Update: Another John Wayne Gacy Victim is Identified - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

JamesG · 10-12-2011, 05:01 PM

Detectives exhume bodies of eight unknown John Wayne Gacy victims in an effort to identify remains
By Associated Press
12th October 2011

They were murdered by one of America’s most notorious serial killers, but no one knew their names - perhaps until now.

Thirty years ago, the skeletal remains of eight young men were found under John Wayne Gacy's home and their identities were never confirmed.

Today, detectives secretly exhumed the bones in hopes of answering a final question: Who were they?

The Cook County Sheriff's Department says DNA testing could solve Gacy’s last mystery, and authorities planned today to ask for the public's help in determining the victims' names.

Investigators are urging relatives of anyone who vanished between 1970 and Gacy's 1978 arrest - and 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.

Detective Jason Moran said: "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."

Sheriff Tom Dart added: "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?"

After so many years, relatives could be anywhere, so the sheriff's department is setting up a phone bank to field calls from across the U.S.

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.

Gacy was executed in 1994. His last words were "Kiss my ass."

Despite his death, 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's remains were found under Gacy's house.

Sheriff Dart said other families have the same need for certainty.

He said: "They were young men with futures, who at some point had families that cared about their kid. Until the dead are identified, 'it's like they didn't even exist."

The plan began unfolding earlier this 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.

Sheriff Dart said: "I completely forgot or didn't know there were all these unidentified."

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.

Detective Moran said: "They kept them for 30 years, and then they got rid of them."

A court order allowed them to dig up a wooden box with eight containers shaped like buckets, each holding a victim's jaw bones and teeth.

Back in June, Det Moran flew with them to a lab in Texas. "They were my carry-on," he said, smiling.

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 or 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.

Last week, the men who probed and prosecuted Gacy reminded the sheriff that many victims were already lost when they crossed paths with Gacy.

One had not even been reported missing when his body was found floating in the Des Plaines River.

Retired Detective Phil Bettiker said: "I can almost guarantee you that one or two of these kids were wards of the state. I don't think anybody cared about them."

Most of them were 17 or 18 years old and had been, "through God knows how many foster homes and were basically on their own."

At the same time, they recalled, others insisted their loved ones were among Gacy's victims, but no evidence ever came to light confirming it.

Robert Egan, one of the prosecutors who helped convict Gacy, said: "It's very conceivable that a kid in his teens didn't have dental records."

He added: "There could have been parents who would have loved to have brought in dental records but they didn't have any."

Sheriff Dart doubts all eight victims will be identified, but he is confident that the office will finally be able to give some of them back their names.

He said: "I'd be shocked if we don't get a handful. The technology is so precise."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...=feeds-newsxml

Apostapler · 10-12-2011, 07:46 PM

I hope there is some closure for some families. DNA technology is so amazing.

Orange_Sody_84 · 10-13-2011, 02:48 PM

It's so sad 8 kids are seemingly forgotten. no one should end up that way. if anyone is interested there is a movie called "Dear Mr. Gacy" that delves into what makes him tick. the book the film is based on "The Last Victim" by Jason Moss was good. and I felt the movie didn't glorify Gacy and made you think.

Steve W. · 10-13-2011, 03:01 PM

His known killing spree was before my time but is there anyone here old enough to remember if there was a widespread fear in the Chicago area of a serial killer at that time (most of the '70's)?

Was it sort of like NYC in the Summer of '77 or not really because all of the victims/missing (I presume) happened to be gay males and that specificity did not trigger panic in others who weren't? I'm just curious as I haven't ever really read or seen stuff about John Wayne Gacy in great detail.

Edit: from reading, I'm not getting the impression that many of the victims were gay (at least not openly), so that then goes back to my original question.

Steve W. · 10-13-2011, 03:35 PM

Nevermind, I'm reading about him now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

I feel bad for him in their details of his childhood and teenage years, but still it obviously doesn't make up for all the bad stuff he did. That's crazy that there's a photo of him with the First Lady in 1978 in the midst of all his raping and murdering that he had been doing.

crochetbuff · 10-14-2011, 11:14 AM

I wasn't aware that there was a stigma attached to being a victim of Gacy. Obviously no one wants their loved one to be a victim of anybody... That the one mother disputes that her son was found under Gacy's home, (the way I read it) because she thinks if her son was killed by Gacy, that means her son was gay, etc... So sad that the stigma could make families not bring forth DNA to finally identify their loved one.

