Police continue to investigate cold cases

Lt. Jerry Bledsoe was a rookie deputy when a redheaded teenager vanished from the Scott City gas station where she worked, leaving behind her purse, her car and a mystery that has haunted the officer since 1979.

More than 34 years later, Bledsoe still is trying to find out what happened to then-19-year-old Cheryl Ann Scherer.

"I've kind of gotten attached to this case, because I've been working it so many years," Bledsoe has said.

Scherer is one of several presumed or known Southeast Missouri crime victims who are still waiting for justice as police struggle to piece together what happened to them.

Bonnie Huffman

Huffman, a bespectacled 20-year-old schoolteacher, disappeared July 2, 1954, after an evening out with friends. Her car was found the next day, parked in the middle of Route N about 6 miles from her home.

On July 5, 1954, her badly decomposed body was found 2 miles away in an overgrown ditch along Route N just north of Delta. She was found curled up with her neck broken and her jaw dislocated. Sexual assault is suspected as a motive.

Fifty-nine years later, the case remains under investigation by the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department.

Elizabeth Gill

The blonde toddler known as Betsy was just 2 years old when she vanished from her front yard in the 300 block of South Lorimier Street on June 13, 1965.

Her mother told police at the time that drifters staying at a motel near her home had tried to coax her into a car the day before she vanished.

Anonymous donors have contributed $25,000 in reward money, and the FBI reclassified the missing-child case as a kidnapping in 2010.

Cheryl Ann Scherer

Scherer was 19 when she disappeared April 17, 1979, from the Rhodes Pump-Ur-Own station where she worked on Main Street, about a half-mile from Interstate 55 in Scott City.

She had called her mother that morning to find out what was for dinner and talk about her plans for the afternoon.

An off-duty attendant saw her about 11:30 a.m. but returned a few minutes later to find her gone, her car still parked outside and her purse still behind the counter. About $480 was missing from a bank bag near the cash register.

Deborah Manning

Manning, a 27-year-old mother of three, left her mother and stepfather's Cape Girardeau home on foot just after 10 p.m. July 4, 1983.

Witnesses reported seeing her that night at the now-defunct Candlewick Bar on Kingshighway.

Just after 12:30 a.m., an off-duty Chaffee, Mo., police officer found her nude body on County Road 249 between Chaffee and Delta. She had been stabbed to death.

Lt. David James of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department has expressed frustration that the Major Case Squad, then in its infancy, was not called out to investigate -- a move that could have provided a break in the case while it was still fresh.

Mischelle Lawless

Angela Mischelle Lawless, a 19-year-old nursing student, was found dead in her car Nov. 8, 1992, at the northbound Highway 77 exit ramp off Interstate 55 in Benton, Mo. She had been shot three times and struck in the head with a heavy object.

Based on the testimony of jailhouse snitches, Josh Kezer, a teenager from Kankakee, Ill., was convicted of her murder, but Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter reopened the case in 2006, believing the wrong man had been convicted. No physical evidence connected Kezer to the case, and he was exonerated in 2009.

The killer's identity remains unknown.

Jeffery Scott Robins

In the area's most recent unsolved homicide case, Robins, a 35-year-old repo man, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the back of the head Sept. 6, 2012, in his Bessville, Mo., home in rural Bollinger County.

There were no signs of forced entry, and no one in the area remembered seeing suspicious people or vehicles near his home that afternoon.

Friends and family members have described Robins as a kind, generous man who had no known enemies.

The Bollinger County Sheriff's Department continues to investigate.

The Krajcir murders

While some criminals escape prosecution for decades, time is no guarantee that a killer will get away with murder.

In December 2007, five of Cape Girardeau's most notorious cold cases were solved at once when convicted rapist Timothy Krajcir pleaded guilty to the murders of Brenda and Mary Parsh, Sheila Cole, Margie Call and Mildred Wallace.

DNA evidence linked Krajcir to the 1982 rape and murder of Deborah Sheppard, a Southern Illinois University-Carbondale student.

Detectives noticed similarities between the Sheppard case and an unsolved rape in Cape Girardeau from the same year.

Then DNA and a palm print connected Krajcir to the Wallace crime scene, and he eventually confessed to it and the other murders as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.

Brenda and Mary Parsh

Mary Parsh, 58, and her daughter Brenda, 27, were found dead of .38-caliber gunshot wounds Aug. 15, 1977, at Mary Parsh's home in at 612 Koch Ave. The women were found nude, with their hands tied behind their backs, and were believed to have been sexually assaulted.

Sheila Cole

Cole, 21, a college student, was found dead Nov. 17, 1977, at a rest stop on Illinois Highway 3. Krajcir admitted he abducted her from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Cape Girardeau, drove her to his mobile home in Carbondale, Ill., sexually assaulted her and then drove her back to McClure, Ill., where he shot her twice in the head in the ladies' room at the rest stop.

Margie Call

Call, 57, was found bound, gagged and strangled to death in her home at 1829 Brink St. on Jan. 27, 1982. Krajcir spotted her at a Kroger grocery store in the area, followed her home to see where she lived and returned a week later to rape and then kill her.

Mildred Wallace

Wallace, 65, was found shot to death June 21, 1982, in her home at 1218 William St. She had been bound, blindfolded and sexually assaulted.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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