Latest / Luke's English Podcast / Scott Kimball_ I Spoke to the Serial Killer the FBI Trusted

Transcript

Scott Kimball_ I Spoke to the Serial Killer the FBI Trusted · Luke's English Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: I'm driving through the wilderness of northern Colorado when my
0:04
Speaker 1: phone rings. There's no cell service out here in most days,
0:10
Speaker 1: just long silence and distance. But today I've got reception.
0:16
Speaker 2: I have a prepaid call from Scott Kimball, an inmate
0:21
Speaker 2: in a Colorado correctional facility.
0:25
Speaker 3: Are you there?
0:27
Speaker 1: This is the same landscape in which the man calling
0:31
Speaker 1: me left the remains of his victims rolled in carpet bound, abandoned.
0:38
Speaker 3: I tried to call you yesterday. I did that show
0:40
Speaker 3: up on your machine.
0:41
Speaker 1: Scott Kimball is responsible for the deaths of at least
0:44
Speaker 1: four people and a series that began in two thousand and.
0:48
Speaker 4: Three and ended three years later.
0:51
Speaker 1: At one point, he told authorities he killed more.
0:54
Speaker 3: Than twenty one I didn't kill anybody for the thrill
0:59
Speaker 3: of iding' kill anybody for the sport of it, and
1:01
Speaker 3: kill anybody for like a sexual sadist type thing. I
1:05
Speaker 3: kill people forever reason.
1:07
Speaker 1: The most disturbing part isn't just what Kimball did, but
1:10
Speaker 1: how he did it. The murders that we know about
1:14
Speaker 1: were committed well. Kimball was a paid FBI informant. In
1:18
Speaker 1: this episode, I speak with Scott Kimball himself and follow
1:22
Speaker 1: the chain of decisions that allowed a serial killer to
1:26
Speaker 1: operate under federal protection.
1:28
Speaker 3: By definition, any sequence of three or more serial and
1:31
Speaker 3: I'm responsible for for homicide, so that that fits the bill.
1:34
Speaker 3: But I'm not your typical serial pisot.
1:38
Speaker 1: I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked. Over the course
1:44
Speaker 1: of his life, Scott Kimball has committed so many crimes
1:47
Speaker 1: even he has lost track. I spent months corresponding with Kimball, letters,
1:56
Speaker 1: phone calls, and what emerged isn't just aminal or a
2:00
Speaker 1: calculating liar, but a psychopath blinded by his own grandiosity.
2:07
Speaker 3: There's an article that was written by a newspaper guy. Uh,
2:13
Speaker 3: That's why I agreed to make a deal with him.
2:16
Speaker 3: He told several people that I was the most intelligent
2:18
Speaker 3: criminal he's ever met.
2:20
Speaker 1: Despite decades of incarceration, he's still trying to control the narrative.
2:25
Speaker 1: Kimball likes to talk about the articles and the books that.
2:28
Speaker 4: Have been written about him.
2:30
Speaker 1: If they're complimentary, he recalls them verbatim.
2:34
Speaker 3: If not, he rans he wrote that book after he
2:37
Speaker 3: told me he wasn't gonna write it first, sim we're
2:38
Speaker 3: gona write a book. They said, I'm not going to
2:40
Speaker 3: write a book. Then all of a sudden he said, hey, listen,
2:42
Speaker 3: I wrote the book. And I said, well, you told
2:43
Speaker 3: me you're going to write the book.
2:45
Speaker 1: Despite his obvious hunger for infamy, Kimball is not a
2:49
Speaker 1: household name like Bundy or Dahmer. So here's what you
2:53
Speaker 1: need to know. Kimball describes himself as a country boy
2:58
Speaker 1: from rural Colorado. In reality, he's a prolific liar, forger,
3:05
Speaker 1: scam artists, and murderer, a man who survived by convincing
3:10
Speaker 1: people he's something he's not. Starting in the early nineteen eighties,
3:15
Speaker 1: Kimball spent decades stealing hundreds of thousands, maybe more through
3:20
Speaker 1: fraud and deception. By two thousand and two, he turned
3:24
Speaker 1: those same skills on the FBI, persuading them to pay
3:28
Speaker 1: him as an informant, and from inside the system he
3:32
Speaker 1: selected his victims. When Kimball was finally cornered in two
3:36
Speaker 1: thousand and six, he didn't surrender. He ran, leading US
3:41
Speaker 1: marshals and sheriff's deputies on a high speed chase that
3:45
Speaker 1: ended only when his car ran out of gas. A
3:48
Speaker 1: dramatic scene near Riverside yesterday fugitive Scott Lee Kimball was
3:53
Speaker 1: arrested after a standoff with authorities. Kimball, over the years,
3:57
Speaker 1: he's confessed, recanted, chained his story, and even led police
4:02
Speaker 1: to bodies. But even now he's still trying to control
4:07
Speaker 1: the narrative.
4:08
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to build trust with you. I'm trying
4:10
Speaker 3: to go through it porn with you.
4:12
Speaker 1: The best place to begin is nineteen eighty one. Scott
4:16
Speaker 1: Lee Kimball is fourteen years old, raised in Boulder, Colorado,
4:22
Speaker 1: but at this point he's living in the small mountain
4:25
Speaker 1: town of Nederland, It's about an hour away. In the
4:29
Speaker 1: early eighties, his parents go through a bitter divorce, leaving
4:33
Speaker 1: Kimball and his younger brother with their grandmother. It's a
4:36
Speaker 1: rupture that defines him. He's lonely, emotionally unmoored, and already
4:43
Speaker 1: showing early signs of an anti social personality.
4:47
Speaker 3: My mom and dad they divorced, and so my mom
4:50
Speaker 3: said I'm not paying she needs more money. On the end,
4:52
Speaker 3: she said, I'm not paying child support. As not a
4:53
Speaker 3: woman in history the world has paid to child's sportill man,
4:56
Speaker 3: and so there's always a big fight with about that.
