CHICAGO, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- A suburban Chicago orthodontist says he is confident in his identification of a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
A judge last week ruled Sherry Marino may exhume a body found in 1978 inside Gacy's home to determine if it is really her son Michael, who disappeared in 1976 at the age of 14.
Edward Pavlik, a suburban Chicago orthodontist and expert in forensic odontology, told the Chicago Sun-Times that X-rays taken of Michael Marino's mouth before he disappeared show dental fillings that were identical to those found in the body he examined.
"I am a perfectionist," Pavlik told the newspaper. "I would never have signed off on this if it wasn't correct."
Sherry Marino has said she has always wondered if the body was correctly identified as her son. Her lawyer, Robert M. Stephenson, said a dental chart created about seven months before Michael disappeared showed the teen was missing one of his second molars, while the autopsy report said the victim had all of his second molars.
Stephenson said he would be happy to look at any evidence Pavlik can provide and would ask Marino to call off the exhumation if the evidence warrants, the newspaper said.
Gacy was convicted of 33 slayings and was executed in 1994.
