“Lorraine was a nurse and she usually worked the twelve-to-eight shift at the hospital. When she came home at night she would scare Roger just by her presence. She had beaten him when he was young. I was in the Navy and away a lot during the war, and I didn’t know what was happening until I came home.
“I’d been away for nearly two years when I got dropped in front of the house by a taxi in ’45. We were living in Navy housing at the time on 32nd Street in San Diego. During the war that area was the biggest whorehouse in town with all those young, lonely Navy wives. Roger was out front. He was about six years old. He looked at me with big eyes and said, ‘Are you my daddy?’ That shook me up.”
The senior Kibbe was reminiscing about a period of his son’s life that was of minimal interest to the detectives, but they weren’t about to cut him off.
“A week or so later we were taking a drive. Roger was standing up on the backseat looking out the window. We passed 28th Street and he said, ‘Here’s where we picked up Uncle Howard.’ Lorraine never came out and admitted it but I found love letters. I would have divorced her but I didn’t want some other guy bringing up my children. So we stayed together. I don’t know if Roger knew what was happening.
“Whenever I was around I’d intervene between Roger and his mother so he wouldn’t get hit. But I made the Navy a career and didn’t retire until 1953. I was gone a lot.”
“What about Roger’s school days?” said Bertocchini, realizing he was being drawn into the life story.
“He had difficulties in that department. He was a poor reader. The other kids called him ‘dumbbell.’ In high school, he’d get up in the morning, get dressed, and after breakfast head out the door like he was going to school. The first we knew he wasn’t going to school was when we went for a parent-teacher night. They thought we’d moved away. Roger quit his junior year of high school. But he was talented in other ways. He’s real good at woodworking and drawing. One night he was sitting at the kitchen table drawing a plan for a building. I was impressed with his detail. His mother arrived home from work. Without saying a word, Roger gathered up some of his papers and left the room. He was always trying to steer clear of her. As he was leaving, she began to yell at him for the ‘mess’ that he’d made.”
“Did he have close friends?” Bertocchini asked.
“No, he was a loner. Other children picked on him a lot. I remember dropping him at a matinee and before I even pulled away the other kids had started in on him. When he’d get to stuttering, the kids teased him even more. I did as much as I could with the boys. Used to take them camping. Roger especially really enjoyed the outdoors.”
Asked when he’d last seen Roger, the senior Kibbe told of going to Tahoe for Steve’s ceremony the previous month and seeing Roger and Harriet there.
“What do you think of Harriet?” Bertocchini asked.
Harriet’s father-in-law said at first he thought she would be good for his son. “But marrying her has turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened to Roger. Harriet blames him for everything that goes wrong. She’s domineering and mean.”
“Before Tahoe,” Ferrari asked, “how long had it been since you’d seen Roger?”
“A year ago. Maybe a year and a half. I remember it was hot so it must have been summer [1986]. Roger drove down and stayed four or five days. His furniture business had just shut down. He told me he was going to start working out of his garage, making wooden toys and whatnot.”
“What was he driving?”
“Some kind of dark sports car.”
“Could it have been a Datsun 280Z?”
“Yeah, that’s what it was.”
“What did Roger do while he was here?”
“Stayed around. Several nights he went out.”
“Did he say what he was doing at night?”
“He was trying to find some woman he’d known years ago from skydiving. Told me he never found her, though. After four or five days, he left for home one night around ten o’clock. Said he wanted to drive when it was cooler.”
“Could you come up with the dates he visited?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask Susan when she gets home.”
“Sir, we thank you for your time,” Ferrari said, standing. “I’m going to leave my card.”
Bertocchini stood, too. “Just one more question, Mr. Kibbe. As his father, how would you describe Roger?”
“Timid. Not a mean bone in his body.”
That same day the detectives met Jack Jr., forty-three, the youngest of the three Kibbe boys. He was bigger than his brothers and sandy-haired.
