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Editorial: Finding small relief under the enduring specter of John Wayne Gacy

And then there were six.

Another of John Wayne Gacy's victims has been identified - a 16-year-old Minnesota runaway, Jimmie Haakenson, who called his mom from Chicago in August 1976 to let her know he was OK. He promised he'd call again. He didn't get the chance.

Six unidentified victims remain, dug out in 1978 from beneath the Norwood Township house where at least 33 young men and boys drew their last breath.

With each new identification made, a little more of the mystery is chipped away. Victims cease being identified only by their victimhood - they acquire names, personalities and surviving relations. We learn about the troubled lives that made some of them easier prey.

But nothing, it seems, will rid us of Gacy.

He confessed to his crimes in 1978, was convicted in 1980 and executed in 1994.

With every new identification, the details of the terrible story are re-examined. And the most agonizing mystery of all remains: How could he have killed so many for so long without being caught?

Authorities say Gacy started killing in 1972. He killed at least 33 between the ages of 14 and 21, burying most of them in the crawl space of the Norwood Township house - later dumping bodies into the Des Plaines River when the crawl space filled up.

He was arrested in 1978, tripped up because his last victim was not a runaway who nobody missed, but 15-year-old Robert Piest of Des Plaines. Police aggressively traced the teen's disappearance and the clues led them to Gacy.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart had the eight unidentified victims exhumed in 2011 in hopes that DNA technology not available in the 1970s could be used to help identify them. Besides helping to ID two Gacy victims, the DNA base has solved four cold cases not related to Gacy, located five missing people who were still alive and two who had died elsewhere in the U.S.

Ideally, all eight previously unidentified victims eventually will be known, although that likelihood fades with each passing year.

Gacy is dead, but the rest of us live with the knowledge that a monster lived among us. The sorrow he caused continues nearly 40 years after his crimes.

We may never be able to definitely know what could have stopped him or what could stop someone else like him in the future. For the families of his newly identified victims, it is at least a small comfort to finally know the fate of their loved one.

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