Predator. Steven Walker
him to obtain an A.S. degree from Shawnee Community College. Krajcir utilized his education in 1974 to obtain work as an inmate emergency medical technician at Cairo PADCO Community Hospital. The next year, he worked as an inmate EMT at Union County Hospital in Anna, Illinois.
After serving thirteen years of his sentence, in 1976, Krajcir was paroled. He moved to Carbondale and began to attend classes in criminal justice and psychology at SIU. He acquired employment as an ambulance driver for the Jackson County Ambulance Service.
Robert Grove had an old, empty trailer behind his house on his property at North Springer Street. Krajcir rented it from Grove, and he seemed to live a quiet life with much of his time consumed by work and school. His coworkers used words such as “quiet,” “gentle,” and “a sweet guy” to describe him. Krajcir was discharged from parole on July 20, 1978.
Police records show that before the end of that year, Krajcir was arrested again. He was charged with public indecency at a Wal-Mart parking lot, but the case was dismissed and the details of his actions were not included in the records.
Carbondale police officers arrested Krajcir on February 20, 1979, and he was charged with indecent liberties with a child. Krajcir had been engaging in sexual activities with Maria, his landlord’s thirteen-year-old daughter. These activities had taken place on several occasions, and on at least one occasion, they occurred in the presence of Grove’s other daughter, Barbara, who was only twelve years old at the time.
Years later, Barbara explained the circumstances surrounding the incident. She said that their parents had split up in 1976 and that their mother had moved out of the house to live with their grandmother. She said that their father worked a lot of hours and was often not around. When Krajcir moved into the small trailer on the back of their property, the girls began to spend an increasing amount of time with him, especially Maria. Krajcir appeared harmless, friendly, and he paid attention to them. Maria was young, naïve and a bit impetuous. She enjoyed the attention of an older man. Barbara said that at the time, she and her sister suffered from physical but not sexual abuse by their father. Maria was able to confide in Krajcir and talk about her problems without fear of judgment. Because Krajcir seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, Maria began to think of herself as an adult. She eventually gave in to his persistent sexual advances, which usually took place in Krajcir’s trailer, but on occasion occurred in the basement of the house. According to her sister, Maria became enamored with Krajcir. Barbara said that there was one time when Maria saw a young woman with strawberry blond hair enter Krajcir’s trailer, and she expressed strong feelings of jealousy. She was a love-struck teenager who was blind to the fact that she was being taken advantage of by a man who was nearly three times her age. Years later, Barbara speculated that the strawberry blonde was a college girl named Sheila Cole, whom Krajcir was eventually convicted of raping and murdering. The girls never saw her again after that one visit.
Barbara said that one day she and her sister were alone with Krajcir. Not only was he kissing and feeling up Maria, but he also began to touch Barbara in ways that made her feel uncomfortable. Barbara later told her mother about the incident and she reported it to the police after it came out that Krajcir had been having an ongoing sexual relationship with Maria for nearly two years. Their mother gained full custody of both girls in 1979 and they moved to Texas for a period of time.
According to Barbara, life did not improve much. Maria was allowed to date a nineteen-year-old boy when she was still thirteen. When she was fifteen years old, Maria dropped out of school because she became pregnant by a classmate. Her mother let her marry a man twice her age, and by the time she was twenty-one, Maria ended up having seven pregnancies and three miscarriages.
While Krajcir was in custody, a warrant to search the trailer he rented from Grove was issued. During a search of the bedroom closet, police recovered a .38-caliber five-shot Charter Arms revolver in a box, along with a receipt for the gun, which was sold to someone named Beverlee Pappas. Bullets for the gun were also discovered. Also found was a .25-caliber Raven Arms model P-25 handgun and an accompanying clip. Police also confiscated a glass jar, one-third full with what appeared to be cannabis. Under the conditions of his parole, it was unlawful for Krajcir to have possession of any guns.
With the aid of his employer, Krajcir was able to bond out of jail after only two days.
On April 25, 1979, Howard L. Hood, Illinois state’s attorney of Jackson County, filed a petition to commit Krajcir as a “sexually dangerous person.” The petition stated that Krajcir was a person suffering from a mental disorder coupled with criminal propensities to the commission of sexual offenses, which had included sexual assault and acts of sexual molestation of children.
The petition also asked the court to appoint two qualified psychiatrists to make a personal examination of Krajcir in order to ascertain whether he was a sexually dangerous person. It took four months to get through the bureaucracy of the justice system, but on August 23, 1979, Judge Richman officially declared Krajcir to be listed as the region’s first “sexually dangerous person.” After enjoying six months of freedom, Krajcir was committed to the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC), where he was ordered to receive psychiatric treatment to help control his sexual deviancy.
During one psychotherapy session, Krajcir said that he enjoyed his sexual relationship with the thirteen-year-old girl because she would be pliable to his sexual demands and made him feel more masculine. Krajcir was told that his abuse of other women was his way of acting out his anger toward his own mother, and that he used violence to punish those who made him feel sexually inadequate.
Krajcir became an active and enthusiastic participant in group therapy sessions. On December 31,
1980, just sixteen months after being declared a sexually dangerous person, attorney John Ryan asked the court for Krajcir’s release from incarceration. Dr. Frank M. Perez evaluated Krajcir for his potential release. He concluded that Krajcir was no longer prone to commit chronic violence, and that he was now able to exercise control over his behavior. His evaluation reported that the chance of Krajcir committing any future violent crimes was low.
Despite opposition from State’s Attorney John Clemons, Krajcir was released from prison June 4,
1981, by order of Judge Richman. His release was dependent on certain conditions, one of which was that Krajcir was to attend SIU and complete his degree in criminal justice. Krajcir was paroled, but it was his later violation of the conditions of his parole that forced his return to the Illinois DOC in 1988, and allowed investigators to easily interview him and ultimately convict him of mulitiple rapes and murders, twenty-five years later.
In December, Krajcir graduated with a B.S. in administration of justice and a minor in psychology—taxpayer dollars hard at work. In April 1982, Deborah Sheppard was found dead. Twenty-five years later, Lieutenant Echols was convinced that he had finally found the man responsible for her murder. It was now up to a judge or jury to decide if he was correct.
3
Mary and Brenda Parsh
August 12, 1977
Floyd Parsh clutched his chest. He gasped for air. It felt like the weight of the world was pressing down on him. His life was being crushed out of his body. It was a heart attack. He knew it. It was something that was prevalent in his bloodline. It was inevitable and, of course, inconvenient. He knew that the consequences would be significant, even life-threatening. If he had lived a thousand more years, Floyd would never have anticipated just how much his life was about to change. As his heart failed to function, he feared the idea of losing his life and his connection with his loved ones. He did lose that connection, but not because he died. It was his wife and daughter that ended up losing their lives. Floyd’s heart never recovered from that.
After receiving word that Floyd was hospitalized at the Southeast Missouri (SEMO) Hospital and was recovering from open-heart surgery, Brenda Parsh booked a flight from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to St. Louis, Missouri. From there, she would travel south to Cape Girardeau so she could be with her father.
Brenda’s boyfriend, Richard McGougan, lived in St. Louis at the time. He said that Brenda called him to let him know that she would be flying in on Friday,