Suspected serial killer charged in Berks slaying

READING - An Illinois prison inmate suspected of killing women in four states in the 1970s and 1980s was charged yesterday with the rape and murder of a Berks County woman almost three decades ago.

State police said Timothy Krajcir, 63, an Allentown native, confessed last month to killing Myrtle Rupp, 51, of Temple, near Reading, in April 1979.

Police said Krajcir sexually assaulted Rupp and then strangled her. DNA recovered from the scene matched that of the defendant, police said.

Krajcir pleaded guilty last month to strangling a Southern Illinois University student in 1982 and is serving a 40-year sentence in the Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois. He was charged last month with killing five women in Cape Girardeau, Mo., in 1977 and 1982. He is also charged with the 1978 stabbing death of another woman in Illinois.

- AP