'I-65 Killer': Police to discuss long-unsolved Indiana, Kentucky serial killer case
The Indiana State Police have scheduled a news conference Tuesday on a string of serial killings that have remain unsolved for more than 30 years.
The “I-65 Killer,” also known as the “The Days Inn Killer,” raped and killed at least three women – Jeanne Gilbert, Mary “Peggy” Gill, and Vicki Heath – in Indiana and Kentucky in the 1980s. All three were clerks at motels along the I-65 corridor.
The killer may also be linked to other attacks and killings.
ISP, as well as members of the FBI and Elizabethtown, Kentucky, police department, will be present at the Indianapolis press conference, ISP said in a news release Thursday. Spokesman Sgt. Glen Fifield declined to say what specifically would be unveiled.
“We’re going to wait until Tuesday,” he said. “But we wouldn’t call a big press conference like this if it wasn’t big and important.”
More: Webb: The I-65 Killer: An Indiana / Kentucky serial killer still runs loose
The victims
Police found Heath behind the Super 8 Motel in Elizabethtown in the early-morning hours of Feb. 21, 1987, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported at the time. She had been assaulted and shot to death.
According to the News Enterprise, the 41-year-old mother of two was an avid reader who had just gotten engaged.
In 1989, her killer claimed two more victims – on the same day.
Gill, a 24-year-old night auditor at the Days Inn in Merrillville, Indiana, was attacked and killed sometime between 12:30 and 2:30 a.m. on March 3.
Gilbert, a part-time auditor at the Remington Days Inn, suffered the same fate. A motorist driving through White County just after dawn spotted Gilbert’s lifeless body lying near the roadway, where the killer had apparently left her. She had been shot three times.
Police said the suspect shot the women with the same .22 caliber handgun. And both motels had been robbed. In all, the killer got away with $426.
Gill loved to bake and decorate cakes for her co-workers, the Indianapolis Star reported in 1989. She was also known for her cross-stitches – so much so that one of her friends cross-stitched a scene from the Last Supper for Gill's funeral and left it draped over her coffin.
Gilbert, meanwhile, was a 34-year-old mother of two with a cheerleader daughter and a son who loved to play basketball, the Star wrote.
Updates
In 2010, Kentucky State Police announced authorities were officially dealing with a serial killer. Its crime lab had linked DNA found at the Elizabethtown crime scene to deaths of Gill and Gilbert.
The suspect was also definitively linked to another attack in 1990 at the Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana. But that time, the clerk got away.
The victim described her attacker as a 6-foot-tall man with greasy hair, a gray-spotted beard and drifting green eyes. Police used those details to create a composite sketch.
Other than that, there haven’t been many updates in the cases over the years. That could change Tuesday.
Contact Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: I-65 killer: News conference set for unsolved serial killer case
