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Timothy
Wayne KRAJCIR
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics:
Rape
Number of victims:9
Date of murders:1977
- 1982
Date
of arrest:August 29,
2007
Date of birth: November 28,
1944
Victims profile:Women
Method of murder: Shooting
/ Strangulation
Location: Illinois/Missouri/Kentucky/Pennsylvania, USA
Status: Sentence to life in prison in Illinois and Missouri on
2008
Timothy Krajcir
(born c. 1944) is a convicted American serial killer
from Allentown, Pennsylvania who has confessed to
killing over nine women, five in Missouri and four
others in Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Background
After a stint in the Navy, Krajcir
first entered the Illinois prison system in 1963 on a
rape conviction. Since then, he has spent most of his
adult life behind bars for sex crimes, except for a
brief period of freedom in the late 1970s and early
1980s. Krajcir has been incarcerated since 1982.
Murders
Krajcir would travel to various towns
that he had no connection to, stalk his victims, and
then break into their homes and wait for them to arrive.
In 1977, Krajcir was released from prison after serving
time for rape when he enrolled at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale as a condition of his parole.
There, in 1981, he earned a degree in Administrative
Justice with a minor in psychology which taught him how
police investigated crimes. Ironically, Krajcir used
this knowledge to elude police for decades.
The victims were often found in their
beds, bound, raped and shot in the head, often with
little evidence to connect any of the murders together
or to any one person.
He was finally connected to a murder
because of DNA evidence left at the crime scene, which
at the time, was still considered new technology and not
available. Krajcir was sentenced on December 10, 2007 to
40 years in prison for the 1982 killing of Southern
Illinois University Carbondale student Deborah Sheppard
and, in addition, has been charged with five counts of
murder and three counts of rape against women in the
Cape Girardeau area from 1977 to 1982.
On January 18, 2008, Krajcir pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to another 40 years in prison
for the 1978 killing of Marion resident Virginia Lee
Witte. The new sentence will be served consecutively
with the 40 year sentence he received in December 2007.
Krajcir is currently held at the
Tamms Correctional Facility, Tamms, Illinois.
Known
and suspected victims
Deborah Sheppard
Mary Parsh
Brenda Parsh, 27
Sheila Cole
Virginia Lee Witte
Myrtle Rupp, 51
Joyce Tharp, 29
Mildred Wallace, 65
Margie Call, 57
Sentencing
Krajcir was finally connected to a
murder because of DNA evidence left at
the crime scene, which at the time, was
still considered new technology and not
available. Krajcir was sentenced on
December 10, 2007 to 40 years in prison
for the 1982 killing of Southern
Illinois University Carbondale student
Deborah Sheppard and, in addition, has
been charged with five counts of murder
and three counts of rape against women
in the Cape Girardeau area from 1977 to
1982.
On January 18, 2008,
Krajcir pleaded guilty and was sentenced
to another 40 years in prison for the
1978 killing of Marion resident Virginia
Lee Witte. The new sentence will be
served consecutively with the 40-year
sentence he received in December 2007.
On April 4, 2008,
Krajcir pleaded guilty to the murder of
five women in Cape Girardeau, to seven
sexual assaults, and one robbery. He was
then sentenced to an additional 13
consecutive life terms. Relatives of the
victims agreed to the plea bargain,
which took the death penalty off the
table.
At his sentencing in
April, Krajcir stated, "I don't know if
I could have been so generous if I were
in the same situation. Thank you for
sparing my life."
Krajcir is currently
held at the Tamms Correctional Center
located in Tamms, Illinois.
Inmate charged with 1982 murder
By Bethany Krajelis - ThSouthern.com
Friday, August 31, 2007
CARBONDALE — Timothy W. Krajcir, 62, was arrested and charged with
four counts of murder this week for the 1982 slaying of Deborah Sheppard,
Jackson County court documents show.
Jackson County State’s Attorney Michael Wepsiec filed a motion for
an arrest warrant Tuesday and a judge granted that motion Wednesday. A
press conference is slated for 2:30 p.m. today at the Carbondale Civic
Center, where Carbondale Police and the state’s attorney are expected to
release further details regarding the man arrested for a murder that
occurred 25 years ago.
On April 8, 1982, a friend entered the South Graham Street apartment
of Sheppard, a 23-year-old marketing senior from Olympia Fields, near
Chicago, to find her naked body lying on her bedroom floor. At the time
of Sheppard’s murder, police reported that a telephone cord in the
living room was cut and a window in Sheppard’s bedroom had been removed.
