How a suburban 51붚죕 detective broke a 30-year-old serial killer case wide open

O�섺ALLON, Mo. �� It was June, and Detective Jodi Weber was waiting at a prison in Potosi.

She had been working for 14 years to solve the brutal murders of several 51붚죕 women, crimes that had gone unsolved for more than three decades.

She�셝 read folders of investigative notes. She pulled grisly evidence out of storage. She finally had a DNA match.

And steps away was the man she�셝 been trying to find.

Weber, a detective sergeant with the O�섺allon police department in St. Charles County, took the Post-Dispatch inside the investigation that led her to that prison room and, eventually, to charges filed on Monday against Gary Muehlberg, 73, in the 1990 murders of Robyn Mihan, Brenda Pruitt, Donna Reitmeyer and Sandy Little.

The investigation didn�셳 always seem like it would pay off. Weber had to dig through a room full of evidence, where she discovered none of it had been tested for DNA. She had to wait years for DNA testing to improve. And she had to persuade a killer to admit it all.

That first day in Potosi, Weber hoped Muehlberg, who was already serving a life sentence for a 1993 murder, would quickly come clean. She was hoping he�셝 say: �쏧�셶e been waiting for you guys for 32 years.��

But when the balding, white-bearded man in a gray prison uniform walked through the door, that�셲 not how it went.

A huge disappointment

Weber couldn�셳 get the photos out of her head.

She was a new detective in O�섺allon in 2003 when she first heard stories about the case of Sandy Little.

In O�섺allon, a suburban city with a rapidly growing population of about 94,000, Little�셲 death was just about the only cold case homicide in town.

Her body was found in February 1991 off Interstate 70. It had been packed into a dresser and placed in a box five months after Little had disappeared from �쏷he Stroll,�� a stretch of Cherokee Street in 51붚죕 then known for prostitution.

Investigators had long tied her case to the disappearances of a series of women in 1990, most of whom were sex workers and all with ties to The Stroll. Several turned up, like Little, in �쐏ackages�� on the side of the road across the region. All had been strangled.

The case immediately captured Weber�셲 attention. She got into police work in part because she was fascinated by the cold cases featured on shows like �쏡ateline.�� She grew up in St. Charles, went to college, paid her own way through the Eastern Missouri Police Academy, and became a detective just three years after she was hired as a police officer in O�섺allon.

That�셲 when she came across the Little crime scene photos.

�쏧t was just the grisliness of it that stuck with you,�� she said. �쏝asically the worst you can think of. I thought: First of all, how could anybody do this to a human being? And second: Why isn�셳 this solved?��

In 2008, she learned none of the evidence had been DNA tested, a tool not available to investigators in the 1990s.

To reopen the case, Weber pulled dozens of evidence bags of clothes and other items found with the body, some no longer recognizable. She read through 16 case folders on Little�셲 death, which included information on two other women�셲 cases.

Weber looked into those killings, too.

She pulled evidence from the Lincoln County Sheriff�셲 Office for the case of Robyn Mihan, a sex worker last seen in March 1990 on The Stroll. Mihan�셲 body was found four days later stuffed between two mattresses bound together with wires near a highway in Silex, a rural Missouri town about 60 miles northwest of 51붚죕.

Weber then went to Maryland Heights to collect all the evidence on Brenda Pruitt, who went missing in 1990, her body found by Maryland Heights city employees 10 months later in a brown plastic 33-gallon trash can.

Between all the cases, Weber sent dozens of evidence bags off to the Missouri Highway Patrol crime lab for DNA testing.

In 2009 she got news: Nothing was found.

�쏷hat was a huge disappointment,�� she said.

But she didn�셳 quit: Weber met with other investigators to brainstorm the case, filling a whiteboard with every piece of evidence they could try testing again.

That year, she and two other detectives spent two weeks re-interviewing witnesses, speaking to victim�셲 family members and going back to longtime suspects. They found nothing new.

Still, she again sent all the evidence for testing, this time to the St. Charles County crime lab. And she asked for updates regularly over the years, making sure the lab continued the search.

Then this spring, the St. Charles lab called. It found a partial fragment of DNA off of a condom thrown between the mattresses with Mihan�셲 body.

The fragment wasn�셳 enough to run through the FBI�셲 Combined DNA Index System. But it could be used to rule out or confirm suspects investigators already had.

Weber checked it against blood police had already collected from other suspects. None were a match.

She got DNA from two more suspects, including one man already in prison for killing a woman and stuffing her body in a luggage container.

Again, neither matched.

Then came big the break.

�쁗e got a hit��

Weber was at an emergency room in Keystone, Colorado �� her 12-year-old son had run into a tree on a ski vacation, spraining his wrist and knocking loose two teeth �� when she got a text from the O�섺allon police evidence specialist: Someone from the crime lab needed to reach her.

�쏧 knew this had to be something big,�� Weber said.

Her family left the ER and found an orthodontist. She called the crime lab in the waiting room.

The DNA specialists were gathered, excited, on speakerphone. They told her they tested the condom again.

�쏻e got a hit,�� one of them told her. �쏻e don�셳 have the name yet, but we�셱e working on it.��

Weber was elated and anxious to dive back into the case.

A few days later, back at home, she got another call. They had a name: Gary Muehlberg.

�쏦is name wasn�셳 on anyone�셲 radar,�� she said. �쏶o I started researching him immediately.��

Weber learned Muehlberg was serving a life sentence in prison for the February 1993 killing of Kenneth �쏡oc�� Atchison, who he murdered for $6,000 before storing the man�셲 body in a plywood box in Muehlberg�셲 basement. Atchison had gone to Muehlberg�셲 home at 3520 East Edgar Drive in Bel-Ridge in hopes of buying a 1987 Cadillac with the cash.