The detectives met him at his suburban San Diego home shortly after he’d gotten in from work. He operated an assembly machine that drilled holes and shot rivets into the wings and fuselages of new aircraft, a job that had to be done right the first time and took considerable skill and concentration. He’d worked for Rohr Industries, the largest employer in Chula Vista, for two decades and planned to stay until retirement. Every bit as settled in his home life, he was happily married and the father of two children.
In a statement concise enough for an epitaph, Jack Jr. said: “Roger is a kleptomaniac. He stole stuff of no value just to be stealing, and he lied a lot.”
Bertocchini nodded. “He got in trouble early.”
“Yes. We had no discipline in the family. My brothers and I could come and go as we pleased. There wasn’t any type of curfew.”
“What’s Roger like?” Bertocchini asked.
“Calm, quiet, slow-moving. He used to stutter a lot when he was young. He still stutters when he begins to lie.”
Jack explained that he’d last seen Roger the previous summer. “He called first and I gave him directions to the house. When he got here he told me he’d come down for a visit because he’d gotten into a fight with his wife.”
Bertocchini asked if there were any old friends of Roger’s in the area to whom they might want to speak. Jack gave him the name of an ex—police officer from Chula Vista with whom Roger was friends growing up.
“Anything else you can tell us about Roger?”
“I know he’s got a weak stomach and doesn’t like the sight of blood,” Jack said. “To this day he won’t go into a hospital and refuses to see a doctor or seek medical attention of any kind.”
Perhaps to balance his other comments about his brother, Jack made a point of saying that shortly after Roger left on the day of his visit, their daughter, Denise, called from the paint store where she worked.
It seemed Uncle Roger had stopped by with a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers for his young niece.
“THE CASE of Roger Kibbe will be forever etched in my memory,” said Leo Kelly, the former Chula Vista juvenile officer who had confronted Roger Kibbe, age fifteen, three decades earlier over the clothesline theft of women’s clothing.
“Not only were the circumstances of the crimes so bizarre,” said Kelly, a tall man with receding steel-gray hair, “but I was certain that this type of behavior from a youngster would result in a lot more serious acts down the road if something wasn’t done.”
Kelly told the detectives about making the psychiatrist appointments for Roger, and then the boy’s parents not continuing with them.
When Detective Vito Bertocchini let Kelly know that Kibbe was suspected of being a serial killer of young women, the ex-cop nodded sadly. “That’s the type of thing I feared might happen. Even as a youngster, he was very sneaky, and I thought he was capable of doing harm to someone.”
Kelly confirmed that Kibbe became a habitual truant. “He’d leave in the morning like he was going to school, then sneak back to the house after his mother left for work and spend the day there. His father didn’t seem to be home much, so Roger was able to take advantage of the situation.
“When we caught Roger with the stolen clothes, he told me he knew he was doing wrong,” Kelly said. “I asked him why he did it and he said he didn’t know.”
Bertocchini asked what type of cloth
ing he took.
“Ladies’ hose, bras, panties, and some slips. Mostly underclothes, you know. He didn’t bother with anything else.”
“He told you he cut them with scissors?” Ferrari asked.
“Yeah. He admitted he cut them up. I always thought it was interesting that he used his mother’s medical scissors. He was an angry boy who grew up, I guess, to be an angry man.”
“Is there anything else you can add?”
“The time to help Roger Kibbe has long passed,” Kelly said. “I certainly hope you take him out of circulation.”
Kelly explained he’d left the police department a year after his run-in with Kibbe. He suggested the detectives contact Jack Dowell, who worked Juvenile during and after Kelly’s tenure.
They found the slightly built, mustachioed Jack Dowell living in a motor home in a Chula Vista trailer park. Dowell said he well remembered Roger Kibbe, too.
“I arrested that boy several times,” he said. “He didn’t like me and would refuse to talk to me.”
Bertocchini asked about the clothes-cutting incident.
