John Wayne Gacy victims – who was James Byron Haakenson and how many unknown victims of the serial killer remain?
The "Killer Clown" is believed to have sexually assaulted, tortured and killed 33 teenagers and young men in Illinois
JAMES "Jimmie" Byron Haakenson has now been identified as one of his victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
The "Killer Clown" is believed to have sexually assaulted, tortured and killed 33 teenagers and young men before he was caught - 27 have now been named.
Who was James Byron Haakenson?
After running away from his Minnesota home in 1976, 16-year-old Jimmy Haakenson called his mother, told her he was in Chicago, then disappeared forever.
More than 40 years later, a detective from Illinois arrived at the family's home to tell Haakenson's relatives that at some point after hanging up the phone, the teenager crossed paths with serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Haakenson's body, it turns out, was among dozens found in a crawl space of Gacy's Chicago-area home in 1978.
The remains were only recently identified thanks to DNA technology that wasn't available then, the Cook County Sheriff's Department announced.
Haakenson's family in Minnesota plans to come to Chicago to mark his grave.
"One of the worst people in the world that walked the earth murdered my brother," his sister, Lorie Sisterman, who lives in North St. Paul, said Wednesday.
"You hope for something different," but she went on to add, "I'm so glad to know where my brother is."
Haakenson came to Chicago hoping to strike out on his own in a city far bigger than the community of St. Paul where he lived, Dart said.
According to Sisterman, the teenager had finally made good on his angry vows to his mother that he was going to run away.
He was a boy, said Sisterman, who kept "trying to find himself."
Authorities believe the teen was killed in August 1976, in part because of where he was found in Gacy's house
Who was John Wayne Gacy?
Gacy, who was 52 when he died, was born on March 17 in 1942 in Chicago Illinois.
Throughout his childhood he was bullied and suffered severe physical abuse at the hand of his alcoholic father.
After a troubled childhood, he became a successful businessman - managing three KFC restaurants - and married Marlynn Myers, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
She divorced him after he was convicted of sexually abusing a 16-year-old in 1968 and sent to prison for 10 years.
He was out on parole in 1970, set up a successful construction business, remarried and became a hard-working community volunteer.
Gacy began wearing a clown outfit to entertain at charity events and children's hospitals as "Pogo the Clown".
How many people did John Wayne Gacy kill?
In January 1972 gacy stabbed a 16-year-old boy to death in his home after picking him up from a bus terminal.
It was the start of a sickening spree that cost an estimated 33 young boys and teenagers their lives.
He would often ply his victims with drink or drugs and then trick them into being handcuffed - often as part of his clown persona.
Gacy would then rape and torture the men before strangling them with a rope. Many are believed to have died from asphyxiation after he stuffed cloth down their throats.
He buried many of the bodies beneath his own home.
How many unknown victims remain?
Gacy was convicted of killing 33 young men and was executed in 1994.
Authorities hadn't been able to identify eight of the victims until Sheriff Tom Dart in 2011 ordered the remains of the eight victims exhumed and asked families of young men who went missing in the 1970s to provide DNA samples.
Haakenson's body is only the second person that authorities have identified in this latest investigation.
The first was William Bundy, a 19-year-old construction worker from Chicago whose remains were identified weeks after the exhumations.
Six men's identities remain unknown.
