The major disappointments they’d experienced had surely taken their toll—most recently, the collapse of their business, for which Roger had borrowed (and lost) $10,000 from his brother Steve for start-up capital. Such a reversal, followed by the loss of the home they had loved and their general inability to work through everyday problems, had added to their increasing burden.
Restless one night not long after they’d stopped sleeping together, Harriet got out of bed at 4:00 A.M. and found Roger’s room empty. She dressed and drove to the shop, where she found him asleep on the office couch. Waking him up, she said, “Tell me what’s wrong. I need to know.” Without saying a word, Roger, fully clothed, threw off the blanket and walked out. “We need to talk!” she yelled to his departing back. When she heard his car pull away, she broke down.
A month or so later, Roger had not been home for several nights in a row. Around 10:00 P.M. Harriet called the shop. Sounding desperate, she told him that a “Mexican guy” had called threatening to burn down their house. She begged Roger to come home, and he finally did, an hour or so later. By then, the police had arrived. Lying alone in bed that night, Harriet knew she’d reached rock bottom: she’d made up the call and even filed a false police report in an effort to get Roger to come home to her.
Harriet began picking up Roger’s mess in the bedroom when suddenly she stopped. Dropping the things back on the floor, she rushed into the small office that adjoined the apartment. She opened the drawer in which she kept the cash deposits from customers. It was empty. Roger had made off with the $375 she’d carefully counted out and for which she’d prepared a bank deposit slip the afternoon before.
In an instant, her depression turned to anger.
Roger obviously didn’t give a shit about her and had left for good. His leaving now threatened her new job and her new home. Luckily, she had just enough money in savings to cover the loss, which she would do right away. But their boss had hired them as a couple: she to handle the office work, Roger the maintenance and upkeep around the rental yard. With Roger gone, who would do the outside work? How long before their employer found out she was alone and fired her? Where would she go? Where would she get the money for another place? How would she support herself?
Cursing Roger’s gross ineptitude when it came to living life, she took a roll call of his shortcomings:
He was weak,
—emotionally unstable,
—insecure,
—a latent thumb sucker who stuttered the most when he lied, not when he told the truth,
—a frightened little boy in a grown man’s body,
—at forty-seven years of age totally unfit for adult responsibility.
Why had he always been so afraid to reveal himself?
* * *
SHE PICKED up the phone and dialed Vito Bertocchini’s number at the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department. When he came on the line, Harriet told him Roger had decided not to take a polygraph.
“We have an attorney, so please don’t bother us anymore,” she said abruptly.
“Mrs. Kibbe, I’m just trying to gather information in our investigation,” Bertocchini said. “We have several young women who were abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death. One of them was nineteen years old. Another one had an infant at home she was still nursing.”
So quick had she been to disassociate Roger from the entire matter, she hadn’t considered the enormity of the crime itself. Murder had been committed—lives had been taken, callously snuffed out, leaving grieving families.
Harriet knew the detective had meant to shock her, and he’d succeeded. Yet, she formed the thought—stronger than ever—that Roger could not possibly be involved. If a stack of two-by-fours were missing from a lumberyard or if someone’s customized parachute rig had disappeared at the airport, she might have wondered if Roger was up to his old tricks. But multiple homicides?
They had lived in the same house, slept in the same bed, eaten at the same table, laughed at the same TV shows, wrapped Christmas presents for each other, gone through the ups and downs of life together for more than a decade. While Roger certainly had his faults, he had never displayed a penchant for violence or a hatred toward women. Harriet had been with men about whom she could not so testify, but Roger wasn’t among them. The three slaps, delivered open-handed and during fits of anger over an eleven-year period, hardly counted as violence in her book. As for women, he’d never had trouble making and keeping them as friends. And given the mile-wide streak of passivity that ran through him, anyone who knew Roger wouldn’t possibly peg him as a murderer.
