Cold cases

Introduction [00:00:05] Now this is recording RTI International Center for Forensic Science Presents Just Science.

Voiceover [00:00:19] Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research, and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In episode three of our Case Studies Part 2: mini season, Just Science sat down again with Jason Moran, Commander of Police at the Cook County Sheriff's Office, to continue discussing how his Forensic Services Initiative team reopened the John Wayne Gacy case in an attempt to identify the eight remaining victims. Once Commander Moran's cold case unit announced the reopening of the Gacy case, his team was contacted by hundreds of families across the country who were still looking for their missing loved ones. Although the team planned to identify the eight remaining victims, it turned out they were able to provide answers for more families than they could have ever predicted. Listen along as Commander Moran discusses the hurdles of forming a cold case unit, the methodology behind identifying a victim, and the incredible results from his cold case investigation. This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Jaclynn McKay.

Jaclynn McKay [00:01:27] Hello and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Jaclynn McKay, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. Today, we will be continuing the conversation from last week on resolving cold cases with unidentified victims. Back to guide us in our discussion is Commander Jason Moran. Thank you so much for coming back to talk to us again.

Jason Moran [00:01:48] It's great to be with you, Jaclynn. Thanks for having me.

Jaclynn McKay [00:01:50] With all the leads that you were gathering and through your triaging process, what were some of the leads that you received that actually lined up with some of Gacy's victims?

Jason Moran [00:02:03] After we had the press conference announcing the reopening of the case, right away, it became so overwhelming because so many people were reaching out, all regarding missing young men from that time period. You know, one of the first few leads that had come in was a woman looking for her missing brother. And she basically explained that her brother, he was a young man named Bill Bundy, had gone missing in the mid seventies, around 1976, if I remember. That he had left to go to a party and he never returned. And she remembers that he ended up leaving his wallet at home and never was seen or heard from again. The circumstances fit the victim profile fairly strongly. He was from the north side of Chicago, where Gacy was known to operate. He was the right age. Stature was consistent. There was a lot of consistencies with the victim profile. Well, I got a second phone call from a friend of Bill Bundy's, who said that one of the last times he saw Bill alive, just a week or so prior to his disappearance, that Bill had flashed him a bunch of cash money. And he said it might have been a couple hundred dollars, and for a 17-year-old young man in the seventies to have that amount of cash money on him, he thought that he was dealing drugs. So he says, Bill, are you dealing drugs? Why do you got all that cash on you? And he goes, no, I'm working construction for a guy. Now we know from researching the case, I had learned that one way Gacy acquired his victims

