TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (58 page)

“Mr.
Driggers is a little different. His testimony changes. When he first talked to police he’d only seen the man for a minute, and only a side view of his face. When he comes to court he’d been in the car for five minutes and gets a full-face view. Why? Because he wants to solve it and put it behind him, too. I’m not going to maintain he’s a liar. I am maintaining everything about his identification grows in his mind as time goes on.

“Roger was a suspect very early on in this
case, and they focused on it. That’s important because it explains the identifications, it’s important because it explains the procedures used in the laboratory.

“Mr. Drossel wants us to believe that
Faye Springer is a scientist who just simply looks at a microscope and where the fibers fall, they fall. No bias. No interest. Just a scientist. Until she testified that she cannot do work for the defense, cannot give opinions for the defense, because she works for the California Department of Justice.

“When we look at the fiber evidence, Ms. Springer says it was probably a primary transfer because of the number of fibers she found. In other words, that pink dress had to have been in Mr.
Kibbe’s Hyundai. That doesn’t mean that someone else could not have been in that car and picked up those fibers.
Kim Quackenbush testified that she and Darcie occasionally wore clothes belonging to each other. Did she wear Darcie’s dress and was she in that car and did she pick up the fibers? It’s entirely possible that Darcie was never in that car. There is no way of saying when that dress was in that car, if it was in fact in that car. If it was not the night she disappeared, then a week before or three weeks before? There is no evidence to that.

“Another problem I have: How many fibers did they have to look at until finally finding something of Mr. Kibbe’s that was consistent? That’s my problem. And the
hairs—okay, Mr. Kibbe cannot be eliminated. Does that mean he did it?”

As for the
cordage evidence, Kohn said, “The reason the defense brought Mr.
Farrell forward was to indicate to you that that cord is commonly sold in military surplus stores and marine supply stores and in many other stores. The prosecution says this is unique evidence because of the
red paint. Mr. Farrell explained how red paint can get on there during the cutting and sewing of canopies.”

Kohn was winding down.

“Our burden is not to prove Roger Kibbe is innocent. That’s not the burden placed on the defense. The prosecution has the entire burden. I have highlighted certain areas of evidence which the defense thinks raise a reasonable doubt. You have to search all the evidence, review the law, and I implore you to make a decision based on the law and on the evidence and not on emotion.”

T
HE JURORS
began deliberating at 9:05
A.M.
on March 18, 1991. At 11:45
A.M.
, they took a noon recess.

After their return from lunch, compliments of El Dorado County, jury foreman
John Zucconi, an employee of the South Lake Tahoe Long’s Drugs, sent a note to the judge.

When court reconvened at 1:54
P.M.
, the lawyers and defendant were back at their respective tables.

“The Court has received a note indicating the jury has reached a verdict,” Judge
Finney said.

“Yes, we have,” said the foreman.

“Please hand the verdict to the bailiff.”

When the judge received the verdict form, he glanced at it but kept a poker face. “All right. I’ll read the verdict.

“We, the jury, find the Defendant, Roger Reece Kibbe,
guilty
of the crime of murder in the first degree, in violation of Section 187 of the California Penal Code.”

May 10, 1991

“
People
versus
Kibbe
,” said Judge Terrence Finney. “The matter is set for judgment and
sentence.
Mr. Kohn?”

It had been fifty-three days since the jury’s verdict.

Phil Kohn stood. “Your Honor, I have advised my client not to talk to Probation due to the fact that there are other cases that are out there. Based on that, we have decided to put forth no evidence.”

“Mr. Drossel?” said Finney.

Taking his place before the bench, Bob Drossel said, “There is no question in the People’s mind that the statutory term of twenty-five years to life is appropriate.”

“What other choice is there?” the judge asked.

“There may be a quirk in the law as to
probation.”

Indeed, Kohn had submitted on his client’s behalf an application for probation.

“When you consider the factors against probation,” Drossel went on, “certainly there should not be much choice in the judge’s mind. There was a showing of intent to plan and execute this crime. We have the violent conduct portrayed, which certainly shows a danger to society. As expressed in the probation report, the victim’s mother,
Judy Frackenpohl, who will not be here today, is clear about what she thinks should happen to the defendant: death. But that’s not an option of this court.”

