A man presumed dead for decades has been found alive and well in Montana.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Thursday his investigators located Robert Hutton after his sister submitted his name as a possible victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Dart's office has been trying to identify several Gacy victims after collecting DNA samples from their remains.
Hutton was last heard from in 1972, the same year that Gacy killed his first known victims. A then-21-year-old Hutton told his mother he was traveling from New York to California -- meaning he likely passed through Chicago.
- Related: Could Gacy Have More Victims?
- Nov. 2011: Gacy's "Victim 19" Identified
Detectives found Hutton in rural Montana in April. Dart says Hutton since has visited his father and plans to visit his sister.
Gacy admitted to killing 33 teenage boys and young men from 1972 to 1978. Only 26 bodies were ever found. Most of his victims were found in the crawl space beneath his home. Three others were found beneath other areas of his property. His last four victims were thrown from a bridge into the Des Plaines River.
Another man who was believed to be a victim of Gacy's was found alive in Florida in 2011.
Documents uncovered inside dusty boxes of decades-old evidence show serial killer John Wayne Gacy made numerous trips around the country in the years before his arrest, leading investigators to speculate as to whether the man with the house of horrors had more victims. Retired Des Plaines Police Chief John Kozenczak two years ago said the body count could be "well past 50."
A former Chicago homicide detective maintains that more bodies are buried on the property of an apartment complex on the city's northwest side. A search has been done there, but Detective Bill Dorsch says that dig was less than thorough.
Gacy, a former construction contractor, was executed in May 1994.
