Mother of Gacy victim wants body exhumed

The mother of a 14-year-old boy who authorities say was among the 33 victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy wants a judge to order his remains exhumed.

Sherry Marino, of Chicago, wants to determine if the body that’s been buried for more than 30 years is actually her son, Michael Marino.

Chicago attorney Robert M. Stephenson says Sherry Marino has long wondered if the body pulled out of Gacy’s crawl space was her son’s, because the remains were not publicly identified until four years after his 1976 disappearance.

Stephenson says he’s filing a request for the exhumation to test the body’s DNA. It comes after the discovery of dental records that Stephenson says raise questions about the identity of the remains, which are buried at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside.

One dental chart created for Michael Marino seven months before his 1976 disappearance showed a tooth had been either extracted or had not come in yet, and another one recently located by the dentist who examined the body later identified as Marino showing a full set of teeth.

Stephenson said the boy’s mother, who provided the dental records to authorities after her son’s disappearance, said he had not had any teeth removed. And she did not even know there was a discrepancy, he said, until Stephenson located the forensic odontologist who examined the skull and who, all these years later, still had the chart he prepared — a chart that showed a full set of teeth.

Stephenson said he has since contacted a dentist, who told him that it was unlikely a new tooth would have come in such a short period of time.

“Somebody needs to explain this tooth to me,” said Stephenson. He said Sherry Marino did not want to be interviewed.

Stephenson also said there are also questions about X-rays that revealed the boy whose body was pulled from Gacy’s house had suffered a “possible” broken collarbone. He said the boy’s mother has said as far as she knows her son had never broken his collarbone.

Her son disappeared the same day as a friend of his, Kenneth Parker, whose body was next to the one identified as Marino in Gacy’s house. But Stephenson said Sherry Marino has never fully accepted that Gacy killed her son. Further, the description of the clothes found on the body did not match what she recalled seeing him wear the last time she saw him.

A hearing on Sherry Marino’s request is scheduled for next month, Stephenson said.

Gacy, a building contractor and amateur clown, was convicted of luring 33 young men and boys to his Chicago-area home and strangling them between 1972 and 1978. Most were buried in a crawl space under the home; four others were dumped in rivers. Gacy was sentenced to death for the 12 killings that occurred after Illinois re-enacted the death penalty in 1977. He received sentences of life in prison for the remaining 21 killings. He admitted the crimes before his trial but later denied having killed all but the first victim. He was executed in 1994.

Stephenson said he’s not sure if Marino wants the DNA tests to show that her son was a victim of Gacy or not. “After 35 years or so she wants to know definitely if he is under there,” he said of the grave site he hopes to convince a judge to dig up.

And, he said, “I don’t want to speak for her but I think she holds out hope he’s still alive.”

Gacy’s attorney, Sam Amirante, declined to speculate on Sherry Marino’s action Thursday but says he can understand that a grieving mother who has even a shred of doubt would want peace of mind.

During the 1980 trial, Amirante said, the prosecution proved Michael Marino’s life and death.

“Every one (of the victims) was proven in court,” Amirante said.

Gacy mentioned the names of several of his victims to Amirante, but now that more than 30 years have passed, Amirante said he can’t recall whether Gacy specifically mentioned Michael Marino.

Former attorney Danny Broderick, who just released a book about Gacy cowritten with Amirante, believes it’s highly unlikely Michael Marino’s body was misidentified.

“They meticulously went through the identification process. They don’t willy-nilly say, ‘It’s this guy,’” Broderick said. “The likelihood of it not being her son is slim.”

Broderick has “thousands of pages” of transcripts of Gacy interviews and notes from the trial and said he plans to go through them to see if Gacy specifically mentioned Michael Marino by name.

“He didn’t mention that many kids by name. He’d say ‘that kid’ or ‘that kid from there,’” Broderick said.

When asked if the court has ever proven someone’s death only to find out it was the wrong person, Broderick said, “Of course it’s happened. But it doesn’t happen very often.”

Attorney Terry Sullivan, who prosecuted the case against Gacy, said he’d be surprised if Michael Marino’s body was misidentified because the forensics doctor who identified Gacy’s victims was “extremely careful.” However, he said forensic science has progressed so much since then, there’s always the possibility that a mistake was made.

“(The identification process) was very thorough, but it was thorough with what authorities had with their scientific abilities at the time. We didn’t have DNA back then,” he said. “A mother has a right, even after all these years, to be satisfied.”

Ÿ Daily Herald staff writer Jamie Sotonoff contributed to this report.