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Family Finally Learns Fate Of NW Side Man Missing Since 1978

(CBS) -- The mystery has been unsolved since 1978 and now a Northwest Side family knows the truth about what happened to a 22-year-old man.

WBBM's Steve Miller has the exclusive details.

"I miss him. I miss my brother a lot," says Ruth Rodriguez.

She has been without her brother Edward Beaudion since July 1978 when he borrowed her car to go to a wedding and never came back.

He was 22.

Family Finally Learns Fate Of NW Side Man Missing Since 1978

The car was found in Missouri and a man was charged with car theft, but no one was ever charged with murder. Jerry Jackson served four years in prison for the car theft and told police he had gotten into a fight with Beaudion at the time of Beaudion's disappearance. However, without a body, he was never was prosecuted for murder. Jackson died last year.

Click Here To View Newspaper Clippings About Bedoin's Disappearance

Fast forward to 2011.

Detective Jason Moran of the Cook County Sheriff's Police asked people to come forward if they thought their missing relatives might have been still-unidentified victims of John Wayne Gacy.

Beaudion
Ruth Rodriguez and Louis Beaudion hold a photo of Edward. (Credit: CBS)

One of his first calls was from Ruth Rodriguez.

"And she says to me, 'I think my brother was killed by John Gacy.'"

So the family submitted DNA. There was no match to the Gacy victims, but there was a match to remains found off I-55 in 2008 - now positively ID'd as Edward Beaudion.

Jerry Jackson
Jerry Jackson has been accused of stealing Edward Beaudion's car in 1978. (Photo from Cook County Sheriff's office)

Beaudion's father Louis is 86 now, and he says knowledge has brought him peace.

"To know that now that I can have his remains... because we're going to have him cremated, and I'm going to take the urn and when I pass away I'm going to put that in my casket and we'll be buried beside his mom."

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