UBC: Henderson, Trace Evidence

[truepenny]

Trace Evidence: The Hunt for an Elusive Serial Killer by Bruce Henderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Roger Reece Kibbe was convicted of 1 murder & confessed to 6 more: Lou Ellen Burleigh, Lora Heedick, Barbara Ann Scott, Stephanie Brown, Charmaine Sabrah, Katherine Kelly Quinones, and Darcie Frackenpohl. I don't for a second think that's all of his victims.

Darcie was 17.

Roger Kibbe is currently 76. He's in prison and not getting out (one sentence 25 to life for Darcie in 1991, and then six more consecutive life sentences when he confessed to the other six murders in 2009). But he's alive. So is Randy Woodfield, another man who used the I-5 as his killing ground. So is Gary Ridgway up in Walla Walla. I could go on. I don't think these men are happy or comfortable. But they're alive. They can still make choices. They can play games with interviewers or find Jesus or write their memoirs.

Their victims don't have that. Their victims are frozen, lifeless, at 17 or 29 or 26. Their victims, who outnumber them substatially, don't even have what very little these men have. And, because they are what they are, these serial killers probably to this day don't really believe that there's anything wrong with that. As Henderson quotes Kibbe after his conviction for Darcie Frackenpohl's murder, Yeah, I've killed a few women. What's the big deal?

No amount of justice can restore life to the victims. The simple unfairness of the fact that Roger Kibbe is alive and Charmaine Sabrah is dead cannot even actually be addressed. His death won't balance the scales. Nothing will.

Trace Evidence was written in 1998, so Henderson doesn't know the (almost certainly partial) list of Kibbe's victims. He misses Quinones and Scott and includes Karen Finch, who may or may not have been killed by Kibbe. (I think yes, and Kibbe's cellmate claimed he confessed, but no conclusive proof.) He does a good job explaining the fiber evidence that Kibbe was convicted on. As an exemplar of its genre, this book is competent in all ways, but not stand-out.



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