Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer

by Bruce Henderson

  Bertocchini talked by phone with Walnut Creek Police Detective Jerry Whiting, who remembered the more-than-a-decade-old case and the suspect, Roger Kibbe.

  Whiting explained that the victim had been a student at a local secretarial college. One day a male subject, identifying himself as John Brown and claiming to be a representative of the Helena Rubinstein Co., called the college wanting to hire a young secretary with no experience for $1,200 a month, with lucrative benefits and short hours.

  Burleigh went on the job interview, which was to take place in a new office at the shopping center still under construction. When she arrived at 1:00 P.M. Saturday afternoon, she was met by a man in his early forties, about 5-foot-10, with graying hair and several front teeth missing. The man explained that since his office was not yet finished, he’d have to interview her in his van. They were seen by several construction workers getting into a multicolored van. They talked for about half an hour, after which the man asked Burleigh to return for a second interview the next day.

  “She did,” Whiting said. “On Sunday, there were no construction workers or other witnesses around. We found her car in the parking lot that night when her boyfriend reported her missing. He told us she’d expressed some reservations about returning for another interview, as the man made her uncomfortable. She’d asked her boyfriend to come with her, but he was unable to do so. Since things had gone okay the day before, she decided to go back.”

  Bertocchini wanted to know how Walnut Creek had gotten the lead on Kibbe.

  Whiting explained that a police detective in neighboring Pittsburg had called after reading about the missing woman. “He had a case on his desk involving a prostitute who was picked up by a guy in a multicolored van about a month after Burleigh disappeared. She’d had some trouble with him and jotted down his license number. When she was arrested for prostitution a few nights later, she handed the license number to police. It came back to Kibbe. He matched the description of the suspect in Burleigh, and his van was like the one she was seen getting into on Saturday. We took a picture of the van and got one of Kibbe. The problem was that the eyewitnesses at the shopping center couldn’t positively identify or eliminate either of them. He was as good a suspect as we had but we didn’t have anywhere to take it. One problem was that it was a missing persons case, not a homicide. We were a small department, and didn’t have the detectives to spend a lot of time on the case.”

  “Was Burleigh ever found?” Bertocchini asked.

  “No, she never was.”

  Bertocchini asked for a copy of the Burleigh file. When it arrived, he was able to glean more details. The prostitute who had connected Kibbe and his van to Burleigh, Gina Reilly, thirty-four, said she’d received a phone call in response to a personals ad she had placed in the Berkeley Barb: “Playboy Bunny seeks supportive relationship.” The man who met her outside a Black Angus restaurant on a Friday night, October 7, 1977, said he wanted to make “a date” with her and would pay $200 for sex. She was apprehensive when he said he wanted to drive into the country; she agreed only after he doubled his price to $400 and showed her his identification. She would tell police a few days later that his name began with an “R,” and was “something like Richard.” She said his last name had a double “ee” sound in it. She recalled his date of birth as 1939.

  According to Reilly, they drove into the country a considerable distance and parked across from a small airport. The man asked her to step out of the van, which she did. He began to walk her across a dark field, at which time she became alarmed. She was cold and asked him to put his arm around her, which he did. She said she wanted to go back to the van where it was warmer. The man complied. They had intercourse in the back of the van on a sleeping bag. Afterward, they drove around some more until he pulled over and asked to have sex again. Reilly said she would rather not. When the man became “very persistent,” she agreed. Then they drove some more. As they crossed the Benicia Bridge over San Pablo Bay she noticed the clock on the bridge showed 3:30 A.M. She said it was late and she wanted to get back. He turned the van around in the middle of the bridge and headed back toward Walnut Creek. At one point, he pulled up a dark hill and parked by an empty field. He claimed his two sisters lived in a house up on the hill and that he wanted to check to see if they’d left their lights on, as they often did. When she refused to get out, he went around to her side, opened the door, and pulled a knife from the glove box. He stuck it to her throat and ordered her out. As they walked up the hill, Reilly said she became “totally submissive.” She said, “There is no need for you to pull a knife. I will do whatever you want. You can have sex with me again. You can have my purse.” He said nothing, and they kept walking. Then she said, “I thought you were a nice guy.” The man answered, “I’m a fucking asshole.” He repeated it several times. Having been in tight spots before, Reilly decided that the best thing to do was “act very cool and undisturbed by the threats.” The man finally asked her, “Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you scared?” She answered, “No, I’m not. I know you’re a nice guy and you won’t hurt me.” At that point, the man removed the knife from her neck and they returned to the van. He agreed to take her back to the Black Angus. On the way, she asked him if he’d done this before. The man said, “Yes, I’ve done it with girls three times before.” He dropped her off in the restaurant parking lot, and she got his license number as he drove away. Police ran Kibbe’s rap sheet, saw he was heavily involved in burglaries but had no sex-related offenses. The prostitute declined to press charges.

