John Wayne Gacy victim identified 45 years after being found in serial killer’s crawl space

A murder victim found in the crawl space of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s Illinois house in 1978 has been identified as a man whose family didn’t even know was missing.

North Carolina native Francis Wayne Alexander would have been around 22 years old when he was killed sometime between early 1976 and the start of 1977, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who spoke at a Monday press conference announcing the identification.

His unidentified body, along with those of seven others, was exhumed for DNA testing in 2011. The estimated date of his death was based on what was known about the person buried on top of him, including when that victim went missing.

This image displayed at a news conference by the Cook County Sheriff's Office on Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, shows three photos of Francis Wayne Alexander, a North Carolina native who has been identified as one of the victims of John Wayne Gacy. (Charles Rex Arbogast/)

Alexander’s family didn’t know he was dead, according to Dart. It was their feeling, Dart said, that Alexander had decided “he wanted nothing more to do with them” so no one thought to file a missing persons report.

The victim’s sister, Carolyn Sanders, said knowing her brother was one of Gacy’s 33 victims gave their family “closure” though the news was still difficult to process.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart answers a question after announcing the identity of "Gacy Victim 5" as North Carolina native Francis Wayne Alexander during a news conference Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, in Maywood, Ill. (Charles Rex Arbogast/)

“It is hard, even 45 years later, to know the fate of our beloved Wayne,” Sanders wrote in a statement. “He was killed at the hands of a vile and evil man. Our hearts are heavy, and our sympathies go out to the other victims’ families. We can now lay to rest what happened and move forward by honoring Wayne.”

Alexander’s remains were discovered under Gacy’s Des Plaines home along with the bodies of 25 other dead men and boys. Gacy, who was executed in 1994, also buried three victims in his yard and disposed of four other bodies in Chicago-area waterways.

This 1978 file photo shows serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of killing 33 young men and boys in the Chicago area in the 1970s and executed in 1994.

It’s unclear how Alexander and Gacy crossed paths. The victim, who worked in the nightlife industry, left North Carolina for New York where he got married. In 1975, he made his way to Chicago and divorced. In January 1976, Alexander received a traffic ticket.

That accounts for the last recorded documents in his life. He was not making much money at the time. Gacy was known for luring victims with the promise of construction jobs.

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Dart’s office had exhumed eight sets of human remains in 2011, and put out a call for Chicago families who had a male relative disappear in the 1970s to give their DNA. That was the time that Gacy was preying on young male victims.

The sheriff’s office identified two victims. The first was William Bundy, 19, who worked as a construction worker, and the second was 16-year-old Jimmy Haakenson.

The DNA match for Alexander was made possible by the Doe Project, which works with law enforcement to link genetic samples on a genealogy website to potential relatives. That led them to Alexander’s family. The victim’s mom and half-brother provided their DNA to make the match.

Gacy was 52 at the time of his death. He had been detained at the Statesville Correctional Facility, which is roughly an hour’s drive from Chicago. In addition to doing construction work, Gacy performed as a clown at children’s hospitals.

With News Wire Services