ST. LOUIS — Our I-Team has enlisted the help of a Missouri State Senator to get answers for women targeted by a convicted stalker. Robert Merkle was sent to prison for sending violent rape threats to St. Louis women.
An I-Team investigation found those threats continued once Merkle was paroled. Now that state senator wants to do something about it.
Since last spring, Megan has been waking up in hell to text messages on her phone from a St. Louis man accused of terrorizing dozens of women.
Megan, 38, is an attorney from Georgia. She tells the I-Team the texts usually threaten to rape or murder her. Sometimes the texts threaten to rape and murder her at the same time.
Megan filed a police report about the threats and that's when a link was made to Robert Merkle.
“I have no idea why this man chose me, I have never been to Missouri in my life,” said Megan. “I’m not a celebrity, I’m not super active on social media, I just have no idea, so the not knowing is terrifying.”
Megan found the I-Team reports on Merkle online. She learned that in 2017, Merkle, 53, went to prison for sending rape threats to Missouri women. Police reports show, for some of the women the violent messages started again as soon as Merkle was released on supervised parole.
Two years had gone by, but those women told the I-Team the language of the threats was unmistakable.
“Absolutely astonishing, absolutely astonishing, you know it's a person who is a predator like this, like this man is, he’s the predator and getting to continue to prey on people, despite the fact he is supposed to be under the supervision of probation or parole,” said Megan.
Although the threats are the same, the person sending them uses dozens of different phone numbers. That makes it hard for investigators to trace where the calls are coming from. The I-Team uncovered reports that women in at least 3 states received rape threats from Merkle while he was on parole.
For weeks, the I-Team contacted the Missouri Parole Board to find out why they wouldn't intervene and put a stop to the threats. They wouldn't comment and they wouldn't tell us, or Merkle’s victims, the terms of his parole.
Our investigation inspired Missouri State Senator Jill Schupp to reach out to Merkle’s victims. She's also got the FBI involved.
“There's obviously some failure of the system. Clearly, this is a violation of this person's parole, and committing this crime again means there need to be repercussions,” said Schupp. “We know this particular stalker has worked through across state lines or at least in other states. So the failure here may have, may need to have national implications.”
It's not the first time the FBI has heard about Robert Merkle.
The I-Team was given a report made by a desperate mother last year. She claimed Merkle was harassing her daughters while he was on parole.
It's frustrating for Megan. She says police in Georgia have closed her case because it's out of their jurisdiction.
"Why is this perpetrator and this predator being allowed to escalate his behavior? Does somebody have to be raped and murdered for real, not just in a text message for someone to take it seriously?”
Merkle completed his parole last October. Police sources tell us he has been working at a local factory. His last known address is a homeless shelter. Senator Schupp says she's not done investigating and changes on a state level could be coming.