  In spite of the inability of the shopping center witnesses to identify Kibbe in a photo lineup, Bertocchini saw that he was brought in for questioning in the Burleigh case by Walnut Creek detectives on January 19, 1978. The report noted that he was accompanied by his wife, Harriet, who waited outside the interview room. To detectives, Kibbe denied any involvement with Burleigh, both before and after being shown her picture. He also denied any involvement with Gina Reilly, even though detectives went over the incident in detail and explained that she’d gotten the license number of his van. He claimed not to know about “either of these girls.” He gave police permission to search his van for any possible evidence, including the knife. Nothing was found.

  Based on the facts of the case and what he knew about Kibbe, Bertocchini had little doubt that he was responsible for Burleigh’s long-ago disappearance. He wondered just how many more women had gone missing through the years after crossing his path.

  The detective marveled at Kibbe’s ability to remain a moving target for so long. He had some luck, certainly—even when he had the bad luck of someone taking down his license number, key witnesses couldn’t identify him. That had happened a decade ago in Walnut Creek, and it had repeated itself in the I-5 investigation. Kibbe wasn’t careless, either; he was good at not leaving behind incriminating evidence. He confounded police by crossing jurisdictional lines; hadn’t it happened too many times to be coincidental? He also knew enough when confronted by authorities to deny, deny, deny. He could certainly have picked up some of this information over the years from listening to his cop brother. In hearing the war stories that every cop accumulates throughout a career, had Roger deduced how bad guys fooled good guys?

  On the same afternoon that Pete Rosenquist was visiting Roger’s daughter in Stockton, Bertocchini and Larry Ferrari walked in the door of the California Rehabilitation Center at Norco, a state prison located in Riverside County east of Los Angeles.

  During the search of Tupelo, detectives had found an envelope addressed to Roger and Harriet Kibbe from an inmate at Norco. A subsequent phone call to the prison revealed that their correspondent, Helen Pursel, was Harriet’s older sister and only sibling.

  In their rapidly expanding investigation of Kibbe, Bertocchini and Ferrari had flown into L.A. that morning and rented a car for the drive to Norco.

  After the confrontation Kay Maulsby had had with Harriet two weeks earlier, Bertocchini and Ferrari weren’t sure what kind of rec
eption they would receive from Helen. They were pleasantly surprised when she greeted them in a private interview room at the prison with a smile and an open manner.

  Like her sister, Helen, forty-eight, was a light-complected blonde with curly hair, but unlike Harriet she was laid back and had a natural gift for putting others at ease. Married with three children ranging in age from twelve to twenty-nine, her current prison stay—she was midway through an eighteen-month sentence—was her second in five years for theft. The detectives found her more than willing to discuss her brother-in-law “in connection with an ongoing investigation.”

  Helen said proudly that her twenty-four-year-old daughter, Susan, was an Alameda County Sheriff’s Department deputy, and that her daughter was married to a sheriff’s deputy.

  A regular cop family, Bertocchini mused, were it not for Mom the con.

  “Where do you want to start?” she asked cheerfully.

  “At the beginning,” Bertocchini said.

