TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (48 page)

“Give me something to tell her, Roger.”

“Before I say anything, I want to talk to my wife.”

“I understand.”

“Can I talk to her privately? Somewhere we can’t be heard or taped? Just a private conversation?”

“It can be arranged. Give me her number.”

He handed over a slip of paper with two numbers.

“They’re both at work, one at her desk and the other on a recorder when she’s gone.”

“It’s almost seven o’clock,” Watson said. “Is she normally at work this time of night?”

“Yeah. She’s a workaholic.”

Ten minutes after Watson left, Detective Stan
Reed, the most experienced and dogged interviewer in the Bureau, entered the room. They were playing tag team and Reed was up.

The detective held the slip of paper with Harriet’s phone numbers. “Talking to Harriet is going to benefit you and your wife, not us,” he said. “The officers who’ve been in here talking to you have been up front with you.”

“Yeah, they’ve been more than nice.”

“They arranged a phone call to your brother.”

“I appreciated that.”

“We’ll be more than happy, if we can get something in return, to arrange a phone call to Harriet.”

Kibbe paused. “That’d be nice.”

“What could I get in return, Roger?”

Long silence.

“Probably what you want,” Kibbe finally answered.

“Okay, let’s explore this,” Reed said. “How about admitting that you’re guilty. If, in your opinion, you are.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I’m going to show you some photographs, Roger. Tell me if you recognize these people.”

Reed laid out photographs of seven young women; most were smiling, almost all had long hair, every one of them was dead and gone.

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re presently under arrest for the murder of this young woman,” Reed said, holding up a high school yearbook picture of
Darcie.

“That’s what you say.”

“I’m certain there’s more than these seven people, but these are the cases I’m interested in. You’re going to have to commit yourself to telling me the remainder of the story once you’ve talked to Harriet. I might even consider a face-to-face meeting for you with her.”

“You’re showing me pictures I don’t recognize.”

“Well, that’s not true. Let me show you the face of an angel.” Reed
reached for another snapshot. “This is Stephanie Brown. She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

The detective found another picture in a stack he’d brought into the room with him. “Do you recognize this area here, down off Highway 12 next to a cornfield?”

“Doesn’t look familiar to me.”

“How about that drainage ditch?”

“Never seen it before.”

“Never seen it before? You’re having difficulty making any kind of commitments here. How about this isolated road along Highway 50? Do you recognize the spot?”

“Uh-uh.”

“This is where you left the body of this young lady,” Reed said, holding up Darcie’s picture again.

“Doesn’t look familiar.”

“Do you recognize this?”

Reed was pointing to a picture of the nylon cordage found at Tupelo during execution of the search warrant.

“That’s 550 nylon cord,”
Kibbe said without hesitation.

“Which is used for what?”

“Can be used for anything.”

“What did you use it for?”

“Fixing and repairing things.”

“Then it’s true that you had some of this cord at your home when we did the search warrant?”

“Sure.”

Another picture.

“You had this piece of cord tied between two dowels when you
assaulted the prostitute,” Reed said.

“I don’t think I did.”

“It’s just positively factual. I mean, there’s no denying it. It was in your crime kit that had your fingerprints on it. You’ve been convicted of that. And is it not true that you used to be or still are a sky diver?”

“Used to be.”

“Is that when you came by this cord?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You also, Roger, used this very same rope on Darcie.” He held up a picture of cordage from the Frackenpohl scene. “And that rope that you left there is identical to the rope we took from your house during the search warrant. Absolutely, positively the same rope. We’re way beyond
where we were when we talked to you the first time. It’s to the point that you need to come forward and be honest.

“Now give me something, Roger, and I’ll arrange for you to talk to Harriet. Give me everything and I’ll arrange for you to have a contact visit with her. I’m willing to give you something in return. But I want a lot from you because you owe us a lot. You owe the families of these girls a lot. That baby that was waiting to be nursed by his mother,
Charmaine. You owe that baby a lot, too. This pretty lady,
Karen, who had just kissed her little daughter goodbye before you took her out and did what you did to her and cut her throat. You owe her, too.”