was through employment, through Gacy's business, PDM contractors. So that immediately struck out and combined with what I learned from the sister was - fit the victim profile very, very strongly. So I decided to pursue with the DNA. So I collected DNA from Bill Bundy's sister and brother, sent it in for profiling and the mitochondrial DNA in the samples from the sister and brother were a match to the mitochondrial DNA in victim number 19.
Unfortunately, that victim did not produce a suitable amount of STR DNA, so I didn't have that to go on. And as your listeners may or may not know, mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited, but it's non discriminative. So in other words, if your mother and you and your child all left a drop a blood on the desk and we swabbed it and tested it for mitochondrial DNA, we would not be able to say, this is your mother's drop of blood, this is yours and this is your child. All we be able to say is these individuals are maternally related since the beginning of time. So while it's a great tip or a clue, it wasn't discriminative. So I needed a little more. And I began looking at the skeletal analysis report for victim number 19. The skeletal analysis report and the dental reports. Notice that victim number 19 did not have the maxillary canine teeth. So, in other words, the upper jawbone did not have the IT or canine teeth. But not - it wasn't postmortem tooth loss. They didn't fall out in Gacy's crawl space as a result of decomposition or a result of the excavation and I teeth are known to fall out post mortem because they don't have a strong root system like the molars do. But it wasn't that. These were healed fracture. The forensic dentist that examined victim number 19 noted that these were healed sockets. In other words, the I teeth were extracted from this victim prior to death, which at the time was not significant to me. I didn't know what - I've never really known anybody that had both I teeth extracted or what the purpose of that would be. I just noted it in the report. So I thought to myself, if I could get a picture of Bill Bundy smiling, you know, a nice big, bright smile, and we could see that Bill did not have k9 teeth, that that in combination with the mitochondrial DNA match, in combination with the circumstances surrounding Bill's disappearance, may be enough to say that victim number 19 and missing person Bill Bundy, were one in the same person. So I'd gone back to the family of Bill Bundy and I'd asked them for these photographs and and we really went on a journey, which is something you do with family members of long term missing persons, you know, going back through their recollection and seeing the pain of having a long term missing person in your life and other circumstances. You know, I call it living in a cruel limbo. But so we sort of went on this journey about her remembering and she shared with me, you know, my mother was so upset after Bill went missing, you know, it became so hard for her to look at this picture year after year after year that we started to purge Bill's items. And we don't have many pictures left. And she didn't have any of Bill smiling.
And I couldn't lead on at the time that I knew about the mitochondrial DNA profile or what the circumstances were because I did not want to get this family's hopes up. So we just talked it out. We talked and talked more. And I asked about other items she may have belonging to her brother. And she thought about it, she thought - she goes well, I have his teeth. I go, what do you mean? What do you mean you have his teeth? She goes, well, years before he disappeared, our dentist and by the way, they didn't have dental records for Bill. Bill's dental records were destroyed years prior to reopening the case. Actually, they were destroyed prior to the original murder case because the family came forward, Bill Bundy's family came forward during the original Gacy murder case to try to learn if their missing loved one was one of Gacy's victims. But when my predecessors asked for dental records, the family could not locate them. They went to the dentist, he had retired and destroyed his dental records. So they went back to my predecessor and said, well, there is no dental records. And they said, well, there's no other way to identify the skeleton at this time. So I'm sorry. But anyway, she had explained to me that prior to Bill's disappearance, he'd gone to the dentist and had these two teeth removed, and I think he was about 15 at the time. And being a typical boy from that time period, especially, he requested from the dentist to keep his teeth, particularly because the I teeth, they're the biggest teeth in the mouth. So being a boy, he said, I want to gross my friends out by showing them my big teeth that were extracted from my head. And the dentist allowed it. And he did. I guess he kept them in a little jar and he would show the girls to try to gross them out or he would jiggle them in front of his guy friends and that type of thing. So I immediately showed them to the forensic dentist, he identified them as maxillary canine teeth, and I asked, why would a dentist extract someone's canine? And he says, well, back in the day before, braces were popular, or even if they were around, they were so expensive. When someone, an individual, specifically a teen, had crooked teeth or very tight, the teeth were very tight, they would remove the canine teeth to allow the rest of the teeth to sort of spread out and line up better. They were like poor man's braces is what he referred to them. But the significance of the teeth was now there was enough. Now we could say that between the mitochondrial DNA profile, the circumstances surrounding Bill's disappearance, both that he was working construction for an individual and location and the timing of it all, his biometrics, his stature and some other things were consistent with victim number 19. Now, the maxillary canine teeth, that was enough to say that Gacy's victim number 19 and missing person, Bill Bundy, were one and the same person. And that is really how human identification is done in a cold case setting. You know, it's never one thing. You know, it's never just DNA or just dental or just circumstances. You take all of the evidence and information that you have to find out if this is reasonable to say this missing individual is this unidentified deceased person. And we were able to amend victim number 19's death certificate with the name of William Bundy. And that was the first Gacy victim that I was able to identify.

Jaclynn McKay [00:10:01] That's incredible. I literally have goosebumps, you talking about that and I really think that will resonate well with our listeners, and I'm very happy that you were able to give that victim their name back.

Jason Moran [00:10:14] And their family members some answers.

Jaclynn McKay [00:10:17] Absolutely. And I'm sure, especially since they were involved, since the beginning, that they welcomed those answers.

Jason Moran [00:10:25] That was the hard part to the poor family. They tried to learn if Bill was one of Gacy's victims back during the original murder case. But without those dental records, there was nothing that could be done. From working with dozens and dozens and dozens of families of long-term missing persons, it's the cruel limbo, not knowing what to think. I've met some family members of long-term missing persons, they wouldn't move from their house in case the missing person had amnesia or some other issue that made them not remember where they lived and that they would get their memory back one day and they would come back home and that the family would be gone because they moved. It's really working with family members of long-term missing persons. They're just so eager for any answer, anything. An exclusion is good for them. I can exclude this as a possibility of what happened to my missing loved ones. That is a huge win. You know, they don't want to give up hope. It's a very hard way to live. And the other side of that is with the, you know, with cold cases, unresolved murders, the family lives in incredible pain with the loss of their loved one, but an increased pain without knowing who killed them. But at least they have a grave to go to. You know, at least they have some answers. So there's a different type of pain with family members of long term missing persons because there are so many unanswered questions.

Jaclynn McKay [00:11:49] With your experience working with all these families, are there any like victims centered practices that you would recommend to investigators for actually

making the death notifications? And how does death notifications differ for cases that are decades old, or do they even differ at all?
Jason Moran [00:12:09] Well, I've always said one of the worst parts of being a detective, at least for me, was making the death notification. You know, there's just no good way to put it. You know, informing someone of their loved one's death is just, it's just a horrible task. There's a lot to it because you also have to obtain information from the next of kin to make sure you're talking with the right person that they are responsible for the decedent's welfare. There's other investigative questions that have to be answered. It's sensitive, but you have to be a fact finder at the same time. While you may feel emotionally connected to the person, you cannot become emotional. It's just a horrible task. But it's an important part of the death investigation because it begins that victimology, you know, learning about your victim. Part of what you learn, you know, the victimology is talking with the next of kin. So that death notification is an important part of the case. And it really makes no difference if the individual died an hour ago, say, in a car crash or the individual died 40 years ago at the hands of a serial killer.

