Brenda Parsh, 27, was working as a fashion designer in Wisconsin when she came home to spend time with her father -- who was undergoing heart surgery -- and attend a family reunion with her mother, 58-year-old Mary Parsh.

Brenda Parsh's longtime friend, Vicki Abernathy, said the former beauty queen came home on a hot Friday evening in August 1977 and planned to attend a family reunion the next day with her mother.

The women never got there.

A neighbor found them shot to death Monday morning, Aug. 15, 1977, at Mary Parsh's home at 612 Koch Ave. They were found nude, with their hands tied behind their backs, and were believed to have been sexually assaulted.

On Monday night, a cable television show will explore the case, which was solved 30 years later when Illinois prison inmate Timothy Krajcir admitted to killing the Parshes and three other Cape Girardeau women.

Mary Parsh

In a telephone interview Saturday, Abernathy said a crew from Investigation Discovery's "Beauty Queen Murders" spent seven hours filming at her home recently for the episode. The show is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Monday and again at midnight, according to the website, investigationdiscovery.com.

"I hope as her and her mother are looking down, they'll be proud I tried to portray the kind of people they were," Abernathy said.

She said Brenda Parsh -- who was a bridesmaid in her wedding and worked with her at a local clothing store in college -- dreamed of competing in the Miss America pageant.

Parsh came close, participating in local pageants and eventually taking first runner-up in the Miss Missouri pageant, Abernathy said.

Abernathy described her friend as "beautiful on the outside as well as the inside," an "unassuming" woman who deserved all the accolades she received.

Timothy Krajcir

The family did not have much money, but Brenda Parsh had a sense of style, and her mother -- an excellent seamstress -- made all her pageant dresses, Abernathy said.

"Brenda always looked like a million bucks," Abernathy said.

Although a few of his victims were younger, Krajcir usually attacked older women, and Abernathy said Mary Parsh -- not her daughter -- was his real target.

She said Krajcir spent a lot of time at a now-closed corner store near the intersection of Koch Avenue and Bloomfield Road, where he "scoped out" potential victims.

Abernathy said she followed the case closely for three decades.

"I was consumed or obsessed by the whole thing. I was, until they solved it," she said. "... I sought psychics all over the United States. I called the 'Unsolved Mysteries' TV program. I never let up."

In 2007, Krajcir pleaded guilty to killing the Parshes; 21-year-old Sheila Cole, whom he abducted from a Wal-Mart parking lot in November 1977 and shot to death at a rest stop in McClure, Illinois; Margie Call, 57, who was found bound, gagged and strangled in her home on Brink Street in January 1982; and Mildred Wallace, 65, who was found shot to death in June 1982 in her home on William Street.

Abernathy went to court and spoke on behalf of her friend, addressing Krajcir directly, she said.

"He was stone cold -- never showed any emotion to anybody," she said.

Abernathy praised the Cape Girardeau Police Department for sticking with the case.

"It gives me a lot of confidence in our detectives and department: They never gave up. They could have and just shoved it in a file saying, 'cold case.' They never gave up, and I'm glad they didn't," she said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

612 Koch Ave., Cape Girardeau, MO