Some time after midnight in July of 1986, Stephanie Brown took some friends home who lived in an unfamiliar part of town. Make sure you go I-5 North. Don't go south or you'll get lost. To get back to her apartment, Brown was told to take Interstate 5 North, a major thoroughfare in California. I-5 north? Okay. Despite the directions, Stephanie Brown made the wrong turn. Bye-bye. It took both science and psychology to discover what happened next. A fisherman walking down this trail in a remote mountain area outside of Sacramento, California, discovered the semi-nude body of a young woman lying face down in a flooded irrigation ditch. Around her neck, a band of purple discoloration, the sign of ligature strangulation. It was a very isolated, desolate area next to a cornfield. And there were no houses or lights or civilization anywhere around. It was a very lonely spot to have been driven to. And certainly she was conscious during the drive. We don't know how long he toyed with her. We don't know how long he assaulted her, how long it was before she was killed. The autopsy found traces of semen, but the samples were too badly degraded for DNA testing. The victim was identified as 19-year-old Stephanie Brown, who worked as a teller in a Sacramento bank. Stephanie was a very sensitive, loving, caring daughter who wouldn't hurt anybody. Monday after work, she came by and did laundry. She called a couple of friends on the phone. Then when she was through, she gave us a kiss goodbye. and I just remember her walking out the family room, out the door, waving, you know, her hair in a ponytail, waving, bye, Mom, I love you. When police learned that Stephanie's hair was long and in a ponytail the day before she died, they realized that her killer had cut it. Ray Biondi headed Sacramento's homicide unit. First thought came to my mind is we're dealing with somebody with a very perverse fetish, cutting hair. And I had never seen this before in hundreds of other murder investigations. Did this person cut the hair and take it away as a trophy or a souvenir? We didn't really know. Brown's car was found 20 miles away on Interstate 5 and was headed in the opposite direction from her apartment. The car was full of gas and operational. Brown was probably lost and may have stopped to ask someone for directions. Just one month later, there was another incident along Interstate 5. 26-year-old Charmaine Sabra and her mother had been out to dinner and were heading home when their car broke down along a deserted stretch of Interstate 5. A man in a dark sports car stopped and offered help. Ladies having trouble with your car? Yes. I'll be happy to give you a ride, but I can only take one. This is only a two-seater. That was the last time her mother saw her. In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains outside of Sacramento, California, a hunter discovered the badly decomposed remains of a white female. The remains had been scattered by animals, but investigators recovered the skull, torso, and some clothing, which included a purple skirt, dark blouse, and a pair of alligator heel shoes. The clothes were similar to those worn by Charmaine Sabra, who disappeared without a trace after accepting a ride three months earlier on Interstate 5. Dental x-rays confirmed that the remains were those of Charmaine Sabra The cause of death was strangulation The side seam from Charmaine's blouse was cut and used as a ligature around her neck Along with a piece of yellow nylon cord Her pantyhose had been cut in two places and tied around her wrists There were cuts made to the victim slip and the shoulder straps of her bra Criminalist Jim Streeter analyzed the clothing from the crime scene I never seen clothes cutting like that I never seen any cutting like that Talking with other investigators they never seen any types of cutting like this Cuttings would be for some function in any other case that we had seen, but in this particular case it was so unusual that it became his calling card. The initial cutting is what he uses to arouse himself initially sexually and then enables him to complete and perform the rest of the offense. Like Stephanie Brown, Charmaine Sabra's body was found over 50 miles away from where her car broke down on Interstate 5. Charmaine's mother was not able to provide a detailed description of the driver since she did not see him clearly. All she could say was that he was a white male in his 40s with a large nose and pale skin. It's hard to imagine that he would take Charmaine, planning to kill her, knowing that he left his mother, her mother, as a witness behind. That makes no sense to me. Bruce Henderson described the sophistication of this serial killer in his book, Trace Evidence. He was very good at confounding the police. This killer didn't leave behind easy clues, and he took his victims great distances, and he left clean crime scenes, meaning no fingerprints or anything that could connect him to the