For years, Paul Frederick Runge was a suspect, and he knew it.
Five and a half months after the death and dismemberment of a young woman in January 1995, federal and local authorities began watching Runge.
They searched his rental car and found traces of blood, they studied his phone records, even searched the trash bags outside his Carol Stream house, records show. Investigators trailed him, with Runge sometimes waving at them, tauntingly.
And through it all, Runge kept killing, police say. Through a 1996 search of his home that might have immediately sent him back to jail, and through a DNA analysis that could have led police to him, Runge managed to remain free as he killed five more Chicago-area women and an 11-year-old girl, according to charges filed last week.
How Runge avoided arrest in the seven murders with which he now stands charged is a story of police oversights, of perhaps unavoidable technological glitches, and of plain bad luck. Whatever the reasons, the chilling reality is that as police worked in vain to arrest Runge, six of his alleged victims died.
Runge, 31, is described by law enforcement officials as a vicious, brazen sexual sadist with a propensity for torture, handcuffs and crossbows, and books with such titles as “The Eyeball Killer” and “Bloodletter and Bad Men.”
That’s a far cry from the “average” kid described by neighbors in the Oak Forest neighborhood where Runge grew up. Some saw a radical shift in his behavior following the 1987 death of his mother, a woman whom he described as a “saint.”
Shortly after, while his father and younger brother were away on a fishing trip, Runge lured a 14-year-old girl into his home, blindfolded, handcuffed and brutally and repeatedly raped her over 15 hours, court records show. He was 17.
Runge pleaded guilty to kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and armed violence in return for a 14-year sentence. He spent just 5 years in prison.
Runge got out of prison in 1994, moved to Carol Stream, got a job at a Lady Foot Locker, and got engaged. He married on Jan. 27, 1995–“too quick,” he would later tell the prison psychologist.
Weeks before Runge was to marry his wife, Charlene, the first of his alleged victims was killed. Mutilated parts of Stacey Frobel, 25, a friend of Charlene’s, were found as the month went on. Frobel had last been seen at the couple’s home, so police quickly focused on them.
By June 15, 1995, the couple were under “random” surveillance by investigators, according to a 1996 FBI affidavit.
They used a substance called Luminol to find blood on the trunk liner of a car Paul Runge had rented. It was Type A, the same as Frobel’s, according to the affidavit. They had a forensic dentist compare bite marks on Frobel’s body to Runge’s teeth and concluded they were “consistent.” They followed the Runges’ cars, watched them use pay phones, studied their trash.
Still, the FBI and police surveillance of Runge and his wife wasn’t constant. Over two years, there were 286 times when the couple were being watched.
The reason for the inconsistency of the watch, officials said, was its purpose: FBI spokesman Ross Rice said authorities were focused on finding evidence to connect the couple to the Frobel killing, not on whether they might catch Runge committing another crime.
Sisters become victims
Even as periodic surveillance went on, two more women were killed. In July 1995, Bosnian refugees Dzeneta Pasanbegovic, 22, and her sister Amela, 20, were raped, strangled, dismembered and dumped in trash bins.
Not long after the killings, the signs again pointed to Runge, and authorities tried to make a case against him, the affidavit shows. They found numerous links between the Runges and the Bosnian sisters, just as they had with Frobel, the affidavit shows.
A woman who worked with Runge at a HoneyBaked Ham store in Bloomingdale told police she helped the two Bosnian sisters contact Runge’s wife, who was supposedly starting a cleaning business.
The co-worker said she gave Runge’s wife the phone number for the two Bosnian sisters shortly before they died.
When investigators searched the Runges’ garbage, the co-worker’s phone number and the names of the sisters were found. They also found records indicating that a gas station pay phone often used by Charlene Runge had been used to dial the sisters just before their deaths.
In the garbage investigators found notes with other women’s names and addresses: “Single. Mid-30’s. Cute. Easy,” one said. “Very Hot Blonde with 2 hot sisters,” another said.
In interviews with investigators, the Runges denied involvement in the deaths of the Bosnian sisters. The day after the sisters had died, meanwhile, Paul Runge called in sick to the HoneyBaked Ham store, the affidavit said. He quit a few days later.
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By March 1996, in the middle of the surveillance, authorities gathered all their links between Runge and the three dead women in the affidavit–in the hopes of getting a judge’s approval to search his house. They did and reported finding a “Viper” knife, a stun gun and a crossbow with 29 arrows in a duffel bag.
FBI officials say they did not consider using the evidence to try to put Paul Runge back behind bars for a violation of his parole. It occurred to them later, however, and in June 1997, Runge was sent back for the weapons violation that had been discovered 15 months earlier.
In those intervening months, four more people died.
Law enforcement sources now believe Runge, then working as a driver for 7-UP company, targeted Yolanda Gutierrez and daughter Jessica Muniz while he was making a delivery at a supermarket on Chicago’s Northwest Side. He saw a sign Gutierrez had posted, the sources said, saying that she was selling “Hooked on Phonics,” a reading program. Runge called her and said he was interested in buying the materials, the sources said.
The mother and daughter were sexually assaulted and fatally stabbed, and their bodies were found in their burning apartment. Despite the fire, investigators recovered DNA evidence from the rapist.
Investigators tested that DNA evidence against a database of known violent offenders.
Because of his sexual assault conviction, authorities said, Runge’s DNA profile was included in a state database.
No match on DNA
However, there was no match. Runge’s DNA profile was taken with an old technology, and the evidence from the murder scene analyzed with a newer technology. At the time, the database could not make connections between samples tested under the old and new technologies.
Five weeks after the mother and daughter were killed, Runge killed Kazimiera Paruch, police allege.
Two months later, Runge was sent back to prison on the parole violation. With her husband now in jail, and knowing that investigators were looking at her as well, Charlene Runge began offering information.
Years later, there would be another development, thanks to updated technology.
Last fall, a different suspect’s DNA was compared to the DNA from the mother and daughter and proved not to be a match. Because the Illinois State Police Crime Lab has, over the past two years, been converting the old DNA profiles in its database so that they can be compared to more modern DNA profiles, the profiles obtained from Gutierrez and Muniz were compared once more to the database.
This time, the result was a match to Runge, authorities said.