Bio 

Paul W. Kreutzer was born on February 22, 1972, in Gravette, Arkansas. He lived in Pike County, Missouri, with his adoptive parents after being paroled from an Illinois prison in May 1992. Kreutzer had a criminal record before the murder of Louise Hemphill. On April 26, 1991, he was convicted in Adams County, Illinois, of three counts of burglary and one count of conspiracy to commit robbery. He received prison sentences that ran concurrently and was later released on parole.

After his parole, Kreutzer returned to Pike County and lived less than a quarter of a mile from the Hemphill family home. Louise Hemphill lived there with her husband and three children.

Kreutzer met Louise Hemphill when he went to the Hemphill residence to look at a horse that was for sale. In the last week of August 1992, shortly before the murder, he was arrested and later released in Columbia, Missouri, on a charge of indecent exposure.

Murder Story

On the morning of September 2, 1992, Louise Hemphill’s husband left for work, and her two oldest children went to school. Louise then drove her youngest child to school. Later that morning, her brother visited the Hemphill home and became the last known person to see her alive before the attack.

That same morning, Kreutzer was seen in several places near the Hemphill residence. He was also seen near the school where Louise had taken her daughter. He visited two area schools and offered to speak to students about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. At 9:41 a.m., he bought a BB gun at a store in Louisiana, Missouri.

Around 4:00 p.m., Louise’s daughters, Janie and Jessie, came home from school. Jessie went upstairs and found her mother’s nude body on the floor of her brother Luke’s bedroom. She called her father, who returned home, saw the body, and called 911.

Investigators found signs of sexual assault inside the home. Duct tape was found around parts of a bed and on Louise Hemphill’s ankle. Evidence showed that Louise had been stabbed in the neck, struck in the head with a baseball bat, and strangled with a belt. The head injuries would have been fatal, but the immediate cause of death was strangulation. The strangulation likely took three to four minutes.

Police arrested Kreutzer later that evening. Officers found Louise Hemphill’s billfold or purse, bloody gloves, duct tape, and the BB gun in his car. A search of his motel room found bloodstained jeans and a receipt for the BB gun. DNA testing of semen found on the bed cover and on Louise Hemphill’s body matched Kreutzer.

Kreutzer used a diminished-capacity defense at trial, claiming that mental disease or defect prevented him from acting with deliberation. The jury rejected the defense. On March 26, 1994, he was convicted of first-degree murder. On March 28, 1994, the jury recommended death. On June 6, 1994, the court sentenced him to death.

The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, death sentence, and denial of post-conviction relief on August 20, 1996. His later federal habeas claims were also rejected. On April 10, 2002, Paul W. Kreutzer was executed by lethal injection in Missouri.