  Helen explained how Roger and Harriet had met some fifteen years earlier, married in Lake Tahoe, and settled in the Oakland East Bay community of Pittsburg before buying a home in Oakley in the late seventies.

  “Harriet started her own bookkeeping business called Check Mate and Roger was working at the time for the Volunteers of America. In 1984 or so, they borrowed some money and purchased a furniture warehouse south of Modesto. Roger manufactured furniture and Harriet managed the books. Is this what you want?”

  “Keep going,” Bertocchini said.

  “Last spring [1986] the business went under. During the time she’d been helping Roger run his business, Harriet had neglected her bookkeeping service. They had to look elsewhere for another source of income, and that’s how they became involved in the Public Storage business last winter.”

  Bertocchini asked when she’d last seen Roger.

  “Before I came here,” she said. “Summer of ’86. Roger and Harriet have never visited me here but I call them collect once in a while. I talked to Roger a month ago.”

  “What do you think of their marriage?”

  “Well, my sister has been married and divorced three times. Her ex-husbands were all strong, macho-type men. Her marriage to Roger has a better chance of lasting because he’s a lot different than the others.”

  “How so?” Ferrari asked.

  “He doesn’t drink,” she said. “Besides that, Roger is incapable of hurting anybody.”

  “You should tell that to the prostitute he assaulted last month,” Bertocchini said solemnly.

  Helen’s eyes widened in surprise as Bertocchini went on to describe Roger’s recent assault arrest. It was sometimes good to surprise someone in an interview.

  “That’s a side of him I’ve never seen,” Helen said. “I know he’s very naive sometimes. Maybe he got in over his head.”

  “Does Harriet dominate Roger?” Bertocchini asked.

  “Oh, without question. She makes all the decisions. Although he was the one who wanted to go into the furniture business, she made it work for as long as it did. He would have been nowhere without her.”

  “Do they argue?”

  “Harriet’s anger is extremely explosive but it doesn’t last long. I’ve never heard Roger argue in any way with Harriet or raise his voice to her even when she’s screaming at him.”

  “What would he do?” Bertocchini asked.

  “Leave. At least a couple of times a year, after Harriet has yelled at him, he’ll jump in the car and go away. Typically, he’d be gone for two or three days at a time, and end up at Steve’s.”

  As he and the other detectives had first suspected while on surveillance, Bertocchini was hearing from someone who should know that Roger’s relationship with Harriet could be, at times, the catalyst that sent him forth.

  “Harriet would phone Steve to make sure Roger had shown up,” Helen said. “Then he’d drive home and things would return to normal.”

  “Why do you think their marriage has lasted?”

  “My sister is a very insecure person. Always has been. She relies heavily on Roger, and I know he relies on her. I don’t think she’d leave him for any reason. She didn’t leave the others and they treated her like a doormat.”

  “What else can you tell us about Roger?” Ferrari asked.

  “He’s an extremely artistic person who likes to paint and draw,” she said. “You should see some of the beautiful furniture and wooden toys he’s made. But I’ve always found him to be a little strange.”

  “In what way?” said Bertocchini.

  Helen seemed a bit embarrassed. “His background is not unlike mine. He’s spent considerable time in institutions. That does something to someone. He’s so quiet you don’t know what he’s thinking. I’ve always felt a little sorry for him.”

  “Do you think he’d stop for a stranded motorist?” Bertocchini asked.

  Helen looked quizzical for a moment. “I doubt it,” she said. “Roger’s not the type to get involved.”

  Bertocchini explained they were heading to San Diego to do further background interviews on Roger.

  “You should talk to his other brother, Jack, who lives there,” she suggested. “And his father, of course.

  “Roger adores his father.”

  “YOU’RE THE one who called a few days ago?” asked the Chula Vista Police Department records clerk.

  Before leaving for southern California, Detective Vito Bertocchini had phoned to see if the department still had a file on Roger Kibbe.

  Kibbe’s rap sheet revealed that three of his first four arrests as an adult—starting in 1957 when he was eighteen years old—had been made by his hometown police force. Old reports might contain valuable history on him.

