St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 16

A16 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH EWS SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2001 The Search for the Killers of 13 Women fa 0 Av 7 F. i- A makeshift memorial stands in front of a derelict house at 2647 St. Clair Avenue in East St. Louis, where the body of Dianna Kunkle, 28, was found on Nov.

8, 1999. Investigators have found no connection between her death and 12 others who died under similar circumstances. mm V- The bodies of Teresa Wilson, 26, and Verona "Ron!" Thompson, 36, were found near this stretch of Highway 67 in St. Charles County in May and June. A St.

Charles County investigator says the same person killed the two women, whose bodies were found 45 days and 16 feet apart. '1 pn; Ti c3 lit Tin. Villi UUfV 4v PHOTOS BY ANDREW CUTRARO POST-DISPATCH i 13 bodies spark hunt for serial killers Alton If) Feb. 2'00 Yvette House, 33, East St. Louis East St.

Louis (picture unavailable) ST. CHARLES CO. April 1 '01 Alyssa Greenwade, 34, Hometown: Found in: St. Louis Washington Park (picture unavailable) E. St.

Louis has history as dump site for bodies 67 1143 West Alton Murders 10 killings may be Work of 2 serial killers Continued from Al So police are hurrying to gather, evidence to support the filing of charges. Sources said he was identified by a prostitute who broke away from an attacker in East St. Louis. Police agree those four probably were the work of one person. Meanwhile, detectives from four agencies met recently to compare details of nine other ST.

CHARLES C0.r, Wilson James Johnson Feb. 2 '00 Seriece Johnson, 33, Hometown: East St. Louis Found in: East St. Louis Sidney ffil May 18 '00 Ramona Sidney, 31, Hometown: East St. Louis Found in: East St.

Louis ST. LOUIS CO. I' ILLINOIS MISSOURI May 15 '01 May 23 '01 Teresa Betty Wilson, 26, James, 46, Hometown: Hometown: St. Louis Venice Found in: Found in: St. Charles St.

Louis County ifiMay 18 '00 Tracy Williams, 38, Hometown: Found in: East St. Louis East St. Louis (picture unavailable) tl MADISON ffi) 7 I jr S. I 1 1 co. I Nov.

8 '99 I Dianna wf Kunkle, 28, Hometown: O'Fallon, III. Found in: East St. Louis Thompson stL0Ul! Zs Crues mAug. 25 '01 Yvonne Crues, 50, Hometown: St. Louis Found in: East St.

Louis Kunkle TkJune29 '01 Verona Thompson, 36, Hometown: Washington Park Found in: St. Charles County I July 31 '00 Mary Shields, 61, i Hometown: Found in: Alorton East St. Louis (picture unavailable) How many undiscovered bodies lie in the abundance of tall weeds, trash piles and abandoned buildings of East St. Louis? Police shudder at the question. They do know that nine times in two years, dead women have turned up, some possibly killed in St.

Louis or elsewhere. Desolate, wide-open stretches of ground in a town with a dwindling police force make East St. Louis an inviting environment to dump and hide a body. The easily crossed state line adds jurisdictional complications. "It's been a dumping ground since the 70s," said St.

Clair County Coroner Rick Stone, a police officer in East St. Louis from 1971 to 1984, most of those years as a homicide detective. "Back in the 70s, we found garbage bags we were afraid to" open." Detective Sgt. James Mister, a 24-year veteran of the force, said he is offended at a common presumption that killers, can escape detection by dumping bodies in his community. "It's upsetting to me.

It gives us a bad rap, a rap we don't need," he said. But some of the shortcomings of East St. Louis police are obvious. One is credibility. Under Chief J.W.

Cowan, police said the FBI was helping provide a profile of the serial killer or killers at work there. But the FBI recently said that nobody ever accepted its offer to help. Cowan could not be reached to explain. New Chief Delbert Marion said the city would accept. The force had 98 officers three years ago but is down to 61 now.

Marion said he needs 120, but city budget difficulties have raised the possibility instead of more cuts. "They need a lot of help," is the way one St. Louis city homicide detective described it. When the most recent body turned up in East St. Louis, that of Lolina Collins on Oct.

7, Sgt. Mister was the only detective assigned. The Illinois State Police eventually sent an investigator to work with him. "Everybody needs a partner," Mister said. Bill Bryan nuk I i I Oct.

