TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (53 page)

“You work for McCrone Associates, a private lab?”

“Yes. We’re an independent analytical laboratory specializing in microscopy for government, industry, whoever will hire us. We’ve worked for both the prosecution and the defense in criminal and civil cases in this country and abroad.”

Palenik explained that he had become involved in the I-5 investigation when Faye Springer called him and asked if he could look at some fibers.

“She described them as having ‘little footballs’ on them, and she didn’t know what they were,” he said. “Also, on one fiber she had seen some red paint she wanted analyzed.”

“What procedure did you use?”

“Just looked at them under a microscope. At first, I didn’t see the football-shaped particles. I saw the red paint, and I thought that’s what she was talking about. But then I saw them. Right away, I could tell, just on the basis of their morphology—shape, in other words—that they were fungal spores. And they were present on both samples.”

Palenik went on to describe his much more complicated analysis of the paint present on the one
carpet fiber from Darcie’s dress and on the fibers from Kibbe’s Hyundai floor mat, where paint had been spilled.

“I used a technique called electron microprobe analysis, which permitted
the elemental analysis so we could look at the inorganic composition of this material.”

Drossel was ready to press rewind and do that one again, but Palenik, who had testified more than a hundred times, caught on.

“It’s just a big tube, basically,” he said. “You place your particle on an aluminum plate and it tells you the elements inside the material.”

“What was your conclusion?”

“The red paint particle from the fiber in question was qualitatively the same as the red paint particles on the floor mat. There were ten elements present that I could identify. It doesn’t mean they came from the same can of paint, necessarily, although they might have. What it does mean is that they had exactly the same elemental composition. I cannot say that they absolutely, lay-my-life-down-on-it have to be from the same source, but everything that I could do to distinguish them from different sources failed. All the paint particles were essentially identical, this in a world where there are jillions—good scientific word—of different types of red paints to choose from.”

Before Drossel could ask another question, Palenik continued thoughtfully: “In my opinion, it would be very unlikely that you would be able to go out somewhere and find paint of identical elemental composition on fibers that were also identical in all measure respects and have them not be from a common origin.”

Drossel looked down at his notes. There were a few more questions to ask, more ways Palenik could say the same thing. But how many times did the microscopist have to hit the nail on the head? The spike driven in by Springer had been finished off by the heavy hitter from Chicago.

“I have no further questions.”

Tom Kolpacoff’s cross-examination was short, although, it turned out, not short enough.

“The ten elements you found in the paints,” he said, “would you consider them common elements?”

“They are common in paint, not necessarily all at one time,” Palenik answered. “But I think every one of them I have seen at one time or another in paint.”

“But it’s not unusual for paint to have all ten elements, is that correct?”

“I can’t say I’ve seen a sample with those particular ten elements before, no. For example, sodium and chlorine, two of them, are outside contaminants.”

“Outside contaminants in what respect?”

At the defense table,
Phil Kohn had a bad feeling. It was after four
o’clock on a day that had not gone well for the defense.
Just sit down, Tom. Let’s get out of here.

“Sodium and chlorine have no particular use in paint,” Palenik said. “And they are the common ingredients of salt. Anyone who painted in any area where there was salt spray could be expected to put some salt in the paint can.”

The red paint had just gotten more unique.

“As for the football shapes,” said Kolpacoff, trying to recover by changing the subject, “you cannot tell the type of fungi from these spores?”

“That is correct.”

“Therefore, you can’t tell how common the fungus is?”

“That’s correct, yes.”

“I have no further questions.”

Kohn had never been big on fiber evidence; he just didn’t think it looked as good in real life as on paper. But Faye Springer hadn’t been caught shading it to favor the prosecution; she had been very straightforward about her findings and the jury had listened. As for her cordage
testimony, had they been playing chess, Kohn would have happily offered and/or accepted a draw here and now. If there had only been cordage from Guffie and
Frackenpohl, he could have argued, however weakly, that maybe the two prostitutes knew each other, maybe the
Frackenpohl rope came from Guffie, maybe prostitutes carried rope for some reason. But the cordage from Tupelo was the third side of a triangle that boxed
Kibbe in, which was why Kohn had fought hard in a
pretrial motion to have the search of Tupelo (and everything found there) thrown out as “overly broad.” He had lost, and now was stuck with cordage from all three locations having the same red paint.

