Authors: Corey Mitchell
Dead And Buried (25 page)
“A few.”
“What’s a few?”
“Probably six or seven shots.”
“On a scale of one to ten, ten being passed out and one being sober, where were you?”
“About eight.”
Hobson refocused the discussion to Krebs’s abduction of Rachel Newhouse. “So you drove up to your house. When you got to the house, what did you do?”
Krebs looked up at the officer. He paused. “Raped her.”
Hobson realized Krebs was taking him down the path that everyone wanted to know about. He was going to spill the beans. Hobson needed more information, so he led Krebs systematically.
“Did you take her out of the car?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you park your car or truck where you usually park it?”
“No, I went down to the, uh ... I stopped at the cabin.”
“The abandoned cabin?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where did you take Rachel then?”
“Into the cabin.”
“You had to carry her?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you carry her?”
“Over my shoulder.”
“Is she conscious now?”
“Yeah.”
Hobson had Krebs and Rachel placed in the abandoned A-framestructure deep in Davis Canyon. He continued to dig for more details. “You get her inside the abandoned cabin, it’s still dark, and what happens in there?”
“I raped her,” Krebs repeated for the second time in less than three minutes.
“She’s tied up. Do you untie her?” Hobson forged onward
“Her legs.”
“What happens to her pants?”
“I pulled them off.”
“Did you have a knife, where you cut them off?”
“No, I pulled them off.”
“Did you untie the panties from her mouth?”
“Yeah.”
Despite the grim nature of the confession, Hobson continued to ply details from the paroled convict. “Did you talk to her?”
“No.”
“Did she talk to you?”
“Yeah. She was cussing me. ‘Fuck you, you piece of shit.’ ”
“Was she sober, intoxicated?”
“She was drunk,” Krebs spat out, almost convinced that this was justification for his actions.
“Did she say anything else to you?”
“ ‘Get out of me.’ ”
“When she called you, said, ‘Fuck you, you’re a piece of shit,’ how’d that make you feel?”
“About the way I feel right now,” Krebs replied as he shifted uncomfortably in the tiny wooden chair.
“Then what did you do to her?”
“After raping her, I retied her.”
“When you say you raped her, what do you mean by raped her? What did you do? Did you put your penis in her vagina?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sodomize her?”
“Huh-uh,” he stated emphatically, denying the accusation.
“Did you ejaculate?”
“Yeah.”
“Was she fighting during this process?”
“Yeah,” he stated yet again.
“Did you go down on her?”
“No.”
“Did you make her go down on you?”
“No.”
“So it was strictly vaginal intercourse. Then what’d you do?”
“Turned her over on her stomach, retied her legs.”
“Like they were before?”
“Yeah.” Krebs acknowledged the hog-tied position.
“Now when you say you tied her legs, are her legs attached to any part of her body or her hands?”
“Her hands.”
“So she’s hog-tied then ... Her legs are pulled up in a
L
shape?”
L
shape?”
“Yeah.”
“Tied to her hands?”
Krebs again nodded his head.
“So she’s clothed on the top half, but she’s naked from the bottom half, right?” Hobson continued.
“Right.”
“Then what happened?”
“I run the loop above, rope around her neck to keep her, uh, make her keep her legs up.”
“Her feet were tied to her hands and then looped around her neck?”
“Uh-huh,” Krebs grunted.
“Then what happened?”
“I went home.”
“And you just left her there?”
Krebs nodded yes again. “So then you got in your truck and drove up to your house. What’d you do when you got home?” Hobson continued.
Krebs looked up pensively at the detective. He sighed and finally told him, “Can’t remember what the hell I was doing.”
“Did you have something to drink?”
“I think I did have a shot of whiskey.”
“And did you sit down and think what the hell was I doing?”
Krebs, staring off into space, nodded. “Sat down and thought what the hell was I doing.”
“When you left her”—Hobson kept the conversation going—“was she gagged?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you gag her again?”
“Stuffed her panties back in her mouth.”
“So she’s left there; she’s alive, but she’s gagged so she can’t scream.”
“Right.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“I went back down.”
“How much later? The next morning?”
“No, about ten or fifteen minutes.”
Hobson adjusted himself in his seat and hunkered down to nail the specifics of what happened next. “So you drove up to the house, had a shot of whiskey, thought about it, and drove back down.” Krebs nodded again and Hobson asked what happened next.
Krebs responded, “When I went in, she was dead.”
Hobson finally found out what everyone in San Luis Obispo had waited for five months to know. Rachel Newhousewas dead and Rex Krebs was involved. “She was dead?” he asked incredulously. “What killed her?”
“The rope around her neck.”
“When you tied the rope around her neck, Rex, was it in such a position that she couldn’t breathe?”