crime or to the victim. Two weeks later, police were called to another homicide, 35 miles southeast of Sacramento. She was hogtied with her own tank top, a victim of lickature strangulation, wherein her arms were bent up behind her back and then the tank top was looped over her neck. Her halter top and socks had been cut in the same non-functional way as the other victims. Dental records identified the remains as 20-year-old Laura Hedick. Don't say. The last time anyone saw her was in an area frequented by prostitutes. Why don't you go with this guy for a little while? Laura was with her boyfriend and James Driggers. They needed money for drugs, and Driggers told police that Laura agreed to prostitution. Laura left with a customer in a white car. Driggers said he never saw her again. But Driggers took a lie detector test and failed. Is it the boyfriend or is it not the boyfriend? The first people you must eliminate are those all around the victim. Police were convinced that the murders were all related. But if Driggers had a hand in his girlfriend's murder, what was his connection to the other victims? A serial murderer was on the loose in Central California, at first abducting women along Interstate 5, and later prowling for prostitutes in downtown Sacramento. Police decoys dressed as prostitutes in an attempt to lure the killer into their trap, and they also posed as motorists in distress along Interstate 5. Despite these efforts, the murders continued. On Sunday, June 21, 1987, in the remote woods of Deer Creek, Amador County, a family on a hiking trip found blood on the trail. The victim was identified as 25-year-old Karen Finch, She was divorced and the mother of a two-year-old daughter. Her car was found near Interstate 5, fully operational. Her sandals were still in the car. If she walked barefoot, she hadn't planned to walk far. There was a piece of duct tape in her hair, which the light bulbs went on at the time thinking, this is what happened in Stephanie Brown's case. That's why her hair was cut. the killer used duct tape to gag his victims and always cut it off before leaving the scene he may have known that the sticky side of tape is a rich source of fingerprints but this time something went wrong Tom Finch probably fought back and when she did the killer used what he had in his hand the scissors to stab him The killer left the scene without removing all of the tape. Unfortunately, there were no fingerprints on the piece of tape he left behind. The bodies were found some distance from where he would have been able to park his vehicle. Some of these distances were too far that he would have carried them So we certain that they were made to walk They may have had their hands bound at that time A few weeks later police had yet another victim The new decomposed body of 17-year-old Darcy Frackenpole was found in a deserted area off Highway 50 near Lake Tahoe. The cause of death was strangulation. Her blouse was tied around her neck with a wood garrote. two pieces of rope were found near her clothing. The rope was made of nylon, and after checking with several rope suppliers, police discovered that it was the type of rope used in parachute cords. Cutting the victim's clothing was important to the killer for some reason, so important that he did this in all of his murders, so important he would carry a pair of scissors to every crime to carry out the ritual. I cried for all the victims. It was just so emotional after a year and a half of working on all this physical evidence, trying to link everyone together and trying to find the person that did this so that it wouldn't happen again and just be overwhelming at times. The killer was experienced. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he perfected his technique with every case. The only lead police had in their search for the serial killer was the way in which he carried out the murders. His signature characteristics included the rope and the clothes cutting. A few months later, an unrelated incident caught Homicide's attention. Deborah Guffey was a street prostitute in downtown Sacramento who told police an interesting story. Hey, you working tonight? When he parked the car, he turned violent, smashing Guffey's head into the dashboard and tried to handcuff him. Get him! Get him for me! Come back. Guffy managed to escape. A policeman was driving nearby, saw the altercation, and stopped to investigate. 