California's 'I-5 Strangler' Roger Kibbe was strangled to death, coroner says

The serial killer known as the “I-5 Strangler” was strangled to death in his cell early Sunday morning.

On Tuesday, the Amador County Sheriff's Office released the results of an autopsy on Roger Reece Kibbe, an 81-year-old convicted murderer from Citrus Heights who was serving consecutive life sentences for raping and strangling seven women across Northern California in the 1970s and '80s.

"A forensic autopsy was performed at the Sacramento County Coroner's Office. The cause of death was manual strangulation and the manner of death is homicide," deputies said in Wednesday morning's news release.

At 12:45 a.m. on Sunday, a guard conducting a headcount at Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County found Kibbe, 81, laying on the floor of his cell. His cellmate, Jason Budrow, 40,was standing over him, prison officials announced Monday.

Budrow, a self-described Satanist and sex offender with a "666" tattoo over his right eyebrow, was convicted in 2011 of strangling his then-girlfriend in Riverside County.

Prison officials said Budrow was placed into segregation while a homicide investigation took place. Amador County's undersheriff, Gary Redman, said the local district attorney would determine whether Budrow would face a new murder charge for Kibbe's death.

Kibbe was first convicted of raping and murdering Darcie Rene Frackenpohl, a 17-year-old runaway from Seattle in 1987, and dumping her body in the mountains south of Lake Tahoe.

He was arrested in 1988 for Frackenpohl's murder just two days before his sentence was up after being convicted of beating a sex worker at the Haggin Oaks golf course in Sacramento. The woman was able to escape and flag down a passing police officer who spotted Kibbe throwing a bag out the window when the officer pulled him over.

In the bag was a garrote fashioned out of a pair of dowels and some parachute cord, a pair of scissors, a sex toy, some women's hair ties and a pair of handcuffs, detectives said.

The evidence in the bag proved critical to securing Kibbe's conviction for Frackenpohl's murder. Later, DNA evidence linked Kibbe to two other murders, and he confessed to four more in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty.

His other victims included Lou Ellen Burleigh of Walnut Creek in 1977 and the 1986 murders of Stephanie Brown, 19, of Sacramento, Charmaine Sabrah, 26, a mother of three from Sacramento, Lora Heedrick, 21, of Modesto, Katherine Kelly Quinones, 25, of Sacramento and Barbara Ann Scott, 29 who was kidnapped in Pittsburg.

Kibbe was dubbed the I-5 Strangler because some of his victims were abducted from their cars and their bodies dumped along highways. He was known for leaving his signature — random cuts on the women's clothing using a pair of scissors.