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

by Bruce Henderson

  “As to the black particles, were you able to ascertain what that substance was?” Drossel asked.

  “No. But I was able to determine that they all had the same physical appearance and elemental makeup.”

  “Did you analyze the red paint?”

  “Yes. The red paint on all seven pieces of cordage was similar in everything I was able to analyze. Color and appearance, but also in organic and elemental composition.”

  Springer explained that the amount of red paint on each piece of cord varied, from “only a few red particles” on the crime-kit cord strung between the two dowels to “large smears of red particles” on a piece of cordage from Tupelo.

  “Do you have an opinion as to how the red paint got on the cordage?” Drossel asked.

  “It got there while the paint was wet, and it was applied in some manner that made very small particles, such as spraying.”

  “Are you indicating that the different pieces of cordage were in the same environment at one point?”

  “Everything I was able to see indicates that there is a common source for the paint,” Springer said. “I believe you can make a strong association that these seven pieces of cordage at some time were exposed to a similar environment.”

  Drossel was finished with his direct examination of Springer, and his timing couldn’t have been better. At the end of the day, he would be sending the jurors home for the night with a very clear picture of the same red paint on all the cordage.

  “I have no further questions at this time.”

  The next morning, Springer was back on the stand.

  Defense attorney Tom Kolpacoff stepped forward.

  “Miss Springer, what does ‘tunnel vision’ mean?”

  “In terms of crime scenes, it has to do with overfocusing in a case on a theory you may have early on.”

  “Did you keep an open mind in this case?”

  “Yes,” said Springer.

  She told of having authored a published scientific article, “Crime Scene: Avoiding Tunnel Vision.”

  The defense attorney’s question had been rather like asking Billy Graham if he was a true believer.

  “Does the fact that you have been an employee since 1972 of the Department of Justice, the state’s top law enforcement agency, affect your ability to make a judgment that may be beneficial to a defendant?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I have made judgments that have been beneficial to defendants.”

  “Regarding your testimony as to the car mat fibers all being from a 1986 Hyundai, did you do any checking with the manufacturer as to the number of vehicles they produced that year with a blue interior?”

  “I tried. I called Hyundai, the distributor out of Los Angeles, and he wasn’t able to tell me how many. He gave me the names of the manufacturers of the carpeting, which was made in Korea, so I wrote a letter but never got a reply.”

  “You don’t know how many cars they made in 1986?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know whether they used the same type of carpeting in a 1985 Hyundai or 1987 Hyundai?”

  “That I can’t tell you.”

  “Would it be fair to say, then, from the investigation you conducted, you were not able to determine the number of car manufacturers that used the same carpeting that was in the Hyundai?”

  “In this particular case I did not. However, if you take a blue carpet from a Hyundai versus a blue carpet from a Ford, I would be very surprised if I could not tell them apart, even though they might look physically similar.”

  Under questioning, Springer stated that she never did find the source of the red paint on the cordage as a result of police searches of Tupelo and other residences of Kibbe’s, although nine miscellaneous items painted red had been brought to her for a comparison. She also said that the red paint spill on the car mat did not match the paint from the cordage, which was some kind of acrylic. “I have run a lot of acrylic-based paints and not found the right one,” she said. “It may be some kind of blend of acrylic.”

  Asked why she thought her colleague, Jim Streeter, hadn’t been able to see the red paint on the cordage before she found it, Springer shrugged. “He told me that he had examined them for their general features like construction, length, how many pieces of yarn went into weaving. But other than that, you’ll have to ask him.”

  “In this case,” Kolpacoff said, “we have very few fibers on the Frackenpohl dress. Five in all?”

  “Right. I found five—two matched the fibers from the car mat. In my experience, I would say that I would be very happy with recovering five fibers in all of my cases.”

  Drossel withheld a smile. His key scientific witness was doing just fine.

  The defense attorney tried to dispense with the hair evidence in a few choice questions.

  “Would you agree,” Kolpacoff said, “that human hair evidence is an extremely less valuable form of identification than fingerprints?”

  “Yes. We don’t identify individuals by hair. It is most useful for the exclusion of individuals.”

  “Is there a term that is sometimes used regarding hair evidence?”

  “Well, we tend to call it corroborative evidence.”

  “When a body has been outside for a period of time, it’s not uncommon to find animal hairs, is that correct?”

  “That’s true, yes.”

  “Did you compare the animal hairs you removed from the Frackenpohl dress with coyote hair?”

  “No.”

  “Raccoon?”

  “No.”

  “Squirrel?”

  “No, but I’ve looked at those animals before.”

  “Miss Springer, you cannot identify the animal hairs obtained on the Frackenpohl dress as being identical to the white or brown cat from the Kibbe residence, can you?”

  “No, I cannot say that.”

  Kolpacoff was nearing the end.

  “Miss Springer, you submitted the fibers with the football-like properties on them to McCrone Associates.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you received a report back from them dated May 4, 1990.”

  “That sounds about right,” said Springer, remembering that was about when she had learned that the dark particles were some kind of fungal spores.

