Authorities have arrested a former long haul truck driver who they say was responsible for the murder of multiple women in the 1990s.
On May 6, police arrested 58 year old Clark Perry Baldwin at his home in Waterloo, Iowa following a year-long multiple agency investigation.
Baldwin is facing homicide charges in connection to the 1991 murder of Pamela Rose McCall and her unborn child who were found in strangled to death in Tennessee, as well as two women who have never been identified who were found murdered 400 miles apart in Wyoming in 1992.
Federal authorities were able to make the arrest nearly 30 years after the slayings thanks to new forensic evidence.
Investigators in Tennessee reopened the cold case into McCall’s death in April 2019 and were able to establish a DNA profile of the suspect.
This DNA profile matched the two unidentified victims found in Wyoming in a national database.
After making this connection, investigators looked into commercial genealogy databases, which pointed them towards Baldwin as a possible suspect.
The FBI was then able to secretly collect DNA from Baldwin from his trash and from a shopping cart he used at a Waterloo Walmart. Baldwin’s DNA matched the profile created by Tennessee investigators, which led to his arrest.
Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Commander Matt Waldock says that Baldwin may be tied to additional unsolved murders.
“I don’t know what the legal definition of a serial killer is, but we feel strongly he’s responsible for multiple deaths. Obviously, other cases are still under investigation,” Waldock told the Des Moines Register.
Baldwin was also accused of raping a 21 year old hitchhiker at gunpoint in the cab of his truck in Texas in 1991, but the case against him fell apart when the victim refused to return to Texas for the trial. The woman said that Baldwin struck her on the head, bound her hands, and tried to choke her to death.
Investigators are also working to tie Baldwin to the 1992 bludgeoning death of 22 year old Iowa truck stop worker Rhonda Knutson and the 1991 death of Tammy Jo Zywicki, 21, who was seen with a truck driver after her car broke down on an Illinois highway. Zywicki’s body was found in rural Missouri, where it was determined that she had been stabbed to death.
Baldwin is currently being held in the Black Hawk County pending extradition to Tennessee.
Tennessee District Attorney Brent Cooper said, “I would like to thank the Spring Hill Police Department for never forgetting about Rose McCall, and all of the investigators and agencies that have assisted in bringing this serial killer to justice. I am also very happy to be able to give Rose McCall’s mother a chance to see justice for her daughter’s and granddaughter’s murders. As she put it in a recent phone call, “At least I have a grave to visit, some Moms don’t even have that.” Now, thankfully, she has more than a grave to visit.”
The investigation continues. Anyone with information is asked to call the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation at 307-777-7181.
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