Gary Muehlberg's Fourth Police Interview on the "Package" Murders, Potosi Correctional Center, 2022 (Part 4)

Name: Gary Muehlberg's Fourth Police Interview on the "Package" Murders, Potosi Correctional Center, 2022 (Part 4)
Uploaded: 2023-09-08T00:00:00Z
Duration: 2 h 17 min 25 s
Description: In the last of four prison interviews, detectives pressed Gary Muehlberg for anything that might identify the woman he says he left in a barrel at a car wash. He drew them a map, but could not say who she was.

In the last of four prison interviews, detectives pressed Gary Muehlberg for anything that might identify the woman he says he left in a barrel at a car wash. He drew them a map, but could not say who she was.

Subject: Gary Randall Muehlberg
Recorded: about September 29, 2022
Runtime: 2:17:25

Content warning: His account of tying up women he had paid for sex, keeping them bound at his house and having sex with them before strangling them; a body kept in a metal barrel for months and its decomposition; the smell of decomposing bodies; references to sexual assault allegations against him; drug dealing.

The Interview

On September 29, 2022, according to KSDK, Detective Jodi Weber of the O'Fallon, Missouri, Police Department returned to Potosi Correctional Center for a fourth and final recorded interview with Gary Muehlberg. At least one other investigator was present; from what is said on the recording he was probably Mike Harvey of the St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, who had worked on the cases in the early 1990s. By then, prosecutors in three counties had charged Muehlberg with four murders (announced September 19, 2022). After he was read his rights again, he was questioned for a little over two hours. The session was recorded on a police camera, and KSDK News in St. Louis published it in September 2023, without narration, as the fourth of four parts.

Historical Context

In 1990 and 1991 the bodies of four women were found in the St. Louis area, each inside some kind of container: Robyn Mihan between two mattresses near Silex in Lincoln County, Donna Reitmeyer in a trash can in the city of St. Louis, Brenda Pruitt in a trash can in Maryland Heights, and Sandy Little in a dresser along I-70 in O'Fallon. The cases went unsolved. In 1993 Muehlberg was arrested for the murder of Kenneth "Doc" Atchison, whose body was found in a makeshift coffin in his home in Bel-Ridge; he was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life without parole. Decades later, Weber, an O'Fallon cold-case detective, linked his DNA to evidence from the 1990s cases.

Circumstances of the Interview

This was the last of four sessions between June and September 2022. In the first, Muehlberg had denied any memory of the killings and asked for a lawyer. In the second, after the prosecutors of St. Louis, St. Charles and Lincoln counties gave him letters saying they would not seek the death penalty, he confessed to three murders, and in the third he confessed to a fourth and described a fifth woman. By this visit the charges had been announced and he had seen the news on television. The session opens with arrangements: the investigators tell him the prosecutors are trying to handle the court proceedings "in-house" at Potosi, perhaps by video, rather than move him between county jails. In March 2023 he pleaded guilty in all three counties by video from prison.

What the Interview Covers

The investigators' main purpose is the fifth woman. They tell him they have contacted the medical examiner, retired detectives and others and still cannot identify her; one name they checked with the medical examiner's office turned out to be a 69-year-old woman, whom they ruled out. Muehlberg says he picked her up on the stroll in south St. Louis, kept her body behind his house for a few months, first in a cardboard barrel and then in a metal barrel with a ring-sealed lid, and left the barrel in a bay of a small car wash on Natural Bridge near his home in winter. He cannot remember what she looked like. He is shown photographs of missing women, whom he does not recognize, and pictures of car washes, and draws a sketch of the car wash's location. Asked again about bondage, he says that "a couple of them" had their hands tied behind their backs and that one was kept alive and bound at his house for "a day or two"; he says he still cannot explain why he killed some women and not others: "Why did I start with number one and quit with number five?" The second half is a review of his life: his childhood moves around Missouri, his Marine Corps service, his robbery conviction in Kansas in the 1970s, college, teaching, a failed trucking venture, construction work, his job with the Shriners, selling marijuana in the early 1990s, and his health and daily life in prison. Of the fifth woman he says, "She's a John Doe, or Jane Doe," and he promises to write if anything comes back to him.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The session shows investigators trying, after the charges had been filed, to identify a possible fifth victim from a confession that had little detail to give. Muehlberg answers at length but repeatedly says he does not remember the woman, the date or why he moved the barrel when he did. In this part he also says that some of the women were bound before he killed them, after denying bondage during sex in the third session. The woman in the barrel has never been identified or found.

Archival Importance

Recordings of a serial killer's police interviews are rarely made public at this length. Together, the four parts preserve about nine hours of the investigation that closed four murder cases that had been open for more than 30 years and led to four guilty pleas in March 2023. This last part records the search for the fifth woman at the point where it stalled, and a step-by-step review of his life, from childhood to his work in the early 1990s.

Important Caveats

No victim is named in this part. His account of the fifth woman is his claim alone: KSDK reported that police have not confirmed she existed. His statements that he recalls no other victims ("there was nothing besides these six"), that some of the bondage was voluntary, that nobody helped him and that he stopped because something "spooked" him are his claims and should not be read as established fact; so are his accounts of his work history, drug dealing and other people. The second interviewer is not named on the recording, and many questions cannot be assigned to a particular investigator. Several passages are hard to hear.

Gary Muehlberg: Caught me off guard. [unclear: "in this whole cup" / "he just woke up"] Don't have my teeth in.

Interviewer: Okay. Yeah, you're self-conscious about that, aren't you? You all right, though?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I'm okay.

Interviewer: Looks like something's on your mind. What's up?

Gary Muehlberg: I thought I'd be going back to St. Charles by now.

Det. Jodi Weber: What we're trying to do is work it out where you don't have to. That would be better for you, correct?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, it'd probably be better for everybody.

Det. Jodi Weber: One of the reasons is the health problem, health situation. Here they've got it somewhat under control.

Gary Muehlberg: Right.

Det. Jodi Weber: If we bring it back to either one of the three different places, we don't know what kind of, if they're set up for any type of that situation. I think the Department of Corrections would still be responsible for whatever medically happens.

Gary Muehlberg: Right.

Det. Jodi Weber: So I think from talking to the prosecutors and everything, that they're going to try to do everything in-house here. Okay? I mean, obviously it may be a Zoom call. I can't imagine anybody coming up here to do that. But I think we're working on that procedure right now.

Gary Muehlberg: Easy for everybody. I've been thinking about that too, to consolidate everything.

Det. Jodi Weber: Correct, correct.

Gary Muehlberg: Because all of them have been getting together, making arrangements for this and that. And they've all... Yeah. If there's things like the medication I take, even the adult pull-ups. Does this place supply them, or where I go, I have to do it, or back and forth?

Det. Jodi Weber: Yeah, that's probably one of the main problems. Yeah. And we don't want to, you know, put you through any of that, or put the jails through any of that.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Det. Jodi Weber: Because number one, it's a big responsibility.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah.

Det. Jodi Weber: You know, on your part, and [unclear: "unless the time travel" / "blessed time travel"], the personnel involved.

Gary Muehlberg: Correct, correct.

Det. Jodi Weber: So we're still working on that. I talked to my boss the other day, and he's working with everybody involved, and we'll work that out.

Gary Muehlberg: Okay.

Det. Jodi Weber: It'd be easy, easier.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: So, look like you're losing weight.

Gary Muehlberg: I don't think so.

Interviewer: Really?

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "I still ride it" / "I still write it"]

Interviewer: It was my impression too when you walked in.

Gary Muehlberg: Really? Yeah. Just the hair.

Interviewer: The hair, yeah. Just the hair, yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: I'm still around two and a quarter.

Interviewer: Okay. Yeah. All right. You want to get the paperwork out of the way?

Gary Muehlberg: Okay.

Det. Jodi Weber: All right. Before we ask any questions, you must understand your rights. You do not have to make a statement or answer any questions. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before you're asked any questions, and to have a lawyer present with you during questioning. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, and if you so desire, one will be appointed for you before any questioning. If you decide to answer questions and make a statement now, you will have the right to stop answering questions or remain silent at any time.

Interviewer: I'm gonna get you a bottle of water.

Gary Muehlberg: Thank you. Oh, okay. Thank you.

Interviewer: We brought donuts, but we gave them to the help. We brought donuts, but we gave them to the [unclear: "help cards" / "the cards"; probably "the guards"].

Gary Muehlberg: Since you didn't... Okay.

Interviewer: Need some help with that?

Gary Muehlberg: That's pop off or twist off?

Interviewer: Twist. There you go.

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Probably both" / "Hollywood"]

Interviewer: So have you been contacted by any public defenders or anything like that?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: I've been contacted by some people wanting to capitalize off of it, make money off of it. I talked to Ryan twice.

Interviewer: Oh, did you?

Gary Muehlberg: I told him at some later date down the road I might talk to him. He contacted me a second time wanting to talk, where he guaranteed he would not use the information until the time was right, and I'm going... I didn't answer that one. I had a letter from an attorney in Clayton, that the top corners of the advertisement...

Interviewer: Oh.

Gary Muehlberg: It gets to be understood.

Interviewer: Sure.

Gary Muehlberg: Talking to some of the other people in here who have had big cases, I'm expecting all kind of, you know, like, "We'll do this, we'll give you that." Man, I don't want to make anything off this. I just want it to be in the past. It's always going to be in my future. I'm always going to have a thought, it's always there, I can't get rid of it.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: And not to seem... I don't know, I can't even say this. What I did was terribly wrong, it's evil. But these people who are coming to me are people with other cases that want to make money off it.

Interviewer: [unclear: "Is this not also more of a goal?" / "Is this not also Marvel?"]

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yes. Yeah, that's another level of being. I know it's human nature, they want to, you know, make a living, sell books. Ryan works as a staff writer for the Riverfront Times, and this is how he makes his living, but I don't want to be any part of it.

Interviewer: That's understandable.

Gary Muehlberg: There's nothing they can give me or do for me that I want, you know.

Det. Jodi Weber: Did you get my latest letter?

Gary Muehlberg: Yes.

Det. Jodi Weber: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: I just got it, though, so...

Det. Jodi Weber: [unclear: "Oh, Grandma, love is to the family" / "I'm talking about though love this to the family"], what you're talking about.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I don't know if that's even possible.

Det. Jodi Weber: Well, she called me and sent me copies. I got copies of the letter, and I ran it by my boss, and he says at this time it probably wouldn't be appropriate.

Gary Muehlberg: That's right. Yeah.

Det. Jodi Weber: And so basically that's going to be on hold for a while.

Gary Muehlberg: Okay. But I...

Det. Jodi Weber: Go ahead.

Gary Muehlberg: No, go ahead.

Det. Jodi Weber: No, but I think that somewhere down the line that's very [unclear: "possible" / "impossible"].

Gary Muehlberg: I didn't see the letters. I didn't want to... I had to go over and talk. I didn't want to contact them directly.

