A fund to help victims in the Boston Marathon bombings will be divided up first to families of those killed, then by the severity of injuries, but no one should expect to have 100 percent of their expenses covered, the administrator said Monday night.

“Whatever we do with this fund is inadequate,” Ken Feinberg, administrator of One Fund Boston said in town hall for victims and their families. “Everyone, please lower your expectations about this fund. If you had a billion dollars you would not have enough money to deal with the problems with these attacks.”

Feinberg is a Massachusetts native who also administered funds involving 9/11 victims as well as victims in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre and Virginia Tech shootings.

He did promise payouts by June 30 to the families of three people killed in the blasts, the MIT campus police officer killed in the aftermath as well as people who suffered other severe injuries such as double amputations.

Families of the dead and those who lost more than one limb could potentially each receive “well over $1 million,” he said.

In addition to the people killed, some 260 others were wounded or injured in the twin bombings, and several required amputations.

“It’s unique to have so many catastrophic injuries that require compensation,” Feinberg said.

Feinberg talked through a draft protocol that when finalized will dictate who gets money in the fund and how much. He said mental trauma compensation would be “iffy,” and also said outpatients -- people went to the hospital but were then quickly released -- are unlikely to get much if any of the funds.

The protocol includes categories of physical injuries with death, double amputations, single amputations, paralysis, brain injuries at the top and less severe injuries below.

Feinberg and his staff will make the final determination on the protocol, set to be in place by May 15, when applications will be available for victims to apply for aid. Those seeking compensation will have until June 15 to submit an application.

Payouts to individuals are expected on June 30, when the fund's administration will be turned over local board of directors.

One way to decide on compensation is to find out how long each victim has been in the hospital, Feinberg said. But whether the existing insurance coverage of victims or other financial wealth should be taken into account — so called means-testing — is still unresolved.

In the other victims’ compensation funds, it was decided not to account for individual financial resources because it slows the process down, he said.

A least two members of the town hall audience agreed that means testing would be a drag on quickly getting victims money, a goal set by the fund.

Another town hall to receive input on the process will take place in the same location – the Boston Public Library at Copley Square – at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

Feinberg said more than 50,000 private individuals and companies have contributed to One Fund Boston, many with $5 or $10 donations.

The fund has already raised more than $28 million, Feinberg said. Some $11 million dollars of that is already available, and the $17 million remaining is pledged but not yet donated, he said,

At Virginia Tech, Feinberg said, students who witnessed the carnage in the classroom shooting were compensated for mental trauma. That hasn’t been decided in Boston yet, but he called it “iffy.”

Tragedies such as the Boston bombings bring an outpouring of generosity, he said, and bring the country together. He noted that the entire One Fund Boston fund was from private donations, unlike the $7.1 billion 9/11 compensation fund, which was legislated by Congress.

“I’m always amazed at the charitable impulse of people,” Feinberg said. “We have 50,000 private donors. It reaffirms your faith in the American people.”

Still, some in the audience appeared disappointed that outpatients were unlikely to be compensated, including victim who have no insurance and must pay their entire emergency room bills.

Killed in the blasts were Boston University grad student Lingzi Lu, 23, from the city of Shnyang in northeastern China; Krystle Campbell, 29, a steakhouse manager from Arlington, Mass. and Martin Richard, 8, of Dorchester, who was waiting for his dad, Bill Richard, at the finish line along with his mother and sister, who were seriously wounded.

Sean Collier, a 26-year-old MIT campus officer, was fatally shot by the bombing suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar  Tsarnaev as they fled a massive manhunt in the wake of their public identification, police said.

Related:

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• Tsarnaev pal can be released with limits, lawyers say

Theirs are the faces behind the numbers. A hard-working college student shot in her prized car. A fun-loving 2-year-old accidentally shot by his brother. An aging rocker killed for a thousand bucks.

As part of a special NBC News report, “Flashpoint: Guns in America,” NBCNews.com catalogued 91 shooting deaths across the country between Jan. 19 and 21, the weekend the nation marked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and ushered a president into his second term. While not a statistically valid sample, the snapshot of gun violence in America is intended to illuminate both the magnitude of the problem and the personal toll such violence inflicts at a time of national debate about gun rights and gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

The victims we found died during robberies, after arguments, in moments of despair. They were killed by loved ones, by strangers, by their own hand. Each story, in its own way, is heartbreaking. As the country awaits President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, we share a handful of them here:

Rebecca Foley worked as a babysitter, office clerk and cater-waiter to put herself through college, and she scraped and saved to make her first big purchase: a 2006 cherry-red Volkswagen Beetle. The 21-year-old business student adored tooling around Savannah, Ga., with the windows down.