Police initially said there were no signs of foul play or struggle, but
then attributed the murder to the person who entered her apartment that
day.
There are no details at this time as to the connection between
Sheppard and Krajcir.
Court documents list Krajcir’s address as the Big Muddy Correctional
Center in Ina. The Illinois Department of Corrections shows that Krajcir
was taken in to custody August 1979 with an offense that listed him as a
“sexually dangerous person.” The Jackson County court Web site shows
Krajcir does not have a prior criminal history in the county. At this
time, there are no details as to when or whether Krajcir will be
transferred to the Jackson County Jail in Murphysboro.
Krajcir is being charged with four counts of murder for his alleged
involvement in Sheppard’s slaying. Court documents claim he “strangled
Deborah Sheppard with his hands, thereby causing the death of Deborah
Sheppard.” Another count states Krajcir strangled Sheppard “while
committing a forcible felony rape.”
There were three copies of the counts against Krajcir in the court
file, one of which was stamped in “Defendant’s Copy,” in red ink.
After Sheppard’s death, two autopsies were conducted. The first
showed Sheppard died of a pulmonary edema or fluid in the lungs. The
second autopsy, which took place in Chicago, revealed compressions in
Sheppard’s neck and back, indicating suffocation or strangulation.
Police said there were suspects at the time of the Sheppard’s murder,
although no arrests were made.
Sheppard was one of three Chicago-area women murdered in Carbondale
during the early 1980s. Susan Schumake, a 21-year SIUC radio-television
junior from Chicago Heights, was killed August 1981 in a grassy area
near U.S. 51 and the railroad tracks. Joan Wetherall, 30, a former SIUC
student from Elmhurst, was found June 1981 strangled and nude June in an
isolated area of Carbondale.
Both of those murders have been solved. Two years after Wetherall’s
murder, John Paul Phillips told a cellmate he killed Wetherall and two
other women. He was convicted of Wetherall’s murder and sentenced to
death in 1986. While on death row, he died of a heart attack in 1993.
Police initially looked to Phillips in Schumake’s case. His body was
exhumed when DNA technology advanced and allowed police to compare DNA
from Phillips’ femur to DNA from the murder scene. They did not match.
Nearly 25 years after Schumake’s murder, more technological advances
were made and police were able to link DNA from a cigarette butt in the
car of Daniel Woloson, of Michigan, to DNA from the murder scene of
Schumake. Woloson was arrested in 2004, convicted in 2006 and was
sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Court documents did not list a first court appearance for Krajcir.
Illinois inmate Timothy Krajcir
confesses to 5 unsolved Cape murders
Brenda and Mary Parsh. Sheila Cole. Margie Call. Mildred Wallace.
Monday, December
10, 2007
By Bridget
DiCosmo ~ Southeast Missourian
Timothy W. Krajcir has confessed to all of them.
Krajcir pleaded guilty this morning to the 1982 rape
and murder of Deborah Sheppard, a Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
student. It was a crime that had gone unsolved for over two decades.
With his admission of guilt in the Sheppard killing, police prepare to
close the books on five other unsolved murders here in Cape Girardeau.
For the past two decades, the unresolved killings
haunted the town as detectives worked endless hours, trying to piece
together the evidence and answer the questions that plagued law
enforcement, family members and residents.
"I cannot think of anything we failed to do," said Lt.
John Brown, now a campus police officer at Southeast Missouri State
University, who had been lead detective on the homicides.
At one point, police even had a witness, who believed
he had seen Cole's car cross the bridge into Illinois, hypnotized to see
how much detail they could recall, Brown said.
In 2003, some semen samples found at the scenes of
the Call and Wallace murders were tested by the Missouri State Highway
Patrol crime lab, and failed to pinpoint a suspect because there was not
enough usable genetic material to get a DNA profile.
At that time, Cape Girardeau detective Tracy Lemonds
said a confession to the killings may be the last hope, the Southeast
Missourian reported.
This past summer, Cape Girardeau police detective Jim
Smith took over investigating the unsolved homicides full time.
Then, this November, at Big Muddy River Correctional
Center in Ina, Il., where Krajcir has been incarcerated for the last 10
years, the suspect provided Smith with details only the killer would
know as he described raping Brenda Parsh, Cole, Call, and Wallace.
Police refused to elaborate on what it was Krajcir
said that convinced them they had finally caught the killer.
After DNA evidence tied Krajcir to the Sheppard
murder, Smith realized the killing occurred between the murders of Call,
on Jan. 27, and Wallace, on June 21, 1982. He contacted the Carbondale
police department to inquire about whether Krajcir could have visited
Cape Girardeau during those months.
