A California prisoner admitted to strangling the notorious serial killer known as the “I-5 Strangler” in the prison cell they shared, adding that he wanted to “avenge” his victims.
Jason Budrow, 40, claimed he strangled Roger Kibbe, 81, to death in a five-page letter sent to the Times-Herald, adding that he spent months “grooming” Kibbe for murder.
“What had started out as my original bare-bones plan of doing a straightforward homicide of a cellmate to obtain my single-cell status evolved into a mission for avenging that youngest girl and all of Roger Kibbe’s other victims,” Budrow wrote.
The letter was titled, “Ascension … may their souls go to heaven …”
Budrow, who is serving life without parole for murdering a Southern California woman, wrote in the letter that he was not concerned about the legal consequences.
According to court records, no charges have been filed against Budrow yet.
Budrow challenged the acting California attorney general to seek the death penalty against him to test the theory that no jury would convict him for allegedly killing his cellmate, who was a serial killer.
“Should Amador County and/or the new Attorney General for the State of California elect to seek death penalty prosecution against me for murder-one with special circumstances (lying in wait, execution-style, desecrating a corpse, whatever) they can go ahead and ‘run that,’” Budrow wrote.
“I am down to test my theory that no jury during a penalty phase of my potential death penalty trial will ever vote to see me executed for murdering Roger Kibbe, the ‘I-5 Stranger,’” he added.
Officials with Mule Creek State Prison, where Kibbe was confined, have been investigating his death as a homicide, according to a press release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Kibbe was initially sentenced to 25 years to life in May 1991 for murdering a 17-year-old Seattle runaway. He pleaded guilty to six additional killings going back to 1977 after DNA evidence linked the killings to him.
A judge sentenced Kibbe to six additional life sentences for those murders.
