TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (39 page)

Kelly told the detectives about making the psychiatrist appointments for Roger, and then the boy’s parents not continuing with them.

When Detective Vito Bertocchini let Kelly know that Kibbe was suspected of being a serial killer of young women, the ex-cop nodded sadly. “That’s the type of thing I feared might happen. Even as a youngster, he was very sneaky, and I thought he was capable of doing harm to someone.”

Kelly confirmed that Kibbe became a habitual truant. “He’d leave in the
morning like he was going to school, then sneak back to the house after his mother left for work and spend the day there. His father didn’t seem to be home much, so Roger was able to take advantage of the situation.

“When we caught Roger with the stolen clothes, he told me he knew he was doing wrong,” Kelly said. “I asked him why he did it and he said he didn’t know.”

Bertocchini asked what type of clothing he took.

“Ladies’ hose, bras, panties, and some slips. Mostly underclothes, you know. He didn’t bother with anything else.”

“He told you he cut them with
scissors?” Ferrari asked.

“Yeah. He admitted he cut them up. I always thought it was interesting that he used his mother’s medical scissors. He was an angry boy who grew up, I guess, to be an angry man.”

“Is there anything else you can add?”

“The time to help Roger Kibbe has long passed,” Kelly said. “I certainly hope you take him out of circulation.”

Kelly explained he’d left the police department a year after his run-in with Kibbe. He suggested the detectives contact
Jack Dowell, who worked Juvenile during and after Kelly’s tenure.

They found the slightly built, mustachioed Jack Dowell living in a motor home in a
Chula Vista trailer park. Dowell said he well remembered Roger Kibbe, too.

“I arrested that boy several times,” he said. “He didn’t like me and would refuse to talk to me.”

Bertocchini asked about the clothes-cutting incident.

“I remember that. The clothing wasn’t cut into individual pieces but each garment was still intact. The cutting went through the material in random patterns.”

Nonfunctional cutting
, Bertocchini thought.

“But what really sticks in my mind,” Dowell went on, “are two occasions sometime after that. Each time, Roger was discovered in the garage of a different vacant house. He claimed to have been kidnapped, brought to the house, tied up, and molested by unknown assailants.

“The really strange thing about it,” the retired cop continued, “was that the boy was tied up with women’s clothing—slips, bras, that sort of thing. It was obvious he’d tied himself up and fabricated the whole story. It had to have been some sort of sexual fantasy. At the time, I also got the impression that he didn’t like women and was acting out something.”

Contained in the old files of the
Chula Vista Police Department had been a two-page report by a San Diego Sheriff’s Department polygraph
examiner concerning a test he administered to Roger Kibbe in January 1970. Bertocchini and Ferrari located the retired examiner, A. G. Van Ravestyn, living in San Diego. He, too, recalled Kibbe.

“He’d been arrested for burglarizing the jump center at the airport,” recalled Ravestyn, who had retired as supervisor of polygraph examiners five years earlier. “He was suspected of stealing a number of parachutes and selling them to a surplus store for something under a hundred dollars. At first he denied everything, but after I told him he was deceptive on the test, he confessed. I asked him why he committed a theft against people he parachuted with and who trusted him. He was unable to offer an explanation and finally said he didn’t know.”

Roger went on to tell the examiner that since his release from county jail two years earlier, he’d attempted many burglaries and committed at least two—a beauty shop and a residence.

“He described how he had stood for as long as an hour in front of many buildings trying to decide whether or not he should enter. His only explanation for these acts was that he felt angry or just felt that he had to do it. He said he’d committed ‘hundreds’ of burglaries in his life.”

Kibbe was subsequently convicted of the airport burglary and sent back to state prison for two years.

What interested the detectives most, however, was the other information contained in Ravestyn’s detailed report, which thoroughly dissected both the history and psyche of Roger Reece Kibbe:

Roger presently resides at the San Diego residence of his father and stepmother. His natural mother died in 1963. Roger feels that he gets along quite well with his father, but has an intense dislike for his stepmother. He felt that his relationships with his natural mother were strained and that she did not care for him.