Courtesy Sarah Shoup

Rebecca Foley, left, leans against her VW Beetle with friend Sarah Shoup in this undated photo.

On the evening of Jan. 21, she was driving home with her boyfriend of a year following behind in his own car after getting his nails painted because he lost a bet with her, police said. He got caught up in traffic and so she was alone as she piloted the car into her apartment complex’s parking lot, past the live oak trees and hanging moss, toward her tidy garden-level unit.

What happened next is a mystery, but the boyfriend told police that when he finally caught up, he found the little red car stopped at a bizarre angle and Foley slumped over the steering wheel. She had been shot, apparently while the car was still moving, and would be dead within minutes. The rear, driver-side window was shattered by a single bullet that left a hole the size of a 50-cent piece. No arrests have been made, despite a $6,000 reward, and the motive is unknown.

To family and friends, Foley’s violent end still seems unreal.

“She never was around anybody who would put her in a bad situation. She never had any enemies,” said Alixandra Scalia, 20, a former roommate.

Interactive map: A long weekend of gun deaths. Click to enlarge.

Friends and family members use almost identical language to describe Foley, calling her a beautiful, hard-working young woman who was determined to put old family troubles behind her and realize her goal of a degree, grad school and a good job in the risk-management industry.

Born in Charlotte, N.C., and raised in rural Virginia and Georgia by her divorced mom, Foley played the violin at 4 but didn’t read until second grade, after she was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. She had a rocky relationship with her mother, Jennifer, and moved out when she was 17.

“She said, ‘I can’t live under your roof and I won’t.’ But she graduated high school, which doesn’t always happen in these cases, and she went on to college,” her mother told NBC News.

She bounced between several colleges and overcame academic setbacks before enrolling full-time at Savannah State University, where she hit her stride. Her mother said she “worked her butt off” to stay on track, and one of her professors wrote that she was a “joy to work with.”

She would rise at 4:30 some mornings to fit in work in a local insurance office before school. She kept her credit score on a Post-it note and cooked dinner with a friend every night to save money.

At Christmas, she splurged a little on her “very first cruise” to the Bahamas, said one of her bosses, insurance agent Mitchell Bush. She dreamed of buying a fixer-upper on Tybee Island, an island town near Savannah.

“We had just talked about that on Sunday -- and Monday she was dead,” said her grandmother, Lois Fowler.

The night of the shooting, Foley’s two roommates were in the apartment when they heard her boyfriend banging on the door.

“He was just saying, ‘Rebecca’s been shot and just kept repeating that,’” said Abbey Bernal, 22. “Medics tried to resuscitate her, and it was too late. I just saw them pull the sheet over her head.”

Friends and family said they can’t believe they won’t see Foley’s flashing blue eyes and big smile again. They remember how she loved cream of potato soup, wore SpongeBob slippers and doted on her Shih-Tzu named Zoe.

Jim Seida / NBC News

Jennifer Foley holds a portrait of her daughter, Rebecca, inside her Calhoun, Ga. home.

Foley’s mother said she and her daughter had grown closer in recent months and that Rebecca had called the day she was killed to ask what dishes would go well with a pork roast.

And there was another conversation she remembered.

“She called me not six months ago and said she had a dream that she was going to die young,” her mother said. “I told her, ‘I don’t think that’s true. I hope that’s not true.’”

******

Family members say they’ll remember 2-year-old Travin Varise for how his chubby face would break into the sweetest smile, how excited he got every time “Finding Nemo” came on, how he went after a drumstick with gusto.

And how he loved his big brother, Terrance.

Family photo

Travin Varise, 2, was fatally shot at his Baton Rouge, La., home on Jan. 21.

“Terrance growed his little brother up,” his aunt, Juanita, said. “Before my sister knew who the baby’s father was, he raised him up like it was his son.”

That’s why, the family says, it’s tragic that Terrance, 18, is now locked up, charged with accidentally killing the toddler while playing with a friend’s .357 Magnum at their Baton Rouge, La., home. He has not yet entered a plea.

“It’s so hard,” said the boys’ mother, Yarnell.