4:59
Speaker 4: When I press him.
5:00
Speaker 1: Kimball recalls only the financial impact of the divorce. It's
5:04
Speaker 1: a window into his mind.
5:07
Speaker 4: What he never.
5:08
Speaker 1: Acknowledges is that his parents' separation left him profoundly vulnerable.
5:13
Speaker 1: At the age of fourteen or fifteen, Kimball falls prey
5:17
Speaker 1: to a neighbor named Theodore Peyton, who grooms and assaults Kimball,
5:22
Speaker 1: his brother, and other boys.
5:26
Speaker 4: For Scott.
5:27
Speaker 1: The abuse lasts nearly a decade. It's systematic and unchecked,
5:32
Speaker 1: and it breaks something fundamental in Kimball. In a letter
5:37
Speaker 1: he sent me, Kimball wrote, I've had some efed up
5:40
Speaker 1: things happen to me as.
5:41
Speaker 4: A youth in the eighties.
5:45
Speaker 1: He's overwhelmed and desperate to escape, so Kimball attempts to
5:49
Speaker 1: end his life during a hunting trip. He survives, critically injured,
5:55
Speaker 1: but the abuse continues. It doesn't end until the early
5:59
Speaker 1: nineteen h nineties, when multiple victims finally come forward. Peyton
6:04
Speaker 1: is convicted but serves only five years in prison. In
6:08
Speaker 1: a victim Impacts statement, Kimball writes, Ted Peyton denied me
6:13
Speaker 1: my right to a normal, healthy, innocent childhood. His selfishness
6:18
Speaker 1: and his need for sexual gratification has damaged my life forever.
6:24
Speaker 1: Kimball's psychopathy is already brewing, and the abuse hardens his
6:29
Speaker 1: antisocial traits into something colder. In a letter Kimball wrote me,
6:35
Speaker 1: he said, I was a bad kid who grew to
6:38
Speaker 1: be a worse adult. In the late nineties, Kimball and
6:43
Speaker 1: his brother are sent to live with their father in Montana,
6:47
Speaker 1: and he steps outside the lines for the first time.
6:50
Speaker 3: And then when we moved to Montana, instead of getting
6:52
Speaker 3: the child support, my mom set up a kicking account
6:54
Speaker 3: for my brother and I and then I would just
6:56
Speaker 3: write checkson overdrafted and then so she just get bailed
7:01
Speaker 3: mail and bail me out, you know. And then one
7:02
Speaker 3: day she said him, then bail on the app, and I
7:04
Speaker 3: ended up sertingly getting failties.
7:06
Speaker 1: What Kimball is telling me is a bit hard to hear,
7:09
Speaker 1: so I'm going to repeat it. According to Kimball, in Montana,
7:13
Speaker 1: he realizes that he can write bad checks over and
7:16
Speaker 1: over again, and each time his mother bails him out,
7:21
Speaker 1: until one day she reaches her.
7:23
Speaker 2: And then one day bail on the app, Kimball.
7:25
Speaker 1: Says, quote. And then one day she said, I'm done
7:29
Speaker 1: bailing you out, and I ended up starting getting felonies.
7:33
Speaker 1: He says it like it's a punchline. But that's the
7:36
Speaker 1: moment that sets him on a lifetime path of forgery,
7:41
Speaker 1: check fraud, identity theft, and theft by deception. Once his
7:46
Speaker 1: mother cuts him off, Kimball learns that the financial system
7:50
Speaker 1: of the late eighties and early nineties is porous, slow,
7:55
Speaker 1: and easy to exploit.
7:56
Speaker 3: And I just continued with financial crosy, easy to just
8:02
Speaker 3: take advantage of the system so that they didn't have
8:05
Speaker 3: the right security in placement. It just made it too easy.
8:09
Speaker 1: Throughout the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, Kimball racks up
8:13
Speaker 1: multiple felony fraud convictions across several Western states. Along the way,
8:19
Speaker 1: he served short prison sentences, violates probation, and reoffends almost
8:24
Speaker 1: immediately when released.
8:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, they let me out and report of them, and
8:28
Speaker 3: report of the probation novels, And I just racally some
8:30
Speaker 3: my nose of probation.
8:32
Speaker 1: Kimball's memories perfectly illustrate the mind of a true psychopath. Grandiose, callous, impulsive,
8:40
Speaker 1: with no regard for boundaries or consequence.
8:44
Speaker 3: I scammed a logging company in Spokane out of five
8:46
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars, and you know, and when you get
8:51
Speaker 3: no charges and you got away five hundred grand, it's
8:53
Speaker 3: pretty lucrative.
8:55
Speaker 1: What remains unclear is the precise moment when Kimball crosses
9:00
Speaker 1: from financial crimes into murder. The Utah State Bureau of
9:05
Speaker 1: Investigations has said publicly that they suspect Kimball has committed
9:10
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty one murders, possibly more. Kimball himself once
9:16
Speaker 1: claimed that his first victim was a hitchhiker that he
9:19
Speaker 1: picked up in the late nineteen eighties, possibly nineteen eighty
9:23
Speaker 1: eight or nineteen eighty nine, near a bridge in Height, Utah.
9:28
Speaker 1: But nobody has ever been found, and DNA searches have.
9:32
Speaker 4: Turned up nothing.
9:34
Speaker 1: And we can't forget that Kimball is a prolific liar.
9:39
Speaker 1: So whether there's truth buried inside those claims or whether
9:43
Speaker 1: they're just another manipulation, we may never fully know.
9:47
Speaker 3: I was living in Montana and a couple of my friends,
9:51
Speaker 3: we all the three of us, we were young in
9:53
Speaker 3: our twenties, and we all had motorcycles. When I was riding,
9:57
Speaker 3: They're like, Hey, we're going to go up to your girlfriends.
10:00
Speaker 3: I'm nah, I don't want to be the thirty Wheler
10:02
Speaker 3: was like, hey, oh they got a single sister. And
10:04
Speaker 3: I said, well, okay, I'll go, and that's all I matter.