Jaclynn McKay [00:13:23] For sure. So you walked us through how you were able to identify one of the remaining victims. So that leaves us with seven left. How many of those individuals have you had the fortune to identify, and what are some future steps that you're planning to take in order to help resolve the remaining cases?
Jason Moran [00:13:46] Through the process, I've been able to identify three of Gacy's victims. Three of the eight. The investigation continues. Unfortunately, I'm not able to work on it full-time, so there's still more work to be done. One new method that I've employed in the case is forensic genetic genealogy or forensic investigative genetic genealogy or forensic genealogy. It goes by so many names now FG, FGG, FIGG, but that is one new process that I've used that actually has began since I reopened the case. So when we reopened the case ten or so years ago, FIGG was not even a thing. But since we reopen the case, it has become a thing. So that is another method that I'm using. It's been successful with the identification of victim number five, a missing kid named Francis Wayne Alexander, and it aided in identifying him and it's something I'm going to use in the five remaining Gacy victims.

Jaclynn McKay [00:14:48] Obviously, missing persons and unidentified remains investigations is much different today than it was back in the 1970s. So can you maybe talk about what has changed and what strides have been made in order to try to help these investigations as we've moved forward with maybe the addition of new technology or just new ways of thinking?

Jason Moran [00:15:11] That's an interesting part about cold cases or forensic services or these types of investigations that we discuss. One of the main ways we solve cold case is by applying contemporary investigative methods to an old case. So when I'm reviewing a cold case, whether it be an unresolved murder or a missing person or unidentified human remains, undetermined death, I look for what processes do we have now that my predecessors did not. And it doesn't have to be in the form of just DNA. DNA is the main one. But there's other contemporary forensic methods that were not available to our predecessors that we could apply. And that's one of a few different ways we solve cases. What's available to us now, or was a method that was used back then, used incorrectly?
Were the results somehow false? And do we have to do retesting with our current standards?

Jaclynn McKay [00:16:09] Jason, you've dedicated your life's work to resolving cold cases. So what is the importance of having these units established within police departments and what can other cold case investigations teams learn from your experience through reopening these cases?

Jason Moran [00:16:27] Well, that's the big question, you know, when you're talking about forming a cold case unit. There's two main hurdles to forming a cold case unit. One of them is the technical hurdle, and that is resources in the form of personnel who have skill sets in these types of cases, which really - it really comes down to, unfortunately, money. It's money to support salaries of detectives who have skill set in this type of work because cold cases are different than other investigations and they require a certain skill set and experience and training, and it costs money to find individuals with the skill set and experience necessary to work these cases. It takes money for advanced testing, as in DNA testing. Forensic genetic genealogy costs money. So there's that technical hurdle where, are the decision makers, are they willing to put time and money and effort into forming a cold case unit? The second hurdle is the philosophical, and that is what do we value? And it goes back to what we talked about earlier, you know, and it's something that I had always said and the sheriff and I have talked about, is a person that goes missing 30 years or less important than a person that goes missing today? Is a person that was murdered 25 years ago less important than a person that is murdered today? If your answer is no, then you've gotten over the philosophical hurdle, right? If you value justice and you value dignity, then you've gotten over the philosophical hurdle. But there's two. It's the technical and the philosophical. Once you get decision makers to say this is of value, this is important, that we're going to put resources towards funding a cold case unit or a forensic service initiative, so what I do, and you get people with a philosophical hurdle, all of these victims are important, then you have to start getting yourself organized. What is our need? How many cold cases do we have? And that's what I - when we were talking before about defining a cold case, you know, what is a cold case and how are these solved? If you're just doing unresolved murders, you're limiting the effect of the cold case unit. Because some agencies and I'm talking about law enforcement agencies, they may have one or two unresolved murders in their history, but they may have five open missing person cases, long term missing person cases. They may have two unidentified deceased person cases. They may have ten open sexual assault cases and maybe five undetermined deaths where the ME or corner has not been able to determine the cause and manner of the death. Now, when you look at it, that perspective, now you have 25 cases you're looking at and it's easier to put resources in the form of money, particularly, towards this. So you've got to get yourself organized. When you're presenting the cold case options to decision makers, you've got to know. What do you have here? What's open, what's not open? How many unresolved murders do you have? How many long- term missing persons, you know? And you got to give them to them clearly so they can make an informed decision on should we put resources toward this? Does it make sense to form a task force? You know, maybe, you know, here in Cook County, I think there's 130 municipalities in one county. Cook County is the second largest county in the country with 130 municipalities and almost 130 different police departments. Well, many of those police departments may have one unresolved murder case or some have none, some have a bunch of missing person cases and some have a couple of unidentified human remains cases. So none of those departments within themselves would ever form a cold case unit because they don't have the amount of work that would justify putting those resources towards forming the unit. But if you look at the ten towns or the 20 towns or 30 towns around you, maybe in that group there's eight unresolved murders, ten, you know, six unidentified human remain cases, you know, and the sexual assaults and down the line like we've talked about. Now, maybe we pool resources because together we have

enough, but individually, we don't. You know and talking about county task forces, state task forces, but getting over those technical and philosophical hurdles, so you have decision makers put resources into these groups, I think is very important. No less important than some of our homicide task forces that we do now on cases that occur today.

