Predator. Steven Walker
showed up.
The entire car was processed for the collection of evidence. Items sent to the Southeast Missouri Crime Laboratory for examination included hairs found in the vehicle, the floor mats, a gum wrapper, and the contents of the ashtray. No fingerprints were found on the cigarette butts or the gum wrapper. There were only two brands of cigarettes found in the ashtray; the brand that Sheila smoked and that of her boyfriend, Matthew. Hair samples found in the car matched those of Sheila, Matthew, and Sheila’s roommate Connie Walker.
Sergeant John Brown, of the Cape Girardeau Police Department, said that he had no reason to believe that the murder of Sheila Cole was related to the Parsh murders, but for good measure, bullets retrieved from the Parsh house were sent to the FBI lab in Washington, DC, for comparison.
A white pair of panties belonging to Cole was sent to the Bureau of Scientific Services in DeSoto, Illinois, for analysis. No hair or fibers were found. The crotch area was heavily stained, but chemical tests failed to confirm if that was caused by seminal fluid.
No further lab work was authorized unless additional evidence became available. After dozens of additional interviews, up to this point, investigators in both Missouri and Illinois had exhausted their leads, and they still were no closer to discovering who was responsible for the murders. That did not deter them from continuing to investigate every avenue available, no matter how insignificant it appeared.
One witness, Jess Norton, claimed that he had been traveling north on Illinois Route 3 at around 11:00 P.M. after he crossed the Mississippi River from Missouri and entered Illinois. He said that the blue midsized car in front of him pulled into the rest stop where Cole was murdered. He described the passengers as a male and a female, and his description of the female was similar to that of Sheila Cole. He was subsequently hypnotized by an FBI investigator and repeated the same information.
There was no physical evidence at the time to prove that Cole was a victim of rape. Robbery was ruled out because the killer had not taken the traveler’s checks from her purse. Because there was so little evidence left at the scene, authorities could not even confirm if Cole’s assailant was a man or a woman. Special Agent Ashman was quoted by the Missourian newspaper as saying, “People must realize that we have to have something to work on. We’re not miracle workers who can pull a suspect out of thin air.”
With no apparent motive in the slaying, investigators said that locating the handgun and tracing it through its serial number might be the only link to discovering the coed’s killer. It seemed like a long shot, but detectives from the Illinois Division of Investigation called in a septic tank cleaning service to pump out the waste matter from the pits under both the men’s and women’s toilets at the McClure rest area. Once the pits were emptied, investigators probed the debris with claw arms and long-handled shovels to search for a handgun. At best, this might have been considered an unsavory task, but Ashman explained that “it’s just something we have to check out. Experience has taught us that you can’t second-guess these killers.” Unfortunately, the attempt to recover the gun used to kill Sheila Cole was unsuccessful. There was still hope that some useful information might be revealed from the bullets that were recovered at the scene.
Sheila’s mother and father were obviously distraught at the news of their daughter’s death. Sergeant Brown said that for a long time afterward, Harold Cole, Sheila’s father, would drive to Cape Girardeau from his home in Crestwood almost on a weekly basis.
“He would just drive around, hoping that somehow he would be able to find Sheila’s killer. I think he knew that he never would, but he couldn’t just sit around feeling helpless. He needed to feel like he was doing something,” Brown said.
According to everyone who knew Sheila, she was a sweet girl who got along well with just about anyone. She had a contagious smile and an optimistic attitude. As a senior at SEMO State University, Sheila was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Little Sisters at the university and she enjoyed school activities. All her life, she had a fondness and fascination with animals, so she majored in zoology with a minor in chemistry. Her chosen course of study was academically challenging, but Sheila was very studious. She was also a social person who liked to party with her roommates and circle of close friends, but she was conservative with her money. Her roommates said that Sheila never had any financial problems and always found some type of job to make money during the summer months when she returned to live with her family in Crestwood.
During a coroner’s inquest on December 1, 1977, her father, Harold, testified that Sheila always acted conservatively and responsibly when it came to her possessions. “I’d like to make this point very strongly,” he said. “If her keys were found in her car, then she did not leave the car voluntarily. She always took her keys and locked the car.”
Her roommate Connie Walker also testified that Sheila was fastidious in her habits. Walker said, “Sheila’s car was her pride and joy. She took good care of it. She was always telling me to lock the door.”
Harold Cole said that the only enemy the family might have was a woman from Arcadia, Missouri, who was involved in a lawsuit over some money that his wife’s uncle gave to her. He also said that Sheila dated a boy named Jerry Seegers during her first year of college at St. Louis Community College (STLCC)—Meramec in Kirkwood, but that he moved on to attend Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, when Sheila moved to Cape Girardeau.
Dixie Gail Keena, a friend of Sheila’s, told police about another former boyfriend named James Zeiser, who belonged to the Sigma Tau Gamma Fraternity. Each person that investigators interviewed led them to another interview, and another.
Lester Burchyett told investigators that Bob Lusk, of Ralph Edwards Realty, told him that Sheila had inquired about finding a house in McClure, Illinois. When police contacted Ralph Edwards, they were told that Sheila had not contacted their agency.
Round and round it went as dozens of interviews were conducted throughout the next month, and still, the police were no closer to solving the case. They did not even have a suspect or a motive.
Matthew Sopko agreed to submit to a polygraph examination December 2 at the Cape Girardeau Police Department. The results of that examination indicated that Sopko had no involvement in the murder of Sheila Cole.
During the course of the investigation, Illinois state troopers were told of women who claimed they had been stalked by strange men, a member of a mercenary group that killed “dirty women,” and a drunk man who sat at the bar in the Down’s Club and told the bartender he was going to kill somebody. It seemed that everyone knew somebody who might be the killer.
Special Agent Richard Evans, of the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement (IDLE), tracked down Sheila’s former boyfriend Jerry Seegers in Carbondale. He lived at the Tan Tara Mobile Home Park and still attended Southern Illinois University, where he majored in photography.
Seegers told Evans that he had not seen Sheila since he last visited her about a year earlier. He said that they had dinner together, went to the Trail of Tears State Park, and then spent the rest of the evening watching television in his motel room. He added that they did not have sex.
Seegers said that Sheila told him that she did not care for one of her roommates (she was living in the dormitory at that time) and that she was becoming disillusioned with Sopko because he “hassled” her about her foul language. He added that Sheila was not too fond of her brother, either. Seegers told Evans that he had learned of Sheila’s death from a television news report and that he would assist investigators in any way that he could.
Alexander County sheriff Donald Turner reported that a man named Charles Clifton told him that another man, Dean Bagby, came into the Hub Tavern on the morning of November 17 and said that he was in terrible trouble because he had shot someone. When Bagby was interviewed, he denied making that statement. Round and round it continued, but police were still no closer to the truth.
It was not until near the end of December that ballistic test findings determined that it was probable that the same type of gun used to kill Sheila Cole was also used in the Parsh murders. The lab examiner reported that in both cases the bullets appeared to be Remington-Peters .38-caliber 158-grain round-nose bullets that