Authors: Corey Mitchell

Dead And Buried (11 page)

BOOK: Dead And Buried

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TWENTY-FIVE

One year after Rex returned home, his life would change forever. So would the life of an innocent twelve-year-old girl.

Rex hated to stay at his father’s house. If his dad was not beating up on him, he was smacking his sisters around or cussing out Janice. Rex started to get away from the house more often so he would not have to deal with his father’s bullshit.He actually made a couple of friends in Sandpoint. His running buddies were two local boys, John Lowry and Alex Black.

On February 3, 1984, a chilly winter evening, Rex headed to the downtown video-game parlor known as the Electric Horseman, located at First Street and Pine Street. He pumped a handful of quarters into games such as Defender and Tempest,but soon got bored. He wanted something more exciting.

As Rex walked down the icy downtown street, he noticed his friend John inside the Kentucky Fried Chicken. He went inside and told John that he had a surprise, something his fatherhad given him, he claimed. Rex pulled back his long winter coat and revealed a shiny new bottle of vodka. John’s eyes lit up. They blazed out of the restaurant.

After a few swallows of the clear liquor, Rex and John went back to the Electric Horseman, where they met some of John’s other friends. The young men hid out behind the parlorand continued to drink from Rex’s bottle of vodka for about fifteen minutes. They were then joined by two young girls, Karen James, aged fourteen, and Jennifer Everwood (pseud.), who was only twelve years old.

Karen and Jenny had been out on the town for the night. They were supposed to go to the Panida Theater to catch a movie, but they spent all of their movie money at the Electric Horseman. After they left the game room, the girls started to head over to the Pastime Café, but instead made a beeline for the Cedar Street Bridge, which crosses over Sand Creek, where they ran into John, Alex, and Rex. The guys were well on their way to getting drunk. They encouraged the girls to join them.

Rex offered his bottle to Karen, who proceeded to drink a few large gulps from it. She then passed the bottle to Jenny, who took a few swigs. Rex insisted that they drink more. The girls did as requested. Soon they were feeling no pain.

Rex turned to Karen and asked her, “Who, in order, is the most drunk from most to least?”

The teenager replied, “You, John, Alex, me, and Jenny.”

Rex turned his attention to twelve-year-old Jenny and said, “You need another drink.” He handed her the vodka. Jenny accepted it and took another swig. Rex told her he would finishit off for her, so she handed the bottle back to him.

Everyone felt in great spirits by now. The drunken partyers decided to try their hand at some shoeless ice-skating on the frozen creek under the Cedar Street Bridge. They clumsily slipped about on the ice, but had a grand old time. After about fifteen minutes of this foolishness, they decided to go back into the Electric Horseman to get out of the cold. They left the bridge area and began walking to the parlor when Rex turned off the road toward the Panida Theater. Alex and Karen, who were getting cozy together, joined him. Jenny stopped for a moment. She did not know what to do. She decided she did not want to be without her best friend, so she tagged along. John continued on to the Electric Horseman. That left two couples. Alex and Karen. Rex and Jenny.

Behind the theater sat a 1960s blue pickup truck with its tailgate down. Karen and Alex claimed the tailgate and immediately cuddled up together and began to kiss. Rex and Jenny walked toward the front of the truck. Rex attempted to put the moves on Jenny, but she rebuffed his advances. He attemptedto kiss her, but she told him no. She let him know that she was only twelve years old, but that did not stop him. He told her that he was going to kiss her “nicely.” She said she did not want him to kiss her at all. She jumped up to get Karen.

When she went around the front of the truck, Karen and Alex were not there.

According to her statement to the police, Rex grabbed Jenny again and started kissing her. She resisted and they both fell to the ground of the parking lot. Rex got up and Jenny tried to trip him with her feet. He fell to the ground and then rolled on top of the young girl.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” Rex asked the twelve-year-oldgirl.

“No,” Jenny replied, “I’m not interested in kissing you and I certainly don’t want to have sex with you.”

Rex was not pleased with her response. He forcefully pulled down her denim blue jeans, then her panties. Somehow he also managed to disrobe himself from the waist down. Next thing Jenny knew, Rex had mounted her and “tried fucking,but didn’t succeed.” Jenny begged and pleaded for Rex to get off her, but he would not listen. She tried unsuccessfullyto knee him in the groin. Finally, after several attempts, she connected, then scrambled away from Rex and rose to her feet. She hurriedly pulled up her underwear and pants. She began to run away from the older, bigger boy, but he tripped her. Jenny sprawled to the parking lot, her Walkman headphonewires pulled taut around her neck, choking the preteen.

Rex angrily jumped back on top of Jenny.

