Gacy probe helps solve unrelated case
Associated Press
MAYWOOD, ILL.
Ruth Rodriguez didn’t want to believe her brother was one of more than 30 young men and boys John Wayne Gacy lured into his Chicago-area house and strangled, but she was willing to provide her DNA to find out.
She and her father gave authorities samples as part of an effort to identify eight of Gacy’s victims more than two years ago and learned none of the remains were those of her sibling, 22-year-old Edward Beaudion who went missing in 1978.
Eventually, the work done in the Gacy probe did help provide the family with some answers they had long awaited: Beaudion’s remains were those found in a forest preserve by hikers in 2008. And his killer was a small-time Missouri crook named Jerry Jackson who died last year.
On Wednesday, Rodriguez and her 86-year-old father, Louis Beaudion, appeared with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to announce the news.
“My mom went to her grave in 2001 not knowing where my brother was,” the sister said. “My dad, he will now be able to know where my brother was.”
She said Edward Beaudion’s cremated remains will, upon their father’s death, be placed in the dad’s coffin next to their mother’s.
Authorities don’t know exactly how Beaudion died because his skull was never found. But Dart explained what investigators do know.
Beaudion was driving his sister’s car on July 23, 1978, when he dropped a friend off and told her he was heading home. No one ever heard from him again.