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

by Bruce Henderson

  A murder investigation had taken Rosenquist to Lake Tahoe years before, and he’d met Steve. He remembered Steve’s offhanded comment at the time about all the Jane Does in the area: “We find dead girls alongside the road all the time.” Rosenquist now wondered how many of them had been Roger’s work—cruel amusement for him on his way to see Steve or on the way home. Rosenquist also couldn’t help but wonder if the homicide-detective brother had even unknowingly investigated a murder that had been committed by his killer brother.

  Bertocchini had thought about what it might be like to have evidence of murder pointing to his own sibling. He’d decided he could still love his brother, but that he would not confuse love with the urgent need to get a serial killer off the street and behind bars. He was sure he’d feel that way even if he wasn’t a cop, but because he carried a badge and was sworn to protect life, he didn’t know how he could do otherwise. Bertocchini had no doubt: he would give up his brother in a heartbeat if he believed him to be a murderer.

  In view of the physical evidence, Steve had agreed to speak to Roger on the phone and ask him once more whether he had committed murder. After their talk, Steve told the detectives it hadn’t been a private conversation on the other end, and speculated that Roger might feel freer to speak his mind if Kay Maulsby wasn’t in the same room. They arranged it, and a few minutes later the brothers were back on the phone together. Their second conversation, like the first one, was taped at the Homicide Bureau.

  “Roger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was halfway out the door and I told them it wasn’t a private conversation,” Steve said. “So, they told me they’d get Kay out of the room.”

  “Well, the door is shut right now and I’m in the room by myself.”

  “Okay. Now talk to me.”

  “What do they have?” Roger asked.

  “They have physical evidence. Enough to go to court and convict you.”

  “You know, I was just saying to myself, as much as I love you and care about you—and I’m proud of you—”

  Roger was weeping.

  “Don’t start crying,” Steve said. “Talk to me.”

  “But I sat there telling myself, dammit, he lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. They lied to me.”

  “That’s all I could tell myself. I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “I didn’t lie to you, Roger. I told you everything I knew right up till I called you today. I’m in this class down in Fallon. They made contact about three o’clock to bring me down to the station. Okay?”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “You’re going to be charged with homicide. I don’t know how many counts.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I saw it in black and white. They opened the books and they just let me have it. It’s not defendable, Roger. Remember I told you a long time ago, no matter how bad, we’ll stand together on this damn thing? I just don’t want to be blindsided. I don’t like surprises.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Roger, now I got to talk to you like a brother. What I want you to do first of all is get rid of that silly notion about your credit card. I want that gone.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’ll just muddle everything up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “In my own mind, I’ve got to know,” Steve said. “I know you couldn’t talk earlier, but I gotta know. I don’t know if I could hold it back if I know. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it once I know, but you and I’ve been through too much shit in the last forty-some-odd years to let this go by.”

  Roger sighed heavily.

  “You’ve never held back before,” Steve said.

  “How soon can I see an attorney?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know when you’re going to be arraigned. Probably tomorrow. They’ll read the complaint and it’ll be all documented. Once you’re before a judge, because of the seriousness of the offense, they won’t even allow you to enter a plea but they’ll go ahead and appoint you to the public defender. You ain’t got no goddamn money, I know that. I ain’t got no money.”

  “I know that.”

  “And we can’t go to Dad.”

  “No.”

  “So, it will be back to the public defender’s office and hopefully it won’t be the same swizzle dick you had before.”

  “Dad will get ahold of this somehow,” Roger said, “and it’ll kill him.”

  “I know it will. I’m not going to call Dad yet.”

  “I gotta ask the detectives here if I can see Harriet tonight.”

  “From what I understand, Harriet is not in the best frame of mind right this minute.”

  “Of course not.”

  “She’s going to be ricocheting off the wall.”

  “I’m the only one who could calm her down.”

  “I’ve seen the reports,” Steve said. “I know what the evidence is. Yes, I was deceived. I did not lie to you. I revealed to you a lot of information that I was privy to that they should have told you but they didn’t. I kept you posted. Everything I knew.”

  “I know that.”

  “So when you said that I lied to you and I let you down—wrong, wrong.”

  “I’m sorry that I said that.”

  “What can I do to help you now?” Steve asked.

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

  “What can I expect?”

  “You want me to be honest with you?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know, Steve.”

  “All right. You know where I’ll be.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll be at home. I can’t go back to work because they’ve already called my boss. I’m going to take a leave of absence.”

  “For how long?”

  “I’m taking a month.”

  “I hope this doesn’t endanger or ruin your career.”

  “I’m afraid it has, Roger. I’m afraid it has.”

  “Is that why you’re taking a leave of absence.”

  “Yep.”

  “You were asked to?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t do any good. All I can say, Steve, is that I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Detective Steve Kibbe had done all he was going to do to aid the I-5 serial murder investigation. He went home to his wife and children, took his leave of absence, and struggled to come to grips with what his brother had done.

