CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo., April 5 (UPI) -- An admitted serial killer thanked the families of five Missouri women for sparing his life as he was sentenced to 13 consecutive life terms.
Timothy Wayne Krajcir, 63 -- who has acknowledged killing nine women in Missouri, Illinois and Pennsylvania between 1977 and 1982 -- pleaded guilty Friday to the murder of five women in Cape Girardeau, Mo., to seven sexual assaults and one robbery, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Relatives of the victims agreed to the plea agreement, which took the death penalty off the table.
The courtroom was packed with relatives and friends of his victims. A woman who survived a 1981 rape also spoke during the hearing.
"I don't know if I could have been so generous if I were in the same situation," Krajcir said. "Thank you for sparing my life."
Don Call, whose mother was strangled in 1982, said he gets some comfort from knowing that his mother died "simply from being in the wrong place at the wrong time." He said he and his brother were tormented for years by the thought that they should have been able to protect their mother.
