The Revolving Doors

Charles Ray Hatcher was born in Mound City, Missouri, in 1929 and spent much of his adult life in prisons and state hospitals. From 1947 on he was convicted of car theft, escape and an attempted abduction. In August 1969 he abducted and strangled 12-year-old William Freeman in Antioch, California, a killing he admitted years later. Two days later in San Francisco he attacked six-year-old Gilbert Martinez, but a passerby out with his dog stepped in, and the boy lived.

Four-year-old Eric Christgen vanished from the center of St. Joseph, Missouri, on May 26, 1978, and his body later turned up by the Missouri River. Police charged a local man, Melvin Reynolds, who was convicted after coercive questioning and sentenced to life. In the same city on July 29, 1982, 11-year-old Michelle Steele was reported missing, and a day later her uncle came upon her body near the water. Police arrested Hatcher on July 31 while he was seeking admission to St. Joseph State Hospital.

While jailed before trial, Hatcher claimed responsibility for 16 deaths, the earliest in 1969. Using a rough sketch from Hatcher, investigators recovered the body of James Churchill, 28, on the grounds of the Rock Island Arsenal, and his confession to Eric’s murder led to Reynolds’s release. Hatcher was convicted of killing Eric in October 1983 and of killing Michelle on December 3, 1984. On December 7, 1984, he died by suicide in his cell at the Missouri State Penitentiary.