crime. It has been documented that the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) in New York City accused officials in 2004 of reclassifying felonies as misdemeanors, logging in rapes as “inconclusive incidents,” and labeling incidents of attempted murder as simple criminal mischief. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) showed a 28 percent reduction in violent crime in 2005 after they reclassified domestic assaults in which the victims suffered minor or no injuries. Several police officers in New Orleans were fired in 2003 after they were accused of downgrading incidents of violent crimes. There is no doubt that this type of unethical and often illegal behavior exists within law enforcement agencies across the country, but Sheppard had no evidence that this was the case in Illinois.
Sheppard also said that because his daughter was black, racism probably played a role in the alleged cover-up. Whether that was true or not, the fact remains that this was only conjecture on his part, and he had no proof to back up his accusation. At the time, he told the Chicago Tribune that he did not care how much time, money, or heartache was involved, he was going to do whatever he could to make sure that his daughter’s killer was found and convicted.
Sheppard’s family had her body flown to Chicago and paid to have Cook County medical examiner Robert Stein perform a second autopsy. Stein determined that she had suffered several blows to the head and was strangled to death. He also found evidence of seminal fluid inside her mouth. Sheppard’s death was now considered a homicide.
Bernie Sheppard said that if it had not been for the fact that he had access to people in prominent positions, his daughter’s death would have been swept under the rug as a natural-death situation, and it would have been forgotten about. Sheppard’s theory of conspiracy and racism is only speculative, and during an interview in 2008, former Carbondale police chief Hogan provided a different version of the events that took place twenty-five years earlier.
Hogan said that precinct sergeant Jim Rossiter was the first police officer to arrive on the scene. After finding Sheppard’s body, Rossiter called a police dispatch operator who, in turn, contacted Hogan. When Hogan arrived at the apartment building, he noted that there was no indication of a struggle. “There were no broken dishes, no broken furniture, and no injuries to the body that were discernable to the naked eye. It was a clean scene,” Hogan stated.
There were four apartments in the two-story building and Sheppard lived on the ground floor on the east side of the structure. A window to the living room was found open. After Sheppard’s death was ruled to be a homicide, Hogan changed his story and said that he initially suspected that the intruder entered through the open window and then waited for Sheppard to come home. He said that Carbondale police investigators collected all the evidence they could find and spent several days questioning other residents in the building and around the neighborhood.
“We did as extensive of an investigation as possible at the time, but, of course, we didn’t have the expertise or equipment that is available today. No fingerprints were found at the scene, and we kept running into blind alleys with nothing breaking in our favor,” Hogan said.
When asked about Sheppard’s accusation that racism contributed to the hindrance of the investigation, Hogan replied that there was no prejudice on the side of the police department.
“If you know Illinois, you’ll know that there are areas in and around Chicago, and then there is the rest of the state. They are two different worlds. Sheppard comes from one of the ‘colored counties’ and much of what he believes is just a figmentation of his hostility. I have no doubt that it appeared like that to him. He called us a bunch of hick country bumpkins that didn’t know what we were doing. The fact is that we did everything we could. If we would have had the technology that exists today, things might have been different at the time, but we did collect all the evidence we found, and we were able to preserve it well enough to allow it to be used when the technology did finally become available,” Hogan said. Despite Hogan’s insistence that there was no element of racism that played a role, his comment about the “colored counties” might indicate otherwise. The real truth of the matter regarding racism and a possible intentional cover-up of the homicide probably lies somewhere between the perspectives of both Bernie Sheppard and Edward Hogan.
Evidence and leads may or may not have been compromised due to the passage of time between the discovery of Sheppard’s body and the official declaration that it should be dealt with as a homicide, but the end result was that despite the efforts of the CPD, they were left with no suspects and no motive for the crime. A Tribune reporter quoted a Carbondale police officer at the time stating, “If we don’t get a break and make an arrest now, we probably never will.”
Once Krajcir was officially charged, Carbondale police chief Bob Ledbetter released a statement in which he quoted, “I must note that this investigation didn’t sit in a box on the shelf as some might suspect. This case was always assigned to a detective over the years, and new leads would be investigated from time to time, always resulting in another frustrating dead end.”
In 2007, when Echols informed Bernie Sheppard that they had at last found the man responsible for killing his daughter, Bernie said that he might finally get a bit of relief knowing who was responsible. Bernie Sheppard also said, “I want to see him executed. I want to sit right there and watch him take his last breath…. That’s what I want.”
Unfortunately for Sheppard, the state of Illinois didn’t have capital punishment in 1982, so according to the statutes of law at the time the crime was committed, Krajcir would only be able to receive a maximum penalty of forty years if he was convicted.
A preliminary hearing for Krajcir was scheduled for September 28, 2007, and it was ordered that his bond remain at $1 million. The date to enter a plea actually took place on October 1, and the courtroom in the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department (JCSD) fell silent as Timothy Krajcir was escorted into the room in handcuffs. Bernie Sheppard attended the hearing to see the man who had killed his daughter. He admitted that his real purpose for attending was to seek vengeance. He didn’t care if it meant spending the rest of his life in prison—he wanted to kill Krajcir. Sheppard didn’t bring a weapon to the hearing. He wanted to feel Krajcir die between his bare hands. The opportunity never presented itself, and with two bad legs, Bernie Sheppard probably wouldn’t have been much of a match against the fit and athletic Krajcir.
Defense attorney Patricia Gross entered a tentative plea of not guilty to the judge. A pretrial date was set for November 13, when the presiding judge would decide if a bench trial or a jury trial would proceed unless a plea of guilty was entered before then. Plea negotiations could now be pursued by the prosecutor, and if an agreement could not be reached, a trial date of December 10 was scheduled.
Despite the new DNA evidence and Krajcir’s confession during his interview with Echols and Osifcin, in the eyes of the law, his plea of not guilty made him innocent unless a judge or jury decided differently.
2
I’ve been twisted since I was a little kid. I can’t blame it on anything else. The first six or seven years of my life, I was left alone too much. It twisted me. It just got worse when I grew up, I guess.
—Timothy Wayne Krajcir
Life and times of Timothy Krajcir
Despite Carbondale police chief Bob Ledbetter’s efforts to suppress specifics to the media regarding the Deborah Sheppard case, Krajcir’s arrest became headline news on the front page, above the fold, in newspapers across the Heartland. His history came under the scrutiny of law enforcement agencies, as well as the media. After learning of Krajcir’s past, many people wondered how he could have been allowed to be free long enough to commit murder.
He was born in West Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, on November
