For more than three decades, Sherry Marino had her doubts the remains authorities found in Gacy's crawlspace were really from her son.
Michael Marino, 14, disappeared in October of 1976. Two years later, detectives discovered the bodies of 29 Gacy victims in the crawlspace and on his property. They found four others in the Des Plaines River. Police used dental records to identify most of the bodies. But attorneys for Marino's family asked the court to allow them to exhume the body so they could run DNA tests.
"It was released to her because like any mother she still believes he is alive," said Steven Baker, attorney.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart reopened the Gacy investigation a little over a year ago, hoping to identify the eight still unidentified victims. The office has been accepting DNA samples from relatives with missing loved ones and forwarding them to a lab in Fort Worth, Texas. So far they have identified one previously unidentified victim, William George Bundy, and excluded several others. Now they may have another unidentified victim to add to the list.
"We have been going all through this country trying to close the loops on this thing," said Dart.
The sheriff told ABC7's Paul Meincke Thursday afternoon he still has not seen the DNA evidence on the Marino case. But he's anxious to look at it. He says the reason he reopened the Gacy investigation in the first place is because science has advanced so much further than what investigators had to work with 30 years ago.
"This also calls into question the voracity of some of the other identifications made on Gacy victims back at that time," said Baker.