Roger attended
Chula Vista High School until the eleventh grade. He did poorly in reading and writing but was adept in mechanical engineering and shop work, and enjoyed art class. He was married in 1961 to Margie. Their marriage lasted eighteen months. There was a daughter born to the couple, but Roger has not seen the child for a number of years.

For the past eight months Roger has been on unemployment compensation. He went to an adult high school and is a certified welder, but he has been unable to obtain work in this field. He worked for a two-year period for National Steel as a welder, but he was fired from the job for committing theft, and they will not
re-hire him. Roger has a extensive criminal record. He has been arrested over twenty times for burglary, grand theft, receiving stolen property. He has done time in state prison and county jail.

Roger says he has been a “loner” all his life. He has no close friends, and admits that he really trusts no one. He has a girlfriend but describes her as cold and unfeeling. He talked about a possible marriage, but with no apparent feeling. Under the least distress, Roger becomes agitated and inarticulate, manifesting many physical signs of his mental distress. Roger claims he has never received any form of psychiatric treatment during his incarcerations. He knows his kind of behavior is not normal and feels he needs help, but has difficulty expressing his desire for this help.

When one considers his record as a juvenile and as an adult, a pattern of reaction to stress emerges. At the present time, he has hurt no one during his crimes. This may not be the case in the future if this subject is merely incarcerated and released. It is the opinion of this examiner that Roger should have the advantage of psychiatric evaluation both for his own sake and that of the community.

Yes, it was unusual, Van Ravestyn told the detectives, for him to delve as deeply into a subject’s personal life as he did in this instance. But for some reason Roger Kibbe, after failing the polygraph and most assuredly realizing that he faced another conviction and prison term, had been willing to talk that day. And Van Ravestyn, with a B.A. degree in psychology and an inquiring mind, was there to listen.

Van Ravestyn would join the ranks of the Chula Vista officers in recognizing that Roger Kibbe was a potent threat to himself and to society. Most chilling was Van Ravestyn’s final paragraph:

It is not inconceivable that Roger could take the life of another. He has an intense dislike, almost a hatred, for women. If this were coupled with his anger, he might someday do great harm to an individual. Roger is potentially one of the most dangerous men that this examiner has ever encountered.

O
N THEIR
last day in southern California, the homicide detectives found and interviewed Roger’s ex-cop friend,
Hector Hendershon.

Hendershon was a friendly, olive-complected, middle-aged aerospace worker who still lived in Chula Vista and also worked for
Rohr Industries,
which had started back in the 1930s in the garage of
Fred Rohr, who built the fuel tanks for
Charles Lindbergh’s
Spirit of St. Louis.
(When the city fathers told Rohr in the 1950s that he wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was, he began paying his workers in silver dollars. It soon became impossible to find a paper bill in Chula Vista.)

“How’d you first meet Roger?” Bertocchini asked.

“Through his mother,” Hendershon said. “I met Lorraine at
Chula Vista Hospital while I was working as an attendant on the police ambulance. After delivering someone to the hospital, I’d often stay around and have coffee with the nurses. One night when Lorraine and I were in the break room she told me that her oldest son was having some problems. She wondered if anyone could help. I volunteered to talk to the boy and see what I could do for him.

“I got together with Roger and liked him right away. He was a quiet, strong, healthy kid. He was an introvert and sometimes sullen but all it would take was a friendly word or pat on the back to pull him out of it. I found that if he wanted to talk to you, he’d talk your ear off. If he didn’t want to talk to someone, he wouldn’t say a word or stutter terribly. He started coming over to my house, playing with my two young daughters. He became like a member of my family. If he had two dollars in his pocket, he’d go out and spend a dollar fifty on toys for my kids.”

“What about Roger’s home life?” Ferrari asked.

“I think Lorraine did a good job of raising the three boys considering the circumstances. The father, Jack, was never around when the kids needed disciplining. He was away in the Navy during most of their formative years.”

The detectives realized they were getting a different take on
Lorraine Kibbe than they had from her husband.

“Lorraine was an unforgettable character,” Hendershon went on. “She was very kind and had a good sense of humor. She was concerned about her kids and worked hard. She was a good person, the type who would do for people. One night, I brought a woman in by ambulance who was going to have a baby any minute. She didn’t have any medical insurance. The administrator told me to take her to the county hospital. I knew we’d never get there in time. Lorraine and I delivered the baby on the back steps. She got into a lot of trouble and almost lost her job over that.”

