Paul Runge (serial killer)

Last updated
Paul Runge
PaulRungeSK.jpg
2011 inmate photo of Runge
Born
Paul Frederick Runge

(1970-01-28) January 28, 1970 (age 54)
Conviction(s) First degree murder
Criminal penalty Death; commuted to life imprisonment
Details
Victims7–8+
Span of crimes
1995–1997
CountryUnited States
State(s) Illinois
Imprisoned at Pontiac Correctional Center

Paul Frederick Runge (born January 28, 1970) [1] is an American serial killer who sexually assaulted and murdered at least six women and one girl between 1995 and 1997, in Illinois' Cook and DuPage counties. [2] Initially sentenced to death, [3] his sentence was commuted by Governor Pat Quinn in 2011, when capital punishment was abolished in the state. [4]

Contents

Early life and first conviction

Little is known about Runge's early life. He was born in Oak Forest, and since childhood has exhibited sexual sadism. This only worsened upon his mother's death, which occurred when he was 17. [3]

Later that year, Runge kidnapped, raped and beat up a 14-year-old girl in Oak Forest, only to later turn himself in to the authorities. He was given a 14-year sentence for this crime, but was paroled in May 1994. [5] During that time, he married a woman named Charlene, got a job as a shoe salesman and later a truck driver, and resettled in three different cities prior to his eventual rearrest in May 1997 [2] for violating the conditions of the parole. [5]

Murders

When searching for a victim, Runge would cruise around the area and look for ways to acquaint himself with the potential victim. For some victims, he achieved this by pretending to be interested in a property that they were selling or renting and would ask if he could check the inside of the building. When he earned her trust, he would proceed to rape the victim before either strangling, slashing or beating her to death. In some instances, he disposed of the body by dismembering and dumping it in garbage cans, and in four cases, he burned the victim's home down. [5]

Stacy Frobel

The first victim was an acquaintance of Runge's wife: 25-year-old Carol Stream resident Stacy Frobel. On either January 3 or 4, 1995, Frobel had gone to visit Charlene in the couple's Streamwood home, but was never seen alive after that. [5] Approximately two weeks later, on January 16, a German Shepherd named Friendly brought a severed leg to its owner's home, which it had found in a field near the border with southern Wisconsin. Five days later, the dog also found the other leg. DNA tests concluded that it was indeed Stacy Frobel, who was last seen entering the Runge household. [2]

When she was inside the house, Runge had struck her with a dumbbell, killing Frobel on the spot. He then proceeded to place the body in the bathtub, where he dismembered her using a saw, [5] before scattering the remains around northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. For days after the murder, he called in sick at his job at Foot Locker, before eventually quitting. [2]

Dženeta and Amela Pašanbegović

The Pašanbegović sisters (22 and 20, respectively) were Bosnian refugees who had come to live in the US with their uncle in Hanover Park, six months prior to their murders. [5] They were last seen on July 11, 1995, when they were offered a house cleaning job by the Runges through a mutual acquaintance. At the time, the couple had moved to Glendale Heights, where Runge had begun work for a Honey Baked Ham store in the mall, while Charlene was planning to start a cleaning business. [2]

It is presumed that they were enticed by Charlene into the house, where they were subsequently handcuffed, bludgeoned, raped, tortured, and strangled to death by Runge. [6] In order to get rid of their bodies, he dismembered both sisters' corpses, placed the remains in plastic bags and discarded them in garbage bins. The day after he killed the sisters, Runge again called in sick, before quitting this job as well. [2]

Dorota Dziubak

In January 1997, the 30-year-old Dziubak was raped and subsequently strangled in Chicago's Northwest Side. Runge came across her after responding to an ad for selling a house. Her burned body was later located by firefighters extinguishing a fire in her home. [3]

Yolanda Gutierrez and Jessica Muniz

On February 3, 1997, Runge entered 45-year-old Gutierrez's Northwest Side apartment in response to a for-sale sign for some sport equipment. In there, he bound both her and her 10-year-old daughter Jessica, raping and torturing them for hours on a bed. [4] Eventually, Runge cut their throats and set their home on fire before escaping. [3]