She was crying, but her voice took on an edge as she complained she had not been able to visit her eldest child because the jail is too far away. “I want him to know it’s going to be all right. I know he didn’t do it on purpose,” she said.

Terrance was on probation after pleading guilty to burglary in May, but his mother said he was a “good dude” who had matured since then. His aunt said he didn’t carry a weapon – “We don’t allow guns in the house” – but had been hanging out with “the wrong crowd.”

Terrance’s Facebook page, however, suggests an interest in guns. There’s a photo of a small arsenal laid out on a plaid bedspread, another where he is holding a silver revolver at his side, a third where he appears to be dangling a shotgun from one finger.

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore says he sees pictures like that all the time after a young person is arrested for a violent crime.

“Do you know where your guns are? Because young kids play with guns and bad things happen sometimes,” he said. “I think it’s video games and stuff – no one really dies and everyone wakes up the next morning. There’s a whole culture of kids not knowing it’s real.”

Read Part 1: Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend

Terrance Varise is getting his fill of reality now. He’s being held on charges of negligent homicide, cruelty to a minor and weapons possession along with a probation violation. He was not allowed to attend Travin’s funeral.

“He feels the pain and he’s going to live with this for the rest of his life,” his aunt said.

His mother said she feels like she’s lost two children.

“My father Jesus does things for a reason, but I don’t know what the reason is,” she said. “It’s a hurting feeling. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

******

“There are two dead people.”

Those chilling words on a 911 call just after midnight on Jan. 21 were the last that anyone heard retired fire inspector William Liebrich utter. He hung up and then, police believe, shot his wife of 30 years, Colleen, before turning the 12-gauge shotgun on himself.

When cops arrived at the Warwick, R.I., home they found a note on the front door saying it was safe to enter and that the couple’s two sons, Bill, 24, and Jeff, 21, should not be allowed in. There were also letters for the boys, unsigned but typed by William, police say.

Before that, the sons said, it had been just like any other day. When Bill left for soccer practice, his dad told him, “Have fun. Be safe, bud.” Jeff watched TV with his dad before meeting friends.

Family photo

Colleen and William Liebrich, in an undated family photo.

“The thing that was so shocking about the whole thing is that life was moving along as normal. There wasn’t a single red flag, there wasn’t anything to show that anything like this could possibly happen. … It still feels like a nightmare,” said Jeff, an information technology student.

But life hadn’t been easy for Colleen. The once-active soccer and karate mom was mostly bedridden in recent months by a range of ailments: pancreatitis, osteoporosis, schizophrenia. She had suffered a seizure, memory loss, confusion and falls.

Warwick Police Capt. Robert Nelson said her condition was not terminal, but Bill recalled his mother hitting “an all-time low, physically and mentally,” on Christmas.

The brothers believe their parents decided together to end their lives. They said their father had never owned a gun and they assume he bought one to carry out a pact.

“It wasn’t just the fact that, you know, she wasn’t getting better,” Bill said. “It was the fact that she was progressively getting worse.”

The police are continuing their investigation into what they have tentatively ruled a murder-suicide and waiting for a trace on where the shotgun came from.

Bill and Jeff are treasuring the good memories of their parents -- their dad playing secret Santa and giving money to families in need, the couple's love of animals, the launch of their mother's salon business, which she eventually gave up because of her health – while coping with sadness and anger.

“I can see where my dad was coming from and I hate to say it like that because I don’t agree with what he did or how he did it,” said Jeff. “But I know what he was doing and the whole point was to put her out of pain, and he did that and she’s not in pain. So there’s a bittersweetness to it. “

Asked if they felt the need to forgive their father, Jeff said, “Obviously our primary focus is that we don’t have our parents anymore. … And so as far as forgiveness, there’s no one there to forgive.”

*****

Her “baby” was turning 7 and Lydia Bradford wanted it to be a day she would remember. She had ordered the cake and was getting the house ready. Soon, the cousins would start arriving for the party.

Her three daughters, including the birthday girl, were playing in the front of her Cocoa, Fla., house with another kid when a man with a ski mask burst in, police said. The terrified children fled as the intruder stalked to the rear of the small house and opened fire on Bradford, 24, and her mother Equaller, 58.

The young mom was killed and Equaller Bradford, shot in the chest and head, is still clinging to life. The motive is unknown and there have been no arrests, though family members suggest the women may have been victims of mistaken identity.

