"To See If It Could Be Done": Roger Kibbe Questioned by Dr. Park Dietz, 2009
The day after his plea agreement for six more murders, Roger Kibbe sat down with forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz and described his first killing, his childhood and his methods, while denying that he cut Stephanie Brown's skirt.
- Subject
- Roger Kibbe
- Recorded
- about September 29, 2009
- Runtime
- 43:50
Content warning: Kibbe describes the abduction, rape and strangling of young women, and rates a rape as a sexual experience.
The Interview
In 2009, the day after Roger Kibbe reached a plea agreement in which he admitted six more murders, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz interviewed him at the San Joaquin County Courthouse in Northern California. Speaking with Dietz was a condition of the plea agreement, and Dietz says the district attorney's office asked him to conduct the interview. It was filmed, and the footage became the MSNBC special *Profiling Evil: Confessions of the I-5 Strangler*, broadcast in November 2012. Dietz tells Kibbe at the start that nothing he says will be confidential: "I'm not here to help you. I'm not here to hurt you either."
Historical Context
Kibbe, a former skydiver from San Diego County, was convicted in 1991 of the 1987 murder of Darcie Frackenpohl, 17, whose body was found near South Lake Tahoe. On September 29, 2009, to avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to six more murders: Lou Ellen Burleigh in 1977, and Lora Heedick, Barbara Scott, Stephanie Brown, Charmaine Sabrah and Katherine Kelly Quinones (also identified as Traci Gobel) in 1986. On November 5, 2009, he was sentenced to life without parole. According to the programme, police gave him the name "I-5 Strangler" because of where he left the bodies of his first three victims, near Interstate 5.
Circumstances of the Interview
The plea agreement required Kibbe to talk to investigators and to Dietz, and to help find the remains of Lou Ellen Burleigh, 21, described in the programme as a secretarial student, who disappeared in 1977 after going to what she believed was a job interview. Her body had never been found. The day after the interview, investigators drove Kibbe to the hills around Lake Berryessa to look for the place. The programme combines the interview with Dietz's comments to camera, narration, interviews with investigators, and film of that search.
What the Interview Covers
Kibbe describes how he lured Burleigh with a fake job interview, overpowered her in his van, raped her and strangled her near Lake Berryessa; he says he killed her "to see if it could be done". He speaks of a childhood he describes as neglectful and violent, of being unable to read and write at school, and of his marriage. He denies cutting the clothing of Stephanie Brown, though investigators say clothes were cut in several cases. He says he does not know why he killed, insists he committed seven murders and no more, and tells Dietz what he thought of while strangling a victim. At the end Dietz gives him his own assessment of his motives, and Kibbe largely agrees.
What Makes the Recording Significant
The interview was a condition of a plea agreement, which is unusual for a broadcast confession. It records Kibbe's own account of his first murder, at length, and Dietz's direct questioning about sexual sadism. The programme also shows how the case ended: in March 2011, using information from the interview and other sources, Napa County deputy Mike Bartlett found a bone in a creek below the area Kibbe described, and DNA testing later confirmed that it was Lou Ellen Burleigh's.
Archival Importance
Kibbe was killed by his cellmate at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, on February 28, 2021, so no further account from him is possible. This recording preserves, at length and in his own words, his account of his first murder and his answers to a psychiatrist about why he killed, together with the search that eventually led to Lou Ellen Burleigh's remains.
Important Caveats
Everything Kibbe says about his motives, his state of mind and the clothes-cutting is his own account; his denials of cutting clothes conflict with the crime-scene evidence described by investigators. The narrator gives his year of birth as 1941 (records give 1939) and calls Stephanie Brown his "second victim" (she was one of several victims in 1986). The programme is an edited documentary, so the interview appears in excerpts, and some passages are repeated. Do not quote the line "I felt better later" (12:32): the captions read "I felt bad later", and the word is unresolved.
Dr. Park Dietz: I'm Dr. Park Dietz, and I'm about to meet a man that I've never met before. He's already serving time for one homicide, but yesterday he reached a plea agreement in which he admitted to killing six other women. Part of his plea agreement was that he had to tell the truth, and the district attorney's office asked me to conduct this interview.
Narrator: A killer confessing to his crimes and a forensic psychiatrist delving deep inside the mind of a convicted murderer.
Vito Bertocchini: They've granted us access to videotape it. This was an effort to try to find out as much as we could about this man, his life, his crimes. He's the one that set the limits on how far he'd go.
Narrator: A man known as the I-5 Strangler agrees to talk about his crimes and to lead police on a search of his killing fields to avoid the death penalty.
Dr. Park Dietz: Does it make you uncomfortable to have the cameras here?
Roger Kibbe: No.
Dr. Park Dietz: At what point in the process of taking the girl out do you know she's going to die?