Kibbe seemed unmoved by the speech.

“Let’s talk some more about the cord. There is microscopic evidence on the cords, things that can’t be seen with the naked eye. All the cords had been in contact with
red paint. The red paint is identical, okay? These criminalists nowadays can do amazing things.”

Kibbe was listening, but not reacting.

Reed wasn’t deterred. Part of his strategy was to let Kibbe know just how dead-bang they had him so he’d begin to think that he had nothing to lose by filling in the gaps.

“You don’t appear to be a violent individual,” Reed said. “Just speaking to you, I would say that Roger Kibbe could not do this. But we have the physical evidence that says Roger can and did do these things.”

Reed sat back. He’d noticed that even when Kibbe wasn’t responsive, he kept eye contact.

“Are there two sides to Roger Kibbe?” Reed asked. “Everybody, I think, has two sides. They have a side that’s acceptable to society and a darker one that’s not. Most of us, fortunately, can control the side that’s not acceptable. We suppress our fantasies. We suppress a lot of anger. But I think at some point, maybe on April 20th, 1986, when you picked up
Lora Heedick in your white Maverick, or maybe a long time before, you lost it. You could no longer control that dark side.”

This whole exercise would have been more frustrating for Reed had he not known what it was that Kibbe very badly wanted, what it was that he would deal for.

“Okay, give me one of the cases,” Reed said. “At least admit your guilt, because there’s no doubt about it, is there? Give me that. You give me that and I’ll arrange a phone call with Harriet. You give me the thirty-five cases or whatever it is that you’re really responsible for and I’ll arrange for you to stay in this room alone with Harriet.”

Thirty-five was probably a pretty good number, Reed figured. Given
Kibbe’s age it could be higher. A man didn’t suddenly roll out of bed one morning at forty-eight years of age and become a serial killer; not when he’d done his clothes-cutting apprenticeship at age fifteen. No, this one had crossed the line a long time ago.

“I’m not prepared to go out of my way to bring Harriet here if I don’t get what I want. Are you prepared to make that commitment? Are you prepared to be totally honest with me? Are you clear in your mind what I want?”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s clear in my mind what you want.”

“I wanna see her.”

“I know you want to see Harriet. I can deliver that. Can you deliver what I want? Do you have the heart to be honest with me?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay. You could give me the
missing property of one of these women. Tell me where to find it.”

“If I tell you where something is and you go out and find it, that’s it. I’m not gonna get my visit with Harriet.”

“That’s wrong. Put the carrot out in front of the rabbit. I’m the rabbit, and believe me, I will want the rest of it. I want the whole story. I want the truth.”

Reed waited, but Kibbe stayed quiet. The detective sensed some backsliding. It seemed a good time to take a break.

“I’m going to go talk to my lieutenant to see what he thinks about a visit from Harriet. Can I bring you some coffee or water?”

“No.”

“Okay, you sit here and think about it.”

Reed sauntered into the office, where Biondi,
Maulsby, and
Watson were watching the television monitor.

Kibbe seemed to be staring at the floor. Then, he leaned over and placed his head heavily into his hands. It was a defeated, exhaustive motion. He was wearing down. It was going on 9:00
P.M.
—they’d been at it for four hours.

“Want to come in with me, Kay?” Reed asked.

“Sure,” she said.

It was a special invitation. Reed, who liked working alone, recognized her special relationship with Kibbe after all her jailhouse visits.

The business Reed had handed out about going in to check with his lieutenant was pure moonshine—the way a car salesman goes to “check with the sales manager,” then comes back and employs imaginary edicts to
try to shape the best deal. It was all about posturing and dickering and endurance. Stanley Reed would have made one hell of a car salesman.

Back inside, Reed broke the bad news to Kibbe.

“The lieutenant says no.”

“Fucker,” Kibbe said.

“He says I can’t bring Harriet in to see you because you haven’t given us anything yet. Let me ask a stupid question. Why do you want to see Harriet?”

“I want to talk to her.”

“Do you feel an obligation to tell it first to Harriet?” asked Maulsby.

