Law enforcement officials have always wondered if serial killer John Wayne Gacy — executed in 1994 for the savage murders of 33 teenage boys — had additional victims they didn’t know about.
Now, thanks to modern science and a legal loophole, they will finally be able to find out the truth, the
Chicago Sun Times reports.
Investigators have created a DNA profile of Gacy and plan to enter it into a national database in an effort to link him to other unknown victims.
DNA samples from other serial killers are also being prepared for similar comparisons.
The remains of Gacy’s victims were found in 1978 in a crawl space in his Cook County, Illinois home and in a nearby river.
But police have long suspected there may be additional victims they have yet to link to the killer, who worked as a circus clown at birthday parties and was once photographed with First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
It has been legally tricky for the Cook County Sheriff’s Department to get the project underway.
State officials had refused to allow the DNA samples to be used, unless the killers themselves were listed as homicide victims.
But detectives discovered that Gacy and other murderers were technically murder victims because their death certificates following their executions listed homicide as the cause of death.
Despite Gacy’s execution 18 years ago, the case refuses to rest.
Earlier this year, two Chicago lawyers re-examined the case files of three of his victims and concluded that Gacy may have had one or more accomplices.