While it must always be devastating to learn that a loved one has met a violent death, there hopefully is also a sense of peace and closure that can come when a person whose fate was long unknown is finally revealed.  For the family of one victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, there are now some answers after thirty years of wondering and pain. 

DNA tests recently performed on a body previously known only as “Victim 19” have confirmed that the remains belong to young man named William George “Bill” Bundy.  In 1978, he left his home stating that he was heading to a party and was never heard from again.  Based on his new job in construction and the fact that Gacy lured some of his victims with work in that field, Bundy’s sister had long suspected that her brother may have been murdered by the infamous “killer clown.” But without DNA testing at that time and dental records lost to a family dentist who had retired, her assumptions could not be proven. 

Unfortunately, Bundy’s parents have both passed away since their son’s disappearance more than three decades ago, so they died without knowing the truth about what happened to their teenaged boy.  With seven bodies from Gacy’s gruesome crawl space grave still not identified, let’s hope that some names are put to those victims before too much more time goes by.

It is stories like these that continue to have me in awe of forensics and the technology that those who spend their lives fighting crime now have at their disposal.  It’s fascinating that a young man whose life was robbed from him can receive at least some small sense of delayed justice many years later for his siblings and others who knew and loved him.

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Blog: www.authorjenniferchase.com/
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Books: Compulsion = Dead Game = Silent Partner = Screenwriting