Dr. Sergei Zacharev, a 58-year-old White man, was nearing the end of an ordinary Saturday night on May 15, 2021, when violence found him in Brentwood, Missouri. He was a physician whose life story stretched far beyond St. Louis—born in Minsk, Belarus, to parents who were also doctors—before building a medical career and a family life in the region.
Late that night, police were dispatched to the Drury Inn at 8700 Eager Road after reports of gunfire.
When officers arrived around 11:45 p.m., they found Zacharev suffering from apparent gunshot wounds; he was pronounced dead at the scene. In the first hours after the killing, investigators publicly said they had not identified a motive and did not know of any connection between the victims involved in what would soon look like a linked pair of attacks.
What made Zacharev’s death feel even more chilling to detectives was the realization that it did not stand alone. Less than an hour earlier, in University City, Stanley and Barbara Goodkin were driving eastbound on Delmar Boulevard when shots tore into their car around 10:51 p.m. Barbara Goodkin was struck and later died from her injuries, while her husband survived. As investigators compared evidence, forensic findings suggested the two shootings were connected, and the search widened from a single scene to a fast-moving manhunt for whoever had crossed the county line and struck twice in quick succession.
In those early days, police asked the public to watch for a smaller SUV or passenger vehicle that might have been involved. Behind the scenes, the case pulled multiple agencies together; the Major Case Squad and University City detectives worked jointly as leads pointed out of state. Reports around the investigation described ballistic evidence linking the attacks, and the picture emerging was not of a targeted feud, but of strangers hurt by people passing through.
Investigators ultimately identified Tyler D. Terry and Adrienne R. Simpson as suspects in both Missouri killings, and prosecutors filed a sweeping set of charges in St. Louis County: two counts each of first-degree murder, along with robbery, first-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, and multiple counts of armed criminal action. Authorities said the pair was also believed to be tied to other killings outside Missouri, and no-bond warrants were issued as the search pushed south.
The trail led to South Carolina, where the suspects’ flight ended in violence and pursuit. Accounts of the timeline described Terry and Simpson arriving in the St. Louis area earlier that evening, stealing a license plate, and then—after the two shootings—continuing on the road until law enforcement confronted them days later. During a traffic stop attempt in Chester County, deputies said shots were fired during a chase that ended in a crash; Simpson was arrested, while Terry ran into the woods and evaded capture for nearly a week before being found and taken into custody.
As the legal cases unfolded across state lines, prosecutors in South Carolina announced guilty pleas and life-without-parole sentences tied to murders there, with reporting describing agreements aimed at avoiding the death penalty in exchange for pleas spanning multiple jurisdictions. In Missouri, Terry later pleaded guilty in St. Louis County to a package of counts that included the two first-degree murder charges, and Simpson later entered guilty pleas in St. Louis County connected to the killings; her plea encompassed first-degree murder along with assault, robbery, weapons, and armed-criminal-action counts.
