Aug 31, 2007 11:40 pm US/Central
Police Announce Arrest In 1982 Carbondale Killing
CBS 2's Jay Levine and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Police say DNA evidence led them to the 62-year-old man arrested in the killing of a Southern Illinois University from the Chicago area a quarter century ago.
Deborah Sheppard's murder qualified as a cold case long before we knew what a cold case was. She was raped and murdered in a Carbondale apartment building in April of 1982, just before graduating from Southern Illinois University.
Carbondale Police Chief Bob Ledbetter says Timothy Krajcir was incarcerated at the Big Muddy Correctional Center outside Ina when authorities arrested him. He has been jailed there on other charges since 1988.
Krajcir is facing four murder charges in Sheppard's 1982 strangling death. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
Sheppard was a 23-year-old senior from Olympia Fields majoring in Marketing when her naked body was found on the floor of her Carbondale apartment.
Krajcir was a 37-year-old student at SIU at the time of the murder.
Deborah Sheppard's father told CBS 2 Krajcir admitted breaking into Deborah's apartment and attacking her as she came out of the shower.
"He threw her down in the living and raped her and she resisted. He had a bandana on his face to cover his face and she pulled it down," Sheppard said. "And he says he killed because she had seen his face and didn't want her to identify him.".
Back then a Carbondale Police officer told a Chicago Tribune reporter, "If we don't get a break and make an arrest...now, we probably never will."
By 1982, when the murder was committed, Krajcir was already described as "a sexually dangerous person." A DNA sample recently taken from him while in prison linked him to the Sheppard murder.
"It is truly unfortunate that we had to wait for technology to catch up before we could solve this crime," said Chief Bob Ledbetter of the Carbondale Police Department.
For Bernie Sheppard, who fought the initial finding of no foul play, enlisting the help of the late Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Robert Stein, the late Cook County to prove she was murdered, charging her killer is of some comfort.
"There may be some relief, possibly, in the fact that I know now who perpetrated the crime, who killed my daughter," Sheppard said.
Bernie Sheppard ponders just what price the killer ought to pay for the terrible toll he has taken on the Sheppard family. It is a question which tests his patience and his faith and tempers what relief has come from putting a name and a face to the killer of his daughter.
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