TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (47 page)

“Okay.”

“How you doing?”

“I’m doing fine.”

“You know what’s happening?”

“They already more or less pointed the stick at me.”

“What room are you in right now? I mean, are we talking alone or do you have people there with you?”

“I got Kay right here in front of me. She said she can’t wander very far. I’m in one of those little rooms. I don’t know if this is being taped or what.”

“Is Kay listening to you talk to me?”

“Yeah, she can hear me.”

“You know what we talked about at the very beginning of this thing?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to ask you one more time.”

“Okay.”

“And I want you to tell me straight up. Don’t fuck with me, Roger.”

“Right.”

“Tell me straight up and you don’t have to tell her what we’re talking about. Just talk to me.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“I gotta know,” Steve said. “I told you this before.”

“I know that.”

“Just answer me yes or no. Don’t screw with me, Roger. No matter how bad it is, I’ve got to know.”

“Okay. Well, the answer is no.”

“I’ve seen the reports, Roger.”

“I know you have.”

“And I’ve seen the evidence.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I support you no matter what. I want you to know that.”

“I realize that.”

“No matter what, we’re still family.”

“I know that.”

“I’m heading home now. I’m about two hours away. I’ve gotta have some game plan. I’m going to need your help. Don’t make a blistering fool out of me. I don’t want to be blindsided.”

“Okay.”

“Roger, talk to me. I’m your brother.”

“Will you tell me something?” Roger asked.

“Yes, I’ll tell you anything.”

“What do you know?”

“I know what’s going before the judge. I know the evidence that
they’ve recovered. I didn’t know until this afternoon that they’ve got physical evidence.”

“Do I or do I not get an attorney?”

“Yep, you’ll probably have a whole row of attorneys in front of you. I’m talking to you as your brother, and it doesn’t look good.”

“One more thing,” Roger said. “You remember a while back I told you about a credit card? Think about it.”

“My mind is in a fog.”

“About cashing it in.”

“Yes.”

“Remember what we discussed about it?”

“Yes. Don’t”

“I don’t think I have to say any more then.”

“Don’t do it, Roger. Don’t do it. You’re going to hurt everybody.”

“They’re already hurt.”

“You’re going to make it worse. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Goddammit, if you do it, I’ll come down there and I’ll dog-shit kick you up alongside the head. Don’t you do it.”

“Am I going to have a chance to see you?”

“No, you’re not going to have a chance to see me as long as you’re thinking and talking like that.”

“I’m not talking like that right now.”

“If you’re even thinking about doing it, no, you’re not going to see me.”

“Okay.”

“If you’re going to stand tall and be a man about it, I’ll be there. But if you’re going to take the coward’s way out, I don’t want nothing to do with you, Rog. You can’t do that to me. You don’t go up there and goddamn swing by the light. Don’t do it. That’s foolish and stupid and all you’re going to do is prove to everybody that you did it.”

“All right. I understand.”

“Don’t let me down, Roger. I love you.”

W
HEN
detectives Vito
Bertocchini and Pete Rosenquist had pulled
Steve
Kibbe out of a classroom at a Fallon community college and advised him of his brother’s pending arrest for
murder, he had not acted surprised.

He had known about the murder investigation from the beginning, of course. Beyond that, the detectives thought
Steve must surely have harbored
his own suspicions. However, they found him still believing in his brother’s innocence.

“If all you have against Roger is a circumstantial case,” Steve said, “then I don’t think he did it. I just don’t feel Roger is the type to murder anyone.”

Steve said he and his other brother, Jack, used to “always beat up” Roger when they were growing up, and that Roger was never one to fight back. Steve couldn’t see such a passive kid growing up to be a serial killer.

Bertocchini asked Steve if he knew about Roger, at age fifteen, stealing women’s clothing in the neighborhood and cutting up lingerie.

Steve denied any knowledge of the incidents.

“Do you recall Roger having a black eye last year in the latter part of August?” asked Bertocchini. It had come out in several background interviews that Roger had sported a shiner around the time of Darcie Frackenpohl’s abduction. Detectives theorized that she had fought hard for her life.