At first, it seemed like another dead end.
"At that point, nothing linked Krajcir to anything in
Missouri," said Lt. Paul Echols of the Carbondale police department.
Most of the details of the Sheppard murder did not
match up with the way the other women had been killed, leaving police
little to go on in tying Krajcir to the unsolved homicides, Echols said.
After DNA proved with a one-in-a-980 billion match
that Krajcir killed Sheppard, Carbondale police continued to gather
evidence against him - and that's when law enforcement began to suspect
he may have committed some crimes outside of Carbodale, Echols said.
Based on the way Sheppard was murdered, Echols
developed a profile of the way Krajcir killed, and submitted it to
surrounding law enforcement agencies.
Then, Cape Girardeau detective Tracy Lemonds compared
the profile to an unsolved rape dating back to 1982. The details were
identical to the rape of Sheppard.
"That's when we knew we were onto something," Echols
said.
Now, police had something solid to go on: a strong
suspect they could place in Cape Girardeau around the time of the string
of killings, police chief Carl Kinnison said.
A DNA sample was obtained from the Wallace crime
scene and preserved. Lemonds was an evidence technician at the time and
distinctly remembers collecting the sample.
Smith was sitting at his desk at the Cape Girardeau
police department when he got the call from the crime lab in Jefferson
City: They had a match.
"It brought tears to my eyes," Smith said.
Kinnison described the analysis as a "cannot exclude
match." According to Echols, that's about a one-in-720,000 match.
A few weeks later, Lemonds received a call from a
former evidence technician with whom he had worked the Call and Wallace
crime scenes and now is a crime analyst with the Southeast Missouri
Crime lab.
He wanted Lemonds to look at a palm print that had
been lifted from the Wallace's home, and compared to one taken from
Krajcir.
That was the moment when Lemonds said he knew they
had found their killer.
Smith immediately arranged to interview Krajcir.
The 63-year-old former ambulance driver politely
denied everything, said Smith.
He said he had never met Wallace, broke into her
house or waited for her to get home, Kinnison said.
"The next best thing to a confession is a provable
lie," said prosecuting attorney Morley Swingle.
The palm print and DNA evidence tied him to the
Wallace killing, and Swingle intended to see the death penalty in the
case, he said.
Then Krajcir mentioned he would be willing to listen
to what police had to say about the other killings in the area if he
knew death penalty was off the table.
"He said, 'I have nothing to live for, I'll be in
prison for the rest of my life, but I don't have a death wish either,'"
said Smith.
Swingle said he was set against the idea of agreeing
to the arrangement, even to learn new information about the other
murders, until he met with the surviving family members of the victims.
"They all agreed they'd rather find out the truth
about what happened than seek the death penalty and have him take it to
his grave," said Swingle.
He sent a letter to the prison, explaining that he
would not seek the death penalty for the rape and murder of Wallace if
Krajcir could provide accurate and detailed information leading to the
resolution of the other unsolved murders.
Aware of the danger that Krajcir may falsely confess
to the other murders simply to avoid the death penalty, Swingle said he
insisted that Krajcir be able to provide information he could not have
possibly learned from another source.
He did not seem to show much remorse, Smith said.
Krajcir admitted to raping Brenda Parsh, Cole, Call,
and Wallace, but a legal technicality will bar rape charges from being
filed in the Parsh and Cole homicides, because the statute of
limitations has run out, Swingle said.
According to a Nov. 21, 1977 Southeast Missourian
article, autopsy reports said Cole had not been sexually assaulted.
There is no statute of limitations on any class A
felony in Missouri, but it wasn't until 1980 that rape became a class A
felony, so Krajcir cannot be charged for the 1977 rapes, Swingle said.
Brown said he was thrilled to learn about the arrest,
although it seemed odd to think that if the case went to trial, he would
have nothing to testify about, despite the investigation having occupied
a constant presence in his mind since he was assigned the Parsh homicide
in 1977.
"As I entered the pearly gates, I was going to ask St.
Peter who did those killings," he said.
Suspect Timothy Krajcir has long
history of crime, sexual deviancy
Monday, December 10, 2007
By Bridget
DiCosmo ~ Southeast Missourian
Before he killed in Cape Girardeau, he raped in
Pennsylvania.
Timothy W. Krajcir is 63 years old now, a confessed
serial killer, a convicted rapist.
He's from a small Pennsylvania town called Laury's
Station.
According to a psychologist letter sent to a
Pennsylvania courthouse in July of 1983, he was raised by a single
mother. Abandoned by his father at birth. Moved at least a dozen times
in his early childhood.
