Man Reunited with Family Through Gacy Case
by Lauren Zumbach and Deanese Williams
The Hutton family may spend its first holiday season together in 41 years after Robert Hutton, whose family feared he might have been a victim of John Wayne Gacy, was reunited with his father and sister through an investigation to identify the serial killer’s unnamed victims, the Cook County sheriff’s department announced Thursday. Hutton was reported missing in 1972, when he was 21 years old, after telling his mother he was traveling from New York to California His family never heard from him again, and law enforcement agencies closed the missing-person case after several years of trying to find him, sheriff’s officials said. Hutton and his family declined to comment, according to the sheriff’s office. Attempts to reach the family were unsuccessful. In February 2012, Hut-ton’s sister heard that the sheriff’s department was trying to identify seven of Gacy’s victims who were unidentified.
Gacy was convicted of 33 murders in 1980 and executed in 1994. His victims, all young men, were killed between 1972 and 1978, and many of their bodies were hidden in the crawl space under his home in Norwood Park. Like many of the victims, Hutton was a young man hitchhiking and traveling by bus who likely would have passed through Chicago, said Detective Jason Moran, who leads Sheriff Tom Dart’s Gacy investigation. Hutton also worked in construction, and Gacy was known to lure victims by hiring them to do such work, Moran said. The sheriff’s office traced a man named Robert Hutton to Colorado but found he’d moved to rural Stevensville, Montana.
In April, investigators confirmed it was the same Hutton who disappeared in 1972, Moran said. “He said he just got caught up in the ’70s lifestyle, and after years went by, he became embarrassed he hadn’t had contact with his family, and that made it easier to dismiss them,” Moran said. Hutton said he tried to contact family in the ’80s and ’90s but had trouble tracking them down, Moran said. He never knew that the owner of a bar just a few miles from his home was his stepmother’s brother, Moran said. They’d spoken several times but never exchanged last names.
Hutton first reunited with his father in June and has visited him at his home in Washington state several times, Moran said. Since the sheriff’s office began investigating unidentified Gacy victims in 2011, 150 families provided leads, Dart said. Just one of Gacy’s victims, William George Bundy, was identified, but seven missing-person cases have been closed. Five people, like Hutton, were found alive, and two died of natural causes, Dart said. The sheriff’s office asks anyone who believes a family member may have been a Gacy victim to call 708-865-6244.
