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Subscribe to RSSWhen Sherry Marino visited the grave marked with her son’s name, she would ask, “Is this you, Michael?”
Each time, she felt nothing, a feeling she brought to authorities, questioning whether the body in the grave belonged to her son, Michael Marino, a 14-year-old who went missing in 1976 who had long been labeled a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
On Wednesday, she was redeemed. She was on her way to the cemetery, marking the 36th year since the day her son disappeared, when her lawyers called her: The boy in the grave was not her son.
For years, Marino fought to have the grave exhumed. When she approached Steven Becker and Robert Stephenson of Becker Stephenson, they agreed to work on her behalf, pro bono.
After fighting bureaucracy, they said they succeeded in having the body unearthed.
“When we opened up the casket, we were immediately suspect, because there was neither a lower or an upper jaw bone connected to the skull and of course this was the major form of identification was through the dental records,” Becker said.
Added his partner, Stephenson: “We did find a small piece of the jaw bone and another piece of the jaw connected to the upper part of the skull. One of those was tested, that’s where we got the DNA from.”
Previously, a forensic dentist said, based on dental records, that the body was Michael Marino’s.
But modern DNA, pulling from the same source, found Sherry Marino was not the parent of the exhumed body.
“She was relieved that now the rest of the world knew she was right,” Stephenson said.
Officials thought the body belonged to Michael Marino in part, Becker said, because the body was found in a grave site that included his friend, Kenny Parker, 16. Both boys hung out at an arcade in an area where Gacy prowled.
Officials “have always asserted that Kenny Parker and Michael were in the same grave,” Becker said. “Today we have proof that that was in fact not Michael. And if it was not Michael, was it Kenny Parker if he was identified in the same means?”
Now the lawyers, who have argued that Gacy had accomplices, say the Gacy case must be reexamined.
Bill Dorsch, a former Chicago police officer, urges officials to look at a building at the corner of Miami and North avenues in Chicago where Gacy was a caretaker.
Dorsch knew Gacy and had even been in his home with his wife and son in 1974.
“One night coming home from my work as a police officer in Chicago, that’s when I encountered him walking from the building with a long-handled shovel in his hands,” Dorsch said.
Dorsch, who lived nearby, asked what Gacy was doing at that early hour. Dorsch said that Gacy replied, “You know me, Bill, there’s not enough hours in the day.”
Seven years later, as Cook County law enforcement dug up bodies of boys and young men at Gacy’s home, Dorsch recalled their encounter. Since then, he’s been urging the Cook County Sheriff’s department to dig up the site near where they bumped into each other.
Witnesses also told Dorsch that Gacy dug trenches there at night.
Dorsch, Becker and Stephenson have also pursued the angle that Gacy had accomplices.
Related: Witnesses shed new light on John Wayne Gacy murder; suggest he had accomplice
Related: Serial killer John Wayne Gacy had accomplices, lawyers say
“The only way to bring closure to the victims’ families is to investigate it,” Dorsch said. “And every victim’s family that we talk to says the same thing: ‘I just want to know.’”
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fn gacy.still causing pain.
I hear ya RB :(
OF COURSE spend the money and re-open this case.
It always baffles me when we hear about how years later there were ppl giving the police/ authorities all of this information about criminals but they never followed up on it. Why make a woman go through years of court proceedings to get someone to dig up the body and test it? Why not follow up with the tips on Gacy digging trenches in the middle of the night? Common sense says if you arrest someone for being a serial killer and then have ppl telling you stories about suspicious things hes been doing, you investigate further. It been 40 years you cant tell me that the police/FBI have been consistently too busy for the past 40 years that they cant spare one or two ppl to follow up on things especially if there are still unsolved missing ppl in the area...
Looking back in hindsight it's easy to say now, why didn't police followup on information from people. But what folks may not realize is that police and FBI are working on lots of information about possible other victims, current victims and past victims, in other locations across this nation, and out of this country. Sometimes hundreds of thousands are involved. It isn't a matter of just a couple, obviously sticking out easily.
When you consider statistics show 800,000 individuals under the age of 18 are reported missing each year in addition to 100,000 runaways, and another 200,000 are reported stolen by a parent, one can appreciate the problems. In 1974, the Runaway Child Act was created to assist children because of the huge need to help children on the streets to stop them from becoming victims of crime.