Jaclynn McKay [00:21:04] Commander Morgan, it has been great discussing these topics with you. Thank you for your insight and your time. It has truly been a pleasure talking with you.

Jason Moran [00:21:12] Thank you, Jaclynn it was great.

Jaclynn McKay [00:21:13] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow Just Science on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources in the forensics field, visit ForensicCOE.org. I'm Jaclynn McKay and this has been another episode of Just Science.

Voiceover [00:21:32] Next week, Just Science down with a panel from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office to discuss an active case where modern technology is being used to help identify another victim. Opinions or points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.
 

Introduction [00:00:05] Now this is recording RTI International Center for Forensic Science Presents Just Science.
Voiceover [00:00:19] Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research, and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In episode two of our Case Studies Part 2: mini season Just Science sat down with Jason Moran, commander of police at the Cook County Sheriff's Office, to discuss how he and his colleagues set out to identify the remaining victims of John Wayne Gacy, decades after their bodies were found. Technological limitations can sometimes make it very challenging to identify decomposed human remains. In the case of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, eight of his 33 victims remained unidentified for more than 30 years. Listen along, as Commander Moran discusses how the Forensic Services Initiative Team reopens cold cases, utilizes modern DNA analysis for human identification, and began the journey to give Gacy's victims their names back. This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Jaclynn McKay.

Jaclynn McKay [00:01:23] Hello and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Jaclynn McKay, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. On today's episode, we are discussing the identification of a homicide victim from the 1970s. Here to guide us in our discussion is Commander Jason Moran.
Thank you so much for being here today and it's great to talk to you.
Jason Moran [00:01:44] Hi, Jaclynn. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jaclynn McKay [00:01:46] Well, let's give our listeners a little bit of background on who you are and what you've done so far in your professional career.
Jason Moran [00:01:53] I'm a commander with the Cook County Sheriff's Police. Chicago is in Cook County. I'm in my 24th year with the sheriff's office. Right now, I lead a couple different units. One is the Special Victim’s Unit, which is primarily a sex trafficking unit, and then I also lead lead the Forensic Services Initiative. And the Forensic Services Initiative is a cold case unit. So we do old murders, old missing persons, human identification, complex deaths. As you may or may not know, not all deaths are created equally, so to speak, and some require additional forensic services. Those cases come to me for review.

Jaclynn McKay [00:02:35] Jason, you said that you work for the Cook County Sheriff's Office, which encompasses the city of Chicago. And when thinking about cold cases, the story of John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer, often comes to mind. Were you ever involved in his case?

Jason Moran [00:02:52] When Gacy was killing, I was only a boy. I was born and raised in Chicago. And I - obviously being a boy growing up in Chicago, this case stuck with you.
You know, Gacy's victims were all boys or young men, and he operated in the Chicagoland area. Because his victims were all boys or young men and just because of the really bizarre and circumstances surrounding his murders, it's something that always sort of stayed with me growing up in the area. My involvement in Sheriff Dart, my boss, his involvement was we decided to reopen the case to identify his unidentified victims. So we

know that Gacy had at least 33 victims. He killed from 1972 to his arrest, which was December 21st, 1978. My predecessors located 33 victims, so that's in a six-year period, 33 victims. One geographical location being the Chicagoland area. Unfortunately, eight of the 33 victims were never identified. In regards to the Gacy case, you know, people ask, well, why does it sort of stick with us? Is it the amount of victims or other circumstances? And it's sort of both. I mean, for a serial killer, Gacy is at the upper end of the amount of victims that he was able to acquire, being the 33 that we know of. But beyond that, it was just the other ways he operated and some of the other circumstances is why people continue to talk about it. But one being that he wasn't the ghoul that people expected from a serial killer. Overwhelmingly John Gacy was well-liked by his community. He was a democratic ward committeeman, where he would knock on doors of his neighbors and say, hey, could you vote for my candidate? He's a good guy. He was a business owner. It was called PDM contracting. It was a painting, decorating and maintenance. So he would work in the community doing remodeling jobs and painting and concrete work and those types of things. And then, most notoriously, he dressed up like a clown and he would entertain children at block parties and birthday parties and things of that nature. And then one of the other parts was that he concealed the majority of his victims in his residence.
He buried them in the crawlspace of his house. And then three of the other victims were buried in other parts of the house; under concrete in the garage, in the backyard underneath a barbecue grill, and then in a part of the house that he remodeled. So just because of those circumstances, retaining the victims in his own house and entertaining children as a clown and just not being that ghoul, it's just sort of, you know, stayed with us not only in the Chicago area, but across the country because of those bizarre circumstances. So getting back to your original question, the reason why I was involved was because those victims that were concealed in his house, which was 29, there was 29 concealed at the house, eight of them were never identified. They were either markedly decomposed or completely skeletal. And my predecessors, meaning the detectives from my department and the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, they did everything they could at the time to identify all of the victims, but unfortunately fell short. So a few years back, the sheriff and I sort of started talking about cold cases and human identification and learned, we didn't really know this going in, that Gacy had eight unidentified victims. But once we did learned, we talked about should we reopen the case to identify the remaining eight? And that's what we did.
Jaclynn McKay [00:07:02] Would you mind walking our listeners through some of the considerations that your agency weighed in regards to whether or not this case should be reopened and whether any ethical ramifications were thought of?
Jason Moran [00:07:15] At the time we were discussing this, the Gacy case was about 35 years old. And the point of reopening any cold case, not just the Gacy case, but any one, one thing that we try to do is to apply contemporary investigative methods to an old case. So, in other words, to employ methods that were not available to our predecessors. But in the Gacy case specifically, DNA was not available to aid in identifying Gacy's unidentified victims. It was primarily done through the review of dental records, both antemortem records, dental records from before death to postmortem records. I mean, there was other ways to identify these bodies to, you know, some forensic radiology and some other items. But the main way was through dental comparison, forensic dentistry. So we wanted to use DNA in this case. So that was one thing we had to take into consideration. To start the case, to use DNA to identify these victims, we'd have to have DNA from the remains of the eight victims. So we had to learn. Where are those? Are there above ground samples? Are there below ground samples? Where are we going to obtain these DNA profiles? We talked about who would hear our message. Is there families out there that are still looking

