Chronicling crime investigations

In August 1977, mother and daughter Mary and Brenda Parsh, ages 58 and 27, were murdered. Their nude bodies were found face down on a bed in Mary Parsh's home. Both had been shot in the head.

Sheila Cole was abducted from Wal-Mart in 1977 and found murdered near McClure, Ill. Her killer has not been caught.

In 1982, Margie Call, 57, was found strangled in her home, and in a similar case the same year, Mildred Wallace, 65, was found shot to death in her home. Both women lived alone in the same Cape Girardeau neighborhood.

Over the years, the Southeast Missourian has reported details of crimes that detectives have solved and some they continue to investigate and in so doing has also chronicled the changes in the way investigations are made. More recent cases are dispatched with the expertise of the Major Case Squad and innovations in technology. Older cases depend on tracking every possible lead and making any connection that may lead to a conclusion.

When the Parsh case was still new, then-police chief Henry H. Gerecke said he believed the two women knew their murderer because there was no outward sign of a struggle and none of the neighbors heard anything unusual. Robbery did not appear to be a motive.

When the case was 10 years old, Gerecke still held on to the theory that the Parshes knew their murderer, but detective John Brown disagreed.

"To me it appears it was a burglary, and that they either surprised the burglar or he was waiting on them," Brown said in a 1987 interview.

Nothing was reported missing from the home or from the victims. Physical evidence, it was reported then, had disintegrated and was virtually useless. Suspects were interrogated, but nothing solid could be held against any of them.

"We could prove a lot of people didn't do the murder, but we never had a suspect that we could target our investigation on," said Brown in a 1987 account.

In December 1977, it was reported that police were considering a connection between the Parsh murders and that of Sheila Cole. Police released a statement saying that ballistics tests showed that both cases centered on victims shot with a .38-caliber weapon.

In 1982, when Margie Call and Mildred Wallace were sexually assaulted and killed within six months of each other, the similarities between the two cases stood out. Police also attempted to link the Parsh killings to that of Wallace. Again, the weapon used was a .38-caliber firearm.

"We're holding that as a strong possibility," said chief D. Ray Johnson in a 1982 Missourian report, "but we're not ruling out that they may have been committed by more than one person."

Other similarities were considered: the sexual assaults of some older Marion, Ill., women around the same time that Call and Wallace were killed. All the victims were about the same age, and all but one lived alone.

While these cases remain unsolved, Cape Girardeau detectives say they believe innovations in forensic technologies will one day help them close the cases -- although cases are never really closed.

"There is a misconception about cases being closed," said Lt. Tracy Lemonds, supervisor for the Cape Girardeau police department's detective division. "When is a case closed?"

Capt. Carl Kinnison agrees. All cases remain open because information that might change the dynamics of the case sometimes comes in years later.

"Someone may be arrested and convicted and in prison, and that's closed," Kinnison said. "Everything else is open."

As technology advances, it's possible these murders may be solved. Along with available technology that has evolved over the years, investigators also need some things that have always been available: a witness and a certain amount of luck.

"I have to think a person is out there who has information on some of these cases who could step forward and provide the information we need to make an arrest," said detective Jim Smith. "Some people may have information they don't think is important. Some people they were afraid of may not be alive anymore."

Sometimes it takes waiting until someone is ready to tell what he knows. Cape Girardeau County investigators found that on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Delta schoolteacher Bonnie Huffman's murder in July. The sheriff's department received an anonymous note describing what the writer saw the night Huffman was killed, tantalizing in its specifics, but not telling enough to lead anywhere.

One aspect remains about criminals and witnesses that never changes.

"People talk. It's a proven fact," Smith said. "They can't keep a secret. Some people have to tell someone."

In 1993, while investigating the 1992 murders of Sherry Scheper, 41, and her two sons, Curtis, 22, and Randy, 17, known around town as a small-time drug dealer, Cape Girardeau police Lt. John Brown told a Southeast Missourian reporter, "In most major cases, finding the evidence to lead to the naming of a suspect is a matter of being lucky, being in the right place at the right time. But we also find that the harder we work, the luckier we get."

Hard work and luck -- and Smith's belief that people have to tell what they know -- paid off for investigators in that triple murder. After following what a Missourian report called "hundreds of leads," including a suspected connection between that triple killing and a homicide in Alexander County, Ill., police were able to make three arrests after Detective Zeb Williams found a note in his mailbox telling him the names of the men who would eventually be tried and convicted of killing the family. The writer of the note called himself "Del Orfo." Williams suspected the name was a code for a telephone number. He called it and discovered the note's author, which led to the arrest and conviction of Gary Roll, David Rhodes and John Browne Jr., all of Cape Girardeau. "Orfo" had been taking drugs with Browne, who told "Orfo" that he was afraid that Roll would kill him to silence him.

What some suspects or witnesses say isn't always enough. In the case of the 1979 kidnapping and murder of Cheryl Scherer from a gas station in Scott City, Otis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas, both drifters, confessed to killing more than 200 people, including a girl from a gas station along Interstate 55. Thinking it might have been Scherer, Scott County Sheriff Bill Ferrell interviewed the two. His suspicion against them was intensified, but evidence just wasn't there. Lucas and Toole both died in prison, and Scherer's murder remains a mystery.

A witness with a hunch and what officers like to call "good, hard police work" led Cape Girardeau police to the capture in 1961 of two men who shot and killed Herbert L. Goss and Donald Crittendon, two Cape Girardeau police officers. The manager of the local Kroger store, Don Riehn, alerted police to two men who caught his attention while they were loitering nearby. Riehn thought the two looked suspicious and might be planning to rob the store.

According to accounts at that time, Riehn gave police a description of the car the two suspects were in. Goss and Crittendon stopped the car at the entrance to Arena Park, where they both were shot and the two suspects fled. Other officers, including state police in a helicopter from Jefferson City, took up the pursuit and apprehended Douglas Wayne Thompson and Sammy A. Tucker near Grassy, Mo. They were described as fugitives who had a record of robbing grocery stores. Tucker was executed for his involvement in the incident; Thompson served time and was released after a series of appeals.

When luck and someone's need to talk are not forthcoming, technology, especially DNA testing, helps. In the last year and a half, Smith said, investigators have done DNA profiles on some of these older cases, looking for new leads not available before.

Inroads into forensic technology has changed the way investigators look at crime scenes.

"Fifteen years ago, crime scenes were not processed in the same way," Lemonds said.

Now there's DNA typing so sophisticated it can profile a suspect using less of a sample than previously needed.

Cpl. Joe Tado, a forensic specialist with the Cape Girardeau Police Department, is familiar with the technology now available. He has been trained to know how clues can be discovered from the way a body decomposes. He is familiar with the FBI personality profiles that can often pinpoint a suspect.

"Technology is just unbelievable these days," Tado said. "It literally changes month to month, year to year."

It's possible that someday the right technology will lead the investigators to the solutions they've been working on for years and will change the way crime cases are reported.

"I'm optimistic," Smith said.

Added Lemonds, "I'm always hopeful."