Sexual assaults? He’d never been the least rough in bed; not with Harriet, and as far as she knew, not with other women. Years earlier, Roger had told her of making love to his first wife, who he said was quite boisterous in bed, and having to stop occasionally to make sure he wasn’t hurting her. How could a man that sensitive assault a woman?
Harriet felt very sorry for the victims and their families, but before hanging up on Bertocchini she told him that she didn’t see what it had to do with her husband.
As for Roger’s sudden departure, that was nothing new. Sometimes, he’d disappear just as Harriet was getting ready for bed. Nothing she could point to seemed to be the trigger—not an argument or words of any kind exchanged. He’d just sneak out and slink away. When he returned—hours later or the next morning—he’d have nothing at all to say about his absence. She had even stopped asking him where he’d gone because he would simply ignore any questions he didn’t want to answer. It seemed whenever Roger got antsy these days, he hit the road. In July alone he’d logged 10,000 miles on the Datsun 280Z, which they’d bought the previous month as Harriet’s car but which he liked so much he took over. She had bought another car, a white Hyundai, for herself. Once he had the 280Z to drive, Roger had given his old Maverick to a young guy who had been employed part-time at the shop in exchange for $140 owed in back wages when the business failed. (Roger giving away the Maverick—a good-running car they’d owned for three years—for such a pittance had infuriated Harriet. Seeing it as another example of Roger’s irresponsibility, she’d dragged him along to their ex-employee’s house to try to recover the car. It was too late, however, as the ownership transfer had already been filed with the state, and the young man legally owned the vehicle.)
What had made Roger’s departure different this time was that he’d packed his things. He had never done that when he went away before.
As the day wore on, her anger subsided. She stayed busy showing rental spaces (normally Roger’s job) and preparing rental agreements for new customers. Their boss showed up that afternoon. When asked about Roger, Harriet said he was running some errands. She had a feeling she hadn’t lied well. How long would it be before the truth came out, and she found herself out of a job and a place to live?
That they would part had no longer been in doubt; it had come down to a matter of timing. Roger had obviously decided now was better than later. Thinking about it, Harriet could hardly blame him. She had turned into such a miserable nag she couldn’t stand herself sometimes. Why wouldn’t Roger want to leave sooner? He deserved happiness, too.
A few months earlier, Harriet, pessimistic about her life changing for the better, had contemplated suicide. She had phoned her sister-in-law, Julie Kibbe (Steve’s wife), one afternoon to ask her opinion on the “easiest and most painless” method. Harriet’s rationale had been that if she was going to do it, she wanted to do it right, and not suffer needlessly or wind up a vegetable.
Julie had gone right along with the program. “Get in the car and you run the hose.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. You drive the car in the garage and start the engine, but first make sure you drink enough so that you’re pretty numb. Make sure you lay down on the seat because if you sit up they’ll have to break your legs to get you out of the car when you’re dead.”
Harriet wondered at the time what difference it would m
ake if her legs had to be broken when she was dead, but she refrained from saying anything and logged the advice.
Fifteen minutes later the sheriff’s department was at Harriet’s door with deputies, paramedics, and an ambulance. She would find out later that Steve, overhearing his wife’s end of the conversation, had become alarmed and called authorities. She was kept under observation in the hospital suicide ward until 3:00 A.M. the next morning. When they released her, she had called and asked Roger to come get her. When he arrived, he was angry. She was unable to get him to talk on the gloomy ride home. I’ve just left a suicide ward, she thought. Why isn’t he more concerned about me?
It had been not so long after that when Harriet, finally beginning to lay plans for life after Roger, had solicited his promise to stay for a year—a promise that she assumed, given his sudden departure, he’d decided not to keep.
The phone awakened her that night. She was surprised to hear Roger’s voice on the other end.
“Hi, how you doing?” he asked in his soft, almost hushed voice.
“What,” she sputtered, still half asleep. “Why are you calling me?”
