Robert Shafer, Killer: 1990 Murders, Sentence, and I Am a Killer

Robert Shafer is the killer serving life without the possibility of parole in Missouri for the April 1990 murders of Jerry Parker and Denny Young, two gay men he and a teenage friend targeted for robbery in St. Charles County. Shafer originally received the death penalty after firing his lawyers and pleading guilty, but a federal court overturned that sentence, and in 2004 he was resentenced to life without parole. His case reached a wider audience through the Netflix series I Am a Killer.

What Happened on April 29, 1990

Shafer, then nineteen, spent the afternoon drinking and smoking marijuana with his sixteen-year-old friend David Steinmeyer. The two talked about a plan to “rob some homosexuals and beat them up.” Shafer took a .22 caliber revolver and five rounds of ammunition from his sister’s home, and the pair went to Blanchette’s Landing, a spot along the Missouri River on North River Road.¹

There they saw Ford Jerry Parker and Keith Dennis Young listening to music and drinking beer. After watching the two men embrace, Shafer and Steinmeyer walked up and asked for a ride to St. Peters, offering five dollars. Young agreed to drive.²

During the drive Shafer directed Young onto a dead-end road, where he punched and kicked Parker and fought with Young. He forced both men back into the car at gunpoint and took them to a remote stretch of Silvers Road. When the car stopped, another struggle broke out. Parker tried to run. Shafer chased him and shot him at least twice, including once in the face. Young ran toward a nearby field, and Shafer shot him in the back, then fired a final shot into his head.¹

With both men dead, Shafer went back and robbed them, taking about one hundred dollars, a silver Zippo lighter, and cigarettes. He and Steinmeyer stripped the car’s stereo and speakers and abandoned the vehicle in a store parking lot.¹

The two surrendered to St. Charles County detectives the next day, claiming Parker and Young had attacked them and that they had killed in self-defense. Prosecutors rejected that account, saying the location and nature of the victims’ wounds were inconsistent with self-defense.³

Why He Chose Parker and Young

The killings were not formally charged as hate crimes, but the anti-gay motive is in Shafer’s own confession. He wrote that after seeing Parker and Young embrace at Blanchette’s Landing, “This is when we knew they would be ones we robbed.”¹

Phil Groenweghe, the Chief Trial Attorney and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for St. Charles County, said Shafer appeared to treat the victims’ sexual orientation as a “mitigating factor,” as though others would sympathize. Groenweghe argued that Shafer picked the two men because he considered them “easy victims.”³

Shafer’s childhood friend Aubrey Martin offered a different framing in the documentary, saying, “Whether Robert sees it or not, he targeted these two gay guys because he’d been molested,” referring to allegations that Shafer had been sexually abused as a child.³

The Guilty Plea and Original Death Sentence

Shafer was charged on December 27, 1990, with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action. Over the next two years, several appointed defense attorneys tried to represent him. All of them, court records show, tried to talk him out of pleading guilty. Shafer had contact with seven lawyers in total during the proceedings.¹

In April 1992 he told the court he intended to plead guilty and receive the death penalty. On July 24, 1992, against his lawyer’s advice, he signed a Miranda waiver and gave a detailed written and videotaped confession.⁴

On January 4, 1993, in a hearing that lasted less than two hours, the trial court let Shafer waive his right to counsel and to a jury trial. He pleaded guilty to all four counts and waived his right to present mitigating evidence at sentencing. The court sentenced him to death on the two murder counts and to life on the two armed criminal action counts.¹

How the Death Sentence Was Overturned

Within weeks of arriving on death row, Shafer sought counsel and began challenging his conviction and sentence. He filed a post-conviction motion under Missouri Rule 24.035 arguing that his pleas and waivers were not knowing, voluntary, or intelligent. The post-conviction court kept the convictions but set aside the death sentence, citing the trial court’s failure to order a presentence investigation and deficiencies in his penalty-phase waivers. In 1998 the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that ruling and reinstated the death sentence, finding Shafer competent to have waived counsel and pleaded guilty despite diagnoses of borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.²¹

Shafer then filed for habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. In 2001 the district court granted a conditional writ. The trial judge, it found, had never explained the elements of first-degree murder, possible defenses such as diminished capacity, or lesser included offenses. He had not corrected Shafer’s apparent misunderstandings about the burden of proof and double jeopardy, and he had not adequately warned Shafer of the dangers of self-representation. The court also found the state supreme court had made an unreasonable factual determination in concluding the trial judge had weighed mitigating evidence, given that five mental health experts had reported Shafer suffered from conditions contributing to impulsive and irrational decision-making.⁴

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed on May 27, 2003. It held that the Missouri Supreme Court had conflated competence to stand trial with the separate, more demanding question of whether a waiver of counsel was knowing, voluntary, and intelligent.²

On March 17, 2004, Shafer’s death sentence was formally reversed and he was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.⁵ No execution date was ever set, and no death warrant was ever issued. He remains in the Missouri prison system with no possibility of release.

What Happened to David Steinmeyer

Steinmeyer, sixteen at the time of the murders, reached a plea deal with the state. He pleaded guilty to two counts of felony murder and was sentenced on October 21, 1992, to twelve years and six months in prison. He served roughly eleven years before his release.⁴³

During the investigation and the years of court proceedings, Shafer and Steinmeyer gave shifting accounts of who did the shooting. Each man at various points claimed to be the sole shooter, accused the other of being the sole shooter, or said each had killed one victim. Shafer’s own confession acknowledged that on the drive to surrender the two agreed on a version of events that was “not the truth.”⁴

Shafer’s Background

Robert Andrew Shafer was born on August 19, 1970, in Salina, Kansas, into a military family with eleven children. His father died in 1977, when Shafer was seven. Family members interviewed for I Am a Killer described a hostile home without affection. His sister Juliette spoke about the household’s dysfunction, and his brother Phillip alleged their mother frequently directed anti-gay slurs at her sons. Shafer reportedly began using drugs and alcohol by age nine.⁶

The I Am a Killer Episode

Shafer’s case is the subject of Season 1, Episode 8 of the Netflix series I Am a Killer, titled “Hunted,” which premiered on August 3, 2018. The episode features interviews with Shafer, his family members, prosecutor Phil Groenweghe, and Richard Kiel, the nephew of victim Jerry Parker. Kiel said on camera that he had forgiven Shafer in a letter. The episode covers both the crime and the circumstances of Shafer’s upbringing, including allegations of childhood sexual abuse.³⁶

1
FindLaw. State v. Shafer, No. 75868
2
Justia. Shafer v. Bowersox, 329 F.3d 637
3
FOX 2 Now. Netflix True Crime Show Revisits 1990 St. Charles County Murders
4
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Shafer v. Bowersox, No. 01-3685
5
University of North Carolina. Missouri Execution and Death Row History
6
ShowSnob. I Am a Killer Season 1 Episode 8 Recap