As for Skip Palenik, Kohn considered him a tremendous witness for the prosecution. He had corroborated Springer, and in addition, found identical paint on the fiber from the dress and in fibers from the carpet of the Hyundai.

“Next witness,” said Judge Finney.

“Jim Streeter,” Drossel responded.

After raising his right hand and swearing to tell the truth, Streeter related how he became involved in the I-5 murder investigation when he was called out to several murder scenes to examine the physical evidence.

He told of receiving Darcie’s pink dress from Detective Jim Watson, and processing it for trace evidence by taking tape lifts. He said he noted cutting on the dress.

“Are you familiar with the terms ‘functional’ versus ‘nonfunctional’ cutting?” asked Drossel.

“Yes.”

“Could you define those terms?”

“A functional cut serves some purpose. That is, to expose a certain area of the body or remove the garment. Nonfunctional cuts, such as up the sides or in the shoulders or along the bottom seams, don’t go anywhere. They serve no obvious purpose.”

Drossel took Streeter through the extensive clothes cutting in the garments of all four murder victims.

“Is it possible for you to tell as a criminalist what caused those cuts?” Drossel asked.

“My opinion is a sharp instrument was used to make these cuts, but I cannot tell you whether or not it’s a knife or
scissors or some other type of instrument.”

“In your career as a criminalist—how many years has that been?”

“Eighteen years.”

“Have you ever seen these types of nonfunctional cuts on clothing at any crime scene?”

“No.”

Streeter also told of his effort to determine if the pieces of
cordage were the same type, and produced by the same manufacturer. He admitted, however, that the cordage was too common to narrow down very much.

On cross-examination, Tom Kolpacoff asked if Streeter had ever performed the same fiber comparisons on the
Frackenpohl dress that Faye Springer had.

“I actually looked at the tape lifts with the microscope and could not see the same things she saw,” Streeter admitted.

“You did not observe any red paint on the cordage, is that correct?”

“Correct, I did not observe that.”

“If you saw it you wouldn’t ignore it?”

“Given my background and training, I might not be able to recognize its significance.”

“But if you saw the paint on the cordage from three locations, wouldn’t you, as a criminalist, think that was potentially significant?”

“While my eyes may see it, my mind may not interpret it.”

Kolpacoff sat down and Streeter was dismissed.

After the jury was sent home for the weekend and his client escorted away to jail, Kohn slowly packed up his briefcase. In evaluating the day’s scientific testimony, he knew that nonfunctional cutting, as espoused by
Streeter, would not have carried the day. Nor would the similar-cordage business. For Christ’s sake, Streeter hadn’t even seen the red paint on the cordage. It was Faye
Springer’s work, backed up by
Skip Palenik, that defined the government’s case.

Kohn knew Springer’s story; he also knew if she and her hubby hadn’t moved to Sacramento when they did, his client, Roger Kibbe, would not be sitting in this courtroom.

^*
In Roger Kibbe’s prison file was a “Social Evaluation” written by a prison psychologist six months after the polygraph examiner’s report. It read, in part: “Kibbe’s initially fearful manner and stuttering speech completely disappeared once he was certain he had the counselor’s full attention. Relaxed, he stopped gripping one wrist with the other hand and displayed an unexpected sense of humor. There was then no evidence of an ‘intense dislike, almost a hatred for women’ that was commented upon in a January, 1970, polygraph examination, or the basis for the same examiner describing Kibbe as ‘potentially one of the world’s most dangerous men’ ever encountered. Kibbe’s lack of self-confidence is apparent … so is his superior intelligence.” Another evaluation was written by a parole officer in August, 1974: “Kibbe does not appear to be a danger to himself or to others. As reflected by his background, subject’s latest criminal endeavors (grand and petty theft) once again are of a relatively petty nature and indicative of poor judgment.”

