But two weeks ago after Cook County (Illinois) Sheriff's Office reopened the case of John Wayne Gacy to try to identify eight victims through the skeletal remains, a relative of spots Lovell is a Police Florida police records that resulted in the world of the family is the opposite.
The man who disappeared at age 19 did not die by the hand of the clown murderer named after all. Instead, he went to work in jobs as a busboy in South Beach, Fort Lauderdale party, and make another life for himself away from his troubled home near Chicago.
"I never stopped thinking about my mom or my brothers and sisters," said Lovell, now 53, of rural Alabama on Wednesday during an emotional family reunion.
"I feel bad he had to go through life thinking they had died like that," he said. "I feel very bad. But I was a teenager, and did not want to go to Fort Lauderdale, where it is pleasant, sunny and warm?"
Lovell left his home in Aurora, Illinois, in May 1977, telling his family went looking for a construction job. Instead, he went to Florida, and for the next three years he worked a series of odd jobs in hotels and restaurants.
When he returned, a younger sister, Theresa Hasselberg, along with his brother Tim, became convinced that his brother - who goes by Wayne - had crossed with the serial murderer. Gacy had done construction work at a fast food restaurant in Aurora at the time.
They kept scrapbooks of grisly murders, and he shuddered when he realized that Wayne adapt perfectly to the profile of many of the victims of Gacy: children between the ages of 14 and 21.
Gacy was convicted of the murder of 33 young boys in 1970's. Most were strangled, and many were found buried in the basement of his house in the suburbs.
When Gacy was sentenced to death in 1994, the Lovell brothers estimated that their hope of ever finding out what happened to Wayne was dead too.
"I always hope that a clue that he was alive," said Tim Lovell, who was only 14 when she disappeared Wayne. "I would say, 'God, let me see my brother again."
With the reopening of the case Gacy, Tim Lovell and other relatives hoped that genetic testing performed on unidentified remains his old fears are confirmed.
And they were not alone. When the authorities of Illinois announced plans to try to identify the remains, more than 120 families by email to the sheriff's department or call a hotline to see if they met the requirements for evidence that might relate to the DNA of one of those nameless victims.
Of these, 70 are possible, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. Seven families have submitted DNA samples, and four more are being prepared, he said.
Results are expected in two or three weeks.
But before the family could be tested Lovell, a nephew began an Internet search and found Mugshots.com website. And there, under the name of Harold Wayne Lovell, was a photo of Hillsborough County reserve of a man who looked like Uncle Tim.
Wayne was arrested in 2006 on a marijuana possession charge.
After a few phone calls and a trip by bus 10 hours from Tampa, where he has been living in Dothan, Alabama, Wayne Lovell met with two of his three brothers early Tuesday.
Between media interviews, has told the family's history. He left home because he was not wanted. He worked at the Fontainebleau Hotel, swam in the ocean in Fort Lauderdale. He met a girl from Wisconsin, South Beach, went to the Midwest and married.
He lived in Wisconsin for several years, he said, and when he and his wife separated, he returned to Florida, this time to the West Coast. Lovell said he has two daughters, 30 and 28, who has not seen since they were little.
Once, he said Lovell, he returned to Chicago in search of his mother, but she was gone. She died in 2001.
"This has been very emotional," said Lovell. "I have to get a job and be part of the family. And I need rest. There are 33 years of catching up and can not be done in two days. "
Tim Lovell, 48, said he is delighted to be back older brother, and invited him to stay in Alabama and join him in his small construction business.
"Every year, I was sure I have it Gacy," said Tim Lovell. "I was sure he was dead and buried.
"I imagine that there are families out there who have felt the way they have all those years. But perhaps their loved ones are alive out there. Do not stop looking."
Reports of the Chicago Tribune was used in this story.
source : chicagotribune.com
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