Memorial to murder victim placed at rest area in Illinois

For the past 30 years, nothing has marked the roadside rest stop near McClure, Ill., where Sheila Cole's body was discovered on Nov. 17, 1977.

Employees of a local doctor's office recently decided to mark the spot with a wreath of flowers.

Cole, 21, a student at Southeast Missouri State University, was abducted from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Cape Girardeau and discovered in the women's restroom at the rest stop along Illinois Highway 3, dead of gunshot wounds to the head.

On Dec. 10, more than three decades after Cole's death, Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle charged Timothy W. Krajcir with her murder.

Krajcir was also charged with the 1977 murders of Brenda and Mary Parsh, the 1982 rapes and murders of Margie Call and Mildred Wallace, and an unconnected rape from 1982.

The murders had gone unsolved for years, and police had no strong leads or suspects until DNA proved Krajcir committed the 1982 murder of Deborah Sheppard in Carbondale, Ill.

The widely publicized case caught the attention of Cape Girardeau detective Jim Smith, who had been assigned to the cold-case homicides, and he contacted Lt. Paul Echols of the Carbondale Police Department, the investigator responsible for solving the Sheppard case.

At first, they didn't think there was a connection, but the description a rape victim assaulted in 1982 provided police of her assailant matched Krajcir perfectly, and that placed him in Cape Girardeau during the right time.

Krajcir has since confessed to committing all of the murders.

The Cape Girardeau doctor who's decided to commemorate the area where Cole was killed, C.R. Talbert Jr., was the same physician who cared for Mary Parsh's husband in the hospital after he suffered a heart attack, and had to tell him his daughter and wife had been found murdered, said Panta Barnes, who works at the doctor's office.

Barnes is also Echol's sister, and she said Talbert offered to do something nice for Echols for his part in the investigation.

Every murder victim except Cole was slain in their home, so a memorial would not work in those cases, he said.

"She's never really been forgotten," Barnes said of Cole.

Every time Barnes drove to Cape Girardeau along Highway 3, she would pass the rest stop and wonder if Cole's murder would ever be solved, never imagining the role her brother would play in the investigation, she said.

bdicosmo@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245