He clasped his hands around the young girl’s throat. Jenny, however, continued to fight back. She also grabbed for his throat, albeit with much tinier hands and far less strength. The two of them yelled at each other while in the throes of a mutual death grip. Finally Rex released his hands from her neck. He did not relent, however, in his attack. Instead, he balled his right hand into a fist, reared it backward, and thrust it toward Jenny’s face. He connected with a brutal ferocity that rocketedthe young girl’s head backward so hard that it smacked the concrete beneath her. He then punched her in the forehead and in the eye. He reared back one more time and connected with the girl’s fragile jaw. He hit her so hard that she bit through her tongue.

The final blow sent Jenny plummeting over the curbside embankment and down the dirty hillside onto the frozen creek. She was not alone as she had grabbed Rex’s shirt and pulled him over the side. As Jenny helplessly rolled down the hill, she bumped her head against a large rock embedded in the ground. Despite feeling woozy, Jenny grabbed Rex’s hair and continued to scream at him to leave her alone. Rex turned to her and, without warning, apologized.

“I’m sorry,” he sincerely intoned. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

Jenny somehow managed to bolt upright, found her footingon the hillside, and took off running. She made it up the embankment in no time and was over the side. She saw a couplewalking hand in hand and headed directly toward them. She asked for their help and told them that someone raped her. They did not believe her and laughed in her face. Nonplussed,the adolescent continued on to the Sandpoint police station, one block away from the theater.

Jenny arrived at the police station and hustled inside to the front desk. She frantically told the dispatcher Sandra Maben what had happened and that all she knew was the young man’s name was Rex. Maben called Detective Andrew “A.D.” Anderson. He arrived at the police station within five minutes.He spoke with Jenny for a few minutes in the front lobby and then brought her to the back, where she could have more privacy. Detective Anderson noted that her speech was slurred and he had difficulty understanding what she said. He asked her to write down the events that had just transpired; however, she was not able to scrawl down more than two or three words. She was either too upset or too intoxicated, the detectiveconcluded. He contacted her parents to come to the station and then advised them, when they arrived, to take their daughter to the local hospital and have them perform a “sex crime kit” exam on her.

Just before midnight Detective Anderson telephoned Allan Krebs. The officer told him about Jenny’s accusation and asked him to bring Rex to the police station.

Rex did not arrive at the police station until 4:00
P.M.
the following day. Detective Anderson confronted him with Jenny’s story and asked Rex to recount his whereabouts from the previous night. Rex told the officer that everything Jenny said was true up until the attack. He even admitted that Jenny did not want him to “kiss and pet” her. He also claimed that he was too drunk to remember what had happened from that point on except that he got sick and fell down several times on the way to his grandmother’s house.

Rex was arrested and locked up in the Sandpoint Jail. The charge was attempted rape. One month later, on March 8, 1984, Rex Krebs pleaded not guilty to the charge and was held over to the Bonner County District Court to set up a trial date. On March 19, 1984, Joe Jarzabek, Kreb’s attorney, convincedthe court to downgrade the charges to a misdemeanor assault. The prosecutor agreed and Rex pleaded guilty. He was remanded back into the custody of the sheriff’s departmentand forced to serve out the remaining thirty-six days of his ninety-day sentence.

Rex Krebs received a slap on the wrist for the attempted rape of a twelve-year-old girl.

TWENTY-SIX

Rex Krebs walked out of the Sandpoint Jail in May 1984. Less than two months later, he was in trouble again. On the night of July 17, 1984, Rex broke into a car, which belonged to Mike Smolinski, near Eleventh Street, by the Snake River in Lewiston, Idaho. The theft took place near Rex’s former residence, the North Idaho Children’s Home. Rex claimed that he dumped the car beside the local police station so the owner could find it the next day.

But he was not done yet.

He next headed over to Eighth Avenue and broke into a 1973 Toyota Landcruiser, which belonged to Dennis Murphy. It was only a few blocks away from Smolinski’s car. The policecaptured Krebs and arrested him later that night.

On July 19, 1984, a complaint was filed against Rex Krebs in the Nez Perce County District Court for first-degree burglary and grand theft. He was not represented by an attorney at the time and was assessed a $10,000 bail. The judge also set Krebs’s preliminary conference for six days later, July 25, 1984, at which time he obtained counsel, Owen Knowlton. Krebs’s arraignmentdate had been set for Wednesday, August 1, 1984. The judge also found sufficient cause to hold him for trial.

Krebs stayed locked up until September 5, 1984, when he pleaded guilty to two charges of grand theft for the stealing of the automobiles of Mike Smolinski and Dennis Murphy.

Rex Krebs, who only served three months for the attemptedrape of a twelve-year-old girl, received a three-year sentence in the North Idaho Correctional Institution for stealingtwo cars.

