Police: Rapist hid killing spree for decades

Krajcir used the city only as a hunting ground, said Carbondale Police Lt. Paul Echols, who has interviewed Krajcir several times. Krajcir would stake out shopping center parking lots in Cape Girardeau, stalking women until he found one he liked and then following her home.

Cape Girardeau police found Krajcir's first victims on Aug. 15, 1977. Mary Parsh, 58, and her daughter, Brenda, 27, were found in their home, nude, lying side by side on the bed, their hands tied behind their backs. Each had been shot in the head.

Sheila Cole was kidnapped from a Wal-Mart parking lot and killed in November 1977. Her body was found at a rest stop in southern Illinois.

In January 1982, Margie Call, 57, was found dead in her home. Her hands appeared to have been bound, and she had been raped and strangled. That June, Milfred Wallace, 65, was found killed and partially nude. Her hands were tied and she had been shot in the head.

Police make connections
The similarities in most of the killings led investigators to believe they were connected, Hughs said. But it was tough to imagine that the killer might be a stranger who chose them at random, so police looked at old classmates, mutual friends and past lovers of the women, he said.

The lulls between Krajcir's killings coincided with his stints behind bars on sex-related crimes, authorities said. He was jailed in Illinois in 1979 for having sex with his landlord's 13-year-old daughter, but given conditional release in 1981.

After moving to Pennsylvania, Krajcir was arrested in 1982 on sexual assault charges and imprisoned until 1988, when he was returned to Illinois to resume serving his sentence there because he had violated the terms of his parole. He has been in the state's custody since.

While he left some forensic evidence at the crime scenes, like hair or bodily fluid, investigators have not found any of his fingerprints that might have been entered into a national database, Smith said.

Police found a palm print matching Krajcir's at one crime scene, but palm prints weren't yet tracked when Krajcir was arrested in the early 1980s, Smith said.

Advances in DNA technology eventually led Echols to test a small sample from Deborah Sheppard's killing. It matched Krajcir's, which was in a database. Smith did a similar test with material from Wallace's killing, which matched Krajcir.

After initially denying his involvement in the murders, Krajcir confessed on Dec. 3, Smith said.

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