Det. Jodi Weber: Correct.

Gary Muehlberg: Because I know that that's not the right thing to do.

Det. Jodi Weber: Correct.

Gary Muehlberg: And like that. If you can, great. If you can't, okay, too. You know.

Det. Jodi Weber: Have you heard from any of the families?

Gary Muehlberg: No, I haven't. I haven't.

Det. Jodi Weber: All right. We didn't know if they would allow something like that or not.

Gary Muehlberg: I don't know. No. I don't, I can't say they haven't tried, because the way letters are received here. It's like legal mail we can get. But if my sister or anybody writes a letter, it goes to Florida and it gets put on our tablet.

Interviewer: Correct.

Gary Muehlberg: And I don't know if everybody knows the address down there.

Interviewer: No.

Gary Muehlberg: No. Okay. I don't know if my ex-wife has heard from anybody. I know my sister says that was a relief. I didn't know she had been talking to y'all for like three months, or you'd been talking to her.

Det. Jodi Weber: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: And last week, Wednesday, I think, when I called her, I finally decided to talk to her, and when I started saying something, she says, "Forget it. I know all about it." I want to do what... Which was a burden off of me. I wanted to give her a heads up before it hit the news.

Det. Jodi Weber: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: I didn't want her to find out from TV. So I gave her...

Det. Jodi Weber: I know you talked to her prior to that.

Gary Muehlberg: I did, yeah.

Det. Jodi Weber: That's before we kind of, you know, got to talking to you and all that kind of thing.

Gary Muehlberg: I didn't call her again till... Yeah. I appreciate the courtesy y'all giving to my family. It means something.

Det. Jodi Weber: So that made it, made the conversation with her a lot easier, or whatever.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah.

Det. Jodi Weber: What'd you guys talk about?

Gary Muehlberg: Not that much about this, just that she was aware of everything, and you'd contacted her, and some people from some newspaper have called wanting to interview her, and she won't do it either.

Det. Jodi Weber: No.

Interviewer: Did you discuss anything about any of the cases? That she asked you any details or anything like that?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: And you didn't volunteer any?

Gary Muehlberg: No. She just, like she told me, "We're still blood, brother and sister. We're family."

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: You know, and she didn't even express in any way want to know any details or anything about it. You know, she did call my son out in Kansas, called my cousins up in New York, to let them know, because it was on the Associated Press. I mean, it went out broad time, big time.

Interviewer: How did you find out about the newscast, the press release?

Gary Muehlberg: TV.

Interviewer: You saw it on TV?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. How did you think that went? Did we...

Gary Muehlberg: I mean, I never gave that one much thought.

Interviewer: I mean, nobody really portrayed you in any other... Was it fair?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Nothing that... I knew a couple of the inmates came down and knocked on my door: "You're on TV." I went, "Okay." So when I got it turned on, it was like, whoa. Everybody knows now.

Interviewer: You know, have you been approached by anybody in here asking you details or anything like that?

Gary Muehlberg: Nothing about details. It's a strange environment I live in. If you're not real familiar with it, it's hard to understand. I don't fully understand it. I'm accepting it. But I've got a good support team.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: From not only religious people, but people with, it's hard to believe, cases worse than mine, that, they're not glorifying anything, but they're talking to me. One or two gentlemen that are on death row that are getting real close. Very supportive.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: Not really talking about anything in depth on a case, just the emotional trauma, the stress, things being lifted off that. The one, I'm trying to think how he said it. It made me feel good in a way, that he admired me as an individual for being a man and standing up to it, accepting full responsibility. And as I said, here it's hard. It's hard.

Interviewer: Has anything gotten worse? Has anything gotten worse? You're not getting any threats or anything like that?

Gary Muehlberg: No. No. There's one gentleman, Larry, works out at rec, and he'd asked me, he said somebody asked him, "Did they lock Muehlberg up?" And they were, "For what?" Now, I have no fear, no threats, no nothing. If there are any lurking, nobody's aware of it, you know. Nothing, nothing to that degree.

Interviewer: Did they give you any advice, these guys that you refer to? Any advice about this whole process?

Gary Muehlberg: Not necessarily what's going to happen, but advice of just opening up about what happened, you know.

Interviewer: Recognizing those details that we've asked you, you know, and we'd like to get cleared up. Have you given that some thought? Some more details about what happened?

Gary Muehlberg: Only as far as tell the authorities, the people, what they want to know, as far as I can, you know.

Interviewer: They suggest you be totally open?

Gary Muehlberg: Which I have been, too.

Interviewer: Sure, sure.

Gary Muehlberg: One of them even said, now that they're... Everybody's different, like to say, "No, no, they're going to take me back and hold me and do all this stuff." Nobody knows. Like you said, you're working on something, no guarantees. "We look for you to have the FBI come down and interview you to profile you, and don't lie to the FBI. They'll give you more time." I almost laughed at them. I said, "Well, I don't plan on lying to anybody." I mean, if the authorities want to ask questions, I will be as honest as I know. Because like, and this you may not want to hear, but I cannot detail what I did exactly at 12:01 yesterday. I mean, you know, I don't have total recall. I wish I did, you know, on a lot of, not only this case, but a lot of other things, of mistakes or things that happened in the past, you know. I've been, I've been trying, but like I said, after I got out of the hospital this last time, that set me back, that I got back here on a Wednesday evening, called my sister, and then found out my daughter passed away the day before.

Interviewer: Sorry to hear about that. We did know that. I think you wrote that in the letter.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. It's like, I'm trying not ever to ask myself, "What else can happen? How can it get worse?" Because darn if it don't, you know.

Interviewer: Have you heard from your other son?

Gary Muehlberg: (his son, name withheld)? No. My sister contacted him, and he works for the railroad, so he's not... I don't know his hours and stuff like that, but we'll touch base eventually.

Interviewer: Yeah. You know, one of the reasons, one of the things that we're, I shouldn't say struggling with, but we have questions about... Four out of the five, that we, you know, we've identified, we've done everything. We're having a hell of a time trying to figure out the fifth one. We've contacted the medical examiner, we've contacted old detectives, people. We just, there's a whole lot of people that have been contacted, and we just cannot find the fifth one. And that's one of the main reasons we want to come back up and talk again, to see if we can go over... [unclear: "what we mean behind we don't fight" / "wouldn't, wouldn't find an identifier"] Yeah. We don't have her, we don't have her identified.

Gary Muehlberg: I can probably... The one that was in the barrel.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. She, like I said before, I don't remember who was first and who was last.

Interviewer: Correct.

Gary Muehlberg: Names, they all used street names.

Interviewer: Correct.

Gary Muehlberg: You know. You'd be surprised with some of the nicknames in this place.

Interviewer: Do you remember what she looked like?

Gary Muehlberg: No, I wish I could. But I figured she had been at my house the longest, in the barrel.

Interviewer: Did you have her in the barrel along with another?

Gary Muehlberg: No. No.

Interviewer: You mean two of them in one?

Gary Muehlberg: No, no, no.

Interviewer: Two different, at the same time?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. No.

Interviewer: Because I thought you said you had had the one in the box and the one in the barrel at the same time.

Gary Muehlberg: But not at the same time.

Interviewer: Oh, okay. You had them back behind your place for a period of time.

Gary Muehlberg: The young lady in the barrel, I think started out, no, not think, I know, was in a cardboard barrel that we had had some clothes stored in in the basement, that I emptied out. But it wasn't a real stable barrel.

Interviewer: Cardboard with like metal rims around it?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: And then I think the following day I got the metal barrel and put everything in it.

Interviewer: Where'd you get that barrel?

Gary Muehlberg: I can't really recall. I don't know if I saw it somewhere. I know there's a place not far from where I lived that sold barrels, like you make barbecue pits or storage, or shipping out of.

Interviewer: All right.

Gary Muehlberg: I'll give that some thought. She sat behind my house for a few months.

Interviewer: You said you put her and other things in the barrel?

Gary Muehlberg: Just that cardboard, and then put all that, her, in the metal barrel.

Interviewer: Okay. So you didn't have to physically transfer her, you know, your hands on her skin. You put the barrel in there.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, it was kind of like the cardboard barrel standing upright, and then you just lift it and slip the metal one over it, and turn it over.

Interviewer: Yeah. Seal the lid down?

Gary Muehlberg: And then you seal the lid down. Oh, yeah. It had a, I can't remember what it's called, but it had the ring, that once the lid was on, you put the ring around it and snapped it shut.

Interviewer: What do you remember about anything of that night? Do you remember anything that would help us identify her in any way? Is there... Obviously, conversation, you don't remember conversations or anything like that? Or where you picked her up?

Gary Muehlberg: Where I picked her up? Down south St. Louis, down what they called the stroll at the time. I don't... I remember reading something in the paper about somebody trying to make a facial recognition out of clay or something, to identify somebody, and [unclear: "a cross" / "uh, cross"]. But I don't know if that was her or somebody else.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I can't, I can't recall.

Interviewer: What do you recall about where you put her? Because you had told us a certain area that you put her in.

Gary Muehlberg: It wasn't, it wasn't that far from my home. I mean, I lived in Bel-Ridge on East Edgar, and the car wash was not that far from where East Edgar came into Natural Bridge. I know I used a van.

Interviewer: What time of day was it? What time of day?

Gary Muehlberg: Real late evening or early morning.

Interviewer: Do you remember if you washed your vehicle out? Did you wash your vehicle? Did you use the car wash that night, for any reason?

Gary Muehlberg: I probably did. I probably did. It was in, I think, the wintertime, and the van, yeah, I washed it off. Regular cleaning, like washing the outside, cleaning the inside, but there were no telltale signs from what was in there. I mean...

Interviewer: Was there anybody else? Did you notice anybody else around the car wash at that time?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm sure there were cars driving by, but I don't...

Interviewer: Anybody washing their cars?

Gary Muehlberg: It was a small, I think, a two-bay car wash. Yeah, I think it just, maybe, maybe a three-bay, with the one bay taller for, like, pickup trucks and vans and [unclear: "into that" / "news of that"].

Interviewer: Do you remember the name of that car wash?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, I sure don't. I don't really know if it had a name. Oh, no, I can't. I don't think I ever knew if it had a name.

Interviewer: The place where you put that barrel at the car wash, describe that. At what location? Inside the bay, outside?

Gary Muehlberg: I was inside the bay, because when I pulled in, I opened, the van had double doors on the side. It wasn't a slider. And I pulled the barrel out and just sat it against the wall.

Interviewer: Like where the wand would be?

Gary Muehlberg: Closer to it, yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer: And are you sure that was the place you put... that car wash? Could it be confused with another car wash?

Gary Muehlberg: No. No. Because I know when I left there, I went to the Waffle House to get a cup of coffee or something.

Interviewer: There you go. Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: They were basically in the neighborhood.

Interviewer: That's very close. You know, these others, O'Fallon, Lincoln County, Maryland Heights...