10:07
Speaker 1: It's the early nineties and Kimball meets Larisa Minor, his
10:11
Speaker 1: first wife, whom he marries in the nineteen ninety three.
10:15
Speaker 3: Well, I lived in Western Montana, and so then from
10:18
Speaker 3: Western Montana, I moved. I moved over Spokane. She was
10:23
Speaker 3: going to school there, my brother with her, and I
10:26
Speaker 3: think I lived there from ninety ninety one or ninety
10:31
Speaker 3: to two thousand. I lived over there with her and
10:35
Speaker 3: the kids.
10:36
Speaker 1: And so Loresa and Scott have two sons together. But
10:40
Speaker 1: the marriage doesn't last. By nineteen ninety seven, it collapses
10:45
Speaker 1: into a bitter custody dispute. It's then the Kimball's violence services.
10:50
Speaker 1: In a documented way during their divorce, Kimball breaks into
10:55
Speaker 1: his ex wife's home and assaults her at gunpoint. She relocates,
11:01
Speaker 1: but Kimball finds her and assaults her for a second time.
11:05
Speaker 1: These are the earliest confirmed incidents that I can find
11:09
Speaker 1: in which Kimball reenacts the kind of power control and
11:13
Speaker 1: terror that he was subjected to as a child. It's
11:18
Speaker 1: a turning point and it becomes a template for what
11:22
Speaker 1: comes next. But when I ask Kimball about his marriage,
11:26
Speaker 1: it becomes clear he's completely rewritten this.
11:29
Speaker 4: Chapter in his mind.
11:31
Speaker 3: No matter all this, all things I've done in my life,
11:35
Speaker 3: I really do care about her, that I wanted to
11:37
Speaker 3: be happy, and me having any kind of contact with
11:40
Speaker 3: her really makes her miserable, her life miserable because of her.
11:44
Speaker 3: The relationship is in now the guy's real controlling.
11:47
Speaker 1: It is truly remarkable reframing. Despite the fact that Kimball
11:52
Speaker 1: is a violent convict who subjected his wife to repeated
11:57
Speaker 1: documented abuse, Kimball framed their estrangement as the fault of
12:02
Speaker 1: another man, as if the only reason they no longer
12:06
Speaker 1: speak is because of her current relationship.
12:09
Speaker 3: He's really kind of a jure. But yeah, but she's
12:17
Speaker 3: you know, as long as she's at because solve the
12:19
Speaker 3: matters on them.
12:20
Speaker 1: There's a well documented trait in psychopathy research that explains this.
12:24
Speaker 1: Highly psychopathic offenders don't just lie to others, they can
12:29
Speaker 1: reconstruct reality for themselves. Studies show that they lack what
12:34
Speaker 1: psychologists call self referential moral processing. It's the ability to
12:40
Speaker 1: connect their own actions to harm in a way that
12:44
Speaker 1: generates guilt or accountability. In two thousand and one, police
12:49
Speaker 1: attempt to arrest Kimball for assaulting Larisa. Instead, he disappears,
12:55
Speaker 1: re emerging in Alaska. It's one of several unexplained gaps
13:01
Speaker 1: in his life periods that remain unaccounted for and have
13:05
Speaker 1: raised questions about how many victims may never be identified.
13:11
Speaker 1: In Alaska, Kimball is arrested again for fraud, and while incarcerated,
13:18
Speaker 1: he begins to understand the legal leverage created by crimes
13:22
Speaker 1: that cross state lines. As he tells me, such cases
13:27
Speaker 1: often leave prosecutors choosing between state and federal charges, but
13:32
Speaker 1: not both.
13:33
Speaker 3: This is how it worked. If the feder would have
13:35
Speaker 3: picked up my case, I would have done months in prison.
13:38
Speaker 3: If the didn't pick up my case in the state did,
13:41
Speaker 3: how would do years? They manipulated so they're advantaged. I
13:45
Speaker 3: can't I manipulate it to my advantage.
13:48
Speaker 1: Kimball wants federal prosecutors to take his case. He's convinced
13:52
Speaker 1: it will give him leverage to make that happen. He
13:56
Speaker 1: looks for a way in and finds it in a
13:59
Speaker 1: new paper article. In prison, he reads about a federal
14:04
Speaker 1: case lifting details from the reporting to position himself as
14:08
Speaker 1: an informant.
14:10
Speaker 3: I read an article in Anchorage Daily News. It's a
14:13
Speaker 3: small article about assistant US attorney who was killed in Seattle.
14:21
Speaker 3: His name was Thomas Wales. So then I told my
14:24
Speaker 3: information about that. I didn't have to in the squad
14:26
Speaker 3: except for what I read in the Newspaper's.
14:29
Speaker 1: Remarkably the ruse works. He requests to speak with a
14:33
Speaker 1: federal agent about the unsolved murder of Thomas Wales, a
14:38
Speaker 1: federal prosecutor who was assassinated in his Holland in two
14:42
Speaker 1: thousand and one.
14:44
Speaker 3: They just believe me. It was just it was just
14:49
Speaker 3: I could tell by their body language voice I was
14:51
Speaker 3: going on the right direction or the wrong direction, and
14:53
Speaker 3: what their theory was. They used to take me over
14:55
Speaker 3: to the courthouse on the weekends, this special prosecutor that's
14:59
Speaker 3: came from Washington, DC, and they just prepped me for
15:02
Speaker 3: testimony and asked me all kind of questions and they
15:06
Speaker 3: get me McDonald's and Addleby's whatever I want to get
15:09
Speaker 3: me kind of food I wanted.
15:11
Speaker 1: At that point, Kimball leverages his position, asking the FBI
15:16
Speaker 1: to transfer him to a federal prison in Englewood.