Roger Kibbe: I haven't figured that one out yet. I don't know if it's halfway down the road or while I'm doing it. I don't know why I picked these seven out of all that I picked up and let loose.
Dr. Park Dietz: Do you think you understood why you did your crimes?
Roger Kibbe: No.
Dr. Park Dietz: Are you curious?
Roger Kibbe: Oh, yeah. I don't know why I did them.
Dr. Park Dietz: Would you like to know?
Roger Kibbe: Throw it out there. [Music]
Narrator: At the San Joaquin County Courthouse in Northern California, a killer arrives for questioning. However, this is not an ordinary interrogation. This murderer is about to take part in an extraordinary interview. The man's name is Roger Kibbe, better known as the I-5 Strangler. From 1977 until his capture in 1988, Kibbe terrorized the northern part of California with his killing spree. Police say he was given the nickname the I-5 Strangler because of where he disposed of the bodies of his first three victims. Though he doesn't look intimidating now, investigators say at one time this man was capable of overpowering women, raping them, and killing them at will.
Unidentified: This is Dr. Dietz here, [unclear: "man, I told you about" / "and I told you about the coffee"].
Dr. Park Dietz: Hi, Mr. Kibbe.
Roger Kibbe: Hi.
Dr. Park Dietz: Can you shake hands from where you are? Um, would it be all right to remove the handcuffs?
Unidentified: Sure.
Dr. Park Dietz: Is that OK by you?
Narrator: Kibbe admits to killing seven women. The police say it's more. Kibbe is willing to talk to a forensic psychiatrist if he can avoid the death penalty. Despite a wealth of evidence against him, authorities are willing to offer Kibbe a plea deal. At 70 years of age, it is unlikely Kibbe will be executed before he dies of natural causes. And the plea deal ensures he will cooperate with authorities as they attempt to connect him to unsolved homicides.
Dr. Park Dietz: Um, Mr. Kibbe, before we start, I want to mention a couple of things to you so that it's all out on the table for you. One is that I think you know that I'm a forensic psychiatrist.
Vito Bertocchini: In 2009, Roger Kibbe pled guilty to six additional murders, where he was given a sentence of life without possibility of parole. Part of the deal agreement with Kibbe is that he would speak with us and also agree to speak with Park Dietz about the crimes that he had committed.
Dr. Park Dietz: I've never been involved in a case where we filmed a thing such as this, and I know you haven't either, so we're exploring new territory here. But part of what I want to make sure you understand, I would tell anyone I'm interviewing: there's no confidentiality, which is not the way it would be if you were seeing a doctor who was trying to help you. So I'm not here to help you. I'm not here to hurt you either. I'm here to ask questions, understand, and try to shed some light on things. But that could end up helping you or hurting you.
Narrator: For more than three decades, Park Dietz has interviewed some of the nation's most notorious killers, such as Joel Rifkin and Jeffrey Dahmer. His job is to get inside their heads, understand why they did what they did, so acts like theirs can be prevented in the future.
Dr. Park Dietz: My goals in the interview were both to assist law enforcement in answering some questions, uh, and also to be able to understand his motivations and whether there were any psychiatric disturbances that played a part.
Narrator: Police and Dr. Dietz are interested in what's believed to be Kibbe's first murder. It happened in 1977. Kibbe admits to killing 21-year-old Lou Ellen Burleigh, but despite the repeated efforts of investigators, her remains have never been found. Authorities hope that after this interview Kibbe will be convinced to lead them to her final resting place.
Dr. Park Dietz: There was a mystery that hadn't been solved, which was: where were Ms. Burleigh's remains? He had cooperated with investigators in trying to locate the bodies and remains of other victims, but in her case, despite his efforts to let them know where she was, she had never been found.
Narrator: Lou Ellen Burleigh was a secretarial student when Roger Kibbe tricked her into meeting him for a job interview.
Dr. Park Dietz: If I understand correctly, Ms. Burleigh was your first homicide, in 1977.
Roger Kibbe: '77, first one.
Dr. Park Dietz: Start at the beginning of what was going on in your life that week and that day and how this came about.
Roger Kibbe: Curiosity got me. I called the college in Walnut Creek and told the director that I was [unclear: "moving" / "Ming"] a company, makeup and all that crap. We got a warehouse over here, and I would like to find somebody who could be office manager. And she wanted to know how many I wanted to look at. I said, one right now. I parked behind a theater at that time. She showed up and got out of her car and got in my van, and we talked for a while. I told her I forgot my paperwork and all this other stuff. Can I see you tomorrow? Well, that's when I should have stopped, right there. I kept going.
Narrator: For Park Dietz, this is a key moment to understand. Why did Kibbe keep going? What was his thinking that allowed him to follow through? To get answers, Dr. Dietz must ask the right questions in the right order.
Dr. Park Dietz: Now, when you met her the first time, this girl, what were you thinking you might do?