for their missing loved ones? Obviously, these eight murder victims most likely had someone somewhere that was searching for them or wondering about them. And then we talked about the ethical part that you had asked about it, and it was really about doing more harm than good. You don't ever want to cause more harm than the good that you're trying to do. You know, if we reopen the case to identify the unidentified victims that those images of Gacy, and you know, the clown image and, you know, my predecessor, you know, bringing bodies out of the house one after another after another, that those were going to resurface. You know, at the time we reopen the case, 25 of Gacy's victims had been identified. Those victims all had family and friends that were still living. And that now, you know, after 35 years, you know, they were going to start seeing this again. And we thought to ourselves, is this going to be, you know, hurtful to them? Is it going to be harmful? Are we bringing this case back up and that we won't succeed in identifying any of the victims, and therefore, it would just be, you know, harmful to the hundreds, if not thousands of people who are still haunted by Gacy's crimes. So there was a lot to take into consideration as there is with any cold case.

Jaclynn McKay [00:10:03] It sounds like you guys really took the time to do a holistic approach as to weighing all the pros and cons and making sure that by going into this, you were doing more good than any harm. So you said that you lead the Special Victims Unit at your sheriff's office. Did the objective of trying to identify the remaining eight victims fall on your plate because of your position? Or did you kind of have a something that drove you to this mission?
Jason Moran [00:10:32] Well, it was two parts. One part, the sheriff, Sheriff Dart, at the time, just prior to reopening this case, was trying to learn about our history with cold cases. It was part of an overall cold case initiative where the sheriff was trying to learn how many open cases do we have, how many open murder cases, how many long-term missing person cases? How many human identification cases? How many open criminal sexual assault cases? And to sort of organize and sort of start looking at these cases again. But it also corresponded with a case I was working as a detective when I was a general case detective. It was an early 2000 death investigation where an individual walking in a set of our forest preserves came across human skeletal remains. And the detectives assigned to the case and the evidence technicians assigned to the case did their best to identify and locate all of the remains and any other evidence associated with the individual's death. But unfortunately, they were unable to identify this individual, and the case went cold because if you cannot identify a victim in a death investigation, homicide or otherwise, you really can't work the case in any considerable way. So the case almost immediately went cold, and my sergeant at the time had said, hey, what do you think about trying to use DNA to identify this individual, the skeleton? Because we were just starting to use DNA in criminal cases where, you know, a burglar cuts his hand on a piece of glass breaking into someone's house and you collect the blood and you send it in for DNA testing. But we had not yet used DNA for human identification. So I started looking back into that case, and I submitted a bone from the victim to the FBI lab and had them work a nuclear and mitochondrial DNA profile, or a STR profile and it and a mitochondrial DNA profile. It took a long time, but I eventually got results back and the DNA from the remains were identical to a convicted felony offender in Illinois. An individual had gone to the penitentiary. His sample was collected according to law here, and now in most states, with convicted felony offenders. And I now knew, based on that DNA testing who the victim was, and now we could really start that death investigation. And I was able to learn how the individual came to be in that woods, the circumstances surrounding his death, and was able to tell his next of kin, who was his minor children at the time, who thought because of his lifestyle, his children thought that he abandoned them again based on his lifestyle. But I was able to tell

his children that, no, your father did not abandon you, that he passed away, and that's why he has not had contact. And that was our first human ID case involving DNA. So when I brought this case to the sheriff, the closure of this death investigation in combination with his overall efforts to organize our cold cases, that's what he had asked me. How many other human ID cases do we have in the cold case file? How many unidentified sets of human remains do we have in the cold case files? And I didn't know. So I'd gone to our cold case room. I saw a file cabinet that was marked with Gacy 1978, and just out of curiosity, I opened it. But by doing that, I learned that eight of Gacy's 33 victims were never identified. And that's when I brought that information back to the sheriff. And I said, did you know that eight of Gacy's 33 victims were never identified and he wasn't aware of that either.
Jaclynn McKay [00:14:24] Did you ever end up getting an answer for how many of your cold cases were actually unidentified humans?