“To see how you are.”
“You ran off without a word and you call to see how I am?” She had thought she might actually never hear from him again, but here he was calling so soon.
He said he had left just to clear his head.
She wasn’t a fool. She knew he could well be cheating on her. But right now Roger’s possible involvement with another woman was not a high-priority concern.
She explained that after he left she’d called the detective and told him there would be no polygraph.
“Do you know anything about any of these women who were murdered?” she asked, a new urgency in her voice.
“No.”
Two days later Harriet was in the office doing paperwork when Julie phoned from Tahoe. She told Harriet that Roger had arrived at their place the previous night. That didn’t surprise Harriet, as Roger often ended up at his brother’s whenever he disappeared for a day or more.
“Roger feels bad and wants to come home,” Julie said. “But he’s afraid to. He’s got the crabs.”
“The crabs?”
Roger had made his admission to Steve, claiming he’d caught them from a motel bed. Steve told Julie, with orders to strip the bed Roger had slept in.
“Roger’s afraid to tell you,” Julie said, “but I thought you should know.”
Harriet also spoke to Steve. The two of them, she had long ago realized, performed very similar roles in Roger’s life. Steve was Roger’s protector, always trying to make something better for his older brother. In that sense, she and Steve were almost like competitors, and perhaps for that reason their relationship had never been particularly warm. However, it had been Steve and Julie—her then next-door neighbors—who introduced Harriet to Roger in 1972, when he had come to live with them after being released from a halfway house following a prison stay.
Harriet asked Steve if she knew where Roger had been the last three days.
Steve said Roger had called collect from outside Las Vegas the previous day. Before accepting the charges, Steve had asked the operator where the call originated from. He heard Roger say, “Don’t tell,” but Steve insisted the operator tell him before he would agree to pay for the call. In this conversation, Roger told Steve he was taking a trip across country “to get away.” When Steve asked him why he was leaving, Roger said he feared he was about to be framed for murder. Steve had persuaded Roger to take a room for the night and call him back in the morning. When Roger did, Steve had been able to convince Roger not to flee.
Steve said Roger also related having been stopped by the Nevada Highway Patrol for doing 110 mph on U.S. 95 in the desert north of Vegas. Harriet knew that Roger carried Steve’s sheriff’s department business card; on occasion, when stopped by a cop, he’d pull it from his wallet in the hope that he could get out of a ticket. Sometimes, it worked.
When she spoke with Roger, he sounded apologetic.
In the face of everything—she made a note to call the pharmacy and find out how to get rid of crabs—Harriet found herself strangely relieved that Roger wanted to come back. Things would go easier with the job, and it would make her a lot less crazy about her immediate future.
She agreed to drive up to Tahoe and pick up Roger and bring him home. He’d leave the Datsun 280Z there, with Steve promising to drive it to Sacramento in a week or two.
Although she could get very angry with Roger for his silent and sneaky ways, when he was gone Harriet missed him. She also felt sorry for him.
The next evening, Roger stood naked in their bathtub as Harriet soaped his entire body with a special medicated shampoo, then ran a fine-toothed comb through his body hair. It was a painstaking process, as he had thick black hair covering his chest, shoulders, back, and legs.
Harriet again felt needed.
ON THE morning of December 19, 1986, four days after he had questioned Roger Kibbe, Vito Bertocchini met with Carmen Anselmi at her Sacramento apartment.
He explained he was going to ask her to look at a group of photographs. Then, he went through the admonishments required by law. “The fact that the photographs are being shown to you should not influence your judgment. You should not conclude or guess that the photographs contain the picture of the person who committed the crime.”
Anselmi nodded.
“You are not obligated to identify anyone,” he went on. “It is just as important to free innocent persons from suspicion as to identify guilty parties.”
Anselmi said she understood.
