Prisoner confesses to killing 'I-5 Strangler' to avenge killer's victims
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This photo provided by the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation shows inmate Roger Reece Kibbe, 81.CDCR via AP
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A California prisoner has confessed to killing the so-called "I-5 Strangler" after deliberately arranging for them to share a cell — calling it "a mission for avenging" the serial killer's many victims.
Jason Budrow, 40, wrote a five-page letter to The Mercury News confessing to killing Roger Kibbe, 81, with a jiu-jitsu-style "triangle choke" the day they became cellmates at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione.
Despite being a convicted pedophile and killer himself, Budrow said in his letter that he was moved by "a dark omen and spiritual calling" after watching in prison a TV special about Kibbe's reign of terror in the 1970s and '80s.
The serial killer eventually confessed to the slayings, rapes and kidnappings of seven women, including a teenager — pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty.
Budrow said he watched the TV doc in "horrifying disgust and heart-wrenching empathy" and "it was the report of his youngest victim that impacted me the deepest," referring to a 17-year-old woman.
It "evolved into a mission for avenging that youngest girl and all of Roger Kibbe's other victims," he wrote, according to the paper.
He decided in November to kill Kibbe, spending months "grooming" his prison victim and arranging for them to share a cell before striking on Feb. 27.
Before dying, Kibbe confessed that he murdered the women "for sport," wrote Budrow, who has "666" tattooed above his right eye and said he carved "a crude inverted pentagram" into Kibbe's body.
This photo provided by the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation shows Inmate Jason Budrow, 40.
CDCR via AP
He believes Kibbe's victims' souls "have been released from the possession of their killer and I pray that they now rest in peace."
So far, Budrow has not been charged over the death, the paper said, citing court records. And the inmate — who is already serving life without the possibility of parole — doesn't care anyway.
He encouraged officials to "go ahead" if they want to "seek death penalty prosecution against me for murder-one with special circumstances (lying in wait, execution style, desecrating a corpse, whatever)."
"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 wrote confidently.
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