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: A little bit further from your house. What do you think of... Did you think about the risk you were taking, so close to your house, disposing of that body?

Gary Muehlberg: Not really, because it's, like, Natural Bridge is well-traveled. It's not isolated, it's out in the open.

Interviewer: Why at that particular time? Was there anything happening with the barrel, odor, or seepage, or anything that you would say, "I think I better do it at this particular time"?

Gary Muehlberg: It just, not... I don't know why at that particular time I did it. I mean, why I moved it then and not earlier or later.

Interviewer: Any reason why you would have kept it for two or three months, as opposed to the other ones?

Gary Muehlberg: Not knowing what to do. Hesitation.

Interviewer: So would you think that might have been the first one?

Gary Muehlberg: For as bad as, you say, if she's decomposed, yeah.

Interviewer: When you look at the timeline of when the bodies were found, you know, and the timeline when they were last seen by their friends or acquaintances down on the stroll, when you just look at the timelines, there was, what, at least two occasions that you must have had, either on your property or somewhere else, two different bodies. Because otherwise, from the time they left to the time they're found, they're going to be not... stacking up, that's probably a bad term, but they're missing.

Gary Muehlberg: Mm-hmm.

Interviewer: And they're not found yet, so they've got to be somewhere. So was there a time when you had two bodies in some sort of container at your property?

Gary Muehlberg: That's what, like, [unclear: "yes" / "you guys girl"], I can't a hundred percent say no, there wasn't two, but I don't remember having them.

Interviewer: [unclear: "Which is a stack up" / "What you just, stack up"]...

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I know the wording. See, I'm not real, real sure how much time really elapsed between each one, or the group of five. Was it over a course of six months, eight months, two months? There's, as cold-hearted as it may sound, I did not keep track of things. I mean, I didn't keep souvenirs and mementos. I didn't keep a scrapbook or mark dates on a calendar.

Interviewer: From the time you might pick up any one of those girls from the stroll, and you take them home to have sex...

Gary Muehlberg: Right.

Interviewer: And then taking their life. But during that time, do you ever interact with anyone else?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Who do you interact with?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, you mean like friends, family?

Interviewer: Yeah. You know, "This is my friend so-and-so."

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't like I isolated myself in a cavern or a cave and came out just to get somebody to kill, and stay in a cave. I mean, I had an ongoing lifestyle.

Interviewer: Sure. But during that interaction with friends and family, do they ever see any of the girls you take home? Just by coincidence, they come by?

Gary Muehlberg: No. No, it was always, like, a late evening that I'd bring them back to the house.

Interviewer: You mentioned that often... Well, each time they were picked up from the stroll. Was there ever a time you picked them up within a bar, a store?

Gary Muehlberg: There, I mean, I don't know if I can clarify this, but what's working on my mind at times really heavy is, these are not the only five young ladies I paid for sex. There are ones in between. What caused me to take the life of this one, but maybe not the next one or two or whatever, and then strike again? It wasn't like striking every time.

Interviewer: Was there ever a time that you actually picked one up from a bar and she ended up losing her life? You met her in a bar...

Gary Muehlberg: Right.

Interviewer: And then you ended up taking her life. Do you remember a scenario like that?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Generally, yeah.

Interviewer: What was the bar?

Gary Muehlberg: I got it pictured in my mind. I think it was called the Wedge, which is down on Jefferson and Broadway. The way the building was shaped, the way the streets come together, give it that wedge. Catty-cornered from a bank. I think that's where I picked the one young lady up.

Interviewer: Which young lady was that? Which package was that?

Gary Muehlberg: Man, I can't, I can't recall that. Man, I really wish I could identify the one, because the family is still not knowing.

Interviewer: What race was she?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, Caucasian.

Interviewer: Do you know age?

Gary Muehlberg: No. No.

Interviewer: How did you kill her?

Gary Muehlberg: Like the other. Strangled.

Interviewer: Right, but some were like ropes, some were hands. How about that one?

Gary Muehlberg: I see. To me, when I say strangled, it means by some means: my hand, the rope, whatever. I mean, not like they weren't... They weren't shot, they weren't stabbed, they weren't sliced and diced, they weren't beaten. For the life of me, I can't really say which one had a rope or a string or my hands.

Interviewer: Gary, we got a name of somebody. We checked with the medical examiner's office.

Gary Muehlberg: Okay.

Interviewer: And the best we were able to find out, she was a 69-year-old woman.

Gary Muehlberg: What?

Interviewer: A 69-year-old Black woman.

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: As soon as I heard that, I said, I can't imagine that being anybody that we want to look at. Because we got her name and things like that, but nothing, nothing of that age.

Interviewer: Were most of the women white?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I believe so. One might have been almost like darker skin complexion, but they were all Caucasian, or white. There were no Chinese or Orientals or Blacks.

Interviewer: I'm going to show you a picture and see if you recognize her. [About 31:47 to 32:00: no speech in either machine source while photographs are shown.]

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Yeah, it was both of the same person" / "Those both are the same person"]. No, I don't recognize either one of them.

Interviewer: Okay. How about this one? [About 32:20 to 32:31: no speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: [unclear: "No, she was missing from Shrewsbury" / "He said she was missing from Shrewsbury"].

Interviewer: Yeah, but she hung out in south St. Louis. [About 32:39 to 32:48: no speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: I believe Shrewsbury took the missing person's report, but she used to hang out on the stroll, correct?

Interviewer: Yeah, correct.

Gary Muehlberg: No. It just doesn't ring any bell whatsoever.

Interviewer: One more. [About 33:05 to 33:18: no speech in either machine source.]

Gary Muehlberg: This one looks almost like a girl I used to date.

Interviewer: When you say date, you mean pick them up?

Gary Muehlberg: No, no. She [unclear: "worked" / "'s actually"]...

Interviewer: You actually dated her?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Let's see. [unclear: "It doesn't look like" / "That looked like"] (a woman he dated, name withheld) a little bit. I met her through a family, a friend of my family, and while I was teaching school at Hubert Wheeler, I dated her for a little while. But nothing happened to (the same woman, name withheld). I mean, we were friends, we dated, with nothing really romantically inclined. Now, those pictures, it's like, I don't know why they're blocking... my mind is blocking things out. It's not only to help you all, but to help the family, and help me.

Interviewer: When you dated women, other than when you picked them up off the stroll, was there ever any action done that would, they would be in fear of you in any way? I mean, was there ever a role play that you might have done that would kind of make them standoffish, as to, "Whoa, what's going on?" You know what I mean?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I know what you're saying. No. Because when I'm dating, it's more or less like just general companionship. You get tired of, not tired... You go out to eat by yourself, [unclear: "go to a show" / "or chill"] by yourself. [unclear: "Go to bed when you have friends" / "It goes better when you have friends"], male or female.

Interviewer: Correct.

Gary Muehlberg: I had a few platonic relationships where, you know, it was just going out to be with someone. There was a couple times where, oh, (the same woman, name withheld), for one, would call me, see what I was doing, and we'd meet at a restaurant, meet at a pizza place. She'd pay, I'd pay.

Interviewer: Nothing really romantic, heavy romance or anything like that?

Gary Muehlberg: No, no. No.

Interviewer: Do you remember, prior to all these girls that lost their lives, do you remember ever forcing someone to have sexual contact with you? [About 36:02 to 36:10: no speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: Mean to the point of being raped?

Gary Muehlberg: Yes... No. I know there's one that... My ex-wife, when we were separated. And the thing that kept me from going to jail then was, when (former wife, name withheld) and I separated, she took the kids and moved back home with her family.

Interviewer: Yeah. Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: And she had a friend. And I kept the house, and [unclear: "you agree when I was gonna get it" / "agree I was going to get it"]. It was a no-fault divorce, and I was trying to win her back, and we had a relationship at night, and she went to her girlfriend's house, and they went to the police, said I tried to rape her. They took both of them to Clayton, or to a hospital for a rape kit or something, and the officer heard them in the back seat giggling and said something to the effect of, "We got him. You'll get the house now." And they went, they're not going to press charges, and everything just went away.

Interviewer: Okay.

Interviewer: We talked about picking up these girls that lost their lives, having sex with them, right? But you really never satisfied our questions regarding any type of bondage. Tying of the hands.

Gary Muehlberg: Okay.

Interviewer: Gags.

Gary Muehlberg: Okay.

Interviewer: You must have given those questions some thought since we talked to you. What did you come up with?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, there's... I can't say all of them, but it might have been a couple of them that were bound, their hands tied behind their back.

Interviewer: Why?

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm. That's a good question. To keep them from [unclear: "fighting back" / "biting back"], or to keep them there while I was doing other things.

Interviewer: What do you mean, other things? Like going to work or something?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: How long do you think they remained bound and alive at your house?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm thinking one of them, a day or two.

Interviewer: Are you having periodic sex with them in between?

Gary Muehlberg: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Interviewer: And are they fighting?

Gary Muehlberg: Mm-hmm. No.

Interviewer: Ever any type of weapon involved? Anything sharp?

Gary Muehlberg: No. I didn't own any firearms. I, for one, I couldn't, legally. No, no.

Interviewer: And then, by the decision to end their life... If you got them there, they're bound, they can't leave. It's a source of sexual contact. Why come to that point where you no longer need them alive?

Gary Muehlberg: You're asking the same question I've been asking myself time and time again. If they willingly went to my house, I paid them...

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: Why did some of them I take home, take back? Unfortunately, five of them I didn't. Why?

Interviewer: Why, or what provoked that type of behavior? I mean...

Gary Muehlberg: I don't know.

Interviewer: Do you recall, when you're talking about the one that you may have had there for one or two days, do you remember what type of packaging you used on her? Which one that would have been?

Gary Muehlberg: No, no. I mean, that may come to mind in time, but... I'm trying my best to remember everything. Even, even if I don't divulge it. I know you all need as much, you need the whole scenario. Not as much as me.

Interviewer: Is there anything that you wouldn't divulge to us? Is there anything that comes to mind that you just, "I just don't want to tell them that"?

Gary Muehlberg: No. How can it be any worse? You know, it's like...

Interviewer: Right. It's out there now.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Way, way out there.

Interviewer: Well, believe it or not, sometimes when we sit down and talk to people, even though they divulge what they did, there's always these details. For instance, you're just now saying they were left bound and kept for a little while. Sometimes it's just, some people are embarrassed, even though what they did was this thing, not good, but still they hang on to that one thing that, "I'm kind of embarrassed about that." Is there anything like that? So for instance, was the act of binding them, gagging them, keeping them, part of the sexual arousal?

Gary Muehlberg: It might have been. It might have been. But you see, holding stuff back from myself would not, no. It's like, everything's in here. Why would I hold this back and not that back, or admit to myself one thing and not the other, because nobody would know about it but me? Yeah. Holding things back from you all, I almost, what's the word, feel obligated to be a hundred percent truthful. Because in the back of my mind, no matter what, you always [unclear: "don't comment to this"], okay? In the back of my mind, there's always that threat, to pull the agreement of no death penalty off the case. And why am I worried about the death penalty? I'm going to die. I don't want to die by my hand or the state's hand. I'm going to die naturally.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: You know what I'm saying?

