MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. — Maryland Heights Detective Chris McNamara knows he doesn't have much to go on other than the word of an alleged serial killer and two people who said the body was found somewhere else.
Yet, he remains hopeful he will figure out the identity of a fifth woman Gary Muehlberg told him and O'Fallon Detective Sgt. Jodi Weber he killed about 30 years ago.
“I'm very optimistic," McNamara said. "People remember things, even though it may take some time. Something traumatic like the remains of a woman being found, especially in that type of condition, would stick in your mind, especially if you knew the family, especially if that was someone that you were friends with or someone you were acquainted with in the neighborhood."
The detectives recently interviewed Muehlberg again and learned a few new details about the case they hope might help bring answers to a family they've never met or who may not even know their loved one was murdered.
But they need the public's help to do it.
“Do they know what happened to their sister, their daughter, their mother?” McNamara asked, looking through the few clues he’s been able to put together on the case. “We need to find out and get some answers to them if they’re out there.”
McNamara now knows the addresses of two car washes where Muehlberg might have left the victim’s body, the time of year it might have happened and two people who say there was a body found at one of the locations.
The confession
Muehlberg, 73, has been in prison since 1993 for the murder of Kenneth "Doc" Atchison, a man he killed after the victim tried to buy a Cadillac from him. Muehlberg is serving a life sentence for that killing without a chance for parole.
DNA from a piece of evidence Weber sent to the St. Charles County crime lab from the murder of 19-year-old Robyn Mihan busted the serial secrets Muehlberg had been harboring for more than 30 years wide open.
Mihan had given birth to her second child just two weeks before her remains were found wedged between two mattresses along Highway 61 and Highway E in Silex.
Just a few months before Mihan’s body was found, another woman, Sandy Little, was found dead in a makeshift box along Highway 70 in O’Fallon.
In a three-hour confession, Muehlberg told McNamara and Weber he killed Mihan and Little along with Brenda Pruitt.
Pruitt’s body was found in October 1991 inside a plastic trash can along the side of the road near Page Avenue and Interstate 270 in Maryland Heights.
Not long after his confession, Muehlberg sent Weber a letter.
“In it, he said he hadn’t been completely forthcoming,” McNamara said.
He confessed to two additional murders. One of them matched the murder of Donna Reitmeyer.
Reitmeyer's nude body was found June 11, 1990, inside a rubber trash can on the sidewalk along Gasconade Street near South Broadway in St. Louis - just as Muehlberg had described.
But the alleged killer's description of a fifth victim didn’t match anything in their case files.
The clues
Muehlberg told the detectives he picked up the unidentified woman in south St. Louis like he had with his other victims.
“He was a frequent visitor to the Cherokee Stroll, which it was referred to in that day, and he would patronize prostitution in that area,” McNamara said.
Some have called Muehlberg the Package Killer, because all of his victims were put in containers or packages.
Mihan's was the first body police found. That was in March 1990.
Muehlberg told detectives he couldn't remember the order in which he killed the women, but he said he said he might have kept the unidentified woman's remains at his home the longest, McNamara said.
So it's possible she vanished sometime in 1989, McNamara said.
Muehlberg also told the detectives he put the unidentified victim in a cardboard barrel with a lid at first, McNamara said.
“He said over time, that cardboard became unstable, and, in an effort to have a more stable package, he bought a barrel, a steel barrel with its own spring-loaded lid,” McNamara said. “He said he bought it from a company that actually made and sold barrels in the St. John area.”
McNamara has been searching for the name of the barrel making company ever since.
The alleged killer also said he eventually brought the barrel to a self-serve car wash called Ram Jet along Natural Bridge in Berkeley. It’s now a vacant lot.
“He thought it might have been winter because either before or right after disposing of that body at the car wash, he washed his truck of snow, so we could determine at least a season,” McNamara said.
The detective tracked down the former car wash owner, who is deceased. So, he called his son.
“He remembered it specifically,” McNamara said of the car wash owner’s son.
Then came a twist.
“He said, ‘Yes. My dad was very upset about that incident, but it was not the one on Natural Bridge, it was our location on Pennsylvania at Mallard Drive,’” McNamara said.
Turns out, the family owned a Ram Jet car wash at Pennsylvania and Mallard Drive in Pagedale, only about five miles away.
McNamara went to the Pagedale Police Department and asked a sergeant to call any retired or former employees who might remember the incident. After many calls, McNamara listened on speaker phone as former public works employee Craig Lovings recalled the few memories he had.
Lovings told 5 On Your Side he remembered seeing Pagedale and St. Louis County police gathered at the Ram Jet car wash sometime in 1990 or 1991 after a woman’s body was found in a dumpster.
“It was all covered up by the time I got there, but everyone was gathered over there so I walked over to find out what happened,” Lovings said in a phone interview.
Just as he thought his investigation was picking up steam, McNamara hit a dead end when he started digging for records. Pagedale police told him old records had been destroyed.
He didn’t find any death records with the St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s Office matching that time period either.
“It could be just a typo, maybe it was listed under a different address because it was at that other location,” he speculated. “If Gary is the one that's accurate and discarded the barrel at the Natural Bridge location, was that barrel ever inspected or did it go to the landfill?”
He brought pictures of both car washes to Muehlberg earlier this month. Before he showed them to him, McNamara asked the alleged killer to describe the one he remembered. He described the one on Natural Bridge.
“He described it very well,” McNamara said. “He says maybe it was three or four bays. One of the bays was elevated like for trucks. He further described it as kind of red and colored and kind of not in great shape.”
Prosecutors have told Muehlberg they will not seek the death penalty as long as he confesses to everything.
“I don’t believe he is lying,” McNamara said of Muehlberg. “He’s been spot-on about everything else up until this point.”
And he’s not giving up just because Muehlberg is in prison.
“It's just as important as someone that is not in prison,” he said. “These are cold cases and they're not forgotten.”
Even if he doesn't have much to go on.
If you have any information that could help detectives solve this case, call the Maryland Heights Police Department at 314-298-8700.
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