XCalibur · 10-14-2011, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crochetbuff

I wasn't aware that there was a stigma attached to being a victim of Gacy. Obviously no one wants their loved one to be a victim of anybody... That the one mother disputes that her son was found under Gacy's home, (the way I read it) because she thinks if her son was killed by Gacy, that means her son was gay, etc... So sad that the stigma could make families not bring forth DNA to finally identify their loved one.

I had always heard that Gacy's victims were not even homosexual? So even if one of those undidentified bodies turned out to be their loved ones, that doesn't mean they were gay. I'm fairly certain not all of Gacy's victims were homosexual, though some may have been.

I think its more the fact that no one wants to believe a loved one is dead, much less that they died at the hands of a lowlife like that.

soilentgreen · 10-14-2011, 04:23 PM

What's disturbing is that both Jeffrey Rignall and Robert Donnelly had attempted to get Gacy prosecuted for his assaults on them, but police were dragging their feet with Rignall's case and the D.A.'s office refused to file charges in Donnelly's case (per his own testimony at Gacy's trial). John Butkovitch's parents couldn't get police to investigate Gacy further, even though he had worked for and had a dispute with Gacy immediately prior to his disappearance, and his car and wallet were found abandoned.

Most likely, some of victims were never filed as missing, not necessarily because they were all street kids or hustlers, but because they were hitchhiking, waiting around a train or bus depot when Gacy offered them a ride or kidnapped them at gunpoint (as he did with Donnelly, and some of the victims were last known to be hitchhiking or taking a train). Back then, it wasn't as easy to have a missing persons report filed with police as it is now; in some cases, the police department would refuse to take a report on anyone they suspected had ran off.

Apostapler · 10-15-2011, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crochetbuff

I wasn't aware that there was a stigma attached to being a victim of Gacy. Obviously no one wants their loved one to be a victim of anybody... That the one mother disputes that her son was found under Gacy's home, (the way I read it) because she thinks if her son was killed by Gacy, that means her son was gay, etc... So sad that the stigma could make families not bring forth DNA to finally identify their loved one.

Yep, because being gay is totally worse than being an unidentified murder victim.

TheCars1986 · 10-15-2011, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by soilentgreen

What's disturbing is that both Jeffrey Rignall and Robert Donnelly had attempted to get Gacy prosecuted for his assaults on them, but police were dragging their feet with Rignall's case and the D.A.'s office refused to file charges in Donnelly's case (per his own testimony at Gacy's trial). John Butkovitch's parents couldn't get police to investigate Gacy further, even though he had worked for and had a dispute with Gacy immediately prior to his disappearance, and his car and wallet were found abandoned.

Yeah the police really botched this one didn't they? Several lives could have been spared had they actually acted on Donnelly's assertion that Gacy kidnapped, tortured, and raped him. They accepted Gacy's explanation at face value and left it at that. Then when another man came forward and accused Gacy of the same thing is when they finally acted on it. And even that took months before he was actually apprehended.

Steve W. · 10-15-2011, 12:42 PM

Yes, after reading that bio on Gacy it seems obvious that most of the teenage boys and young men that were his victims were probably not gay. Wow, he really got away with a lot of horribleness over that time period. At least he was exectued.

It's interesting how some serial killers are very selective in whom they prey on: Ted Bundy killed just females and Jeffrey Dahmer and Gacy preyed on just teenage boys/young men or as it appears in Gacy's case, white teenage/young adult males.

XCalibur · 10-15-2011, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve W.

Yes, after reading that bio on Gacy it seems obvious that most of the teenage boys and young men that were his victims were probably not gay. Wow, he really got away with a lot of horribleness over that time period. At least he was exectued.

It's interesting how some serial killers are very selective in whom they prey on: Ted Bundy killed just females and Jeffrey Dahmer and Gacy preyed on just teenage boys/young men or as it appears in Gacy's case, white teenage/young adult males.

Dahmer targeted black males for whatever reason.

Ironically, he was killed by a black male as well. In fact I've hear thats part of what motivated Scarver to attack him, in his mind he was avenging the black race.

Gelatinous Goo · 10-15-2011, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by XCalibur

Dahmer targeted black males for whatever reason.

