Victim is identified in 1979 S.F. slaying
A Chicago teenager has been identified as the victim of a cold-case homicide in San Francisco more than three decades after he disappeared and four years after being ruled out as one of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s unidentified targets, officials in Illinois said Wednesday.
Andre “Andy” Drath, 16, vanished from Chicago in late 1978 or early 1979, leaving his half-sister, Willa Wertheimer, waiting 36 years to find out what happened to him. That wait came to an end this month when DNA samples positively identified Drath as the victim of a fatal shooting in San Francisco.
“You should never lose hope in finding your loved one. He could still be living, or at least your heart can know the peace of bringing him home,” Wertheimer said. “I urge all families of missing persons to submit your DNA to the national missing persons database.”
Drath was a ward of the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services at the time of his disappearance, and records showed that he traveled to San Francisco with hopes of getting his guardianship transferred to California. In June 1979, police recovered a body in San Francisco, but the investigation went cold quickly and the case was listed as inactive after leads dried up. At the time of the autopsy, the medical examiner took tissue samples that eventually proved crucial in identifying the body.
Meanwhile in Illinois, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart announced in 2011 the reopening of the investigation into the victims of convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, eight of whom remained unidentified. Gacy killed 33 teenage boys and young men from 1972 to 1978. He was executed for his crimes in 1994.
As a young white male from the North Side of Chicago, Drath fit the profile of Gacy’s victims and Wertheimer contacted the sheriff to submit a DNA sample. Though the sample didn’t match for any of Gacy’s unidentified victims, Dart uploaded Wertheimer’s DNA to a national database. In May 2014, he got notice that the sample was a match.
After matching dental records and a tattoo on Drath’s body that read “Andy,” authorities made the identification official.
“John Doe #89 now will come home to his kid sister, with his own name — Andy,” Wertheimer said.
Dart said his department would provide any help it could to investigators in San Francisco, who are reviewing the case with fresh eyes, according to Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman.
“Having his name will allow our inspectors to go back and look at what he might have done here. Now that we have his picture, we can ask if people may have seen him,” Andraychak said. “This is a very important development for us.”