Twenty-Three

T
he fifth day of testimony began with Lora Heedick’s boyfriend,
James
Driggers, stepping into the witness box. A big man, he was dressed in the orange jumpsuit of a state prison inmate—an outfit about two sizes too small for him, and his muscular arms and shoulders threatened to burst free of the straining fabric.

“You’re serving time for some offense?” prosecutor Bob
Drossel asked.

“Yes, sir. Receiving stolen property.”

“And what is your sentence?”

“Three years. State prison.”

Driggers explained he’d been in a year, which meant he’d serve at least another year before he could be paroled.

Drossel showed his witness a picture.

“Do you recognize this person as Lora Heedick?”

“Yes.”

“What type of relationship did you have with her?”

“She was my girlfriend.”

“Did you have another relationship besides?”

“Yeah. We did drugs together and did things to make money to get drugs. She was into some prostitution.”

“Did you assist in that capacity?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I would like to draw your attention to April 20, 1986, and specifically the last time that you saw Lora Heedick alive. Do you have that time frame in mind?”

Drossel couldn’t believe it, but the hard-ass convict who no doubt
pumped iron daily behind bars had gone blubbery and was grabbing for the Kleenex. This was better than he could have hoped for, although the prosecutor still feared he’d get eaten up by the defense on this witness.

“Yes, I remember,” Driggers said, blowing his nose.

Drossel took him through events that night: his walking down South 9th Street looking for Lora, and her pulling up in an older white
car. Driggers said he got into the car, Lora introduced him to the man, and they shook hands.

“Did you notice anything about his hand?”

“Yeah. I noticed he had rough features to his hand. It was not real clean, like a workingman’s hand, you know.”

“What about the size?”

“Fair-sized. I didn’t swallow his hand with mine.”

“Did he seem excited? Nervous? Quiet?”

“He seemed real quiet and what I would call withdrawn. He didn’t say much.”

Driggers told of the man volunteering that he could get some drugs at his shop nearby, and Lora suggesting that Driggers get out of the car and wait for their return.

“I waited—all night.”

The con went back to the tissues.

Driggers identified a picture of Kibbe’s white Maverick as the type of car his girlfriend rode off in that night.

Drossel asked Driggers if he remembered attending a physical lineup at Sacramento County Jail on September 1, 1988.

“Yes, I do.”

“You were asked as a witness to view five individuals for identification purposes?”

“Yes.”

Drossel showed him snapshots taken that night of the five men in the lineup; they were all middle-aged, and about the same height and build.

“And the person you picked out as the man who drove off with Lora was?”

“Number two in the lineup.”

“And who is number two?” Drossel asked.

“The defendant.”

Well and good, but unfortunately the prosecutor now had to bring out the fact that Detective
Kay Maulsby, on orders she didn’t particularly agree with, had shown Driggers a picture of Kibbe six months before the lineup.

“I told her that it looked very much like the guy that was in the car that night,” Driggers said.

Had seeing that picture subsequently influenced his pick in the lineup?

No, Driggers said.

The defense would surely disagree.

On cross-examination,
Phil Kohn started off with a line of questioning to show that Driggers himself had been a suspect for months in the murder of his girlfriend.

“Did you ever beat up your ex-wife,
Debbie Richardson?” Kohn asked from somewhere out in left field.

Drossel jumped up. “Objection as to relevancy.”

“Mr. Kohn?” the judge asked.

“I’m going to ask Mr. Driggers about his relationship with his ex-wife.”

“Objection,” Drossel said forcefully.

The judge directed the jury and witness to leave the room so he could hear the lawyers out.

When the door shut behind the last juror, Kohn said, “I have police reports, Your Honor. This guy, according to his ex-wife, had her have intercourse with other men in front of him, and he would masturbate while they were doing it. He’d have sex with the men when they were done.”