So with bodies being found and people calling in names of missing runaways, stolen by relatives or victims of predators and people having "hunches",just how far are detectives expected to go on taxpayers money? It can easily run into the millions of dollars between the local law enforcement and Federal department resources, not including the court costs.That is just on this one case alone.What about other victims and their cases, who deserve time and attention?
In this case it's nice to see the parent get confirmation to her nagging question. Often going by ones feeling to others can be very frustrating indeed, as women are so often dismissed for this by a large part of society. How unfortunate at the time the body was found, more care wasn't taken to do things correctly. It's the times police make mistakes that makes the news, not the other occasions that don't. Can't you just see paper's headline, "Police waste tax dollars proving parent wrong, victim was their child?" Most people don't want to know when police do their jobs right, only when they do them wrong. Hopefully more information will come forth to help others now.
Why is the title on the main NBCNews.com page "Lawyers: DNA proves Gacy was misidentified"?
That's not what it says. Did you read it right or did they correct it
It says that.
This is what Gacy would have looked like at the time of the murders.
@Mary Jones-1616541 - That is what it says on the main NBC News home page. The title on the actual article page is correct. The site has only gotten worse since it went from MSNBC to just NBC. I was hoping having the site solely under NBC control would make things better, instead it as made things worse. They really need to start hiring some editors and proofreaders that can actually read. The reporting as well as the spelling and grammar has been horrendous on this site lately. They are in such a rush to be the first to get something up that the quality has suffered greatly. Unfortunately, most news sites are not much better. They often end up retracting or simply removing erroneous stories with no explanation. The internet seems to be marking the death of real journalism where articles were proofread and sources verified before things were published to the world.
Wow. This sounds like a "Changeling" sort of case. How eerie.
If the remains don't belong to her son, who do they belong to?
That and "WHO" murdered her son? As a mom, I would have an extremely hard time sleeping until my child's murder was solved! Until then, who knows how many children/adults are at risk???? :(
When I was 9yrs old, my Mom inadvertingly pulled behind Gacy's funeral proccesion, that was leaving stateville prison. Scary to know he was executed 2miles from the house I grew up in. Happy to know he wasen't on the streets anymore. Those were eerie times to be a kid...
Still are.
Sativa-I kind of can relate. I live within < an hour of CHI TOWN and grew up with WLS RADIO, BOZO, ETC... (good ole days)!!!! The Gacy news on WGN was a major shocker for this young mother about to give birth to twins at the time!
THANK GOD THE BASTARDS DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know what you mean. It's still odd growing up in the Region, or at least it was when I was a kid. Unique. Strange thing is, I don't think the broadcast quality from that WGN station has changed in all our years combined. lol. Still makes me feel at home when I get to watch it and all the cheesy Empire commercials.
Now I live in a place where no one has even heard the name Svengoolie.
To: nbcnews.com
Please review your policy in regard to the hiring of high school drop-outs as headline writers, editors and spell-checkers.
In the meantime, please correct your front page headline "Lawyers: DNA proves Gacy was misidentified." Add the word "victim" after "Gacy," e.g., "Lawyers: DNA proves Gacy victim was misidentified."
The mass murderer was correctly identified; it's victim was not.
Even better, because no proven and executed mass murderer is worthy of headline mention, delete its name and replace it with "victim," e.g., "Lawyers: DNA proves victim was misidentified."
Thank you.
Sue, Do you have a job? I think NBC needs to hire you.!
Hey NBC, Here's someone that has a clue and a brain. You might want to hire her as a manager/supervisor over your writers, editors and spell-checkers.
I still don't and never did understand why more research never went into the theory that there were more people besides Gacy that were involved with the abduction and the killing of all those young men. More than one survivor of his attacks claims that there were 2 people there at the time of the attacks.
My thinking is that the police just wanted this case closed because they were embarassed from the start by how badly they bungled the case. They could have saved a lot of young mens lives if they had just acted right away on one of the earlier tips from some of Gacy's surviving victims. Therefor they just assumed that since the victims were under the influence at the time of the attacks that they couldn't be relied upon to give an accurate account of what really happened the night they were attcked...
WOW, re: research.
