Gacy victim identified as man from N.C.

CHICAGO — A North Carolina man who moved to Chicago has been identified as a victim of John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of killing 33 young men and boys in the 1970s, authorities said Monday.

Francis Wayne Alexander would have been 21 or 22 years old when Gacy killed him sometime between early 1976 and early 1977, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said at a news conference in announcing the identification of Alexander’s remains.

Alexander’s family didn’t even realize he had 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.

Alexander’s remains were among 26 sets that police found in the crawl space under Gacy’s home just outside the city. Three other victims were found buried on Gacy’s property and another four people whom Gacy admitted killing were found in waterways south of Chicago.

The identification of Alexander came together when the sheriff’s office teamed up with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses genetic information to locate relatives of dead people who have not been identified.