Bertocchini asked Hendershon to describe Lorraine.

“She was a slight woman, about a hundred and fifteen pounds,” he said. “Sandy-colored hair, bright eyes. Perky and witty. She was very feminine but not flirty.”

Hendershon explained that when he quit the police force he bought a convenience store and hired Roger.

“I knew about the malicious mischief Roger had gotten into because I saw the police reports. But Roger never stole anything from me. He even kept track of the free Cokes he drank while at work, so I’d know where they went. After work, I’d drive him home on the back of my motor scooter. Nothing I wanted Roger wouldn’t do for me.”

“Do you remember Roger ever stealing ladies’ clothes?” Bertocchini asked.

“Yes, I do. More than once. When I asked him about it he admitted it. He told me he cut them up. I asked him why he would want to do that. He said because he’d been mad at somebody and this was how he took out his frustrations. I was never clear on who exactly he was mad at. I suggested there were better ways to handle his anger. He did have a problem with his temper, although I never considered him capable of harming anyone. He wouldn’t ever confront. He’d go behind someone’s back to get even. Unless you knew him, you couldn’t tell if Roger was a friend or a foe.”

Asked when he’d last seen Roger, Hendershon said it had been five or six years.

“Roger drove up to my house and called to me. ‘Come on, Hec, let’s go.’ I asked him, ‘Go where?’ He opened up the trunk of his car. Inside were two parachutes. He knew I’d been a paratrooper in the Army, but that I’d never jumped in civilian life. I told him, ‘No, Rog, I’m too old for that.’”

Bertocchini grinned. “Me, too.”

Hendershon held a faraway look. “You know, I always felt sorry for Roger. I think he got shortchanged in life. He had difficulty reading the label on a can of beans. I think they pushed him along in school until at some point he just stopped going. When it came to teaching him things, I found him to be a smart hombre. If Roger wanted to learn something, you could teach him anything. He showed an interest in fishing and everything I did—except for one thing.”

“What was that?” asked Bertocchini.

“Hunting. He wasn’t interested in killing animals.”

Eighteen

K
ay
Maulsby’s journey to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe early in the afternoon of November 19, 1987, was a kind of professional courtesy call. She wouldn’t even write a report about her face-to-face with Detective
Steve Kibbe.

She’d never before met Roger’s younger brother, although the guys who’d been around longer at the Homicide Bureau knew him. Ray Biondi remembered Steve Kibbe and some other
Douglas
County detectives dropping by the Bureau the previous year on a murder case they were working. There had been the usual amount of shoptalk on various cases, and Biondi was sure they’d even discussed the I-5 killings. After Roger had developed as a suspect, Biondi had made a point of calling Douglas County to let them know. The Bureau had always had a good relationship with Douglas County, and the turn in the investigation could impact not only on Steve Kibbe but on his entire department. At some point, they might have
media inquiries to deal with. The undersheriff he spoke with had called Biondi back to say they’d had a “discussion” with Detective Kibbe—“I just want you to know that Steve was told he’s going to be a cop or a brother.”

After a curt handshake, Kibbe showed Maulsby into his office and closed the door.

Maulsby saw the family resemblance in the casually attired man across from her. The cop brother was a slightly younger, shorter, huskier version of the killer brother.

“If my brother was a murder suspect,” Maulsby began, “I’d very much appreciate the detectives sitting down and telling me what they had. That’s why I’m here today.”

Kibbe nodded.

Their first conversation had been a week earlier, when Steve had telephoned Maulsby to offer his assistance. He made it clear in that conversation, however, that he had serious doubts about his brother’s guilt. “I’ve known Roger about forty-seven years longer than you have,” he said. “I think I know him a lot better than you do.” Roger had called him the week before on the “verge of
suicide,” Steve explained. “He and Harriet had been at each other’s throats since you served the search warrant. They were fired and evicted by Public Storage as a result of your investigation. Harriet had driven Roger up to a friend’s cabin outside
Placerville and left him there with no car and no phone.”