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James Byron Haakenson 1976; serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1976
Topic Started: Jul 19 2017, 09:19 PM (45 Views)
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John Wayne Gacy Victim Is Identified After Four Decades
By LIAM STACKJULY 19, 2017



James Byron Haakenson, age 16, was murdered by the serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1976. His remains were identified this week. Credit Cook County Sheriff's Office
Investigators have used DNA evidence to identify one of the seven remaining unknown victims of John Wayne Gacy, a 1970s serial killer who raped and murdered dozens of teenage boys and young men and was labeled “the killer clown” by the news media, the authorities said on Wednesday.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Department in Illinois said that the newly identified victim was James Byron Haakenson, a 16-year-old boy who ran away from his home in St. Paul in the summer of 1976. The police found his body and 26 others in the crawl space beneath Mr. Gacy’s home in December 1978.

Mr. Gacy was among the most prolific serial killers in American history. From 1972 to 1978, he lured or forced 33 teenage boys and young men — some of whom he employed at his construction business — to his home in suburban Chicago, where he murdered them. He sexually assaulted most of his victims as he tortured them to death and buried all but six of them beneath his house.

Neighbors in Norwood Park Township, Ill., knew Mr. Gacy for his appearances at children’s parties where he performed as Pogo the Clown, a character he later painted or sketched numerous times while in prison.

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Mr. Gacy was convicted in 1980 of killing 33 people and was executed in 1994. But identifying the remains of his victims has been a decades-long process aided in recent years by advances in forensic technology and the use of DNA evidence.

The police notified Mr. Haakenson’s family on Monday that his remains had been identified.

“It’s not every day you heard this: A monster murdered your brother,” his sister, Lorie Sisterman, told a CBS affiliate in Chicago. “It’s just not an everyday, normal conversation that you have with a detective from a different state who tells you this awful news.”

Mr. Haakenson’s family last heard from him on Aug. 5, 1976, when he called home and told his mother that he was in Chicago, the sheriff’s department said. Investigators believe he crossed paths with Mr. Gacy soon after that call.

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His body was found in Mr. Gacy’s crawl space in December 1978 in a make-do grave alongside two others. One of those bodies was identified at the time as Rick Johnston, who was last seen on Aug. 6, 1976.

The department said it believed Mr. Gacy murdered Mr. Haakenson and Mr. Johnston either at or around the same time based on the last time they were seen and their relative positions in the crawl space. Investigators have not been able to identify the third body in that grave, which is classified as Victim No. 26.

Thomas J. Dart, the Cook County sheriff, reopened the investigation to identify the remaining victims in 2011, when there were eight whose identities were not known. Since then, investigators have identified one other victim: William Bundy, a 19-year-old who disappeared in October 1976.

The department said Mr. Haakenson’s mother tried to determine in 1979 if her son’s body was among those found under Mr. Gacy’s house, but dental records, which were the primary means of identification at the time, were unavailable. She is no longer alive, the department said.

The authorities identified Mr. Haakenson’s remains by requesting DNA samples from two of his siblings and submitting them to the University of Northern Texas Center for Human Identification. They also reviewed the original missing person’s report filed by Mr. Haakenson’s family, information from the Social Security Administration and post-mortem reports.

Mr. Gacy’s unidentified victims were buried in 1981 under tombstones inscribed with the words “We Are Remembered.” The sheriff’s department said its investigation into the identities of the six remaining unknown victims was continuing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/john-...identified.html
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CNN) ¡X For half a decade, serial killer John Wayne Gacy prowled the streets of Chicago in search of young, vulnerable boys and men to lure back to his Norwood Park home.

Gacy is believed to have murdered at least 33 men between 1972 and 1978. Some 40 years later, six of those men are still unidentified.

But one family was brought closure Wednesday, as Cook County authorities identified James "Jimmie" Byron Haakenson as another victim of the so-called "killer clown."











Police: Victim was murdered shortly after coming to Chicago

Haakenson was 16 years old when he left his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, in search of a different life in a bigger city in 1976, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart told reporters Wednesday.







The teenager came to Chicago in early August and called his mom on August 5, 1976, to let her know he had arrived. It would be the last time she would hear from her son.

Police believe Gacy murdered Haakenson shortly after he made that phone call home, quite possibly that same day.

It is not known how Haakenson and Gacy met. Gacy was known for searching areas around Chicago looking for men who were gay, alone or looking for work.

Gacy would lure men to his home on false pretenses, often offering them rides, money, drugs, alcohol or a job. He would then impair them before sexually assaulting, torturing and killing them.


