Thirty-three years ago, serial murderer Gary Muehlberg discarded 18-year-old Robyn Mihan’s dead body along a stretch of rural Highway E in Lincoln County. Muehlberg abducted Mihan from the Southside Stroll in St. Louis on Thursday, March 22, 1990, before murdering her in his home in Bel-Ridge. That Monday, he tied her lifeless body between two mattresses and in the early morning hours left her along the roadside to be found by a commuter.
This afternoon, 33 years later, Muehlberg pleaded guilty to Mihan’s murder via video feed in a courthouse in Lincoln County. This was the first of Muehlberg's six known killings and the last, for now, that he has pled guilty to.
Prior to Muehlberg being sentenced, Mihan's mother Saundra had a chance to confront her daughter's killer. "I don’t quite understand, Mr. Muehlberg, how you are not able to be here face to face,” she said. “The murders weren’t done by Zoom call.”
She called Muehlberg “a monster," telling him he created a hell on earth for Mihan and his other victims but that he was just at the beginning of his hell.
However, despite the tough words, Saundra said that ultimately she was compelled by her faith to forgive the man.
Between 1990 and 1991, Muehlberg abducted five women from the Southside Stroll, St. Louis' then-red light district. He murdered them all in his home and then left their bodies in conspicuous containers along roads and highways throughout the region. The grim M.O. earned him the name the "Package Killer."
In 1993 he murdered a male acquaintance, Kenneth "Doc" Atchison, a crime for which Muehlberg received a life sentence in 1995. He was in prison in Potosi last summer when cold case detective Jodi Weber with the O'Fallon Police Department cracked the three-decades old murders via DNA evidence and confronted Muehlberg who confessed to the crimes.
Lincoln County Prosecutor's Office
Crime scene photo of mattresses in which Muehlberg discarded Mihan's body.
After the hearing today, Weber told Saundra that as she worked on the cold case for years she regularly drove on Highway E, past the spot where Mihan was found.
"I'd talk to the girls," Weber said. "And say, 'Give me something. Give me something.'"
All this month, Muehlberg has been on a courtroom tour of sorts, pleading guilty and receiving life sentences for his crimes. On March 6 in St. Charles County Circuit Court, he confessed to the murder of 21-year-old Sandy Little. In St. Louis County court on March 21 he admitted via video link he murdered Donna Reitmeyer, 40, and Brenda Pruitt, 27.
In all cases, Muehlberg struck a deal with prosecutors that he would plead guilty to the murders in exchange for them taking the death penalty off the table.
Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood called Muehlberg's crimes, "gruesome and horrific."
"I cannot imagine the pain that was inflicted on the victims and their families," Wood said. "I hope today provides some closure so that Robyn’s family can begin to heal and that Gary Muehlberg can be held accountable for his actions.”
This afternoon's plea brings an end to Muehlberg's pending business before the court. However, two mysteries still hang over his crimes.
The first, which is likely to never be solved, is Muehlberg's motivations for committing the murders. In a letter to his victims' families, Muehlberg described the period during which he committed the murders as a "dark time" in his life. In a previous conversation with the RFT from prison, Muehlberg said, "Somethings cannot be explained as a why."
He added, "Even when all this is over in court, you cannot use an eraser and eliminate from your mind things that are there."
Missouri Department of Corrections, Police Booking Photo
Gary Muehlberg, revealed to be the so-called Package Killer, in March 2020 and in 1993.
The other lingering mystery, which investigators hope can still be solved, is the identity of Muehlberg's fifth female victim.
When he confessed to Weber that he’d killed Mihan, Little, Pruitt and Reitmeyer, Muehlberg also said there was a fifth woman who whose body he discarded in a metal barrel at the Ram Jet self-service car wash, though there is uncertainty about the specific Ram Jet location where Muehlberg left the victim's body.
Muehlberg says he doesn't remember the woman's name, if he ever knew it to begin with. According to Weber, Muehlberg has said the unidentified woman was white, with shoulder-length dark brown hair. Muehlberg says he may have picked the woman up from the Wedge bar at the corner of Bates Street and Virginia Avenue in the Carondelet neighborhood.
Authorities have repeatedly asked the public for their help identifying the unknown woman. If anyone knows anything about a woman who disappeared in the south city area in 1990 or 1991, they are encouraged to call the O'Fallon Police Department.
In the meantime, Muehlberg will remain at Potosi Correctional Center where he has been for almost 30 years. The 74-year-old is in bad health, has fallen repeatedly in recent weeks and appeared this afternoon in a wheelchair.
"I prayed the good Lord would let me live long enough for the monster, whoever it was, to be caught and convicted," Saundra said. "I said that even if they had to bring me in on a gurney, I'd come to court."
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