Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer

by Bruce Henderson

  McCullough requested that the judge have the defendant remanded to custody pending a probation report and sentencing hearing. Such a request was not so unusual given the facts of the case.

  With Kibbe and his lawyer standing, the judge ordered that the defendant be taken into custody immediately Two bailiffs moved behind Kibbe; one handcuffed him.

  At that moment, McCullough saw the first outward sign of emotion from Kibbe, who throughout the trial had remained stoic. He smiled, actually smiled. She had the strangest feeling that Roger Kibbe was relieved.

  Kibbe is off the street; it was a satisfying thought for McCullough. She turned slightly, her eyes finding Maulsby in the front row of the spectators’ section.

  A smiling Maulsby, who was thinking, Roger will be eating Thanksgiving dinner in jail, gave the prosecutor a dignified thumbs-up.

  Three weeks later, Kibbe would be back in court for sentencing. During an interview with a probation officer, Kibbe had been asked about his crimes against Debra Guffie. He said he knew he was wrong for picking up a prostitute, but that the rest of the case had been “blown out of proportion.”

  The judge gave him eight months in county jail. With time served and credit for work and good behavior, Roger Kibbe would be out in five months.

  The clock was now ticking on the I-5 murder case.

  A FEW minutes past 8:00 A.M. on her first day back to work after the Thanksgiving holidays, Kay Maulsby received a call from a booking officer: Debra Guffie was back in custody.

  Maulsby realized she’d forgotten to remove the flag on Guffie’s name. She was being held on a variety of drug charges, Maulsby was told, including possession of crack cocaine and being under the influence of a narcotic.

  The detective was sorry to hear that.

  “Can you put her on the phone?” she asked.

  It took a minute or two, but finally a faint voice on the other end said tentatively, “Kay?”

  “Yes, Debra, this is Kay. Are you all right?”

  “I guess.”

  Maulsby had feared that the pressure of testifying at the trial would add to the monkey Guffie was already carrying on her back.

  “Do you know how the trial turned out?”

  “No,” Guffie said sleepily. “Never heard a thing.”

  “Roger Kibbe was convicted.”

  “He was?” Guffie had perked up. “He really was?” She sounded as if she didn’t believe that twelve upstanding citizens could possibly view her as anyone’s victim.

  “Yes,” Maulsby said. “He’s in jail right now. What you did, Debra, was very important.”

  “It worked out okay, huh?”

  “It sure did.”

  “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Could you call my mom and let her know. She was real scared about me testifying.”

  “I sure will.”

  “Kay, you’re a real peach. Thanks for everything.”

  It sounded as if Guffie was saying good-bye for good. Maulsby kept her on the line awhile, just chatting. She ended the conversation with a sincere offer.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, Debra, like get you into a treatment program, let me know.”

  If Roger Kibbe was ever going to be tried for murder, Maulsby had an idea that Guffie, the one victim who had gotten away, would once again be an important witness against him. This was certainly not something that Maulsby would burden Guffie with now; she was too busy taking life one day and one step at a time, and faltering even at that.

  Of the four Sacramento detectives who had been assigned temporarily to the I-5 case, Maulsby was the last one left. It was funny, she reflected, how things worked out; she, the only one who hadn’t worked Homicide, outlasting them all. Lt. Ray Biondi had even let on that he didn’t intend to give her back but was going to fight to keep her in Homicide permanently. She had her own desk, phone, and office cubicle now, and was feeling right at home. She had even been confident enough to take on the department’s administrative lieutenant when he had recently suggested she solicit funds from other departments involved in the investigation to pay for overtime in connection with the surveillance of Kibbe. “Is that really the job of a homicide investigator?” she demanded angrily. “I’m trying to catch a killer. Your job is to get the financing for the investigation.” She had warned Biondi that he might hear repercussions from her insubordination but he’d only laughed, “Good for you.”