Kazimiera Paruch

Similarly to Dziubak, the 43-year-old Kazimiera Paruch encountered Runge when he expressed interest in buying her condominium in March 1997. She was also raped and strangled, with her burned body also found by firefighters after they extinguished a fire in her home. [3]

Investigation, trial and imprisonment

Between 1995 and early 1996, Chicago's FBI unit were searching for any possible evidence which could connect the Runges to the disappearances of Frobel and the Pasanbegovic sisters. To do this, they kept tabs on the couple, traced calls from payphones, wiretapped the phones and sifted through the garbage. On March 8, 1996, with the help of two other law enforcement agencies, the FBI conducted a search of the Runge household, which Paul Runge shared with his wife and his father, Richard Runge. More than 200 items were seized, including a book about Charles Albright, a guide to police radio traffic, a crossbow, a stun gun and a knife. Initially, they were not able to arrest him, but in May 1997, he was detained for possession of a weapon, a violation of his parole. [2]

In 1999, as authorities were fighting in court to keep Runge in prison under the Sexually Violent Persons Act, citing his lack of remorse for the 1987 rape, DNA analysis linked him to the Gutierrez-Muniz murders. Runge then confessed to the other five slayings; however, he is suspected of being responsible for many more. He has confessed to killing a prostitute, whose body he later dismembered and disposed of [2] and has been charged with three of the murders to which he had confessed. In 2000, while he was being driven to a Cook County court hearing, Runge overpowered the corrections officer with the help of two other inmates during a routine stop in Plainfield. However, the trio were quickly recaptured by local police. [2]

In January 2006, Runge was convicted of the Gutierrez-Muniz murders and was sentenced to death. The prosecutors, who named him as the "face of the death penalty," expressed their hope that his case could help sway opinion in favor against the 2000 moratorium on the death penalty in the state. [3] However, in 2011, capital punishment was abolished under Governor Pat Quinn, resulting in the commutation of Paul Runge's death sentence. [4] Later in August, the DuPage County State's Attorney, Robert Berlin, decided to drop the charges against Runge concerning the Pasanbegovic sisters, citing that it would be a waste of time, as he had already been sentenced to the highest punishment available in the state. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

A thrill killing is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", actual details of events frequently overlap category definitions making attempts at such distinctions problematic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Kemper</span> American serial killer (born 1948)

Edmund Emil Kemper III is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women and one girl, between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the Co-ed Killer, as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, and dismemberment.

Ronald Joseph Dominique, known as The Bayou Strangler, is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 23 men and boys in the state of Louisiana between 1997 and 2006. On September 23, 2008, Dominique was found guilty and sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment without parole for his crimes. Following his conviction, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated that Dominique's was the most significant serial homicide case in the country over the past two decades in terms of both death toll and duration.

Henry Louis Wallace, also known as the “Taco Bell Strangler”, is an American serial killer who killed eleven black women in South Carolina and North Carolina from March 1990 to March 1994. He is currently awaiting execution at Central Prison in Raleigh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlton Gary</span> American serial killer

Carlton Michael Gary was an American serial killer who murdered three elderly women in Columbus, Georgia, and one in Syracuse, New York, between 1975 and 1978, though he is suspected of at least four more killings. Gary was arrested in December 1978 for an armed robbery and sentenced to 21 years in prison. He escaped from custody in 1983 and was caught a year later. Evidence was found linking him to the earlier murders and he was convicted and sentenced to death in August 1986. He was executed by lethal injection on March 15, 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bobby Joe Long</span> American serial killer (1953–2019)

Robert Joseph "Bobby Joe" Long was an American serial killer and rapist who was executed by the state of Florida for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms. Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least eight women in the Tampa Bay area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Durousseau</span> American serial killer

Paul Durousseau is an American serial killer who murdered seven young women in the southeastern United States between 1997 and 2003. German authorities suspect he may have also killed several local women when he was stationed there with the United States Army during the early 1990s. Typically, Durousseau would gain the victim's trust, enter the victim's home, tie their hands, rape, then strangle them to death. All of his known victims were young, single African-American women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodney Alcala</span> American serial killer (1943–2021)

Rodney James Alcala was an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979. He also pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 25 years to life for two further murders committed in New York and was also indicted with a murder in Wyoming, although charges were dropped due to a technicality. While he has been conclusively linked to eight murders, Alcala's true number of victims remains unknown and could be much higher – the actual number could be as high as 130.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Laurence Marquette</span> American serial killer

Richard Lawrence Marquette is an American serial killer who killed three women, drained their blood, mutilated and dismembered their bodies, and scattered their remains between 1961 and 1975. He was the first person ever to be added as an eleventh name on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List, in connection with the 1961 murder of Joan Caudle in Portland, Oregon. He is currently incarcerated at Oregon State Correctional Institution.

