through Hannibal in 1967. Jackson readily acknowledged Gacy regularly drove through Hannibal in the 1960s and 1970s, en route to visit his mother and sister in Little Rock, Arkansas. “He always stayed at the Holiday Inn,” Jackson told Sederwall. This is a big break in our ongoing investigation as it proves Gacy was regularly travelling to Hannibal. The Holiday Inn where Gacy overnighted was located on the western edge of town, just east of Highway 61, the route Gacy would have driven from his home in Waterloo, Iowa, four hours away by car.
When the topic of Hannibal’s three lost boys was mentioned by Sederwall, Jackson openly acknowledged that he, too, had wondered whether his depraved distant relative might have been involved in their abductions and deaths. Jackson spoke to Gacy occasionally at Menard Prison and once even raised the subject. “I asked him if he knew anything about those three boys in Hannibal who went missing. He was evasive about the matter and quickly changed the subject,” Jackson related. It seems clear Gacy was uneasy with the topic and didn’t want to discuss the matter with one of the few people with whom he still maintained a semblance of a normal relationship.
As time progresses, we’re discovering more about Gacy’s travels and his increasingly likely role in the murders of three children taken and dispatched in the bloom of their lives. Shawn Jackson’s admissions are important additional pieces to the puzzle.
For more information, visit John Wingate’s author blog CardiffHill.com, and visit him on Facebook (AuthorJohnWingate) and Twitter (@CardiffHill).
Both of John Wingate’s books were published by Calumet Editions, and are available on Amazon.com.
It’s a tight squeeze for cavers who are the first to enter Murphy’s Cave in 53 years.
The historic Murphy’s Cave in Hannibal, MO., the site of the 1967 search for three lost boys, as documented in my books Lost Boys of Hannibal and Souls Speak, is the focus of a new effort to better map the maze cave network. Nearly two miles of the complex cave passages were first mapped between 1959 and 1967, and that map was very helpful during the 67 search. Now this new effort, with new technology, promises to provide a much more accurate snapshot of this most complex maze cave. The effort began earlier this month by a team of cavers led by Kirsten Alvey-Mudd. Here is her first report!
“It’s not often one gets the opportunity to be the first person in over 50 years to enter a legendary cave in their own hometown. Especially one with as infamous a history as Murphy’s Cave in Hannibal, Mo. There’s few who grew up in Hannibal of recent decades not familiar with the Lost Boys who disappeared on May 10, 1967 and were suspected to be lost or buried in Murphy’s Cave passage while blasting of bluff for the construction of Highway 79 was being conducted. The largest cave rescue in US history unfolded involving cave rescuers from all over the nation, but no evidence of the boys or their bodies were ever found within the cave. After thorough search and the completion of a cave map, respect and concerns resulted in it’s entrance being blasted, filled shut and seemingly sealed forever.
Fast forward 50+ years to October 2, 2020. The new landowners of the Old Quarry House property (along the edge of where inaccessible cave passage lay silent beneath the hills) is removing a woodchuck den and building a retaining wall when they accidentally backhoe into passage just 5ft inside the hillsides edge. Cold air is blasting from the hole.Hannibal being the childhood home of MoBat Executive Director Kirsten Alvey-Mudd, she made contact with the landowner to discuss permitted access to assess stability for exploration. She and Mark Twain Grotto alum Dave Mahan assessed safety and tried to estimate where this new entrance might lie on the existing 1967-69 cave map on file. Dave conducted a surface survey and took measurements from where the original barrel entrance once existed.On October 3, a remote control car with camera was used to explore passage conditions. We began assembling an exploration team.October 22, Kirsten came ahead to set logistics with the landowner and pre-dug the entrance for better access into the first 3ft pocket not far inside.
On October 24, a 4 man team of MoBat volunteers Quintin Heaton, Desarae Garcia, Jim Mudd, Kirsten and the owner were the first humans to enter the cave in 50+ years. Much digging using small hand trowels and hoes was needed to make both entry and passage feasible. The route is small, requiring mostly belly crawling at approximately 2ft wide and most between 6 inches and 1.5 ft tall with a few small areas about 3ft tall. 56 2gal size buckets (5gal won’t fit in the passage!) of clay were removed to facilitate exploration far enough to see that we could indeed access main passages and were not in an area collapsed off by the blasting.