In retrospect and after all the work that had gone into the case and the swift verdict by the jury, Drossel would very much like to have been seeking the
death penalty. He believed in it, and considered Roger Kibbe an especially good candidate for that particular brand of justice.

“Based on these and other factors,” Drossel continued, “the People urge the Court to follow the statutory term of twenty-five years to life.”

Judge Finney cleared his throat.

“Mr. Kibbe, if you will please stand.”

Kibbe rose; at his side, Kohn did, too.

“The defendant’s application for probation is denied. The Court finds the factors against probation outweigh those in favor of probation. The only sentence under the law I can impose is the twenty-five years to life. Therefore, the defendant is sentenced to twenty-five years to life.

“In addition to this sentence, a period of parole pursuant to Penal Code Section 3000 commences upon the defendant’s release from state prison. The period of parole shall not exceed life.”

The judge informed Kibbe of his rights of appeal.

“Do you have any questions about your rights?”

“No,” Kibbe responded.

“Do you understand you have sixty days to appeal?”

“Yes,” Kibbe said.

“All right.”

With that, court was adjourned.

El Dorado County Sheriff’s Deputy
Robert Dougherty escorted Kibbe from the courtroom into the secured hallway on their way back to the jail in an adjacent building. The convicted killer would wait there, his home for the past three years, until transported to state prison.

“What’s new, Bob?” Kibbe asked casually.

“I’m probably doing better than you are, Roger.”

“I’m not surprised about the time,” Kibbe said nonchalantly. “I’ve been waiting for this for three years.”

“I bet you’re kinda relieved,”
Dougherty said. “Now you can sweep all this under the carpet and just start doing your time. Where do you think they’re going to send you?”

“Kohn thinks Pelican Bay.”

They were now waiting for the service elevator to take them to the ground floor, where they would exit through a back door and walk 100 yards down a fenced path to the jail.

“You’re probably better off going there. You’ll be locked down in your own cell and not have to worry about the general population,” the deputy said about California’s new maximum security prison reserved for the most dangerous of the dangerous.

“Yeah, I’ve had my own cell for the last three years so it’s nothing new. For sure I don’t want to go to the prison where that big guy who testified against me is doing his time. He wants a piece of me.”

Having sat through the entire trial and listened to all the testimony, Dougherty had no doubt that Kibbe was referring to
James Driggers.

The elevator arrived and they climbed in for the short ride down from the second floor.

“I’m sure a lot of people want a piece of you, Roger,” Dougherty said as the door closed and the elevator started its descent with a groan. “But why do you think that guy wants you so bad?”

“Because I killed his girlfriend.”

Dougherty looked at his charge curiously. “Roger, you’re finally admitting that you killed someone?”

“Yeah,” Roger Kibbe said, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “I’ve killed a few women. What’s the big deal?”

Dramatis Personae

Kay Maulsby
still works in the Homicide Bureau of the
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. “She’s not only an excellent homicide investigator,” says her mentor, Ray Biondi, “but she’s one of the best interviewers and interrogators I’ve ever seen.” A year after Roger
Kibbe’s arrest for murder, Maulsby encountered another serial killer: James David
Majors, who murdered ten people in seven months in California and Arizona. The case was solved by Maulsby and her partner,
Bob Bell. Majors now resides on California’s Death Row.

Faye Springer
continued to review evidence in the I-5 investigation, and in July 1992 made another match of seat fibers to Roger Kibbe’s Datsun 280Z in the death of
Karen
Quinones, a twenty-five-year-old prostitute who disappeared from downtown Sacramento in November 1986. Her body was found the following month in Napa County, 40 miles away. Cause of death was ligature strangulation; cordage connected to
wooden dowels was still in place around her neck, although the cordage was not the same type that helped convict Kibbe. Springer left the California Department of Justice lab in 1996 to work at Sacramento County’s new state-of-the-art
crime lab, where she practices her
trace evidence specialty and operates the lab’s new $250,000 electron scanning microscope. In the same year that Roger Kibbe was convicted of murder, Springer’s analysis of fibers, paint chips, and
hair helped convict Warren James
Bland, a fifty-one-year-old
career sex offender, in the torture death of a seven-year-old girl. Bland is on Death Row awaiting execution by lethal injection.