  EL DORADO Detective Jim Watson was the first to go back into the interview room with Roger Kibbe after his telephone conversations with his brother.

  “Roger, I hate beating around the bush. I’ll come right to the point. After we’re through here, I’m going to take you to Placerville and place you under arrest for the murder of Darcie Frackenpohl, a young lady who these past few months I’ve learned just about everything there is to learn about.”

  Kibbe showed no reaction.

  “At this point, we’ve developed enough evidence to charge you and take you to trial for her murder. I need to know, for myself, about Darcie. She’s got a mother and a fifteen-year-old brother who need to know about her, too. I’m sure you don’t know Darcie by name. She’s someone who got taken by the sights of the big city and by a young man who influenced her into coming down here and working the streets. For some reason, she happened to be out in the street that particular night in August. For some reason, you happened to be on the same street. I just want to understand how this young lady ended up dead on the side of a hill outside South Lake Tahoe. I need to understand this.”

  “Do you know where my wife is?”

  “At this particular time, I don’t,” Watson said. “I can tell you we are serving a search warrant on the Hyundai as we speak. I’m sure your wife is worried about you.”

  “It’s not so much that she’s worried about me. I need to talk to her.”

  “Tell me what you’re
feeling right now, Roger.”

  “I’m not like that. I’m not gonna tell you that. That’s not my way.”

  “What is your way, Roger?”

  “I’m thinking about my wife. There’s some things I’d like to get straight with her, so she can understand what’s going on.”

  “Is she going to be able to understand this?”

  “I don’t know. But I want her to hear it from me.”

  “I don’t need your confession to go to court,” Watson said. “We have evidence you left behind at the murder scene. Evidence at your house. Evidence we found at the golf course. I’m just here to get some answers so that I can tell Darcie’s mother what happened.”

  Silence.

  “Give me something to tell her, Roger.”

  “Before I say anything, I want to talk to my wife.”

  “I understand.”

  “Can I talk to her privately? Somewhere we can’t be heard or taped? Just a private conversation?”

  “It can be arranged. Give me her number.”

  He handed over a slip of paper with two numbers.

  “They’re both at work, one at her desk and the other on a recorder when she’s gone.”

  “It’s almost seven o’clock,” Watson said. “Is she normally at work this time of night?”

  “Yeah. She’s a workaholic.”

  Ten minutes after Watson left, Detective Stan Reed, the most experienced and dogged interviewer in the Bureau, entered the room. They were playing tag team and Reed was up.

  The detective held the slip of paper with Harriet’s phone numbers. “Talking to Harriet is going to benefit you and your wife, not us,” he said. “The officers who’ve been in here talking to you have been up front with you.”

  “Yeah, they’ve been more than nice.”

  “They arranged a phone call to your brother.”

  “I appreciated that.”

  “We’ll be more than happy, if we can get something in return, to arrange a phone call to Harriet.”

  Kibbe paused. “That’d be nice.”

  “What could I get in return, Roger?”

  Long silence.

  “Probably what you want,” Kibbe finally answered.

  “Okay, let’s explore this,” Reed said. “How about admitting that you’re guilty. If, in your opinion, you are.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I’m going to show you some photographs, Roger. Tell me if you recognize these people.”

  Reed laid out photographs of seven young women; most were smiling, almost all had long hair, every one of them was dead and gone.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’re presently under arrest for the murder of this young woman,” Reed said, holding up a high school yearbook picture of Darcie.

  “That’s what you say.”

  “I’m certain there’s more than these seven people, but these are the cases I’m interested in. You’re going to have to commit yourself to telling me the remainder of the story once you’ve talked to Harriet. I might even consider a face-to-face meeting for you with her.”

  “You’re showing me pictures I don’t recognize.”

  “Well, that’s not true. Let me show you the face of an angel.” Reed reached for another snapshot. “This is Stephanie Brown. She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  The detective found another picture in a stack he’d brought into the room with him. “Do you recognize this area here, down off Highway 12 next to a cornfield?”

  “Doesn’t look familiar to me.”

  “How about that drainage ditch?”

  “Never seen it before.”

  “Never seen it before? You’re having difficulty making any kind of commitments here. How about this isolated road along Highway 50? Do you recognize the spot?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “This is where you left the body of this young lady,” Reed said, holding up Darcie’s picture again.

  “Doesn’t look familiar.”

  “Do you recognize this?”

  Reed was pointing to a picture of the nylon cordage found at Tupelo during execution of the search warrant.

  “That’s 550 nylon cord,” Kibbe said without hesitation.

  “Which is used for what?”

  “Can be used for anything.”

  “What did you use it for?”

  “Fixing and repairing things.”

  “Then it’s true that you had some of this cord at your home when we did the search warrant?”

