Harold Wayne Lovell was missing for almost 34 years and was thought to be one of the victims of one of America’s most notorious serial killers, John Wayne Gacy. However, he was found alive in Florida and was reunited with his family on Tuesday.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case of John Wayne Gacy the Killer Clown a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to identify the eight murder victims through skeletal remains. In that process, one of Lovell’s relatives found a Florida police mug shot that led to a chaotic discovery. Lovell, who disappeared when he was 19 years old, was not a victim of Gacy after all. He was actually alive and worked as a busboy in South Beach and was a constant partygoer at Fort Lauderdale.
“I never stopped thinking about my mom or my brothers and my sisters,” said 53-year-old Lovell. “I feel bad that they had to go through life thinking that I’d been killed like that. I feel terrible. But I was a teenager, and who didn’t want to go to Fort Lauderdale, where it’s nice, sunny and hot?”
When Lovell, whom they call Wayne, left Aurora, III in May 1977, he told his relatives he was looking for a construction job. However, he went to Florida instead and did odd jobs in hotels and restaurants for the next 3 years. When he failed to come back, his siblings, Theresa Hasselberg and Tim, thought he had been killed by Gacy, who had done a construction work in Aurora at that time. The family scrapbooked the brutal killings of boys and girls between 14 to 21 years old and shuddered at how well Lovell fit into Gacy’s profile of victims.
In the 1970s, Gacy was convicted of the murders of 33 young men. Most of them were strangled and many were found buried under his house. He was executed in 1994.
“I always had that inkling of hope he was alive,” said Tim Lovell. “I would say, ‘God, let me see my brother one more time.’
When the Gacy case was reopened, Lovell’s family expected their fears to be confirmed. But before their DNA testing started, Lovell’s nephew began an internet search in the website Mugshots.com. He found a photo of a man who looked like his Uncle Tim under the name Harold Wayne Lovell. That man had been arrested in 2006 for possession of marijuana.
A few telephone calls and 10 hours’ travel from Tampa to Alabama led to the tearful reunion of Lovell and two of his three siblings on Tuesday. He told his family that he left home because he didn’t feel wanted. He married a girl whom he met on South Beach and lived in Wisconsin for several years. When they split up, he returned to Florida. He has two daughters whom he has not seen for a very long time. He said he once returned to Chicago to look for his mom, but she had already died in 2001.
“This has all been so emotional,” said Lovell. “I need to get some work and be part of the family again. And I need to rest. There is 33 years of catching up to do and you can’t do it in two days.”
Tim is very happy that his wish came true. He has invited his big brother to join him in his small construction business. He looks back to the time that they all thought Wayne was gone.
“I imagine there are other families out there who have felt the way we have all those years,” Tim shared. “But maybe your loved ones out there are alive. Don’t quit looking.”
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