15:19
Speaker 3: Colorado, and I just told him, if you want my help,
15:22
Speaker 3: you're going to do what I want. And I said,
15:26
Speaker 3: I want to be with the England, bringing my wife
15:28
Speaker 3: and kids and my family.
15:31
Speaker 1: The FBI agreed to move Kimball to be closer to
15:35
Speaker 1: his children and.
15:36
Speaker 4: His ex wife, Larisa.
15:38
Speaker 1: It's a massive oversight for reasons that remain unexplained, the
15:43
Speaker 1: FBI failed to realize that Kimball has pending charges for
15:47
Speaker 1: the assault and kidnapping against the same woman. Once in Colorado,
15:54
Speaker 1: Kimball's scam escalates. He'd befriends fellow inmates he learned their crimes,
16:01
Speaker 1: then positions himself as a snitch, padding real information with lies, exaggerations,
16:08
Speaker 1: and inventions. It's then that Kimball meets two inmates who
16:13
Speaker 1: he will use to free himself. The first is a
16:18
Speaker 1: serial bank robber dubbed the Ponytail Bandit real name Steve Holly.
16:25
Speaker 1: He's Kimball's cellmate. The second is a young drug dealer
16:29
Speaker 1: named Steve Ennis, who Kimball recalls meeting shortly after arriving
16:34
Speaker 1: in federal prison.
16:35
Speaker 3: Well, he befriended me. When I came out, I didn't
16:37
Speaker 3: know anybody. He was a member of the wood, and
16:39
Speaker 3: so he introduced herself and he really became he's a
16:44
Speaker 3: good friend of mine, and you know, showed me the
16:46
Speaker 3: ropes there. I was new there. I didn't know any
16:48
Speaker 3: of the white boys there, and so he took me
16:51
Speaker 3: in and talk to me and we got to close friends.
16:54
Speaker 1: And Kimball tells Holly and Ennis he has connections on
16:58
Speaker 1: the outside that he can help them. At the same time,
17:03
Speaker 1: he feeds the FBI a carefully blended mix of truth
17:08
Speaker 1: and fabrication about their cases. It works so well that
17:12
Speaker 1: by two thousand and two, the FBI persuade a judge
17:16
Speaker 1: to release Kimball without probation, specifically so he can operate
17:21
Speaker 1: as a federal informant. He's assigned to help build cases
17:26
Speaker 1: against Holly and Ennis, the very men who believe Kimball
17:31
Speaker 1: is working in their best interests.
17:33
Speaker 3: I always amount of time that I was required to
17:35
Speaker 3: serve and so it's a big gilt. I mean today
17:38
Speaker 3: listener listening to give you out on bond and their
17:41
Speaker 3: idea was if we could him bomb and we can
17:43
Speaker 3: kind of hold you under the thumb until he gets since.
17:46
Speaker 1: But once again, Kimball is exactly where he wants to
17:49
Speaker 1: be trusted by everyone and accountable to no one.
17:54
Speaker 3: Yeah. So then they got me out and I told
17:57
Speaker 3: him my information on this and this, this, and I
18:01
Speaker 3: didn't but they believe me.
18:03
Speaker 1: Unbelievably, the FBI pays Kimball upwards of fifty thousand dollars
18:08
Speaker 1: during this period and supply him with whatever he needs
18:12
Speaker 1: to get them information.
18:14
Speaker 3: I mean they slew me around, put me up in
18:18
Speaker 3: the nice hotels, Gati rental cars, gave me money, bought
18:23
Speaker 3: me a membership strip clubs. I mean, they constant.
18:28
Speaker 1: It's a crack in the system. This is the kind
18:30
Speaker 1: of structural vulnerability that serial killers thrive on. Research consistently
18:37
Speaker 1: shows that confidential informants are among the least reliable sources
18:42
Speaker 1: in the criminal justice system, particularly jail house informants. When
18:47
Speaker 1: liberty or money is the reward.
18:50
Speaker 4: Information becomes transactional.
18:52
Speaker 1: And yet the FBI and law enforcement agencies continue to
18:56
Speaker 1: rely on informants to this day, and in Kimball's case,
19:02
Speaker 1: once he's released. The murders don't happen despite the system,
19:06
Speaker 1: they happen because of it. Kimball tells me one story
19:11
Speaker 1: in which he told an FBI agent that he needed
19:13
Speaker 1: to speak with someone who frequents the VIP area of
19:17
Speaker 1: a local strip club.
19:19
Speaker 3: I told him that this person needed contact, was always
19:22
Speaker 3: in the VIP and I wasn't going to spend five
19:24
Speaker 3: hundred bus around money to go with the bill up
19:26
Speaker 3: for the VIP, So he brought me a five hundred
19:29
Speaker 3: dollars VIP membership for the year.
19:32
Speaker 1: By the end of two thousand and two, Kimball is
19:35
Speaker 1: taking everything he can get from the Federal Bureau of
19:38
Speaker 1: Investigation money, access, credibility. But what no one realizes is
19:45
Speaker 1: that he's working on a different project altogether. Kimball is
19:50
Speaker 1: using his position as an informant to identify and gain
19:54
Speaker 1: access to victims, specifically the girlfriends, Ennis and Holly.
20:01
Speaker 4: Women he knows.
20:02
Speaker 1: Are already vulnerable, already overlooked, already discounted, And we.
20:08
Speaker 3: All knew each other from visiting. We'd all go in
20:11
Speaker 3: there together with all of our girlfriends and hang out
20:16
Speaker 3: AG's Burgers and Gray Service and laugh and one visit
20:19
Speaker 3: your molaves together.
20:21
Speaker 1: What no one knows is that by now Kimball has
20:24
Speaker 1: become fixated on bondage and violent sexual imagery material centered
20:30
Speaker 1: on control, restraint, and domination. It's not incidental. It's preparatory,
20:38
Speaker 1: and it feeds directly into what comes next. Using the
20:42
Speaker 1: trust his informant status affords him, Kimball begins planning the
20:46
Speaker 1: murders of both women, crimes he carries out days apart.
