Ill. inmate sentenced in killing spree

This undated photo provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows inmate Timothy Krajcir. Krajcir, 63, charged in a multi-state killing spree decades ago, pleaded guilty Friday, Jan. 18, 2008, in Marion, Ill., to charges that he stabbed and strangled a woman in this southern Illinois community in 1978. Authorities say Krajcir's confessions to killing 51-year-old Virginia Lee Witte and eight other women in four states in the 1970s and 1980s were given in exchange for assurances he would not face the death penalty. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in Witte's death. (AP Photo/Illinois Department of Corrections)

MARION, Ill.—An inmate charged in a multistate killing spree in the 1970s and 1980s pleaded guilty Friday to stabbing and strangling a woman in this southern Illinois town.

Timothy Krajcir was sentenced to 40 years in prison in the 1978 slaying of Virginia Lee Witte, whom he admitted targeting after seeing her while both were driving.

Krajcir, 63, said in a videotaped confession that he followed Witte home and sexually assaulted her. He said he choked her four to five minutes but wasn't sure she was dead, so he stabbed her as well.

Krajcir looked ashen and answered meekly but politely when the judge asked him if he understood the plea agreement. His sentence in Witte's killing will be served consecutively to a 40-year term he received in the 1982 death of Southern Illinois University student Deborah Sheppard.

The sentences mean Krajcir is virtually assured of dying in jail.

Authorities say Krajcir's confessions to killing Witte and eight other women in four states in the 1970s and 1980s were given in exchange for assurances he would not face the death penalty.

"I'm very satisfied that after all these years, we're finally able to bring justice to Mrs. Witte," Prosecutor Charles Garnati said. "It is justice she has deserved all these years."

Krajcir, who has a long history of sex crimes, next will be prosecuted in Cape Girardeau County, Mo., where he was charged last month in the killings of five women in 1978 and 1982.

He also is accused in Paducah, Ky., of kidnapping and burglary in the case of 29-year-old Joyce Tharp, who authorities say was abducted from her home in 1979 and killed in southern Illinois before her body was brought back to Paducah.

A Kentucky prosecutor says he won't charge Krajcir in that killing because it appeared to have taken place in Illinois.

Last week, prosecutors in Reading, Pa. -- Krajcir's home state -- charged him with the 1979 rape and slaying of 51-year-old Myrtle Rupp.

Authorities say DNA evidence implicates Krajcir in many of the killings to which he has now confessed.

Krajcir attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale around the time of the killings. Cape Girardeau is about 35 miles from Carbondale. Paducah is 55 miles away. Marion is just 16 miles away.

Krajcir, already serving time in the Tamms (Ill.) Correctional Center, has spent most of his adult life in prison for sex crimes.