His mother had been cold and unaffectionate. The
letter says he hated her.
During his teen years, he described himself as a shy,
introverted young man who by the age of 14 had developed voyeuristic
habits. He wore feminine clothing. Fondled women in public.
A therapist once told him he acted out his anger
towards his mother by committing violence against other women. Following
the rapes, he would have intense sexual fantasies about his victims, the
letter said.
He joined the Navy and later relocated to the
Carbondale area of Southern Illinois. It was around that time, in 1977,
when Krajcir began driving an ambulance. Sometimes he would drive the
ambulance to Saint Francis Medical Center or Southeast Missouri
Hospital. Hiding behind a hero's uniform, Krajcir introduced himself to
Cape Girardeau.
And that's where Krajcir began killing, according to
police and public documents. Police say Krajcir confessed to five
murders in Cape Girardeau. The announcement came at a Dec. 10 media
conference.
Krajcir has spent the last 24 years behind bars. He
hasn't been a free man since 1983, roughly the time when fear among
women in Cape Girardeau hit its peak.
The first murders in Cape Girardeau occurred in 1977
with the slayings of Mary and Brenda Parsh and later Sheila Cole. Then,
five years later in 1982, Margie Call and Mildred Wallace were murdered,
as well as a woman named Deborah Sheppard, an SIU student from Illinois.
Between the killings, Krajcir was in an Illinois prison.
In 1979, after he raped a 13-year-old girl, Krajcir
became the first person in Jackson County, Ill., to be committed on the
sexually dangerous person statute, according to Cape Girardeau County
Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle.
By 1982, he was conditionally released. He continued
psychiatric treatment, got an EMT license and took classes in criminal
justice administration at SIU, according to Cape Girardeau police chief
Carl Kinnison. Cape Girardeau detective Jim Smith said Krajcir sought
victims in Cape Girardeau during that time because he wanted to avoid
committing crimes "in his own backyard."
Six months after Mildred Wallace's body was found,
Krajcir returned to Pennsylvania where he committed two bizarre acts of
violence toward women.
According to an arrest document signed by Sgt. Harold
Boyer of the Allentown Police Department, Krajcir robbed two women at
gunpoint, forced them to undress and fondled one of them. According to
the document, Krajcir had threatened to kill the victims' family members
if the women didn't cooperate. He also stole a change purse from one of
the victims.
The following year, Krajcir forced "indecent contact"
with another woman and was arrested in a separate incident after police
caught him at a shopping center with a .25-caliber blue steel automatic
pistol. Because of prior conviction, police arrested him on weapons
charges, but he was linked to the previous crimes.
He was charged with theft, receiving stolen property,
reckless endangerment, indecent exposure, criminal trespass, aggravated
assault, indecent assault , making terroristic threats and firearms
violations. Krajcir was convicted of those crimes, but before he was
sentenced, he was injured while trying to escape Lehigh County Prison.
He and another inmate tied bed sheets together to form a rope, according
to court documents. The other convict escaped, Krajcir slipped, injured
himself and was caught.
He was sentenced for up to five years with the
specific directive that prison officials be advised that he needed
continuous psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment. He was moved to an
Ina, Ill. prison in 1988, called Big Muddy River Correctional Center on
the civil commitment under the sexually violent predator statute.
Lt. Paul Echols, of the Carbondale police department,
interviewed Krajcir on many occasions concerning the Deborah Sheppard
killing.
"He's a likeable person. You're sitting there talking
to him, and you know all the evil that he's done in his life, but it's
just hard to believe," Echols said.
Prison guards described Kracjir as an exceptional
athlete, and easy to get along with, Echols said.
He also spoke with some women who used to work with
Krajcir, and they said he had seemed like a "sweet guy."
In 1977, a group of psychologists from Saint Francis
Mental Health Clinic painted a different picture as they assisted
detectives in creating a personality profile of the type of person they
suspected may have committed the Parsh homicide.
The conclusion reached was that the killer had slain
the mother and daughter in a revenge-type murder, according to a police
memorandum dated Aug. 30, 1977.
The individual or individuals were considered to have
an "obsessive compulsive personality and generally not deal well with
other people," the letter said.
Parts of the profile matched Krajcir, and parts did
not, which is typical of such analysis, police said.
Timothy Krajcir: Inside the Mind of a Serial
Rapist and Murderer
Dec 12, 2007
Blogs.riverfronttimes.com
As might be
expected, Timothy Krajcir, who
authorities announced earlier
this week has confessed to nine
cold-case killings in Missouri,
Illinois and one other
jurisdiction, did not have a
good childhood.
