Gacy and North Fox Island

Last month, [Ed Opperman interviewed](https://www.spreaker.com/user/oppermanreport/private-investigator-william-dorsch-john_1) a private investigator named William Dorsch who has been investigating loose ends of the John Wayne Gacy murders in Chicago. Dorsch believes that there are more victims, accomplices to Gacy, and connections to sex trafficking rings.

At 87:02 (this is after he's gone into the background of Francis Shelden), he details an interesting link between one of Gacy's victims and North Fox Island:

> There was a young man by the name of Russell Nelson, who had moved from his home in Wisconsin to the Minneapolis area. And, he was working there and going to school there. And he met a minister there, a gay minister, who was actively proclaiming his association with the gay community. And this minister was attached and helped set up this North Fox Island. [...] Well, it turns out that this young man, Russell Nelson, moves in with the minister. And he's living with the minister.

According to p.134 of *The Man Who Killed Boys* by Clifford Linedecker, the name of this minister was "Thomas Maurer, a sixty-year-old clergyman with the United Church of Christ and a lecturer in sexuality at the university's medical school". I have not yet been able to find any connection between Maurer and North Fox Island outside of what Dorsch claims, but it would be interesting to see if such a link turns up.

While in Minneapolis, Nelson also met a young man in his late 20s named Robert Young, who was associated with John Wayne Gacy. They took a trip to Chicago, met some people in Chicago's gay community, and then Nelson allegedly just disappeared. Young filed a missing person's report, then called Nelson's family asking them for money to help him finance the search. They refused, but two of Nelson's brothers came down to Chicago to search, and when they did, Young offered them jobs with John Wayne Gacy. Russell Nelson ultimately turned up buried in Gacy's crawlspace. More on that in [*WGN9*, "Did John Wayne Gacy have an accomplice?", 2012/02/09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60q5hBKVJ-M).