  Without even checking, the clerk had told him that the department didn’t keep records that ancient. When he got off the phone, Bertocchini was chastised by Pete Rosenquist. “It’s easier to say no over the phone than to someone’s face,” he said. “The best way to deal with clerks and bureaucrats is to go in person.”

  So, the first stop on their first day in Chula Vista—the day after he and Larry Ferrari had interviewed Helen Pursel in prison—was the local police station.

  “Like I told you on the phone,” the clerk said, “there’s no way we’re going to have records that old.”

  “I was just hoping,” Bertocchini said. “We’ve got this multiple-murder investigation going.”

  She nodded understandingly. “I saw this big pouch of old microfiche reels a while back. I can look.”

  “I’d sure appreciate it.”

  She returned half an hour later with a sheaf of papers in hand. “I don’t know why we still had this. Those reels should have been thrown out ages ago.”

  The clerk had copied all forty-one pages of Roger Kibbe’s file from microfiche.

  On their way out, Bertocchini said to Ferrari, “Remind me to thank Uncle Pete for this.”

  They jumped in the car and headed for nearby San Diego, where they had an appointment to interview Kibbe’s father. Bertocchini drove, and Ferrari read the reports.

  The packet contained juvenile contact reports going back to the mid-1950s, arrest and booking reports, and various supplemental reports. It was a vivid portrait of a young life going astray from which there would be no return.

  “The earliest one is dated July 17th, 1954,” Ferrari said. “Suspect: Roger Kibbe. Address: 545 Casselman. Hair: dark brown. Height: five-foot-four. Weight: One forty. Age: fifteen. Report of crime: Received call of theft of clothes from clothesline located at 447 Casselman. On arrival victim stated she had been ironing in front room and had made several trips to check clothes on the line. At approximately 4:30 P.M. she discovered clothes missing from line. Description of missing clothing: one orchid dress, two bathing suits, four pairs of hose.”

  Ferrari paused.

  “Keep reading,” Bertocchini said eagerly.

  “Officers were contacted by a nine-year-old girl who saw the suspect entering a park c
arrying the box, which he buried. Officers found the box and recovered the missing clothes. They contacted Roger and his parents. Report submitted to the juvenile division.”

  Ferrari flipped a page.

  “Here’s a juvenile contact report,” he said. “Officer Leo Kelly goes out to the Kibbe house. Roger admits he’s been taking women’s clothes off clotheslines in the area near his home for the past year. Does not know how many times but states ‘once or twice a week.’ Takes them off the line and puts them in his pockets or under his shirt and carries them either to the park or throws them in the first trash can he comes to.”

  Ferrari read silently for a minute.

  “Jesus Christ!” he exploded.

  “What?”

  “Roger hands the juvenile officer a box of stolen women’s clothes hidden in his closet. They’re cut up!”

  “No way.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Bertocchini practically wrecked the car getting over to the side of the road so he could read the report himself. When he finished, he was certain they’d just made a key connection in the I-5 serial murder case.

  “Cutting up women’s clothing was a ritual for Roger at fifteen years of age for Christ’s sake,” Bertocchini said incredulously. “And thirty years later he’s still at it. Only now he’s graduated to cutting up clothes while the women are still in them.”

  “ROGER’S been in trouble most of his life,” said his father, Jack Kibbe Sr., seventy-three, a tall, Ichabod Crane—type with sagging jowls and sloped shoulders.

  Detectives Vito Bertocchini and Larry Ferrari were seated on a lumpy couch in an add-on room at the back of Jack Kibbe’s San Diego home on a quiet suburban street, where he and his wife, Susan, had lived for more than a decade.

  The detectives had told the senior Kibbe that they were investigating his eldest son in connection with his recent arrest for assaulting a prostitute.

  “Roger had a miserable childhood,” he said, reclining in a black vinyl La-Z-Boy. “His mother was a bad influence in his life. She didn’t like him very much.