“His lack of stability was accentuated by a mother
who he describes as cold and unaffectionate,” states a 1983
psychological profile (click on image at right to download)
that was submitted to a Pennsylvania court by Dr. Paul Gross and
obtained by the Southeast Missourian in Cape Girardeau. “In
therapy, he was told that he hates his mother and does remember that,
during the mid-sixties, he did feel much hatred for her.”
On Monday Krajcir, who has been in and out of prison
since 1963 and has been continuously incarcerated since 1983 because of
his history of sexual deviance, pleaded guilty in Jackson County Court
in Murphysboro, Illinois, to the 1982 slaying of Deborah Sheppard, who
at the time was a student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He
was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Hours later
law enforcement officials
announced that Krajcir had also
confessed to a string of murders
that terrorized the city of Cape
Girardeau in 1977 and 1982, as
well as three slayings in
another jurisdiction.
Among his
victims in Cape Girardeau: Mary
Parsh and her daughter Brenda
Parsh, Sheila Cole, Margie Call
and Mildred Wallace. Although
Cape Girardeau Police Chief Carl
Kinnison said that Krajcir had
also confessed to three slayings
in another jurisdiction, he
declined to elaborate.
Gross
submitted the psychological
portrait of Krajcir after the
inmate was charged with breaking
into a house in an attempted
rape. According to documents
filed in Pennsylvania court, the
attempted rape was thwarted when
the victims called the police.
According to court documents,
Krajcir then threatened the
victims and masturbated in front
of them.
Gross’ letter
then goes on to detail Krajcir’s
“long history of sexual deviancy,”
stating that Krajcir, raised by
his mother, “became shy and
introverted during his
adolescence and remembers...fondling
women in public and wearing
feminine clothing.”
According to
Gross’ letter, Krajcir spent
thirteen years in an Illinois
prison on a 1963 rape sentence.
Gross states that during the
rape, Krajcir “did stab his
victim.” In 1979 -- two years
after he’d killed three of his
victims in Cape Girardeau -- he
was found guilty in Illinois of
raping a thirteen-year-old girl.
Though
Krajcir was deemed a “sexually
dangerous person” and could
legally have remained
incarcerated until he convinced
authorities that he’d been
rehabilitated, he was paroled
two years later in 1981.
Once paroled
-- and presumably after killing
and raping Margie Call and
Mildred Wallace in 1982 --
Krajcir transferred his parole
to Pennsylvania, where an
attempted rape led to Gross’
psychological evaluation.
Gross, who at
the time did not know the extent
of Krajcir’s crimes, noted that
he was a “cold, detached man”
who “feels ‘no remorse’ for what
he has done.”
“He somehow
tries to justify his behavior on
his past childhood experiences
and once was told by a therapist
that he is action out his anger
towards his mother on other
women,” wrote Gross. “His rapes
have been proceeded [sic]
by intense fantasies of sexual
abuse and rape on women.”
Gross closes
by stating, “Other than his
sexual deviancies, Mr. Krajcir
shows no evidence of any
psychiatric illness.”
Once he was
released from prison in
Pennsylvania, Krajcir was
transferred back to Illinois in
1988 on a parole violation and
has been held there ever since
as a “sexually dangerous person.”
The cold
cases first broke when when Lt.
Paul Echols of the Carbondale
Police Department submitted DNA
evidence from the Sheppard crime
scene that matched Krajcir.
Noticing the
similar time frame between the
Sheppard murder and the Missouri
killings, Cape Girardeau
detective Jimmy Smith contacted
Echols about a possible link
between Krajcir and the cold
cases in Cape Girardeau.
In exchange
for Krajcir’s confession, Cape
Girardeau prosecuor Morley
Swingle agreed to forgo seeking
the death penalty. Krajcir now
faces multiple life sentences.
Timothy Krajcir a suspect in two more '70s murders
Friday, December 14, 2007
By Bridget DiCosmo, Peg McNichol
and Matt Sanders ~ Southeast Missourian
While Cape Girardeau police are re-examining rapes,
robberies and home invasions for links to alleged serial killer Timothy
Krajcir, two other jurisdictions have said he may be responsible for two
more murders.
Krajcir was linked with the 1979 homicide of Myrtle
Rupp, 51, in South Temple, Pa., and the 1978 killing of Virginia Lee
Witte of Marion, Ill.
On Monday, Krajcir pleaded guilty to raping and
murdering Southern Illinois University student Deborah Sheppard in
Carbondale, Ill., in 1982 and received a 40-year sentence.
