Gacy exhumations help identify unrelated homicide victim

Willa Wertheimer, who submitted a DNA sample to the sheriff’s office back in 2011, is making plans to bring home the body of her half-brother Andy Drath.

Authorities in Cook County, Illinois announced Wednesday they had identified the victim in a 36-year-old murder in California after the victim’s half-sister submitted a DNA sample as part of an effort to solve cold cases related to serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart said that since the Gacy investigation was reopened in 2011, one of the original eight unidentified victims has been identified as William George Bundy and identifications have been made in 11 other unrelated missing persons cases.

This story has been corrected to reflect that tissues were examined last year, not submitted by medical examiner last year. In some cases, the missing loved ones have been found alive, including a man who ran away years ago and was found living in Oregon.

Those samples were added to a federal database, and the Cook County Sheriff was notified in May of a possible match between Wertheimer and the SF body.

Testing revealed that there was no genetic association between Dr. Wertheimer and any of the unidentified Gacy victims.

Department of Children and Family Services records show Drath traveled to San Francisco, hoping to get his guardianship transferred there, but was never heard from again.

Wertheimer’s relative, named in media reports as 16-year-old Andre Drath, was not one of Gacy’s victims but was found shot to death in San Francisco in 1979. “… John Doe No. 89 now will come home to his kid sister with his own name – Andy”.

“This breakthrough illustrates that we should never give up on a cold case, no matter how hopeless it appears”, Dart said.

In addition to Drath, investigators have been able to identify the remains of five other young men unrelated to Gacy’s killing spree after families submitted DNA to the Gacy team investigators. Two others were found to have died of natural causes after going missing. But the mystery of what became of her brother was finally solved as a byproduct of an investigation into one of the most infamous serial killers the nation has ever known, John Wayne Gacy.

The identification is the latest in about a dozen cases that have been closed as a result of the exhumations of Gacy’s victims. But the sample turned up a match to skeletal remains found in a New Jersey state park in 2000. His remains were recently identified.

This time, they’d use new technology to obtain DNA profiles, an effort they hoped would provide closure to families looking for their loved ones for decades. He was reported missing in 1976 around his 19th birthday, and his family had long believed he may have been a Gacy victim.