  “Since that time, have you done any investigation to determine whether or not fungus is common to floors of automobiles?”

  “Well, only that it’s common to the floor in my personal GMC that has french fries growing out of it with lots of fungus at this moment.”

  The jurors and courtroom spectators laughed.

  So did Kolpacoff. “That’s a good test. No further questions.”

  Before Springer had left the courtroom, Judge Finney, who was given to moving trials along at near breakneck speed, said, “Next witness.”

  Knowing Finney, Drossel tried to keep a line of witnesses in the hallway. Woe to any attorney in this court who didn’t have someone ready to climb onto the stand.

  “Skip Palenik,” Drossel announced.

  Once sworn in, the tall, round-shouldered Palenik, who defined his profession as “analytical microscopist,” said he had been interested in microscopes since he was eight years of age. It wasn’t difficult imagining him as a youth tinkering with his chemistry set while other boys were out playing ball. He recited his educational background (B.A., chemistry, University of Illinois) and work experience.

  “In layman’s terms, what do you do?”

  The prosecutor understood the importance of making sure all these scientific terms and pieces of evidence being bandied around were understandable. Jurors hopelessly confused by the prosecution’s experts, he knew, were inclined to acquit.

  “We use microscopes of various types and microchemical methods to solve problems involving either small amounts of material or small particles. We have skills in manipulating these very small particles and being able to do an analysis of them. These can be anything from pigments in paintings whose authenticity are questioned t
o identifying particles floating in a pharmaceutical solution. We work for fiber companies, doing patent infringement work. In short, we try to correlate what something is or where it could have come from by its identity and characteristics.”

  “You work for McCrone Associates, a private lab?”

  “Yes. We’re an independent analytical laboratory specializing in microscopy for government, industry, whoever will hire us. We’ve worked for both the prosecution and the defense in criminal and civil cases in this country and abroad.”

  Palenik explained that he had become involved in the I-5 investigation when Faye Springer called him and asked if he could look at some fibers.

  “She described them as having ‘little footballs’ on them, and she didn’t know what they were,” he said. “Also, on one fiber she had seen some red paint she wanted analyzed.”

  “What procedure did you use?”

  “Just looked at them under a microscope. At first, I didn’t see the football-shaped particles. I saw the red paint, and I thought that’s what she was talking about. But then I saw them. Right away, I could tell, just on the basis of their morphology—shape, in other words—that they were fungal spores. And they were present on both samples.”

  Palenik went on to describe his much more complicated analysis of the paint present on the one carpet fiber from Darcie’s dress and on the fibers from Kibbe’s Hyundai floor mat, where paint had been spilled.

  “I used a technique called electron microprobe analysis, which permitted the elemental analysis so we could look at the inorganic composition of this material.”

  Drossel was ready to press rewind and do that one again, but Palenik, who had testified more than a hundred times, caught on.

  “It’s just a big tube, basically,” he said. “You place your particle on an aluminum plate and it tells you the elements inside the material.”

  “What was your conclusion?”

  “The red paint particle from the fiber in question was qualitatively the same as the red paint particles on the floor mat. There were ten elements present that I could identify. It doesn’t mean they came from the same can of paint, necessarily, although they might have. What it does mean is that they had exactly the same elemental composition. I cannot say that they absolutely, lay-my-life-down-on-it have to be from the same source, but everything that I could do to distinguish them from different sources failed. All the paint particles were essentially identical, this in a world where there are jillions—good scientific word—of different types of red paints to choose from.”

  Before Drossel could ask another question, Palenik continued thoughtfully: “In my opinion, it would be very unlikely that you would be able to go out somewhere and find paint of identical elemental composition on fibers that were also identical in all measure respects and have them not be from a common origin.”

  Drossel looked down at his notes. There were a few more questions to ask, more ways Palenik could say the same thing. But how many times did the microscopist have to hit the nail on the head? The spike driven in by Springer had been finished off by the heavy hitter from Chicago.

  “I have no further questions.”

  Tom Kolpacoff’s cross-examination was short, although, it turned out, not short enough.

  “The ten elements you found in the paints,” he said, “would you consider them common elements?”

  “They are common in paint, not necessarily all at one time,” Palenik answered. “But I think every one of them I have seen at one time or another in paint.”

  “But it’s not unusual for paint to have all ten elements, is that correct?”

  “I can’t say I’ve seen a sample with those particular ten elements before, no. For example, sodium and chlorine, two of them, are outside contaminants.”

  “Outside contaminants in what respect?”

  At the defense table, Phil Kohn had a bad feeling. It was after four o’clock on a day that had not gone well for the defense. Just sit down, Tom. Let’s get out of here.

  “Sodium and chlorine have no particular use in paint,” Palenik said. “And they are the common ingredients of salt. Anyone who painted in any area where there was salt spray could be expected to put some salt in the paint can.”

  The red paint had just gotten more unique.

  “As for the football shapes,” said Kolpacoff, trying to recover by changing the subject, “you cannot tell the type of fungi from these spores?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Therefore, you can’t tell how common the fungus is?”

