A convicted serial killer and rapist was just handed an epic street justice.
Serial killer Roger Reece Kibbe, the so-called I-5 Strangler, who 12 years ago sat down with San Joaquin County officials and in a raspy voice detailed his horrific crimes, has been slain in his prison cell some 40 miles from Stockton, state correctional officials said.
Kibbe is believed to have strangled and raped at least seven women and was serving multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.
A correctional officer doing rounds spotted Kibbe, 81, unresponsive in his cell at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione shortly after midnight Sunday, officials said. They said they are investigating his death as a homicide.
His cellmate was standing nearby, officials said. Kibbe was taken to a prison healthcare facility and pronounced dead less than 45 minutes later. Amador County’s chief coroner, sheriff’s Sgt. P. Weart, said he couldn’t give details on the death, citing the ongoing investigation.
Kibbe’s cellmate Jason B. has since been suspected of killing the 81-year-old man. Rightly so, as it turned out now. In a five-page letter to the Californian newspaper “The Mercury News,” B. confessed to the crime and claimed that he had “primed” his victim for murder for months.
Back in 2009, Kibbe had pleaded guilty to six more murders that go back to 1977 – DNA evidence had connected him to the deaths. On November 5, 2009, he was sentenced to “serve life without the possibility of parole for two counts of first-degree murder.” For the 1991 murder, he was sentenced in El Dorado County “to serve a consecutive life-with-parole sentence for first-degree murder.”
Police said they continued their efforts in trying to prove that he was responsible for more deaths. Hoping Kibbe would reveal the whereabouts of more victims, detectives would secretly take him on multiple field trips. Vito Bertocchini, a retired San Joaquin County sheriff’s detective and district attorney’s investigator, told The Sacramento Bee how they would often buy Kibbe a McMuffin and a Coke for breakfast; a hamburger, fries, and Coke, for lunch to get more answers out of him.
Kibbe’s ways of killing were brutal. He had strangled one of his victims with a tank top and had choked Frackenpohl to death with a “cord with dowels at both ends.” The weapon had been found in the killer’s locker room.
Reportedly, Kibbe also used to leave signatures after his crimes. “Random cuts in his victims’ clothing with a pair of scissors.” As per the book ‘Trace Evidence: The Hunt for an Elusive Serial Killer,’ when the killer was younger, he used to “cut up garments he stole with a pair of his mother’s scissors.” Detectives had also revealed that he “sometimes bound himself with the garments.”
Kibbe was finally captured after a potential victim escaped and authorities recovered a garrote made from dowels and parachute cord along with scissors and other items, according to AP. However, he did not admit to any killings beyond those he was charged with. Bertocchini, who never stopped trying to elicit another confession from Kibbe, called the killer’s death by strangulation “some fitting justice.”
“I don’t wish ill on anyone,” Bertocchini told The Sacramento Bee. “But I hope he remembered every one of his victims while he was being killed.”
Watch the video report below for more details:
Source: AWM
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