  The best part, she reflected that morning as other Bureau detectives scurried about busy with their own caseloads, was that there was no one in close proximity with which she had to have interminable meetings about I-5. Hallelujah and let’s hit the pavement.

  With their prime suspect behind bars for a few months, Maulsby understood that the investigation had taken a new turn. Gone were the distractions of the past couple of months since she’d discovered the Guffie case: the focus was now on Kibbe’s background, the surveillance operations, getting Guffie to the witness stand. What was needed was a renewed concentration on all the murder cases, a review of the evidence in each and how they tied together. Something that didn’t appear important in one case might show up in another and provide a critical connection.

  The investigation needed to return to basics. The best place to start, Maulsby figured, was to have all the physical evidence laid out before her. Other than the Jane Doe crime scene in El Dorado County, she hadn’t viewed any of the evidence firsthand. That trip to Tahoe had certainly paid off with her later recognition of the white cordage in the crime kit, but what else was buried in the pile of evidence obtained in the cases? So far, she’d mostly read descriptions in reports, not the same as seeing evidence with her own eyes.

  Maulsby called Jim Streeter and asked him to set aside time for her to view in his lab all the victims’ clothing and other physical evidence in the cases. On the phone, they went over a list of what he’d accumulated from the various departments. When they got to Lora Heedick, Streeter explained that he’d examined her blue jeans, panties, and socks a year earlier and found no cutting. He’d returned the clothing to the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department as he wasn’t convinced it was an I-5 case.

  “Been down that road myself,” Maulsby said. “We spent a lot of time looking at her boyfriend. I’d like to see her clothes, too. If you sent them back, our property warehouse should have them.”

  Before tracking down Heedick’s clothes, Maulsby reviewed the autopsy report. In addition to the garments Streeter said he had previously examined, there was also mention of a pink tank top. She called Streeter.

  “I never saw a tank top,” he said. “Was one found?”

  “It was wrapped around her neck as a ligature, and apparently looped around her wrists, too, as bindings.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  It took Maulsby one phone call to her department’s property warehouse to find the clothing Streeter had returned a year ago: Heedick’s jeans, panties, socks, and loafers.

  “No pink tank top?” she asked.

  “Nope,” the clerk said. “Don’t have that.”

  Maulsby next called the county crime lab. She gave a criminalist the case number, and explained that she was looking for a tank top that had never made it to DOJ or the property warehouse. “I don’t find anything but I’ll keep looking,” he said. “Have you tried the coroner?”

  Five minutes later, a deputy coroner was explaining to Maulsby that they had no reason to keep any of Heedick’s clothing. “We sent all of it to the crime lab,” he said.

  During her lunch hour, Maulsby went to the property warehouse. She reviewed the paperwork and checked the shelf upon which the clothes had been stored since their return from DOJ. There was no sign of Heedick’s tank top.

  She checked out the clothing Streeter had earlier examined and took it back to him because she wanted the garments part of their evidentiary show-and-tell.

  The next morning she called the county crime lab again and spoke to the s
ame criminalist. She told him her thinking: that if the coroner no longer had the tank top and it wasn’t at the property warehouse and had never shown up at DOJ, it had to be at the crime lab. The search widened.

  That afternoon, the criminalist called to say he had located the top in the freezer compartment, where a colleague had placed it a year ago. “It had ‘ligature’ marked on it, which is why it didn’t go to DOJ with the rest of the clothes,” he said. It was a lame excuse because all the physical evidence in the I-5 was supposed to go to DOJ.

  Maulsby went to the lab and peeked inside the manila envelope. She saw rolled-up pink fabric sealed in plastic. Closing the envelope, she signed for it and made a beeline to DOJ, where she placed it in the hands of Jim Streeter.

