When 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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A proposed new tax in Cook County, Ill., home of violence-plagued Chicago, takes aim at guns, and gun rights activists aren't happy about it.

County President Toni Preckwinkle wants to introduce a "violence tax" on guns and ammunition to help plug a $115 million budget gap in 2013. Under the tax, guns and ammunition would cost more, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, but Preckwinkle isn't saying how much more just yet.

The aim of the proposal is to curb the number of guns in circulation, Preckwinkle's chief of staff, Kurt Summers, told the newspaper. Summers cited a report from last summer showing that nearly one-third of the guns recovered on the Chicago's streets were purchased in suburban gun shops. 

The idea follows a violent Chicago summer, when some weekends saw multiple people killed and dozens injured in shootings. The city's murder rate is up 25 percent and the Cook County Jail is near capacity, with 9,000-plus inmates.

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"If it's going to deal with crime, I'm all for it," said Vincent Fracassi, who says he is not a gun owner.

But some residents questioned how much this would raise for the county and whether the tax would really cut down on crime.

"If we can tax cigarettes, it seems we can tax bullets and guns," said Chicago resident Cathryn Taylor. "But at the same time, I get the point that if people are buying the stuff illegally, then the tax doesn't matter because they aren't going through legal channels anyway."

Brandi Swafford said she doesn't think it will be effective. "You can get this from anywhere. You can go outside the city. There's always a way to get something illegally."

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No such tax exists in Illinois, experts say, but two bills that would create an explicit tax on ammunition are in consideration in the Illinois Legislature.

Elsewhere in the country, Tennessee has an ammunition tax, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. And right now, guns and ammunition sold across the country are subject to a federal excise tax that funds conservation projects. In Illinois, the local sales tax rate is applied to such purchases. 

Preckwinkle's budget proposal is set to be unveiled Oct. 18, and an ammunition tax isn't the only potential money maker on the table. The board president reportedly wants to lease the top two floors of the County Building in Chicago's Loop for what she estimates could net at least $1 million a year for 10 years.

NBC News staff contributed to this report. 

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CHICAGO -- Hundreds of bodies found stacked up at the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office will receive a proper burial Wednesday overseen by Francis Cardinal George.

The Cook County Funeral Directors Association and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago will bury 300 at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery on Chicago's South Side.

In January, it was revealed human remains had been stockpiled in the morgue’s coolers, some doubled up on trays, outraging many in the community.

A few families complained that the Medical Examiner's Office, which is led by Dr. Nancy L. Jones, had turned them away while searching for loved ones, only to find their family members in the morgue all along.

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The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic Cemeteries offered up to 300 graves and services to help clear the backlog of remains.   

When commissioners asked last month why the offer wasn't accepted sooner, an administrator said the county wanted to make certain no individuals were buried in Catholic plots whose families wanted them buried elsewhere.

Last month, the Cook County Board approved measures making it easier to fire the chief medical examiner, who until now has enjoyed a virtual lifetime appointment. 

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AP

An Illinois sheriff wants to dig up a backyard where serial killer John Wayne Gacy was once spotted at dawn, shovel in hand. Gacy, convicted of 33 murders, was executed in 1994.

An Illinois sheriff hopes to excavate a Cook County backyard in hopes of finding more victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the Chicago Tribune reported. Gacy, convicted of killing 33 boys and young men and then stuffing them in the crawl space beneath his house, was executed in 1994.

But Anita Alvarez, the state’s attorney for Cook County, has so far denied Sheriff Tom Dart’s request, saying the sheriff does not have enough new information to merit a warrant.

The yard was dug up in 1998 after a retired homicide detective tipped off authorities that he had seen Gacy there one early morning in the 1970s, shovel in hand, the Tribune reported. They chatted briefly, and the detective went on his way. That dig produced a glass marble and flattened sauce pan.

Dart started looking into Gacy last year. He also wants to excavate Gacy’s mother’s yard, and the yard where Gacy once worked as a maintenance man, the Tribune reported.

Last year, his office exhumed bodies of victims and identified one, William George Bundy, who went missing at age 17, the Tribune reported.   

Gacy reentered the news again in February, when friends of a Gacy victim announced they believe that he had an accomplice in the murder of their roommate, John Mowery, a 19-year-old former Marine who disappeared on the night of Sept. 25, 1977.

Witnesses suggest John Wayne Gacy had an accomplice

Attorney Robert Stephenson told msnbc.com that he conclusively believes that “this individual was involved as an accomplice at least in this one (murder) and we suspect others as well.”

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