“No.”
“She could breathe when you left?”
Once again Krebs nodded his head.
“So what you’re telling me, then, is her struggling caused her to strangle herself?”
“That or her legs relaxed or something. I don’t know,” Krebs responded with a straight face.
“How do you know she was dead?”
“ ’Cause she wasn’t breathing when I untied her.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“Panicked.”
“It’s understandable,” Hobson reassured. “When you panicked,what’d you do?”
“I walked around in circles. Carried her out of the cabin.”
“Where did you take her?”
“Behind the cabin.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“Went home.”
“When did you come back?”
“The next morning.”
“Would this have been after Debbie left for work?”
“Yeah,” Krebs responded.
“She leaves for work at what time?”
“Around eight (
A.M.
) or so, I guess.”
A.M.
) or so, I guess.”
“Is Muriel home?”
“I don’t know.”
Hobson returned the conversation to what happened after Krebs found Rachel Newhouse’s dead body. “So you got back in your truck and you drove back to the cabin. Then what’d you do?”
“Actually, I didn’t drive back to the cabin,” Krebs recalled. “I drove down the road farther, where I’d been cutting wood.”
“To the woodpile?”
“Farther down than that. Where I was putting the wood in.”
“And then where did you go on foot?”
“Up to where I was cutting wood. I took a shovel with me. Dug a grave and I buried her.”
“She’s still at the cabin, though, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you parked your truck where you were cutting wood, went up the hill?”
“Uh-huh,” Krebs proffered yet again.
“And dug a grave. And then how did you get her?”
“Waited till that night.”
“All right. What time do you think?”
“Late.”
“This would be on Friday the thirteenth then, right?”
“I guess.”
“And when you say late, what are we talking about?”
“Eleven-thirty (
P.M.
), twelve (
P.M.
).”
P.M.
), twelve (
P.M.
).”
“What did you do during the day after you dug the grave? You’re off work, right? What’d you do during the day? Did you stay home or did you go someplace?”
“Stayed home.”
“Didn’t go anywhere that day?”
“No.”
“What’d you do then?”
“Went and got her. Put her in the back of the truck. Drove down to where I dug the grave, picked her up.”
“And you lifted her out of the back, put her over your shoulder?”
Krebs nodded.
“How far off of the road is the grave?” Hobson continued.
“Twenty yards.”
“Is it up a hill or flat?”
“Up a hill.”
“By trees?”
“Kind of in a flat spot.”
“And then after that, what’d you do?”
“Went back home.”
“Did you see Roslynn that weekend?”
“I think I did, yeah.”
“And did she come out and stay at your place?”
“Yeah.”
“At any time, did you have Rachel inside your house?”
“No.”
“When did you notice the blood in the back of your truck?”
“When I took her out of the truck. At the cabin.”
“You realized she bled quite a bit in the back of your truck?” Krebs again nodded. “When did you clean up that blood?” Hobson queried.
“Sometime during the day ... same day that I buried her.”
“So after you dug the grave, you went back and cleaned your truck before you put her in the grave?”
Krebs again shook his head yes.
“What did you do to clean that truck?” Hobson wanted to know.
“Took the seat out of it.”
“Was there blood on the seat?”
“Yeah.”
“Was there blood on your carpet?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you cut any carpets out?”
“Cut the carpet out.”
“Okay. What’d you do with the carpet?”
“Threw it away.”
“What’d you clean the jump seat with?”
“Some kind of a carpet cleaner.”
“But it didn’t work? So then you cut it out?”
“There was too much.”
“What’d you cut it out with?”
“Utility knife.”
“Where’d you put it? Well, when you cleaned it, you thought it was clean, right?”
“No, if it was clean, I would have put it back in the truck,” Krebs responded somewhat sarcastically.
“Where did you put that jump seat then after you did your best?” Hobson tried again.
“Where you found it.”
“Which was where?”
“In the downstairs at the cabin. In the barn.”
“Where in the room did you put it?”
“ ’Bout halfway back on the right-hand side.”
“Did you do anything else to your truck that you had to clean up?”
“There was some blood on the seat belt, so I cut it out. The passenger seat belt.”
“So she bled up to that point also? Was there any other blood in your truck?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“When you put her in the grave site, was she still tied?”
Krebs paused before he answered. “No, I think I cut the rope.”
Hobson countered, “But her hands and her feet were tied, you just cut the rope from the hog-tied position?”
“I believe so.”
“Had you ever seen Rachel before that night?”
“No.”
“That was the first time you saw her?” Krebs nodded his head in the affirmative. “When you saw Rachel, did you have any plan as to what you were going to do or did it just kind of spiral on you?” Again Krebs nodded yes. “One thing progressed to the next? Did you intend to kill her, Rex?”
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