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Man Sentenced in 1987 Missouri Cold Case — But He Gets Just 10 Years
Karla Delcour was just 22 when she was killed, and Kirby King will now serve less than half that time in jail for her manslaughter.
A cold case in Missouri dating all the way back to 1987 has been solved by detectives — but to say it has resulted in justice for the victim may be stretching the imagination.
Karla Delcour was 22 and living in the town of St Clair some 45 miles south-west of St Louis in the summer of 1987.
However, she suddenly disappeared that June, with her father realising she was gone when he didn’t receive a Father’s Day card from his usually dutiful daughter.
A search began for the young woman that ended in tragedy just four days later. On June 25th 1987, Karla’s decomposing body was discovered by the side of a service road along Interstate 44.
She had been bound by cords around her wrists and neck that had ultimately strangled her to death, Franklin County Sheriff Steve Pelton told the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
Detectives thought Karla had been killed elsewhere approximately four days earlier before being left in the woods — and it didn’t take them too long to come up with a suspect.
Kirby R King became a person of interest early on in the investigation and was questioned by police in 1987. He would have been known by Karla and moved in similar social circles at the time the crime was committed, investigators believed.
However, actually proving his involvement in her death seemed to be far more difficult. King slipped through the net in the 1980s — and again in the early 2000s, when the case was revisited with a view to getting justice for Karla.
Incredibly, it has been reported that King himself told investigators he had a role in her death at one point during this time, but nothing could apparently be done about it.
It was only when Karla’s case was reopened once more in 2018 that King could finally be pinned down and arrested a year later. He was charged with second-degree murder initially, but a plea deal in June 2023 saw Lincoln County prosecutors agree to the lesser…