Law enforcement and the public were still on the learning curve as to how many American males were involved in clandestine sexual deviance porn and child sex rings, as well as to the enormous number of serial killers who've roamed American streets for decades. No one seems to be able to stop them, or stop them from being born, but we can better ID them and quicker. Victim ID has also progressed. Too bad it has to. It will be a relief when the world can prevent these monsters from being born or begin to ID boys younger, before they hit puberty and begin torturing small animals and then children. The 17-year-old sick freak just apprehended in Colorado over the Jessica Ridgeway murder/dismemberment makes one wonder how many children would still be alive, if only Gacy and Dahmer and Bundy and hundreds other U.S. monsters had been exposed by family early in their mental illness, before they made murder and child rape a career. Society gave all men the benefit of the doubt in the 1970s, just as Gacy's cop friend noted; today trenches dug behind a city building and a man walking around at night with a shovel would raise suspicions - especially when children were disappearing right and left. Too bad we don't know yet what goes wrong in the male predator brain during childhood that makes them so fascinated with torture of the vulnerable and helpless, sexual perversion and causing death. But then, that would also go a long way to unraveling what is wrong with more than 5 million American men currently in prison/jail and on parole/probation.
Little changes, it's suspicious, but not necessarily criminal to be digging late at night. And from the article it sounds like the cop did want that area investigated, but the department wouldn't or couldn't investigate.
I come from Seattle and we've had quite a few serial killers over the years that were busted in that area. Kids run off, nobody notices prostitutes and gays back then would be deeply closeted and likely unwilling to come forward to the police unless they knew enough to give up everything.
But they get busted there largely because every serial killer wants to be The Green River Killer or ever serial killer wants to start where Bundy started and such. And as a result the enforcement has gotten better. And as it gets better it becomes a bigger deal to get away with it there and so you get more trying t do so.
The bigger question really is why, even after Gacy was convicted, was that area never searched as with a murder conviction, something like that is certainly to be checked out even if you couldn't establish probable cause previously.
Frank-1870776
I will submit that they DON'T investigate further as that might uncover evidence detrimental to the prosecutions case and potentially lead to evidence to exonerate the convicted or implicate others. You know as well as I that the prosecution is more interested in the conviction rate than the truth. The truth doesn't get them elected to the mayor's or governors office. And the police are generally very happy to "close" the case file and not expend any more hours investigating. To them it's obviously a budgetary and financial issue. There is only so far they can stretch the budget before they run out of money.
So where is her son??? I could not imagine living in a time where you were told your child was killed but you didn't have the opportunity to identify him before he was buried??? You tell them no it's not him but they don't listen???
Who knows, at age 14 that many years ago, the kid could still be alive. Or could have been in a different grave. Could also have had an unrelated accident and never been found.
Ultimately, if he is still alive or wasn't murdered at that time, it does raise questions about why he doesn't want to be found.
Not to sound heartless, but in the meantime...your tax dollars are working.
on river robots? which should they be working on robert?
Coulrophobia - fear of clowns. In this case, perfectly justified.
Now that the mother has had her second worst nitghtmare come true, it begs the question... Where is her son? Is he dead or alive? If he is in fact dead, where is he buried? If he is alive, where might he be and with whom?
But it's a typical situation. We think we've "solved" the crime, so lets get through the rest as quickly as possible... even if we leave a few holes behind us, don't worry we can fill them with th BS we spew and the sheep will believe it.
"She was relieved that now the rest of the world knew she was right," Stephenson said.
You, uh... didn't read the article, did you?
LilacSynesthette
I, certainly DID read the article. I recognized it answered definitively that the remains in the grave were NOT those of her son...
Obviously you have issues comprehending English yourself. Did you catch the part where I noted "it begs the question...."? I surmise that was beyond your ability.
"Begging the question" about where the body is, is not what I was responding to. How the mother feels (which the article clearly stated) was what I had clearly responded to when addressing your presumptuous comment, you dolt.
LilacSynesthette, DNFTT ;-)
Awesome handle, by the way.
It's really, so cheap and so low, to go here, but.......John Wayne Gacy was a Democrat precinct captain
I just want to provide some context for this murder victim investigation update, that's all. The purest of intentions.
If that homosexual Gacy had been allowed to marry maybe a lot of those kids would still be alive?