Authorities used DNA to identify victim

By the time police uncovered the crawlspace in Gacy's home in 1978, Haakenson's body was unidentifiable. For 39 years, he was given a new identity: Victim No. 24.

In the 1970s, police could only identify victims using dental records. Cook County officials removed the jawbones from the eight unidentified Gacy victims before burying them in county cemeteries, Dart said.

County officials found the bones did not provide enough information for four of the unidentified victims, and in 2011, authorities exhumed the bodies to gather more DNA.

Dart said authorities gathered enough DNA evidence on the victims and are ready to start bringing closure to their families. Dart said he hopes more families will come forward in the near future so more victims can be identified.



„Ý



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Ted Bundy raped and killed at least 16 young women in the early to mid-1970s before he was executed in 1989. A crowd of several hundred gathered outside the prison where he was executed, and they cheered at the news of his death.














Joel David Rifkin was stopped by police for driving without a license plate when a body was found in his pickup. Rifkin killed 17 women in New York between 1991 and 1993 and was sentenced to life in prison.














Charles Ng, seen here, and accomplice Leonard Lake tortured, killed and buried 11 people in northern California between 1984 and 1985. After the men were arrested for shoplifting, police found bullets and a silencer in their car and took them into the police station for questioning. Lake killed himself there with a cyanide pill. Ng was later sentenced to death.














Robert Lee Yates Jr. killed 15 people, most of them between 1996 and 1998. He buried one of them in a flower bed by his house in the Spokane, Washington, area. Most of his victims were prostitutes or drug addicts he killed in his van. He is on Washington's death row.














Gary Leon Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, confessed to 48 killings after his DNA was linked to a few of his victims. Remains of his victims, mostly runaways and prostitutes, turned up in ravines, rivers, airports and freeways in the Pacific Northwest.














Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida in 2002 for the murders of seven men whom she had lured by posing as a prostitute or a distressed traveler.














Derrick Todd Lee was accused of raping and killing six women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, between 2001 and 2003. He was arrested in Atlanta for the murder of Charlotte Murray Pace, convicted in 2004 and sentenced to death.














Danny Rolling pleaded guilty to the 1990 murders of five students he raped, tortured and mutilated in Gainesville, Florida. Rolling was also found responsible for a 1991 triple homicide in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was executed in 2006.














Angel Maturino Resendez, also known as the Railway Killer, was a drifter from Mexico. During the 1990s, he would rob and kill his victims near railroad tracks on both sides of the border and then hop rail cars to escape. Resendez was executed in 2006.














Pig farmer Robert Pickton was charged with 26 counts of murder after police found the bodies of young women on his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. He was convicted of six murders in 2007, and he is serving a life sentence.














The BTK Strangler, Dennis Rader, killed 10 people between 1977 and 1991 in the Wichita, Kansas, area. He was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in 2005. Rader named himself BTK, short for "bind, torture, kill."














Police found the decomposing and buried bodies of 10 women and the skull of another woman at the Cleveland home of ex-Marine Anthony Sowell. He was convicted and given the death penalty in 2011.














Chester Dewayne Turner was sentenced to death for murdering 14 women and one victim's unborn fetus in the Los Angeles area between 1987 and 1998. Turner was later convicted and sentenced to death for four more murders.














John Wayne Gacy killed 33 men and boys between 1972 and 1978. Many of his victims, mostly drifters and runaways, were buried in a crawlspace beneath his suburban Chicago home. Here's a look at some other notorious convicted serial killers.














Jeffery Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms for the murders of 17 men and boys in the Milwaukee area between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer had sex with the corpses of his victims and kept the body parts of others, some of which he ate. Dahmer and another prison inmate were beaten to death during a work detail in November 1994.














Law enforcement officers meet in San Francisco in 1969 to compare notes on the Zodiac Killer, who is believed to have killed five people in 1968 and 1969. The killer gained notoriety by writing several letters to police boasting of the slayings. He claimed to have killed as many as 37 people and has never been caught.














Authorities said DNA recovered from the body of Mary Sullivan matches that of her suspected killer, the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo. After a sample was secretly collected from a relative, DeSalvo's body was exhumed in July 2013 for more DNA testing. From mid-1962 to early 1964, the Boston Strangler killed at least 13 women. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in 1973 while serving a prison sentence for rape.














Ed Gein killed at least two women and dug up the corpses of several others from a cemetery in Wisconsin, using their skin and body parts to make clothing and household objects in the 1950s.














In 1973, Juan Corona, a California farm laborer, was sentenced to 25 consecutive life sentences for the murders of 25 people found hacked to death in shallow graves.