Roger Kibbe: I might have been thinking, can I get away with this?
Dr. Park Dietz: And then, get away with what?
Roger Kibbe: Get away with her.
Dr. Park Dietz: Well, what were you going to do? Were you going to rape her?
Roger Kibbe: Uh, have sex with her, yeah. Kidnap her, rape her, have sex, kill her.
Dr. Park Dietz: So from the beginning, you were thinking about killing her?
Roger Kibbe: No. No, that never played into my mind. Not until the second day.
Dr. Park Dietz: On the first day, the idea was what? Get a girlfriend? Date her? Rape her?
Roger Kibbe: I don't know.
Dr. Park Dietz: Kidnap her?
Roger Kibbe: Maybe kidnap her, rape her. I never thought about killing. I don't believe that ever entered my mind until I had her down on the floor. She showed up on a Sunday, I believe, and got into the van, and we started talking. And I looked around and I told her, oh, there's my trucks now. She turned and looked. I reached up and grabbed a handful of hair on her head and pulled her down on the floor. We wrestled for a while until she pooped out, tied her up, and I took off. Where I was going, I had no idea.
Narrator: Before his killing spree, Roger Kibbe was an avid skydiver with more than 4,000 jumps. Once he began killing, he used parachute cords to choke several of his victims.
Dr. Park Dietz: One of the interesting things about Kibbe's background is his experience as a skydiver. What he no doubt discovered was that he could get a rush from jumping out of a plane. The fundamental biological difference between people who are psychopaths and those who aren't is that psychopaths don't experience the normal level of anxiety as something scary is about to happen. But once the scary things happen, they have a sudden rush of sensation, which is quite unfamiliar to them. And so it can become highly addictive to keep doing the thing that suddenly evokes an emotion that's generally absent.
Dr. Park Dietz: So the position you had her in, [unclear: "tied" / "to tire"], was face down, at which point you tied her wrists together behind her back using the parachute cord, and then you rotated her body so that her face is toward the rear of the van?
Roger Kibbe: No, let me back up. What I stupidly did, I got on the freeway to go back over the Martinez Bridge, and it hit me: it's a toll. So to get her to shut up, as I pulled out a dollar bill, I took the knife out and I put it to the back of her neck. I said, don't scream. [unclear: "I'm coming down on this"].
Narrator: Coming up: Park Dietz discovers just how detached Roger Kibbe is from the act of murder.
Dr. Park Dietz: You happen to remember what the first thing was you did when you got home?
Roger Kibbe: Probably went to bed.
Narrator: As part of a plea deal, convicted killer Roger Kibbe, also known as the I-5 Strangler, has agreed to tell forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz the truth about his crimes. He continues to tell how he killed his first victim, 21-year-old Lou Ellen Burleigh.
Roger Kibbe: She was complaining that, uh, the ropes were too tight. I pulled over, loosened them up, and kept on driving. Where I was going, I had no clue. I could have went straight, right, left, whatever, to find a place. I went right back up to Berryessa, where I knew where to go. I knew how to get there. And that's where it happened.
Narrator: The land surrounding Lake Berryessa is rugged, unforgiving terrain.
Dr. Park Dietz: What do you do? You put the van in park and...
Roger Kibbe: I parked it on a flat area.
Dr. Park Dietz: Uh-huh. You pulled the panties off, or did you cut them off?
Roger Kibbe: No, I didn't cut the panties off. I cut the bra off. She got dressed, turned around, and went over a little hill. And I followed this dirt road all the way down to the bottom of the canyon.
Dr. Park Dietz: You're driving, you say?
Roger Kibbe: No, no, walking.
Dr. Park Dietz: Walking?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah. [unclear: "Another" / "Little"] dirt road. It has a horseshoe shape in it. And right there, it's like a little canyon that goes up the hill. It's full of boulders, big boulders. And that's where she is today.
Dr. Park Dietz: And then what happens when you're standing out there?
Roger Kibbe: Um, I strangled her.
Dr. Park Dietz: How'd you feel about killing her?
Roger Kibbe: I don't know. First time I ever did it.
Dr. Park Dietz: Yeah, so I'm asking.
Roger Kibbe: I don't know. I felt [unclear: "bad" / "better"] later. I did it. Thinking about it. But while it was happening, blank mind. Don't think of anything. It's like a fog.
Dr. Park Dietz: Was there any pleasure in the killing itself?
Roger Kibbe: No. None whatsoever.
Dr. Park Dietz: Curiosity?
Roger Kibbe: Maybe. It was an act that should never have happened. But I was too far into it. What do you do?
Dr. Park Dietz: I think the truth must be that at the time he had abducted her, had already raped her, there was no turning back. At that point, his decision is: which is more important, my continuing freedom, or whether she dies?
Dr. Park Dietz: Would you regard that as a rape?
Roger Kibbe: Oh, yeah. Yeah, naturally.