�쏧 just couldn�셳 believe how many connections there were to our case,�� Weber said. �쏡oc was found in a makeshift coffin. Sandy Little was in a makeshift box. He kept Doc�셲 body in the basement for six weeks and we know several of our girls were kept for an extended period of time. It all fit.��

Weber pulled the old investigative files and evidence from Atchison�셲 case from 51붚죕 County police. She spent two hours with a retired homicide detective. She interviewed people who remembered Muehlberg.

�쏧 wanted to figure out what type of person Gary was,�� she said.

Weber pulled a 1973 police report from Salina, Kansas. Muehlberg had been accused of tying up, gagging and threatening a 14-year-old babysitter with a knife in her home. He served some time in prison for the crime.

Associates of Muehlberg told Weber he was a twice-divorced narcissist.

�쏷hey just said he always thought he was better than everyone,�� she said. �쏦e always thought he was right.��

Muehlberg�셲 home in Bel-Ridge was torn down in 2019, but Weber looked at pictures and descriptions of the place from the old police report. It was run down with wires dangling everywhere, she said. The walls were severely damaged after a fire. In the basement, there was a concrete room that had its door hidden from visitors.

�쏧 don�셳 know how anyone could live there,�� she said.

Weber researched Muehlberg�셲 time in prison. He had been close to a model inmate with just one write-up over 27 years.

His only offense in custody? Passing some jellybeans to another inmate.

�쁗hat are you scared of?��

Weber brought Mike Harvey, an investigator for the St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney, to help question Muehlberg.

Weber remembers a long, tense wait. Then Muehlberg walked through the door.

�쏻e�셱e working a cold case from the early ��90s,�� she remembers telling him. �쏻e got your DNA. That�셲 why we�셱e here. We didn�셳 pull your name out of a hat.��

Weber showed him the lab report connecting him to Mihan�셲 death.

�쏧t says homicide,�� he told the detectives, looking at the paper. �쏛re you gonna charge me with some homicides?��

�쏧�셫 not gonna charge you with anything right now,�� Weber told him. �쏻e need to talk about this.��

Weber and Harvey described details in the deaths of Mihan, Little and Pruitt. They showed Muehlberg the crime scene photos of Mihan�셲 body.

He acted shocked by the picture, Weber recalled. It seemed fake to her.

So they tried different tactics.

�쏽ou�셱e 73 years old,�� Weber told him. �쏽ou have medical problems.��

They told him admitting to the murders could ease his mind. It could help the victim�셲 families.

He kept saying: �쏧 don�셳 know anything about this type of thing. You got the wrong person.��

Eventually, Weber asked: �쏥ary, what are you scared of? What are you worried about?��

Weber now clearly recalls his answer: �쏦e didn�셳 say being accused of murders I didn�셳 do. He said the death penalty.��

When the detectives suggested that an admission would give victims�� families closure, Muehlberg told them his brother died in Vietnam. He told them he got closure when he buried him.

�쏻ouldn�셳 you want to know,�� one of the detectives asked, �쐗hat happened to your brother?��

Muehlberg got emotional, but stopped answering questions. He shut down.

�쏻ould you be willing to talk to us again in the future?�� Weber asked.

�쏽eah,�� he said. �쏽ou know where I�셪l be.��

�쁍o more running��

A little more than a month later, the detectives returned to face Muehlberg a second time, now armed with letters from prosecutors in Lincoln, St. Charles and 51붚죕 counties promising that they would not seek the death penalty against him.

Weber also got a letter from the warden of the prison, telling Muehlberg his inmate privileges were based on his current behavior and would not be altered if he faced more charges.

�쏰K,�� Weber remembers Muehlberg saying. �쏬et�셲 get to it.��

The detectives then took him through all three cases. He admitted to each.

And he seemed to show remorse. �쏷his was a bad time in my life,�� he said. �쏷hese girls didn�셳 deserve this.��

�쏧 can�셳 tell you why I did this because I don�셳 even understand it myself,�� Weber said he told them.

Muehlberg said he met some victims on the street and others at a bar. He said he never knew many of their real names because they went by aliases. He took them all back to his Bel-Ridge home where he killed them, he told the detectives. He recalled dropping bodies on the sides of highways that matched the accounts in the police reports.

Weber asked if Muehlberg thought differently of sex workers. He said no, telling her he had picked up other prostitutes and let them go without hurting them.

�쏦e couldn�셳 really say why he chose to kill these specific women,�� Weber said.

Two days after that second interview, Muehlberg sent Weber a letter, admitting to two more killings.

The detective quickly identified one as Donna Reitmeyer, a 40-year-old sex worker whose body was found in June 1990 inside a rubber trash can in south 51붚죕. Investigators for decades suspected it might be linked with the others.

Weber is still working to identify the second. Muehlberg said he disposed of the body in a metal barrel at a self-serve car wash.

�쏧 must live with my past �� the good and bad parts,�� Muehlberg wrote at the end of the letter. �쏯o more running.��

Are there more?

Area prosecutors pushed to quickly charge Muehlberg because of his failing health.

They gathered at a press conference on Monday in Clayton, the 51붚죕 County seat, to announce the four new murder charges.

Weber opted not to take center stage. She instead stood most of the time behind the prosecutors, her eyes watching the victims�� family members in the crowd. She only took the microphone when pressed.

It was a big day for Weber, she said.

Since then, she has fielded calls from more families wondering if Gary Muehlberg is behind the deaths of their loved ones, too.

�쏦e claims he�셲 told us about all of the people he�셲 killed,�� Weber said.

�쏝ut from my experience,�� she said, �쏧 would guess there�셲 probably more.��