January 1, DNA testing leads to identification of another victim of John Wayne Gacy

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart confirmed that a North Carolina man who moved to Chicago was a victim of John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 young men and boys in the 1970s.

Francis Wayne Alexander was 21 or 22 years old when Gacy killed him sometime between 1976 and 1977, Dart said. Alexander’s family didn’t realize he’d been dead all these years, the sheriff said.

“They just loved him, but they thought that he wanted nothing more to do with them, so that’s why there was never a missing person’s report,” Dart said.

“It is hard, even 45 years later, to know the fate of our beloved Wayne,” Alexander’s sister Carolyn Sanders wrote in a statement. “He was killed at the hands of a vile and evil man. Our hearts are heavy, and our sympathies go out to the other victims’ families. … We can now lay to rest what happened and move forward by honoring Wayne.”

Authorities found 26 sets of remains, including Alexander’s, under Gacy’s home outside Chicago. Three other victims were found buried on Gacy’s property, and four others were found in waterways south of the city.

Alexander’s identification came when the sheriff’s department teamed up with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses genetic information to locate relatives of the unidentified deceased. The group compares the DNA profile from the unnamed victim’s remains against data on a genealogy website to find potential relatives.

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Another victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s has been identified using DNA