THE DEADLIEST YEAR: PERRYVILLE'S FIVE HOMICIDES SINCE JANUARY PUT THE TOWN'S MURDER RATE AT 11 TIMES LAST YEAR'S NATIONAL RATE

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- Driving past Perryville's strip mall, its outlying cattle ranches, the pickups parked around the fast-food franchises, the gas stations, the blue water tower, one thinks the town could easily switch places with any other small, sleepy Midwestern community.

But this year, Perryville has developed a dark side that few sleepy Midwestern towns can match. With five homicides occurring out of 7,900 residents, Perryville already weighs in at 11 times last year's national murder rate.

"It's terrible. Everyone talks about it," said Perryville bartender Chris Childers, 40, drying beer mugs. "My 12-year-old son is scared. I don't like that."

The town is small enough that everybody knows somebody related to the killings, she said. Childers knew Samuel Lowe, a fellow St. Louis migr, who allegedly stabbed an elderly Perryville couple to death in April.

"I never thought he'd do something like that," she said.

Compared to other small Missouri towns, this year's homicide rate in Perryville is particularly disturbing. With 6,129 residents, Trenton has reported no murders this year. Over 260 miles to the southeast, Sullivan, population 6,258, also reported none. Neither has Olivette, population 7,573; nor Nevada, with 8,597 residents; or Harrisonville, population 9,000. Jackson, with 11,900 residents, also reported no murders this year.

Perryville's last murder before the year 2000 was in 1994.

The Missouri Highway Patrol maintains statewide homicide statistics but has only accumulated data through 1998. Patrol Capt. Chris Ricks said he expects Perryville to rank near the top of the list in the homicide-per-resident ratio when the statistics catch up to the year 2000.

The situation in the small town will be something patrol statisticians will keep an eye on, he said, to see if this is an anomaly or a trend.

"That's a tremendous amount of murders," said Ricks. "It will be interesting to see what Perryville does in the next two or three years."

Perryville Mayor Robert Miget was at a loss to explain his community's unusual homicide rate.

"I don't know why it is, and I'm very discomforted by it," said Miget. "This time of the year is usually a bad time for people who are depressed. I'll hold my breath that that's the end of it."

Mixed emotions

This year, Perryville has experienced two murder-suicides, both apparently domestic in origin, one murder in the course of a possible drug deal rip-off, and one murder in the course of a possible home burglary. June Blessing lost her daughter, Lauren, in November.

Lauren was shot and killed in her Perryville residence by a St. Mary, Mo., man, who then turned the pistol on himself -- a man who was unknown to Lauren except that he was dating her sister.

"Why he picked Lauren, I don't know," said June Blessing. "My other daughter was out of town at the time, so maybe he wanted to die, and maybe he didn't want to go alone."

Perryville resident Rita Rubel said, when taken in context, this year's killings do not unnerve her.

"I feel safe because two have been domestic and one of them had been on drugs. I still feel safer living here than I would in the city. Normally, we don't even have one murder a year here," said Rubel, 57.

Reita Peer, who lives just outside Perryville city limits, disagreed.

"It scares me. The last one was right down the road from where I live," said Peer, 41. "Now, I lock my doors. And I leave a light on in the house."

But Perry County Sheriff Gary Schaaf said despite Perryville's dramatic increase in homicides, he has not seen expressions of fear from local residents. His department has not received an increased number of reports of suspicious individuals, he said, an indicator of how safe residents feel.

Since three out of five of the deaths involved individuals who knew each other, most residents don't see a reason to be afraid, he said. For those who are asking why this year has seen so many violent deaths in Perryville, the sheriff said he doesn't have any good answers.

"I don't know how you'd explain it," he said.

Perryville Police Chief Eugene Besand has said that the Sauer murders gave residents more reason to be afraid than any of the other killings because it involved a suspect who was not from the community.

Perryville police detective Keith Tarrillion said he has never experienced the emotional strain of having to communicate with the families involved in the deaths while still conducting a thorough investigation.

"It's something I'd never expected to do as a detective here," said Tarrillion, who has lived all but four years of his life in Perryville. "I'd never want to work another murder in my life if I didn't have to."

Reaching out

During the course of the murder investigations, Perryville police have developed better contacts within the FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the detective reported. Tarrillion explained the Perryville Police Department had to reach out to the FBI and the Highway Patrol for assistance, because the small department could not thoroughly investigate a murder and still respond to the standard daily police calls.

"On the day of the Sauers' murder, we had five officers working," Tarrillion said. "With help from the FBI and Highway Patrol, we didn't have to get them all tied up in this investigation."

The last homicide in Perryville prior to 2000 occurred on June 4, 1994.

Barbara Roth, 54, of Perryville, was knifed and killed outside the Perry Plaza Shopping Center. Police officers testified they saw Roth stumble toward them with her throat slashed, then collapse. The officers reported they then saw her boyfriend, Lawrence Coppaway, 65, of Perryville, lying nearby, also with a blade wound to the throat. A hunting knife was seized at the scene. Coppaway recovered from his apparently minor, self-inflicted injury at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau and was charged with murder.

In February 1995, a Cape Girardeau County jury found Coppaway guilty of first-degree murder. A prosecution witness testified that Coppaway had stated he was ready to kill himself over an impending break-up with Roth. Coppaway was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

PERRYVILLE KILLINGS IN 2000

* Feb. 8 -- William Dial, 33, was shot and killed in his Perryville residence. Police said they discovered the body after a tipster phoned the police department and reported a shooting. Russell Cline, 39, of Perryville, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Police believe Cline killed Dial in a bungled drug deal rip-off.

At his April arraignment, Cline pleaded not guilty. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bond.

* April 7 -- Edgar, 84, and Leona Sauer, 83, were stabbed and killed in their Perryville residence. The bodies were discovered by their son, who had arrived for a visit. Samuel David Lowe, 38, of St. Louis, was arrested and charged with the murders. Police believe the Sauers may have surprised the suspect as he was attempting to rob their home. Lowe had been staying at a motel adjacent to the Sauer home. He was in town to appear in court to face a charge of a drug-related probation violation.

At his July arraignment, Lowe pleaded not guilty to the murders. A Perry County judge granted a change of venue proposed by the public defender, allowing Lowe's trial to be held in Cape Girardeau County. The trail is tentatively scheduled for April or May.

Lowe is being held in lieu of $1 million bond.

* Nov. 14 -- Lauren Blessing, 37, was shot and killed in her Perryville residence. Her presumed killer, Walter Martin of St. Mary, Mo., was found dead a short distance from her body. Martin's cause of death was an apparently self-inflicted pistol shot to the head.

The motive for the killing remains a mystery. The only connection known between the two is that Martin had been dating one of Blessing's sisters, and the pair had recently broken up.

* Nov. 25 -- Susan Grindstaff, 32, was shot and killed in her Perryville residence. Her presumed killer, her husband, Michael Grindstaff, 36, was found dead a short distance from her body -- the cause of death an apparently self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head.

The Grindstaffs had reportedly been in the early stages of divorce.