On a spring day in May of 1992, the life of 37-year-old Sarah Blessing was tragically cut short in Raytown, Missouri. The afternoon of May 7th began like any other for Blessing, who was at her recently opened business, The Shop of Many Colors, located in the Woodson Village Shopping Center. It was there, amidst the herbs and wellness products she sold, that she would become the final known victim of a string of murders that terrorized the Midwest.
At approximately 6:15 p.m., a man was
seen walking across the shopping center's parking lot and entering Blessing's store. Shortly after, the owner of a neighboring video store heard a loud noise resembling a gunshot. When he went to investigate, he discovered Blessing in a back room of her shop, having been fatally shot in the head. The assailant had taken a small amount of cash from the register and was seen by witnesses walking away from the shopping center and heading toward an access road for Interstate 70.
Investigators quickly linked Blessing's murder to a series of similar slayings that had occurred in the preceding weeks across Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri. Ballistic evidence confirmed that the same. 22-caliber handgun was used in each of the crimes, solidifying the theory of a serial killer who came to be known as the I-70 killer. The victims were typically female clerks working alone in small stores located near the interstate.
Despite eyewitness descriptions of the suspect—a white male in his mid-20s to mid-30s at the time, with a slender build and light brown or reddish hair—no arrests have ever been made in the case of Sarah Blessing or the other victims of the I-70 killer. The man responsible for her death, and the deaths of at least five others, seemingly vanished after the murder in Raytown, leaving a trail of grieving families and a decades-long mystery. The case remains open, a cold but not forgotten chapter in the region's history.
