MAJOR CASE SQUAD CALLED BIG SUCCESS

Eight years after its formation, the Major Case Squad of Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties appears to have proven its strength as a tool for investigating homicides, authorities say.

Of five homicides the squad has investigated, four have ended in convictions. Prosecution of the fifth is pending.

The last homicide to end in a conviction dealt with the shooting death of Randy Lee Stephens, a Cape Girardeau auto parts store manager from Scott City.

A week ago Thursday, another Scott City man, Marvin Dwane Goad, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Stephens' death and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Stephens was shot six times with a .25-caliber handgun in February 1990 following a robbery at the AutoZone auto parts store, 835 North Kingshighway.

Goad's plea in the case continues a model record for the squad, a pool of law enforcement manpower, resources, and equipment.

"I think the Major Case Squad has been the biggest success story in Cape Girardeau County in the last decade," Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle, who serves on the squad's Board of Directors, said Friday. "So far knock on wood it's been successful on every case it's been called out on."

The squad was formed in Cape Girardeau County in January 1983 as a model of a major case squad in St. Louis. In December 1986, the squad took in the Bollinger County Sheriff's Department.

Existence of the squad allows for the increase in manpower, equipment and resources for the investigation of major crimes, says the squad's instructions and procedures manual. It also helps in searches for suspects, and witnesses, leads and evidence in other jurisdictions.

By Missouri statute, a police officer acting under the authority of a major case squad can exercise jurisdiction as an officer throughout the entire state, said Swingle.

Twenty law enforcement officers make up the local squad, Swingle said, not counting its Board of Directors. That total includes a commander and deputy commander, evidence technicians, investigators, a report officer, and a personnel officer.

The squad's by-laws say the squad can be used to investigate crimes of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, burglary, and "others of a magnitude constituting a county threat." But so far, Swingle said, the squad has worked only homicides, two of which were later ruled as natural-cause deaths.

Any member of the squad's board of directors, or a ranking officer in his place, can activate the squad. The request must come within eight hours of the crime's discovery.

Swingle said the purpose of the squad is to get a large amount of officers on the scene quickly to solve the crime.

"That's the whole point of the deadline. If they're going to be successful they need to be called out quickly. It's not something for somebody to save face because he couldn't solve the crime himself."

The prosecutor said he believed the squad's first case, the November 1983 shooting death of Wisconsin truck driver Kenneth M. Wood, would not have been solved without the speed of the major case squad. Wood was shot to death when his truck, carrying a load of aluminum, was hijacked on Interstate 55 in northern Cape Girardeau County.

"There was no contact to Cape Girardeau County," said Swingle, "except the unfortunate luck that this was where they caught him."

The crucial bit of evidence came from a 9mm shell casing found at the scene, he said.

"It turned out to be a type of ammunition that turned out to only be sold at two places in the state of Missouri."

Investigators followed the lead to a sporting goods store at Fenton. There, Swingle said, they found the murderer, Ray Lloyd Bibb Jr., then 23, had purchased the ammunition a day or two before the shooting.

Bibb eventually received a life sentence with no parole for 50 years. Two other defendants, Melissa A. Wagner, then 17, and Curtis A Cutts, then 23, also received life sentences.

In the squad's second case, the April 1985 stabbing death of Dale E. Breckheisen, investigators uncovered the crucial evidence after tracking the murderer's credit card records to a rented industrial-strength vacuum. They found the victim's blood inside, said Swingle.

Breckheisen was killed by his father-in-law, Milo F. Mracek, of Creve Coeur, who disposed of the body on a rural Cape Girardeau County road. Both worked as engineers at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. in Bridgeton.

Mracek killed Brecheisen during a bitter divorce from Mracek's daughter and a custody battle over the couple's 4-year-old daughter. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

An original member of the squad's Board of Directors, former Cape Girardeau Police Chief Ray Johnson estimated Missouri had about four to six major case squads across the state when the local squad was formed.

Since then the squads have "really proliferated," said Johnson, now police chief at the Chesterfield Police Department. He said he had no idea of how many squads currently exist across the state.

Johnson, a former member of the squad in St. Louis before coming on as Cape Girardeau's police chief, said he believes the success of that squad contributed to the local squad being started. Another contributing factor, he said he believed, was a string of unsolved murders in Cape Girardeau in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

"The fact that there were several murders that went unsolved, in my mind, tended to highlight the need or justify the existence," he said.

He wasn't suggesting, he said, that a major case squad would have solved the murders. "But it's been my experience," he added, "that whenever a major case squad has been involved, the success ... has been much greater."

Case squads, Johnson said, have a indirect benefit for law enforcement.

"It brings agencies together and certainly enhances the working relationships outside of the scope of the major case squad just on a day-to-day basis. It goes beyond just solving a crime or what's obvious when a major case squad is activated."

The squad's current commander is Lt. John Jordan of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department. Jordan became commander in January, replacing Lt. Det. John Brown of the Cape Girardeau Police Department. Brown had served as commander of the squad since its inception.

Jordan says he plans to get more training for the squad in the area of homicides and other major crimes, but that no major change is planned.

"We will carry on, as it has been proven successful," he said.

In addition to Swingle, the squad's current Board of Directors is made up of Jackson Police Chief Larry Koenig; Cape Girardeau Chief of Police Howard Boyd; Cape Girardeau County Sheriff Norman Copeland; Bollinger County Sheriff Dan Mesey; Doug Richards, the director of the Department of Public Safety at Southeast Missouri State University, and C.R. Emmerson of the Missouri Highway Patrol at Sikeston.