By Christine Byers
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2008 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO. — Confessed serial killer Tim Krajcir says the community he once terrorized is now a place he fears.
“It’s scary,” Krajcir told the Post-Dispatch on Thursday in a phone interview from his cell at the Cape Girardeau County Jail. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things to this community, and I imagine there is a lot of anger and hate here toward me. But believe it or not, I’m the type of person that likes to be liked.”
Krajcir spoke to the Post-Dispatch Thursday after being arraigned in a video feed inside a Jackson, Mo., courtroom on 13 charges, including the murders of five women in Cape Girardeau between 1977 and 1982. One of the women was Lindbergh High School graduate Sheila Cole, who was found shot twice in the head at a rest stop outside of Cape Girardeau in 1977.
In all, Krajcir has confessed to killing nine women in four states, police say.
“I regret doing all of it, but it’s 30 years ago,” Krajcir said. “I wish a lot of things could have been different, but that’s the way it was. It’s like I’m two different people. I worked for the ambulance service saving lives and here I was taking them.”
His job took him to many communities, including Cape Girardeau, to transport patients.
Carbondale, Ill., police Lt. Paul Echols and Cape Girardeau police Detective Jim Smith said he told them that he never committed violent acts while on the job but would return to communities to commit the crimes act while off duty.
Krajcir has been in prison continuously since 1983 for sexual crimes unrelated to the murders. While behind bars, he said, he attended many intense therapy sessions, which he believes helped him begin to understand the magnitude of his crimes.
He considers himself agnostic.
“I’m not a goody-two-shoes or some good Samaritan, but I do have some good feelings,” Krajcir said.
Through the years, his fellow inmates often turned to him for advice on how to work through their feelings, he said.
“My door was always open,” Krajcir said. “I’m not a guy that doesn’t have any feeling. I’m full of emotion, but it’s become more so over the years as I learned more about myself. I read all I could when I wasn’t in therapy.”
So far, Krajcir has pleaded guilty of killing two victims in Illinois.
Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle on Thursday filed five additional charges, including the rapes of four additional women, against Krajcir.
Krajcir would not discuss any pending charges against him.
Cape Girardeau County Circuit Judge Gary Kamp set Krajcir’s preliminary hearing for 1 p.m. on April 4.
Swingle waived the death penalty in November in exchange for Krajcir’s full confession. He said the victims’ families agreed that they would rather have closure for each victim than see him die.
During a four-hour interview in December with Echols and Smith, Krajcir confessed to multiple rapes, robberies and murders, they said.
“I wanted everything I had done behind me,” Krajcir said. “I had to make disclosure for several reasons. ... I told them things they knew nothing about.”
Krajcir has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for each of the two murders to which he pleaded guilty. Those victims were Southern Illinois University student Deborah Sheppard and Virginia Witte, a Marion, Ill., housewife. He has yet to appear in court for the murders of Myrtle Rupp of Reading, Pa., and Joyce Tharp of Paducah, Ky.
“I have felt emotional about my victims at times, and I’m not the same person I was 30 years ago,” Krajcir said. “They told us in therapy to try to feel what our victims and their families were feeling, and I’ve done that. But I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t do anything again.”