Advances in DNA testing helped authorities link 3 deaths to a dead murderer in 1999

ST. LOUIS – An Arkansas man who was killed in a 1999 police clash in a Missouri motel was a killer and a rapist, authorities said Friday. He strangled a South Carolina woman in 1990 and shot a Missouri mother and daughter eight years later, they said.

Advances in DNA testing have allowed investigators to link the three murders and rape of a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997 to Robert Brashers, the Missouri State Highway Patrol announced. Brashers, a Paragould (Arkansas) man with long criminal records, committed suicide for four hours at a motel in Kennett, a town about 30 kilometers northeast of Paragould.

"Make no mistake: he is a serial rapist and serial killer, but no more," said Sheriff Terry Stevens, New Madrid County, Missouri, at a news conference.

Brashers killed Genevieve Zitricki of Greenville, South Carolina, in 1990. She was beaten and strangled in her bathtub, officials said. The year after the rape of the Tennessee girl, the Brashers murdered Sherri Scherer and her 12-year-old daughter Megan in their home near Portageville, about 155 km southeast of St. Louis. . He also sexually assaulted Megan, police said.

The standoff in which the Brashers were killed began when Kennett police attempted to interrogate him as part of an investigation into a stolen license plate. He was not suspicious in the murders nor in the rape case at the time.

The police have collected DNA evidence linking the crimes over the years, but it was only earlier this year that a private company helped to connect with Brashers. The investigators hired Parabon NanoLabs, whose technology combines DNA testing and genealogical genealogy analyzes. The company's tests revealed that the DNA came from Brashers.

Because he was dead, the investigators obtained DNA samples from Brashers' parents. This DNA evidence led the authorities to exhume Brashers' body last week to take DNA from his corpse, which corresponded to the DNA found at the scene of the crime.

Stevens said that even 20 years later, he had never considered the assassinations of Scherer as a trivial matter. His officers were constantly investigating and re-investigating "because it was too important for this family and the Portageville community."

Anthony Scherer returned from agricultural work on March 28, 1998 and found the bodies of his wife and daughter, aged 38, on the floor of the living room. They had been shot.

Less than three hours after the killings, a man stopped at a house in Dyersburg, Tennessee, and asked the woman who lived there to inquire, then attempted to break in. He shot her in the arm during a fight, but she survived.

Ballistic tests showed that the same gun had been used in both crimes. But the DNA of the two crime scenes lacked the markers needed to place the information in a national database called CODIS, said the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

DNA technology has improved and in 2006 the DNA of the crime scene was introduced into the CODIS system, which corresponds to the assassination of Zitricki, who had 28 years old when she was strangled, April 28, 1990. Her body was found on April 6, 1990 in her South Carolina apartment after failing to get to work.

In May 2017, another genetic match was discovered, tying the same suspect to the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Memphis on March 11, 1997. Police said the abuser had knocked on the door from a house, had pulled out a gun and pushed his way inside.

The patrol stated that the Brashers had a long criminal history, including a conviction for attempted second degree murder in 1986, as well as a burglary, the theft of an officer's identity and illegal possession of a weapon. He was also arrested in Paragould in 1998 for attempting to break into a woman's home.