Authorities have linked a Missouri inmate already serving a life sentence for murder to four additional killings of women who disappeared over three decades ago.
After matching 73-year old Gary Muehlberg’s DNA to evidence seized at one of the crime scenes 32 years ago, Det. Sgt. Jodi Weber with the O’Fallon Police Department obtained confessions from him for the cold case murders of Robyn Mihan, Brenda Pruitt, Donna Reitmeyer, and Sandra Little.
The four women went missing from south St. Louis City, Mo., between the years of 1990 and 1991, and their bodies were discovered in Lincoln, St. Louis, and St. Charles counties.
The killings and the victims all shared similarities too striking to ignore. All four women were mothers, who were found gagged and strangled with their faces covered up.
They all were reportedly known to frequent an area tied to prostitution.
And they were all were found “packaged” up.
Two of the victims’ bodies were stuffed into trash cans, while another was crammed into a wooden box. The fourth body was hidden between two mattresses.
The killings became known as the “Package Killer” slayings in reference to the concealment of their bodies.
The women’s cases went cold until 2008 when Weber revisited their murders. A 14-year investigation on her part helped crack the case.
While Muehlberg, who is serving a life sentence for the unrelated murder of Kenneth “Doc” Atchison (also found stuffed in a box, but in the suspect’s basement), confessed to the slayings of Mihan, Pruitt and Little during a series of jailhouse interviews, it was in a subsequent, handwritten letter addressed to Det. Sgt. Weber, that he also admitted to killing Reitmeyer and a fifth unidentified victim, police revealed.
In the letter, Muehlberg wrote, in part, “No matter how these victims choose to earn a living, they should not have had their lives taken in such a dark way.”
“Glad I can finally do the right thing… I must live with my past… the good and bad parts. No more running,” he wrote.
Muehlberg ‘s confessions after he was diagnosed with kidney failure. Muehlberg was assured they would not seek the death penalty due to his ailing health in exchange for the full confessions.
