TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (34 page)

“Pete, do you know where we’re at?”

“Shit, you’re right!”

They were around the corner from the beauty shop they’d gone to a year and a half ago to interview Stephanie Brown’s hairdresser about her chopped-off
hair.

Bertocchini knew that Roger Kibbe had not lived on Tupelo Drive then, and he recognized it as simply a strange coincidence. Kibbe had come across Stephanie lost on I-5 south of Sacramento; he didn’t follow her from the beauty shop. Still, it made the detectives feel as if they’d come full circle.

They checked in by radio with two unmarked cars, driven by Sacramento detectives Bob Bell and Harry Machen, that had followed. After they found parking spaces nearby, Bell and Machen joined the party in the Winnebago, owned by the
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office for use on major drug
surveillances that had been known to last for weeks.

The morning went by quietly with no activity.

At 1:30
P.M.
, they sent a sheriff’s department records clerk into the Public Storage office to make contact with Roger Kibbe. She did, pretending to be interested in renting space, and came back out to report that the suspect worked from 9:30
A.M.
to 6:00
P.M.
Although the white Hyundai was parked in front, Harriet did not appear to be on the premises.

The detectives had met earlier that morning at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau to establish ground rules in their attempt to keep an eye on Kibbe during his every waking moment until a search warrant could be served.

Luckily, there was a window between new murder
cases in Sacramento—the
last one, ten days earlier, was solved right away with the arrest of the victim’s boyfriend. As a result, Lt. Ray Biondi was able temporarily to divert the entire Bureau to the Kibbe investigation.

Biondi put Stan Reed to work on the crucial affidavit in support of a
search warrant, which would be reviewed by a judge prior to a warrant’s being issued. The key new development in terms of probable cause was, of course, the nylon cordage. Reed would describe, in addition, other physical evidence, each crime scene, the criminal acts that had occurred, list the specific items they would be searching for at Kibbe’s residence, as well as offer his learned supposition as to what he thought had happened (“Based upon my training and experience, it is my opinion that …”). The affidavit would take a week to write, and run nearly seventy pages.

The Sacramento detectives had joined forces with Bertocchini, Rosenquist, and
Larry Ferrari from San Joaquin in setting up the Kibbe surveillance, considered essential if for no other reason than to keep the I-5 suspect from killing again. However, the detectives all hoped to develop new promising leads in the process—perhaps Kibbe would unwittingly lead them to where he’d stashed the victims’ purses?

The detectives had discussed that morning how far to let Kibbe go before stopping him. What if they saw him pick up a potential victim and drive off with her?

“You’ll have to stop him right away,” Biondi said.

They couldn’t take any chances trying to follow Kibbe and possibly losing him, Biondi counseled. After all, they were after more evidence, not more victims.

On the first day of surveillance, October 16 (1987), Kibbe didn’t leave the facility all day. At 6:00
P.M.
, Harriet arrived home in a Chrysler with another couple, who came inside the residence. An hour later, the two couples came out and left. They were followed by Machen and Bell to a nearby restaurant, where they had dinner. They arrived back at 9:00
P.M.
The other couple stayed until after midnight, then left. Lights in the residence went out at 1:34
A.M.
Forty minutes later, with Roger Kibbe home in bed, surveillance was concluded.

The next day featured more of the same, with Roger home alone and Harriet gone. The detectives whiled away the time in front of a 10-inch TV watching the opening game of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals, whom they all hated for having beaten the San Francisco Giants for the National League pennant that year, and the power-hitting Minnesota Twins. Someone went out for cold beer and munchies.

Harriet came home at 3:30
P.M.

The Twins won 10–1.

Roger and
Harriet left at 5:30
P.M.

As detectives ran to their parked cars and tried to set up on the Hyundai, they lost it in traffic. Although their pride was injured, the cops took some consolation in the fact that Roger was not alone. They returned to the motor home and awaited the couple’s return. Roger and Harriet came home at 10:00
P.M.
, and their lights went out an hour later.

