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serial killer who strangled his victims and left them on the highway was found strangled to death on Sunday. Roger Reece Kibbe was found dead in his Mule Creek State Prison cell with his cellmate standing over him.- Kibbe was connected to at least 7 strangling deaths, though police believe he committed more.
Roger Reece Kibbe, a serial killer who was dubbed the
Kibbe, who was 81, was discovered in his cell with his cellmate, Jason Budrow, standing over him. Budrow is in prison for the 2011 strangling death of his ex-girlfriend, the Press-Enterprise reported.
Deputies said an autopsy performed by the Sacramento County Coroner's Office found that Kibbe died from manual strangulation and that they were treating it as a homicide, though no charges have been brought against Budrow yet.
Kibbe was first picked up by authorities in 1991 as a suspect in the 1987 strangling death of Darcine Frankenpohl, a 17-year-old runaway whose body was discovered near South Lake Tahoe. He was convicted of her death and sent to Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, south of Sacramento.
In 2009, advancements in forensic science connected him to several other killings, many of which occurred along the I-5 interstate which runs from the Mexico border all the way to Blaine, Washington.
Kibbe's signature was to rape and strangle his victims and then ritualistically cut patterns into their clothes.
Law enforcement officers connected him to at least seven deaths, though he only confessed to four, and only with the guarantee that the death penalty was off the table.
Kibbe's victims include Lou Ellen Burleigh, who was killed in 1977, and Stephanie Brown, Charmaine Sabrah, Lora Heedrick, Katherine Kelly Quinones, and Barbara Ann Scott, all of whom were killed in 1986.
Vito Bertocchini, the former lead homicide detective in the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, was convinced Kibbe committed other crimes in between the 1977 killing and the 1986 killings. He would often secretly take Kibbe out on field trips to McDonald's, the AP reported, hoping he'd reveal where other victims might be found. He never admitted to any more killings.
Bertocchini told CBS 13 he was concerned that Kibbe had died with the answers to so many more unsolved cases.
"[Kibbe] made a comment a long time ago: 'I have two cans in my head. I'm opening the lid to one can and letting some secrets out, the other can, you'll never get that lid open,'" he said.