At Lydia Bradford’s funeral, relatives remembered her as a bubbly, carefree single mother devoted to her kids.

Cocoa Police Dept.

Lydia Bradford, 24, was shot dead by a masked gunman who burst into the Cocoa, Fla., home she shared with her mother on Jan. 21.

“Lydia didn’t sweat the small stuff,” said her aunt, Yvonne Smith. “You could hate her, but she loved you back. She was as pretty on the inside as she was on the outside.”

She supported her kids by working as a private-duty nurse. She had recently moved in with her mother and they were looking for a bigger place. Her weekends were full of cookouts and card games with family.

When her uncle Melvin was feeling low after chemotherapy, Bradford’s smile would cheer him up, Smith said. She chuckled as she remembered her niece’s sweet tooth, how she tucked into the homemade sweet-potato pie, lemon meringue pie, banana pudding and cake at Thanksgiving – then complained she had eaten too much.

Because she was a working mother, Bradford tried to make sure that holidays and birthdays were special for her girls. She was planning a Feb. 7 party at Chuck E. Cheese for all the cousins with January birthdays.

“Instead, we were all at her funeral that day,” Smith said, her voice cracking. “I know things like this happen every day, but it’s just sad that someone don’t care no more for life and took my baby away from her girls.”

She worries in particular for the 7-year-old.

“That was her birthday and now she’ll associate that for the rest of her life with the day her mama was killed,” she said.

******

The chain of events that led to Christopher Best’s death began when a big maple tree fell on the corner of his house in the Detroit suburb of Redford, Mich., in early January.

Best, 61, a computer whiz who had done sound and lights for countless rock-and-roll shows in Motor City, hired an old buddy from the music scene, carpenter Chris O’Brien, to repair the roof.

A few weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 21, Best drove to O’Brien’s Detroit home, with his dog Maxi in tow, to pay him $1,000. It was considered a relatively safe neighborhood, a historic district of Victorian homes, and Best had visited many times.

Photo provided by friend

Chris Best, a Detroit music engineer, was slain on Jan. 21 while delivering money to the home of a friend who had done some construction work for him. Police believe the motive was robbery.

But this time, as Best got out of his car, he was “apparently ambushed” by robbers, police say. The sound of gunfire – O’Brien says police told him it was an AK-47 assault rifle-- shattered the dinnertime quiet on the tree-lined street.

“A dozen shots came into my house,” O’Brien recalled. “They were going by both sides of my head. If I would have taken one more step, my head would have been blown clear off.”

When the shooting stopped, he stepped outside and saw his friend of 30 years lying on his lawn. “It was cold that night,” O’Brien said. “I got down and put my arm under his head. He was gasping for air.”

Best, he said, died in the ambulance. No arrests have been made, but police say the motive was robbery.

An IT worker by day, Best’s passion was music. He played the guitar and keyboard and had a reputation as a reliable sound man in Detroit’s music joints. His obituary photo showed him mugging with Alice Cooper.

“He was a good guy, a pretty wholesome guy,” O’Brien. “He wasn’t into drugs, which is amazing for the rock and roll business. He didn’t even drink anymore.”

Best came from a large family; he was one of nine kids. And for years, the bachelor had been a foster parent, opening his home to young people in crisis and mentoring others, friend Sergio Sanchez said.

“He had a big heart,” Sanchez said. “That’s why it’s so hard to believe they shot him down because if they had given him the chance, I’m sure he would have just given them the money.”

******

It was just a fistfight.

Steven Rosalez, 16, got into a scuffle with an ex-con, Julius Short, 23, as he left a store with his friends in Pittsburg, Calif., his family says. It’s not known what prompted the fisticuffs, but when the fight  was over, the teen and the older man, who was on probation, went their separate ways.

The Rosalez Family

Steven Rosalez, 16, was killed by gunfire on Jan. 21 after an altercation outside a store in Pittsburg, Calif., allegedly by an ex-con he'd fought with earlier in the day.

That could have been the end of it. But according to police, Short wasn’t one to let it go. He got a gun, found Rosalez and shot him in the back and another 16-year-old in the leg, they said. The other boy survived, but Rosalez died.

“It’s devastated the whole family,” his mother, Wynette, said last Wednesday as Short was arraigned on charges of murder, attempted murder and weapons possession. He has not entered a plea.