Interviewer: Yes. I mean, even if you were to pull that agreement back right now, that would draw this out a long way.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I don't think a person can plead guilty to the death penalty.

Interviewer: We've had one, but it got reversed. He pled to the death penalty, the judge gave it to him, and he got reversed.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. That's probably what would happen. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I don't want to delay, for numerous reasons, any of this. Closure for the family, for you all, for me, for my family.

Interviewer: Did you mention anything like this to your sister?

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "That you just" / "you"] just want to... No. "Do whatever you want, need to do, to get it over with." She stands behind me, and I, no matter what decisions I make. I mean, I'm her brother, she's my sister. We did not discuss anything that wasn't in the paper or on the news, you know, common knowledge. Even with people in here that are the supports I'm talking about, they're not asking, because it's like, boils down to [unclear: "here is another business" / "another business"], but there's an understanding in this kind of an environment. You know what you know, you accept what you know, but you don't dig for anything, you know. Because it's like, if I were to ask somebody about their crime, "Why?" You know, it's like, it is what it is, that happened. You know, you're accepting. Just trying to help get over a hell of a hurdle, or a burden.

Det. Jodi Weber: So I know you said you couldn't remember a time, as far as this last one that's not identified...

Gary Muehlberg: Okay.

Det. Jodi Weber: If you, I mean, can you put more thought into that? Because I just feel like...

Gary Muehlberg: Yes, ma'am.

Det. Jodi Weber: You know what I mean? I just feel like we could probably pinpoint a certain time of when those occurred, compared to the other ones.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Because... Oh, man. Her family's got a right to know if that's her or not. Or some family, if she has a family.

Det. Jodi Weber: Right. And I'm getting quite a few phone calls from families saying, "I think it's my mom. Do you think it's my aunt? Do you think...?" You know.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I can understand that.

Det. Jodi Weber: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I, man, I will give that a whole lot of thought. Because she, she don't have anybody come put flowers on her grave.

Interviewer: Sure.

Gary Muehlberg: She's a John Doe, or Jane Doe, or whatever.

Interviewer: And I know we've bombarded you with questions. Is there anything that you've thought of since we were here last? Any detail of any of the cases, or...?

Gary Muehlberg: No. I've been, no, I can't really come up with anything more right now. Not to make excuses, but that five days in the hospital, and my daughter's death, kind of like...

Interviewer: Set you back.

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "such a bear" (Whisper only)]. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that the suffering I went through, knowing (his daughter, name withheld) was not in the best of health, and her demise. I can't imagine what these families have gone through for 32 years. It's a lifetime.

Interviewer: So what, what made you stop? What made you stop?

Gary Muehlberg: That's what I've been... I, you know, I just, I've been giving a lot of thought to different scenarios, categories, like dating in high school, dating in college, dating when I got out, being married, divorced. What, what turned this on, and what turned it off completely? Because like I said, you're like, I don't remember the first or second victim, but what caused me not to do things in between, or to do things? I mean, you know what I'm saying? It's like, why did I start with number one and quit with number five? Why didn't I quit with number three? Why didn't I go on to number seven? Why did I even start? Why didn't I even stop? Why did I have pauses? Things like, mind-boggling. I don't know. I don't think I'm afraid to know. I owe it to myself, if there's nobody else, to fully understand the complexity of all this. And this is not anything easy for anybody.

Interviewer: What about any other state that you may have lived in? Can you tell me that? What about any other state that you may have lived in? Anything like this occur?

Gary Muehlberg: No. With my involvement?

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: No, no. I've only lived in two states, Kansas and Missouri. I've visited other states, but no.

Interviewer: So tell us more about that time. You said you owned a tractor-trailer, right?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: How long did you own that?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, probably about eight months, when I went bankrupt.

Interviewer: Okay. And you said you used it? You used it yourself?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah, yeah. When I was teaching at Hubert Wheeler, I drove a bus part-time, because I wasn't...

Gary Muehlberg: I wasn't a full-time teacher. I was a part-time sub. And to supplement my income, I drove a school bus before and after, to the school. And through the bus garage I met a couple other bus drivers. We talked and, get to the chase, we decided to buy a tractor-trailer for the summertime, and we bought it from over in East St. Louis, by the stockyards. It was a good used truck. I mean, it was good and used, and it had a lot of problems up front. Like within the first three months, the engine blew, the radiator went out, so we weren't on the road. Our first trip to Chicago, we caught a couple-hundred-dollar fine at a weigh station, because we were [unclear: "axled out wrong" / "absolute outgrown"]. I had too much weight on the axles. So we had no business, but it was an adventure.

Interviewer: Did you always drive with another driver?

Gary Muehlberg: No. During the time or two that I'd take it up by myself, or (his business partner, name withheld) would take it up. The adventure went out of it for me real early. I wasn't put on this earth to live out of a suitcase, you know.

Interviewer: You said (the same man, name withheld)? Who was that?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. The gentleman that we bought... We were partners on the truck.

Interviewer: What was his last name?

Gary Muehlberg: I think that was his last name. I think his first name might have been (name withheld). (Full name withheld), and they called him (nickname withheld).

Interviewer: Is he still alive?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, I have no idea. I haven't, I haven't talked to him since we, uh, parted ways over the truck deal.

Interviewer: What time period are you talking about, when you owned the truck and then when you quit?

Gary Muehlberg: Let's see. The late '70s, early '80s. Because I came back from Warrensburg. I graduated Central Methodist in '77, '78. Probably somewhere around '79, in that time frame.

Interviewer: And it was a short period?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah. It was like way under a year. Six, seven months.

Interviewer: All right.

Gary Muehlberg: I know we took the truck out for a test drive, and everything was great. Never dawned on me that, it's like a car: you drive one way with a car, you drive another way when you're towing a trailer. And when you put a 45-foot dry box on the back end of a truck, loaded, it drives a whole bunch different.

Interviewer: Did you ever drive any other trucks? Did you ever work for a company that would have a box truck or anything like that?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Or did you ever tow a trailer with any of your vehicles?

Gary Muehlberg: Uh, there was a few occasions, when I worked for the Shriners, that I would drive a straight-axle truck, when the circus was in town.

Interviewer: Was that like a box truck?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no pivot point. It's just a long, grown-out, like a [unclear: "hurt surrender" / "her surrender"] truck. Okay? But that was only for like less than a week, you know, at work.

Interviewer: And when did you work for the Shriners? When did you, when did you work for the Shriners?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, late part of the '80s, after my divorce. In fact, I'm thinking, when I got hired and I started to work, I had to take the second day off to go to my divorce hearing. That would have been, oh, mid, mid to late '80s. When they were, they were located down on Sarah. It was in between them moving from Moolah Temple out to Maryland Heights. So I'm not really sure what year that was. Late, late '80s, late to mid '80s.

Interviewer: How long have you worked there?

Gary Muehlberg: A couple years. It was like a real good job. And there's things there that I'm aware of that I can't talk about.

Interviewer: They got a lot of secrets, don't they?

Gary Muehlberg: Well, part of my job was, like, helping haul stuff to and from the circus, setting up...

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: When they'd have their initiation ceremonies. There's a lot of things that I saw and heard that belong to a secretive fraternal organization, and I will take those to my grave. My dad was a 33rd-degree Mason, which is an honorary degree. You can earn, through the York Rite, Scottish Rite, you can earn degrees up to your 32nd degree. The 33rd is bestowed upon you, you know. It was a good job. A lot of long hours, hard work, but...

Interviewer: So when you were picking up the girls from the stroll, even the ones that didn't lose their life, all of them, were you ever stopped by the police, just because you're a john, or you're in an area? You know how it is. They know what goes on in the area, and sometimes they make traffic stops. Did you ever get stopped?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Which, now that you mention it, it's surprising, because certain areas of any town, at certain times of the day or night, people wonder why you're there.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure law enforcement and neighbors all knew what went on after hours on the stroll. Oh, yeah, you know. Human nature: sometimes turn a blind eye. I know the one time, and this came to mind a couple weeks ago. You can tell, when you're walking and looking at, and you pull over, and this one attractive young lady, blonde, you know, "Are you looking for a date?" Whatever, some yes-no questions back and forth, and I just looked at her and said, "Officer, get the F away from my car."

Interviewer: It was that obvious?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Well, from my understanding now, and even I think at the time, is, an undercover officer that's trying to catch guys and stuff like that will not get in a vehicle.

Interviewer: Probably so.

Gary Muehlberg: So when she stood there with her hand on the roof talking, it was like red lights going off, [unclear: "down at the dump" / "again"]. "Goodbye, officer. Get away from my vehicle."

Interviewer: Yeah.

Interviewer: So you have the five, that we're still trying to determine that fifth's identity, but you got five there, and then there was Doc later on. That's six. How many people do you think you've killed in your lifetime?

Gary Muehlberg: I don't really know how to answer that question, because, directly or indirectly?

Interviewer: And this is what I'd say: directly, yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Out of the Marine" / "Are the Marines"]. Yeah. So directly, yeah. Yeah. Just, so, six.

Interviewer: Did you see... You didn't see combat, right?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Because you said about your brother.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: So there would be no combat experience where you would have killed anybody there? Because you really hesitated when you, when we asked you that question. And now what about indirectly? What do you mean by indirectly? Is there... Are you responsible for anything indirectly?

Gary Muehlberg: Just because of being in the Corps, job-wise, training-wise. No, there's not even indirectly. I mean, there was nothing besides these six that I had anything at all to do with somebody losing their life.

Interviewer: Yeah. Did you associate with prostitutes while you were the truck driver, going to Chicago? Did you associate with prostitution?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: What about your trips to Iowa back in the day? Did you associate with prostitutes back then?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Going to Iowa with, by myself or with my family...

Gary Muehlberg: Uh, now, the visit, visit Sis and her family up there. One of the first trips I went up to see (two relatives, names withheld), I had my mom, my grandmother and the family dog in the back seat.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: So, you know.

Interviewer: Not the time or place, right?

Gary Muehlberg: No. And things like that trip stick out now. At the time it was serious, but it was humorous afterwards. I'm driving down the highway, and the weather's a little chilly, and the grandmother's in the front seat. The thermos of coffee, and she opens the thermos near the front window: instant fog. Or having a collie dog lick the back of your head while you're driving.

Interviewer: Yeah. Were you passing those areas where you disposed of the bodies, with other people in the car, and had thoughts?

Gary Muehlberg: No. I mean, I'm sure the one young lady up near Troy, I think of Highway [unclear: "64" (both); probably Highway 61], that goes from, like, Wentzville all the way up into Iowa. But back then, the trip with the dog, that would have been '76, '77, way before any of this. I didn't make any trips, after all this started or ended, to Iowa.