Monday afternoon, Cape Girardeau police announced
that Krajcir confessed to murdering five Cape Girardeau women. Cape
Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle charged Krajcir
with the five murders that occurred between 1977 and 1982, two related
rapes and one unrelated rape.
Krajcir is incarcerated in Illinois for continuous
civil commitment on a 1979 conviction under the sexually dangerous
person statute. He has distanced himself from programs that could help
him work toward release because he says he doesn't want to hurt anyone
else, prison records show.
Muhlenberg Township, Pa., police reopened Rupp's case
several months ago and resubmitted semen samples they obtained from the
victim's bedspread to a Pennsylvania State Police lab for testing.
When the DNA evidence was entered into CODIS, the
database of DNA from convicted felons, there was a "presumptive hit"
linking the case to Krajcir, said Muhlenberg police detective James
Pollock.
A detective spent three hours interviewing Krajcir at
Big Muddy River Correctional Center in Ina, Ill., on Wednesday, and the
results of that interview will be announced today, Pollock said.
During the interview, a fresh DNA sample from Krajcir
was obtained by warrant for new testing, because the state lab requires
a newer sample to obtain a definitive match.
According to Years of Tears, a Web site dedicated to
unsolved Berks County, Pa., homicides, Rupp was found strangled with a
sash cord inside her home in South Temple, Pa.
Sheppard and Margie Call, murdered in 1982 in her
Cape Girardeau home, were also strangled.
On Thursday, the Marion, Ill., police department
announced Krajcir is "a distinct person of interest" is Witte's murder.
David F. Witte found his wife's body in their Lakeview Drive home
shortly after 1 p.m. that day. The 51-year-old mother of two was found
stabbed; police say she was sexually assaulted.
Illinois legal procedures prevent Marion police from
confirming or denying whether Krajcir confessed to Witte's rape and
murder.
"He has been interviewed," said Marion police
detective Tina Morrow.
Morrow said Witte's two sons were "very, very happy"
when she called them to tell them the crime may be solved, but they're
not ready to talk to the media.
According to Morrow, Witte's sons said their mother
"was a very neat, very classy lady. Good things need to be remembered
about her."
She said police are still in the process of checking
the extensive files detectives gathered in the case, which include "four
large boxes of documents and more than 100 pieces of physical and
forensic evidence." Some of the evidence will be resubmitted to police
labs for DNA testing, she said.
Lt. Paul Echols of the Carbondale police contacted
Morrow while he was investigating Sheppard's murder.
"It's all very complicated, how this fits together,"
Echols said. "It's a piece here and a piece there."
He praised the diligence of Cape Girardeau police
detectives in keeping detailed investigation records, particularly of
the 1982 murders of Mildred Wallace and Margie Call. Information in
those files is being compared to other cases, he said.
Echols said he's "honestly not sure" how many
agencies are reviewing cases potentially linked to Krajcir, but said the
FBI, state police agencies in Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky as well as
a host of county and municipal-level detectives are seeking information
on cold cases.
"We've put out the M.O., what to look for," he said.
Morrow said she's contacting retired police
detectives who "worked their tails off" trying to solve Witte's murder,
as she lines up evidence to support formal criminal charges.
Morrow was among detectives who have recently
interviewed Krajcir.
"He's just a little different," she said. "You walk
into the room with an open mind and try to collect as much information
as possible."
Marion police, with detectives from the Williamson
County Sheriff's Department, are also investigating three unsolved
sexual assaults and robberies that occurred between March and June in
1982.
News of Krajcir's confession Monday stirred some
victims of long-ago crimes to call Cape Girardeau police, looking for
connections. Thursday evening, police chief Carl Kinnison said nearly a
half-dozen calls came in this week.
"A couple we were able to eliminate completely
because of the time frame," he said. Other cases of rape, robbery and
home invasion are getting a hard look by detectives.
Kinnison limited his comments on those cases to
saying whether more charges will be made against Krajcir depends of the
statute of limitations.
Krajcir won't face death in Illinois
Thursday, January 10, 2008
By Bridget DiCosmo ~ Southeast
Missourian
MARION, Ill. -- At alleged serial killer Timothy W.
Krajcir's initial court appearance in Williamson County, Ill., on
Wednesday afternoon, State's Attorney Charles Garnati waived the death
penalty for the two murder counts Krajcir faces for a 1978 murder.
Garnati said the state agreed to take the death
penalty off the table because of Krajcir's cooperation in helping
authorities solve the murder of Virginia L. Witte, but did not elaborate
on his decision.
