Sometimes you try to solve a murder mystery — and end up solving a different one.
Authorities in Cook County, Illinois, announced Wednesday they had identified the victim in a 36-year-old murder in California after the victim's half-sister submitted a DNA sample as part of an effort to solve cold cases related to serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Andre Drath was last seen alive in Chicago in the late 1970s, when he was 16 years old. The teenager was in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, but was trying to move to San Francisco, police said in a statement.
Decades later, Drath's half-sister, Willa Wertheimer, heard that Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart's office was trying to identify Gacy's eight remaining unnamed victims. Gacy murdered 33 teenage boys in Chicago in the 1970s. He targeted white, gay victims and was executed in 1994.
Thinking that her lost half-brother might be one of Gacy's victims, Wertheimer submitted a DNA sample, police said. Tests for all eight unidentified victims came back negative.
But Cook County detectives uploaded Wertheimer's sample to the Combined DNA Index System, a federal database that archives samples from missing people. Months later, a test came back positive.
The person who matched Wertheimer's DNA was a young man who was shot to death in San Francisco in 1979. He had a tattoo that spelled "Andy," according to Cook County authorities.
Earlier this month, Sheriff Dart declared the identification official. Drath was taken off the federal missing persons list. Wertheimer and her family plan to bring his body back to Chicago for a belated funeral.
"You should never lose hope in finding your loved one. He could still be living, or at least your heart can know the peace of bringing him home,” Wertheimer said in a statement. “I urge all families of missing persons to submit your DNA to the national missing persons database. Thankfully I did, and as a result John Doe #89 now will come home to his kid sister, with his own name — Andy.”
In January, BuzzFeed News highlighted the efforts of Sheriff Dart and of Detective Jason Moran — Cook County's one-man cold-case unit. Since 2010, the suburban Chicagoland investigators have led a national effort to identify Gacy's remaining victims.
So far, the office has been able to identify one of the serial killer's eight unnamed victims. But they have also closed 11 unrelated missing-person cases, including four murder cold cases, police said in a statement.
“On this bittersweet day, I’m thankful that Andy Drath will be brought home and laid to rest with the dignity he deserves. This breakthrough illustrates that we should never give up on a cold case, no matter how hopeless it appears,” said Dart. “I pledge any and all needed resources to the authorities in California as they seek to identify Andy’s killer.”