YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Investigators suspect a 16-year-old girl whose body ended up at a waste disposal site near the Mercer-Butler County line was the victim of a “thrill kill.”

Gina Bacher Burger’s alleged killer, Ricki D. Williams IV, 18, of Youngstown, also hoped his crime would earn him “status” on the jail’s top floor, known as “murderer’s row.”

“He was kind of living out his fantasy of being a ‘thug’ or ‘gangster,’” Austintown Police Chief Robert Gavalier said of Williams. “He thought killing someone would be fun.”

Prosecutors in Mahoning County announced Wednesday they might seek the death penalty against Williams, who is charged with murder and remains jailed on $750,000 bail.

Authorities allege the defendant on June 23 fatally stabbed Burger, stuffed her body in a playpen bag and placed the bag in a Dumpster outside her apartment building in Austintown, a suburb of Youngstown.

A garbage truck unknowingly took the trash from the Dumpster to the Tri-County Industries dumpsite in Pine Township, Mercer County. Workers discovered Burger’s body two days later while collecting the waste to take it to the landfill.

Prosecutors said Williams, who is homeless, confessed to killing Burger, who he knew as an acquaintance at her Compass West apartment complex

He is accused of grabbing Burger by the arm shortly after she left her apartment, where she lived with her mother. He forced her into another apartment, where resident Ronisha Johnson lived.

Police identified Williams and Johnson as friends. They said the defendant previously had been ordered to stay away from the complex.

According to court documents, Johnson said Williams started beating her and forced her and Burger into the woman’s bedroom, where he allowed them to smoke a “last cigarette.”

Williams tried to force Johnson to stab Burger with a knife, documents said. When she refused, the defendant grabbed the knife and stabbed Burger once in the chest.

The knife punctured the girl’s lung, killing her, an autopsy ruled.

The pair then placed Burger’s body in Johnson’s son’s Pack ‘n Play bag, Gavalier said, before he hauled it to a nearby Dumpster.

A police report said that Burger’s mother, Jacqueline Bacher, told officers that while she waited outside for an officer to take a missing person’s report, she saw Williams walk out of another apartment struggling to carry what appeared to be a bag used to store a portable playpen.

Bacher told police that Williams asked her if she “wanted to buy a baby thing.”

An officer soon arrived and Bacher did not see what Williams did with the bag, the police report said. She said she saw what appeared to be the same bag in a trash container outside the apartment complex the next day.

Days later, police found the alleged murder scene. Outside of Johnson’s apartment in the hallway, an officer noticed the message, “Kill Fo Fun” carved into the stairwell hallway outside.

Williams possibly made the carving with a knife, Gavalier admitted.

“We think (Williams) went to the apartment that night to kill someone,” he said. “Gina may have been the first person he saw. She may have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

U.S. Marshals arrested the suspect on Tuesday at a home in Youngstown.

Williams faces charges of aggravated murder, two counts of kidnapping, intimidation, tampering with evidence, two counts of abduction, possession of criminal tools, abuse of corpse and one misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass.