"There is a maximum security prison in Illinois with an inmate serving time for first-degree murder," Mt. Lebanon resident Sol Toder told a somber crowd last week in the courtyard of the Allegheny County Courthouse.

"That murder was of my youngest daughter, Nan.''

Sol and Lin Toder of the Bower Hill area of Mt. Lebanon are members of Parents of Murdered Children, "a club we really don't won't you to join,'' Mr. Toder said.

The support group was one of several organizations attending the Second Annual Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims held on Sept. 25. The memorial was sponsored by the Criminal Division of Common Pleas Court.

Since their daughter's gruesome murder in a Chicago suburb in December of 1996, the Toders have been pushing -- thus far to no avail -- "Nan's Law'' which would require greater security measures by the hotel and motel industry.

Nan Toder was 33 when a handyman at a Hampton Inn in Crestwood. Ill., bludgeoned her to death with a machete inside the room she was staying in while on a business trip.

Police said Christopher Richee of Burbank Ill., gained access through an adjoining room and, prosecutors said, exploited lapses in hotel security to carry out the crime.

Mr. Richee was eventually convicted in the killing and is serving 40 years.

In 2003 the Toders received a $4.3 million settlement from a civil lawsuit against Crestwood Motel Partners and others.

But what they really want, the still-grieving parents said, is a law in their daughter's memory that could help protect others.

The Toders -- both are retired -- said that working on details of such a law occupies a great many of their waking hours. A prime goal of their proposal to the state would require background checks for hotel personnel, which wasn't done in the case of their daughter's murderer.

Mr. Richee had a history of arrests for theft and weapons and was investigated for stalking.

That such a horrific murder as Nan's even occurred was highly improbable. The Mt. Lebanon High School graduate was working in Miami for Vans Floral Products, a wholesale flower importer. She came to Chicago that December week for a training seminar.

Nan Toder had lived a charmed suburban lifestyle. Her father, now 76, is retired from a successful auto recycling business. Her mom, now 74, was a stay-at-home mom to Nan and her older two sisters, Etta and Debbie.

With her family, Nan attended Bethel El Congregation. After high school she attended Allegheny County Community College where she studied merchandising, a field her parents said was her passion since childhood.

Along with a childhood friend, she moved to Florida when she was 20. Initially she worked as a concierge at a Miami Marriott and also taught aerobics at several spots in South Florida.

Her family described her as warm, upbeat, pretty, petite and devoted to fitness.

She was in Chicago that December week in 1996 for career training. On the night of Dec. 12, 1996, she left orders with the hotel desk for a 5:30 a.m. wakeup call. She had told colleagues that she had a meeting with company officials the next morning.

She never made it. Her bloody body was found by a maid on the morning of Dec. 13, 1996. Police said was beaten in the head with a machete and then posed between two beds with her feet bound by a telephone cord. Police said that she had probably been killed around 1 a.m. that day. Her body was found about nine hours later.

Police accounts also show that Miss Toder did everything a veteran traveler should do. She locked her door, secured it with a deadbolt; she even piled her heavy luggage against the door.

She had no relationship with Mr. Richee, except that he may have talked to her at some point that week.

Mr. Richee, then 27, the hotel's maintenance manager, had come to the hotel with a record that included arrests for theft and illegal use of weapons. He was also investigated by police for burglary and arson, as well as stalking a girlfriend. Still, he got the maintenance job without a background check.

He never confessed to the killing, but police said that he considered himself a master criminal and bragged that he could outwit police.

With Nan's murder, he almost pulled it off. He wasn't convicted of that crime until six years later, in 2002.

Police said he apparently had planned Miss Toder's murder with great attention to detail.

He knew that new locks -- which would leave a computer trail -- were due to be installed at the hotel, so the date of the murder was one of the last chances to go undetected. He shaved all of his body hair to reduce any chance of a DNA match. He apparently pulled the wires from a rear door, thus disabling the alarm device. He made up an excuse to return to the hotel building that Friday night, even though he had never done that before. And there is some speculation that he tried to damage the lock on the front door of Miss Toder's room so that police would think the killer entered that way.

But he actually entered Nan's room through the door of an adjoining, unoccupied suite.

And, police said, he even planted a bloody towel in Nan's room, a towel that had been left by an earlier tenant, to throw police off.

He was an immediate suspect, but wasn't nailed until an accomplice in a previous burglary tipped off police. That informant told Cook County, Ill., Cold Case detectives that Mr. Richee asked him to dispose of a second bloody towel that was surmised to have been used in the killing.

Police said that Mr. Richee owned a machete such as forensics said was used in the killing but it, like the second bloody towel, has never been found.

Mr. Richee was convicted of first-degree murder, which in Illinois, carries an automatic life sentence without parole. But, the conviction was overturned on a technicality: another judge found that the first trial judge should not have allowed Mr. Richee's previous record into the testimony.

Rather than subject themselves to another painful criminal trial, the Toders agreed with the prosecution's suggestion to accept a plea deal for 40 years.

Mrs. Toder said last week that "Nan's murderer will be out of jail when he's 51. Forty years becomes 20 with time off for good behavior. Add to that the credit he gets for time already served. He can probably get out and get a job working at a hotel.''

That is the whole point of Nan's Law.

"Has anyone who stayed at a motel ever considered who has access to their room with a key?" Mr. Toder asked in an interview last week.

The Toders took Nan's Law to their then- State Rep.Tom Stevenson, two sessions ago.

"Tom got some co-sponsors for the bill and it was presented to the House Committee on Travel and Recreation Development. Seventeen showed up for the hearing and it got a very favorable reception. But the state hotel industry was opposed. The industry felt background checks were a "good idea, but they should be voluntary, not the law," Mr. Toder said.

When Rep. Stevenson proposed the law in the next session, "everything had changed,'' Mr. Toder said.

"The committee chairman said he had 25 e-mails on his desk opposing Nan's Law. The chairman also changed the wording so that deadbolts would still be required, the background checks wouldn't.

"He brought the bill out of committee for a floor vote," Mr. Toder said. "It passed but it was far too late for the Senate to act.''

Mr. Stevenson is no longer in office; Matt Smith is the new state representative for the South Hills and is working on re-introducing Nan's Law. Currently, it is state Senate bill 465.

The Toders are sticking with the state for a "Nan's Law.'' They have been told it would be difficult to get such a federal law passed.

The Toders point out that there are anywhere from 50,000 to 60,000 hotels and motels in the United States. Some states have laws with certain safety standards, but not all. Pennsylvania laws date from 1855 and 1913. There is no federal law, other than a national fire code, that governs hotel and motel security.

The Toders explain that they entered the civil suit against the hotel chain, "not for the money, but for the publicity it would bring to the problem.''

They continue to ask support for Nan's Law by contacting their state representative, and by visiting www.nanslaw.org.