"This Was a Pure DNA Case": Gacy Victim James Haakenson Identified, AP Footage, 2017

Name: "This Was a Pure DNA Case": Gacy Victim James Haakenson Identified, AP Footage, 2017
Uploaded: 2017-07-25T00:00:00Z
Duration: 2 min 42 s
Description: Associated Press footage from July 2017, when the Cook County Sheriff's Office identified Gacy's Victim No. 24 as 16-year-old James Haakenson through his siblings' DNA. Sheriff Tom Dart and a sibling speak.

Associated Press footage from July 2017, when the Cook County Sheriff's Office identified Gacy's Victim No. 24 as 16-year-old James Haakenson through his siblings' DNA. Sheriff Tom Dart and a sibling speak.

Subject: John Wayne Gacy
Recorded: July 19, 2017
Runtime: 2:42

Content warning: Concerns the murder of a 16-year-old boy; no graphic detail.

The Interview

This is not an interview with John Wayne Gacy, who is not heard in it. There is no narration. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart answers reporters' questions, and a sibling of the victim, who is not named in the video, speaks about the family.

Historical Context

John Wayne Gacy was convicted in 1980 of 33 murders of young men and boys, most of them buried in the crawl space of his house near Chicago, and was executed on May 10, 1994. Eight of his victims were buried without being identified. In 2011 Sheriff Dart had their remains exhumed and asked relatives of young men who disappeared in the 1970s to give DNA samples. William Bundy was identified that year.

Circumstances

The body known as Victim No. 24 was recovered from the crawl space on December 29, 1978. According to the sheriff's office, DNA from two of James Haakenson's siblings, tested at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, matched it, and the family was told on July 17, 2017. AP's description says a nephew had seen a news clip about the project earlier that year and persuaded his father and aunt to give samples. Haakenson, of St. Paul, Minnesota, had left home in the summer of 1976 at 16 and phoned his mother from Chicago on August 5, 1976.

What the Recording Covers

Dart describes Haakenson as "a young man who at that point in time wanted to go ... to the bigger city," says the family knew he was going to Chicago, and calls the identification "a pure DNA case" that came together within months of the family's contact. The sibling gives his birthday (June 10, 1976, his 16th) and the August 5 phone call, and reasons that because the victim buried above him in the crawl space died the next day, "he died that day." The sibling adds that their mother died "not knowing what happened to her son."

What Makes the Recording Significant

Haakenson was the second of Gacy's eight unidentified victims to be named after the 2011 reopening. The footage records both the investigators' account and a family member's response on the day.

Archival Importance

It sits between the Cook County Sheriff's Office's own 2015 video on the identification project and WGN's 2021 report on the identification of Francis Wayne Alexander.

Important Caveats

Gacy is not heard. The sibling is not named in the video and should not be named on the page; reporting says a brother and a sister gave DNA, and which of them speaks is not known. The sibling's reasoning about the date of death is the family's inference, consistent with the sheriff's release. The machine sources disagree on the date given for the victim buried above him ("August 6th" or a garbled word); records give Rick Johnston's last contact as August 6, 1976. "After 40 Years" in the title is a round figure.

Sheriff Tom Dart: No, [unclear: "you know, what was he" / not in Whisper] he was a young man who at that point in time wanted to go and sort of go out on his own and to go to the bigger city. So he had been in touch with his mom, we believe, hours probably before he was killed. So it wasn't as if he was taking off and never wanted to see people again. He just wanted to start a new life and to try the big city. It wasn't something where the family was unaware. The family knew that he was leaving, that he was going to Chicago.

Sheriff Tom Dart: [unclear: "This year" / "tear"] that he had reached out to us, the samples were only a few months ago. So this all came together pretty quickly. I'm trying to think [unclear: "what happened in this way. So I don't blame them for that. But in the same breath, I don't think there was any physical identity" (Whisper) / "I don't think there was any, no, no, there was nothing physically, I'd never had this" (captions)]. This was a pure DNA case.

Sheriff Tom Dart: But there wasn't even a notion that DNA was on the horizon. It was just, if you don't have dental records, there's nothing we can do. This was down a really narrow window of time from the period of time when they reached out to us. We did the sampling, we made the match, it all came together. And then it was, frankly, [unclear: "it didn't take long" / "just, and didn't, what, didn't take long"]. It was an effort just to make sure we got the whole family together so that we could tell them what happened.

Haakenson'S Sibling: He turned 16 on June 10th of '76. He called my mom on August 5th. So somewhere in there, it's been so long, we don't even remember exactly what day he kind of ran away, you know. And so we know some things, like he called on August 5th. We also know that the victim above him in the crawl space was August [unclear: "6th" (Whisper) / "X" (captions)]. So we know without a shadow of a doubt that the day my brother called home and said he made it to Chicago, [unclear: "I'm fine" / "on fine"], Mom, don't worry about me, whatever he might have said, because I can't remember that conversation, my mom, I don't remember it, but he died that day.

Haakenson'S Sibling: Yes, but that would be a possibility of just, just saying hi. And just, yeah.

Haakenson'S Sibling: My mom passed away in '08. And she had to go to the grave not knowing what happened to her son. And I think that alone would have killed her if she was still alive, just hearing all this. I mean, you know. [02:37: speech ends; clip runs to 02:42.] ---