When serial killer John Wayne Gacy was arrested in December 1978, police excavated the crawlspace of his ranch home at 8213 W. Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Park, suburban Chicago, unearthing the remains of 29 young men and boys. Four more were recovered from the Des Plaines River. While 25 victims were identified using dental records and personal effects, eight bodies could not be named and were buried in numbered plots in suburban cemeteries.
Sheriff Thomas Dart’s 2011 Cold Case Exhumation Initiative
In October 2011, Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart made a historic announcement: his department was exhuming the eight remaining unidentified Gacy victims to extract modern DNA profiles (nuclear Short Tandem Repeats and mitochondrial DNA) and enter them into the FBI’s CODIS database.
Sheriff Dart issued an urgent nationwide appeal to families who had lost a teenage son or young brother between 1970 and 1979 in the Midwest or along interstate highways: "Submit a cheek swab. Let us compare your family DNA against these eight boys."
The Emotional Complexity of Being "Ruled Out"
Over the subsequent decade, more than 200 families responded to the Cook County Sheriff's call. Brothers, sisters, and aging mothers who had spent thirty to forty years wondering whether their runaway son had died in Gacy’s crawlspace provided buccal swab samples.
In the overwhelming majority of comparisons, the lab returned a definitive result: RULED OUT.
For cold-case detectives and victim advocates, delivering a "ruled out" result creates a profound psychological paradox:
- Immediate Relief: Families are spared the horrific realization that their loved one was subjected to Gacy's ritualized torture and burial beneath a crawlspace floorboard.
- Renewed Ambiguity: The ruling out extinguishes hope of closure. The agonizing realization sets in that their son or brother is still missing somewhere out there in the world, his fate unresolved.
The "Accidental Breakthroughs": Solving Unrelated Cold Cases
One of the most extraordinary outcomes of Sheriff Dart's Gacy DNA initiative was the unintended resolution of cold cases having nothing to do with John Wayne Gacy. Because the Sheriff's office entered every submitting family’s DNA profile into the National Missing Persons DNA database, cross-database hits began illuminating cold files across the United States:
| Individual | Year Disappeared | Original Family Fear | Ultimate Resolution via Dart Initiative |
|---|---|---|---|
| William Bundy | October 1976 | Believed to be Gacy victim | MATCHED: Confirmed as Gacy Victim Body 19 in November 2011 through familial DNA. |
| James Byron Haakenson | August 1976 | Vanished after phone call to Minnesota | MATCHED: Confirmed as Gacy Victim Body 24 in July 2017 via sibling DNA swabs. |
| Francis Wayne Alexander | 1976 (New York / IL) | Lost contact with family | MATCHED: Confirmed as Gacy Victim Body 5 in December 2021 with Carl Koppelman & DNA Doe Project. |
| Daniel Noe | September 1977 | Feared murdered by Gacy | RULED OUT & SOLVED: Identified as a hiker who perished in a wilderness accident on Mount Rainier, WA in 1977. |
| Andy Gastgeb | Late 1970s | Suspected Chicago victim | RULED OUT & FOUND ALIVE: Discovered living safely under a different name in Oregon, having voluntarily relocated in the 1970s. |
The Remaining Five: Cook County’s Unfinished Mandate
Following the identifications of Bundy, Haakenson, and Alexander, five Gacy victims still remain unidentified in 2026: Body 10, Body 13, Body 21, Body 26, and Body 28.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Police continue to work with genetic genealogists, NamUs, and forensic databases to test candidate family trees. Anyone with a male relative who vanished between 1970 and 1979 is urged to contact the Cook County Sheriff's Cold Case Unit at (708) 865-6244.