20:53
Speaker 1: Kimball's first victim is bank robber Steve Holly's girlfriend, Leanne Emery,
21:00
Speaker 1: twenty four year old dancer working at a club in Glendale, Colorado,
21:04
Speaker 1: who struggles with bipolar disorder. With Holly's blessing, Kimball inserts
21:10
Speaker 1: himself into her life. He gains her trust, Then he
21:14
Speaker 1: pulls her into a scheme, convincing Leanne to help him
21:18
Speaker 1: steal credit cards. In January two thousand and three, Emory
21:24
Speaker 1: tells her family she's going on a splunking trip to Mexico.
21:28
Speaker 1: It's a hobby she loves. In reality, she goes on
21:32
Speaker 1: a road trip through four Western states with Kimball. Now
21:37
Speaker 1: it's been speculated that Emory believed Kimball was taking her
21:40
Speaker 1: to see Holly, who himself believed Kimball was arranging for
21:45
Speaker 1: him to escape, but Kimball's lies are hard to parse.
21:50
Speaker 1: Kimball and Embery passed stolen checks worth roughly fifteen thousand
21:54
Speaker 1: dollars among other financial scams. When they returned to Colorado
21:59
Speaker 1: on January twenty ninth, Leanne is last seen checking out
22:03
Speaker 1: of a hotel, according to an account Kimball later gave
22:06
Speaker 1: to the FBI after his capture, he drives Emory to
22:10
Speaker 1: Bryce and Canyon in Utah's Brook Cliffs and shoots her
22:14
Speaker 1: in the back of the head. He then abandons Emory's
22:18
Speaker 1: car in Moab, Utah, a champagne colored Toyota Tursell. But
22:23
Speaker 1: we can't forget Kimball is a compulsive liar, and no
22:27
Speaker 1: part of his story should be taken at face value.
22:31
Speaker 1: And when we speak, he's oddly silent on the details
22:35
Speaker 1: of Emery's murder. Instead, he weaves an elaborate story about
22:39
Speaker 1: his next victim.
22:40
Speaker 4: I'm Jennifer Markham to say.
22:42
Speaker 3: That, I'm not going to say who wanted me to
22:45
Speaker 3: kill Markham. I'm not going to say who. I'll never
22:49
Speaker 3: do that.
22:50
Speaker 1: While targeting his first victim, Kimball simultaneously plans the murder
22:55
Speaker 1: of a second person days later, the girlfriend of drug
22:59
Speaker 1: dealers Steve Nis. Jennifer Markham is a twenty five year
23:04
Speaker 1: old single mother who works odd jobs, including dancing, at
23:08
Speaker 1: a Denver area club. As Kimball tells it, Steve Ennis
23:12
Speaker 1: had become concerned that Jennifer Markham would testify against him,
23:17
Speaker 1: which led Kimball to ask the FBI to coordinate a meeting.
23:22
Speaker 3: They did. They set up the interviews and everything, show
23:24
Speaker 3: me where she's going to be in and they gave
23:26
Speaker 3: me phones and all kinds of stuff.
23:28
Speaker 1: On February seventeenth, two thousand and three, Jennifer Markham tells
23:32
Speaker 1: Ennis She's going to meet Kimball for dinner.
23:35
Speaker 3: Then when I was at with Markham, Markham got a
23:39
Speaker 3: DUI and she said, she said, I told the cops
23:42
Speaker 3: I'll do anything so I'm not to go to jail.
23:45
Speaker 3: I'll tell them whatever they want to know. And at
23:48
Speaker 3: that point there I knew for one hundred percent sure
23:50
Speaker 3: that she was a liability.
23:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that makes sense in a way. But
23:56
Speaker 1: what I don't really understand is why would you care
23:59
Speaker 1: what happens to Steve.
24:01
Speaker 4: I mean, you weren't really involved in the.
24:02
Speaker 1: Case, so why would you decide to take matters into
24:05
Speaker 1: your own hands to stop Markham from testifying?
24:09
Speaker 3: Why did I care about what happened to Steve? Yeah,
24:12
Speaker 3: he was a good friend in there, and it's kind
24:16
Speaker 3: of a deal. Like when you say you're going to
24:18
Speaker 3: do something. People say all the time and some stuff,
24:21
Speaker 3: but they never really do it or mean it. And
24:25
Speaker 3: I was a guy who said, listen, if I'm gonna
24:29
Speaker 3: say i'll do something, I do it.
24:32
Speaker 1: Kimball's answer doesn't hold up. This is a man who
24:35
Speaker 1: spent his entire life exploiting anyone in everyone he could,
24:39
Speaker 1: including Steve Ennis, and yet he wants us to believe
24:43
Speaker 1: that this is the moment he draws a moral line,
24:47
Speaker 1: that he commits a murder to keep his word, as
24:50
Speaker 1: if loyalty suddenly matters to him.
24:53
Speaker 4: It doesn't.
24:55
Speaker 1: That explanation isn't insight. It's camouflage, another story designed to
25:00
Speaker 1: make something monstrous sound principled, another attempt to control the
25:06
Speaker 1: narrative after the damage is already done. Back on February seventeenth,
25:13
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, within days of his last murder,
25:17
Speaker 1: Kimball convinces Jennifer Markham to accompany him to Seattle, claiming
25:22
Speaker 1: he owns a coffee shop there. Markham's cell phone is
25:27
Speaker 1: last used at nine to thirty PM, when she's with
25:31
Speaker 1: Scott Kimball, who turns off his own phone for three days.
25:36
Speaker 1: The details of Markham's murder remain foggy. Her body has
25:40
Speaker 1: never been found. We know that Kimball abandoned her brown
25:46
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine Saturn near Denver International Airport, where it's
25:51
Speaker 1: recovered by police.