The following afternoon, a Sunday, Roger took a walk over to the shopping center. Detectives followed him on foot. He picked up a few things at Payless, then stopped at Taco Bell for a Coke before returning home. Later, he and Harriet went grocery shopping. They turned in at 11:00
P.M.

The next morning a unit followed Harriet to a cellular phone company, where she spent the day working in the office. When she got home that night, she and Roger went clothes shopping. Their lights went out early, at 9:00
P.M.

Detectives had noticed some things in the hours they’d spent watching Kibbe. Obviously, he really wasn’t going anywhere. Whenever he did go somewhere, it was with Harriet, and she always drove. Of course, Roger’s driver’s license had been revoked, although that hadn’t stopped him from cruising the stroll the previous month when he’d picked up Debra Guffie. Still, when they walked together Harriet always led, with Roger lagging behind a step or two.

Having a lot of time on their hands, the detectives batted around various scenarios. Concluding that Harriet was the dominant one in the relationship, they wondered if she had grounded Roger since his arrest. Speculating further, they theorized that perhaps it took a big fight with Harriet for Roger to make his move. Could they orchestrate such a donnybrook?

The next morning, Kay Maulsby, who had completed the two-week homicide school, was briefed on the surveillance effort. Biondi shared with her the conclusions of the detectives who had been watching Kibbe, and directed her and Joe Dean to drop in unexpectedly on Harriet at the cellular phone company and “jack her up.”

Their purpose, Biondi made clear, was to irritate her. “She might be the trigger that sends Roger off. She comes home and takes her anger out on him. We’ll watch to see what he does.”

Maulsby and Dean dropped in on Harriet after lunch.

They first talked to her boss, finding out that Harriet had been employed for two weeks as an accountant through a temp agency. Maulsby
explained they wanted to speak to Harriet “about her husband,” and made a point of saying that she was not the subject of their investigation.

The detectives were shown into a private office, where Harriet soon joined them. They showed her their badges.

“Are you married to Roger Kibbe?” Dean asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you reside at 6380 Tupelo with him?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We’ve got some questions about your husband,” Maulsby said in her best tough-guy voice.

Harriet glanced out the plate-glass wall; a couple of office employees quickly turned away.

“You came
here
to talk to me about Roger?” Harriet asked, her cheeks reddening. “I’ve just started working—”

“Your husband was recently arrested for
assault on a prostitute,” Dean said, cutting her off. “This is serious.”

“We want to know about his comings and goings,” Maulsby said, even though she felt they were sailing steerage on the
Titanic
without a life jacket.

Although Maulsby was new to Homicide, she knew about getting information out of people. This was no way to proceed. Coming here plainly to embarrass Harriet and get a rise out of her so she would go home and lambast Roger was shortsighted. Suppose Harriet had valuable information about Roger to share with them? No one believed she was a serial killer, only that she was married to one. Her life could be hellish right now. A much better tack, Maulsby thought, would have been to approach Harriet in a quieter way, coming to her sympathetically, not confrontationally.

Harriet lifted a shaking hand. “There’s the door.”

“We told your boss you aren’t in trouble,” Dean said somewhat lamely.

“Get out!” Harriet barked, a fury in her voice. “You think I don’t have any feelings or any rights here? Don’t come back either because I won’t tell you a thing.”

Maulsby and Dean looked at each other, and left.

In terms of pissing off Harriet, Maulsby knew they could consider it mission accomplished. But if they’d really accomplished something, why did she feel so lousy?

That afternoon
on surveillance at Tupelo Drive, detectives eagerly anticipated Harriet’s arrival home.

It was Bertocchini’s thirtieth birthday, and he was hoping for a special
present that Roger Kibbe could best give him—a slipup of some kind, new physical evidence, maybe Roger going cruising for another victim. Bertocchini would dearly have loved to slap the cuffs on him in the act.

Harriet came home at 5:10
P.M.

Half an hour later, Roger came out and walked to the back of the lot holding a white plastic bag, which he dropped into the garbage can, and went back inside.

