Authorities use DNA to identify victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy

(Image credit: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

published 25 October 2021

Through DNA testing, police in Chicago have been able to identify a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy whose name was unknown for more than 40 years.

On Monday, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart identified Victim No. 5 as Francis Wayne Alexander, a man who grew up in North Carolina and was killed not long after moving to Chicago. Dart said Alexander's family "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."

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Gacy was convicted of killing 33 boys and young men in the 1970s and sentenced to death; he was executed in 1994. He hid most of the bodies in a crawl space at his home near Chicago, and while many of the victims were identified, eight were not. In 2011, the Cook County Sheriff's Department announced it would start conducting DNA tests on the remains, and including Alexander, three of the victims have since been identified.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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