John Wayne Gacy's blood may solve Cold Cases..

[Eat Shit And Die]

Detectives have long wondered what secrets serial killer John Wayne Gacy and other condemned murderers took to the grave when they were executed – particularly whether they had other unknown victims.

Now, in a game of scientific catch-up, the Cook County Sheriff's Department is trying to find out by entering the killers' DNA profiles into a national database shared with other law-enforcement agencies. The move is based on an ironic legal distinction: The men were technically listed as homicide victims themselves because they were put to death by the state.

Authorities hope to find DNA matches from blood, semen, hair or skin under victims' fingernails that link the long-dead killers to the coldest of cold cases. And they want investigators in other states to follow suit and submit the DNA of their own executed inmates or from decades-old crime scenes.

"You just know some of these guys did other murders," said Jason Moran, the sheriff's detective leading the effort. He noted that some of the executed killers ranged all over the country before the convictions that put them behind bars for the last time.

The Illinois testing, which began in the summer, is the latest attempt by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to solve the many mysteries still surrounding one of the nation's most notorious serial killers. Dart's office recently attempted to identify the last unnamed Gacy victims by exhuming their remains to create modern DNA profiles that could be compared with the DNA of people whose loved ones went missing in the 1970s, when Gacy was killing young men.

That effort, which led to the identification of one additional Gacy victim, led Dart to wonder if the same technology could help answer a question that has been out there for decades: Did Gacy kill anyone besides those young men whose bodies were stashed under his house or tossed in a river?

"He traveled a lot," Moran said. "Even though we don't have any information he committed crimes elsewhere, the sheriff asked if you could put it past such an evil person."

Dart's office said Monday that it believes this is the first time DNA has been added to the national database for criminals executed before the database was created.

"This has the potential to help bring closure to victims' families who have gone so long without knowing what happened to their loved ones," Dart said in a news release.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03...30854.html

[username]

That's cool!

[Duchess]

The men were technically listed as homicide victims themselves because they were put to death by the state.

Jesus

[HairOfTheDog]

This is really encouraging.

I'm curious as to which other serial killers have DNA-tappable samples on file.

I'd love to see Henry Lee Lucas's DNA entered into the database. I think he was caught within 5 years of Gacy and he was also executed. Lucas is on record as having confessed to 600 murders at one point, but many of those are believed to have been a hoax or coaxed. It's still unclear AFAIK how many he actually committed.

If you come across more on this ESAD, keep us posted. Very interesting implications for potential victims' families and law enforcement... Thanks.

[Eat Shit And Die]

If you come across more on this ESAD, keep us posted. Very interesting implications for potential victims' families and law enforcement... Thanks.

I made this thread to entice you then never contribute to it again, If i find any updates i will surely hide it from you for ever.

[HairOfTheDog]

If you come across more on this ESAD, keep us posted. Very interesting implications for potential victims' families and law enforcement... Thanks.

I made this thread to entice you then never contribute to it again, If i find any updates i will surely hide it from you for ever.

You can't entice me, ESAD. I'll just do what I usually do and keep an eye out and post updates myself.

You'd think that imaginary SuperMods with really original face palm gifs could be counted on to stay a little ahead of the rest and accept a word of appreciation once in a while. THIS IS BS!

[Eat Shit And Die]

Ask Duchess what I really thought about the Supermod thing then get back to me cupcake.

[HairOfTheDog]

You know I'm messing around and could care less about any communication that you've had with Duchess privately, ESAD.



Here's an update with some of what I was hoping to learn - what other executed killers have also been entered into the CODIS DNA base under the same provision as Gacy?

Snipped:
The DNA of two other executed Illinois killers -- Walter Stewart and Durlyn Eddmonds -- have also been added, according to Will County Coroner Patrick O'Neill.

The DNA may not have qualified if these men had died of natural causes while waiting on death row, he said.

Computers have reported no matches yet for Gacy, O'Neill said.

But Moran's cold case work did lead to one of the eight unidentified bodies being identified a year ago. DNA comparisons on the exhumed body of "victim No. 19" positively identified him as William George Bundy, who was reported missing in October 1976.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/04/justice/jo...-gacy-dna/


Hoping this gets carried out beyond the state of Illinois soon wherever there are samples available...

[Eat Shit And Die]

They have dna samples of most if not all serial killers caught dead or alive.

[HairOfTheDog]

They have dna samples of most if not all serial killers caught dead or alive.

Thanks, ESAD - that's good news.

The DNA science now is amazing. If the "homicide" classification loophole can be equally applied across states, this could be a godsend for cold case investigators and families.

Granted, there would be cost considerations in terms of LE resources for gathering samples, entering them, and running them through CODIS, but I wouldn't think that would be too expensive. I'm just guessin' about that though - maybe wishful thinking.

[Eat Shit And Die]

They caught BTK through swabbing his daughter and getting a family DNA match, they then got a warrant to arrest and charge him with murder... Dennis Lynn Rader.

[HairOfTheDog]

They caught BTK through swabbing his daughter and getting a family DNA match, they then got a warrant to arrest and charge him with murder... Dennis Lynn Rader.