Dr. Park Dietz: And would that be the first rape you ever committed?
Roger Kibbe: Right.
Dr. Park Dietz: How'd you feel about the rape part of it?
Roger Kibbe: How does anybody feel? Good or bad? I don't know.
Dr. Park Dietz: Well, some people like it, and they keep doing it because it feels good. Did you like it?
Roger Kibbe: I don't think so. Because I knew what I was doing was wrong. And if it's wrong, you can't [unclear: "make it" / "I could"].
Dr. Park Dietz: A lot of people like doing things they know are wrong.
Roger Kibbe: Yeah. [unclear: "I'm what I'm" / "I'm what the"]...
Dr. Park Dietz: The general theme of Roger Kibbe and other sexually sadistic psychopathic serial killers, because that's the category he's in, is first, an unusual sexual desire. To a man who is sexually sadistic, the things that are sexiest, that are the turn-on, are control over the partner, the ability to have the partner do as he wishes, the ability to inflict pain or humiliation or suffering, and ultimately, the ability to control whether she lives or dies.
Dr. Park Dietz: If you had to rate that as a sexual experience from one to 10, where 10's the best, how's it go?
Roger Kibbe: Probably an eight.
Dr. Park Dietz: An eight?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah, because it's a forced act.
Dr. Park Dietz: I understand she's forced to do it. I want to understand how that influences the rating.
Roger Kibbe: It takes two people to cooperate and tangle.
Dr. Park Dietz: Uh-huh.
Roger Kibbe: That's a 10. Anything below that, below eight, almost has to be on her part. I got a headache, I don't want to do it.
Dr. Park Dietz: So would having sex with this kidnapping victim be the equivalent of pushing your wife into having sex with you, even though she has a headache and says she doesn't want to?
Roger Kibbe: Right.
Dr. Park Dietz: That's about the quality of the sex for you?
Roger Kibbe: Not very good for her, probably good for me.
Dr. Park Dietz: When they asked you why you killed Lou Ellen Burleigh, your first murder victim, you said it was just to see if it could be done.
Roger Kibbe: Yeah.
Dr. Park Dietz: Yeah, what's that mean?
Roger Kibbe: You make a plan, see if you can carry it out, see if it can be done, that's all. It's like stacking bricks, you know.
Dr. Park Dietz: There are a lot of different plans that a man could decide to make, to see if he can do it.
Roger Kibbe: Yeah.
Dr. Park Dietz: Could be, can I get a job and hold it for six months? Can I make my wife happy for a week? Can I make myself save money?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah.
Dr. Park Dietz: Can I abduct and murder a woman?
Roger Kibbe: Huh?
Dr. Park Dietz: Where does that fit in with the plans a man might make?
Roger Kibbe: I don't know why I did what I did. To see if it could be done. I've said that before.
Dr. Park Dietz: Do you see it as a challenge?
Roger Kibbe: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Park Dietz: So you're giving the answer like, why do you climb Mount Everest? Because it's there.
Narrator: Coming up: investigators take Roger Kibbe to where he says he killed Lou Ellen Burleigh, in hopes they can find her remains more than 30 years after her death.
Roger Kibbe: But what I'm mostly concerned about is that cutaway hill. That's my key.
Narrator: Inside the San Joaquin County, California, courthouse, an extraordinary interview is taking place. Part of convicted murderer Roger Kibbe's plea deal calls for him to sit down with renowned forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz for a tell-all confession, in hopes that Kibbe will admit to more than just the murders cops know about.
Unidentified: Like [unclear: "he" / "you"] said, I think he's keeping [unclear: "because" / "'cause"] we might find other victims.
Narrator: One of the interested parties is Detective Vito Bertocchini, who has been working the Roger Kibbe case for over 10 years.
Vito Bertocchini: When we had done our background on Roger, we found that he had taken a polygraph in regards to one of the crimes he had done down in San Diego. And the polygrapher described Kibbe at that time as being potentially one of the world's most dangerous men ever encountered. And he said the reason that was is because Roger Kibbe had such a hatred for women.
Narrator: Roger Reece Kibbe was born in 1941 and grew up in the National City Navy projects outside San Diego. Kibbe tells investigators that his father, now deceased, was a naval officer who was rarely home, and that as a young boy he was neglected by his mother, a woman he refers to as his dad's wife.
Roger Kibbe: She wasn't a good mother. I don't call her that. Dad served 21 years in the Navy. Left me and my two brothers home with his wife. I don't call her the M-word. I don't have one. Uh, Dad would come home from Navy base late at night and, two, three years old, find me in the garden in a pair of diapers. Why I'm out there, I don't know.
Dr. Park Dietz: He recognized that she was never good to him, wasn't warm, didn't take care of him, beat him, abused him, neglected him. And that, of course, is a source of his hostility toward women.