The first count alleges that Krajcir, 63, murdered
Witte, and the second charges him with killing her while committing
another felony, that of forcible rape.
Witte was found dead at her Marion home by her
husband, David Witte, on May 12, 1978. She had been strangled to death
and suffered a severe knife wound.
Witte's two sons were not present at the hearing, but
Marion Police Department Detective Tina Morrow said she has been keeping
them informed of the case's progress.
"They are excited but not quite sure what to expect,"
she said.
The Witte family's reaction to learning it was an
admitted serial killer who may be responsible for their mother's death
was similar to hers, she said: They were shocked.
"We don't have serial killers in Southern Illinois,"
Morrow said.
More DNA evidence
Though police have collected more than 100 pieces of
DNA evidence in connection with the Witte murder, that material has not
yet been submitted to the crime lab for analysis in comparison to
Krajcir's DNA profile, Morrow said.
She is preparing the evidence and plans to have it
submitted soon, she said.
Police are discussing with Garnati when to submit the
evidence in connection with the court proceedings, because the state
wants the case to progress as quickly as possible because other
jurisdictions wait in the wings to prosecute Krajcir. Krajcir faces
burglary and kidnapping charges in Paducah, Ky., in connection with the
1979 abduction and killing of Joyce Tharp.
In December, Krajcir was charged with five counts of
first-degree murder in Cape Girardeau County for the 1977 killing of
Mary and Brenda Parsh and Sheila Cole and the 1982 murders of Margie
Call and Mildred Wallace. Krajcir won't be extradited to Missouri until
the Illinois case is resolved.
A preliminary hearing in the Witte case is set for
9:30 a.m. Jan. 18. In the meantime, Krajcir will remain at the supermax
prison in Tamms, Ill., on a $1 million bond.
Because the murder charges stem from a crime that
occurred in 1978, Krajcir has the choice of facing the relevant law as
it existed in 1978, or current laws pertaining to the charges. The two
versions of the law have a slight difference in the factors that would
affect the length of the sentence, such as the brutality of the crime.
Suspected serial killer uses confessions as
bargaining chips
Monday, January 14, 2008
By JIM SUHR ~ The Associated
Press
Larry Broeking knows the chances are slim that
Timothy Krajcir will ever emerge from prison on anything other than a
gurney in a coroner's van.
At age 63, Krajcir's public defender said, the
Illinois inmate is in frail health and is newly saddled with a 40-year
prison sentence for strangling a college student decades ago. Krajcir
also has been adjudged a sexually dangerous person, making it even more
unlikely he will ever go free.
Still, Krajcir may have managed to save his life by
cashing in what few bargaining chips he has left.
In agreeing to admit last month to the decades-old
killings of nine women in Illinois, Missouri and two other states, the
man with a long history of sex crimes got assurances that prosecutors
would not seek to have him put to death, authorities have said.
And at least in Illinois, Broeking said, Krajcir may
be able to avoid harsher prison sentences for murder convictions under
existing law and choose to be prosecuted under statutes on the books at
the time of the decades-old killings to which he has confessed.
"Odds are that he will die in prison anyway,
regardless of what happens now," Broeking said as murder charges
continue to mount against Krajcir from Missouri to Pennsylvania.
Krajcir last month pleaded guilty in Jackson County,
Ill., to the 1982 rape and murder of Southern Illinois University
student Deborah Sheppard and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Just
hours later, prosecutors in Cape Girardeau, charged him with killing
five women there in 1977 and 1982.
Since those charges, a prosecutor in Williamson
County, Ill., has charged Krajcir in the 1978 stabbing death of 51-year-old
Virginia Lee Witte.
A grand jury in Paducah, Ky., has indicted Krajcir of
kidnapping and burglary counts in the case of 29-year-old Joyce Tharp,
who authorities say was abducted from her home in 1979 and killed in
Southern Illinois before her body was brought back to Paducah. A
Kentucky prosecutor says he won't charge Krajcir in that killing because
it appeared to have taken place in Illinois.
And Friday, prosecutors in Reading, Pa. -- Krajcir's
home state -- charged him with the 1979 rape and slaying of 51-year-old
Myrtle Rupp.
Authorities say DNA evidence implicates Krajcir in
many of the killings to which he has now confessed.
Krajcir attended Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale, Ill., around the time of the killings.
Krajcir, serving time in the Tamms, Ill.,
Correctional Center as he awaits being prosecuted first on the new
Illinois murder counts, has not replied to written requests in recent
weeks to be interviewed by The Associated Press.
