BATES COUNTY, Mo. — A man who was suspected in the killings of seven women in the mid-1990s but ultimately never convicted has died. Gregory Breeden was found dead by police of apparent natural causes according to the Bates County coroner. The coroner told FOX 4 it appeared he had been dead for several days.
A report from Bates County Live cites a press release that indicates officers with the Butler Police Department were called to a home and found Breeden on the floor. He was 67 years old.
Breeden made headlines when he was the primary suspect in seven different murder cases where women’s bodies were found in the Missouri River over a period of 12 years. Police said some of the women were prostitutes and some of their bodies had been mutilated.
Breeden was charged in the 1996 murder of Viola McCoy, whose body was found in the Missouri River in 1994. The case was eventually dropped after a witness refused to testify and prosecutors deemed they didn’t have enough evidence. While he was never convicted for any murder, he did serve 10 years in prison for writing bad checks.
Then in October of 2013 he was charged with a misdemeanor for sexual misconductafter he allegedly was urinating in public in the view of children. A case review for that charge was set to occur on Tuesday of next week, online court records indicate he had been released from jail on bond last Friday, May 16.