  “Sure.”

  Another picture.

  “You had this piece of cord tied between two dowels when you assaulted the prostitute,” Reed said.

  “I don’t think I did.”

  “It’s just positively factual. I mean, there’s no denying it. It was in your crime kit that had your fingerprints on it. You’ve been convicted of that. And is it not true that you used to be or still are a sky diver?”

  “Used to be.”

  “Is that when you came by this cord?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You also, Roger, used this very same rope on Darcie.” He held up a picture of cordage from the Frackenpohl scene. “And that rope that you left there is identical to the rope we took from your house during the search warrant. Absolutely, positively the same rope. We’re way beyond where we were when we talked to you the first time. It’s to the point that you need to come forward and be honest.

  “Now give me something, Roger, and I’ll arrange for you to talk to Harriet. Give me everything and I’ll arrange for you to have a contact visit with her. I’m willing to give you something in return. But I want a lot from you because you owe us a lot. You owe the families of these girls a lot. That baby that was waiting to be nursed by his mother, Charmaine. You owe that baby a lot, too. This pretty lady, Karen, who had just kissed her little daughter goodbye before you took her out and did what you did to her and cut her throat. You owe her, too.”

  Kibbe seemed unmoved by the speech.

  “Let’s talk some more about the cord. There is microscopic evidence on the cords, things that can’t be seen with the naked eye. All the cords had been in contact with red paint. The red paint is identical, okay? These criminalists nowadays can do amazing things.”

  Kibbe was listening, but not reacting.

  Reed wasn’t deterred. Part of his strategy was to let Kibbe know just how dead-bang they had him so he’d begin to think that he had nothing to lose by filling in the gaps.

  “You don’t appear to be a violent individual,” Reed said. “Just speaking to you, I would say that Roger Kibbe could not do this. But we have the physical evidence that says Roger can and did do these things.”

  Reed sat back. He’d noticed that even when Kibbe wasn’t responsive, he kept eye contact.

  “Are there two sides to Roger Kibbe?” Reed asked. “Everybody, I think, has two sides. They have a side that’s acceptable to society and a darker one that’s not. Most of us, fortunately, can control the side that’s not acceptable. We suppress our fantasies. We suppress a lot of anger. But I think at some point, maybe on April 20th, 1986, when you picked up Lora Heedick in your white Maverick, or maybe a long time before, you lost it. You could no longer control that dark side.”

  This whole exercise would have been more frustrating for Reed had he not known what it was that Kibbe very badly wanted, what it was that he would deal for.

  “Okay, give me one of the cases,” Reed said. “At least admit your guilt, because there’s no doubt about it, is there? Give me that. You give me that and I’ll arrange a phone call with Harriet. You give me the thirty-five cases or whatever it is that you’re really responsible for and I’ll arrange for you to stay in this room alone with Harriet.”

  Thirty-five was probably a pretty good number, Reed figured. Given Kibbe’s age it could be higher. A man didn’t suddenly roll out of bed one morning at forty-eight years of age and become a serial killer; not when he’d done his clothes-cutting apprenticeship at
age fifteen. No, this one had crossed the line a long time ago.

  “I’m not prepared to go out of my way to bring Harriet here if I don’t get what I want. Are you prepared to make that commitment? Are you prepared to be totally honest with me? Are you clear in your mind what I want?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it’s clear in my mind what you want.”

  “I wanna see her.”

  “I know you want to see Harriet. I can deliver that. Can you deliver what I want? Do you have the heart to be honest with me?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Okay. You could give me the missing property of one of these women. Tell me where to find it.”

  “If I tell you where something is and you go out and find it, that’s it. I’m not gonna get my visit with Harriet.”

  “That’s wrong. Put the carrot out in front of the rabbit. I’m the rabbit, and believe me, I will want the rest of it. I want the whole story. I want the truth.”

  Reed waited, but Kibbe stayed quiet. The detective sensed some backsliding. It seemed a good time to take a break.

  “I’m going to go talk to my lieutenant to see what he thinks about a visit from Harriet. Can I bring you some coffee or water?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, you sit here and think about it.”

  Reed sauntered into the office, where Biondi, Maulsby, and Watson were watching the television monitor.

  Kibbe seemed to be staring at the floor. Then, he leaned over and placed his head heavily into his hands. It was a defeated, exhaustive motion. He was wearing down. It was going on 9:00 P.M.—they’d been at it for four hours.

  “Want to come in with me, Kay?” Reed asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  It was a special invitation. Reed, who liked working alone, recognized her special relationship with Kibbe after all her jailhouse visits.

  The business Reed had handed out about going in to check with his lieutenant was pure moonshine—the way a car salesman goes to “check with the sales manager,” then comes back and employs imaginary edicts to try to shape the best deal. It was all about posturing and dickering and endurance. Stanley Reed would have made one hell of a car salesman.