“I remember that. The clothing wasn’t cut into individual pieces but each garment was still intact. The cutting went through the material in random patterns.”
Nonfunctional cutting, Bertocchini thought.
“But what really sticks in my mind,” Dowell went on, “are two occasions sometime after that. Each time, Roger was discovered in the garage of a different vacant house. He claimed to have been kidnapped, brought to the house, tied up, and molested by unknown assailants.
“The really strange thing about it,” the retired cop continued, “was that the boy was tied up with women’s clothing—slips, bras, that sort of thing. It was obvious he’d tied himself up and fabricated the whole story. It had to have been some sort of sexual fantasy. At the time, I also got the impression that he didn’t like women and was acting out something.”
Contained in the old files of the Chula Vista Police Department had been a two-page report by a San Diego Sheriff’s Department polygraph examiner concerning a test he administered to Roger Kibbe in January 1970. Bertocchini and Ferrari located the retired examiner, A. G. Van Ravestyn, living in San Diego. He, too, recalled Kibbe.
“He’d been arrested for burglarizing the jump center at the airport,” recalled Ravestyn, who had retired as supervisor of polygraph examiners five years earlier. “He was suspected of stealing a number of parachutes and selling them to a surplus store for something under a hundred dollars. At first he denied everything, but after I told him he was deceptive on the test, he confessed. I asked him why he committed a theft against people he parachuted with and who trusted him. He was unable to offer an explanation and finally said he didn’t know.”
Roger went on to tell the examiner that since his release from county jail two years earlier, he’d attempted many burglaries and committed at least two—a beauty shop and a residence.
“He described how he had stood for as long as an hour in front of many buildings trying to decide whether or not he should enter. His only explanation for these acts was that he felt angry or just felt that he had to do it. He said he’d committed ‘hundreds’ of burglaries in his life.”
Kibbe was subsequently convicted of the airport burglary and sent back to state prison for two years.
What interested the detectives most, however, was the other information contained in Ravestyn’s detailed report, which thoroughly dissected both the history and psyche of Roger Reece Kibbe:
Roger presently resides at the San Diego residence of his father and stepmother. His natural mother died in 1963. Roger feels that he gets along quite well with his father, but has an intense dislike for his stepmother. He felt that his relationships with his natural mother were strained and that she did not care for him.
Roger attended Chula Vista High School until the eleventh grade. He did poorly in reading and writing but was adept in mechanical engineering and shop work, and enjoyed art class. He was married in 1961 to Margie. Their marriage lasted eighteen months. There was a daughter born to the couple, but Roger has not seen the child for a number of years.
For the past eight months Roger has been on unemployment compensation. He went to an adult high school and is a certified welder, but he has been unable to obtain work in this field. He worked for a two-year period for National Steel as a welder, but he was fired from the job for committing theft, and they will not re-hire him. Roger has a extensive criminal record. He has been arrested over twenty times for burglary, grand theft, receiving stolen property. He has done time in state prison and county jail.
Roger says he has been a “loner” all his life. He has no close friends, and admits that he really trusts no one. He has a girlfriend but describes her as cold and unfeeling. He talked about a possible marriage, but with no apparent feeling. Under the least distress, Roger becomes agitated and inarticulate, manifesting many physical signs of his mental distress. Roger claims he has never received any form of psychiatric treatment during his incarcerations. He knows his kind of behavior is not normal and feels he needs help, but has difficulty expressing his desire for this help.
When one considers his record as a juvenile and as an adult, a pattern of reaction to stress emerges. At the present time, he has hurt no one during his crimes. This may not be the case in the future if this subject is merely incarcerated and released. It is the opinion of this examiner that Roger should have the advantage of psychiatric evaluation both for his own sake and that of the community.
Yes, it was unusual, Van Ravestyn told the detectives, for him to delve as deeply into a subject’s personal life as he did in this instance. But for some reason Roger Kibbe, after failing the polygraph and most assuredly realizing that he faced another conviction and prison term, had been willing to talk that day. And Van Ravestyn, with a B.A. degree in psychology and an inquiring mind, was there to listen.