The North Idaho Correctional Institution is a former militaryradar station located just north of the quaint town of Cottonwood, Idaho. It is located just below the Nez Perce NationalHistorical Park. Most people refer to the prison as Cottonwood.

According to the Idaho Department of Corrections, Cottonwoodis a “program-specific prison designed for male inmates sentenced to a retained jurisdiction commitment by the court. It provides a sentencing alternative for the courts to target those offenders who might be, after a period of programmingand evaluation, viable candidates for probation rather than incarceration. The retained jurisdiction inmates participate in a boot camp program which instills confidence and self-esteem.”

It is a minimum-security prison, where the inmates are not locked down behind the security fence. There are no bars on the windows and the inmates are free to roam the grounds. Inmatesof Cottonwood are not considered escape threats.

This would become eighteen-year-old Rex Krebs’s newest home.

According to Correctional Officer Daniel Werline, Cottonwooduses a two-tiered rehabilitation program: the rider program and the timer program. The rider program takes first-timeoffenders and observes their behavior, gives them an education, offers counseling for psychological problems, as well as alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs. Staff teachers, as well as correctional officers, supervise the inmates.

New inmates must proceed through a 120-day program of observation, education, and counseling before they can be deemed fit to be allowed back into society. As part of their program, they are required to speak with counselors and securitystaff members about their issues. Inmates are monitored as to how well they communicate with other inmatesand other staffers, how they act around those same people, and if they show remorse for the crimes that got them incarcerated in the first place. Staff members and officers then evaluate an inmate’s progress and write up a summary report that gives an opinion as to how well that person has done in the program.

The timer program consists of minimum-custody prisonersor “timers” brought in from other prisons. Timers are usually prisoners up for parole. They participate in jobs at Cottonwood to earn a little money, which will help them upon their release from prison. Some of the work includes construction,kitchen duty, and laundry detail.

Timers are usually older and savvier criminals than riders.

The breakdown of inmates at Cottonwood during Krebs’s imprisonment, according to Werline, usually consisted of 60 to 70 timers and 150 to 200 riders. A large security fence separatedthe two groups.

The correctional officers at Cottonwood placed Rex Krebs into the rider program.

Officer Werline watched over Krebs every day. He observedhis mannerisms as well as his interaction with prisoners and staffers, his cleanliness, and whether or not he took his education seriously. Prisoners were on a twenty-four-hourwatch, even when they slept. Officer Werline spoke highly of his newest charge.

“Other than some immaturity,” Werline noted, “I thought he had an excellent attitude for the program.” Werline further noted that Krebs acted polite and treated him with respect.

After 120 days, Werline wrote an evaluation for Krebs. He gave him a “go,” which meant that the inmate had passed the program. This one recommendation, combined with other recommendationsfrom other staffers, could determine whether the inmate would be released from the program. Despite Werline’sglowing praises, Krebs did not leave the program.

Judge John Maynard of Lewiston apparently took a hard-linestance on riders who screwed up while on the program. The judge rubber-stamped all inmates who received a single negative evaluation. In other words, if the inmate did not do everything and please every staffer, he would not be released from the rider program. Instead, Judge Maynard would ignore the reports and not write a recommendation. After a two-weekextension passed with no word from the judge, the Department of Corrections would automatically change an inmate’s status from rider to timer.

This happened to Rex Krebs. He was moved from Dorm Three over to Dorm Two. According to Officer Werline, when Rex was upgraded to a timer, his attitude sank.

“He was a little depressed at first, but he was a minimum-securitycase. We had no problem with him.” Indeed, Krebs even earned a position in the administration building workingamong the female secretaries of the prison.

“You had to be trustworthy in order to work with the secretaries,”Werline conceded.

As far as Krebs’s stay with the timers themselves, he apparentlykept his nose clean by staying out of the way. Werline recalled that Krebs did not seem to be a leader. He also did not appear to be a follower.

“He wasn’t outgoing. He wasn’t the bullying type or tough or anything like that.”

In 1987, after three years behind bars, Rex Krebs stepped outside the gates of Cottonwood Prison. His father did not pick him up. His mother did not pick him up. Instead, Diana Krug picked him up and took him back to her and Donnie’s home in Lewiston. Rex lived with the Krugs for one week, when he received a phone call from his mother. She informed him that she had remarried and moved to Oceano, California. It is a small coastal town about fifteen miles south of the town of San Luis Obispo. She wanted to start a new life with her fourth husband and wondered if Rex wanted to come along.

Rex had the choice of going out on his own, moving back in with his dad, or moving to the coast of California.

The choice was obvious.

He told his mother he would be there in a week.

BOOK: Dead And Buried

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