7 '01 i I i Lolina 0 Oct. 8 '01 Brenda Beasley, 33, Hometown: St. Louis Found in: East St. Louis Collins, 41, Hometown: Rock Hill Found in: East St. Louis ST.

CLAIR CO. Beasley Collins POST-DISPATCH killings, and they found that six have striking similarities. "My instincts tell me that these six cases are not all coincidences," said Lt. Ron Henderson, commander of the St. Louis police homicide division, who arranged the conference.

Officers, some asking not to be identified, said the six might be related or divided among more than one killer. They said they feel fairly certain that three remaining cases are unrelated to one another or any of the other 10. A suspect in prison East St. Louis and Illinois State Police detectives have been quiet about the suspected serial killer in prison. "We didn't want to say anything until we find out more about our evidence," said one high-ranking officer.

"But we feel very good about this suspect." The man was arrested more than a year ago, the Post-Dispatch learned. Authorities are anxiously awaiting forensic test results some of it DNA-related from an Illinois state crime laboratory. The FBI has been asked to examine the plastic bags used by the killer to cover three of the bodies and compare them with a roll of bags taken from the suspect's home. (A bag comparison by the FBI helped convict Paula Sims in 1990 of the highly publicized murder of her daughter in Alton.) The man is a suspect in the killings of Yvette House, 33, Se-riece Johnson, 33, Ramona Sidney, 31, and Tracy Williams, 38, all of East St. Louis.

The bodies of House and Johnson, acquaintances who frequented the same places, were discovered Feb. 2, 2000, some 50 yards apart in a weed-covered field along 20th Street near Gay Avenue. House had a crack pipe and was three months pregnant with her 12th child. Johnson's body was in a plastic bag nearby. She left behind six children.

The bodies of Sidney and Williams were found May 18, 2000, after someone saw a dog gnawing on a human thigh bone. Their bodies were in separate trash bags under a railroad trestle alongside Boismenue Avenue near 20th Street. That is around the corner from where the other two bodies were found. Sidney and Williams had been missing about 4 14 months. The body of Sidney, like the first two, was too decomposed to reveal a cause of death.

Authorities determined that Williams was suffocated or strangled. Williams had three children, and Sidney had six. "Sgt. James Mister, an East St. Louis police detective, said his force takes these cases as seriously as any other killings, i VWe know the citizens are frustrated," he said.

"We want these homicides solved." Police come together Lt. Henderson, in St. Louiswas watching similarities in the cases all along, aware that some victims might have been abducted from his city. 1 After the bodies of the 12th and 13th victims, Lolina Collins and Brenda Beasley, were found earlier this month in East St. Louis, he arranged two meetings of East St.

Louis police, St. Charles County sheriff's deputies and the Illinois State Police. Enough similarities were found to tentatively lump six of the cases together. Could the six all have been murdered by the same man? "It's a big maybe," said Henderson, a 15-year homicide investigator. "It's way too early to jump to a conclusion like that.

Right now we're just trying to get everything together." Those six victims were: Alyssa Greenwade, 34, strangled and found April 1 in a ditch on North 60th Street at Caseyville Avenue in Washington Park. She was from the Baden neighborhood of St. Louis. She had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, and cocaine and alcohol in her system. Teresa Wilson, 26, found May 15 by a roadside grass-mowing crew along Highway 67 about a half mile north of Highway 94, near West Alton in St.

Charles County. The cause of death is unknown, but shooting and stabbing were ruled out. Betty James, 46, found May 23 in an alley in the rear of the 5700 block of Kennedy Avenue in St. Louis. She was bound with duct tape and beaten, but the cause of death was undetermined.

Her blood contained cocaine. Verona "Roni" Thompson, 36, found June 29 by grass mowers just 16 feet from where Wilson's body had been. No clothing was found in either case. Thompson's cause of death also was undetermined, but she was neither shot nor stabbed. She was last seen leaving a party in Washington Park six days earlier, and she had drugs in her system.

Yvonne Crues, 50, found Aug. 25 in weeds near 11th Street and St. Clair Avenue in East St. Louis. She had scrapes on her knees, ligature marks on her wrists and cocaine in her system.

She was smothered or strangled. Her mother last saw her leaving their home in the 4300 block of College Avenue in St. Louis the day before. Brenda Beasley, 33, found Oct. 8 amid trash, litter and old tires in the 1500 block of Converse Avenue, a little-used street in East St.

Louis. Her eyes and arms were taped. She had been struck in the back of the head and suffocated. She was last seen leaving her home in the Baden neighborhood of St. Louis to go for a walk.

