Monday would have been Deborah Sheppard's 49th birthday. Instead, her killer entered a guilty plea.
"I think he's the lowest form of animal on the planet," said Bernie Sheppard, the victim's father.
Deborah Sheppard was 23, a marketing major at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, two weeks from graduating in 1982.
She grew up in suburban Olympia Fields.
Bernie Sheppard said he lacks a sense of relief now that 63-year-old Timothy Krajcir has pleaded guilty to killing his daughter. But he said there is at least some satisfaction.
"The satisfaction that I have that Deborah did not die in vain, we did find out who killed five other people,' Bernie Sheppard said.
The big break in the case came earlier this year when Carbondale police re-tested evidence with more advanced DNA technology. It linked Krajcir to the crime. He's been in and out of prison for sex crimes since the '60s when he was at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. He's currently serving time at a prison in downstate Ina, Illinois.
Authorities in Missouri then checked into whether Krajcir could be responsible for five other unsolved killings and rapes. And it turned out he was a perfect match and was charged today with killing a string of women in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, dating back to 1977.
For agreeing to plead guilty to those killings, Krajcir will be spared the death penalty in Missouri.
But Bernie Sheppard said he doesn't think that is justice.
"I want to see him dead, that's the only thing that will help me," he said.
But there is still at least the possibility Krajcir could face the death penalty elsewhere, because Monday police said he has admitted to three other killings in other jurisdictions, not in Illinois or Missouri.
For 25 years, the Sheppards say, Timothy Krajcir's name never even came up in the investigation until this year.
