CHESTER COUNTY, S.C. – A man and woman linked to five murders—two of them in St. Louis County—and the subjects of a multi-state manhunt in 2021 pleaded guilty to killings in South Carolina on Wednesday.
Tyler Terry and Adrienne Simpson were each charged with the murder of Eugene O’Brien Simpson, Adrienne Simpson’s husband. Eugene, 33, was reported missing on May 2, 2021. His body was found in a ditch in Chester County on May 20.
Terry was also charged with the murder of Terry Hardin, a trans woman, in York, South Carolina. Hardin was killed on May 2, 2021. It was previously reported that Hardin and Terry had been romantically involved.
A Chester County judge sentenced both Terry and Simpson to life imprisonment for those crimes.
After the murders in South Carolina, Terry and Simpson fled west and wound up in St. Louis County, where Terry shot and killed Barbara Goodkin and Dr. Sergei Zacharev.
Goodkin, 71, was shot in the head just after 10:50 p.m. on May 15, 2021, while riding in a car with her husband in University City on Delmar. Zacherev, 58, was shot and killed less than an hour later in a Brentwood parking lot near a restaurant and hotel. Goodkin died at a hospital the following day.
At the time, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell charged Terry and Simpson with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, one count of first-degree attempted assault causing serious injury, one count of first-degree robbery, one count of first-degree attempted assault, and seven counts of armed criminal action. Those charges also included a third shooting tied to Terry and Simpson that occurred on May 15 on Interstate 170 near St Charles Rock Road.
The status of Terry and Simpson’s cases in St. Louis County is unclear. Those cases have been sealed by the court, according to a spokesman for the prosecuting attorney’s office.
Terry and Simpson were also linked to an additional fifth murder in Memphis, Tennessee.
Simpson was arrested after a shootout with Chester County police on May 17, 2021. Terry got away. Terry was the subject of a major manhunt in South Carolina for nearly a week. He was arrested on May 24, 2021, in Chester County.