The detective took out six color photographs not much larger than wallet-size. He spread them out on the kitchen table. All were frontal head shots of middle-aged Caucasian men with graying hair. Five were known as “filler photos”: pictures of nonsuspects, most of them sheriff’s department employees. Photo 3 was Roger Kibbe.
She looked at the photo spread anxiously, with darting eyes. She didn’t hit on any of them. “It was so dark in the car,” she said, sounding discouraged.
“Please go through them again, one by one, and take your time. It might be helpful to try to eliminate the ones you’re sure aren’t the suspect.”
This time, she went much slower, picking up each picture and studying it intently. In so doing, she eliminated #1, #2, #4, and #6.
Bertocchini asked her about #5.
“He has a fuller face,” she said, “but I can’t positively eliminate him.”
“Okay. What about number three?”
“The hair is right. Color, style, and hairline. The nose is the same, too.”
Bertocchini waited.
“I can’t be sure one way or the other. I never saw the front of his face. Always the side. His right side. It might be better if I could see them in person.”
Bertocchini knew they didn’t have enough on Kibbe to bring him in for a lineup. To put together a stand-up lineup, they were required to process a suspect into jail and notify an attorney, who would have to be present; if the suspect couldn’t afford one, a public defender would show up.
The detective gathered up the pictures and left.
Although he made a point of not showing it, he was every bit as disappointed as Charmaine’s mother.
The detective had not been very surprised when Kibbe declined to take a polygraph. He felt stronger than ever that Kibbe was dirty.
Bertocchini was still haunted by Harriet Kibbe’s comment that her husband had previously been a suspect in the disappearance of a young woman. He contacted the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department to see if they had anything in their files other than what appeared on Kibbe’s rap sheet, which by law included only arrests and convictions. A deputy in the records section promised to look. Most police departments routinely kept “field interrogation” cards that documented any time an individual was contacted by officers. An “FIR” card could lead to a treasure trove of reports.
In the ma
il a few days later came a copy of Offense Report #84-8068, dated April 1984. The crime of “rape by force” had been reported by Janice Evans, a twenty-seven-year-old white female. She initially identified her attacker as “Robert,” but investigators soon identified the accused as one Roger Reece Kibbe, age forty-five, who resided in Oakley and worked in a nearby city as a truck driver for Volunteers of America. (She gave the license number of her attacker’s white, two-door car as 1SAL700, one letter off from Kibbe’s Maverick: 1JAL700.)
Bertocchini refilled his cup with coffee fit for a lube gun and returned to his desk to read the twelve-page report.
Janice Evans had first been contacted by a sheriff’s deputy at the county hospital where she was examined. She had met her attacker five days earlier when she agreed to have sexual intercourse with him in exchange for $30. When she told him she had been down on her luck lately, he offered to help. The next day she met him at his place of work and he gave her five dollars for lunch. The following day she returned and he gave her lunch money again. Out of the blue he asked if she wanted to come live with him for a while; he’d offered to pay her $200 a day for sex. As she had a $150-a-day heroin habit, she agreed. They met at 8:00 P.M. that night, ostensibly to drive to his house. They drove on a main thoroughfare a while, then ended up on a rural road. “Robert” explained he needed gas and that a friend of his had a pump on a ranch that he could use. They continued on the dark road before he pulled over and told her to get out. He came around the vehicle with a 4-inch chrome revolver leveled at her. He ordered her to pull down her pants and lie down on the ground. “Please leave me alone,” she said. “Just take me back.” The man warned: “If you don’t do what I ask, I’ll blow your pussy off.”
She complied and he kneeled down. He inserted the barrel of the gun in her vagina and moved it in and out for several minutes. Then he pulled down his own pants and ordered her to give him “a blow job.” She accommodated, and after he ejaculated in her mouth he told her to stay on the ground until he left. She walked into town and flagged down a motorist who took her to the hospital. (Although she had a few scratches, nothing was found by the attending doctor and nurse that conclusively proved Janice Evans had been raped.)
Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer Page 16