25:52
Speaker 3: Jennifer and I versa who kiseneral. I'm not going to
25:56
Speaker 3: do that. I will say that Jennifer was a liability
26:01
Speaker 3: to Steve, and Steve was looking at few lissidonces and
26:05
Speaker 3: eight ten years, So you kill me? What's the logical?
26:08
Speaker 1: For the record, no evidence has ever been presented that
26:12
Speaker 1: anyone ordered or paid Scott. And when Kimball was arrested,
26:16
Speaker 1: he originally told police another man killed Markham and showed
26:21
Speaker 1: him pictures of her body bound and assaulted. But the
26:26
Speaker 1: truth is Kimball is a violent psychopath and a liar
26:30
Speaker 1: who saw vulnerable women immunity from law enforcement, and he
26:35
Speaker 1: took advantage, plain and simple. In two thousand and three,
26:41
Speaker 1: the disappearance of both women does not go unnoticed. In
26:45
Speaker 1: Markham's case, the FBI questions Kimball but accepts his lies.
26:52
Speaker 1: On June twenty ninth, two thousand and three, Kimball tells
26:55
Speaker 1: an agent at the FBI's Denver office that Markham had
26:59
Speaker 1: been murdered by one of her boyfriend's associates, supposedly out
27:04
Speaker 1: of fear that she might testify.
27:07
Speaker 4: And it works.
27:08
Speaker 3: There's a prosecutor named Stan Garnett. She wrote a letter
27:13
Speaker 3: to the editor saying that Kimball used the FBI for his
27:15
Speaker 3: image and they can't given any use to say, for
27:17
Speaker 3: any useful information. And he says the gift, I got
27:22
Speaker 3: conned by a good old boy, or something like that.
27:24
Speaker 1: In the case of Leanne Emory, her parents file a
27:27
Speaker 1: missing person's report in a Rapahoe County, Colorado, where they're
27:31
Speaker 1: living at the time. They're told Leanne is likely a runaway.
27:35
Speaker 1: There's nothing to suggest foul play, no investigation, no urgency. Ironically,
27:42
Speaker 1: it's the families and not law enforcement, who begin to
27:45
Speaker 1: see the pattern. The parents of Leanne Emery and Jennifer
27:49
Speaker 1: Markham eventually meet. They exchange notes and recognize the striking
27:55
Speaker 1: similarities in their daughter's disappearances. They search together, pair timelines
28:01
Speaker 1: and lobby authorities side by side, but their voices don't
28:05
Speaker 1: carry enough weight. The two young women are gone. The
28:10
Speaker 1: last person to see them alive remains free protective by
28:15
Speaker 1: his lies in the FBI.
28:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I get in trouble and I'd call on
28:21
Speaker 3: to sell the telecompy. You can't boss me. I'm an
28:24
Speaker 3: informer for the FBI, And so he call the pages.
28:29
Speaker 3: Slaughter Sloff would say, let him go.
28:31
Speaker 2: He's working for me at the time.
28:33
Speaker 1: Scott Kimball murders both Lehanne Emery and Jennifer Markham. He's
28:37
Speaker 1: already dating another woman, Laurie MacLeod, a thirty nine year
28:42
Speaker 1: old single mother he meets playing poker at the Lodge
28:46
Speaker 1: Casino in Blackhawk, Colorado. In fact, their first date takes
28:51
Speaker 1: place between the two murders, but by August of that
28:55
Speaker 1: same year, Kimball tells Laurie he's going on a hunting trip.
29:00
Speaker 1: During that trip, he murders her nineteen year old daughter,
29:05
Speaker 1: Casey McLoud. Like the others, exactly what happens remains unclear.
29:12
Speaker 4: Here's what we know.
29:14
Speaker 1: Kimball travels to the heavily forested backcountry of Jackson County
29:19
Speaker 1: in northern Colorado.
29:21
Speaker 4: It's there that he murders or.
29:23
Speaker 1: Disposes of the body of Casey McLoud, because four years later,
29:28
Speaker 1: hunters discover Casey's skull and scattered bones very deep in
29:33
Speaker 1: the snow. And we also know that a witness sees
29:36
Speaker 1: Kimball with Casey shortly before she disappears. When I ask
29:41
Speaker 1: Kimball about it, he makes a highly dubious.
29:44
Speaker 3: Claim Casey's boyfriend who naked in bed and li sitt
29:48
Speaker 3: and naked on the couch outside their bedroom and suspected
29:52
Speaker 3: we were having an affair.
29:54
Speaker 1: Now, this isn't the only time Kimball tells me that
29:57
Speaker 1: he was in a consensual relationship with one of his victims.
30:01
Speaker 1: He makes similar claims elsewhere.
30:04
Speaker 4: Now I won't play.
30:06
Speaker 1: Those recordings out of respect for the victims. But the
30:09
Speaker 1: pattern matters because later, when police search Kimball's computer, they
30:14
Speaker 1: find violent sexual imagery connected to one of those same women.
30:19
Speaker 1: Material centered on control and coercion. Taken together, it undercuts
30:25
Speaker 1: his version of events and points to an underlying motive.
30:30
Speaker 1: Kimball consistently tries to reframe or deny entirely.
30:35
Speaker 3: By definition any sequence of three or more serial And
30:38
Speaker 3: I'm responsible for pH homicide, so that fits the bill.
30:41
Speaker 3: But I'm not your typical serial for in.
30:44
Speaker 1: Reality, despite Kimball's grandiose self image, he's painfully familiar a
30:51
Speaker 1: typical serial killer, a neurologically vulnerable child whose psychopathy is
30:58
Speaker 1: cemented by trauma, A man driven by fantasy and sadistic
31:03
Speaker 1: need not impulse or circumstances. He's enabled again and again
31:10
Speaker 1: and again by the systematic dismissal of vulnerable women, whose
31:15
Speaker 1: disappearances are easier to explain away than confront. After the
31:22
Speaker 1: murder of Casey McLeod, Kimball works deliberately to make it
31:26
Speaker 1: look like she's run away. He stages her bedroom, He
31:30
Speaker 1: pretends to find her belongings as if she's come home.