Jason Moran [00:14:32] Yes, it was tough because at the time, just based on the culture of the police department, some of the files were separated in different places and it wasn't all in one place. We moved everything into one place and we were able to count how many unresolved murder cases there were, how many unidentified human remain cases there were. Things of that nature. So, yes, we did eventually get count of how many.
Jaclynn McKay [00:14:55] Could you also explain what would be your definition of a cold case or what are the circumstances surrounding a case in which it goes cold?
Jason Moran [00:15:04] I've done some work on that in the past, especially with some teaching and lecturers. And, you know, people ask about that, the definition of a cold case and it's really kind of hard to nail down. There really isn't. You know, there is opinions on it. You know, most people sort of define a cold case as one where all leads have been followed up, all loose ends have been tied up, and the case just remains unresolved some way. Other people give it a like a sort of a time period, like after a year, if a case isn't resolve, it's sort of cold. Some describe a cold case as when it's not actively being worked, it's sitting in other words. There really isn't one definition. One thing that I disagree with is some people refer to cold cases only as unresolved murders. I don't think a cold case is just an unresolved murder. I think a cold case could be a long-term missing person.
Unidentified human remains. Sexual assault cases could be considered cold and, you know, undetermined deaths, in my opinion, are cold cases. So that's how I define it for the most part.
Jaclynn McKay [00:16:15] It seems like you definitely take an approach that encompasses a wide variety of different situations and investigation types.

Jason Moran [00:16:24] Yeah and well, another part of that too now that I'm thinking about it you know, I often get called out to work on, you know, what is the complex death part of it. You know, maybe a scattered skeletal human remains case or maybe a buried body, say. While it's a new case, because it's new to law enforcement, it's new to the public, you're already kind of starting it cold because these individuals may have been murdered or died a long time ago. So, you know, that's also part of the the forensic services initiative; providing these types of forensic services as it pertains to, you know, archeology or anthropology or other advanced or contemporary investigative methods.

Jaclynn McKay [00:17:05] So did the Forensic Services Initiative kind of develop out of the knowledge that there are so many unidentified individuals in your cold cases?

Jason Moran [00:17:15] Yeah, sort of. Just didn't want to limit it, you know, I didn't want to call it a cold case unit, which is obviously sort of a cool term for these types of cases. I just didn't want to limit it because some people, like I said before, think about cold cases only as unresolved murders, whereas I think cold cases are much larger than that.

Jaclynn McKay [00:17:34] So after you found out that there are eight remaining unidentified victims, what was the next step in that process and where did you start, especially when you had eight victims? How did you choose which one to start with or what kind of leads did you try to start tracking down from that point?

Jason Moran [00:17:55] The Gacy case had so much to it being a large serial killer case, but one of the first things we try to do in any court case is to review the available documents and evidence. Was there tips or clues as to the identity of the unidentified victims already in the files? And I had to learn how Gacy acquired his victims because I knew eventually I was going to be listening to the circumstance of these missing kids disappearance. And I had to know if the circumstances surrounding their disappearance fit the victim profile in the Gacy case. Because if you review the Gacy case, you could see that there was a fairly clear profile as to who Gacy was acquiring and killing. You know, and this was a sexually motivated crime. Gacy was homosexual and these boys were sexually assaulted prior to their death. So, you know, Gacy was picking a particular type of victim and he acquired them in certain ways. So I knew that I was going to be listening to a lot of missing person cases once we announced to the public that we had reopened it and I needed to know these things. So one of the first things we did was try to get all of the documents and evidence and photographs into one place and to start reviewing them. One part of that was to learn where are these victims? Where are their bodies? You know, are there aboveground biological samples suitable for DNA testing or are they all buried in the grave? Or did someone, God forbid, did they cremate them? So we learned that the maxilla and mandible bone, or upper and lower jaw bone containing teeth of each unidentified victim, was removed. The maxilla was resected from the skull and the mandible obviously is loose, especially in a decomposed body, and they were kept. They were retained by the medical examiner's office for purposes of future dental identification. But so I went to the medical examiner's office to ask for these bones. But unfortunately, the medical examiner's office had buried them about a year before I needed them. I was trying to save time and resources by obtaining these aboveground samples but unfortunately, they had been buried in an unmarked potter's field. So I knew I would have to perform an exhumation. So I obtained the necessary orders, court orders to perform the exhumation, got the resources together, and we were able to get back to the unidentified victim's remains. Then it was time for DNA test. I took the remains to a lab and they began testing each bone of the eight victims for a good STR and mitochondrial DNA profile.
Through that, that testing was partially successful, but unfortunately, some of the remains did not produce a suitable DNA profile for comparison. So the lab asked me if there was other remains available for four of the eight victims, and I knew from the research that their bodies were buried in separate cemeteries. So I went to the grave of four of the victims and obtained skeletal material from those bodies and conducted a second round of DNA testing. And that gave me about what I needed to compare to family members of missing persons. So it was time to announce to the public that we were going to reopen the case.
Jaclynn McKay [00:21:35] Jason, that was a great lead up to everything that you guys did for these victims and - but circling back really quick - at John Wayne Gacy's house, was there any evidence of co-mingling between the remains that you found or were they all pretty much kept to themselves as far as where they were found?

