TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (42 page)

When Streeter finished, the meeting was thrown open to general comments. The tone of the room, Biondi observed, ran from mildly supportive that an active murder series was working to outright skepticism.

The biggest skeptic was the elected sheriff of
San Joaquin County, who, after Streeter’s presentation, had the temerity to ask: “How do we know these
cases are linked?” It was particularly ironic coming from Vito
Bertocchini’s top boss—Bertocchini, the first detective who suspected Roger
Kibbe of being a serial killer.

Hellooo, Mr. Sheriff, are we at the same meeting?
Biondi dearly wanted to respond.
Have you been listening for the last hour or doing the Sunday crossword?

Instead, Biondi coolly reiterated some of the factors just outlined by Streeter. “We can’t say there is a direct link of physical evidence at each scene,” he admitted. “We don’t have matching fingerprints, tire impressions, bullet casings. What we have is a combination of similarities, including, but not limited to, cutting of the victims’ clothes.”

Certain if he added his own “gut feeling” that a series was at work he’d be drummed out of the corps, he left it at that.

The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss Biondi’s suggestion that there be more press coverage—the most important reason being perhaps to pick up additional eyewitnesses and other information the public at large might have without realizing its importance—as well as some firm commitments from other agencies to help with the sweeping investigation.

From the beginning, Biondi sensed a resentment in the room directed
at him; like it was his fault they had to drive all this way and sit down for a couple of hours. And hey, it probably was.

The issue of added press coverage met with nearly total resistance, which dumbfounded Biondi because three of the murders—Brown, Sabrah, and the Jane Doe later identified as Lora
Heedick—had been publicized a year ago as part of a series, even though at the time they did not have evidence that Jane Doe’s clothes had been cut. He began to suspect the revolt had more to do with bruised egos than sound law enforcement. His department, and he personally, had been out in front of the cameras for the last news conference. If someone else wanted to carry the ball on the evening news, that was fine with him.

Biondi went quiet, letting his boss,
Sacramento County Sheriff
Glen Craig, who supported a joint press release on the series by all the agencies, run the show.

Some of the comments against going public:

• “We don’t need to because we aren’t sure about the cases being linked.”

• “We don’t have to tell the press anything. We can just wait and answer their inquiries as they come in.”

• “Our agency isn’t allowed to talk to the media.”

In the interest of reaching peace among the warring factions, Sheriff Craig worked out the structure of an agreement. Its centerpiece was the judgment that it was “premature” to go public with the seven linked cases at this time. However, if the press inquired as to any of the murders, certain information would be given out, including the fact that there were “similarities” in the cases, “but we will not discuss those similarities.” Also, it was decided that, should the media push individual departments for further information, each department could hold its own press conference and “discuss only their own cases.”

So much for asking for help from the top
, Biondi boiled inwardly. He was glad he’d decided beforehand not to talk about suspects, and had kept mum about Roger Kibbe.

From where Biondi sat, the brass, through its collective wisdom, had come up with an unbelievably stupid way to handle the series of murders that now counted seven victims.

Why was he not so terribly surprised?

Nineteen

W
ith 1987 coming to a close,
Judy
Frackenpohl knew deep down that her daughter was dead.

It had been four months since Darcie’s last phone call from Sacramento. As the acceptance of her daughter’s likely fate crept farther into her very being, Judy found the singularly most trying part was not knowing what had happened. Were her daughter’s remains lying somewhere as yet undiscovered? Or had she been found with no identity and did she lie unclaimed? What would they
do
with her?

Darcie’s pimp,
James Brown, had called the Frackenpohl residence in suburban Seattle a week or so after Judy had filed the
missing persons report. Darcie’s brother, Larry, was home alone at the time. Brown wanted to know if they’d heard from Darcie, and Larry said no. After the short conversation, Larry had hung up, then quickly picked up the phone to call his mother at work. Brown hadn’t yet been disconnected—he was whining to someone, “That bitch is probably hiding from me,” before the line went dead. His complaint, obviously unintended for their ears, made both Larry and Judy feel more confident that Brown had had nothing to do with Darcie’s disappearance.

