The identity of Victim 24, whose remains were found buried among the many other bodies in the crawl space of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's Chicago-area home, has remained a mystery for more than 40 years.
On Wednesday, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced DNA had determined the remains were those of a 16-year-old boy from Minnesota who had disappeared in 1976.
James Byron Haakenson, known as Jimmie, left St. Paul that summer, telling his family he planned to explore Chicago on his own, Dart said at a news conference.
He called his mother on Aug. 5, 1976, to let her know he had arrived, but he was never heard from again, according to Dart.
Haakenson's nephew, who had never met him, recently persuaded Haakenson's brother and sister to submit DNA samples for testing.
The sheriff's office formally notified Haakenson's family of the identification on Monday.
"We had to tell them their worst nightmares were, in fact, true," Dart said.
Haakenson's mother had come to Chicago in 1979 to try to learn whether her son was one of Gacy's victims. But since she did not have Haakenson's dental records — then the main method of identifying remains — the identification could not be made, Dart said.
Haakenson's call to his mother in August 1976 could have come just hours before he was killed, Dart said, noting that Haakenson may even have made the call from Gacy's house in Norwood Park Township.
Cook County Detective Sgt. Jason Moran went to Minnesota to inform Haakenson's sister of the office's findings. Moran said she was "tearful," even though she already knew her brother's link to Gacy was a possibility.
"Hearing the words is what hurts," Moran said.
In 2011, Dart reopened the Gacy investigation in an effort to use scientific methods and technology to help identify eight victims whose names remained a mystery.
Haakenson marked the second of those victims to be identified through DNA.
Earlier, William George Bundy, who was 19 when he disappeared in October 1976, was discovered to be a Gacy victim as well.
Through the efforts of the sheriff's office, seven missing-person cases and three cold-case murders have been solved. None of those were related to Gacy.
Six of Gacy's 33 victims remain unidentified, Dart said, noting that his office is still actively investigating their identities.
"Every family deserves to have closure," he said.
In all, Gacy was convicted of the murder of 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. He was executed in 1994.
During the chilly nighttime hours on Dec. 22, 1978, police began one of the grisliest excavations in the history of American crime. For weeks to come, Chicago and the nation watched in horror as the crawl space under the home of 36-year-old John Wayne Gacy, a onetime children's clown, was revealed to be a makeshift tomb. The bodies of 29 young men were eventually recovered from the suburban Norwood Park home. Four others were found in Illinois rivers. The first victim died in 1972, the last in 1978, only 10 days before Gacy's arrest. For decades, authorities could not identify eight of the victims.
Haakenson's identification could aid in determining the identity of the remains found buried just below him in Gacy's crawl space, Dart said.
Since authorities now know Haakenson likely died in early August 1976, the person buried beneath him was probably killed shortly beforehand, Dart said.
"The bodies were buried almost consecutively as he was murdering people and filling up the crawl space," Dart said.
The sheriff's office has DNA records on file for that victim as well as the other unidentified remains, and Dart encouraged anyone who suspects their loved one might have been killed by Gacy to come forward.
Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune
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