She said her son was a happy boy growing up, always surrounded by friends and active in sports until he decided to give up football and baseball in the 10th grade. He was “kind of going through a little rough patch” and had run away from home once but had never been in trouble with the police, she said.

He spent most of his free time with his girlfriend of four years and playing Xbox. He had two brothers and a cousin he treated like a third. He was finishing high school in an independent study program and taking classes at a local college.

“He was loved,” she said, crying.

Short has a 2009 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon and he was on probation at the time of the slaying, which made Rosalez’s mother angry.

Complete coverage of "Flashpoint: Guns in America," an NBC News special report

“I grew up around guns and nobody did this when I was a kid and now here are these people who are felons and on probation and they get guns,” she said. “It’s not right.”

Also contributing to this story and map for NBC News: Daniel Arkin, Meredith Birkett, John Brecher, Bill Dedman, David Friedman, Kriss Chaumont, Polly DeFrank, Shezad Morani, Lisa Riordan Seville, Jonathan Sweeney and Lisa Wilkins.

More from Open Channel:

• Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend
• Obama administration deliberating more cuts in nuclear weapons, sources say
• EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Erin Tennant

Denis Martinez, right, graduates as class valedictorian from maximum-security prison Sing Sing's college program.

Editor's note: A correction has been made to this story.

NEW YORK -- Denis Martinez was a bright young man of 19 with a short fuse and a strong streak of machismo when he shot his victim twice with a revolver after an argument one summer night in The Bronx in 2004.

His victim,  Rodolfo Checo, was seriously wounded and became paralyzed from the waist down. Martinez paid the price for his impulsive violence, landing in New York’s notorious Sing Sing maximum-security prison after being convicted of first-degree assault and being sentenced to 13 years behind bars.

Having seen his hopes and dreams evaporate in an instant, Martinez decided he needed to change and set his mind on college. He soon discovered that he didn’t need to wait until he had served his time. He just enrolled at Sing Sing.

“After you realize you have all this time, you think: 'How can I make my time count?’” Martinez said. “Am I going to leave this place the same person as I went in?”

On Wednesday night, Martinez took his first step toward rebuilding his life, graduating as class valedictorian with a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science after a grueling 4½ years of study.

“One of the only things available to me is my books,” Martinez, now 27, told msnbc.com. “I don’t have anything you could call a social life, so I could give this degree my all.”

Martinez was one of 20 inmate graduates who donned academic gowns and paraded single-file into the  large visitors room as the Sing Sing jazz band played  “Pomp and Circumstance” and the audience of 300-plus family, friends and prison officials stood up from their plastic chairs and applauded.

Sing Sing’s college program currently has enrolled 84 inmates out of a prison population of about 1,700. The program is organized and funded by Hudson Link, a nonprofit set up a few years after state and federal funding for higher education in prisons stopped. It runs programs at four correctional facilities in New York, hiring professors from New York’s Mercy College to teach the students at Sing Sing. 

While the statewide recidivism rate among offenders is 40 percent, not one of the 81 Hudson Link graduates who have been released from prison has been convicted of a crime, according to CEO Sean Pica. (A further 179 graduates are still incarcerated).

To graduate, Martinez and his classmates attended four two-hour evening classes each week inside the prison’s education building per semester. They had access to donated academic journals and magazines, textbooks and 20 computer terminals, two of which have servers with encyclopedias. Internet access is banned.

Martinez said he also studied each day inside his single-bunk cell, with its toilet and basin and window partly overlooking the Hudson River.

Martinez said that he never lacked academic ability and obtained his GED when he was 17. But he said he was “never good at school discipline -- I wasn’t big on doing homework."

Prison changed that.

 “Once I go outside, the odds are stacked against me in the job market. I’m labeled an ex-con,” he said. “A degree will give me something to show for my time.”

Checo, the man whom Martinez shot in 2004, could not be reached for comment on his attacker’s achievement.

Watch US News videos on msnbc.com

But Dan Levey, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, said he wished victims were given the same attention and opportunities as Martinez has had.

"It's a shame that family members and survivors of homicide don't have the same opportunities. We would love a non-profit organization to come forward and pay for college degrees for survivors or the family members left behind because a bread winner was murdered. I hope the general public understands the plight of victims as well."

Across New York, 1,220 prisoners are enrolled in college programs operated by various privately funded colleges, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Corrections said.

The department’s commissioner, Brian Fischer, told Wednesday night’s graduation audience that education was the “key to re-entry” for inmates rejoining society. 