  Maulsby finally located an old 8mm projector and sequestered herself in a broom closet–size room to view the Kibbe home movies confiscated during the search of Tupelo. There were eleven movies, some dated 1976, 1977, and 1978. In grainy, flickering black-and-white images, the movies depicted a younger-looking Roger, with a neatly trimmed beard, and a thinner Harriet vacationing with an assortment of other people who appeared to be family and friends. There were outings on a lake with a boat, and a Little League game. There was dramatic footage of skydiving—no doubt, Roger had carried the camera out the door of the plane. Also, he filmed a wild ride in a parachute while being towed behind a boat.

  Viewing the two “Pretty Girls” pornographic films last, she found them curiously repetitive. In each, a male and a female were engaged in various sexual acts. The women wore nylons, had long hair, and were very busty. Both movies ended with the man ejaculating upon the woman’s breasts. Maulsby couldn’t know if the movies provided a window into any special desires of Roger’s, but she did recall that his victims all had long hair and most had seemed to be busty.

  When the I-5 evidence was ready to be reviewed, Maulsby drove over to Streeter’s lab. When she walked in, she was nearly staggered by the stench of death from the victims’ clothes. Streeter had set up several large electrical fans and vents, mostly to no avail. He was already wearing a surgical mask, and handed one to her.

  Streeter commented that he’d been inundated with dozens of unsolved cases sent in by various agencies wanting him to review all the physical evidence in the murders—some old, some new—for possible linkage to the I-5 series.

  “Did you get a chance to look at the dowelling and the white cordage from the search of Tupelo?” Maulsby asked.

  Streeter said the four pieces of dowelling from Tupelo were the same color and diameter as those in Roger Kibbe’s crime kit. He told of also comparing the two new pieces of cordage from Tupelo with the cordage in the crime kit and, most important, to the cordage found at the Jane Doe murder scene. “They’re all alike in size, color, weave, type, number of threads. I’ve had several conversations with the manufacturer trying to come up with more uniqueness, but all we can really say is that they’re a similar type of common cordage used in the construction of parachutes.”

  Maulsby winced.

  “Still not enough,” she said under her breath.

  The physical evidence, spread out on long lab tables, was segregated by victim. For good reason, Streeter had made Lora Heedick first up.

  “I have something to show you,” Streeter said, quickly moving to and hovering over the pink tank top that had spent a year in deep freeze.

  “You see how it’s in three pieces and tied together with twine? I went back and checked the autopsy report. The pathologist made two cuts removing it—one at the loop around the neck and the other at the wrists. That’s why we ended up with three pieces. Then he tied the pieces together to show how they were connected. Look here.”

  Streeter pointed to the shoulder straps.

  Maulsby saw that both straps were cut through.

  “And here,” he said.

  Both side seams were cut open several inches.

  “The pathologist didn’t make these cuts, Kay.”

  Twenty months after she had disappeared from a Modesto street, Lora Heedick, following much investigation and debate, was finally and unequivocally added to the I-5 body count.

  TWENTY-NINE top officials from six law enforcement agencies—in fact, Lt. Ray Biondi, who had been pushing for such a high-level meeting, was outranked by all but one participant—met at the Department of Justice on December 21, 1987, to hear a detailed, scientific presentation on the I-5 murder series by criminalist Jim Streeter.

  Streeter utilized photo boards of clothes cuttings and other visual aids to illustrate the similarities in the murders of seven young women. In addition to Stephanie Brown, Charmaine Sabrah, Lora Heedick, Karen Finch, and El Dorado’s Jane Doe, found on Old Meyer’s Grade, Streeter had recently discovered similarities in two other cases:

  • An unidentified white woman believed to be in her twenties, dead six months to a year, who had been found nude from the waist up in El Dorado County on June 11, 1987, in a ravine off Highway 50 about 75 miles west of Lake Tahoe. Although the cause of death could not be determined, there was “neck trauma,” leaving open the possibility of strangulation. Streeter found cuts in the crotch of her designer blue jeans.

