Sheriff’s Office Sorts Through New Gacy Leads

(CBS) — As WBBM first reported last week, Cook County Sheriff’s investigators working to identify victims of John Wayne Gacy instead found the identity of a Chicago teenager killed in San Francisco in 1979.

Now, there are new developments.

First, our story — and others — came out that an investigation by Sheriff Tom Dart’s detectives had reopened a San Francisco cold case, a murder.

They did that by learning the identity of the victim: Andy Drath, a Chicago teenager shot and buried on Ocean Beach.

It was his sister who wondered a few years ago whether her missing brother may have been a victim of John Wayne Gacy. And she contacted Dart’s office, offering a DNA sample to see if it would help identify any of the seven unidentified Gacy victims.

It did not. But it did match the remains found on Ocean Beach.

Since last week, the sheriff’s office’s communication director, Ben Breit, says there have been developments.

“We have secured five new leads for the Gacy investigation. Three pertain to missing persons: family members of young men who went missing in the 1970s. All of whom, on their face, appeared to fit the Gacy victim profile,” Breit says.

Two men have also contacted the office, saying they managed to escape encounters with Gacy, he says.

And Breit says both those incidents suggest Gacy was trolling for young men in areas not previously linked to the serial killer.