For more than 30 years, Sherry Marino has faithfully visited her teen son’s grave site in Hillside, finding solace there in his memory. But one feeling has continued to elude her: peace.

Officially, her son, Michael M. Marino, is listed as body No. 14 recovered from the Norwood Park Township home of John Wayne Gacy. Authorities identified his remains during the spring of 1980, using dental records — the principal means of identification before DNA testing.

But his mother has always carried doubts. Why did it take the medical examiner a year and a half to identify her son?

Now, her quest to find the answer to whether it’s her only son buried in that grave — or if he is still missing after three decades — is likely to come to an end. A Cook County judge Thursday ruled that his body could be exhumed by the family and tested for DNA.

“Mrs. Marino has been waiting some 35 years to finally determine whether this is in fact her son,” said attorney Steven Becker. “And now she’ll have a chance to actually find that out and give her some necessary closure.”

Uncertainties remain. Is there enough DNA on the body to allow for testing? If it’s not him, who is it?

Marino’s attorneys say they’re confident the remains will provide enough DNA for testing. The autopsy report indicated the body was partially mummified, making it highly likely testable DNA could be collected and compared to the boy’s mother, they said.

DNA testing on decades-old bodies has been successful. Fifty years after the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, his body was exhumed from suburban Burr Oak Cemetery as part of an FBI reinvestigation. The DNA testing of bone marrow in his thigh confirmed Till’s identity.

Now that the family has authorization, it will begin raising the $9,000 to $10,000 needed to pay for the exhumation and DNA testing, Becker said.

The family hopes to exhume the body in about a month, said attorney Robert Stephenson.

When that happens, it will be the beginning of the end to a long, painful chapter for the Marinos.

Michael Marino, 14, vanished Oct. 24, 1976. He and a friend, Kenneth Parker, were last seen near a hamburger restaurant near Clark Street and Diversey Parkway. Testimony would reveal the serial killer picked up many of his victims near that intersection.

“Michael was a sweet, kind boy,” Sherry Marino, 67, said Thursday in an email. “He was not the best student, but he tried hard and rarely, if ever, got into trouble. He loved sports and music. He was an excellent drummer. … He had big dreams of being a musician when he grew up.

“On the day he disappeared, he made me a sandwich and we were planning to go to a movie at 6 p.m. As soon as he was more than 10 minutes late I knew something was wrong because Michael was always on time.”

When police arrested Gacy on Dec. 21, 1978, authorities called on relatives of missing males to submit dental records. Marino’s mother “promptly submitted two sets of dental records and X-rays,” according to the exhumation petition.

Authorities said the bodies were buried on top of each other in a common grave under Gacy’s home.

Experts who worked on the case say the task of identification was not easy.

There were 29 bodies on Gacy’s property and four pulled from Illinois rivers, all in varying states of decomposition. Some were skeletons. Others were less decomposed but still difficult to identify, in part because there were so many matches to examine from missing children in the area.

Adding to the challenge was that the forensic tools, dental records and X-rays — while cutting edge in the 1970s — are fairly primitive ways to identify someone.

“It might have been state of the art at the time, but it was as much an art as it was science,” said Clyde Snow, a forensic anthropologist who worked as a consultant to the Cook County medical examiner’s office on the Gacy case. “Thank God for DNA. Now we can know with some real certainty.”

Marino’s attorneys said discrepancies nagged at her, including that the body was found in different clothing than she last saw on him.

She hired attorneys and private investigators over the years, but each inquiry ended in a dead end.

It wasn’t until April of this year, when she heard that authorities had discovered another location with possible Gacy victims, that she redoubled her efforts. She hired Becker and Stephenson, who are experienced with Freedom of Information Act laws and obtained her son’s pathology and autopsy reports.

The documentation furthered her doubts. The 1979 report indicated the victim had fractured his collarbone and suggested his molars were coming in. X-rays provided by Marino’s dentist months before the boy’s disappearance show not all his molars had grown in, and he had never broken his collarbone, his mother said.

On Thursday, she gripped her purse tightly as the judge ruled. Her daughter put her arm around her. Becker said she holds out hope her son is still alive.

“I think she’s relieved,” said Stephenson. “It’s almost 35 years to the day that her son disappeared. … And again, a lot of the questions are, if not him, then who? But to her, the main question is, is it him?”

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It breaks my heart that she does seem to be hanging onto a hope that her son is alive. It is worrisome that she is going to break apart if it is him.

I just can not see this boy dissapearing so many years ago and never contacting his family. It would just add to her pain if it is not him and she begins a futile search.

I suppose that I might do the same if it was my kid.

I hope that whatever the DNA tests come up with she finds peace.