Steve remembered Roger’s black eye but not the exact date. “He said he’d gotten involved in a fight at a video arcade place.”

Steve went on to say that he and Roger had taken long walks together since Roger had become a suspect in the I-5 investigation. “I’ve asked him if he was responsible for these murders and he denies it. If Roger did these things, I think he’d tell me.”

Bertocchini decided it was time to lower the boom. “Look, we don’t have strictly a circumstantial case,” he said. “We’ve got strong physical evidence.”

Only after Bertocchini detailed that evidence—specifically, the
cordage and
fibers—did Steve
Kibbe seem ready to accept the unthinkable.

It was, Bertocchini and Rosenquist would agree, as if Steve Kibbe was straddling a fence, caught between wanting to be a good cop and a loving brother.

The detectives were convinced that the murder of Darcie Frankenpohl—as well as other I-5 victims—had been committed by Roger on the way to or from visits to Steve’s place on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe. Steve confirmed that Roger visited his residence “every now and then,” and that when he did, he spent the night.

A murder investigation had taken Rosenquist to Lake Tahoe years before, and he’d met Steve. He remembered Steve’s offhanded comment at the time about all the Jane Does in the area: “We find dead girls alongside the road all the time.” Rosenquist now wondered how many of them
had been Roger’s work—cruel amusement for him on his way to see Steve or on the way home. Rosenquist also couldn’t help but wonder if the
homicide-detective brother had even unknowingly investigated a murder that had been committed by his killer brother.

Bertocchini had thought about what it might be like to have evidence of murder pointing to his own sibling. He’d decided he could still love his brother, but that he would not confuse love with the urgent need to get a serial killer off the street and behind bars. He was sure he’d feel that way even if he wasn’t a cop, but because he carried a badge and was sworn to protect life, he didn’t know how he could do otherwise. Bertocchini had no doubt: he would give up his brother in a heartbeat if he believed him to be a murderer.

In view of the physical evidence, Steve had agreed to speak to Roger on the
phone and ask him once more whether he had committed murder. After their talk, Steve told the detectives it hadn’t been a private conversation on the other end, and speculated that Roger might feel freer to speak his mind if
Kay Maulsby wasn’t in the same room. They arranged it, and a few minutes later the brothers were back on the
phone together. Their second conversation, like the first one, was taped at the Homicide Bureau.

“Roger?”

“Yeah.”

“I was halfway out the door and I told them it wasn’t a private conversation,” Steve said. “So, they told me they’d get Kay out of the room.”

“Well, the door is shut right now and I’m in the room by myself.”

“Okay. Now talk to me.”

“What do they have?” Roger asked.

“They have physical evidence. Enough to go to court and convict you.”

“You know, I was just saying to myself, as much as I love you and care about you—and I’m proud of you—”

Roger was weeping.

“Don’t start crying,” Steve said. “Talk to me.”

“But I sat there telling myself, dammit, he lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you. They lied to me.”

“That’s all I could tell myself. I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“I didn’t lie to you, Roger. I told you everything I knew right up till I called you today. I’m in this class down in Fallon. They made contact about three o’clock to bring me down to the station. Okay?”

“What’s going to happen?”

“You’re going to be charged with homicide. I don’t know how many counts.”

“Yeah.”

“I saw it in black and white. They opened the books and they just let me have it. It’s not defendable, Roger. Remember I told you a long time ago, no matter how bad, we’ll stand together on this damn thing? I just don’t want to be blindsided. I don’t like surprises.”

“What do I do?”

“Roger, now I got to talk to you like a brother. What I want you to do first of all is get rid of that silly notion about your credit card. I want that gone.”

“Okay.”

“That’ll just muddle everything up.”

“Yeah.”

“In my own mind, I’ve got to know,” Steve said. “I know you couldn’t talk earlier, but I gotta know. I don’t know if I could hold it back if I know. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it once I know, but you and I’ve been through too much shit in the last forty-some-odd years to let this go by.”

