CHICAGO (AP) — More than 30 years after a
collection of skeletal remains was found beneath John Wayne Gacy's house,
detectives have secretly exhumed bones of eight young men who were never
identified in hopes of answering a final question: Who were they?
The Cook County Sheriff's Department says DNA
testing could solve the last mystery associated with one of the nation's worst
serial killers, and authorities on Wednesday asked for the public's help in
determining the victims' names.
Investigators are urging relatives of anyone who
disappeared between 1970 and Gacy's 1978 arrest — and who is still unaccounted
for — to undergo saliva tests to compare their DNA with that of the skeletal
remains.
Detectives believe the passage of time might
actually work in their favor. Some families who never reported the victims
missing and never searched for them could be willing to do so now, a generation
after Gacy's homosexuality and pattern of preying on vulnerable teens were
splashed across newspapers all over the world.
"I'm hoping the stigma has lessened, that
people can put family disagreements and biases against sexual orientation (and)
drug use behind them to give these victims a name," Detective Jason Moran
said.
Added Sheriff Tom Dart: "There are a million
different reasons why someone hasn't come forward. Maybe they thought their son
ran off to work in an oil field in Canada, who knows?"
Authorities also hope to hear from people who came
forward back in the 1970s, convinced that their loved ones were buried under
Gacy's house but without any dental records or other evidence to confirm it.
In other cases, some potential Gacy victims who had
been reported missing were later mistakenly recorded as being found after
police received tips that they supposedly were sighted.
So "people may have been told the person they
were looking for was located, when in fact they weren't," the sheriff
said.
The department is prepared to hear from thousands
of people from across the country.
Gacy, who is remembered as one of history's most
bizarre killers largely because of his work as an amateur clown, was convicted
of murdering 33 young men, sometimes luring them to his Chicago-area home for
sex by impersonating a police officer or promising them construction work. He
stabbed one and strangled the others between 1972 and 1978. Most were buried in
a crawl space under his home. Four others were dumped in a river.
He was executed in 1994, but the anguish caused by
his crimes still resounds today.
Just days ago, a judge granted a request to exhume
one victim whose mother doubted the medical examiner's conclusion that her son
was found under Gacy's house. Dart said other families have the same need for
certainty.
Asked about the price of the effort, Dart said the
lab is doing the analysis for free, and the costs will not be exorbitant. To
not take advantage of the DNA technology would be "somewhat immoral,"
he said.
"Here are eight people who had futures, who
could have done so much for society (and) instead this evil monster destroyed
them. And we're really going to just sit here and say, 'You know, they're
forgotten, let's keep them forgotten'? he said at a news conference. "Talk
about the final insult."
The plan began unfolding earlier in the year, when
detectives were trying to identify some human bones found scattered at a forest
preserve. They started reviewing other cases of unidentified remains, which led
them back to Gacy.
"I completely forgot or didn't know there were
all these unidentifieds," Dart said.
It was not a cold case in the traditional sense.
Gacy admitted to the slayings and was convicted by a jury. But Moran and others
knew if they had the victims' bones, they could conduct genetic tests that
would have seemed like science fiction in the 1970s, when forensic
identification depended almost entirely on fingerprints and dental records.
After autopsies on the unidentified victims,
pathologists in the 1970s removed their upper and lower jaws and their teeth to
preserve as evidence in case science progressed to the point they could be
useful or if dental records surfaced.
Detectives found out that those jaws had been
stored for many years at the county's medical examiner's office. But when
investigators arrived, they learned the remains had been buried in a paupers'
grave in 2009.
"They kept them for 30 years, and then they
got rid of them," Moran said.
After obtaining a court order, they dug up a wooden
box containing eight smaller containers shaped like buckets, each holding a
victim's jaw bones and teeth.
Back in June, Moran flew with them to a lab in
Texas.
"They were my carry-on," he said.
Weeks later, the lab called. The good news was that
there was enough material in four of the containers to provide what is called a
nuclear DNA profile, meaning that if a parent, sibling or even cousins came
forward, scientists could determine whether the DNA matched.
But with the other four containers, there was less usable
material. That meant investigators had to dig up four of the victims.
Detectives found them in four separate cemeteries and removed their femurs and
vertebrae for analysis.
At a meeting last week, the men who investigated
and prosecuted Gacy reminded the sheriff that many victims were already lost
when Gacy found them.
"I can almost guarantee you that one or two of
these kids were wards of the state," said retired Detective Phil Bettiker.
"I don't think anybody cared about them."
Most were 17 or 18 years old and had been
"through God knows how many foster homes and were basically on their
own."
Dart doubts that all eight victims will be
identified. But he is confident the office will be able to give some back their
names.
"I'd be shocked if we don't get a
handful," he said. "The technology is so precise."
For more information, the sheriff's department is
asking people to go to www.cookcountysheriff.com
or call 1-800-942-1950.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Paul Beaty)