  • An unidentified black woman, about twenty-six years old, found May 19, 1987, in Nevada’s Virginia City highlands, some 15 miles southeast of U.S. 395 and 30 miles south of the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe. The victim had been dead for several months; the cause of death could not be determined. Her bones had been scattered over a wide area by animals—the victim was found only when a dog brought a human leg bone home to his master and a police search ensued. Her bra, blouse, and jeans all had extensive nonfunctional cutting.

  When Streeter finished, the meeting was thrown open to general comments. The tone of the room, Biondi observed, ran from mildly supportive that an active murder series was working to outright skepticism.

  The biggest skeptic was the elected sheriff of San Joaquin County, who, after Streeter’s presentation, had the temerity to ask: “How do we know these cases are linked?” It was particularly ironic coming from Vito Bertocchini’s top boss—Bertocchini, the first detective who suspected Roger Kibbe of being a serial killer.

  Hellooo, Mr. Sheriff, are we at the same meeting? Biondi dearly wanted to respond. Have you been listening for the last hour or doing the Sunday crossword?

  Instead, Biondi coolly reiterated some of the factors just outlined by Streeter. “We can’t say there is a direct link of physical evidence at each scene,” he admitted. “We don’t have matching fingerprints, tire impressions, bullet casings. What we have is a combination of similarities, including, but not limited to, cutting of the victims’ clothes.”

  Certain if he added his own “gut feeling” that a series was at work he’d be drummed out of the corps, he left it at that.

  The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss Biondi’s suggestion that there be more press coverage—the most important reason being perhaps to pick up additional eyewitnesses and other information the public at large might have without realizing its importance—as well as some firm commitments from other agencies to help with the sweeping investigation.

  From the beginning, Biondi sensed a resentment in the room directed at him; like it was his fault they had to drive all this way and sit down for a couple of hours. And hey, it probably was.

  The issue of added press coverage met with nearly total resistance, which dumbfounded Biondi because three of the murders—Brown, Sabrah, and the Jane Doe later identified as Lora Heedick—had been publicized a year ago as part of a series, even though at the time they did not have evidence that Jane Doe’s clothes had been cut. He began to suspect the revolt had more to do with bruised egos than sound law enforcement. His department, and he personally, had been out in front of the cameras for the last news conference. If someone else wanted to carry the ball on the evening news, that was fine with him.

  Biondi went quiet, letting his boss, Sacramento County Sheriff Glen Craig, who suppo
rted a joint press release on the series by all the agencies, run the show.

  Some of the comments against going public:

  • “We don’t need to because we aren’t sure about the cases being linked.”

  • “We don’t have to tell the press anything. We can just wait and answer their inquiries as they come in.”

  • “Our agency isn’t allowed to talk to the media.”

  In the interest of reaching peace among the warring factions, Sheriff Craig worked out the structure of an agreement. Its centerpiece was the judgment that it was “premature” to go public with the seven linked cases at this time. However, if the press inquired as to any of the murders, certain information would be given out, including the fact that there were “similarities” in the cases, “but we will not discuss those similarities.” Also, it was decided that, should the media push individual departments for further information, each department could hold its own press conference and “discuss only their own cases.”

  So much for asking for help from the top, Biondi boiled inwardly. He was glad he’d decided beforehand not to talk about suspects, and had kept mum about Roger Kibbe.

  From where Biondi sat, the brass, through its collective wisdom, had come up with an unbelievably stupid way to handle the series of murders that now counted seven victims.

  Why was he not so terribly surprised?

  Nineteen

  With 1987 coming to a close, Judy Frackenpohl knew deep down that her daughter was dead.

  It had been four months since Darcie’s last phone call from Sacramento. As the acceptance of her daughter’s likely fate crept farther into her very being, Judy found the singularly most trying part was not knowing what had happened. Were her daughter’s remains lying somewhere as yet undiscovered? Or had she been found with no identity and did she lie unclaimed? What would they do with her?