Seattle Detective
Mike Hatch of King County’s new missing persons bureau wasn’t so sure about James Brown, even when Brown initiated a call to the detective three months after Darcie’s disappearance to find out whether there was anything new in the search for her. In truth, there was no search under way for Darcie—just a file that Hatch hadn’t opened in a month. When Brown said he was in Seattle, Hatch tried to solicit information about the last time he’d seen Darcie, but Brown said he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. He refused to give his whereabouts but
promised to come to Hatch’s office four days hence. He also consented to Hatch’s request to take a polygraph that day. When the day arrived, Brown was a no-show. Thirty minutes later, Hatch had a superior court subpoena issued in Brown’s name.

The first week of December, Hatch called the
Sacramento Police Department and asked for the records section. Since the city was Darcie’s last known location, he requested any arrests or contacts that the department had with her, but they came up empty-handed. He spoke with a
Sergeant Meadors in the homicide unit and gave him a full description of Darcie. The sergeant said there had been no homicide victims or Jane Does fitting her description within the city limits; he suggested Hatch call the
Sacramento County Coroner’s Office. Hatch did, speaking to coroner’s investigator
Laura Synhorst. Hatch asked if they knew of any unidentified female murder victims that fit Darcie’s description, adding that she was
missing the four ends of her fingers on her right hand. Synhorst said no. She took down all the other pertinent information, and promised to call if an unidentified female victim fitting that description came in.

A few minutes after he’d gotten off the phone to Sacramento, Hatch received a call from
Kim Quackenbush, a prostitute friend of Darcie’s from Seattle who said she’d been with her on the night Darcie disappeared in Sacramento. The last time she saw Darcie, Quackenbush reported, was around 9:00
P.M.
on August 24, 1987. They were both working on West Capital Avenue, a popular stroll area in West Sacramento. At the time, Darcie was wearing a sleeveless pink dress, pink pump heels, and a thin black chiffon jacket. Hatch asked Quackenbush if she thought Brown might have harmed Darcie or if she might have voluntarily left him. Quackenbush was positive neither had happened. Darcie’s disappearance was a shock to everyone, she said, Brown included—although within a few days he’d recruited a new blonde to whom he gave Darcie’s clothes.

On December 8, Hatch was having his teeth cleaned and his dentist happened to be adjacent to Darcie’s dentist. He had the receptionist go next door and retrieve Darcie’s dental records, which had been ready for him to pick up since September. The following day, he sent the dental charts to the
King County Medical Examiner’s Office. The first thing chief investigator
Bill Hagland of the medical examiner’s office did was to send a copy of the records to the
Washington State Police in Olympia for them to enter into the
National Crime Information Center’s missing persons system, to which many states—including California—contributed information about missing persons and unidentified dead on a voluntary, if somewhat delayed, basis. There was no hit in NCIC.

On Christmas Eve day,
Judy Frackenpohl received a surprise phone call from Detective Hatch.

“Have you heard from Darcie?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t.”

The question irritated Judy. When Hatch had previously told her that the “typical runaway” calls home during the holidays, she had responded that Darcie wasn’t a typical runaway because she called home “all the time.”
Had he not worked the case seriously
, Judy now wondered,
because he expected Darcie to call over the holidays?

“Well, in that case, since there haven’t been any new leads,” Hatch said, “I’m deactivating the case.”

“What does that mean?”

“We won’t be actively investigating it. Since your daughter apparently disappeared from Sacramento, I suggest you call and file a missing persons report with them.”

Judy saw red. “I asked you people
four months ago
if I should do that,” she said furiously. “I was told I had to file it here since Darcie lived here.”

The detective calmly offered to give her the number of the Sacramento Police Department.

“Merry fucking Christmas to you, asshole!” Judy Frackenpohl yelled into the receiver before slamming it down.

