“Oh, you weren’t?” said Rosenquist, who knew full well that Kibbe had been in prison at the age many young men were in the service. “Then how did you get started in jumping?”
“Curiosity.”
“How many jumps you make?” Bertocchini asked.
“Pretty close to forty-two hundred now.”
“So, you’d be qualified as an expert.”
“Yeah.” Kibbe’s chest seemed to expand.
Bertocchini could see they were was making progress.
“Did you ever think about being an instructor?”
“I didn’t want the responsibility.”
“Did you ever have your main chute not open?”
“I’ve had four of them not open. The first one on only my twenty-sixth jump.”
“How high up?”
“About four thousand, I guess.”
“Did you panic?”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
The detectives talked back and forth about parachuting—Bertocchini had had one rip-cord jump with a bunch of other deputies and no desire to ever do it again—but Kibbe spat out the bait and went quiet.
“Where were you born, Roger?” Rosenquist asked.
“I can’t say anything.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m not going to say anything.”
“You’re married now?”
“Yes.”
“How long you guys been married?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Can you tell me why you think we’re talking to you today?”
“I have no idea.”
“No idea why we would be serving a search warrant at your home?”
“No.”
“The main reason we’re here is about Charmaine Sabrah. The gal that disappeared on I-5.”
“The name’s not familiar.”
“A gal’s car broke down along the road.”
“I heard about it on TV.”
“It happened over a year ago. You say you don’t know anything about her?”
“Right. I heard something on TV several times. It’s been quite a while.”
“You don’t remember ever stopping and helping out a gal with her mother? Do you know what happened with her? What eventually became of her?”
“I don’t believe I ever heard anything more about it. I don’t know.”
“She was killed,” Rosenquist said evenly. “Are you the kind of person that could do something like that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have you ever thought about doing anything like that?”
“No.”
“Never at all?”
“I walk away from things.”
“Do you?”
“I’ve never been in a fight in my life.”
“Would you be willing to take a polygraph?”
“No. No reason to.”
“If you were to take one, what would it show?”
“I don’t know what it would show.”
“Is there any reason why somebody is going to tell us that they saw you out riding around that night down in our county where Charmaine Sabrah disappeared?”
It was a bluff by Rosenquist. Their only eyewitness, Carmen Anselmi, had passed on two chances to finger Kibbe—once in a photo lineup and once in the flesh.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you go riding around at night?”
“Yeah, but I’m usually home by eleven o’clock or midnight. I don’t go far.”
“Is there any reason why somebody would have seen you down that far south on I-5 near Stockton?”
“Not really. There’s no reason to go down there.”
“I don’t know what your travels encompass. Maybe you were going down and looking for different jobs.”
“Why should I look for a job when I have one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Makes no-no sense.”
“Maybe you had to go down there and buy furniture or something.”
“When I had the furniture business I never transported. I h-had a truck driver wh-who did that.”
“Can you think of any reason why somebody would say they saw you down there the night she disappeared?”
“I h-have no idea.”
The detectives sat quietly, looking at Kibbe.
“You guys got no intention of taking me back, do you?”
Too bad, Bertocchini thought, that Kibbe’s concern about being arrested for murder wasn’t a valid one.
“You’re probably going back,” Bertocchini admitted. “The thing is, Rog, there’s so many things that need explaining. Like Sabrah broken down on the freeway. Maybe you did give her a ride and maybe you’re afraid to say you gave her a ride and dropped her off somewhere.”
“I don’t give anybody a ride.”
“Everything seems to be indicating you did,” Bertocchini went on. “I think what we need to do is to talk and eliminate you if you didn’t do anything. Obviously, you’d be benefiting yourself, and also benefiting us. We need to get rid of you one way or another.”
“You’re-you’re telling me that I killed somebody.”
“No, we’re not. I’m not telling you that, Roger.”
“You’re accusing me of killing somebody.”
“No.”
“That’s the way I look at it.”
“I’m not telling you that, Roger,” Bertocchini insisted.
“I know, but that’s the way I look at it.”
“Well—”
“You-you got to understand my point.”
“Yeah.”
“I understand where you guys are coming from. This is your job. You guys are polite and you’re kind. But you got to understand my side.”
“We do,” Bertocchini said.
“I see that you guys are accusing me of murder. That’s what I hear. And that’s a low blow.”
“We’re not accusing you.”
“Y-you may not be, but that’s what I hear.”
“Obviously, your name isn’t the only one that’s ever come up.”
“Probably not,” Kibbe said, relaxing some.
“We’re not sitting here accusing you. We’re here to discuss things so we can go ahead and get to the bottom of this. Maybe you dropped her off at a phone booth. That’s why we’re here talking to you, Roger.”
“You’ve got to get-get in my shoes and behind my eyeballs and listen to wh-what I’m hearing and what you’re saying.”
