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7月，詹姆斯·拜伦·哈肯森的照片出现在芝加哥的一次新闻发布会上。G-Jun Yam/Associated Press MAYWOOD, Ill. — It was a painful mystery that had simmered just below the surface for about 40 years, and last month, the family of James Byron Haakenson finally got their answer. As they had long feared, the funny, good-natured 16-year-old they called Jimmy had been a victim of John Wayne Gacy, one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. 伊利诺伊州梅伍德——这是一个痛苦的谜团，在平静的表面之下酝酿了大约40年的时间，上个月，詹姆斯·拜伦·哈肯森(James Byron Haakenson)的家人终于得到了答案。正如他们长期以来一直所担心的那样，被他们叫做吉米的那个风趣、善良的16岁男孩，是被全国最臭名昭著的连环杀手之一约翰·韦恩·盖西(John Wayne Gacy)杀害的。 But the revelation by Chicago-area law enforcement officials opened up a new set of haunting questions for this family as they imagined his final days, now with just enough certainty to be horrifying. 但是，芝加哥地区执法人员的发现令这家人开始想象吉米人生的最后几天，并且思考各种难以释怀的新问题，现在可以充分确定，那几天一定非常可怕。 “How did this 16-year-old kid get to Chicago, and how in the heck did he run into this awful man?” Lorie Sisterman, Jimmy’s older sister, said from her home in North St. Paul, Minnesota. “这个16岁的孩子是怎样来到了芝加哥，究竟又是怎样遇到了这个可怕的男人呢？”吉米的姐姐洛莉·塞斯特曼(Lorie Sisterman)在明尼苏达州北圣保罗的家中说。 The story of Jimmy’s identification, decades after his death, is a remarkable quest that spanned the country. It took a curious nephew in Texas with a knack for digging around online, siblings in Minnesota and South Dakota who had never stopped wondering what had happened to their brother, and a sheriff-detective team in Illinois determined to close cold cases. 吉米的身份在他去世几十年后得到确认，这个追寻真相的惊人故事传遍了整个国家。参与其中的包括德克萨斯州一位好奇的侄子，他擅长在网上挖掘资料；以及吉米在明尼苏达州和南达科他州的兄弟姐妹，他们从来没有停止猜测兄弟的遭遇；此外还有伊利诺伊州一个由治安官与警探组成的团队，他们一心想了结那些未结的案件。 Originally, Cook County investigators had little to go on but the body of a young man, between 5 feet 5 and 5 feet 10, discovered with dozens of others at Gacy’s house in 1978. He was known only as Victim No. 24. 起初，库克县的调查人员几乎没有什么线索可供继续追查，只有一具身高在5英尺5英寸到5英尺10英寸（约合165厘米至178厘米）之间的年轻人的尸体，1978年，他和数十具尸体一起在盖西家中被发现。对他的唯一称呼是第24号受害者。 The Disappearance 失踪 One summer day in 1976, Jimmy appeared in the kitchen of the Haakenson house in St. Paul, his brown hair bleached blond. Carrying no backpack or suitcase, he told his family that he was off to Chicago. Jimmy had been known to leave home before, seeking fun and relief from a crowded house with four children, a mother who held as many as three jobs and a father who worked as a plumber but also drank heavily. Jimmy had always come back. 1976年的一个夏日，吉米出现在圣保罗的哈肯森家的厨房，他把棕色的头发漂成了金色。他没带背包或手提箱，告诉家人他要去芝加哥。为了出去玩，或是逃离拥挤着四个孩子的家、同时做三份工作的母亲和酗酒的水管工父亲，吉米之前也曾离家出走。但他总会回来。 “I just said, ‘Why is your mom letting him go to Chicago?'” said Jackie Haakenson, who was then dating Jimmy’s older brother, Donald (they later married). Nobody else in the room seemed to share her worries. “我说，‘为什么你妈妈让他去了芝加哥？’”杰基·哈肯森(Jackie Haakenson)说，当时她正和吉米的哥哥唐纳德约会（他们后来结了婚）。房间里的其他人似乎都和她有同样的顾虑。 “It was so loose and easy back then, you could just hitchhike and not worry about it,” Sisterman said. “If he thumbed it all the way to Chicago, we don’t know.” “当时这种事很自由，很随便，你可以搭便车，不用担心什么，”塞斯特曼说。