Van Ravestyn would join the ranks of the Chula Vista officers in recognizing that Roger Kibbe was a potent threat to himself and to society. Most chilling was Van Ravestyn’s final paragraph:
It is not inconceivable that Roger could take the life of another. He has an intense dislike, almost a hatred, for women. If this were coupled with his anger, he might someday do great harm to an individual. Roger is potentially one of the most dangerous men that this examiner has ever encountered.
ON THEIR last day in southern California, the homicide detectives found and interviewed Roger’s ex-cop friend, Hector Hendershon.
Hendershon was a friendly, olive-complected, middle-aged aerospace worker who still lived in Chula Vista and also worked for Rohr Industries, which had started back in the 1930s in the garage of Fred Rohr, who built the fuel tanks for Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis. (When the city fathers told Rohr in the 1950s that he wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was, he began paying his workers in silver dollars. It soon became impossible to find a paper bill in Chula Vista.)
“How’d you first meet Roger?” Bertocchini asked.
“Through his mother,” Hendershon said. “I met Lorraine at Chula Vista Hospital while I was working as an attendant on the police ambulance. After delivering someone to the hospital, I’d often stay around and have coffee with the nurses. One night when Lorraine and I were in the break room she told me that her oldest son was having some problems. She wondered if anyone could help. I volunteered to talk to the boy and see what I could do for him.
“I got together with Roger and liked him right away. He was a quiet, strong, healthy kid. He was an introvert and sometimes sullen but all it would take was a friendly word or pat on the back to pull him out of it. I found that if he wanted to talk to you, he’d talk your ear off. If he didn’t want to talk to someone, he wouldn’t say a word or stutter terribly. He started coming over to my house, playing with my two young daughters. He became like a member of my family. If he had two dollars in his pocket, he’d go out and spend a dollar fifty on toys for my kids.”
“What about Roger’s home life?” Ferrari asked.
“I think Lorraine did a good job of raising the three boys considering the circumstances. The father, Jack, was never around when the kids needed disciplining. He was away in the Navy during most of their formative years.”
The detectives realized they were getting a different take on Lorraine Kibbe than they had from her husband.
“Lorraine was an unforgettable character,” Hendershon went on. “She was very kind and had a good sense of humor. She was concerned about her kids and worked hard. She was a good person, the type who would do for people. One night, I brought a woman in by ambulance who was going to have a baby any minute. She didn’t have any medical insurance. The administrator told me to take her to the county hospital. I knew we’d never get there in time. Lorraine and I delivered the baby on the back steps. She got into a lot of trouble and almost lost her job over that.”
Bertocchini asked Hendershon to describe Lorraine.
“She was a slight woman, about a hundred and fifteen pounds,” he said. “Sandy-colored hair, bright eyes. Perky and witty. She was very feminine but not flirty.”
Hendershon explained that when he quit the police force he bought a convenience store and hired Roger.
“I knew about the malicious mischief Roger had gotten into because I saw the police reports. But Roger never stole anything from me. He even kept track of the free Cokes he drank while at work, so I’d know where they went. After work, I’d drive him home on the back of my motor scooter. Nothing I wanted Roger wouldn’t do for me.”
“Do you remember Roger ever stealing ladies’ clothes?” Bertocchini asked.
“Yes, I do. More than once. When I asked him about it he admitted it. He told me he cut them up. I asked him why he would want to do that. He said because he’d been mad at somebody and this was how he took out his frustrations. I was never clear on who exactly he was mad at. I suggested there were better ways to handle his anger. He did have a problem with his temper, although I never considered him capable of harming anyone. He wouldn’t ever confront. He’d go behind someone’s back to get even. Unless you knew him, you couldn’t tell if Roger was a friend or a foe.”
Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer Page 30