Interviewer: What about Indianapolis? You said you had traveled there?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. There was a... The company we leased out to in East St. Louis, I think it was Island Cartage or something like that. We hauled, I hauled, with the truck, a lot of Anheuser-Busch products, rolled steel out of Indianapolis, Indiana. Food products out of [unclear: "Milstead" (both)], Illinois. Golden Dip, I think, the name of the company was. Mainly to and from Chicago, St. Louis, Indiana. I'm not sure what the name of the town was. It was cold-rolled steel on pallets. Isn't Indianapolis southern Illinois? Down southern, or is that up near the lakes? I can't recall. I've been there numerous times. There's a town I was in, Indianapolis, in reference to the case with Doc. When I had called my boss, (his former employer, name withheld), and he said the police wanted to talk to me, I called him and I came back to the police department to talk to him. I can't recall the name of the town in Indianapolis I was in. I was visiting some friends.

Interviewer: Have you given any more thought to if anybody's helped you with any of these? Anyone? Anyone has helped you, either with any help...

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. [unclear: "They're what?" / "Deal with"] Disposing of the bodies, or...? No, there's nobody else involved.

Interviewer: No one else involved?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Let me ask you this. If there was, would you tell us?

Gary Muehlberg: Yes, sir, I would.

Interviewer: What, what started you on your adventure, to start picking up people off the stroll, women off the stroll? I mean, because you were actively dating, right?

Gary Muehlberg: Well, yeah.

Interviewer: So what was the necessity to start using the women off the stroll?

Gary Muehlberg: That's a good question. I don't...

Interviewer: Was there anything that happened in your life that... Rejection from a girlfriend, or...?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Because it's like, I had all kind of friends that we did all different kind of things with. Hell, with (the woman he dated, name withheld), when I first came back to St. Louis, her mom and aunt were schoolteachers, and there's some summer retreat down off 44. Her brother was a Marianist priest, and we didn't stay together at this retreat. They had separate lodging. (Another woman, name withheld) was a waitress at a little diner in Overland. We went to New Orleans for four or five days, just to get away from St. Louis. But that was right after my home burned. Well after this time, a good year or two after all this. I don't know. It's like I said, I'm trying to piece together different recollections, and some fit and some don't.

Interviewer: Was the sexual contact that you had in relationships, your wives, girlfriends, dates, that sexual relationship, was that very much different than the sexual contact that you'd have with prostitution?

Gary Muehlberg: As far as...?

Interviewer: The activities.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, the activities. Oh, yeah. [unclear: "Being a knight" / "your day and night"].

Interviewer: Yeah. So maybe the reason for contact with prostitutes, because you can live out that sexual activity with them, and not necessarily with real relationships.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Especially the bondage.

Interviewer: Yeah. Was there bondage in a regular relationship?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Not part of it. No.

Interviewer: But with prostitutes it was. Is that something you had to pay extra for, the bondage with the prostitutes, or was that all forced?

Gary Muehlberg: I think it's just a package deal. I mean, I don't think there's any extra. Maybe there was. I don't, I don't remember right now.

Interviewer: And each time, we asked you this before, but each time, did you have these things that you would need, like rope or other types of bondage? Did you have those ready before you brought them home?

Gary Muehlberg: I'd have to say no, but don't hold me to it. I mean, being in construction and a homeowner, you have certain things around all the time.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: You know. I don't really recall if it was, like, prearranged, like, "Okay, I'm going to get this stuff together because I'm going to go out and do this now."

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: Or if it was spontaneous, or an afterthought. Boy, those are some heavy questions to think about now.

Interviewer: Was the bondage voluntary?

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm?

Interviewer: Was the bondage voluntary?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm thinking on one or two of them it was, but I can't say for sure it goes for all of them. Probably not.

Interviewer: Were they conscious and awake and aware of what was happening to them, or were they unconscious?

Gary Muehlberg: No, they were, they were aware of what was going on.

Interviewer: What was the words exchanged? Some natural things that people [who] are aware of what's happening to them would be what? "Let me go"?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm thinking there might have been one of them that, after the sexual act happened, made a comment about, "Can you untie me now?" And I said, "No, it'll come later," or something to that degree. [unclear: "Well, some of this hurts" / "or if someone is hurts"].

Interviewer: Do you understand why we have to ask those questions?

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm?

Interviewer: Do you understand why we have to ask those questions?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Because I don't know if y'all need to, or want to, or have to, but you got to get to the bottom of everything, whether it's significant or...

Interviewer: It's all significant.

Gary Muehlberg: Well, it's all significant if it had to do with a crime, but... Needed all the information.

Interviewer: Yeah. And sometimes, when we get these little things, and frankly some things are irrelevant, but when we get those things and you start thinking, well, then [unclear: "I'm where" / "remember"] the connections in the brain start making connections to things we really need. And what we really need is the identity of that fifth, that fifth girl. I know, and maybe something that you recall would unlock that door.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah.

Interviewer: It could lead us to a place where we can check, "Hey, did you have some deceased body in a barrel?" You know. So far, we're not there yet.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, I fully understand that. Yeah. And I'm not just saying, I wish I could. Because I'm, I've opened up the doors on four of them. Maybe not a hundred percent, but they're open. Yeah. This one, the one in the barrel, that's, as far as identity goes, that's still a closed situation.

Interviewer: And I did ask you this in the beginning of today's conversation: are you sure it was that car wash? Hmm? Are you sure it was that car wash? Nothing spooked you and made you move on to another location, or anything?

Gary Muehlberg: No. That's the car wash I normally used. Yeah. Because, close proximity to my home.

Interviewer: [unclear: "I brought him" / "Picture a car wash, I brought them"]. Yeah. All right. So I brought, I prepared a couple pictures of car washes. And really, this is to try to help you recollect. [About 1:11:52 to 1:12:00: no speech in either machine source while he looks at the pictures.]

Gary Muehlberg: That definitely looks like it could possibly be the car wash. There's another one. It wasn't that big.

Interviewer: And this one, this particular picture, has the intersection there.

Gary Muehlberg: No, that's Pennsylvania. That's down in south St. Louis. [unclear: "Page dill" / "didn't it hey still page deal"]. Okay. Yeah, no, that wasn't it.

Interviewer: Okay. The other one, the red one.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. You got a scrap piece of paper? Maybe this will help, maybe it won't. [About 1:12:43 to 1:12:46: sound of paper; no speech.]

Gary Muehlberg: Okay, let's see. If this is the Inner Belt...

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: And this is Natural Bridge. There's a blacktop road that comes off of here, down and around, to get to East Edgar, where this comes out on Natural Bridge, headed west. There's a mortuary up here, or was at the time.

Interviewer: It's still there.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. The car wash sat right here, not that far down from a White Castle. I'm thinking it was a two- or three-bay car wash, and there's the small shopping center up here, that they faced each other this way. It didn't run horizontal to the road. It was, like, in between. But yeah, it was, it was not, it was not that far from the Inner Belt.

Interviewer: That girl in the barrel, did she have bondage on her?

Gary Muehlberg: Right offhand, I can't recall.

Interviewer: Gary, can we have that?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Please. Yeah. It looks like I learned how to draw in kindergarten.

Interviewer: Do you remember, because you said that you saw some of them on the news or in the paper or anything after their bodies were discovered, do you remember seeing anything about her?

Gary Muehlberg: No. The only one I really remember had a reference to an earring, which was a cross, and where they used, what, clay or something, to try to form...

Interviewer: Right. Facial features.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember which one that was.

Interviewer: And would you have... Because she was disposed of so close to your house, could this be the last one? Because you were so confident in what you were doing, and how you were disposing of bodies, and hadn't been caught yet.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I don't think she was the last one that died, because, like I said, the condition of the remains, the decomposition. She couldn't... I don't, I don't think she was. I think, no.

Interviewer: But was she last to be disposed of?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. That, that'd be a pretty good hunch right there. And is it the same year as the one you just described, that had the clay figure in the, you know, news article? Was it that same year?

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm. It might have been.

Interviewer: And this might help you. You mentioned, last time we were here, about the box, the young lady that was in the dresser. It just came in my mind, because you said something about her, decomposed a little bit. She might have been the one with the earring.

Interviewer: But you mentioned something about the box and the barrel, you having at your house.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Do you, can you, do you recall in which order you disposed of those two, the box and the barrel?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm almost sure I disposed of the barrel last.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: I'm almost sure. The box... Nah, I can't. I'm thinking the first one was down in south St. Louis, but I'm not a hundred percent sure on it.

Interviewer: And you thought maybe the barrel, it was wintertime?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer: So, you frequent that area. You know how it's divided in that area. You got to drive past it. You got to drive another westbound, you got to go on the other side of it. After you dropped the barrel off, do you remember, just in normal routines, looking, "Is the barrel still there?"

Gary Muehlberg: I probably did, but didn't pay a lot of attention.

Interviewer: Yeah. [About 1:17:28 to 1:17:42: no speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: The smell. I know we've talked about it, but these decomposed bodies, including Doc, they, you know... I've been around a lot of homicide scenes. It gets pretty darn smelly. You don't remember having that as a nuisance to yourself?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm thinking the one with the box. Yeah. In the van, I had to have all the windows open, because there was a, not a real strong, but unpleasant odor.

Interviewer: And could you smell them when they were being stored at the house?

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Yeah, if you like" / "You know, if Mike"] the barrel, they're stored outside.

Interviewer: How far did the aroma, or the odor, permeate into the air? And how long did it, I mean, how long did it keep smelling before it dissipates? Did any one of your associates or family that happened to visit ever comment to you, "Hey, what's that smell?"

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Which would be real... That would make me nervous, if someone asked that question.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I don't think I had many people, family or friends, up at the house during this time frame...

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: While the barrel or the box was there.

Interviewer: Or if it was in the wintertime, and, like, the barrel, if it's sealed, would there be an odor coming out of it?

Gary Muehlberg: Well, that particular one, that's a pretty good seal.

Interviewer: Yeah, you're right.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Others weren't such a great thing, you know.

Interviewer: So you started to talk about the box and the van and the smell. Did you do anything to cover up that smell?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Just the box that was left, went on I-70, out in St. Charles County, O'Fallon area.

Gary Muehlberg: Okay. I don't know if it, if I had the intentions of driving farther away, or if the aroma was just, like, overcoming, so I left her where I did, when I did.

Mike Harvey: Do you remember having to... Did you just lift the box out? Because it was a pretty good-sized box. I was, I'd seen it, I was there. Would you have lifted it out, or just opened the door and just pushed it out on the shoulder of the road, or...?

Gary Muehlberg: Probably would have pushed it out.

Mike Harvey: So you wouldn't have...

