Remains In 1979 San Francisco Homicide Identified As Teen From Chicago
Source: WBBM, CBS affiliate in Chicago
September 23, 2015 6:12 AM
Andy Drath (left) and his half-sister Willa (right). (Credit: Cook County Sheriff’s Office.)
(CBS) — San Francisco homicide investigators have now reopened a cold case from 1979 – and we now know that the victim was a Chicago teenager, reports WBBM’s Steve Miller.
Willa Wertheimer, who’s 51 now, remembers the last time she saw her older brother Andy Drath. ... “I was about 13 or 14,” Wertheimer said. “I didn’t memorize what age I was, because I didn’t know that was the last time I was going to see him. He was so tall. And then that was it.”
Andy had been a DCFS ward and a runaway. He made his way to San Francisco. ... In 1979, he died there. He was shot and his body was concealed near the ocean. ... But his remains were unidentified for almost 36 years. His murder unsolved.
Sheriff Tom Dart’s investigators have been trying to identify seven of John Wayne Gacy’s unidentified victims. ... Willa Wertheimer submitted her DNA, thinking her long-lost brother may have fallen prey to Gacy. ... But instead, the DNA matched the remains in San Francisco.
Read more: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/09/23/remains-in-1979-san-francisco-homicide-identified-as-teen-from-chicago/
Gacy Exhumations Help Identify Unrelated Homicide Victim
CHICAGO — Sep 23, 2015, 8:33 AM ET
An effort to identify the remains of young men murdered by serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the 1970s has led to a break in an unrelated case of a previously unidentified teenager found shot to death in San Francisco 36 years ago.
The Cook County Sheriff's office will announce Wednesday that tests have revealed a "genetic association" between the teenager and the DNA of a woman whose half brother, Andre Drath, went missing decades ago.
The sheriff asked relatives of missing teens to submit DNA to determine if it matched unidentified Gacy victims, and the woman submitted hers in 2011.
The sheriff's office submitted the DNA to a federal database. The match was discovered after San Francisco authorities submitted DNA of the teen to the database last year.
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