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Informant Turned Serial Killer · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:15
  Nobody could say that Scott Lee Kimball had an easy upbringing. His parents divorced
• 0:20
  around the time he was ten, and Scott with his brother moved into their
• 0:24
  grandmother's mobile home. It's here where their neighbor, Theodore Peyton, entered Scott's
• 0:30
  life and began more than a decade of sexual abuse. Before Peyton was brought
• 0:36
  to justice. Scott had sought escape at the end of a barrel in a
• 0:40
  suicide attempt that left him with a distinct scar on his forehead and, by
• 0:45
  the accounts of those close to him, a change in the way his brain
• 0:49
  worked. Before and after this attempt, Scott had already been running into trouble
• 0:54
  with the law. Check fraud and scams soured his relationship with Larissa Hints,
• 1:00
  who he had married in nineteen ninety three and fathered two sons with an allegation
• 1:04
  of sexual assault from hence led to a divorce, But it was a previous
• 1:08
  probation violation that actually led to his arrest. When the FBI apprehended him,
• 1:15
  he had already fled to Alaska, fallen into another engagement, and restarted his
• 1:19
  scams. In prison, Scott quickly used whatever intel he could gather among inmates
• 1:26
  and staff to his benefit. He built up his reputation and convinced a member
• 1:30
  of the FBI named Karl Schlaugh to use him as an informant. Between poor
• 1:36
  background checks that left overlooked rape allegations against Scott out of the consideration and Scott's
• 1:42
  ability to enter certain cliques in the prison to gather information, Schlaugh accepted a
• 1:49
  decision that now defines his career in all the worst ways. So for a
• 1:53
  very brief recap up to this point, Scott Lee Kimball was abused sexually as
• 1:57
  a child by a neighbor. He attempted as suicide from the trauma related to
• 2:00
  that. The injury to his brain from the suicide attempt, his friends and
• 2:05
  family say, altered his personality and decision making. He was never really on
• 2:09
  the right side of the law at any point in his life. He was
• 2:13
  married and then divorced after a sexual assault, arrested by the FBI, put
• 2:16
  into prison, and while in prison infiltrated certain groups to his advantage. He
• 2:22
  used the sneaky ability to partner with the FBI to become an informant. Scott
• 2:27
  Kimball left prison with a pretty good deal skirting a tougher penalty. His mother
• 2:31
  and brother financially supported his new businesses. The FBI also put him on their
• 2:37
  payroll with a hefty first payment of fifty thousand dollars. Leanne Emery's name had
• 2:43
  been given to Scott by another inmate, her boyfriend, Steve Holly. The
• 2:49
  three had embellished long discussions about a wild escape plan back when Scott was still
• 2:53
  in custody. After his release, Scott met with Leanne. With her boyfriend
• 2:58
  still behind bars and a long history of struggles with her bipolar disorder, Scott
• 3:02
  quickly pulled her into his world of deceit. The last time she saw her
• 3:07
  parents, she claimed she was going to Mexico, but the real story is
• 3:12
  she was going on a cross state road trip stealing checks with Scott. When
• 3:15
  her abandoned car was found and her parents reported her missing, All police seemed
• 3:21
  to see was a troubled young woman who had decided to run off and might
• 3:24
  return at her own discretion. Scott knew, of course, that Leanne would
• 3:30
  never be coming home. He had, after all, shot her in the
• 3:34
  head and seemed pretty certain about getting away with it. His responsibilities as an
• 3:38
  informant also led Scott to a lady named Jennifer Markham. Under the supervision of
• 3:45
  Schlaf, Scott was instructed to gain her trust to lead to a criminal partner
• 3:50
  of another kingpin serving time at the prison. A dinner date that Scott recorded
• 3:55
  helped little in forwarding the case, only for Jennifer mar to disappear shortly afterwards.
• 4:01
  When Scott made contact again after days of silence, he insisted that he
• 4:05
  knew nothing about what happened to Jennifer. As often was the case with Scott,
• 4:11
  he was lying, but given Markham's own troubled circumstances and connections to violent
• 4:15
  criminals, little came of it. Scott's association with the FBI was one of
• 4:21
  the many things about him that impressed Laurie McLeod. Of course, when he
• 4:26
  gave her his number, she bought into another lie, one where he represented
• 4:30
  himself not as an informant but as a bona fide agent for the FBI.
• 4:35
  Scott Kimball slowly entered her life, meeting Laurie's nineteen year old daughter, Casey.
• 4:42
  Casey was troubled, much like the others had been, and when she
• 4:46
  disappeared, the police were again slow to investigate. Laurie was not as quickly
• 4:50
  dissuaded, and Scott seemed to realize this could be a problem. He needed
• 4:56
  to throw off suspicion from himself and ease Laurie's mind, and he did that
• 5:00
  with an engagement ring. The wedding was quick and the honeymoon romantic, but
• 5:06
  Laurie didn't know at the time was just a few miles out from where they
• 5:11
  were camping. Her daughter's remains were in the soil buried there by Scott Lee
• 5:15
  Kimball. The next few years would see Scott changing as targets from vulnerable women
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  to next of ken, one of his two sons from his previous marriage to
• 5:26
  Larissa. Hence, he had a clear favorite in Cody Kimball, and he
• 5:30
  seemed to resent Justin Kimball enough to want to kill him. An incident where
• 5:33
  Scott had severely injured Justin enough to be hospitalized, raised serious suspicions and Scott's
• 5:40
  mother, who believed he had tried to kill his own child to claim the
• 5:44
  insurance money. There obviously isn't enough time to go into this attempted murder of
• 5:48
  his own son, but I'll put a link to that story In the show
• 5:51
  notes of this episode, Scott Kimball's uncle, Terry, came to visit his
• 5:56
  nephew one day and then disappeared. Shortly thereafter, Scott's wife, Laurie,
• 6:00
  walked in to see her husband putting a couch on to the curb. His
• 6:04
  statements weren't convincing that the stain on it had been from a dog and that
• 6:10
  Terry had escaped to Mexico with a stripper and some lottery winnings. It was
• 6:15
  a pretty bad lie, especially from someone as talented as deception as Scott.