L
T
. R
AY
Biondi had a wild idea as to how to get some dialog going with Roger
Kibbe: send in a woman detective to visit him in jail.

In the process of persuading detective Kay
Maulsby that she should be the one, Biondi found himself answering her cautionary questions.

“You sure we can do this?” she asked. “He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to talk to us.”

“Then he’ll tell you to leave.”

Biondi’s hope was that
Kibbe would be less threatened by a lone woman and more willing to open up than he had been to other detectives who had spoken to him.

“Try to establish rapport,” he said. “Become his friend. If he is ever going to vent and come clean, be the person he’ll talk to. It’s lonely sitting in jail. Show him that you care enough to come see him.”

“Before or after I read him his rights?”

Biondi laughed. “Don’t worry about that. He can go back to his cell or tell you to leave if he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“What if he tells me something or even confesses? How can we ever use it, Ray?”

Now
that
was a good question.

A few years earlier, Biondi had been interviewing a guy about a murder. Funny thing was, he thought the guy’s wife had committed the nasty deed. But as the guy was going through his alibi he grew noticeably more nervous. Biondi decided to run a bluff. “Tell me how you killed him,” he asked, poker-faced. The guy broke down and confessed everything, explaining he’d thrown the murder weapon in a river. Biondi read the suspect his Miranda rights at that point, and had the guy repeat the whole story. The trial judge allowed the confession but a higher court ruled that everything Biondi had learned in the interview was the “fruit of a poisoned tree.” Without other evidence to tie him to the crime, the guy walked.

“If Roger confesses, it would be tainted,” Biondi admitted. “Let him know that nothing he has said up to that point can be used against him. Then read him his rights and start over. Try to keep him talking. It’s up to the D.A. to fight legal issues. Our job is to solve the case.”

“You’re thinking we don’t have anything to lose?”

“Right.”

“In that case, I don’t have a thing to fear.”

Biondi cocked his head, looking at her quizzically.

“All his victims were so busty.”

It was a twenty-five-minute drive from Sacramento through long miles of green fields alive with wild flowers to
Rio Consumnes Correctional Center, the branch jail that housed 1,200 sentenced prisoners doing county time. The first view of the huge facility was a tall guard tower that jutted up from the middle of the complex and was visible for miles.

At the main entrance, she signed in as an official visitor under the date, December 30, 1987, and gave her badge number. She didn’t have her 9mm service revolver to turn in because it was where she always kept it: locked safely in the trunk of her work car. She waited in a deserted hallway for Roger Kibbe to arrive from “B barracks.”

She had purposefully not given Kibbe any notice, and wondered if he would even leave his cell when he was told who was here to see him. But she soon saw him sauntering down the hall, next to his escort. When they reached her, Maulsby identified herself. She asked him if he remembered her from the day the search warrant had been served at Public Storage.

“Yeah.”

“I’d like to talk to you, Roger.”

Kibbe shrugged.

The escort officer unlocked the door to a private conference room, and they all entered.

“You can uncuff him,”
Maulsby said.

Kibbe’s strong hands, manacled in front, came free.

The escort looked at Maulsby.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You can leave.”

He did, swinging the door shut behind him. A few seconds later, the bolt lock clicked in place.

They sat down in metal chairs facing each other.

“I went to Tahoe last month and talked to Steve,” Maulsby said.

She had Roger’s attention.

“We spoke again over the phone a couple of weeks ago. Steve is concerned about you.”

“I know.”

“I promised him I’d check with you to see how you’re doing. He’s concerned that you might need some psychological help. Are you having any problems here?”

“No, everything’s fine. I just don’t know if they’re going to leave me in the same barracks.”

“Would you like to stay where you are?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I’ll try to arrange that.”

They discussed general conditions at the jail—Kibbe liked the food but thought it unfair the way the TV room was run—and segued into some of his personal background. It wasn’t anything revealing, just droplets of information, but at least he was talking. When he told her about his
childhood troubles in school, she empathized. When he spoke about how much he enjoyed woodworking, she smiled.