Jason Moran [00:21:57] So Gacy's crawl space was - it was sort of a mix of a single graves and multiple death graves, I guess you could call them, or multiple victims graves. And in those multiple death graves or where there was more than one victim buried within the graves space, there was some co-mingling, only because when you're excavating a clandestine grave with multiple victims within the Graves space, it's sort of difficult sometimes to keep evidence or remains separate. But the way that was resolved was we had some really great anthropologists at the time, one being an old friend of mine, Dr.
Clyde Snow, who was thoroughly examining these remains for the issue of commingling; making sure there was not remains that were duplicating themselves with a body, as an example, to left femurs and also for morphology or, you know, the size and the shape of the bones, you know, that they were sort of matching up with a single victim and not a femur bone that's an inch longer than another femur bone. Obviously, that's not coming from the same individual under most circumstances. So while some graves were separate and the body and the evidence within was intact, with some of the graves that had more than one victim in it, they carefully excavated and then had the anthropologists come behind them and make sure that there was no mixing or co-mingling or inconsistencies with the bodies.

Jaclynn McKay [00:23:40] And then were the jaw bones that were removed, were they labeled efficiently enough to be able to, once you dug those up, you were able to trace those back to exactly the individual they were from?
Jason Moran [00:23:53] Yes. Thankfully, the odontology team, or the forensic dentistry team, that was led by another friend of mine, Dr. Edward Pavlik, did a real nice job in keeping the remains separate. The upper and lower jaw bones contain teeth. They were put in separate containers, but beyond that, the bone was also labeled with a permanent mark for each victim. So each victim had two numbers. They had the victim number, which was assigned by my police department. So as they were locating remains in the crawlspace or in Gacy's house, they would give the victim a number; one, two, three, four all the way to 33, because immediately upon discovering these remains in the crawl space or in the house, they didn't know who they were. And then when the body remains went to the medical examiner's office, they were given a medical examiner's case number. So each victim had two numbers and those numbers were written directly on the bone. So if not for those markings, I wouldn't have known who was who and what was what and that's not how investigations are worked.

Jaclynn McKay [00:25:00] So I'm sure that really helped moving forward as far as the DNA analysis is concerned.

Jason Moran [00:25:06] Yes, there was - this case was very important to my predecessors, obviously. Not many people have been involved in a serial killer case of this magnitude, so. And a lot of people had, you know, another part of reopening the Gacy case, besides going through all the evidence and documents, was we interviewed every individual that was involved in the original investigation. And these unidentified victims were really, you could tell by talking with them it was something that was unfinished business.
Jaclynn McKay [00:25:37] I think that's a testament to the type of people that end up getting into this type of work is, at the end of the day, we're out there just trying to help people and give people their names back. This, of course, is, like you said, a case that will definitely stick with you for a long time. After you announced to the public that you were

reopening the case and you submitted samples from all of the eight remaining victims for DNA analysis, can you walk through essentially what happened next?
Jason Moran [00:26:10] Yeah, so the sheriff had a press conference. Basically announced to the country and to the world, really, because we were getting leads from Canada and England and everything else, but announced to the world that we had reopened the case to identify the eight unidentified victims, and that if you had a family member who went missing during this time period to come forward and that we would collect their DNA sample through the form of buccal swab, and we would directly compare the DNA from the families or a family reference sample to the unidentified victim's DNA profile and learn what we learned. I'll tell you, it was overwhelming because, you know, there could only be eight family members looking for these eight missing kids in the form of unidentified murder victim. But right away, we started receiving phone calls and emails, dozens and dozens and dozens of phone calls and emails from people all over the country looking for their missing loved one. Some were even duplicates. Sometimes a family member and a friend of a missing person would call about the same missing individual. So it was very overwhelming. Right away I could tell that this was going to take a considerable amount of time.

