Suspect Confesses To Serial Murders

A 31-year-old man has been charged with murdering six women and a 10-year-old girl in a string of Chicago-area sex attacks between 1995 and 1997.

Police said Paul Frederick Runge — who has been in custody on an unrelated charge — confessed to all seven killings and was linked by DNA to two of the crimes, the deaths of the child and her mother.

Runge was charged Thursday with first-degree murder, sexual assault and armed robbery in connection with the seven slayings and could be eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Police said his victims were bludgeoned to death or strangled. In some cases, their bodies were dismembered; in one, the home was set on fire with the victims inside.

"Paul Runge is our worst nightmare," Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine said Thursday. "He conned his way into women's homes or duped them into trusting him. He then raped and murdered them."

Police said some of Runge's victims had responded to help-wanted ads for someone to clean his home.

The first victim was killed January 3, 1995, at a townhouse complex where Runge lived. Parts of her dismembered body were found in rural Lake County and in Wisconsin. Two other victims, sisters from Bosnia, were dismembered in a bathtub and their remains were dumped in trash bins, authorities said.

Police got a break in the cases after the bodies of Yolanda Guiterrez, 35, and her daughter were found. They had been sexually assaulted, their throats slashed and their apartment set on fire in March 1997. DNA taken from the scene was linked to Runge last December.

Investigators presented the DNA evidence to Runge, who police say confessed to all seven slayings.

"Based upon that evidence, he obviously believed we had the goods on him," Chicago Police Cmdr. Gerard Mahnke said. He said police are still searching for solid links between Runge and the other deaths.

Runge has been behind bars since 1997, when he was arrested for a parole violation. He had been paroled in 1994 for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in 1987.

"I'm relieved because this is the final chapter, but it brings back memories," Guiterrez's father, Ramon Rivera, told the Chicago Tribune. "Now we know who, and we're left to wonder why."

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