Gary Muehlberg: I'm looking over there where you got your arm. The, the dresser, or whatever it was, the actual furniture inside the box, I don't think was really much bigger than that. I mean, it wasn't a full-length chest of drawers. It was like a, so long, had maybe three drawers in it.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: No, I would have pushed it out. Let's see. Had the white drop cloth or whatever around it. Yeah, I would have pushed it out.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: That way I wouldn't have to be at the scene that long, and just pull over, come from the captain's seat, your driver's seat, around, push it out, and drive off. Nobody'd really see somebody walking around a van or something, pulling something out.

Interviewer: Are you asking me?

Gary Muehlberg: No, I mean, I'm just reflecting on it. Because there, I mean, not remembering the exact hour that I did this one, there would have been traffic on I-70 all hours of the day, you know.

Interviewer: So I drove by where your house... I drove by East Edgar, where your house used to be.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: The way that... I don't know what it looked like 30 years ago, but now it's all grown, overgrown.

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "That's a curious idea" (Whisper only)].

Interviewer: Is that kind of like what it was 30 years ago? Could you see the highway from your house, the back of your house?

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "There was a third" / "outer"] kitchen window on the back of the house. The state had put up a sound barrier, a concrete retaining wall. But off to the side you could see the Inner Belt, going north and south.

Interviewer: Okay. Because to me, back there is a perfect place to hide stuff. Is there any chance there's anything back there that belongs to the girls? Clothing?

Gary Muehlberg: Not, not that I can recall, no.

Interviewer: Out of curiosity, it's like, why did they tear the house down, what, a year and a half ago?

Gary Muehlberg: That's what I heard, yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: I don't know. I don't know if anybody lived in it, or they couldn't, because it wasn't completely rebuilt when I was arrested. It was still under construction.

Interviewer: Did, did, were you making payments on the house, or did you own the house?

Gary Muehlberg: I owned the house. I owned it. It wasn't that big of a house. It was like eight, 825 square feet.

Interviewer: So you're not sure what happened to the house after you got locked up?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: I don't know how that all works, if you owned it. Did the family take part in trying to claim any of that, or sell the lot?

Gary Muehlberg: I think they got... The state or the county or somebody put a lien on it so it couldn't be sold. [unclear: "COVID, kind of like evidence" / "go with kind of like evidence"]. I don't know what happened after everything on it. I know it sat vacant for a while. At least, three to three years, out of the county jail, it was like... It might have been auctioned off at a sheriff's sale or something. Not really sure on that one.

Interviewer: Did the family get any proceeds from it that you know of? Or did the bank repo it?

Gary Muehlberg: No, the bank couldn't repo it if it was paid for.

Interviewer: Oh, it's paid for?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I'm thinking there was something that, when they went to sell it, we had borrowed $5,000 from my family for a down payment. There was something about them getting that money back, either from the buyer or when it's sold or whatever, because they had a family-type lien on it, you know, where we owed the money, or I owed the money. [About 1:25:35 to 1:25:48: no speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: Were you going to discuss a timeline, just of Gary's life?

Interviewer: Sure. We can, just a rough timeline. It's a rough timeline of where you were at any given time, you know, from as early as you can recall, to... So you're born in St. Louis, right?

Gary Muehlberg: Mm-hmm.

Interviewer: What year?

Gary Muehlberg: 1949.

Interviewer: All right. And how long did you live in St. Louis?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, mercy. I was born down on [unclear: "Gaynor" / "Gainer"], south of Bevo Mill. And somewhere around three or four years of age, folks moved up to Bissell Hills, North County. And we lived in two different locations while up there. That's when Dad was mayor up there in Bellefontaine Neighbors. And then Dad got transferred to Cape Girardeau in, like, 1957, '58. And we were only down there for, like, nine months. We got moved down there before school started, and somewhere near the end of the first year, Dad got transferred back to St. Louis, and we lived in a hotel for a month or two while we finished grade school. Got moved up to Paddock Hills, and I went to [unclear: "Halsbury" / "Halls Ferry"] Elementary School for the sixth grade, and then [unclear: "Florida State" / "Florida"] Junior High. And the same thing, the house sold, we lived in a motel, or an apartment complex rather, excuse me, the last semester or two of my ninth year at the junior high. And Dad got transferred to Jeff City. And the first semester of my senior year, Dad got transferred to Salina, Kansas. So I finished my senior year in Salina, and I went into the service in '68, got out in '69. Am I talking too fast?

Interviewer: No, you're good.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, you got it on recording. Yeah. Okay. Never mind. Let's see. And living in Salina again in '69 for a while. Got married in '70. (His son, name withheld) was born in '71. Then I caught a case out there for robbery in '72, and I came back to Missouri, to Central Methodist, in June of '75.

Interviewer: So how long did you do time in Kansas?

Gary Muehlberg: 32 months.

Interviewer: And was it only one case that you caught there?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I was convicted of a robbery charge.

Interviewer: Okay. Didn't you get out, wasn't there another charge after you got out?

Gary Muehlberg: Yes, it was. I got out on the first one on probation...

Gary Muehlberg: On the first one on probation, court-ordered probation, and turned around and caught another case, a robbery case. That's why I went to Hutchinson, [unclear: "our laboratory" / "how Reformatory"; probably "the Reformatory"]. Then I came back to Missouri in '77, to, I graduated... I came back in '75, and graduated from Central Methodist, up in Fayette.

Interviewer: What year?

Gary Muehlberg: '77.

Interviewer: Okay. So you moved back to St. Louis first?

Gary Muehlberg: Only for five days after I got out of Hutchinson, because I started Central in summertime, and I had five days in between, so I came back to St. Louis to get clothes, a car, before I started on the college.

Interviewer: So you graduated in '77 from Central Methodist. Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: Then I went to Warrensburg for grad school, but I dropped out the first semester and came back to St. Louis.

Interviewer: What were you going to get your graduate degree in? What were you going to get your graduate degree in?

Gary Muehlberg: Childhood learning disabilities. Then, when I came back after that, I lived with my mom for a while, and her next-door neighbor, oh, man, (a neighbor, name withheld), I can't think of the last name right now, but he was a recruiter for Missouri Baptist. [unclear: "She" (both); perhaps "He"] taught at Hubert Wheeler, and I babysat a couple times for him, and went to work as a teacher's aide and a substitute teacher.

Interviewer: There, at Wheeler. How long were you there?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, a little over a semester, before (his business partner, name withheld) and I bought the truck. That would have been '79, '78, latter part of '78.

Interviewer: Okay. Bought the truck.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I just lived a whole lifetime in how many minutes?

Mike Harvey: And I wrote it all down.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Really?

Mike Harvey: Verbatim shorthand.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: That's a curious question. If it's on a tape recorder, where you could have a stenographer, why are you writing it down?

Mike Harvey: Because she would yell at me if I made her do that. I have to go back and watch it and type my report.

Interviewer: She's never yelled at you before.

Mike Harvey: Oh, yeah, but I try to keep her on my good side.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Mike Harvey: If I made her do all these interviews...

Interviewer: So, bought the truck, had that for nine months or so, right?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Then I got married. Oh, I don't even remember when. Early '80s.

Interviewer: Real quick: how long were you married to your first wife?

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm. We got married in '70. I don't know, '69. Yeah, in '70. And got divorced while I was in Hutchinson, probably in '73, '74. And I graduated from Hutchinson Community College while I was incarcerated.

Interviewer: What was her name?

Gary Muehlberg: (First wife, name withheld). She passed away not that long ago, from leukemia.

Interviewer: Okay. Then you married (former wife, name withheld).

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Do you recall what year that was?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Early '80s, maybe. I mean, I've got dates written down on calendars, where, when the kids were born, to remember birthdays and stuff. But we were probably married about four or five years when we separated, got divorced.

Interviewer: So after you bought the truck, where did you work?

Gary Muehlberg: Mmm. Teaching school, with the truck, [unclear: "valley carpentry" / "probably carpentry"], construction.

Interviewer: Did you work for anyone particular at that time?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. When (former wife, name withheld) and I were still married, when we bought our home up in Bel-Ridge, I went to work for (a construction company, name withheld), owned by (his former employer, name withheld). And he lived in Maryland Heights. And he got the name of the company from him and his son's name. His was (name withheld), son's name was (name withheld). They came up with (the company name, withheld).

Interviewer: So how long did you work for him?

Gary Muehlberg: Probably close to the time that Doc was killed. And indirectly was, (his former employer, name withheld) knew people that I wish I'd never met. And I don't know if it's true or not, but (his former employer, name withheld) used to talk about being a personal bodyguard to Mike Trupiano, (name withheld: a family he links to organized crime), which I never met. I think I worked at Trupiano's house one time, not knowing who this guy was. And for (his former employer, name withheld), we did quite a few Rent-A-Center stores, remodeling.

Interviewer: Were those all in the St. Louis area?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Did you travel?

Gary Muehlberg: I know we remodeled a Rent-A-Center down in New Orleans, and that's when he flew down with his pilot in the plane to bring me back, and gave me my own crew. And I remodeled Rent-A-Centers in Farmington; Gary, Indiana, no, not Gary; Louisville, the racetrack, Louisville; and Des Moines, Iowa. And then there was like one or two in St. Louis we did. On top of commercial buildings. There was a Liquor Barrel, liquor store, up on Chambers Road. We remodeled out at Lamp and Lantern shopping center, out in Chesterfield, I believe. It was a bar, [unclear: "shoes" (both)] bar and grill, and we remodeled it into an office complex. We found some jobs in between, like private homes and stuff.

Interviewer: So when you traveled to these other locations, how long would you be in town for?

Gary Muehlberg: New Orleans, probably an average of a week, week and a half. And it was pure... I remember telling one guy on the crew, especially on the New Orleans job, they'd like to go out at night with me: "I'm down here to work, making money, get back to my family." You know. Same as in Louisville. I rented a motel for me and one helper. It took a long... But we ended up, the last three or four nights, it took a little longer than normal, so we stayed at the Rent-A-Center, and that's boring as hell. When you sleep in the back and you get up and your job's right there, I mean, there's no parking lot to walk across, there's no town to drive across, you know. But it averaged a week, week and a half, out of town.

Interviewer: So when... I'm sorry, you said Moolah Shrine, the Shriners. Where, where do they fit in? The Shriners that you worked for, where does that fit in the timeline here?

Gary Muehlberg: Okay. After my divorce, this would have been probably... I'm not really sure of the years. I mean, you can check, from when they went from Moolah Temple down in...

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Don and Lindo" / "in Lindo"] and Sarah, out to...

Interviewer: I'm thinking of the old Parkway Junior High School.

Gary Muehlberg: It was, yeah, yeah. I was involved in that when it was being remodeled into the Shriners.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Old brick place.

Interviewer: So you worked there when it moved, is that what you're saying?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: And then I believe, in one of the interviews, you said that you worked for a... Was it a refrigeration-type place?

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, yeah. Hussmann Refrigeration.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: That would have been, let's see, I was married, right after we bought our house up in Bel-Ridge. I worked for (his former employer, name withheld), and work got slow, and I got hired on at Hussmann on the graveyard shift.

