Predator. Steven Walker
before she went to Cape Girardeau.
“I wasn’t sure what time her flight was getting in, so Brenda called me when she arrived at the airport. She said that she had just talked with her mother, who expressed that she was very concerned about Floyd’s condition,” McGougan said. “Brenda decided that we would not have time to meet because she wanted to take the next commuter flight out to Cape as soon as possible.”
It was the last conversation that Richard had with Brenda.
It was a short hop between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, only 120 miles. Her plane arrived at 9:38 P.M. It took less than ten minutes to retrieve her luggage and then Brenda met her mother, Mary, who had come to pick her up.
Due to the situation they were now confronted with, the usual banter between mother and daughter was replaced by a long, uncomfortable silence during the short drive to Floyd and Mary’s house on Koch Street. Police reports estimate that they would have arrived at around 10:00 P.M., barring any stops or delays.
The blanket of night did little to stifle the heat of the August sun, which beat down with a vengeance for days and had elevated temperatures to the upper 90s.
Mary Parsh pulled her car into the driveway in front of her house. After turning the air-conditioning and fan dials on her dashboard console to the off position, she twisted the ignition key backward to stop the engine. Mary and her daughter Brenda unbuckled the seat belts that were strapped across their midsections and then took a deep breath of cool air before opening their doors to enter the lingering heat and humidity outside. Little did they know that someone was already waiting inside the house they were about to enter. The intruder was waiting for Mary to return home. He wasn’t expecting a guest, but when they arrived, he altered his plans to accommodate both of them.
Brenda and her mother got out of the car. They each grabbed a suitcase from the backseat of the vehicle before they shut the doors to the car, and on the life that they had both once cherished.
They walked forward and Mary slid her key into the lock of the front door. With a slight twist of her wrist, the door opened and they both stepped inside. Neither Mary nor Brenda was prepared for the possibility that Floyd might die. They didn’t know what to say to each other or how to act. The usual conversation between them that sometimes consumed hours and consisted of nothing pertinent at all seemed strained as they struggled for something to say to each other. It did not last long, though. As soon as they passed through the doorway, there was something else that they were not prepared for. Now they were confronted with something more immediate and even more terrifying than the thought of the death of Mary’s husband and Brenda’s father. It was the reality that their own lives were in jeopardy. More frightening was the possibility of what they might have to endure before they gave up their lives.
Inside the house, an intruder sat waiting. He wore a blue bandana over his face so that just his eyes and the top of his head were visible. He expected the return of Mary Parsh, a fifty-eight-year-old woman who wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight, and therefore become an easy victim. Instead, he got Mary, as well as her young and physically fit daughter Brenda. He would have to deal with Brenda first in order to eliminate any problems that might occur due to her unexpected presence.
When he heard the car pull into the driveway, the intruder moved to the front door. Adrenaline coursed through his body as he listened to the key enter the lock to release the bolt. The door opened and he confronted Mary and Brenda as soon as they stepped inside. Mary never even had an opportunity to pull the keys out of the front door’s lock.
They were led to the master bedroom at gunpoint and their hands were tied behind their backs. Their assailant pulled his bandana down around his neck and forced Brenda to perform oral sex on him. Then he raped her on the bed while her mother lay beside her, helpless and scared. The gruesome details of what Mary and Brenda had to endure would never be fully known by anyone other than the man who committed the crimes.
The phone might have rung several times during the ordeal. It was certain that at least one phone call was made. Somehow, Brenda was able to convince her rapist to allow her to answer it. The caller on the other end of the line was Floyd. She barely got to speak for a full minute when the intruder hung up the receiver. At least she got to tell her father that she loved him.
The gun that was pointed toward Brenda’s head blasted a bullet into the back of her skull. Her mother trembled beside her raped and murdered daughter. It is nearly impossible to imagine what thoughts must have been going through her mind. A second gunshot blurted out and penetrated the pillow that Mary’s head rested on, but it did not hit her.
Thinking that he had just killed both women, the intruder went into the other room. He rifled through a purse and took some money out of a desk in the den. He heard Mary crying, came back into the bedroom, and then squeezed off a third round. This time he made sure that Mary was dead.
McGougan claims that he called the house sometime between 8:30 and 11:00 P.M. but got no answer, so he decided to go to sleep and try again in the morning. Floyd called from the hospital after Mary and Brenda failed to show up to visit him. His call was the one that did get answered.
Sergeant John Brown, of the Cape Girardeau Police Department (CGPD) said Floyd told him that when Brenda answered the phone, he sensed that something was wrong right away.
“Floyd said that Brenda’s voice was shaky, nervous, and she spoke with too much formality,” Brown related.
Police speculate that during the time of the phone conversation, Brenda was already tied up and probably had a gun pointed at her head. Brenda told her father that they would not be able to visit him then because she was too tired. Floyd remembered asking, “Where is your mother?”
Without answering the question, Brenda told her father that she loved him. Floyd heard a click, which was replaced by the ominous sound of a dial tone.
As the hours passed on Saturday, and then through the entire day of Sunday, Floyd became increasingly worried that he had not heard from his wife and daughter. He called the house several times after they had not turned up to visit or even make contact with him. Brenda’s boyfriend, Richard, called the house periodically throughout those two days without response. Floyd and Mary’s other daughter, Karen, also called multiple times, and she became worried when nobody answered. She finally contacted her mother’s neighbor and asked her to check in on Mary.
Mary’s neighbor walked next door and found that the front door to the Parsh house was slightly ajar, with a set of keys still dangling from the lock. An overpowering stench of death filled the small house. The neighbor found two bodies inside, which were later identified as Mary and Brenda Parsh. A call to the police department was made.
“We received a call from a concerned neighbor very early on Monday, August fifteenth, when she noticed that there was a set of keys still inserted into the lock of Mary Parsh’s front door, but nobody answered to repeated knocks on the door or ringing the doorbell,” said Henry Gerecke. He was the Cape Girardeau police chief at the time.
Floyd was recovering from open-heart surgery and had been told not to become overly stressed emotionally just before he received the news that his wife and daughter had been murdered while he was in the hospital. A cardiologist, Dr. C. R. Talbert Jr., was not the physician who was treating Floyd at Southeast Missouri Hospital, but he was working there that day and was left with the unpleasant task of delivering the news.
“Mr. Parsh sat there quietly and took it in. He was obviously very upset, but he held it all inside. I believe that he already knew,” Talbert said.
It was early Monday morning when Brenda’s sister, Karen, called McGougan’s father to tell him what happened, and, in turn, Richard’s father called him to relay the news. Richard said that he was devastated and became almost dysfunctional. He ended up moving back to his parents’ house while he struggled to deal with the circumstances.
When Chief Gerecke and his team arrived at the scene, they weren’t prepared for what they were about to find when they entered the Parsh home. Just inside the front door were several suitcases, which were identified as belonging to Brenda.
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