Joseph Paul Franklin was convicted in 1997 of murdering Gerald Gordon outside a St. Louis synagogue in 1977. Franklin was also convicted of at least five other murders, receiving a string of life sentences, but he suggested that he was responsible for 22 murders. He was best known for shooting Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who was paralyzed from the attack. Franklin was executed in November 2013.














In 1977, David Berkowitz, also known as Son of Sam, confessed to the murders of six people in New York City. Berkowitz, now serving six consecutive 25-to-life sentences, claimed that a demon spoke to him through a neighbor's dog.














Cousins Kenneth Bianchi, seen here, and Angelo Buono were charged with the murders of nine women between 1977 and 1978. Also known as the Hillside Stranglers, the cousins sexually assaulted and sometimes tortured their victims, leaving their bodies on roadsides in the hills of Southern California.














Wayne Williams killed at least two men between 1979 and 1981, and police believed he might have been responsible for more than 20 other deaths in the Atlanta area. Williams was convicted and sentenced to two life terms in 1982.














After serving 15 years for murdering his mother, Henry Lee Lucas was convicted in 1985 in nine more murders. Lucas was the only inmate spared from execution by Texas Gov. George W. Bush.














Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, was convicted of 13 murders and sentenced to death in California in 1989. The self-proclaimed devil worshiper found his victims in quiet neighborhoods and entered their homes through unlocked windows and doors.














During a routine traffic stop, a police officer found a dead U.S. Marine in the front seat of a car driven by Randy Steven Kraft. Kraft was linked to 45 murders and sentenced to death in 1989. He would pick up hitchhikers, give them drugs and alcohol, sexually assault them and then mutilate and strangle them.














Ted Bundy raped and killed at least 16 young women in the early to mid-1970s before he was executed in 1989. A crowd of several hundred gathered outside the prison where he was executed, and they cheered at the news of his death.














Joel David Rifkin was stopped by police for driving without a license plate when a body was found in his pickup. Rifkin killed 17 women in New York between 1991 and 1993 and was sentenced to life in prison.














Charles Ng, seen here, and accomplice Leonard Lake tortured, killed and buried 11 people in northern California between 1984 and 1985. After the men were arrested for shoplifting, police found bullets and a silencer in their car and took them into the police station for questioning. Lake killed himself there with a cyanide pill. Ng was later sentenced to death.














Robert Lee Yates Jr. killed 15 people, most of them between 1996 and 1998. He buried one of them in a flower bed by his house in the Spokane, Washington, area. Most of his victims were prostitutes or drug addicts he killed in his van. He is on Washington's death row.














Gary Leon Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, confessed to 48 killings after his DNA was linked to a few of his victims. Remains of his victims, mostly runaways and prostitutes, turned up in ravines, rivers, airports and freeways in the Pacific Northwest.














Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida in 2002 for the murders of seven men whom she had lured by posing as a prostitute or a distressed traveler.














Derrick Todd Lee was accused of raping and killing six women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, between 2001 and 2003. He was arrested in Atlanta for the murder of Charlotte Murray Pace, convicted in 2004 and sentenced to death.














Danny Rolling pleaded guilty to the 1990 murders of five students he raped, tortured and mutilated in Gainesville, Florida. Rolling was also found responsible for a 1991 triple homicide in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was executed in 2006.














Angel Maturino Resendez, also known as the Railway Killer, was a drifter from Mexico. During the 1990s, he would rob and kill his victims near railroad tracks on both sides of the border and then hop rail cars to escape. Resendez was executed in 2006.














Pig farmer Robert Pickton was charged with 26 counts of murder after police found the bodies of young women on his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. He was convicted of six murders in 2007, and he is serving a life sentence.














The BTK Strangler, Dennis Rader, killed 10 people between 1977 and 1991 in the Wichita, Kansas, area. He was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in 2005. Rader named himself BTK, short for "bind, torture, kill."














Police found the decomposing and buried bodies of 10 women and the skull of another woman at the Cleveland home of ex-Marine Anthony Sowell. He was convicted and given the death penalty in 2011.














Chester Dewayne Turner was sentenced to death for murdering 14 women and one victim's unborn fetus in the Los Angeles area between 1987 and 1998. Turner was later convicted and sentenced to death for four more murders.














John Wayne Gacy killed 33 men and boys between 1972 and 1978. Many of his victims, mostly drifters and runaways, were buried in a crawlspace beneath his suburban Chicago home. Here's a look at some other notorious convicted serial killers.