We dug for 4 hours to make 43ft of belly crawling passage navigable. Dead end side passages totaling another 46ft were measured along the route for attempting to locate the exact area on the existing map. We stopped at a T junction with a 90° angle turn which will require additional digging of the 8 inch high passage to reach more comfortable 3ft tall passage that can be seen approximately 10ft away. She’s blowing hard and going.Not unlike Mark Twain and Cameron Caves, Murphy’s is a complex maze cave of fissures in the limestone characterized by numerous intersections. Murphy’s passages are MUCH smaller, the majority of them being no more then 2 feet wide and 1-2ft high. Progress will be slow going as there is little room to work in or dump dug debris. All dug clay must be removed all the way back to the entrance and dumped outside to keep from blocking the passage behind us. We are still unsure how much of the originally mapped passage can be accessed since the blasting which sealed the original entrance and additional blasting which created highway 79.This project and it’s potential re-mapping will NOT be open to the public as it will require skilled and experienced cavers.
Caver Kirsten Alvey-Mudd.
The owner asks that individuals please respect the on-going construction and restoration of the Old Quarry House on the property and NOT stop by to disturb work crews, take photos or ask questions. There is little to see. A board covers the entrance until a proper angle iron cave gate can be constructed in the near future. This is a highly dangerous site.NO human remains or evidence of the missing Lost Boys was seen. Only a few small animal bones and an old spike were found in the passage. Cave crickets, several species of spiders, armadillidiidae and small isopods were the only living creatures seen.We will keep the public updated after each future expedition.” Thanks to Kirsten Alvey-Mudd
It will take several months to remap Murphy’s Cave. The maze network was first mapped between 1959 and 1967 when nearly two miles of passages were explored.
Want to do a good deed? Please ask your local library to carry copies of my books, Lost Boys of Hannibal and Souls Speak. When libraries carry these books, people who cannot afford copies can still get a chance to read them. So anything you can do to help get these books in YOUR library is much appreciated!
My books, Lost Boys of Hannibal and Souls Speak (below) now have new, compelling covers. The graphic artist, Jeffrey Mardis is a leading book cover designer. (Ignore the price label; the price of the books is still $16.99 each.)
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding writing, superb book Reviewed in the United Kingdom
Excellent book. The writing style is gripping without becoming sensationalist. At times the descriptions of the cave networks were so well constructed that I felt claustrophobic and uncomfortable while reading. The author made me feel like I was almost experiencing what the lost boys and rescue teams went through. I highly recommend this book to anyone. I’m not a caver, it’s simply an enthralling true story very well told.
On July 15, 2018, I called Lynnie, the oldest sister of the two missing Hoag boys. Her first words were, “John! Gacy killed them! They were his first kills!”
With that startling and chilling statement, the conversation launched me on a year-long odyssey that points to serial killer John Wayne Gacy as the man who abducted, tortured, and strangled three Hannibal boys, then buried them in a single hastily dug grave. The location, preserved with GPS coordinates, is only a few miles from where Joey and Billy Hoag, and their friend Edwin Dowell, were last seen on the early evening of May 10, 1967.
My latest book, Souls Speak: missing children reveal their serial killer from beyond is the product of the year-long probe, conducted with three experienced clairvoyants who peered across the boundary between this world and the heavenlies and connected with the etheric spiritual energy of the boys and Gacy himself.
The Hoag boys were friends of mine, and over these past five decades their families and many friends have grieved them.
Writing about the missing boys incident has brought its challenges. A relative of Edwin Dowell has sent threatening messages promising harm to me and my family. The relative, only a little boy when the three Hannibal boys went missing, is still engaging in juvenile behavior born of trauma. My team’s sole goal is to find the boys so they may be put to rest.