It was Rosenquist’s turn. “There’s a lot of things that point to you,” he said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. Did you give her a ride someplace?”
“I don’t even know the girl. I just told you I don’t pick anybody up off the freeway and give them a ride.”
“Rog, we know you pick people up. Okay? You’ve recently been stopped for doing that but we don’t want to get into that. We just want to know what happened to Charmaine Sabrah. If there was a problem between you and her, if she created a situation, that’s what we want to hear. We’d like to hear your side of the story.”
It could be tough to sympathize with a suspected killer, but Rosenquist was trying hard to do just that.
“I don’t know her.”
“I’m sitting here trying to think of explanations. You just gave her a ride and dropped her off at a phone booth or you gave her a ride down the road and she tried to rob you or she spit in your face or hit you with her elbow. I don’t know. I mean, we weren’t there. We don’t know. I don’t want to sit here and say Roger just decided to kill her so he just killed her. You’re the only one who knows what happened. Is there a problem here?”
“With what?”
“With Charmaine Sabrah?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know her.”
“You don’t remember picking a gal up and driving down the freeway and dropping her off someplace?”
“No, I don’t.”
“This was on I-5.”
“I’ve been on it many times. I’
ve been on Highway 101 and 80, too.”
The baton went to Bertocchini. “Do you remember giving Charmaine a ride?” he asked.
“I don’t even know the name.”
“I realize you probably wouldn’t have known her name at the time. It was about four in the morning.”
“I think that’s a little bit too early,” Kibbe said.
“Too early for what?”
“Like four in the morning—hell, I’m home.”
“Oh, you’re home by then?”
“Yeah. I would be sleeping.”
“How often do you go out at night? Once a week, twice a week, three times?”
Kibbe shrugged.
“Where do you go?”
“I don’t know. Just go.”
“The last time we talked, last December, you told me that you went out and looked for prostitutes. Do you still do that often?”
“No.”
“Obviously, you don’t go drinking.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You just drive around wherever you feel like?”
“Yeah.”
“No particular place, you just drive around?”
“No particular place.”
“When you take off, how long would you be away?”
“A couple of hours at least.”
There was some noise outside the interview room, and Rosenquist slipped out for a minute, then returned.
“They’re working on a new homicide right now,” he said.
“Where at?” asked Kibbe, noticeably perking up.
“Huh?”
“Where at?”
“I don’t know.” Rosenquist knew that some killers had an intense interest in police work, and he wondered how often Roger talked to his detective brother about it. “When we’re through here we’ll take your blood and urine and hair samples,” Rosenquist said.
“That’s all I know.” Kibbe was anxious to move on.
“Vito has your rap sheet. All that’s on it are property crimes like burglary.”
“That’s all,” Kibbe agreed.
“Way, way back. You have nothing recent?”
“No, I’ve been clean for thirteen to fourteen years. Except for a f-few tickets.”
Rosenquist, noting that Kibbe had previously admitted to trying to pick up women in Stockton, read off the names of some young women missing from the area. He asked Kibbe if any of them sounded familiar.
“I never picked up a girl in Stockton. I-I wanted to but never did.”
“Why not?”
“I thought that I could but when it’d come right down to it, it’s hard to do.”
“Hard to talk to them or what?”
“It’s just hard to do. I thought that I’d just waste a lot of gas driving around trying to.”
“Did you ever stop and talk to them?”
“A couple of them, yeah. Some of them thought I looked like a cop and they would move on.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.”
“When you are driving back and forth going no particular place, what would you do if you saw a stranded female?”
“Probably keep right on going.”
“You wouldn’t even stop to help her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Too dangerous.”
“Even if it was just a gal? You look like you’re big enough to handle yourself.”
“I don’t do that. I don’t stop for anybody.”
“This isn’t a trick question,” Bertocchini said. “Obviously, you’re attracted to women, right?”
Kibbe nodded.
“Okay, you’re attracted to women. Your marriage isn’t so good right now, is it?”
Kibbe froze.
The next several questions went unanswered.
“Roger, you’re starting to get hinky on us,” Bertocchini said.
Rosenquist again asked if Kibbe would take a polygraph.
“No, no.”
“Absolutely not, huh? Can you give me a reason?”
“There’s nothing to-to discuss.”
“Going back to what I said in the beginning,” Rosenquist said patiently, “we have a lot of information or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I take it from you that in a roundabout way you are saying that I’m a little crazy,” Kibbe said.
“I don’t know,” Rosenquist said.
“But this is what you’re saying, basically.”
“No. What I’m saying, Roger, is that I don’t know. We come to you hoping you can give us some explanations.”
Bertocchini piped up. “If you were in our shoes, Roger, you’d be doing the same thing.”
“Probably.”
