Serial Rapist and Killer Confesses Additional Crimes

By Margaret Lyons in News on Dec 11, 2007 5:53PM

Timothy Krajcir, a currently incarcerated repeat violent sex offender, pleaded guilty yesterday to killing Deborah Sheppard, an SIU student who was murdered in 1982. And then he confessed to eight other murders in Missouri and another area police haven't disclosed yet (possibly Kentucky). So far, he's been charged with five counts of murder and three counts of rape, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for Sheppard's murder. Krajcir is 63.

Krajcir's rap sheet is nightmarish:

In 1963, he was sent to prison in Joliet, Ill., where he served about a decade on a rape conviction. When he was released in 1976, he killed his first three victims [in Missouri].

He was sentenced to prison in 1979 on another rape conviction, then paroled in 1981. In June 1982, after killing Ms. Call and Ms. Wallace, he transferred his parole to Pennsylvania. where he raped again, Lieutenant Echols said.

He completed that sentence in 1988, when he was transferred back to Illinois because of a parole violation, Mr. Echols said. He has been held at the Big Muddy Correctional Center in Ina, Ill., since then.

These decades-old cold cases were finally solved when Carbondale leiutenant Paul Echols reopened Sheppard's case, hoping that DNA evidence would implicate someone; Krajcir's DNA was on Sheppard's shirt. Krajcir was charged in August, at which point Cape Girardeau, MO detective Jimmy Smith got in touch with Echols to see if the unsolved murders in his jurisdiction were connected. Once the DA took the death penalty off the table, Krajcir confessed. There isn't a hot enough place is hell for this scumbag.

Photo via UPI handout