Patrick Tissier is a French serial killer and rapist who was convicted of killing three people from 1971 to 1993 in the southern regions of France. His case, along with that of Christian Van Geloven, led to a reform in the penal code in regard to the treatment of child murderers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Little</span> American serial killer (1940–2020)

Samuel Little was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 93 people, nearly all women, between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) has confirmed Little's involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubert Geralds</span> American serial killer

Hubert Geralds Jr. is an American serial killer who murdered five women between 1994 and 1995. He is serving his prison sentence, life without parole, in Menard Correctional Center, which is operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections. During his spree of murders he was known as the Englewood Strangler. Geralds is in custody under the identification number B39967. He was admitted to the Menard Correctional Center on January 16, 1998.

Alfred J. Gaynor is an American serial killer and rapist who committed a series of nine murders in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts from 1995 to 1998. For these crimes, Gaynor was subsequently given four sentences of life imprisonment without parole.

Kegashbek Shamshievich Orunbayev, known as The Ivolginsky Ripper, is a Kyrgyzstani-Russian serial killer, rapist, necrophile and cannibal who murdered six women in Altai Krai and Buryatia between 1991 and 2012, sexually abusing their corpses afterwards. He was found guilty of these murders, and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he is serving at the Black Dolphin Prison.

Joseph "Joey" Daniel Miller is an American serial killer who raped and murdered at least five girls and women in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from 1986 and 1990. In 1993, he was convicted and sentenced to death, but it was later commuted to life imprisonment without a chance of parole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Hall (suspected serial killer)</span> American kidnapper, rapist, murderer,

Larry DeWayne Hall is an American kidnapper, rapist, murderer, and suspected serial killer. An aficionado of the American Revolution and Civil War, Hall traveled around the Midwest for historical reenactments and is believed to have abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered dozens of girls and women.

John Peter Malveaux is an American serial killer and rapist who committed between four and five murders around Opelousas, Louisiana from January to October 1997. Following his arrest and confession to the crimes, Malveaux pleaded guilty on all counts and was given four life terms without parole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Mailhot</span> American serial killer

Jeffrey S. Mailhot, also known as The Rhode Island Ripper, is an American serial killer who murdered three prostitutes in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, between 2003 and 2004. After strangling his victims to death, Mailhot dismembered their corpses with a saw, placed them in garbage bags, and threw them in dumpsters. After one of his victims survived, Mailhot was arrested on July 17, 2004, and later sentenced to three life terms in prison. Only the remains of one victim have been found.

Robert Sylvester Alston is an American serial killer who raped and murdered at least four women in Greensboro, North Carolina from 1991 to 1993, whose bodies he then dismembered and buried in various locations. He made anonymous phone calls to investigators about the crimes in an attempt to confuse them and gain media attention. He pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and received multiple life terms.

References

  1. "N84715 - RUNGE, PAUL F." Archived from the original on 2022-02-05. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Cam Simpson (June 16, 2001). "FBI lapse let serial killer suspect remain free". Chicago Tribune.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jeff Coen and Carlos Sadovi (February 28, 2006). "Jury: Runge should die". Chicago Tribune.
  4. 1 2 3 Lauren Traut (March 9, 2011). "Gov. Pat Quinn Commutes Death Sentence of Oak Forest Serial Killer Paul Runge". Patch Media.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 John W. Fountain (June 15, 2001). "Man Charged With Killing 7 Chicago Women". New York Times .
  6. 1 2 "2 Cases Dropped Against Serial Killer Paul Runge". WBBM-TV. August 24, 2011.