  “That’s correct, yes.”

  “I have no further questions.”

  Kohn had never been big on fiber evidence; he just didn’t think it looked as good in real life as on paper. But Faye Springer hadn’t been caught shading it to favor the prosecution; she had been very straightforward about her findings and the jury had listened. As for her cordage testimony, had they been playing chess, Kohn would have happily offered and/or accepted a draw here and now. If there had only been cordage from Guffie and Frackenpohl, he could have argued, however weakly, that maybe the two prostitutes knew each other, maybe the Frackenpohl rope came from Guffie, maybe prostitutes carried rope for some reason. But the cordage from Tupelo was the third side of a triangle that boxed Kibbe in, which was why Kohn had fought hard in a pretrial motion to have the search of Tupelo (and everything found there) thrown out as “overly broad.” He had lost, and now was stuck with cordage from all three locations having the same red paint.

  As for Skip Palenik, Kohn considered him a tremendous witness for the prosecution. He had corroborated Springer, and in addition, found identical paint on the fiber from the dress and in fibers from the carpet of the Hyundai.

  “Next witness,” said Judge Finney.

  “Jim Streeter,” Drossel responded.

  After raising his right hand and swearing to tell the truth, Streeter related how he became involved in the I-5 murder investigation when he was called out to several murder scenes to examine the physical evidence.

  He told of receiving Darcie’s pink dress from Detective Jim Watson, and processing it for trace evidence by taking tape lifts. He said he noted cutting on the dress.

  “Are you familiar with the terms ‘functional’ versus ‘nonfunctional’ cutting?” asked Drossel.

  “Yes.”

  “Could you define those terms?”

  “A functional cut serves some purpose. That is, to expose a certain area of the body or remove the garment. Nonfunctional cuts, such as up the sides or in the shoulders or along the bottom seams, don’t go anywhere. They serve no obvious purpose.”

  Drossel took Streeter through the extensive clothes cutting in the garments of all four murder victims.

  “Is it possible for you to tell as a criminalist what caused those cuts?” Drossel asked.

  “My opinion is a sharp instrument was used to make these cuts, but I cannot tell you whether or not it’s a knife or scissors or some other type of instrument.”

  “In your career as a criminalist—how many years has that been?”

  “Eighteen years.”

  “Have you ever seen these types of nonfunctional cuts on clothing at any crime scene?”

  “No.”

  Streeter also told of his effort to determine if the pieces of cordage were the same type, and produced by the same manufacturer. He admitted, however, that the cordage was too common to narrow down very much.

  On cross-examination, Tom Kolpacoff asked if Streeter had ever performed the same fiber comparisons on the Frackenpohl dress that Faye Springer had.

  “I actually looked at the tape lifts with the microscope and could not see the same things she saw,” Streeter admitted.

  “You did not observe any red paint on the cordage, is that correct?”

  “Correct, I did not observe that.”

  “If you saw it you wouldn’t ignore it?”

  “Given my background and training, I might not be able to recognize its s
ignificance.”

  “But if you saw the paint on the cordage from three locations, wouldn’t you, as a criminalist, think that was potentially significant?”

  “While my eyes may see it, my mind may not interpret it.”

  Kolpacoff sat down and Streeter was dismissed.

  After the jury was sent home for the weekend and his client escorted away to jail, Kohn slowly packed up his briefcase. In evaluating the day’s scientific testimony, he knew that nonfunctional cutting, as espoused by Streeter, would not have carried the day. Nor would the similar-cordage business. For Christ’s sake, Streeter hadn’t even seen the red paint on the cordage. It was Faye Springer’s work, backed up by Skip Palenik, that defined the government’s case.

  Kohn knew Springer’s story; he also knew if she and her hubby hadn’t moved to Sacramento when they did, his client, Roger Kibbe, would not be sitting in this courtroom.

  * In Roger Kibbe’s prison file was a “Social Evaluation” written by a prison psychologist six months after the polygraph examiner’s report. It read, in part: “Kibbe’s initially fearful manner and stuttering speech completely disappeared once he was certain he had the counselor’s full attention. Relaxed, he stopped gripping one wrist with the other hand and displayed an unexpected sense of humor. There was then no evidence of an ‘intense dislike, almost a hatred for women’ that was commented upon in a January, 1970, polygraph examination, or the basis for the same examiner describing Kibbe as ‘potentially one of the world’s most dangerous men’ ever encountered. Kibbe’s lack of self-confidence is apparent … so is his superior intelligence.” Another evaluation was written by a parole officer in August, 1974: “Kibbe does not appear to be a danger to himself or to others. As reflected by his background, subject’s latest criminal endeavors (grand and petty theft) once again are of a relatively petty nature and indicative of poor judgment.”

  Twenty-Three

  The fifth day of testimony began with Lora Heedick’s boyfriend, James Driggers, stepping into the witness box. A big man, he was dressed in the orange jumpsuit of a state prison inmate—an outfit about two sizes too small for him, and his muscular arms and shoulders threatened to burst free of the straining fabric.