CHICAGO_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 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 the Twin Cities that summer, telling his family he planned to explore Chicago on his own, Dart said at a news conference.
Shortly after he arrived, he called his mother, but he was never heard from again, according to Dart.
Haakenson's nephew, who had never met him, recently convinced Haakenson's brother and sister to submit DNA samples for testing.
"We had to tell them their worst nightmares were, in fact, true," Dart 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.
In addition, 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.
In all, Gacy was convicted of the murder of 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. He was executed in 1994.
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