Vito Bertocchini
tired of the slow pace of detective work and returned to street action in the
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department Patrol
Division. He worked as a canine officer with his German shepherd partner for six years. He is presently assigned to Vice. “I have never forgotten Stephanie or Charmaine,” Bertocchini says of his two I-5 murder
cases. He continues to search for new evidence, and hopes one day to see Roger Kibbe stand trial for their murders. Bertocchini is working with state legislators and victims’ rights groups in pushing for a new state law that will allow for the single prosecution of a serial killer for crimes committed in various
jurisdictions, thereby streamlining a system that still today works to the benefit of killers like Roger Kibbe. Bertocchini’s partner,
Pete Rosenquist
, left the sheriff’s department in 1995 for a job in the
San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office as a criminal investigator. “I’m doing the same thing,” says Rosenquist, “without all the politics.”
Larry Ferrari
, the third San Joaquin detective assigned to the I-5 task force, is also working as a criminal investigator in the D.A.’s office, alongside Rosenquist.

Ray Biondi
, a year after Roger Kibbe’s arrest, declined to accept a departmental Distinguished Service Award from his supervisor. His job had been made “twice as hard as it should have been” by having to continually butt heads with a “mostly indifferent administration,” he told his boss. After I-5, Biondi led two more successful serial murder investigations before retiring in 1993. He consults occasionally on homicide investigations, and still pesters the
Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office about filing murder charges against Kibbe. “It’s a low priority for the D.A. because Kibbe has been convicted of murder and is in prison,” Biondi says. “Seeing him convicted of the other murders is not a low priority for those victims’ families.”

Stan Reed
continues to work Homicide with uncommon tenacity. In 1991, he identified and arrested Eric Royce
Leonard, aka “The
Thrill Killer,” who was subsequently convicted of six murders and sentenced to die. In 1996, after seven years of investigative work, Reed arrested
Joseph Consorti for the vicious 1989 killing of a five-year-old girl. And in 1997, he arrested
Duane Hackney for the decade-old sexual assault and murder of eleven-year-old
Vickie Skanks.

Jim Streeter
left DOJ in 1993 for a position as a forensic scientist with the State of Montana crime lab in Missoula, where his specialty is
DNA analysis. He says the effectiveness of DNA technology has increased by “quantum leaps” in the decade since Roger Kibbe’s arrest—"We’re able to do a
lot more with a lot less.” Streeter believes that the single foreign
hair and few sperm cells recovered from Stephanie
Brown, and the sperm cells from
Karen Finch, could today be successfully analyzed to see if there is a match of genetic markers with Kibbe.

Carmen Anselmi
is raising
Charmaine’s son,
Sabri, now twelve years old, in Sacramento. Being an older single parent living on her late husband’s survivor benefits has not been easy for Carmen, now sixty-three. She adopted Sabri when he was a year old and he calls his grandmother “Mom,” although he knows of his mother’s fate. “I told him when he started asking questions,” Carmen says. “He’s very angry. It has affected him in school and everything. I think we’ll both feel better when we have a trial for his mother’s murder and her killer is convicted.”

Judy Frackenpohl
has advanced in her career with a food service company and still lives in Seattle, where she raised her son,
Larry, now twenty-five, an expert skier who works at ski resorts. She says Roger Kibbe’s conviction for killing her daughter, Darcie, gave her “no personal satisfaction because he’s still alive,” although she was pleased to see him “off the streets.” Judy thinks about her daughter every day. “Darcie made her choices. Maybe they weren’t the right choices, but she didn’t choose to die.”

Jo-Allyn Brown
, and her husband, Tom, still reside in the rural ranch-style home where Stephanie was raised. Their surviving three daughters live close by. Stephanie’s youngest sister, Michaela, twenty-eight, now the mother of two, says, “We aren’t the same people. There’s a deadness to us all.” Jo-Allyn has always wanted to know what happened at the end. “The man who was the last to see Stephanie alive will probably never tell.” Jo-Allyn says she and Tom were glad Kibbe was convicted of one killing, “but he’s still eating three meals a day and our daughter is dead. Is that fair?”