• 6:18
  That wasn't his best work. But for Laurie, the relationship was already at
• 6:23
  its breaking point. Scott had already started seeing a waitress, and his unwillingness
• 6:28
  to discuss Laurie's still missing daughter had all but concluded. Scott moved out,
• 6:32
  and between his frogs and the murders, it would only take a single pull
• 6:38
  at one of the many, many threads to unravel everything. That pull came
• 6:44
  and Lafayette in two thousand and six, when an optometrist realized that there was
• 6:47
  something off with his bank account. The bank called on detected Garry Thatcher to
• 6:53
  investigate, and Scott Kimball was seen on security cameras as the person making a
• 6:58
  deposit into the account. Thatcher at first spoke to Laurie McLeod. Among the
• 7:03
  multiple claims of fraud, she revealed, she also brought up that Scott was
• 7:08
  an FBI agent. That lie from so many years ago stuck out the Thatcher,
• 7:13
  who quickly confirmed it to be false. Along with the mentions of Casey's
• 7:16
  disappearance and the incident that had nearly claimed Justin's life, it seemed long overdue
• 7:23
  to give Scott a second look. When the day of his arrest came,
• 7:27
  Kimball didn't go graciously. He put his foot on the pedal, instigating a
• 7:31
  long chase, threatening to take his own life in a long phone call with
• 7:35
  schlaugh all for nothing. His gas tank finally ran out in the town of
• 7:40
  Mecca and his car came to a halt. It seemed like the truth that
• 7:44
  finally caught up to Scott Lee Kimball. Over the course of the next few
• 7:47
  weeks, Scott insisted that he was innocent in the face of increasingly incriminating revelations,
• 7:54
  including Casey Mcloud's body being found after Scott claimed she owed deed International Forest
• 8:01
  a deal was offered. If Scott Kimball came clean and showed them the bodies
• 8:05
  of the other individuals who he was highly suspected of killing, he'd be charged
• 8:09
  on only one count of second degree murder. Scott accepted, leading them to
• 8:16
  the remains of Leanne Emery and Terry Kimball. He then claimed he didn't remember
• 8:20
  where he had left Jennifer Markham's body, and that meant the deal was off.
• 8:26
  In prison, Scott was not remorseful, just the opposite. He bragged
• 8:30
  about it. He bragged about more victims, some of which the FBI began
• 8:33
  to take seriously. Among these were Katrina Powell, a sex worker whose body
• 8:39
  had been found in a dumpster behind him all in two thousand and four with
• 8:43
  both hands cut off. There was also Lena Ray's Gettys, whose hands were
• 8:46
  cut off like Powells had been in West Mesa, Albuquerque. There was also
• 8:52
  the possibility that Kimball could be tied to a mass burial pit holding the remains
• 8:56
  of nine women. Today, the case is still visible scar on law enforcement,
• 9:01
  both local and federal. Reforming the informant system was an obvious first step,
• 9:07
  and eyes fell on those Colorado departments that had so quickly dismissed the urgency
• 9:11
  of looking for female victims just because they had somewhat of a sketchy background.
• 9:16
  Schlaugh found himself under heavy scrutiny. Although he was only suspended three weeks,
• 9:22
  he eventually left the FBI due to difficulty with being assigned to other cases.
• 9:26
  For Scott Kimball himself, a two eleven letter he sent to his family was
• 9:31
  significant, not only because it seemed his most detailed descriptions of the debts yet,
• 9:37
  but also because it contained another admission of guilt. He said that he
• 9:41
  was in fact responsible for Emory's death, shooting her twice when she tried to
• 9:46
  run from him. For Casey and Jennifer Markham, he was less remorseful,
• 9:50
  still blaming their deaths on accidental drug overdoses. Today, Scott Lee Kimball is
• 9:56
  unmasked in a way he might never have expected. For him self and interviews
• 10:01
  from prison, he continues to jump from one story to the next. Sometimes
• 10:05
  he reveals something new, Oftentimes he outright contradicts what he had said before.
• 10:09
  But with every lie, Scott Lee Kimball bolsters another truth about himself that he
• 10:16
  is a killer and a con artist. Through and through that is ten Minute
• 10:28
  Murder for today brief and bingeible true crime. I'm Joe, the host,
• 10:33
  and I really appreciate you taking the time to listen today. And as I
• 10:37
  mentioned in the middle of the story, in the show notes, you're going
• 10:39
  to find the news story. I think it's from twenty twenty. They interviewed
• 10:45
  Scott Lee Kimball's two sons, one of them he tried to kill allegedly.
• 10:50
  There's an interview with both sons there, and I'll put the link for that
• 10:54
  in the show notes of this episode, and I'll also post it on the
• 10:58
  Facebook page for ten Minute Murder. And Hey, if this is your first
• 11:01
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• 11:03
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• 11:07
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• 11:20
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• 11:24
  Murder dot com. Thank you for listening today. Bye,