48-year-old Roger Kibbe was charged with the assault. He was the manager of a public storage facility, married, and had a daughter from an earlier marriage. A background check on Roger Kibbe revealed an arrest 30 years earlier. at the age of 15, for stealing women's underwear off their clotheslines and cutting it in a random, non-functional way with a pair of his mother's scissors. Kibbe told police at the time he had a terrible relationship with his mother. Roger Kibbe was also a parachutist, another coincidence, since parachute rope had been found at one of the murder sites. Kibbe's brother was a homicide detective in Nevada. Another coincidence, since police suspected that the killer knew homicide investigative techniques. Roger Kibbe owned two different cars. One was similar to the car which picked up Charmaine Sabra. In the other, police found some rope with a garrot tied to the ends, a set of handcuffs and scissors. We knew who our killer was. It was Roger Kibbe. but we lacked evidence to actually file any murder charges against him. Criminalist Faye Springer is an expert in exchange or trace evidence that can link a suspect or victim to a crime scene. Springer poured over the thousands of hairs, fibers, and other materials found on the victim's clothing. She found two carpet fibers on Darcy Frackenpole's dress. They were blue, triangular in shape, made of nylon, and were manufactured by the DuPont company. When she compared the fibers to the carpet in Roger Kibbe's automobile, she discovered that they were the same color, size, shape, made of the same polymer, and dyed with the same chemicals. And when Springer looked closer, she saw something else on the fibers. I noticed when I was looking at the fibers microscopically that there were some contaminants on the surface. It was a football shaped particle that turned out later to be identified as a fungal spore. The same fungal spores were on the fibers from the floor mat of Kibbe car The human hair found on one of the victim dress was microscopically similar to hair taken from Roger Kibbe inner thigh When Springer turned her attention to the pantyhose used to tie Charmaine Sabra's wrists, she noticed something which had previously been overlooked. The benefit of being a woman criminalist and working sexual assault-type homicides is that we know that when the pantyhose come off, they come off inside out. Men just wouldn't know that unless they actually had pantyhose on. With the pantyhose turned the proper way, Springer discovered several small fibers on the back of the leg area. When Springer compared those fibers to the fibers on the seat of one of Roger Kibbe's automobiles, they were microscopically similar. Finally, Springer analyzed the pieces of rope found in Kibbe's car and in his storage shed. At first glance, it appeared to be identical to the rope found near Darcy Frackenpole's body. Both were made of white nylon with six fibers running through the cord and 32 threads per cord. But Faye Springer noticed something peculiar when she looked at the rope under the microscope. I noticed that there was red paint on the cordage and some black particles. Later, Kay Malsby said that she had some cordage from an assault case that Kibbe was involved in. She brought that out. I looked at it. I noticed the same particles were on that cordage. This was a very strong link to Roger Kibbe and Darcy Frackenpoe. But the size of the paint particles was tiny, about six microns, which is six millionths of a meter. With the scanning electron microscope, scientists performed an elemental analysis of the inorganic compounds of the paint. They found ten different elements in the paint mixture, common in the chemical formulation of red acrylic paint. but they found two additional elements in the paint which were not sodium and chlorine. These were contaminants in the air when the paint was sprayed near the rope. All three pieces of rope had the same red paint and the same contaminants. The rope found near Darcy Frackenpole's body, the rope found in Roger Kibbe's car and in Kibbe's storage shed, all were in the same area when someone was using a can of red acrylic spray paint. The cordage was basically the coup de grace of the people's case. It was extremely unique. Commonality was the red paint stains on each one of these cords at those three seams, which meant Roger Kibbe was at the seams. Roger Kibbe was charged with the murder of Darcy Frackenpole. On March 18, 1991, he was found guilty of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to 25 years to life. Roger is in prison for only one murder. There has to be another trial. These other families need to see some kind of reconciliation in court. The police and prosecution were unaware that Kibbe confessed to his wife shortly after his arrest. And I didn't know that he had murdered anybody until that night the police arranged for me to get in the backseat of the cruiser with him. And he told me that he had killed five people, excuse me, four. I asked him why. But when you're sobbing, I mean, we were sobbing. He said he didn't know. I came away from there just feeling and overcoming with the thought that this is not enough. My daughter is laying there and so are many, many other girls laying there. And this man, all he can say, what is the big fuss about? I killed a few girls. The horror that Darcy and the fear that Darcy Frankenpool must have felt before going. Stephanie Brown. How frightened she must have been. I'm so sorry.annah
