The Package Killer: Gary Muehlberg

Robyn Mihan was 19 years old and worked along Cherokee Street in St. Louis, a stretch known at the time as The Stroll. She had given birth to her second child two weeks before she was murdered. Her hands and feet were bound. Her body was found stuffed between two mattresses along Highway 61 near Silex, Missouri, approximately four days after her death. The medical examiner determined she died of manual strangulation.

Robyn Mihan's case was the one that ultimately broke the cold case open. DNA evidence collected from the scene — specifically from a condom — was submitted to the St. Charles County Police Crime Lab by Detective Jodi Weber in 2008 and ultimately matched to Gary Muehlberg in 2022. She was the first victim identified and the first for whom Muehlberg entered a guilty plea.

Sandy Little was 21 years old and worked along Cherokee Street. She had a 9-month-old son. She went missing on September 4, 1990, and was not discovered until February 17, 1991, when a man commuting to work spotted a box on the highway shoulder and notified authorities. Inside the box was a dresser. The two bottom drawers had been removed and badly decomposed remains were found in their place. Sandy was identified partly by her stocking cap. She had been missing for five months before she was found.

Sandy was known to have warned a friend, Sandra Cain, to never go with a particular man in a station wagon. Investigators later theorized that this man may have been Muehlberg, and that Sandy may have recognized him as dangerous from her own experience before she died.

Brenda Jean Pruitt was 27 years old and lived on Cherokee Street. Her family reported her missing on May 9, 1990. Her remains were not discovered until October 4, 1991, when a jogger found her decomposing body near Page Avenue and Interstate 270 in the Maryland Heights area of St. Louis. She had been placed in a plastic trash can on the side of a busy road. She remained unidentified for several months before investigators confirmed her identity through the missing person report her family had filed.

Muehlberg pleaded guilty to Brenda's murder on March 21, 2023, in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Her daughter appeared at the hearing and addressed Muehlberg directly, telling him she was grateful he had admitted to her mother's death.

Donna Reitmeyer was 40 years old and a mother of three adult daughters. Her nude, badly decomposed body was found on June 11, 1990, inside a rubber trash can on the sidewalk of Gasconade Street near South Broadway in St. Louis. The level of decomposition meant the St. Louis Medical Examiner's Office was unable to determine a cause of death, though signs of extreme violence were present. Donna was not one of the original four victims Muehlberg was charged with — he confessed to her murder in a letter he sent to Detective Jodi Weber shortly after their first prison meeting.

Her daughter Juanita Zills appeared at the March 21, 2023 sentencing hearing, addressing Muehlberg over video and telling him she was grateful he had admitted to her mother's murder.

Kenneth "Doc" Atchison was 57 years old. On February 8, 1993, he went to Gary Muehlberg's home in the Bel-Ridge neighborhood of St. Louis with $6,000 in cash, intending to purchase a used Cadillac. Muehlberg handcuffed him, shot him multiple times, and strangled him. He stored Atchison's body in a homemade plywood coffin in his basement. Muehlberg fled the area but was located six weeks later in Illinois and extradited back to Missouri.

Kenneth Atchison's murder was the first case for which Muehlberg was convicted. A jury found him guilty in September 1995, and he was sentenced to life without parole. He had already been serving that sentence for 28 years when DNA evidence linked him to the murders of the Cherokee Street women.