212 - Who is Victim Number 5?
Trace Evidence
Steven Pacheco
4.7 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2023
⏱️ 89 minutes
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Summary
Between 1990 and 1991, four unsolved homicides occurred in and around the city of St. Louis. Robyn Mihan, Brenda Pruitt, Sandy Little and Donna Reitmeyer had been murdered, kept for some period of time and then disposed of by an unknown predator referred to as the "Package Killer."
More than thirty years later, in the winter of 2022, DNA analysis of evidence found at one of the scene finally returned a hit. This led investigators to a 73 year old prison inmate serving life for a murder in 1993. After confronting the man with this evidence, Gary R. Muehlberg confessed to the four murders and gave investigators details about the crimes.
However, just when they thought they'd gotten all they needed from Muehlberg he dropped a surprise on them. He admitted to a fifth murder, one which he claimed occurred during the same time as the other. Muehlberg claimed to have murdered this woman and later to have left her body in a metal barrel at a local car wash.
Investigators were baffled, not because of the admission, but because they were not aware of any crime which fit the description. This has left many to wonder if Victim Number 5 truly exists or if the entire story is just a sick and twisted game being played by a serial killer who doesn't have much time left.
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Transcript
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| 0:38.6 | From 1990 to 1991, the bodies of four women were recovered from different locations scattered |
| 0:44.9 | in and around the city of St. Louis. In almost all instances, the women's bodies were |
| 0:50.5 | found stuffed into or between various items. One woman was found between two mattresses, |
| 0:57.2 | another inside of a makeshift box, and yet two more were in plain plastic garbage cans. |
| 1:04.2 | All of the women had been abducted, murdered, and kept for some period of time by what was |
| 1:09.1 | then an unidentified predator referred to as the package killer. By 2022, many of the |
| 1:16.6 | cases had grown cold, and while there were suspects, none of them could be linked to the |
| 1:21.0 | murders. Then, when evidence was retested for DNA, they finally managed to pick up a |
| 1:26.7 | profile. Fed into the system, detectives were led to an elderly inmate serving a life |
| 1:32.0 | sentence from a 1993 homicide. As it turned out, Gary Muleberg was the package killer, |
| 1:39.6 | and had been sitting in prison for nearly as long as detectives had been seeking him |
| 1:43.8 | out. Investigators questioned Muleberg thoroughly |
| 1:47.2 | about the crimes, hoping to finally bring some closure to the families. However, one thing |
| 1:52.7 | they never expected was for Muleberg to tell them about a murder they didn't know about. |
| 1:58.2 | A fifth victim killed during the same time that the other four women were murdered. Detectives |
| 2:04.1 | are now working to determine the identity and fate of this victim, while others believe |
... |
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