Jeffery Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms for the murders of 17 men and boys in the Milwaukee area between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer had sex with the corpses of his victims and kept the body parts of others, some of which he ate. Dahmer and another prison inmate were beaten to death during a work detail in November 1994.














Law enforcement officers meet in San Francisco in 1969 to compare notes on the Zodiac Killer, who is believed to have killed five people in 1968 and 1969. The killer gained notoriety by writing several letters to police boasting of the slayings. He claimed to have killed as many as 37 people and has never been caught.














Authorities said DNA recovered from the body of Mary Sullivan matches that of her suspected killer, the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo. After a sample was secretly collected from a relative, DeSalvo's body was exhumed in July 2013 for more DNA testing. From mid-1962 to early 1964, the Boston Strangler killed at least 13 women. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in 1973 while serving a prison sentence for rape.














Ed Gein killed at least two women and dug up the corpses of several others from a cemetery in Wisconsin, using their skin and body parts to make clothing and household objects in the 1950s.














In 1973, Juan Corona, a California farm laborer, was sentenced to 25 consecutive life sentences for the murders of 25 people found hacked to death in shallow graves.














Joseph Paul Franklin was convicted in 1997 of murdering Gerald Gordon outside a St. Louis synagogue in 1977. Franklin was also convicted of at least five other murders, receiving a string of life sentences, but he suggested that he was responsible for 22 murders. He was best known for shooting Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who was paralyzed from the attack. Franklin was executed in November 2013.














In 1977, David Berkowitz, also known as Son of Sam, confessed to the murders of six people in New York City. Berkowitz, now serving six consecutive 25-to-life sentences, claimed that a demon spoke to him through a neighbor's dog.














Cousins Kenneth Bianchi, seen here, and Angelo Buono were charged with the murders of nine women between 1977 and 1978. Also known as the Hillside Stranglers, the cousins sexually assaulted and sometimes tortured their victims, leaving their bodies on roadsides in the hills of Southern California.














Wayne Williams killed at least two men between 1979 and 1981, and police believed he might have been responsible for more than 20 other deaths in the Atlanta area. Williams was convicted and sentenced to two life terms in 1982.














After serving 15 years for murdering his mother, Henry Lee Lucas was convicted in 1985 in nine more murders. Lucas was the only inmate spared from execution by Texas Gov. George W. Bush.














Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, was convicted of 13 murders and sentenced to death in California in 1989. The self-proclaimed devil worshiper found his victims in quiet neighborhoods and entered their homes through unlocked windows and doors.














During a routine traffic stop, a police officer found a dead U.S. Marine in the front seat of a car driven by Randy Steven Kraft. Kraft was linked to 45 murders and sentenced to death in 1989. He would pick up hitchhikers, give them drugs and alcohol, sexually assault them and then mutilate and strangle them.




















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Nephew of victim searched for answers

It was earlier this year when a nephew of Haakenson's reached out to the county to find out more about his uncle.

Dart said the nephew came across information on the county's recent efforts to identify the victims. Shortly after, he persuaded his father and aunt, Haakenson's brother and sister, to take a DNA test.

The DNA submitted by the family members was an "immediate hit" on Victim No. 24, Dart said, which quickly led to identifying Haakenson.

It wasn't the first time family members came forward to link Haakenson's disappearance to John Wayne Gacy.

Haakenson's mother went to authorities in 1979 to see if her son was a victim, Dart said. But due to limited resources at the time and the mother's lack of dental records, nothing was recovered. The mother passed away in the early 2000s, Dart said.


Timeline of murder determined from positions of victims

Cook County authorities used other victims' positions in the crawlspace of Gacy's suburban Chicago home to narrow the timeframe of Haakenson's death.

Haakenson's body was found between the bodies of two other men: Rick Johnston and another unidentified boy, referred to by police as Victim No. 26.



Serial Killers Fast Facts


Related Article: Serial Killers Fast Facts

Johnston, whose body was found on top of Haakenson's, is believed to have been murdered by Gacy on August 6, 1976, after attending a concert at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago.

Dart said authorities believe the third victim, whose body was found below Haakenson's, was murdered in July or August of 1976.


Police urge people to come forward

When remains were first uncovered in Gacy's home in 1978, eight victims were unidentified. But due to advancements in technology, that number has been reduced to six.

John Doe No. 89 identified

Dart said the victims were identified because "people agreed to come forward with DNA."

Authorities are now urging people who had loved ones who went missing in Chicago during that period to come forward and submit their DNA -- and hopefully get some answers.

"Every family deserves closure, without hesitation," Dart said.
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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Ell
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PIC
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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Ell
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3rd one from left was I'D as James
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Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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