Roger sighed heavily.

“You’ve never held back before,” Steve said.

“How soon can I see an attorney?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know when you’re going to be arraigned. Probably tomorrow. They’ll read the complaint and it’ll be all documented. Once you’re before a judge, because of the seriousness of the offense, they won’t even allow you to enter a plea but they’ll go ahead and appoint you to the public defender. You ain’t got no goddamn money, I know that. I ain’t got no money.”

“I know that.”

“And we can’t go to Dad.”

“No.”

“So, it will be back to the public defender’s office and hopefully it won’t be the same swizzle dick you had before.”

“Dad will get ahold of this somehow,” Roger said, “and it’ll kill him.”

“I know it will. I’m not going to call Dad yet.”

“I gotta ask the detectives here if I can see
Harriet tonight.”

“From what I understand, Harriet is not in the best frame of mind right this minute.”

“Of course not.”

“She’s going to be ricocheting off the wall.”

“I’m the only one who could calm her down.”

“I’ve seen the reports,” Steve said. “I know what the evidence is. Yes, I was deceived. I did not lie to you. I revealed to you a lot of information that I was privy to that they should have told you but they didn’t. I kept you posted. Everything I knew.”

“I know that.”

“So when you said that I lied to you and I let you down—wrong, wrong.”

“I’m sorry that I said that.”

“What can I do to help you now?” Steve asked.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

“What can I expect?”

“You want me to be honest with you?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know, Steve.”

“All right. You know where I’ll be.”

“Where?”

“I’ll be at home. I can’t go back to work because they’ve already called my boss. I’m going to take a leave of absence.”

“For how long?”

“I’m taking a month.”

“I hope this doesn’t endanger or ruin your career.”

“I’m afraid it has, Roger. I’m afraid it has.”

“Is that why you’re taking a leave of absence.”

“Yep.”

“You were asked to?”

“Yep.”

“I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t do any good. All I can say, Steve, is that I’m sorry.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

Detective Steve
Kibbe had done all he was going to do to aid the I-5 serial murder investigation. He went home to his wife and children, took his leave of absence, and struggled to come to grips with what his brother had done.

E
L
D
ORADO
Detective Jim
Watson was the first to go back into the interview room with Roger Kibbe after his telephone conversations with his brother.

“Roger, I hate beating around the bush. I’ll come right to the point.
After we’re through here, I’m going to take you to Placerville and place you under arrest for the murder of Darcie
Frackenpohl, a young lady who these past few months I’ve learned just about everything there is to learn about.”

Kibbe showed no reaction.

“At this point, we’ve developed enough evidence to charge you and take you to trial for her murder. I need to know, for myself, about Darcie. She’s got a mother and a fifteen-year-old brother who need to know about her, too. I’m sure you don’t know Darcie by name. She’s someone who got taken by the sights of the big city and by a young man who influenced her into coming down here and working the streets. For some reason, she happened to be out in the street that particular night in August. For some reason, you happened to be on the same street. I just want to understand how this young lady ended up dead on the side of a hill outside South Lake Tahoe. I need to understand this.”

“Do you know where my wife is?”

“At this particular time, I don’t,” Watson said. “I can tell you we are serving a search warrant on the Hyundai as we speak. I’m sure your wife is worried about you.”

“It’s not so much that she’s worried about me. I need to talk to her.”

“Tell me what you’re feeling right now, Roger.”

“I’m not like that. I’m not gonna tell you that. That’s not my way.”

“What is your way, Roger?”

“I’m thinking about my wife. There’s some things I’d like to get straight with her, so she can understand what’s going on.”

“Is she going to be able to understand this?”

“I don’t know. But I want her to hear it from me.”

“I don’t need your confession to go to court,” Watson said. “We have evidence you left behind at the murder scene. Evidence at your house. Evidence we found at the golf course. I’m just here to get some answers so that I can tell Darcie’s mother what happened.”

Silence.