Krajcir pleads guilty in Cape

For the past 26 years, Donald Call dreamed about seeing the man who murdered his mother, 57-year-old Margie L. Call, in January of 1982 brought to justice.

In his dreams, he was standing with his brother when the judge banged down a gavel, declaring the defendant guilty, and Donald Call had to make an immediate grab for his more hot-tempered sibling as his older brother vaulted over the railing to lunge at their mother's killer.

He would always wake up before he knew how the dream ended.

When Timothy Wayne Krajcir pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom Friday to murdering Margie Call and four other women, Circuit Judge Benjamin F. Lewis did not bang a gavel as he handed down 13 life sentences for the five murders, seven sexual assaults and robbery Krajcir admitted to committing in Cape Girardeau from 1977 through 1982.

Still, for Donald Call, the other family members of Krajcir's victims and survivors of Krajcir's attacks, Krajcir's plea puts to rest more than two decades of wondering.

"The overwhelming question was why — now we know," said Donald Call of his mother's death.

Details of the crimes

As Krajcir explained when he recounted the facts of each crime after entering his plea, Margie Call, like all of the killer's victims, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Krajcir first spotted Margie Call about a week before her death, at an area Kroger grocery store. As he did with many of his victims, he followed her home to see where she lived and returned a week later.

He broke into her 1829 Brink St. residence and lay in wait for her to get home, a blue bandanna shrouding his face.

Margie Call walked into her hallway and noticed the broken window. She tried to run, but Krajcir gave chase and used a bootlace to bind her hands so he could sexually assault her.

He then strangled her to death with the blue bandanna and used a knife to slice off a piece of her body to keep as a souvenir, changing his mind at the last minute and flushing it down the toilet.

A hair found on Margie Call's neck matched Krajcir's DNA so closely only one in 4.498 quadrillion white males would match.

On June 21, 1982, Krajcir went hunting at Kroger for another victim and found Mildred Wallace, again breaking a window in her house while she was out running errands so he could lie in wait for her return.

Not wanting Wallace to run the way Margie Call had, Krajcir concealed his entry by stuffing a towel in the broken window so his victim wouldn't see the white, gauzy curtains flapping in the breeze.

When Krajcir ambushed Wallace with a gun, the 65-year-old woman asked him point blank whether he was the one who killed Margie Call. He said no.

Leaving evidence

When Krajcir broke the window in Wallace's bathroom, he cut himself, and used a bandage from his victim's medicine cabinet to mend his wound while he waited for her.

Blood found on the windowsill matched Krajcir's, as did a palm print on the window frame, lending Cape Girardeau County prosecuting attorney Morley Swingle the necessary physical evidence he needed to prosecute Krajcir for the murder.

He planned to seek the death penalty. He would have let Krajcir take his other secrets to his grave, he said at the hearing, but after conferring with the victims' families, agreed to waive capital punishment if Krajcir would discuss the other crimes he'd committed.

"These cases would not have been solved if not for the death penalty," Swingle said.

Authorities are still awaiting lab results linking Krajcir's DNA to the 1977 murder of Sheila Cole, a Southeast Missouri State University student Krajcir admitted to killing.

Krajcir accosted Cole at the parking lot of the Wal-Mart in Cape Girardeau and herded her into his car, driving to his mobile home in Carbondale, Ill., where he sexually assaulted her.

He then drove her back to McClure, Ill., and shot Cole twice in the head in the ladies room of a rest stop.

Earlier that year, Krajcir was peeping into windows in a Cape Girardeau neighborhood when he spotted Mary E. Parsh, and realized she lived alone.

But 58-year-old Mary Parsh was not alone Aug. 12, 1977, when Krajcir broke into her house and waited for her. Brenda Parsh, Mary Parsh's 27-year-old daughter, was with her, home to visit her father in the hospital.

When the two women walked in, Krajcir forced them onto the bed at gunpoint and sexually assaulted them. When the phone rang, Brenda Parsh answered, and spoke to her father, calling from the hospital, for what would be the last time.

Shortly after she hung up, Krajcir shot at both women, thinking he killed them, and moved into another room to steal some money, when he heard Mary Parsh crying as she lay next to her daughter's lifeless body.

In the courtroom

After Krajcir finished describing the crimes he'd committed in Cape Girardeau, Marcia Carter added her voice, thick with tears, to those of several family members and friends of victims. Standing less than ten feet from the man who sexually assaulted her in 1981, Carter talked about how difficult the legal proceedings have been, and how many feelings were dredged up that she'd buried years before.

"He gave me a cloud that I cannot get rid of," said Carter, not looking at her former attacker, who stared straight ahead.

"Hopefully, after today, the cloud can be lifted," she said.

There were five small children at home with Carter when Krajcir forced his way in and ordered everyone on the floor, threatening her young nephew when Carter looked to fight back.

"I was hoping that my children would not remember this, but they do," Carter said.

Carter asked Cape Girardeau detective Jimmy Smith, who along with Lt. Paul Echols of the Carbondale Police Department solved the five homicides, not to interview her son about the assault because she feared his rage would get him in trouble, she said.

For years, Carter said she would not use the same eating utensils as her family because she feared giving them a disease, and admitted to feeling "dirty" and "useless," she said.

Twenty-six years later, she can say she's no longer afraid.

"Today feels like a holiday for all of us," she said, and embraced Donald Call fiercely before taking her seat in the courtroom section designated for victims and family members.

Then Krajcir spoke.

He turned, as if to look at the people who lives he'd torn apart, and Lewis admonished him to address only the bench.

"I'd like the family members and victims to know that I heard what they said," he said.

He began to cry, behind thick prison-issued rubber glasses, as he described his search to find an explanation for his scourge of crime.

He apologized to the families of his victims and the people of Cape Girardeau for the terror he caused and vowed to spend the rest of his days trying to help others.

"I'm terribly sorry for what I've done," Krajcir said.

Sentencing

Before reading the sentence he'd decided to impose, Lewis told Krajcir he was honestly surprised by the apology, and wanted him to "live the rest of life aware of that pain."

Because the crimes were committed so long ago, older sentencing laws apply, and Krajcir would not be eligible for parole for 50 years in each case, meaning he would serve a minimum of 650 years in prison before he could receive conditioned release.

The sentences will run on top of the 80 years he's already serving for two Illinois murders.

Krajcir was transferred back to the Illinois Department of Corrections on Friday night.

Carter said after the hearing that she did not believe Krajcir's apology was genuine.

Donald Call said he's hoping that Krajcir is truly as remorseful as he appeared, but that in the end, it didn't matter.

His dream, or nightmare, finally has come to an end, so to speak.

"We've got Mom back now. She can rest in peace," he said.

His mother, a longtime Woolworth employee, loved children, and he feels she was cheated out of some of the joys he's now experiencing as a grandparent, Donald Call said.

"Mom missed all of the ball games, the track meets, the graduations, my daughter Christine's high school valedictorian speech," he said.

bdicosmo@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245

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