A boy who disappeared 35 years ago — when he was 19 years old — has finally been identified as a victim of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Cook County, Ill.,   Sheriff  Tom Dart told reporters that DNA testing had positively identified William “Bill” George Bundy as one of Gacy’s victims.

William "Bill" George Bundy -- ID'd as John Wayne Gacy victim after 35 years.

 Bundy was among eight previously unidentified victims — all boys and young men — whose partial remains were sent to a testing lab at the University of North Texas.  Bundy’s brother, Robert, and sister, Laura, came forward after Dart launched a public campaign asking families of young men who could have been Gacy victims to provide DNA samples.  

 Said Dart: “I do hope and pray that Laura and Robert might find some peace and closure with the news today.”

Bundy’s is the first positive identification of the eight previously unidentified victims, whose bodies were exhumed earlier this year, at Dart’s request, in the hope that sophisticated DNA testing that was not available at the time of Gacy’s killing spree could help clear up the mystery surrounding the unidentified remains.  

 Even if the remaining leads don’t turn up a clear connection to Gacy, technicians at the Texas lab will match them against a Justice Department database that contains an estimated 40,000 other unidentified bodies.  According to forensic pathologist Dr. Arthur Eisenberg, “If their samples can get into the national databases, then their cases are active. They’re not cold.”

 Gacy killed 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978, burying their bodies in and around his home outside Chicago. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994.