Ironically, he was killed by a black male as well. In fact I've hear thats part of what motivated Scarver to attack him, in his mind he was avenging the black race.

It has been explained that Dahmer chose ethnic minorities because he felt there was a far better chance of not getting caught. Racial profiling at its cruelest.

crochetbuff · 10-15-2011, 09:33 PM

NBC News just reported on their evening news that along with trying to identify the remains of the 8 unknown victims, they have also uncovered new evidence. They found airline tickets showing Gacy travelled during that time and are gong to look into at least 20 cases of missing people from the places he travelled to. Very interesting.

mystery_daisy · 10-16-2011, 04:17 AM

This is such good news. I'm sure the victims' families that find out will be surprised and hopefully the closure will be cathartic for them. While the homosexuality may be a factor in some families coming forward, I think a lot of the young men were transient and the families didn't know they what state they were in, so hadn't considered the possibility of Gacy.

Blech, i saw a movie about Gacy. They kept showing under the house with tons of maggots and huge cockroaches and the sound effects of the bugs crawling just made me shudder.

10-12-2011, 05:01 PM	#1
JamesG Freakshow Moderator Forum Icon Join Date: Feb 01, 2008 Location: Brooklyn, NY Posts: 56,961	Update: Another John Wayne Gacy Victim is Identified Detectives exhume bodies of eight unknown John Wayne Gacy victims in an effort to identify remains By Associated Press 12th October 2011 They were murdered by one of America’s most notorious serial killers, but no one knew their names - perhaps until now. Thirty years ago, the skeletal remains of eight young men were found under John Wayne Gacy's home and their identities were never confirmed. Today, detectives secretly exhumed the bones in hopes of answering a final question: Who were they? The Cook County Sheriff's Department says DNA testing could solve Gacy’s last mystery, and authorities planned today to ask for the public's help in determining the victims' names. Investigators are urging relatives of anyone who vanished between 1970 and Gacy's 1978 arrest - and 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. Detective Jason Moran said: "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." Sheriff Tom Dart added: "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?" After so many years, relatives could be anywhere, so the sheriff's department is setting up a phone bank to field calls from across the U.S. 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. Gacy was executed in 1994. His last words were "Kiss my ass." Despite his death, 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's remains were found under Gacy's house. Sheriff Dart said other families have the same need for certainty. He said: "They were young men with futures, who at some point had families that cared about their kid. Until the dead are identified, 'it's like they didn't even exist." The plan began unfolding earlier this 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. Sheriff Dart said: "I completely forgot or didn't know there were all these unidentified." 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. Detective Moran said: "They kept them for 30 years, and then they got rid of them." A court order allowed them to dig up a wooden box with eight containers shaped like buckets, each holding a victim's jaw bones and teeth. Back in June, Det Moran flew with them to a lab in Texas. "They were my carry-on," he said, smiling. 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 or 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. Last week, the men who probed and prosecuted Gacy reminded the sheriff that many victims were already lost when they crossed paths with Gacy. One had not even been reported missing when his body was found floating in the Des Plaines River. Retired Detective Phil Bettiker said: "I can almost guarantee you that one or two of these kids were wards of the state. I don't think anybody cared about them." Most of them were 17 or 18 years old and had been, "through God knows how many foster homes and were basically on their own." At the same time, they recalled, others insisted their loved ones were among Gacy's victims, but no evidence ever came to light confirming it. Robert Egan, one of the prosecutors who helped convict Gacy, said: "It's very conceivable that a kid in his teens didn't have dental records." He added: "There could have been parents who would have loved to have brought in dental records but they didn't have any." Sheriff Dart doubts all eight victims will be identified, but he is confident that the office will finally be able to give some of them back their names. He said: "I'd be shocked if we don't get a handful. The technology is so precise." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...=feeds-newsxml Attached Images
	Last edited by JamesG; 10-25-2021 at 02:57 PM.

10-13-2011, 03:01 PM	#4
Steve W. Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 03, 2010 Posts: 870	His known killing spree was before my time but is there anyone here old enough to remember if there was a widespread fear in the Chicago area of a serial killer at that time (most of the '70's)? Was it sort of like NYC in the Summer of '77 or not really because all of the victims/missing (I presume) happened to be gay males and that specificity did not trigger panic in others who weren't? I'm just curious as I haven't ever really read or seen stuff about John Wayne Gacy in great detail. Edit: from reading, I'm not getting the impression that many of the victims were gay (at least not openly), so that then goes back to my original question.
	Last edited by Steve W.; 10-13-2011 at 03:50 PM.

