John Wayne Gacy victim ID’d using DNA technology (VIDEO)

One of eight unidentified victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy secretly exhumed for DNA identification has been identified.

Authorities announced Tuesday that they had identified William George Bundy, who was 19 when he vanished in October 1976 on his way to a party.

His remains were found in the crawl space of a Chicago-area home owned by Gacy, convicted of the sexual assault and murder of 33 boys and young men in the 1970s.

Gacy, who performed at children's parties and charity events dressed as a clown, was arrested in 1978 and put to death in 1994.

The Cook County Sheriff's Office exhumed the body, along with seven others — all white males aged between 14 and 32 — buried in Chicago-area cemeteries for DNA testing.

(GlobalPost reports: John Wayne Gacy victims' remains exhumed for DNA testing)

Cook County has been working with the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification to obtain DNA from the jaw bones of four victims and the femurs of four others, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

The family of Bundy — long referred to by authorities as "Victim 19" — had long suspected that he had been one of Gacy's victims, his sister Laura O'Leary told a news conference held Tuesday by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

O'Leary said her brother had been working construction jobs before he disappeared, and she noted that Gacy was known to lure victims looking for work through his remodeling and construction company, CNN reported.

Gacy had used the promise of work as one way of luring his victims, along with posing as a police officer or picking up runaways.

"I always knew he was going to be one of them," O'Leary said. "But there was no DNA [testing] back then, so there was nothing I could really do."

She said her brother's disappearance took a horrible toll on her parents, who have both since passed away.

"My mother, she was really never the same," O'Leary said, according to the paper.The Chicago Tribune reported that O'Leary, now 50, said the decision to revisit the Gacy case using new DNA technology might provide a measure of closure to relatives wondering for decades whether their loved ones were victims of the serial killer.

Of her brother, whom she reportedly described as a gregarious young man who excelled at sports, O'Leary said: "All of my girlfriends wanted to date him."