Pa. man in court in 1982 slaying

Recent DNA evidence led authorities to the Allentown, Pa., native.

MURPHYSBORO, Ill. (AP) — A 62-year-old man with a long history of sexual misconduct was assigned a public defender Thursday during his first court appearance in the 1982 slaying of a Southern Illinois University student from the Chicago area.

A Jackson County judge set a Sept. 28 preliminary hearing for Timothy Krajcir and ordered that his bond remain at $1 million on four murder counts filed against him last week in the strangling death of Deborah Sheppard.

Sheppard’s naked body was found on the floor of her Carbondale apartment, and authorities have said there were no signs of a struggle. Authorities say Krajcir also was a student at SIU when Sheppard, a 23-year-old senior marketing major from Olympia Fields, died.

DNA evidence

A recent review of the case led an investigator to a piece of DNA evidence that linked Krajcir, an Allentown, Pa., native, to the crime, Carbondale Police Chief Bob Ledbetter said after Krajcir was charged last week.

Workers at the Illinois State Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Carbondale and the state’s crime lab in Springfield matched Krajcir and the DNA, Ledbetter said.

“The use of technology and the constant improvements in technology used in the forensic sciences make something that did not seem to be important just a couple of years ago, let alone 25 years ago, become a key piece of evidence in solving this case,” Ledbetter said without elaborating on the evidence.

Krajcir already was incarcerated at the Big Muddy Correctional Center near Ina when investigators questioned him earlier this year, authorities said.

The state Department of Corrections’ Web site lists Krajcir as a “sexually dangerous person.” One of the murder counts he faces alleges he strangled Sheppard “while committing a forcible felony rape.”

Deborah Sheppard’s father, Bernie Sheppard, said last week he wants the death penalty for Krajcir. But Michael Wepsiec, the county’s state’s attorney, said the harshest punishment in the case would be life in prison because Illinois did not have capital punishment in 1982.

Wepsiec declined to comment after Thursday’s brief court hearing.

Telephone calls to the Jackson County public defender’s office were directed to office administrator Patricia Gross, who is out of the office until Monday, a receptionist said.

Suspect’s record

Krajcir’s criminal past dates back several decades, the (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan has reported.

He was paroled in 1976 from an Illinois prison after serving 13 years of a 25- to 50-year sentence in the 1963 rape of a Lake County woman.

Krajcir was convicted in 1979 of having sex with his Carbondale landlord’s 13-year-old daughter. He was given an indeterminate sentence and dubbed a “sexually dangerous person,” applied to people deemed to be suffering from a mental disorder and with some history of sexual offenses.

Court records in that case — about two inches thick — include several mentions by officials that Krajcir needed psychiatric care, the Southern Illinoisan reported.

A Jackson County judge conditionally released Krajcir from prison in 1981, and he returned to Pennsylvania to be with family.

But Pennsylvania court documents show that from December 1982 through May 1983, Krajcir was arrested on sexual assault charges. In one of those cases Krajcir held a gun to a woman, forced her to undress and fondled her while threatening to kill her mother.