Roger Kibbe: Going through elementary school, couldn't read or write. Going through junior high, couldn't read or write. In the middle of the senior year, I was asked to leave school because I couldn't read and write. Dad went to the principal, and he was told that we just keep pushing them along, and eventually they get it. Well, eventually never got around to me.
Dr. Park Dietz: What else do you remember about the way your mom treated you?
Roger Kibbe: Always yelling. What did I do? There's been times when I've even tried to get closer to her, because maybe I needed her and I wasn't getting her. No more lunch at school, no money to eat at the cafeteria. I told him, if you ever find my yearbooks, I'm wearing T-shirts, not regular dress shirts. It was just bad all the way through.
Dr. Park Dietz: Well, I do want to try to understand about why your mom would neglect you so, because you seem to think that's important, and it sounds important to me, too.
Roger Kibbe: I call it, uh, pretending to be a housewife.
Dr. Park Dietz: Did she give you any serious beatings?
Roger Kibbe: I think I was beaten several times. Uh, I can remember one Christmas, I got up and took the canister of flour and sugar and dumped it on the living room rug, and got my little car from underneath the tree and making roads through it. I got beat pretty good for that. I got beat for not being home on time.
Dr. Park Dietz: Did you have any friends as a child?
Roger Kibbe: I basically was a loner. I stayed to myself. In grade school, I started stuttering real bad. I'd open my mouth and nothing would come out. And for about two years I never said more than one word, because it was that bad. I was [unclear: "basically a loner" / "a basically owner" / "a Michigan owner"] all through life.
Narrator: Kibbe says it was during the early 1970s that he married his second wife, Harriet. His failed first marriage from years ago was long over. Now in his early 30s, Kibbe works at a gas station and then manages a furniture store that eventually fails. Kibbe tells investigators it doesn't take long for he and Harriet to begin arguing, which drives Kibbe deeper into his killing rage. A monster in the outside world, he manages to keep his murderous actions a secret from his wife during their entire marriage.
Roger Kibbe: I had so many knives in my back because of her. She didn't cook. No breakfast, no lunch. One or two dinners I can remember. My God, I married my mother all over again. I would bring my checks home and stupidly give to her. I needed money for gas. I needed money to eat on. It wasn't there. I got pissed off at her several times, almost beat her.
Dr. Park Dietz: What would a perfect wife be like, if you could design one to your specs?
Roger Kibbe: I don't think there is a perfect wife.
Narrator: Besides trying to understand Kibbe's past, Dietz is also here to try and gather important information about how he killed [unclear: "the other" / "NE"].
Unidentified: [unclear: "shoes found out on the way bottom"]. So is he saying he [unclear: "threw around" / "threw her down"]? He didn't, he drug her down in here?
Narrator: Police say they have dozens of open cases that closely resemble the Kibbe murders. If Dietz can get Kibbe to admit certain things about murders he claims to have committed, he may well be responsible for other unsolved cases.
Dr. Park Dietz: Can we talk about Stephanie Brown now?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah.
Narrator: Kibbe's second victim, Stephanie Brown, was a 19-year-old student. This time Kibbe says his ruse was pretending to have car trouble when Brown stopped to help him on the side of the highway. Police are especially interested in why Stephanie Brown, like many of Kibbe's other victims, had clothes cut from her body, something Kibbe refuses to admit doing.
Dr. Park Dietz: You said that the claim in the records that her skirt was cut...
Roger Kibbe: I was told her skirt was cut, and they told me I cut it, and I told them, you're full of beans. I never cut it. Didn't have to. I told her to take all her clothes off. She took all her clothes off, all in one piece. She was sitting there. I untied her. I told her, take your shoes off, put them in the next seat. Take your skirt off. Everything she took off, I told her to take off. They were never cut. Never.
Narrator: Though Kibbe is quick to deny cutting the clothes of his victims, the evidence at the crime scenes tells a very different story, one that Park Dietz says fits with Kibbe's psychological profile.
Dr. Park Dietz: To cut the clothing can provide gratification to the offender without injuring the victim. So in a sense, then, cutting clothing is a kinder, gentler means of exercising the sadistic impulse.
Roger Kibbe: I had told her to put her hair in a ponytail. I cut, I cut the ponytail off. Is that a sign that I'm pissed off at my dad's wife? Am I getting even with somebody? I don't know. I tossed her clothes, some of them, in the canal. They found the scissors in the canal. They found the skirt. They said it was cut, in the canal. More cop lies. I never cut that skirt. Somebody else had to do it.
Vito Bertocchini: When Roger was 15, 16 years of age, he was going to the clotheslines and stealing women's clothing, and he was bringing them back home and cutting them at that time. He will sit there and tell us about the rape that he committed on the women, and he will sit there and tell us about the strangulation without any problem. When it came time for the clothes cutting, he would back off. In his mind, strangling and raping, that's OK, people do that, but cutting clothes is very strange.