“Yeah, I do.”

Maulsby’s next question was a gem. “Do you feel like once you’ve opened up and been honest with her then it might be easier to be honest with us?”

Kibbe looked at them both before answering. “If I can have her, you can have the whole can of worms.”

“Will you give us that commitment?” Reed asked. “You sure as hell haven’t got anything to lose.”

“I have nothing to lose.”

Reed was glad Kibbe agreed. They had made progress.

“All you have to do is give us something.”

“You have what I want,” Kibbe said, “and I have what you want. It’s a Mexican standoff.”

“I need some commitments from you. Can you tell me where the rest of the
cord is? Can you give me that?”

“Yep, I can do that after I see Harriet.”

“Can you give me the source of the
red paint on the cords?” Reed asked.

“Yeah.”

Interrogation was tedious, tiring work, especially with someone who didn’t open up or talk much. But Reed was feeling a second wind now that Kibbe seemed to be moving in the direction of giving something up to get his visit with Harriet.

“Okay,” Reed said. “Can you identify these girls?”

The photos were spread out on the table.

“There are two of them in there that I don’t even know,” Kibbe said. He’d looked at the images before when Reed had first put them down on the table, and now he looked again.

“I-I never saw her before in my life,” Kibbe said, taking a quick stab at one of the photos.

“So you won’t be able to give me that?”

“I can’t give you something I don’t know.”

“Okay, I was simply asking. What is the other one you can’t give me?”

“Did you say there was a black woman?”

“Black or Asian. A Jane Doe from Nevada. This is an artist’s reconstruction of her face since she was so decomposed.”

“I’ve never had any dealings with a black or Asian woman,” Kibbe said in his monotone voice that never wavered no matter what the topic. “White girls only.”

“White girls only,” Reed repeated sans inflection. “Will you be able to give me details about this girl?”

Reed pointed to Stephanie Brown.

“After I see Harriet.”

“Will you be able to give me details of this girl?”

Charmaine Sabrah.

“After I see Harriet.”

“Will you be able to give me details of this girl?”

Lora Heedick.

“After I see Harriet.”

“Will you be able to give me details of this girl?”

Darcie Frackenpohl.

“After I see Harriet.”

“Will you be able to give me details of this girl?”

“She’s in Nevada?”

“No, this one’s in Nevada.”

“I thought you said—”

“Excuse me, I’m confused now. This one was Nevada. But this one was along the freeway outside of
Placerville.”

“Look, this one and this one,” Kibbe said a bit impatiently, jabbing at two photos to clear up the confusion, “I know nothing about.”

“Okay, but the other five pictures here you can tell me about?”

“You said there was one girl that had her throat cut?”

“Right.”

“Which one’s that?”

“Right here.”

Karen Finch.

“I know nothing about that.”

“Okay, you know nothing about this girl.”

“Yeah. Never saw her before.”

“Are there other cases we haven’t talked about that you can give me?”

“What have you got—four?”

“Yes. Brown, Sabrah, Heedick, and Frackenpohl.”

“No, those are the only ones.”

“So there aren’t others I don’t know about?”

“No.”

“Are there rapes or other crimes involving women we haven’t talked about?”

“Rape?” Kibbe seemed a bit offended. “No. I picked up I don’t know how many girls, but I always let them go.”

“So, there’s four
victims you’ll be able to tell me about after you talk to
Harriet?”

“That’s right.”

“I have your word on it.”

“You have my word.”

“And can you give us the personal property of any of these women?”
Maulsby interjected.

The IDs and purses of these four women had never been found. Also, in Sabrah, there was jewelry missing. Maulsby remembered Carmen Anselmi’s description of her daughter’s jewelry: dangly black earrings, an imitation pearl necklace, and a
diamond ring—a solitary stone attached to a thin gold band.

“I can give you one,” Kibbe said.

“I’m really tempted to take your word,” Reed said. “I really am. Tell me again,
Roger. We have your word that once you have your visit with
Harriet, you will discuss in all honesty and the greatest detail as possible these things that you say you know about.”

“That’s what I told you.”