“不知道他是不是一路搭便车到了芝加哥。” Word that he had made it there safely came on Aug. 5. Jimmy called home and spoke to his mother, June Haakenson, assuring her that he was fine. 8月5日，他平安抵达的消息传了回来。吉米打电话回家，和母亲朱恩·哈肯森(June Haakenson)通话，告诉她自己一切都好。 But then weeks passed with no word from him. June Haakenson, a quiet, reserved woman, reported Jimmy missing to the police, and told them where she suspected her son, who sometimes wore makeup, might be. In a message dated Sept. 7, 1976, the St. Paul police alerted the Chicago Police Department. “Mother thinks he may be in company of gays in Chicago,” the letter said. 但随后几周，他再也没有音信。朱恩·哈肯森，一个寡言、谨慎的女人，向警方报告了吉米的失踪。她告知警方，她的儿子有时会化妆，还说了她怀疑吉米可能出现的地点。圣保罗警方在1976年9月7日的一封信函中提醒芝加哥警察局，“他母亲认为他可能和芝加哥的男同性恋们在一起。” 约翰·韦恩·盖西。Associated Press The Serial Killer 连环杀手 The news out of Norwood Park Township, Illinois, in December 1978, was grisly. The police arrested Gacy, a 38-year-old owner of a construction firm who was known in the neighborhood as a businessman and amateur clown. 1978年12月，伊利诺斯州诺伍德公园镇传来了令人毛骨悚然的消息。警方逮捕了盖西，一名38岁的建筑公司老板，他在这一带以商人和业余小丑演员的身份为人们所知。 A search revealed dozens of bodies in and near his house. Gacy had abducted and rapedsome victims, and lured others to his home by promising them construction jobs or sex. Then he killed them, often by strangulation. 经搜查，警方在他家中和家附近发现了几十具尸体。盖西绑架并强奸了若干受害者，还通过承诺提供建筑工作或性爱，引诱另一些受害者来到他家。然后他会杀死他们，最常用的方法是扼杀。 Hearing about the murders, June Haakenson thought of her son, who had now been missing for more than two years. “After the story broke, my mom and I had a conversation and said, ‘Well, what if?'” Sisterman recalled. 朱恩·哈肯森听说这些谋杀事件后，想到了当时已经失踪两年多的儿子。“这件事曝出后，妈妈和我谈了一次，说：‘万一真的是呢？’”塞斯特曼回忆。 Her mother told the St. Paul police, who passed along her theory to officials in Illinois, according to police records. The Cook County police asked for Jimmy’s dental records. For reasons unknown, none were sent. 根据警方的记录，她的母亲和圣保罗的警察谈过，他们将她的推测转给了伊利诺伊州的警官。库克县警方要求获得吉米的牙科记录。由于未知的原因，这份纪录没有发出。 In the house in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where Jeff Haakenson grew up, he never saw a picture of his Uncle Jimmy. But when he was a child in the 1980s, his mother, Jackie Haakenson, told him what had happened before Jeff was born. 杰夫·哈肯森(Jeff Haakenson)在南达科他州苏瀑市长大，他从来没有见过吉米叔叔的照片。但是，1980年代，当他还是个小孩的时候，母亲杰基·哈肯森给他讲过这桩在他出生之前发生的事。 “John Wayne Gacy got him,” she would say. “他被约翰·韦恩·盖西杀了，”她会说。 Jeff Haakenson often read about true crime, including books about the Gacy killings and the Jeffrey Dahmer murders in Milwaukee. And from the time he was 19 and in the Air Force, he would spend hours searching for his uncle online. 杰夫·哈肯森经常阅读真实犯罪报道，包括关于盖西杀人案和密尔沃基的杰弗里·达默(Jeffrey Dahmer)谋杀案的书籍。他19岁时加入了空军，在军队里，他会花很多时间在网上搜索他叔叔的消息。 “I could never find him,” Jeff Haakenson, 37, said from Lubbock, Texas. “It just really bothered me that nobody cared, that somebody went missing and it’s like, nobody’s doing anything about it. If it was my brother who went missing, I would be turning over every rock looking for him.” “我怎么也找不到他，”37岁的杰夫·哈肯森在德克萨斯州的拉伯克说。“真正令我感到困扰的是，根本没有人在乎，有人失踪了，但是好像没有人为此做任何事。如果是我的兄弟失踪了，我会千方百计寻找他的。” 库克郡警局的杰森·莫兰警长与盖西案中未确定身份受害者的档案，摄于2015年。Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press The Detective 探长 As a boy growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, Jason Moran would hear about the serial killer from the suburbs who targeted young people. As a seasoned detective in Cook County trying to close Gacy cases, he saw the agony left behind. 杰森·莫兰(Jason Moran)是1980年代在芝加哥南部长大的，他从小就听说过这个来自郊区，专门杀害年轻人的连环杀手。作为库克县的一位资深警探，在试图为盖西案结案之时，他看到了遗留下来的痛苦。 “It’s quite devastating to see how much death and pain he has caused for so many people,” he said. “This was a new experience with human pain.” “看到他对那么多人造成了那么多的死亡与痛苦，这非常令人不安，”他说。“这是对人类痛苦的新体验。” In 2011, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart announced a new push to close cold cases in Cook County, particularly the Gacy case, which had left eight unidentified victims at the time. Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994. 2011年，治安官托马斯·J·达特(Thomas J. Dart)宣布了一项推动库克县了结未结旧案的新行动，特别是盖西一案，当时已经只剩八名受害者身份不明。1994年盖西被执行注射死刑。 Moran and Dart started digging, beginning with the warehouse where boxes and materials on the Gacy case were kept. They gathered everyone they could find who was involved with the original investigation. And they acknowledged the challenges ahead — after decades, many families have long given up on finding their missing relatives. 莫兰和塔特开始深入挖掘此案，从保留盖西案相关物证和材料的仓库开始。他们尽可能地寻找了所有参与原始调查的人。他们承认自己面临的挑战——几十年过去了，许多家庭早已放弃寻找失踪的亲戚。 But DNA evidence was making it easier to link unidentified bodies with names, and DNA was extracted from the bones of the unidentified people who were discovered in a crawl space beneath Gacy’s house. There was also hope that families who did not want their missing loved ones to be associated with Gacy back then might come forward now. 但是，DNA证据可以更容易地将不明身份的尸体同失踪人名联系起来，而且从那些不明身份的尸体的骨头当中可以提取DNA，这些尸体都是在盖西房子下方一处仅可爬行的空间里发现的。况且还有希望，有些家庭当年不想让失踪的亲人与盖西案联系起来，现在他们可能会站出来。 After publicizing their quest, hundreds of tips poured in, including from Jeff Haakenson. 这项寻找工作一经公布就收到了数百个线索，其中就包括关于杰夫·哈肯森的。 From there, the investigation moved swiftly, Moran said. Nothing revealed that Jimmy was alive, and his description — a young, unsupervised man in Chicago during the period when Gacy was killing people — suggested a possible link. 莫兰说，从那时开始，调查的进展就很迅速。没有证据表明吉米还活着，对他的描述——一个无人监管的年轻人，于盖西杀人期间在芝加哥出现——表明他同此案可能有关。 He then asked Donald Haakenson and Sisterman to submit DNA samples; Jimmy’s parents had both been dead for years. 然后他要求唐纳德·哈肯森和塞斯特曼提交DNA样本；吉米的父母已经去世多年。 The results from the lab were convincing enough that Moran asked the Haakenson family if they could meet in person to discuss them. 实验室的结果足以促使莫兰问哈肯森一家，是否可以就此事面谈。 With family members assembled around Sisterman’s dining room table in North St. Paul in July, Moran broke the news. Shock rippled through the room as the family absorbed it. 7月，家庭成员们在北圣保罗塞斯特曼家的餐桌边相聚，莫兰告知了他们这一消息。家人们努力接受这个现实，惊骇之情弥漫在整个房间。 “I didn’t want him to be dead, and especially dying the way he did,” Jeff Haakenson said. “But I’m relieved that he’s found, that he’s not missing anymore.” “我不希望他死去，特别是以这种方式死去，”杰夫·哈肯森说。“但我松了一口气，他被发现了，他不再失踪了。”
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