Roger Kibbe: She's the only girl that I remember the name, Stephanie Brown. I don't remember the others. Why do I remember her? I don't know. She was a bank teller. Her and her girlfriend just bought a house.
Dr. Park Dietz: You learned all that from her?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah, she told me a little bit. And, uh, I did my deed. I strangled her and went home. It keeps getting easier and easier and easier to do it.
Dr. Park Dietz: What gets easier?
Roger Kibbe: Killing.
Narrator: Coming up: Park Dietz delves deeper into the mind of a killer.
Dr. Park Dietz: At what point in the process of taking a girl out do you know she's going to die? [Music]
Narrator: Roger Kibbe, otherwise known as the I-5 Strangler, continues to tell Dr. Park Dietz everything about the murders he's committed.
Dr. Park Dietz: When did you cut it?
Roger Kibbe: I usually took, uh, pieces that I had.
Narrator: It's a grueling and at times horrific process.
Unidentified: How about this fellow?
Roger Kibbe: No. That's not [unclear: "you" / "me"]. [unclear: "Why does he got a nick of his ear" / "I just got a nick in this here"], like I do, the right ear. I don't recognize it.
Narrator: And part of a plea agreement in which Kibbe agrees to tell the truth about his crimes to avoid the death penalty, prosecutors want Kibbe to confess so that victims' families learn the truth, while giving Kibbe a chance to open up about unsolved cases.
Dr. Park Dietz: You understand that this is a time-limited opportunity to confess to any of them without any legal risk.
Roger Kibbe: Right. And I told the officer, I'm not going to confess to something I didn't do. I can't do that.
Dr. Park Dietz: And nobody wants you to do that.
Roger Kibbe: I can't do that.
Dr. Park Dietz: But we would like you to confess to what you really did do.
Roger Kibbe: Yeah, and I've already done that.
Dr. Park Dietz: And you haven't got any others?
Roger Kibbe: No others. I can stand on seven, and that's it. Whether you want to believe me or not.
Dr. Park Dietz: At what point in the process of taking the girl out do you know she's going to die?
Roger Kibbe: I haven't figured that one out yet, 'cause I don't know why. I don't know if it's right now, halfway down the road, or while I'm doing it. I don't know why I picked these seven out of all that I picked up and let loose.
Dr. Park Dietz: Were there any occasions on which the strangulation itself was a turn-on for you?
Roger Kibbe: There's been times when I sat and thought about it, and I come up with the idea that while I was doing it, my mind was a blank. Someone took my mind. I would look off in another direction, look up at the stars, if they were [unclear: "ready" / "there"]. That one in Berryessa, up on the hill: when I was doing her, I looked up and, uh, saw the Big Dipper. I just stared at the Big Dipper while I had my hands around her throat. I don't know how long it takes. To me, it felt like it just took a few minutes. I've had people tell me that it takes much longer than that.
Vito Bertocchini: In Roger's mind, strangulation was a kinder and gentler way to kill somebody. I think it was a power trip, knowing that he had in his hands the control of their life. He did tell stories where he had strangled the women with his hands. He could feel the vocal cords inside their throat, and he could just squeeze and just feel the life go out of them.
Dr. Park Dietz: How many nights did you go look for a victim and find nobody?
Roger Kibbe: Two, three nights, maybe.
Dr. Park Dietz: So not a lot?
Roger Kibbe: Not a lot, no.
Dr. Park Dietz: Usually, if you wanted one, you found one?
Roger Kibbe: I'm going to say 50-50. A lot of nights we didn't find anything. They're out there, but not what I wanted. Other nights, they stick out like a sore thumb. They're willing to get into a car. That's their mistake.
Dr. Park Dietz: Anything she could have done to avoid being pulled into the car in the first place?
Roger Kibbe: Kept on driving. Kept on driving until you got off the freeway where there were stores around. Way at the end, uh, Highway 12, where there's lights, where there's people. Stop at a gas station, get directions, get back on the freeway, go home.
Dr. Park Dietz: And if someone did make the mistake of pulling over, maybe even to be a good Samaritan, to a motorist who's broken down, how can she avoid being dragged into a car by the likes of you?
Roger Kibbe: Not good. Not good. Not good at all.
Vito Bertocchini: What people should realize is that Kibbe is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more Kibbes out there. Um, when we did our investigation, we were flooded with hundreds of possible leads in this case. Some of these people are actually predators that are out there driving the roads among us, who live right among us. Kibbe made a comment that there was never a girl that was going to get away with him once he decided to take her. So, um, if anything else, be wary. Hopefully you're never in that situation. But I instructed my wife and my daughter: fight like hell. Because once he has you in that car, they were done.
Narrator: Coming up: the mystery of where Lou Ellen Burleigh was killed is finally solved.