Jaclynn McKay [00:27:26] Did you have a team to essentially help you with this at all, or was - did all that fall on your shoulders, essentially?
Jason Moran [00:27:35] Well, I had a small team at the beginning. One, just to basically help me intake these cases. Because now I was becoming a repository for missing boys from the seventies. Very quickly, I recognize that this was much bigger, but you know, what missing individual most closely fits the victim profile in the Gacy case? It was yeah, it was very overwhelming. It was right off the bat had a lot of work. But unfortunately, as you'll see with cold case units throughout the country, they're not always well-staffed and well-funded. And we could talk about, you know, forming a cold case unit and unit expectations and things of that nature, but, you know, the rapes, robberies and murders of today take precedence over the murder or disappearance of someone 30 years ago. Now, I don't necessarily agree with that, but the rapes, robberies and murders of today sort of - they demand immediate attention because we don't want them to go cold. You know, we try to nip it in the bud from the beginning. So all the resources go towards those cases, which they should, we need to.

Jaclynn McKay [00:28:43] And I'm sure in a place that encompasses Chicago, I'm sure that's a very hard dilemma to try to balance with the amount of crime Chicago has.
Jason Moran [00:28:53] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the big - that's the management, you know, managing these issues. Now personally, and I think for the sheriff and I, you know, a person that was murdered 20 years ago or an individual that goes missing 25 years ago is no less important than a person that was murdered or goes missing today. So and that's the philosophical part of forming a cold case unit. Do you believe that? You know, actually at the press conference when we reopened the Gacy case, the sheriff was asked that by a reporter and it sort of kind of gave you that, you know, a little bit of a sick feeling. But the reporter asked why these victims? Don't you have enough to do in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois? Don't you have enough murders and missing persons that are occurring today and you're going to put resources towards these eight murder victims from 35 years ago? Now, some people may say that sounds reasonable. The sheriff, Sheriff Dart, answered it perfectly. You know, he says, well, why don't you tell me as law enforcement when we stop caring? When is the cut off? When law enforcement and

community stop caring about a murder victim or a missing person? Is it five years? Is it 15 years? Tell me what the cut off is for pursuing justice. And the reporter just sort of sat there with a silly look on his face, like, okay, you got me. I can't answer it. And the reason why he couldn't answer it was because there is no answer. The answer is we never stop. You know, a murder victim from four years ago is no less important than a murder victim from today. The pursuit of justice does not have an expiration. Restoring dignity does not have an expiration.
Jaclynn McKay [00:30:39] With all of the influx of all the information and collection of familial reference samples, did that inadvertently help solve other cases that were unaffiliated with the John Wayne Gacy victims?
Jason Moran [00:30:52] My goal was to identify the unidentified. That was the assignment I was given. But as I'm listening to the circumstances surrounding all of these kids disappearance from the seventies, a lot of them fit the victim profile in the Gacy case.
Now, again, there could only be eight, but there was dozens of missing boys and young men were the circumstances surrounding their disappearance fit the victim profile in the Gacy case. So I had to pursue them. I couldn't exclude them as a potential Gacy victim. So I would talk with the family members and friends of the missing, or I would try to gather reports from other law enforcement agencies and do background on these missing persons, looking for proof of life or proof of death. And then I would collect family reference samples, send them to the lab, and have them directly compare to the unidentified victims. And I began to receive DNA reports back and other documents and evidence. The first thing I would learn from the lab is that this - the missing person related to these families were not a victim of John Gacy. So I was able to exclude that. Based on the DNA from the families, there was no genetic association with any of the unidentified Gacy victims. So the first thing I'd be able to report to the families was, your loved one is not a Gacy victim. But then I started receiving information based on the DNA and other investigation that they were an unidentified deceased person from another place and that they were either killed by other men or died of other causes. Also, I was able to locate five of the missing persons alive. So these families would come to me and report their missing loved ones. They fit the victim profile in the Gacy case. But through investigation, I was able to learn that they were alive and out there still after 35 or 38 years or 40 years. And all five of those individuals, I gave them the option during the investigation to reunite with family members after all this time. And, you know, they all agreed. I found some individuals with proof of death that they died with a death certificate in their name, but they were unclaimed. Their family - their next of kin was not aware of their passing. It really has been remarkable in that sense. I think I've been able to close 13 cold cases that were unrelated to the Gacy case in any way. And that was really a nice unintended consequence, you know. And that's what I've always said about this, you know when people talk, you know, because everything is about the killer, the killer, the killer, I don't like talking about the killer. In fact, in my own correspondence, I don't even refer to him as Gacy. I do here for the purposes of your audience. But in my own correspondence, I refer to him as J. W. G., because I don't want to bring attention to the killer. For me, this is about missing and unidentified persons. Now, if inadvertently, I bring attention to the missing and unidentified person problem in this country through this serial killer, I'll take it. But for me, it's not about the killer. That killer is long gone.
Jaclynn McKay [00:33:49] Commander Moran, thank you so much for your insight today. I'm really excited to continue this conversation on next week's episode. It was great having you.

Jason Moran [00:33:58] I appreciate you having me. It was great.
Jaclynn McKay [00:34:00] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow Just Science on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources in the forensics field, visit ForensicCOE.org. I'm Jaclynn McKay and this has been another episode of Just Science.

Voiceover [00:34:19] Next week Just Science sits down again with Commander Moran to discuss the results of his investigation. Opinions or points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.