LINCOLN COUNTY, Mo. — O'Fallon Detective Jodi Weber passed by the site where 19-year-old Robyn Mihan's body was found on her way to work for years, quietly asking the young victim and the others believed to be killed by the same man to help her solve their cases.
"I'd say, 'C'mon girls, I need your help. Give me something,'" Weber recalled Friday.
In a sense, Mihan did.
In early 2022, four pieces of evidence Weber sent from her crime scene for DNA testing -- including a T-shirt that was wrapped around Mihan's head, tape that was put across her breasts and a condom wrapper -- all came back with DNA evidence that connected Gary Muehlberg to the young mother's murder.
She had given birth to her second child just two weeks before her body was found in March 1990 along Highway 61 and Highway E in Silex, Missouri.
Mihan, such as the other three women Muehlberg confessed to killing, had vanished from what was once known as the Cherokee Street Stroll between 1990 and 1991.
Once Weber confronted him with that evidence, Muehlberg confessed to killing four other women -- one of whom still remains a mystery.
On Friday, Mihan's mother, Saundra Kuehnle, confronted Muehlberg in a Lincoln County courtroom after he pleaded guilty to her daughter's murder.
The 74-year-old killer appeared via video feed from the Potosi Correctional Center, where he has been serving a life sentence since 1995 for killing a man who tried to buy a car from him.
"I do not understand how you were not able to come face-to-face with the families of the children you murdered," Kuehnle said. "This is a cop out, you should have to be brought here to face us. Why aren't you here to face us?"
Judge Milan Berry interrupted her and told Muehlberg he didn't have to answer.
"I'm sorry for wasting my breath on that then," Kuehnle said, before continuing her statement to Muehlberg. "The only reason you're feeling concern for yourself is because you are realizing this has all finally caught up with you after 33 years. You had no concern for the living hell you put them through, how they felt, what thoughts went through their minds as they prayed and pleaded for someone to help them. You are the monster you were then, and you still are now."
Muehlberg told the judge he broke his hip three weeks ago and has other health issues that make it difficult for him to travel.
"You should have had to be uprooted from your comfortable cell," Kuehnle said.
Berry sentenced Muehlberg to life in prison for Mihan's murder.
Kuehnle told Muehlberg she forgave him for her daughter's murder because that's what her faith tells her to do, but she added: "The hell for our children is over. Now is the beginning of your hell. May God have mercy on your soul."
It is the fifth and final life sentence Muehlberg is expected to receive -- unless investigators can determine the identity of the fifth woman he claims to have killed.
He has been in prison since 1995 for the murder of a man who tried to buy a car from him at his Bel-Ridge home in the early 1990s.
All of the remains were found in various containers or packages, earning Muehlberg the moniker The Package Killer during the years police tried to track him down.
He kept the man he killed at his home, Doc Atchison, in a makeshift coffin in his basement.
Mihan had been strangled and her hands were bound. Her body was stuffed between two mattresses Muehlberg tied together.
Mihan's mother thanked Weber and all of the investigators who worked on her daughter's case through the years during her statement to the court.
Weber drove past the site where Mihan's body was found on her way home from the courthouse Friday.
This time she thanked her.