Mike Bartlett: It was a miracle. I think [unclear: "I'd go for the needle in the haystack" / "it was the needle in the haystack"].
Narrator: The day after his court-decreed interview with Park Dietz, Roger Kibbe is allowed out of his cell once again. Investigators are hoping he will be able to find the spot where he killed Lou Ellen Burleigh in the rural mountains surrounding Lake Berryessa.
Investigator: We drove to this pullout along Highway 128, and on the trunk of my car I showed him the different aerial photos: what they looked like in 1977, what they looked like in '89. And then, look, you could look at it and see how the area had changed.
Roger Kibbe: So it went like, it went this way, went this, like this way, it went this way, and then...
Investigator: But you could have hit it with a rock?
Roger Kibbe: Oh, yeah. From... And you look down on [unclear: "the hallway" / "it"].
Investigator: Okay. You described that you had sex in the van...
Roger Kibbe: Right.
Investigator: ...and then you walked up over the top of a hill...
Roger Kibbe: Right.
Investigator: ...and then down.
Roger Kibbe: Right. Very, very overgrown now.
Investigator: Yeah.
Vito Bertocchini: Now, we had been there several times already with Roger Kibbe. We even put him in a helicopter, because he was a person that was parachuting so much, we thought that maybe if we put him in a helicopter and he was able to see from above, he might be able to identify the location.
Roger Kibbe: That's what I'm looking for.
Investigator: Okay.
Roger Kibbe: [unclear: "If I find that" / "I find that"] I can turn around and go back.
Vito Bertocchini: We had him in 2009, so we did the same thing again. We drove up and down some roads, we got out, we walked some roads.
Narrator: Though Kibbe has described this spot in great detail, once there he becomes confused. It has been more than three decades since the killing, and nothing seems the same.
Roger Kibbe: There are [unclear: "new" / "no"] hills. It's all flat on top. There's dirt roads on top.
Investigator: But what I'm saying is, see up there?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah.
Investigator: Does it look like it could be flat up there?
Investigator: He said he wasn't up that high. Things could change, but he's looking for specific items, so it was going to be extremely difficult for him to find that exact location.
Unidentified: Thirty-two years. This is our fourth time up here. We'll never find that spot. He's just not going to remember. We're not going to find it.
Investigator: And if you stand here, you can look down into the valley.
Roger Kibbe: Stand where? Stand where?
Investigator: Uh, well, if, if I was standing here.
Investigator: There was no other area that matched. Either he was lying about where the homicide had occurred, or he didn't recognize the spot. But I knew her remains were in that area. They had to be.
Producer Or Investigator: What do you think the odds are?
Roger Kibbe: None. We're not going to find nothing here. We're, we're done. This is our last, definitely our last trip to this place. We're not coming back.
Producer: Do you think he's jerking you around?
Investigator: [unclear: "Yeah, that's what we were wondering" / "I, as we were wondering"]. I don't. I think he'd give this up, if, uh, if he could. I think he's, you know, he's probably trying. But in the back of my mind, it's always been: is he jerking us around on this?
Narrator: Despite their efforts, investigators would not find the location on this day. It would take nearly two more years for authorities to solve the mystery. The first break came in 2010, when Napa County investigator Mike Frey found an ally, Napa County deputy Mike Bartlett, who was familiar with the case.
Mike Frey: Mike Bartlett was stationed at Lake Berryessa, and he called me and said, hey, you know, I'm up here, it's off-season, there's not a lot going on, would you mind if I tried to find her? And I just thought that was exactly what we needed.
Narrator: Finally, on a misty March morning in 2011, using information gleaned from the interview with Park Dietz and others, they find the location.
Mike Frey: In 1977, when this occurred, Roger Kibbe parked his van up just over the other side of the ridge here, at the top of the hill. He led her up over the top of the ridge and down this dirt road. This dirt road presently is about 10, 12, 14 feet higher than it was then. So he said he walked Miss Burleigh along this dirt road. He was walking behind her, and he strangled her, and then he said he put her in the, in the ravine from there.
Mike Bartlett: After reading the transcripts and looking at the aerial photos, I believe he murdered her right, right about here. Once I got to this area and realized that this isn't the way it looked back then, and that the road was approximately 10 feet lower, with large boulders in the area, I felt that this was it. After hiking around the area for approximately a month, I started hiking this canyon down below us here, and within about 15 minutes I saw a white speck the size of a dime or a quarter in about six inches of water. I reached down into the water and pulled it up, and as I was pulling it up, I discovered that it was actually a bone that was covered with mud and silt. And as I examined it, I realized that it was, it appeared to be a human hip bone. It was definitely a gratifying experience, locating her and giving closure to her family. But without the efforts of everybody involved, it never would have happened.
Narrator: Coming up: Park Dietz gives his opinion of what drove the I-5 Strangler to kill.