“Harriet must be really pissed,” Bertocchini deadpanned. “She made him take out the garbage.”

At 6:22
P.M.
, they observed Roger mopping the floor of the office.

The detectives howled.

Roger then went to work cleaning the countertops.

As Kibbe went about his chores, the cops watched the third game of the World Series. At one point, Rosenquist ran over to Payless with a roll of film he had previously shot of Roger walking through the parking lot. When he turned it in for developing, the salesgirl told him he could get two prints for the price of one, and also a free pair of nylons. Rosenquist picked up a pound cake, and back at the motor home they celebrated Bertocchini’s birthday. Rosenquist gave him the nylons, which Bertocchini complained weren’t his size.

Even though the lights in the Kibbe residence went out before 10:00
P.M.
, the
surveillance team stayed in place until after midnight before reluctantly calling it a night.

So much for the Harriet-as-a-trigger theory.

A
T
10:00
A.M.
the next morning, Detective Kay
Maulsby picked up Carmen
Anselmi at her apartment for a tour of a dozen Public Storage rental businesses.

In setting up the tour, Maulsby had explained to Carmen that she was going to be shown a group of people working in storage rental businesses around the city. In viewing these individuals, Maulsby counseled, it was important to keep in mind that the man who drove off with
Charmaine might or might not be in this group of people.

In the car, Maulsby went back over everything, as Carmen, obviously nervous, nodded her assent.

“You’re in no way obligated to identify anyone today,” Maulsby said. “Study each person carefully. Remember that hairstyles change and beards can come and go.”

Maulsby further cautioned Carmen that if she saw anyone who looked like the suspect, she should wait until they were back in the car
before commenting. The detective had Carmen bring a hat and dark glasses to disguise her own features so that recognition wouldn’t be a two-way street.

“Remember now, you may not see anyone who looks like him and that’s okay, too,”
Maulsby said before they got out of the car at the first location on Folsom Street.

After they spoke to a man who identified himself as Frank and he showed them a storage space, they got back into the car to debrief. “His hair has too much gray,” Carmen said. “And he’s heavier.”

At the second stop, on San Juan Avenue, the man behind the counter, Ken, was “too pudgy.”

At the next stop, a woman was working the counter.

At the fourth location, on Vernon Boulevard, the manager’s name was R.J. “He doesn’t look like him at all.”

Women were managing the next three locations.

On Howe Avenue, George came next. “No, no.”

Tony, on Auburn Boulevard, was “out of the question” because he was “too dark and too fat.”

Then another woman.

They arrived at Tupelo at 2:15
P.M.
Working behind the counter was a soft-spoken man with a closely cropped salt-and-pepper beard. He identified himself as Roger, and answered their questions about space sizes and prices. He took them out back and showed them a few storage spaces.

Back in the car, Carmen said the man who took her daughter away had straighter hair and a lighter complexion.

“This guy is not the one.”

T
HAT NIGHT
, Kay Maulsby was awakened by the phone.

As she reached for the bedside phone, she saw on the illuminated clock dial that it was past midnight.

A deputy was calling to advise her that Debra Ann
Guffie had been arrested and was being processed at the downtown county jail facility.

“Thanks very much,” said Maulsby, whose feet were on the floor by the time she hung up.

Anxious to speak to Guffie, who had gone back out on the streets since her run-in with Roger Kibbe, Maulsby had asked the warrant bureau to contact her in the event Guffie ended up back in custody. Guffie had failed to appear for a court date on a medical fraud misdemeanor involving her using someone else’s insurance card for medical treatment, and a bench warrant had been issued for her arrest. Maulsby had given
them not only her office and pager numbers, but her home number as well, with instructions to call day or night. It had been a long shot—Guffie might or might not be arrested in the near future, and some deskbound deputy might or might not notice the flag to call Maulsby before Guffie was kicked back out the revolving jailhouse door.

After the booking process was completed, Maulsby signed for Guffie and drove her the two short blocks to the Homicide Bureau. It was 1:45
A.M.
when they sat down in an interview room.