SERIAL KILLER Roger Kibbe, The I-5 Strangler

Roger Kibbe

Roger Reece Kibbe was an evil man who made a name for himself as the I5 strangler. From 1977 to 1987 he took the lives of at least 8 young women ranging from 17 to 29 years old.

He drove up and down the I 5 highway in Northern California picking up hitchhikers and anyone else he could get into his car. In most cases he would strangle his victims though in one case slashed a woman’s throat. His reign of terror finally ended in 1987 when a police officer heard screams and rushed to Kibbes car where he had just tried to slip handcuffs onto a prospective victim. He was known to authorities and a search of his car turned up a treasure trove of incriminating evidence. A year later homicide charges were brought against him which led to a 25 to life sentence. In 2009, the tireless efforts of investigators led to a guilty plea in 6 additional homicides. On February 28 of 2021, he was strangled by his cell mate at mule creek prison in Ione California. A fitting end for such a heinous and evil
creature.

So what made Roger Kibbe do what he did? We can’t say for certain whether it was nature or nurture, though we do know that he had a rough childhood. He was born on May 21st, 1939, in San Diego, California to Johnathan and Loraine Kibbe.

Roger got beat up at home and bullied at school. Which considering was normal in the 1940s, must have been fairly extreme. When he wasn’t dealing with trouble at home and school, Roger started some trouble of his own. He was seen burying a cardboard box in a park in 1954. When it was dug up it was found to contain 2 women’s bathing suits that Roger had stolen off a clothesline. In 1957 when he was 18, he was arrested for a series of thefts of cash and coins the summer after graduating from Chula Vista High School.

The thefts could mostly be looked at as a mistake of youth. Though he had also continued stealing women’s underwear. He would say he did it once cutting them with scissors, a precursor to his later acts of evil. He spent a little bit of time in jail then seemed to straighten out. He moved North to the East Bay Area near San Francisco.

In 1975 he got married to a woman named Harriet Sullivan. She is reported to have been a hard woman very much like his mother and she is referred to as domineering in some articles.

So he had spent his whole childhood getting beat up by his mother and then as an adult, married a woman who picked up where his mom left off. There’s no way to know what pushed Roger over the edge or whether he was born evil, but after 2 years of marriage Kibbe lashed out. If he was so enraged at his wife or his home life why wouldn’t he simply move out?

Roger Reece Kibbes first known homicide occurred on September 11th 1977. His victim was a 21 year old woman named Lou Ellen Burleigh. He set a trap using using a job listing to lure a her into into his control. On September 10, Lou Ellen went for a job interview with a cosmetics company that had placed at ad at the college she attended. Some it was through the school she felt comfortable, even when the man said his office was under construction snd to meet him in a parking lot in Pleasant Hill, California.

When she got home Lou Ellen excitedly told her mother about the interview, that the man she had spoken to was in 40s and had met her in what she called a fancy van. The next day she went to meet him and was never seen alive again. Roger Kibbe had taken her to Lake Berryessa where he attacked her, doing horrible and evil things before strangling her.

Kibbe confessed to the homicide in 2009 and took investigators on an unsuccessful attempt to locate her body around the lake. Her remains would not be found until 2011 when a lone sheriffs deputy named Michael Bartlett took it upon himself to bring her home.

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