I remember that.

Hadn't thought about how family DNA might assist in some of these cases too. Even if the executed killer's DNA isn't available, still some possibility to make a match that way if LE suspects one of them of a specific unsolved murder.

I loved how Rader sunk his own ship, btw. What a dipshit. Hard to believe that he was able to get away with killing people for so long.

"Hey, cops, you can't trace a CD back to me or my computer if I send you one, right pals? No, you say. Okay, cool, it's in the mail."

[Eat Shit And Die]

I know, I LOL the first time I read that they were all like "No OFC we can't track a disk"

[HairOfTheDog]

INTERESTING NEW RELATED STORY:

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida detective trying to crack a 53-year-old unsolved murder case will ask a Kansas judge for permission to exhume and extract DNA from the bodies of two notorious killers made famous in Truman Capote's 1966 true-crime novel, "In Cold Blood."

Sarasota County Sheriff Detective Kim McGath told Reuters she believes the two men convicted for the 1959 murder of Herbert Clutter, his wife and two children in Holcomb, Kansas, might be responsible for a similar killing one month later of a family in Osprey, Florida.

McGath, who spent four years reviewing half-century old investigative files on both the Clutter and Walker murders, said the exhumation of killers Richard Hickok and Perry Smith, who were executed in 1965, could provide key clues.

The hope is that DNA can be obtained from the men's long buried remains to either rule them out or connect them to the Walker murders, McGath said.

Full story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/dna-cold-blood-kil...26201.html


ESAD: I think this is the right place for this story as it relates closely to the subject matter in the OP, though not to the thread title. Understood if you or SC wanna move it to a separate Cold Case DNA thread or something like that.

[Eat Shit And Die]

Nope it ties in just fine.

[HairOfTheDog]

I'm starting to wonder if DNA testing for some of these executed murderers is actually gonna create some new cold cases.

While hopefully the DNA CODIS matching will tie executed killers to unsolved murders, it might also prove that some of the killings for which they were convicted were actually committed by someone else.

Could get political.

[Eat Shit And Die]

Thats the pros and cons.

[HairOfTheDog]

I see both as a "pro" in the sense that the truth is always positive. But, I know what you mean.

I can see some in law enforcement and/or politics not wanting to open up a can of worms, or perhaps law suits from victims' and criminals' families, if DNA matching results ultimately determine that some of those executed were wrongly convicted on some/all counts way before DNA testing was available. Hoping limited political barriers will be erected to stop the CODIS DNA entries as a result.

If LE is able to keep the scope limited to comparison only in unsolved murders and stave off requests or necessity to compare samples in "solved" cases, it should be manageable.

Really hoping to see these CODIS DNA entries take off on a broader scale.

[HairOfTheDog]

Gacy Victim Identification Investigation Leads to Resolution of Cold Cases

Interesting developments.

Since soliciting families of potential victims to come forward, one additional Gacy victim was positively identified - 19-year-old Chicago construction worker, William George Bundy (as noted upthread). Bundy disappeared in 1976.

Bundy's sister had long suspected that her brother was killed by Gacy. She contributed to the DNA matching project which positively confirmed her brother as matching up to previously unidentified skeletal remains in the Gacy case.

In addition, nine missing persons cases have been closed since they were investigated as possible Gacy victims.

-Five of the nine suspected potential victims were found alive.

-Two suspected potential victims had died of natural causes.

-Two other missing persons cases were solved after family submitted DNA that later was matched with bodies found in other states.

[HairOfTheDog]

ANOTHER SET OF REMAINS IDENTIFIED

An effort to identify remains of young men murdered by serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the 1970s has led to a break in the unrelated case of an unidentified teenager found shot to death in San Francisco 36 years ago.


The Cook County Sheriff's office announced Wednesday that DNA tests revealed a "genetic association" between Dr. Willa Wertheimer, whose half brother Andre "Andy" Drath went missing decades ago after traveling from Chicago to San Francisco.

Wertheimer submitted her DNA to the office in 2011. At the time, Sheriff Tom Dart said he had exhumed the remains of eight of Gacy's 33 victims who were never identified, and asked the relatives of young men who vanished in the 1970s to submit to DNA testing in the hopes of finding a match in the federal DNA database.

Late last year, the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office submitted tissue samples of unidentified people who had died here, including from a young man who was shot to death in 1979.

Wertheimer was notified of the match this month. Drath's body will be returned to Chicago for burial.

The identification is the latest in about a dozen cases that have been closed as a result of the exhumations of Gacy's victims.


Gacy, one of the most notorious serial killers in American history, was executed in 1994.

"This breakthrough illustrates that we should never give up on a cold case," Dart said in a news release.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-wayne-g...dre-drath/
--------------------

I think this is so exciting and encouraging and hope that sometime in the not too distant future there will be a nationwide process whereby DNA for all missing/unidentified persons is submitted routinely and consistently into the federal DNA database.

There are tens of thousands of families in the U.S. who have missing/presumed dead loved ones with no closure and no leads left to investigate.