31:33
Speaker 4: And left again.
31:35
Speaker 1: He claims a neighbor saw her driving. Every lie is
31:39
Speaker 1: designed to buy time. Then Kimball does something chilling. He
31:45
Speaker 1: convinces Casey's mother to marry him and takes her on
31:48
Speaker 1: a camping trip not far from where he's hidden Casey's remains.
31:53
Speaker 1: This isn't just cruelty, it's confidence, complete certainty that he
31:58
Speaker 1: will never be caught.
32:00
Speaker 3: I didn't kill anybody for through the thrill of iding.
32:03
Speaker 3: Can anybody for the sportaviting countybody for like a sexual
32:07
Speaker 3: statist type of thing. I can people for every reason.
32:11
Speaker 1: Another lie from Kimball, unknowingly taking his victim's mother to
32:16
Speaker 1: the location of her daughter's remains is about maintaining the
32:20
Speaker 1: fantasy and sense of control he is returning for the thrill.
32:26
Speaker 1: The following summer, July two thousand and four, Kimball takes
32:30
Speaker 1: out a fifty thousand dollars life insurance policy on his
32:34
Speaker 1: ten year old son, Justin. Days later, he attempts to
32:39
Speaker 1: kill him, dropping a heavy metal cattle grate onto his
32:42
Speaker 1: son's head in their backyard. Justin survives, and on the
32:47
Speaker 1: way to the hospital, Kimball attempts to throw.
32:50
Speaker 4: Him from the car.
32:53
Speaker 1: Somehow, Justin survives that attempt as well, and when he
32:57
Speaker 1: wakes up from a medically induced coma, Justin tells authorities
33:01
Speaker 1: exactly what his father did. The police dismiss the account.
33:07
Speaker 1: By now, Kimball is such a practiced liar that he
33:10
Speaker 1: can explain away almost anything, even the obvious. But there's
33:16
Speaker 1: one person who doesn't believe him. Justin's mother, Kimball's ex wife, Larisa.
33:22
Speaker 1: She takes Kimball's name off the insurance policy, and with
33:27
Speaker 1: no prospect of getting the money, Kimball finds a new victim.
33:32
Speaker 1: At the time, Kimball's uncle Terry is staying with him
33:36
Speaker 1: while going through a divorce. Terry Kimball is known to
33:40
Speaker 1: be carrying thousands of dollars in cash withdrawn from his
33:45
Speaker 1: savings account. During the separation, God Kimball kills him in
33:50
Speaker 1: the living room. Witnesses see Kimball dispose of a blood
33:54
Speaker 1: soaked couch. He then transports the body to a remote
33:59
Speaker 1: mountain pos near Vail, Colorado, wrapping it tightly in blankets
34:04
Speaker 1: and tarps. Afterwards, Kimball signs divorce papers on his uncle's behalf,
34:11
Speaker 1: making it appear as if Terry is still alive. For months,
34:16
Speaker 1: Kimball uses Terry's credit cards and bank accounts, stealing tens
34:21
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars through fraudulent checks and purchases. When asked,
34:26
Speaker 1: he tells people that his uncle won the lottery and
34:30
Speaker 1: that Terry went to Mexico with a woman. At one point,
34:34
Speaker 1: Kimball even forges a note from Terry claiming he's.
34:37
Speaker 4: Alive and living abroad.
34:40
Speaker 1: But by now the pattern is unmistakable. Scott Kimball isn't
34:45
Speaker 1: just killing, He's a racing people then stepping into the
34:49
Speaker 1: space that they left behind. In early two thousand and six,
34:54
Speaker 1: an optometrist in Lafayette, Colorado, discovers that Scott Kimball has
34:59
Speaker 1: been using his BI business account to cash tens of
35:02
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in bad checks. Kimball flees the state,
35:07
Speaker 1: but for the first time, local investigators dig in. When
35:12
Speaker 1: the Lafayette Police Department search Kimball's office and home, the
35:16
Speaker 1: uncover a sprawling paper trail forged checks, insurance scams, falsified documents,
35:24
Speaker 1: even fake subpoenas. The volume is staggering. Lafayette PD bring
35:30
Speaker 1: their findings to the FBI, and that's when the realization
35:34
Speaker 1: sets in the Bureau hasn't been managing an informant. They've
35:38
Speaker 1: been covering for a serial killer.
35:41
Speaker 5: Authorities are asking the public for help in locating a
35:44
Speaker 5: Montana man, Scott Lee Kimball, is wanted for questioning.
35:48
Speaker 1: Kimball is eventually located in Riverside, California, and after a
35:52
Speaker 1: prolonged police pursuit, his car runs out of gas. He's
35:58
Speaker 1: arrested on the roadside of lies, out of road and
36:03
Speaker 1: finally out of the FBI's protection. Today, just a short
36:06
Speaker 1: time ago, a serial killer who was a long time
36:10
Speaker 1: Boulder County resident is behind bars.
36:13
Speaker 4: We expect for the rest of his life.
36:16
Speaker 1: In early two thousand and nine, prosecutors reach a complex
36:20
Speaker 1: plea agreement with Scott Lee Kimball. Under the deal, Kimball
36:24
Speaker 1: is allowed to plead guilty to two counts of second
36:27
Speaker 1: degree murder, covering the deaths of Terry Kimball, Jennifer markham,
36:32
Speaker 1: Lehanne Embry, and Casey McLeod. This is the voice of
36:37
Speaker 1: Ed Cohen, who is the spokesperson for the Kimball family
36:40
Speaker 1: after his arrest, later.
36:42
Speaker 4: Writing a book.
36:43
Speaker 5: This is Scott's statement, I, Scott Lee Kimball have pleaded
36:48
Speaker 5: guilty to two counts and murder in the second degree.
36:52
Speaker 5: This was part of a plea bargain arrangement. I am
36:55
Speaker 5: sorry for my crimes.
