A year ago today, Souls Speak became real.

It was on this date a year ago, that 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 new 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. My team’s sole goal is to find the boys so they may be put to rest. Idle threats will not deter us because there are many people supportive of these efforts, even if this relative does not share our pursued goal.

Quincy Herald-Whig article on Souls Speak

New book suggests serial killer’s involvement in missing boys case

By Edward Husar Herald-Whig

Posted: Jul. 14, 2019 12:01 am

HANNIBAL, Mo. — A new book released last week puts a surprising new ending on a 52-year-old Hannibal story.

Two years ago, Hannibal native John Wingate released his first book about the disappearance of three Hannibal boys who were last seen on May 10, 1967, near some cave openings on Hannibal’s south side.

The boys’ disappearance triggered a massive search. More than 200 cavers from across the country converged on Hannibal to explore the labyrinth of underground passageways, including Murphy’s Cave and some newly opened cave entrances where road construction was taking place along what is now Mo. 79.

Wingate’s book, “Lost Boys of Hannibal: Inside America’s Largest Cave Search,” noted that the boys — Edwin Craig Dowell, 14, and brothers Joel Hoag, 13, and Billy Hoag, 11 — were never found despite month-long search efforts.

Many people, including Wingate, speculated that the boys likely became trapped or smothered deep underground by tons of collapsed rock after cave walls and ceilings became cracked and unstable from explosive charges used by road-building crews.

But now, in a new book, Wingate is advancing a different theory — one that suggests the boys may have been victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of murdering 33 boys and men in the Chicago area between 1972 and 1978.

This theory contends Gacy encountered the Hannibal boys near the caves, offered them a ride home, then drove them to a nearby wooded area and assaulted, killed and buried them.

“For 52 years, the consensus has been that the three Hannibal boys were lost in a calamitous collapse inside the cave,” Wingate said. “But now this whole situation has rewritten that history and changed the ending from ‘missing’ to ‘murder.’ “

Wingate expounds on the Gacy theory in his new book, “Souls Speak: Missing children reveal their serial killer from beyond,” which became available Wednesday on Amazon.com.

Wingate said he started investigating the theory a year ago — around the same time he was making stops in Hannibal and Quincy, Ill., to sign copies of his first book.

That’s when he began hearing separately from three women, ages 26 to 31, who claim to be psychics. All three suggested they had similar visions that Gacy was to blame for the disappearance and deaths of the Hannibal boys.

“The psychics maintain that the tree boys were tortured, sodomized, suffocated, strangled and buried in one grave,” Wingate said.

“I had no idea this was coming,” he said. “This is a story that found me.”

Wingate said his first encounter with one of the psychics came last spring while he was doing a book signing at the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal for “Lost Boys.” While giving a presentation, he noticed a woman in the audience was crying and visibly upset.

Wingate later learned the woman was a psychic from southern Missouri who reportedly “saw the three boys’ spirit energy manifest up front when I was speaking,” he said. “That was the start of it.”

Several weeks later, Wingate said, he received a call from a sister of the Hoag brothers who told him she had just visited a psychic in Hannibal who told her: “I can tell you without a doubt the boys were killed by John Wayne Gacy.”

Then in July of last year, a third woman — an “evidential clairvoyant” in Wyoming who helps police solve crimes — was looking at photographs of the three Hannibal boys when “all of a sudden she was overwhelmed with these images” of John Wayne Gacy brutalizing and burying the boys, Wingate said.

This wasn’t the first time Gacy’s name has come up in connection with the missing youths. In 1978, after Gacy was arrested “and all of his darkness was revealed,” Wingate said, many rumors and questions surfaced in Hannibal about whether Gacy could have been in town when the three boys vanished in 1967.

He said Hannibal police contacted the FBI back then to inquire about any possible Gacy connections. As it turned out, Gacy was living and working in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1967, while his mother was living in Little Rock, Ark. Wingate said if Gacy were to go visit his mother, “driving from Waterloo to Little Rock, he would take Highway 61, which takes you right through Hannibal.”

Wingate says he was skeptical when he heard from the three female psychics who all sensed a connection between Gacy and the missing Hannibal boys.

“I’ve always been skeptical of this stuff,” he said. “But each of these clairvoyants corroborated the others’ findings independently.”

As he further explored the possibility of Gacy’s involvement, Wingate kept finding other connections.

For example, during the massive cave search for the boys in 1967, there were reports in Hannibal that a “mystery man” had been hanging around for a couple days near the cave openings where road construction was occurring — a place where the three boys had been playing in the days prior to their disappearance.

“They had been seen darting down into those caves on May 8 and May 9,” Wingate said. “They were last seen up on the road watching the construction on May 10 at about 5:15.”

The mystery man, meanwhile, “was no longer seen at that location after the boys went missing,” Wingate said.

Two of the psychics told Wingate that “John Wayne Gacy was that mystery man,” he said.

As part of his research, Wingate said he drove the psychics separately though parts of the Hannibal area on different dates in August and September of 2018. He said all three women identified some of the same key locations in connection with Gacy and the missing boys.