Interviewer: What did you do there?

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Great press operator" (both); perhaps "brake press operator"]. And that, that was, oh, fall and winter, I can't remember what year. But they hired nothing but basically Vietnam-era vets on the third shift. And you have to work like 90 days to get into the union, and like less than two weeks after I got into the union, they shut down the third shift. And then I went to work for [unclear: "I" / "Canada who"], and I got a call back from Hussmann, and I went, "No, I'm working over here. I'm going to stay with this other company." Because the first three to five years at Hussmann was give and take with layoffs, on seniority. I needed something more stable.

Interviewer: So you left them and went to...

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah, I went, I think I went... I was working for (his former employer, name withheld) then.

Interviewer: Any places we forget about, or...?

Gary Muehlberg: No, I can't, no, I don't think so. I mean, working for myself on and off. But that pretty well covers the jobs.

Interviewer: In college. In college, you got your degree in...?

Gary Muehlberg: Psychology.

Interviewer: Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Study of human behavior and the human mind, and look where I sit. I must have missed the course on doing right.

Interviewer: Did you get any tattoos over the years? Hmm? Did you get any tattoos over the years?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Came close to getting the Bulldog.

Interviewer: Did you?

Gary Muehlberg: But, uh, no. I have no body art on me.

Interviewer: You got the bull?

Gary Muehlberg: No, I have nothing. I can't even go for shots without passing out. Why would I have so many tattoos? I think that was my [unclear: "son-in-law at the time" / "son on an extra time"], because I went with a couple buddies, went out, and, no way in hell. [unclear: "I did too. And watching this on TV is, no" / "and you do and watching this on TV is"]. I had a fear of going to a dentist, getting a shot of Novocaine. I do not like needles.

Interviewer: They call that the white coat syndrome.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Never have. I might have smoked some grass, done a few pills, years, but never a needle. He's like, no. Not going to happen.

Interviewer: It doesn't hurt that bad.

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm?

Interviewer: It doesn't hurt that bad.

Gary Muehlberg: Maybe not for you, but I'm glad there's somebody else in the room that would disagree with you. I don't know, I don't know how it feels.

Interviewer: Just annoying pain.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I've never stuck my hand in the fire, and I know it'll burn. I don't, down here, even, this last stay at the hospital in Festus, putting the IVs in, it's like, holding on the bed rails, white-knuckle.

Interviewer: Yeah. Oh, yeah. So what is your prognosis?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm going to be seeing Dr. James next week, I think. When I came back from the hospital, I saw Dr. James. He talked about changing some of my current medication and starting me on, I can't remember the name of it, for the kidneys. None of that has transpired yet. They've done some lab work, checking white blood cells, things of that nature. The medication they're going to, the one they're going to change, is, it's all going to still be for arthritis, for the knees. But meloxicam is not recommended when you have liver and kidney problems. But there's other kind of medication they can use. And to figure out why I'm taking Flomax, and I don't have a prostate. But they all have some kind of effect on it.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I should know more on that when I talk to him about the follow-up on the lab work. And I know it's hard to believe, but one or two doctors and you got 900 patients, you know. And it's like, when they prescribe medication, it's not like me giving you a prescription, you're going to the pharmacy.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: It takes a while to go...

Interviewer: Did they bring it around to you?

Gary Muehlberg: If it's a controlled substance, you go out to the bubble, they call it, in the house, where they give it to you and watch you take it. The medications that I'm on now, for whatever reason, is called KOP, keep on person. Comes on card, 30 pills at a time. When it gets down to your last seven pills, you turn in a refill request, they bring it to you. So you keep it yourself.

Interviewer: Yeah. So how are you feeling?

Gary Muehlberg: Physically or mentally?

Interviewer: Physically.

Gary Muehlberg: Not a hundred percent. I've got a lot of fatigue, a lot of symptoms that go with, I mean, a lot of diarrhea, loss of appetite, problems urinating, which is tied to the kidneys. Excuse me. I mean, like, I can drink a bottle of water and not have normal urination for half a day, not being able to go at all, or just dribbling for a while. With the loss of a prostate, that's why I wear pull-ups, which is and isn't embarrassing. I mean, I'm at the age... The first time I had to go, they come 20 to a pack, and there's a couple different ways of requesting them. The other gentleman in the wing and I just go up to the bubble and say, "Can you call medical? I need some pull-ups." So we'll go up and get them. "If you want, you got something to put this in?" And now, "You don't want to carry it like this, do you?" I went, "I'm 73 years old. I don't get [unclear: "nervous" / "birth"] no more." Yeah, you know. And nobody really asks, because in the housing wing, or the house, people know the surgery I've had two years ago.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: So they don't... There's certain things you don't joke, you don't talk about, you don't kid about, is, like, a grown man wearing pull-up diapers. You know, not by choice. Or maybe it is, because if you don't wear them, you soil yourself a lot.

Interviewer: So then how are you mentally?

Gary Muehlberg: Better than I was the first time I met you.

Interviewer: Good. Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: Not near as good as I hope I will be someday. That's why I, I can understand time delays and restraints on something like this, because you just can't do everything at one time, you know. Just take a lot of stress off, so to speak. Coming forward, owning up to myself and to others, took a lot off. It also created a different type of stress, of time restraints, on what I'm going to be facing. And it took a little bit off, even knowing if, nothing for certain. It's having everything settled.

Gary Muehlberg: Is having everything settled down here. I don't have to worry about being transported here and transported there, and coming back here, or having to go to each little municipality. Am I going to say a week, a month, six months? And not going to trial is shortening that time frame, you know. Because I know from the case I'm here on, that was 976 days in the St. Louis County Jail, from the arrest to the time I left. And that's hard time.

Interviewer: Yeah. I've heard that from numerous people. They can't wait to get whatever is going to happen, so they get out of the county jail.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I'd ask my attorney, when I went for sentencing, or got found [guilty], said, "Make this as quick as possible, because I know I'm going. Let me get there and get on with it, get it over with." And there's nothing glorious about this environment, you know. At least I haven't seen any lines outside, people going, "Oh, let me in, let me in."

Interviewer: No. There's an old joke about, yeah, there's people out there willing to kill to get here.

Gary Muehlberg: Well, yeah, I guess so. [unclear: "Kind of Marvin" (captions only)]. Yeah. Yep. But it's, I've lived down here going on a little over 27 years. You don't fully, or I don't, accept it, but you fully deal with it on a daily basis. There's no alternative when you're doing life without.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: I mean, yeah, there's thoughts and dreams about what it could have been, what it should have been, but there ain't nothing about it. This is the way it's going to be, you know. It's like, I have to make the best out of it. I try to keep myself a little bit above board. I had one minor write-up, for passing jelly beans to somebody, back in '01, '02, something like that. There are people here that, everybody's got to do their time the way they want to. You can get sucked into things, group affiliation, individuals who you hang with, who you deal with. I don't have any one person or group, not even the religious people. I mean, I don't only associate with them. I'm respectful to everybody, and I don't care what color uniform you got on. I mean, I'm not going to slam the door in your face because you're a correctional officer. I'll hold it, you know. It's like, it's not pride, because look why I'm here. But I cannot, just because this is prison, doesn't mean I can lose all morality, values, respect, and live like some people do in here. I mean, they prey on people. They're in the game, playing. I don't gamble, except with myself when I play solitaire. You know, like, am I going to win or lose this time? But no, it's a different lifestyle that, like I said, you conform to your environment. You know, if you lived in the woods, you lived like you lived in the woods. You don't have all the luxuries of town living, you know. We have things in here, like [unclear: "here for us one time" / "gear Express one time"], that you're surprised at, some of the things we had access to. It's its own little world within a big world. I mean, you got good and evil on the outside, you got crime on the outside. It may be magnified in here because of the element, but the type of environment is highly structured. I mean, it has to be controlled.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: You know.

Interviewer: Basically, you're doing time, time's not doing you, right?

Gary Muehlberg: Exactly. Exactly. In fact, some of the courses I've taken in here, some of the jobs I've held, you, you utilize the time for numerous reasons: to help pass it, to better yourself. Because basically, the individual I am now is, physically, yeah, I'm not the same as I was 32 years ago. Mentally, I'm not the same person I was 32 years ago. Hopefully I've evolved on the positive side of it, you know. I'm not out to hurt anybody. I don't want to cause any more grief in this world, or in my life, or anybody's life. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's...

Interviewer: It does. Yeah. Totally.

Gary Muehlberg: And I'm sure you all know people, like I know in here, that they get off on getting over on staff members, or on their friends, or on their celly. And it's like, man. For numerous reasons, I'm too old to play games with myself anymore, you know. It's like, knowing I can't pay you back, why should I borrow something from you and tell you I'll pay you back next canteen, when I know I can't?

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: And there's people, they do it. And when it comes to that point, there's only two things you can do. If, if you let them get over on you, people think you're weak. If you stand up and fight, [unclear: "there's two house eggs egg" / "there's two house at Exit again"; perhaps "it's the hole, ad seg again"]. No, I'm not afraid of it, but if I have a choice, I'm not going there.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: You know. I enjoy the little rights and privileges I have on this side of the camp. Some people enjoy getting served three meals a day through a slot in the door. I went two weeks like that. Did nothing for me.

Interviewer: [unclear: "You guys think of some" (Whisper)] Something we haven't covered: the offense back in '72 in Salina. Was there a sexual component to that?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I was charged with rape and robbery.

Interviewer: Was that very similar to the behavior with these girls that lost their life?

Gary Muehlberg: No. Different.

Interviewer: Yeah. Was she a prostitute?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: Okay. And there was not one thing that happened, after the last one of these girls, and then that time between Doc? Did anything, anything happen that spooked you, that provoked you to stop that behavior?

Gary Muehlberg: That might have been the operative word right there. Something might have, I'm not sure, but spooked me. Kind of like, they used to have a program for youngsters called Scared Straight.

Interviewer: Oh, sure. I remember, yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: They did. When I first went down here, they had that program down here, and I can't remember why they stopped doing it. But they would... I never took part in it, but I knew some of the inmates that did, and a lot of it was rehearsed, for the benefit of scaring the shit out of the kids, to keep them out of a place like this.

Interviewer: There was some talk, during that whole situation with Doc, that you were concerned that you were being surveilled by the federal government.

Gary Muehlberg: That I thought that?

Interviewer: That you thought that. Do you remember that?

Gary Muehlberg: No, I don't.

Interviewer: And I was thinking, well, maybe that would provoke you to stop bringing girls back home, you know.

Gary Muehlberg: See, Doc happened quite a long time period after this, a year and a half, two years after.

Interviewer: But nothing happened, that you remember, that you stopped bringing home prostitutes?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Something, something spooked me. I don't know if that's a proper word, but it seems like it might fit the scenario right now. Something.

Interviewer: Did you have a girlfriend, start a relationship, maybe, and that would stop it as well, maybe?