10-12-2011, 07:46 PM	#2
Apostapler Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 06, 2009 Location: Indiana Posts: 872	I hope there is some closure for some families. DNA technology is so amazing.

10-13-2011, 02:48 PM	#3
Orange_Sody_84 Member Frequent Poster Join Date: Aug 05, 2010 Location: Myrtle Beach Posts: 234	It's so sad 8 kids are seemingly forgotten. no one should end up that way. if anyone is interested there is a movie called "Dear Mr. Gacy" that delves into what makes him tick. the book the film is based on "The Last Victim" by Jason Moss was good. and I felt the movie didn't glorify Gacy and made you think.

10-13-2011, 03:35 PM	#5
Steve W. Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 03, 2010 Posts: 870	Nevermind, I'm reading about him now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy I feel bad for him in their details of his childhood and teenage years, but still it obviously doesn't make up for all the bad stuff he did. That's crazy that there's a photo of him with the First Lady in 1978 in the midst of all his raping and murdering that he had been doing.

10-14-2011, 11:14 AM	#6
crochetbuff Member Forum Regular Join Date: May 16, 2007 Location: USA Posts: 545	I wasn't aware that there was a stigma attached to being a victim of Gacy. Obviously no one wants their loved one to be a victim of anybody... That the one mother disputes that her son was found under Gacy's home, (the way I read it) because she thinks if her son was killed by Gacy, that means her son was gay, etc... So sad that the stigma could make families not bring forth DNA to finally identify their loved one.

10-14-2011, 04:23 PM	#8
soilentgreen Member Forum Regular Join Date: Oct 13, 2005 Posts: 622	What's disturbing is that both Jeffrey Rignall and Robert Donnelly had attempted to get Gacy prosecuted for his assaults on them, but police were dragging their feet with Rignall's case and the D.A.'s office refused to file charges in Donnelly's case (per his own testimony at Gacy's trial). John Butkovitch's parents couldn't get police to investigate Gacy further, even though he had worked for and had a dispute with Gacy immediately prior to his disappearance, and his car and wallet were found abandoned. Most likely, some of victims were never filed as missing, not necessarily because they were all street kids or hustlers, but because they were hitchhiking, waiting around a train or bus depot when Gacy offered them a ride or kidnapped them at gunpoint (as he did with Donnelly, and some of the victims were last known to be hitchhiking or taking a train). Back then, it wasn't as easy to have a missing persons report filed with police as it is now; in some cases, the police department would refuse to take a report on anyone they suspected had ran off.

10-15-2011, 12:42 PM	#11
Steve W. Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 03, 2010 Posts: 870	Yes, after reading that bio on Gacy it seems obvious that most of the teenage boys and young men that were his victims were probably not gay. Wow, he really got away with a lot of horribleness over that time period. At least he was exectued. It's interesting how some serial killers are very selective in whom they prey on: Ted Bundy killed just females and Jeffrey Dahmer and Gacy preyed on just teenage boys/young men or as it appears in Gacy's case, white teenage/young adult males.

10-15-2011, 09:33 PM	#14
crochetbuff Member Forum Regular Join Date: May 16, 2007 Location: USA Posts: 545	NBC News just reported on their evening news that along with trying to identify the remains of the 8 unknown victims, they have also uncovered new evidence. They found airline tickets showing Gacy travelled during that time and are gong to look into at least 20 cases of missing people from the places he travelled to. Very interesting.

10-16-2011, 04:17 AM	#15
mystery_daisy True Crime Buff Forum 3000 Club Member Join Date: Jun 14, 2006 Location: Galveston Bay Posts: 3,118	This is such good news. I'm sure the victims' families that find out will be surprised and hopefully the closure will be cathartic for them. While the homosexuality may be a factor in some families coming forward, I think a lot of the young men were transient and the families didn't know they what state they were in, so hadn't considered the possibility of Gacy. Blech, i saw a movie about Gacy. They kept showing under the house with tons of maggots and huge cockroaches and the sound effects of the bugs crawling just made me shudder.