St. Louis • An Arkansas man who killed himself during a 1999 police standoff at a Missouri motel was a serial killer and rapist who strangled a South Carolina woman in 1990 and gunned down a Missouri mother and daughter eight years later, authorities said Friday.
Advancements in DNA testing enabled investigators to link the three killings and the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee, to Robert Brashers, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said. Brashers, a Paragould, Arkansas, man who had a long criminal record, killed himself during a four-hour standoff at a motel in Kennett, a city about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Paragould in an area of southeastern Missouri that's wedged between Arkansas and Tennessee.