Dr. Park Dietz: For you to have sex was at least as important as whether she lived or died.
Narrator: When Dr. Park Dietz completed his interviews with Roger Kibbe, the I-5 Strangler, he tells Kibbe what he believes made him a murderer.
Dr. Park Dietz: Do you think you understood why you did your crimes?
Roger Kibbe: No.
Dr. Park Dietz: Are you curious?
Roger Kibbe: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know why I did them.
Dr. Park Dietz: Do you think you have any secrets left?
Roger Kibbe: No. Everything's on the table. Everything.
Dr. Park Dietz: Yet there's some mysteries, some things that don't fit, some things that don't make sense.
Roger Kibbe: Was it my childhood? Was it her? Was it my upbringing?
Dr. Park Dietz: Would you like to know?
Roger Kibbe: Yeah, I'd like to know.
Dr. Park Dietz: I'm happy to tell you, if you want to know.
Roger Kibbe: No, throw it out there.
Dr. Park Dietz: Well, I don't think you have to be a psychiatrist to recognize that whatever happened between you and your mother has been the source of enormous anger...
Roger Kibbe: Right.
Dr. Park Dietz: ...that's generalized beyond your mother. That you've had a long-term disregard for the rules, a disrespect for authority. You've been willing to get even when you perceive that somebody wrongs you. You are willing to steal and to lie and to cheat, and those are traits you've carried with you throughout your life, I think. That set of traits, in which you've got anger and a willingness to break all the rules, no moral inhibitions against doing things, is a pretty familiar set of traits to mental health professionals. What it was called at the time of your doing these things was sociopath or psychopath, and then it got the name antisocial personality disorder. There's a piece of you missing, to be able to feel what other people feel and relate to their suffering, so it doesn't bother you the way it would others.
Roger Kibbe: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Park Dietz: You accept all this so far?
Roger Kibbe: [unclear: "No, no" (captions only)].
Dr. Park Dietz: And if your only crimes were forcible rapes of women, maybe hating women is enough to explain it. But that isn't all you did. And it is a way to get even with women, to attack them violently one after another, to convey to them that you think they're worthless, that they deserve no respect, the same way you think your mom treated you. But to go farther than that, abduct them, hold them captive, keep them under your control for a time, and then ultimately strangle them after one or two orgasms on your end, that's more than just anger toward women, isn't it?
Roger Kibbe: I believe so, yeah. [unclear: "You're right" / "Now you're right"].
Dr. Park Dietz: As I was telling him what my opinions were, he was nodding in agreement, and I wondered each step of the way whether he was going to stand up and walk out, whether he was going to get angry. Would I see a flare? What was going to happen here?
Dr. Park Dietz: It's a fact that from your point of view, back when you were doing this, for you to have an orgasm or sex was at least as important as whether she lived or died.
Roger Kibbe: No, she didn't matter more than that. I have to agree with you.
Dr. Park Dietz: What would make sense of the whole story of abduction, rape, captivity, binding, strangulation, homicides is if you've also got a special sexual interest in that area. And there are a bunch of clues that you do, but you're saying not true to every one of them. The clues that, if believed, would explain this are the cop who says that when you were a kid, you stole some female clothes and you cut it up. You cut female clothing. And the story that you were, as a kid, found tied up with women's clothes and claimed that you'd been kidnapped and put there. The reason those would be so important, if they're true, is that cutting female clothing is a kind of substitute for cutting a woman. It's a non-bloody, non-violent, actually, substitute for doing harm to a person, to cut their clothes or to cut their photograph, because those don't bleed...
Roger Kibbe: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Park Dietz: ...and nobody dies. And as ways to kill go, I can see how you might think of strangulation as not as brutal as some of the other ways you might have killed them...
Roger Kibbe: No.
Dr. Park Dietz: ...beating them to death or cutting them apart. Now, today, when I ask you about all these crimes in detail, you don't admit to the cutting of the clothing, and you deny cutting clothes when you were a kid. These are parts of the story that you distance yourself from, and there's a couple possible reasons of why you're denying those things to me and to law enforcement. One possibility is that you don't remember. These things are too painful for you to remember, and you've pushed them down. I don't really buy that, but some people would. Another possibility is that these things are too shameful and too private, and it's nobody's business, so you're not going to reveal that, because you don't want people to think of you as being some kind of pervert. So I think that you've got some private fantasy life that involves tying women up and keeping them captive, and where you'd like to hurt them, but you'll make do with the substitute of cutting the clothing or cutting a ponytail, because you don't want to see yourself as that kind of person who cuts women up. That's what I think.
Roger Kibbe: All right.
Dr. Park Dietz: You want to ask anything else?
Roger Kibbe: No. You're doing a good job.
Dr. Park Dietz: In the end he said, you're doing a good job. So I think he accepted that what I said nailed it.
Narrator: Roger Kibbe avoided the death penalty. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. ---