36:58
Speaker 1: The arrangement with Kimball is made in part so the
37:01
Speaker 1: victims' families can have some measure of closure and to
37:05
Speaker 1: avoid the risk of re traumatization across multiple trials. Though
37:10
Speaker 1: Kimball's lies leak through his apology.
37:13
Speaker 5: I accept full responsibility from my role in these murders.
37:18
Speaker 5: I deserve to be held accountable and punished for my crimes. However,
37:24
Speaker 5: I did not act alone.
37:27
Speaker 1: More manipulation from Kimball. When I ask him, he rants
37:31
Speaker 1: about his own family.
37:33
Speaker 3: Spokesman ed Cohen and I are not in good standings,
37:36
Speaker 3: and a lot of that is as choice. It told
37:39
Speaker 3: me when he needs prison need to make their ac changes.
37:42
Speaker 3: You need to do this, do that. I'll stand by you.
37:44
Speaker 3: And in there he says a lot of things that
37:46
Speaker 3: he just speculates on, which really kind of pissed me off.
37:49
Speaker 1: Like he says, as part of the agreement, Kimball also
37:52
Speaker 1: commits to helping authorities locate his victim's remains. He leads
37:57
Speaker 1: FBI agents to leanne Emery's body. He then directs them
38:01
Speaker 1: to Terry Kimball's remains, buried near.
38:04
Speaker 4: Vail Pass, Colorado.
38:06
Speaker 1: But when it comes to Jennifer Markham, the story falls
38:09
Speaker 1: apart again. Each search comes up empty. Eventually, Kimball says
38:16
Speaker 1: he can't remember exactly where he left her. In my opinion,
38:21
Speaker 1: even at the end, faced with the weight of his crimes,
38:25
Speaker 1: Scott Kimball continues to lie. In a letter Kimball sent me,
38:30
Speaker 1: he wrote, I'm honestly surprised that the FBI has let
38:34
Speaker 1: me live this long. I know that sounds crazy. Maybe
38:38
Speaker 1: the FBI is just sure that people will think I'm
38:41
Speaker 1: crazy and not believable. They could be banking on.
38:45
Speaker 2: That to be the case.
38:47
Speaker 1: After being sentenced in two thousand and eight to fifty
38:50
Speaker 1: three years in prison on theft and multiple related charges,
38:54
Speaker 1: Kimball returns to court the following year. On Thursday, October eighth,
38:59
Speaker 1: t nine, he receives an additional seventy year sentence for
39:04
Speaker 1: his guilty please to second degree murder. Despite the way
39:08
Speaker 1: of those sentences, he insists he'll one day be released
39:12
Speaker 1: on parole, but the Colorado Department of Corrections tells a
39:17
Speaker 1: different story. His estimated parole eligibility date is July twenty eighth,
39:22
Speaker 1: twenty fifty six, when Scott Kimball will be.
39:25
Speaker 4: Eighty nine years old.
39:29
Speaker 1: Before I leave Colorado, I get another letter from Scott Kimball.
39:34
Speaker 1: He wants to keep talking. He tells me journalists and
39:38
Speaker 1: producers are reaching out. Then he asks me something revealing.
39:42
Speaker 1: He says, I need you to counsel me on how
39:46
Speaker 1: to deal with these other producers contacting me. He writes
39:50
Speaker 1: it like I'm his agent. It's a classic manipulation technique
39:55
Speaker 1: called forced intimacy. Kimball tries to reframe our relationships so
40:00
Speaker 1: I'm no longer an interviewer, but a confidant, an ally,
40:05
Speaker 1: someone invested in his success. It's a move designed to
40:09
Speaker 1: blur boundaries and create obligations and keep control firmly in
40:14
Speaker 1: his hands. What men like Scott Kimball are incapable of
40:19
Speaker 1: isn't remorse. It's truth, not because the facts are hidden,
40:24
Speaker 1: but because there's nothing inside them that requires honesty, no
40:30
Speaker 1: internal breaks, no moral reference point. Truth only exists if
40:35
Speaker 1: it's useful, if it buys time, if it grants leverage,
40:40
Speaker 1: and when it stops working, they discard it, just like
40:43
Speaker 1: everything else. In a final letter that Kimball sent me,
40:47
Speaker 1: he wrote, I have accepted responsibility for my crimes, and
40:52
Speaker 1: as I've said at least one hundred times, I belong
40:55
Speaker 1: in prison. They build prisons for people like me. I
41:01
Speaker 1: deserved every day I was sentenced to and then some.
41:04
Speaker 1: I have no ill feelings towards anyone. Scott Kimball doesn't
41:10
Speaker 1: want redemption. He wants relevance. And the most dangerous lie
41:15
Speaker 1: he tells isn't the ones about his crimes. It's the
41:19
Speaker 1: belief that he's still in control of the story.
41:23
Speaker 2: He isn't all right, all right, James, alright away, before
41:32
Speaker 2: we wrap I want.
41:33
Speaker 4: To take a second to acknowledge you. This community is.
41:37
Speaker 1: Growing faster than we honestly expect it, and that only
41:40
Speaker 1: happens because people are listening closely, they're thinking critically, and
41:44
Speaker 1: they're sticking around for the conversations that don't end when
41:48
Speaker 1: the story does.
41:49
Speaker 4: The comments, the.
41:50
Speaker 1: Debates, the pushback, even the disagreements. They matter, We read them,
41:55
Speaker 1: and they shape where this show goes next. If you're
41:58
Speaker 1: new here, welcome, and if you've been here since the
42:01
Speaker 1: early episodes, thank you for helping us build something that
42:04
Speaker 1: values nuance over noise. This episode of Unmarked was produced
42:10
Speaker 1: by John Dedau and edited by Dave Alderson. Our additional
42:14
Speaker 1: producer is Jesse Demiray. We've much more coming soon, and
42:19
Speaker 1: if you're still here, you're already part of what makes
42:22
Speaker 1: this work.