“The same exact thing.”
“Probably.”
Rosenquist surmised aloud that Roger’s detective brother, Steve, would be doing the “same exact thing, too, if he was in my position.”
Kibbe nodded in agreement.
“We’re only trying to do our job,” Rosenquist went on. “We’re not trying to say you’re crazy. I’m not trying to say that you’re the murderer, okay?”
“This is what I’m hearing from both of you.”
“I’ve interviewed other people, too.”
“How many have you talked to?”
“Several.”
“I know that’s a lot of bull.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Roger, remember there was a composite picture of a suspect put in the paper?”
“Yeah, I—I—I think so, yeah.”
“Our office received hundreds of calls and Sacramento County received even more. We’ve interviewed hundreds of people. And we’ve given polygraph tests to other people, too.”
Rosenquist wanted to know if Kibbe had anything else to tell them.
The suspect shook his head.
The detectives walked Kibbe to the sobriety clinic next to the jail, where a male nurse took samples of hair from several areas: arm, back of the hands, head, and pubic. The nurse also took a saliva sample and withdrew a vial of blood.
On the ride back to Tupelo, the suspect spoke up. He told the detectives that he had no hard feelings toward them and knew they were simply doing their job.
“But I have to do what I’m told to do,” said Roger Kibbe, looking out the window at the passing urban scenery. “And my brother told me not to take a polygraph.”
Seventeen
Carolyn Jean Redman was an attractive twenty-five-year-old brunette with long hair, high cheekbones, and soft blue eyes.
She seemed surprised when Detective Pete Rosenquist knocked at the door of her apartment the first week of November 1987, inquiring about her father, Roger Kibbe.
A resident of Eugene, Oregon, until her move to Stockton the previous year—Rosenquist had located her through driver’s license records—Carolyn said that she hadn’t seen or talked to her father in years.
The detective advised her he was seeking background on her father, who had “recently been found in the company of a prostitute and was arrested for trying to handcuff her.”
Carolyn seemed neither surprised nor concerned, explaining that she didn’t know her father all that well, as he and her mother had divorced before her second birthday and her mother had raised her in Oregon.
“My mother talks as if he never paid child support and never tried real hard to keep in contact with us,” she explained. “When I got a little older I would write him letters once in a while but he never answered them.”
“Did you see him while you were growing up?”
“A few times. The first time was the summer that I was thirteen. My mom and I flew down to San Diego and stayed with her parents. One afternoon we went over to see my Grandfather Kibbe and my dad was there.”
Carolyn said she next saw her father in 1979, when she was seventeen years old and had just had a baby. She stayed with her father and Harriet for a month and a half that time. She recalled he gave his first grandchild a lot
of attention.
Rosenquist asked what she thought of Harriet.
“I didn’t care much for her but I think it had more to do with the fact that she wasn’t my mother and she was living with my father.”
“What kind of marriage did they seem to have?”
“While I was with them it seemed like they had a major crisis at least once a week. Harriet would call a meeting to discuss it. She did most of the talking.”
“Do you remember anything specific?”
“No. It just seemed like a lot of things bothered her. She was pretty uptight all the time.”
“How would your father respond to her concerns?”
“He’d just listen and not say much. He and Harriet seemed to get along, though. They never had a big fight in front of me. They seemed to be living well—I remember they had nice furniture and didn’t want for much.”
Rosenquist asked how he could contact her mother, Marjorie.
Carolyn showed him a return address on a letter her mother had sent her from Washington State, and he jotted down the information. When he came to the state, she’d written “WAWA.”
“WAWA?” he said.
“Oh, that’s a joke between us. That’s how you pronounce Washington if you stutter. See, that’s one thing I do have in common with my father. I stutter sometimes.”
Rosenquist was surprised; he hadn’t noticed a single hesitation, and told her so.
“I have better control over it than he does.”
“Tell me, Carolyn, do you think of your father as a good guy or a bad guy?”
“A good guy, I guess. This is the first time I’ve heard about anything bad that he’s done.”
“I need to ask something that might be difficult for you, Carolyn. Did your father ever abuse you?”
“No,” she answered without faltering in the slightest. “I have no memories of ever being abused.”
“Did your father ever complain about being abused as a child?”
“We never discussed anything like that. We usually had nothing much to say to each other because we really didn’t know each other very well. He’s very quiet, you know.”
* * *
VITO BERTOCCHINI finally found the missing persons case that Harriet Kibbe had alluded to when he’d first brought Roger in for questioning a year ago.
Methodically checking one by one with police departments throughout Contra Costa County, he had come across the case of Lou Ellen Burleigh, a twenty-one-year-old brunette with shoulder-length hair and hazel eyes who disappeared on Sunday morning, September 11, 1977, from a shopping center parking lot.
Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer Page 28