Krajcir has spent most of his adult life behind bars
for sex crimes. After a stint with the Navy, he first entered the
Illinois prison system in 1963 on rape charges. Except for a brief
period of freedom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Krajcir has been in
prison ever since.
Krajcir was jailed in Illinois in 1979 for having sex
with his landlord's 13-year-old daughter. A judge conditionally released
him in 1981 and he reportedly returned to Pennsylvania to be with family.
In 1982, Krajcir was arrested on sexual assault
charges and served time in a Pennsylvania prison. The crime violated his
parole, so after his Pennsylvania term was finished in 1988, he was
brought back to Illinois to resume serving the sentence and has been in
that state's custody ever since.
Authorities have said Krajcir agreed to admit
recently to the killings in Missouri and Illinois only if prosecutors
pledged not to seek the death penalty.
In the Illinois case involving Witte's death,
Broeking said Krajcir -- not prosecutors -- will have the choice of
whether he wants to be sentenced under 1978 statutes, which carried a
possible 20 to 40-year prison sentence for a murder conviction, or the
current law that's punishable by up to 60 years.
Illinois statutes then and now carry a possible death
sentence. But Charles Garnati, Krajcir's prosecutor in the Witte slaying,
has told the court he would not seek to have Krajcir executed, citing
the inmate's help in apparently solving the crime.
Messages left with Garnati for this story were not
immediately returned.
Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley
Swingle has said Krajcir agreed to admit to the killings there in
exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Krajcir given 40 years for second Ill. murder
Saturday, January 19, 2008
By Bridget DiCosmo ~ Southeast
Missourian
MARION, Ill. -- Confessed serial killer Timothy W.
Krajcir pleaded guilty Friday to the 1978 murder of a Marion woman and
was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The sentence for the murder conviction will run
consecutively with a sentence of the same length Krajcir, 63, received
Dec. 10 for a 1982 murder in Carbondale, Ill., meaning Krajcir will
spend the next 80 years behind bars.
Now he faces five murder charges and three rape
charges in Cape Girardeau, kidnapping and burglary charges in Kentucky
and a murder charge in Pennsylvania.
In exchange for the guilty plea, one of the two
counts of murder Krajcir faced in the Witte killing was dismissed. That
count charged him with causing her death while committing the felony of
rape.
With the guilty plea, Krajcir admitted to having
strangled Witte with his bare hands May 12, 1978.
According to the facts as read by Williamson County
State's Attorney Charles Garnati, Krajcir confessed Dec. 11 to seeing
Witte driving around her neighborhood and followed her in his own
vehicle.
He admitted to forcing his way into her house when
she got home and sexually assaulting her before strangling her for
several minutes.
Krajcir then confessed to slashing Witte with a knife,
and then, not convinced she was dead, taking up a second knife and
stabbing her several times before putting his clothes on and leaving the
house, Garnati said.
Physical evidence collected by police at the scene
had been preserved and would have corroborated the confession at trial,
Garnati said.
Because of the guilty plea, Marion detective Tina
Morrow said the physical evidence had not yet been submitted to the
state crime lab for DNA testing.
"We're very satisfied after all these years we were
finally able to bring justice to Mrs. Witte," Garnati said after the
hearing.
Morrow said she breathed a heavy sigh of relief that
the legal proceedings, and the case that languished for nearly 30 years
without resolution, were over.
She said she will continue to follow the rest of the
charges against Krajcir.
Now that the Williamson County charges have been
resolved, Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said
Friday that Krajcir will be extradited to Missouri as soon as possible
from Tamms Correctional Center in Tamms, Ill.
Serial killer gets 13 life terms
April 5, 2008 - Upi.com
CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo., April 5
(UPI) -- An admitted serial killer thanked the families of five Missouri
women for sparing his life as he was sentenced to 13 consecutive life
terms.
Timothy Wayne Krajcir, 63 -- who has acknowledged
killing nine women in Missouri, Illinois and Pennsylvania between 1977
and 1982 -- pleaded guilty Friday to the murder of five women in Cape
Girardeau, Mo., to seven sexual assaults and one robbery, the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch reported. Relatives of the victims agreed to the plea
agreement, which took the death penalty off the table.
The courtroom was packed with relatives and friends
of his victims. A woman who survived a 1981 rape also spoke during the
hearing.
"I don't know if I could have been so generous if I
were in the same situation," Krajcir said. "Thank you for sparing my
life."
Don Call, whose mother was strangled in 1982, said he
gets some comfort from knowing that his mother died "simply from being
in the wrong place at the wrong time." He said he and his brother were
tormented for years by the thought that they should have been able to
protect their mother.