“I wanted to see what they picked up on. And without exception, all three of them picked the same locations” where the boys were ostensibly killed and buried.

“In all three cases, we’d find ourselves standing at the same location on three different days,” he said. “It’s beyond coincidence.”

One of the psychics even suggested that Gacy was involved in the disappearance and deaths of two Monroe City boys — John Wagner in February 1968 and Rickey Enochs in June 1977.

Wingate said he realizes the psychic-driven theories about Gacy’s involvement will sound far-fetched to many people. “But I decided just to lay it out and let people decide for themselves” if there’s any merit to the story.

Wingate is scheduled to sign copies of his new book from 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 2, at Quincy Books and Toys, 3800 Broadway, and will sign books and give a presentation from 2 to 4 p.m. Aug. 3, at the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal.

Excerpt from Souls Speak

Souls Speak: Missing Children Reveal Their Serial Killer from Beyond (Wisdom Editions, 2019)

“A most astonishing series of events began to unfold during the late spring and summer of 2018 that fingered John Wayne Gacy as the abductor and killer of the Hoag and Dowell boys.

Equally astounding are the sources of this shocking revelation. Identical stories were told to me by three women intuitive mediums, two in Missouri and one living on a ranch in the state of Wyoming. Within a two-month period, these women independently had visions of the boys’ abductions and murders by Gacy. This information, they explained, was sensed as they channeled the immaterial vibrational energy from the other side in contacts with the etheric spirit of Gacy and the spirits of the missing and long-deceased boys.

In addition, these women believe the boys’ murders were likely Gacy’s first kills, five full years before his murderous spree even began in suburban Chicago. Gacy would have been only twenty-five at the time, barely a man himself. Yet, the Waterloo, Iowa, restaurant manager, married with two small children, was already steeped in a lustful evil that could be sated only by the torture and killing of innocent young boys; true innocents who were denied their lives for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

These psychic sleuths are all sober-minded, responsible, self-described Christian women. Transgressing the veil between worlds, they peered across time and from beyond the chasm between this world and the spiritual realm of the heavenlies to reveal one of the most perplexing and unfathomable experiences of my life….”

The Abduction – May 10, 1967

This is the route taken by serial killer John Wayne Gacy after he abducted three boys in historic Hannibal, Missouri the early evening of May 10, 1967.

Gacy’s route out of Hannibal

That’s a finding from the year-long paranormal investigation documented in Souls Speak: Missing Children Reveal Their Serial Killer from Beyond.

At the time, Gacy was 25 and living in Waterloo, Iowa. Until now, his only known kills were the 33 young men and boys in Cook County, Illinois between 1972-78. But I found Gacy’s evil was emerging as early as age 15 in 1957. And his prosecutor and psychiatrist, and most other authorities connected with his case, agree that he could not control his killer demon named Jack. This means Gacy was likely killing elsewhere when he lived in Springfield, IL and Waterloo, Iowa, and during travels to Arkansas and Florida. He was a completely depraved shell of a human being. He killed as easily as you might swat a mosquito. As his psychiatrist said, “He saw people as inanimate objects.”

#paranormal #truecrime #crime #johnwaynegacy #lostboysofHannibal#hannibal #johnwingate #mystery #books

My New Book – Souls Speak – is Coming in Days

My new book, Souls Speak, will be published the week of July 4th. It is an astonishing paranormal, true-crime story about missing children who identify their serial killer from beyond.

I worked with three very experienced clairvoyants who each independently revealed an astounding story from the non-physical realm. The children identify their killer by name, and the killer admits he committed the murders.

Prepare yourself. This true story strains the limits of human understanding. Souls Speaks details the astonishing paranormal investigation into one of America’s most vexing mysteries.

This paranormal journey will challenge your boundaries of reality and broaden your understanding of the nature of good and evil, across the totality of God’s impossibly complex creation.

Souls Speak will be available on Amazon around July 3rd or 4th.

Be sure to subscribe to my blog in the upper right corner!

Thanks for visiting!

John


A great review for Souls Speak!

“Here’s another advance review for my upcoming book Souls Speak!

“The author’s investigative prowess and candid transparency will give even the staunchest skeptic reason to seriously consider the astonishing discoveries examined in this book. The paranormal, true-crime story is chilling, mind-bending, unforgettable and not readily explained in any other way. Read this book!”

Souls Speak will be published in ten days or so.

First Review of Souls Speak!

An active Omaha book reviewer got an Advance Reading Copy of my upcoming book Souls Speak. Here are her comments…

“I finished it. First of all, thanks for two sleepness nights. I’m rattled to the core. I was reading fast and furious at the end. It’s an incredible story and I was initially skeptical, but now I’m convinced. Spooky, chilling, most definitely compelling. I’m like jaw-on-the-floor.

Souls Speak will be published in a few weeks. I should have a cover to share with you in a week.

#johnwingate #soulsspeak #serialkillers #hannibal #missingchildren #books #bookclubs

Update on Souls Speak

We’re in the final steps of the production process. Copy-editing has been completed and we’ll discuss book cover design tomorrow.

At this point it appears Souls Speak will be published in two weeks or so!