“Our goal has been to get every inmate at least a high school diploma,” he told msnbc.com. “Once we started to get people educated, they began to ask us: 'Why can’t I get a college education?’”

“It’s not just about book learning. It’s about acquiring self-awareness, by studying topics like psychology and philosophy and logic."

At Sing Sing, inmates have to score well enough on an English and math test to earn a place in the college program.

Mercy College Professor Susan Wiener said her inmate students sometimes struggle with writing skills more than her regular students, but they also tend to be more motivated.

“They really feel proud to be able to do this,” said Wiener. “They’ve put their families through a tough time by being incarcerated. Graduation is the day their families get to come and be proud of them instead.”

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AP

John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murdering 33 young men between 1972 and 1978.

Three people have come forward with new information that suggests serial killer John Wayne Gacy had an accomplice in some of his grisly rape and torture murders, two Chicago lawyers say.

The three were friends of one of Gacy’s 33 victims, John Mowery, and their stories indicate Mowery’s roommate had a hand in his death, criminal defense attorneys Robert Stephenson and Steven Becker say.

“We conclusively believe this individual was involved as an accomplice at least in this one (murder), and we suspect others as well,” Stephenson told msnbc.com on Friday.

Mowery, a 19-year-old former Marine, disappeared the night of Sept. 25, 1977. He was last seen alive leaving his mother’s house in Chicago after dinner. His body was among 29 corpses of young men and boys found buried on Gacy’s property in an unincorporated part of Norwood Park Township, a little over a dozen miles outside Chicago, in 1978. Four other victims were dumped in a river.

Becker and Stephenson said they recently spoke with two women and a man who knew Mowery. According to their accounts, a man who knew Gacy moved into Mowery’s Chicago apartment three days before Mowery went missing.

The day after Mowery disappeared, the two women went to his apartment looking for him. While there, they say, the roommate told them he knew of a location in the Chicago area where dead bodies were stored.

“He told us that he knew of a location where there were a bunch of dead bodies that nobody knew about, not even the police, which I remember very clearly because he said this with such a terrible smirk on his face,” one of the women told WGN.  (The women also spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times. Neither WGN nor the Sun-Times used their names because the women said they still fear the roommate.)

The roommate also reportedly said Mowery probably just took off on a trip and tried to persuade one of the women to take Mowery’s dog.

“If John was simply on his trip, there would be no need to give John’s dog away and seems to imply that Accomplice knew John was not coming back,” Stephenson and Becker conclude in a written summary.

They also said it’s unlikely that Gacy had enough time to kill Mowery and bury the body alone, and then show up for work at 6 o’clock the next morning at his contractor’s job in Michigan.

Mowery’s roommate would later testify as a prosecution witness at Gacy’s trial. He told the court he helped dig a trench in the crawlspace of Gacy’s home where most of the victims were found. But he denied knowing about any of the murders.

Stephenson and Becker say the roommate also matches the description of a second attacker that a man who survived a March 1978 sexual attack in Gacy’s home gave to authorities.

Related: Serial killer John Wayne Gacy had accomplices, lawyers say

Msnbc.com is not naming the former roommate because he has not been charged in the Gacy case. Stephenson and Becker said the man is apparently still living in the Chicago area. A message msnbc.com left at the telephone number the lawyers provided for the man was not returned.

Court records provided by Stephenson and Becker indicate the man served prison time in 2003 on a state aggravated battery charge for attacking a man with a bat. He was also among nine people indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2003 in an alleged conspiracy to burn down movie theaters in retaliation for labor contract disputes. He served 31 months in prison for that crime, according to Stephenson.

Stephenson and Becker have been pursuing new leads in the Gacy case on their own time for several months. They say the evidence they’ve uncovered suggests the so-called “Killer Clown” had help carrying out some of the murders.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Office has said it will review the lawyers’ findings and pursue investigations as warranted.

"Have we ruled out that someone would have helped Gacy in one or more of the murders? No," Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart told msnbc.com last week.

Stephenson and Becker say the women in the Mowery case contacted Chicago police at the time about their encounter with the roommate but their information was never followed up on or forwarded to prosecutors working on the Gacy case.

“Had they known this accomplice moved in with John Mowery three days before he disappeared I think that would have changed the nature of this investigation,” Stephenson said. “This guy was an accomplice. There’s no other way to explain the connections."

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