Gary Muehlberg: But I had, I've had girlfriends in between all this. So, yeah. Whatever terminology y'all come up with, or whatever I come up with in my mind, I don't know if it will help.

Gary Muehlberg: I don't know if it will help me or others, but what transpired, me to lock that door and quit doing it, what got me away from it...

Interviewer: Did you continue... I'm sorry, go ahead. If you continued picking up prostitutes after the murders stopped?

Gary Muehlberg: I have, yeah.

Interviewer: How many times?

Gary Muehlberg: I'm not, I, I don't remember [unclear: "what you out of" / "the other"]. It might have been one or two times.

Interviewer: Okay. And you said you dabbled in weed a little bit, smoking marijuana?

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Did you, you got involved in selling that, or...?

Gary Muehlberg: Okay. Years back, when I got out of the service, there was involvement, occasionally smoking it. And then, through (his former employer, name withheld), even to the time where Doc passed away, I was selling... How much? Three or four thousand dollars a week. So back then, that's pretty good. I got into it, and myself convinced, I told (his former employer, name withheld), at the time my home burned, I'm only going to do it for a certain set period of time, to get enough money for different things, and I'm going to walk away from it. And through the little diner and other people... (His former employer, name withheld) knew the people that would transport it up from south of the border. And I would have to, I think, I was selling it for [unclear: "16" (both); perhaps $1,600] a pound. More so if it's broke down. I was going through five to eight pounds a week, and I'd make anywhere from $500 to $700 a pound. That only lasted, like, three or four weeks when Doc died.

Interviewer: So at one point, were the police on to you about that? The police were on to your drug dealing, right?

Gary Muehlberg: Not that I was aware of at the time. But there's always that thought in the back of the mind, that the people like that, that (his former employer, name withheld) associated with... I was on the way outside perimeter. I met one individual from Belize, at (his former employer's, name withheld) house, that was the main supplier. I knew the people who made trips, how they made them, the routes they took. There was, at one point, and this is before Doc passed away, long story short, I went with (his former employer, name withheld) and two gentlemen in a small Cessna down to Atlanta, and I brought the plane back. And when I went to touch down at Creve Coeur Airport, I saw all these headlights come on. I went over to St. Charles airport to land. Yeah, it was nothing at the other airport. I guess paranoia, you know. Late at night, a lot of times you'd call Creve Coeur, and they would turn on certain lights so you could see the landing strip. And when you don't call them, and there's a moon out, and you can see it, and you're going to land, and, you know, or you thought, "Man, what I just did is illegal as hell." And then a couple days later found out that, after we got to Atlanta and we went out to dinner and everything, certain objects were put in the plane.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: Unbeknownst at the time, I flew them back to St. Louis.

Interviewer: Really?

Gary Muehlberg: And I'm not talking two or three pounds.

Interviewer: So you had your pilot's license?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: But you could fly.

Gary Muehlberg: You know, anybody can drive a car without a driver's license.

Interviewer: So how many of those trips do you think you did?

Gary Muehlberg: Mm-hmm. How many trips? Just that one. That's when I started getting away from (his former employer, name withheld). I went, "Dude, you can at least fill me in a little bit." You got me thinking, and I should have reflected back. When we got down here, and all this, and I was ready to come back, and he said, "Go ahead and take it back by yourself." [unclear: "You should click" / "click"]. "What the hell is going on?"

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: I don't even have a student pilot license.

Interviewer: What did you learn... Where did you learn how to fly?

Gary Muehlberg: Through (his former employer, name withheld), and (a friend, name withheld), who I met through (his former employer, name withheld) and his company. (The same friend) was a chopper pilot in 'Nam. And another gentleman, who was an electrician, that flew in 'Nam. And he took his life out of Creve Coeur Airport. Real fine Black gentleman. Came home one day and saw his wife in bed with another female, and about two weeks later he went out to the airport, and he pancaked his plane. I mean, when you take off and you go straight up...

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: Planes with a propeller don't climb like that very far.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: [unclear: "Door stayed into the ground" / "after we're staying to the ground"].

Interviewer: So you learned to fly for the purpose of making this run?

Gary Muehlberg: No. No, no, no, no.

Interviewer: Recreation?

Gary Muehlberg: Recreational, yeah. I've had, with, the pilot always sits in the left-hand seat, that's PIC.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: And there's another seat here, and a little seat in the back. And after the divorce, (his former employer, name withheld) and his family, and me and my kids, we'd get together occasionally. I never flew by myself. And flying with (his former employer, name withheld), learning the basics. I mean, they tell you certain things, and it's not humorous or funny. You think back to 9/11, when the terrorists took training down in Florida: they didn't give a rat's [ass] about how to land a plane. They had no intentions. You learn how to take it off and keep it up. And as long as you got power, you got automatic pilots, you know, it is easy, if you put certain things together, to get a plane off the ground. Just like getting a car out of the garage: open the garage door, start the car, put it in reverse. A plane is like, yeah, I can't remember everything, but you make sure the plane ain't moving, you got your feet on the brakes, you rev up your engine, you get to a certain speed, you release the brakes, you start taxiing down the runway, and pull on the yoke, or the rudders, and the plane takes off. Learning how to land is fun. You bounce a little bit. Some things I was a quick study on, other things I wasn't.

Interviewer: So do you think all that deal, and the weed and stuff, took up a lot of your time during those years?

Gary Muehlberg: No.

Interviewer: No?

Gary Muehlberg: Probably the last six months I was out on the street. Yeah, that was between working on a house, and transporting to people, like... Yeah, it took up quite a few hours a day. But at the time it seemed well worth it, when I could put, like I said, three to five thousand dollars in my pocket. You work the hours you've got to work, you know. A hell of a lifestyle. They don't have a happy ending. Everything, in its own little bizarre way, ends up here, you know.

Mike Harvey: I know you've tried to remember as much as you could, but after talking to us today, if there's anything about the fifth one, oh, let us know. If it's just, if something pops in, and you want to write her a letter, or...

Gary Muehlberg: Marine to Marine, I'm going to give it my best.

Mike Harvey: Hooah.

Gary Muehlberg: Because it means something to me.

Interviewer: Yep. And we're still in contact with some of the people that were familiar with the stroll. So if you come up with her street name, it might lead to someone else's name.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Because I know what it's like not being able to visit a family grave...

Gary Muehlberg: But at least I know there is a grave, and who's in it. There's a family somewhere that...

Interviewer: [unclear: "There's a lot of changes" (captions only)]. Like you're saying, you get a lot of calls.

Gary Muehlberg: Similar situations. They've lost loved ones, whether they ran off, hiding, dead, whatever. And yeah, it was like, you got to know something. Got to know something.

Interviewer: I think it'll come to you. I think every time we talk, we get more and more.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. And I'm, I'm almost sure that even when all this is over, said and done, and I've been through the courts, and everything is going in the past, I will keep in contact. If something comes up that helps me, it'll help you all. Because I'm sure a certain amount of this might be profiling, trying to get in my head. Like I said, I think I said earlier, one guy in here said that he suspects the federal profilers to come talk to me. Because, not only specifically on this case, or cases, but for the future, to see if they can stop something from happening, because they learn something from the past.

Interviewer: Yeah. And they get a better profile.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not, not that anything good is going to come out of this, but there might be some positive attributes that come about due to this. There's a lot of, there's a lot of families out there that are now trying to heal. You know, they've got that final piece of information they've been looking for. And I'm sure there's families out there that, certain similarities, that if they've got a child or a loved one involved in this kind of career, prostitution, drug addiction, it might say, "Hey, y'all better focus on this shit, because look what happened back here." You know, you get frustrated, you kick people out of your lives. Maybe they'll take that extra step to help them, knowing that, yeah, this kind of behavior does happen. Dangerous profession. If you could help some, somebody in the future, some unknown person...

Interviewer: Sure.

Interviewer: Or, like, part of the Scared Straight program.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. [About 2:12:50 to 2:13:00: laughter; no other speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: I'm going to leave you with my card as well, here. Okay? So you know who I was. Take care of yourself.

Gary Muehlberg: Hmm?

Interviewer: Take care of yourself.

Gary Muehlberg: I will do the best I can, and I appreciate that.

Interviewer: Yeah. You know where to find us, so...

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I wish I could say the same thing.

Interviewer: Yeah. We know where you are. We know where you're at.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. I'd give you my card, but you'd have to get a copy of it.

Interviewer: Can you think of anything else that we've missed? Because we rack our brains on the way up.

Gary Muehlberg: Oh, I'm sure.

Interviewer: We critique everything we've said and done. And I think we've covered everything that we thought of on the way up, and, since we've been doing this.

Gary Muehlberg: Yeah. Same here. If you think of it, write me. I mean, you all can write a letter to me, and I'll get it.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: Because it is, but it isn't, legal work. There's a fine line, but they allow it. Just like, if my sister writes me a letter like that, it has to go through Florida.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: They scan it, it gets put on the tablet. Definitely from the courts, attorneys. And they got this thing down here now, where, I witnessed it the other day when I got the copy of the arrest warrant from St. Charles County: we cannot have any envelopes. Legal mail, we get called over here, they open it, take it out, shake it, give us the contents. They keep the envelope. There's one gentleman, is on death row, Dave [unclear: "Hoosier" (both); perhaps Hosier], he's getting close. And like y'all were, in court, time restraints are important. And he cannot even have the postmark, or a copy of the envelope. They, they don't allow that. You can have the contents inside. And hearing the argument he was having, or a conversation: time restraints mean a lot, because when you file motions you have deadlines to meet.

Interviewer: Right. Okay.

Gary Muehlberg: And the lady who gave him the letter, he was arguing with, says, "Well, the letter is dated." "I need proof of when it was received down here. Because you may send me a letter September 1st, and I've got 10 days to respond to it. And if it's received down here on September 9th..."

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.

Gary Muehlberg: "I don't have any time to do it."

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: If you got proof of that, you could get an extension. But for numerous reasons, we don't have envelopes anymore. We don't get any pictures, postcards, letters, on that machine right there.

Interviewer: They're just trying to reduce what's coming in.

Gary Muehlberg: That's the biggest part. You have the fentanyl, there's a problem down here. And there's [unclear: "inmates and, oh, yeah, it's got to be staffed" / "your then mate saying oh it's got to be staffed"]. Now, you can't constantly... There's so many numerous ways [unclear: "to expand your mind" / "Hawaii's expand your mind"]. It could be a delivery truck, where the driver don't know what's in the back. Somebody that packed up a box of potato chips could hide something in it and mark the box, when the inmates work in the warehouse. Drones that fly at night, drop... There's anything and everything is possible with the human mind. Bad example: I have never seen a flying saucer. Never have. I can't tell you they don't exist.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: Just because, like I said, I've, I've never stuck my hand in a fire, but I know it's going to burn.

Interviewer: Right.

Gary Muehlberg: I definitely will keep in touch.

Interviewer: Sounds good.