Her four children lived with her mother in Ferguson. The similarities in 6 cases Henderson said there are obvious similarities. "All the victims are black, prostitutes and crack addicts," he said. But there are other connections: Some were known to hang around the same spot in Baden and near trucking terminals along Hall Street a short distance away, where prostitutes solicit drivers for sex in their trucks or parking lots. Most were found nude.

"Street prostitutes don't get naked," Henderson said. "They just don't do it." Most appeared not to have struggled much. "These women are street-tough people who would fight for their lives if their lives were in danger," Henderson said. "There's little sign of that." St. Charles County sheriff's Lt.

Dave Kaiser said it is obvious that the same person killed Wilson and Thompson, who were found 45 days and 16 feet apart along Highway 67. Kaiser said the people who would seem most threatened by a MetroLink construction worker who had wandered inside. Kunkle was last seen in a bar in East St. Louis on Aug. 2, 1999.

The cause of death was undetermined. She was a heavy drug user. Shields' body was found July 31, 2000, in tall weeds near a vacant building on Piggott Avenue near 20th Street in East St. Louis. Despite proximity to four bodies found just a few blocks away, investigators see no other connection.

Shields was sometimes homeless, a heavy drinker, but not a prostitute, according to friends. She was strangled. Collins' body was found Oct. 7 inside two plastic bags in the 900 block of North First Street, near the National Stockyards in East St. Louis.

She was strangled by hand. She had three children and was last seen two days earlier at her home in Rock Hill. Collins' estranged husband said she was working toward becoming an elementary school teacher, but he also told police she used cocaine. Sgt. Mister said her case doesn't fit with the others.

"She wasn't a streetwalker." Mister doesn't like to use the word "prostitute." He knows many of them, he said. "They have families I know that hurts." He explained: "They're out there supporting their (drug) habit. It's the only way for them to make money. I don't like what they were doing, but they didn't deserve to die. I believe every family deserves closure.

The person who killed those young ladies needs to be crawling on the ground with the roaches." Mister discovered one of the bodies himself, as he and other officers investigated Johnson's death. "A short distance away, I saw another garbage bag," he recalled. "I cut it open and looked serial killer won't cooperate. "We talked to a lot of prostitutes and acquaintances of the victims, and most of them showed no interest in helping us," he said. "Some wouldn't even talk if we offered them money for information.

"It was surprising to me. These murders don't seem to worry them." Lester Anderson, chief of detectives in East St. Louis, said he believes Crues and Beasley were killed by the same person, but he wouldn't give his reason. "There were lots of similarities, and they were both dropped off in our city from St. Louis." A St.

Louis homicide detective's instincts tell him that Greenwade's death is linked to the Crues and Beasley cases as well. Henderson said that on the surface, he feels James and Beasley were killed by the same person. "The crime scenes highly suggest that," he said. But, Henderson said he's keeping an open mind. "Maybe there's two men or more doing this.

Maybe it's two men working in tandem. Maybe it's a woman." 3 killings seen as isolated The three remaining open cases include the first of the series of 13 victims, Dianna Kunkle, 28, and the most recent, Lolina Collins, 41. The other case is that of Mary Shields, 61. Police said that of the 13 victims, only Collins and Shields were not believed to be prostitutes. Metro East-area investigators believe those three were slain by separate killers; they have a suspect in mind in the killing of Collins.

Kunkle's decomposed body was discovered Nov. 8, 1999, in the bathroom of an abandoned, derelict house at 2647 St. Clair Avenue in East St. Louis by a dead into her eyes. It was Seriece Johnson.

Despite what she did, she was a very sweet young lady." Johnson's mother, Delores Turner, 51, of East St. Louis, welcomed news there may be a suspect. "It makes me feel better," she said. "It would give me closure if he were the right person." Turner pulled out childhood photos of a perpetually smiling Seriece, with "Teasie" as a nickname. "Teasie was the jokester of the family," Turner said.

"She'd keep you laughing. She was outgoing." Levonda Riley remembers her sister as "goofy, silly and always wanting to play and say crazy stuff. She was a fun person to be around." But then drugs entered Se-riece's life. "That's the devil," Turner said. Said Riley, "After she got on drugs, it was like she didn't have time for anybody." She added, "I just want to know why she was killed." Reporter Bow EhiuI: biiryanpost-dlsptduain Phone: 314-340-8950.