Investigators who have been looking into the unsolved murder of Seattle federal prosecutor Tom Wales for nine years — a case for which Scott Kimball had once been an informant — turn their attention to Kimball himself as a possible suspect.

Tom Wales (walesfoundation.org)

An anonymous law enforcement source tells the Camera that Kimball is under investigation in the Oct. 11, 2001 murder, in which someone standing in Wales’ backyard in Seattle fatally shot him through his basement window.

This becomes the fourth known cold case into which authorities are looking that involves Kimball as a possible suspect.

A timeline the Camera assembled of Kimball’s whereabouts in the latter part of 2001 is incomplete, but shows that he spent time in Seattle around the time Wales was killed.

An arrest report from Nov. 7, 2001, shows that Kimball was picked up by Cordova, Alaska, police on suspicion of forging thousands of dollars of checks in his brother’s name. The report states that Kimball had opened a Wells Fargo bank account in Seattle into which he attempted to cash bogus checks that appeared to come from his employer, a Seattle-based fishing company.

Investigators also reported that Kimball admitted he had “hypothetically” purchased blank check stock at an Office Depot in Seattle before his arrest.

In a book about Kimball, titled “SLK: Serial Killer,” his cousin Ed Coet wrote that Kimball spent a period of time in Seattle recuperating from an injury he sustained on a fishing boat.

Coet wrote that Kimball’s mother, Barb, visited her son in Seattle and stayed with him in a hotel as he recovered from his fishing injury. She doesn’t recall the exact dates she was there, Coet said Thursday, but she remembered that it was fall of 2001.

Seattle skyline (Wikimedia Commons)

Kimball told Coet that after he was arrested in Alaska in early November 2001, he used information about the Wales murder to play the FBI. Gleaning whatever information he could about the case off the Internet, he convinced authorities that he had overheard a couple of inmates talking about Wales. He said solving the murder of a federal prosecutor was a top priority for the FBI and they listened eagerly to what he had to say.

The most significant clue the FBI has gotten on the Wales murder case over the last decade came in 2006, when the bureau’s office in Seattle received an anonymous letter from the purported killer. The writer said a woman had hired him to shoot Wales and that he took the job because he was broke.

The letter was sent from Las Vegas and was postmarked Jan. 23, 2006. Kimball had left Lafayette about a week earlier, when he realized authorities were going to launch an investigation into a massive check fraud scam he had committed. He was bound for southern California, but it’s unclear whether he stopped in Las Vegas on the way.

When Coet asked his cousin if he had killed Wales, Kimball denied it.

“If I did, do you think I’d tell you?” Kimball is quoted in Coet’s book. “You don’t just go to jail for killing a federal prosecutor. You get executed for that sort of thing. But if anybody ever asks you, my answer is no.”

An advance copy of a book written by Scott Kimball’s cousin, Ed Coet, includes an excerpt of a jailhouse interview that appears to directly tie Kimball to the brutal 2004 murder of a woman whose dismembered body was dumped in Westminster.

Cover of SLK: Serial Killer (PublishAmerica)

In “SLK: Serial Killer,” Kimball is quoted telling a fellow inmate that he “picked up a hooker” off Colfax Avenue, gave her drugs, strangled her and “used chemicals on her to test what the acid did to her skin.”

Catrina Renee Powell, who was last seen alive on East Colfax Avenue in Denver on Oct. 24, 2004, was found dead the next day behind a strip mall at 7530 Sheridan Blvd. in Westminster.

Her hands had been cut off, and she had severe head injuries.

An autopsy report from the Adams County Coroner’s Office, which became public in September 2010, revealed that Powell had chemical burns on her body and that her cause of death included strangulation. Prior to the autopsy report becoming public, investigators working on the case hadn’t disclosed the existence of chemical burns and hadn’t revealed the exact cause of her death.

Kimball’s account comes from a May 2009 interview that FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing conducted with an inmate who was housed with Kimball in Park County, according to the book.

Catrina Powell (Denver Post)

Powell’s sister-in-law, Dachelle Powell, confirms to the Camera that investigators have told her Kimball is being investigated for the murder.

The FBI refuses to comment.

 

The Denver Post reported that Scott Kimball is a potential suspect in “several” unsolved disappearances.

The FBI disclosed the fact that investigators are looking at specific cases after the paper tried to obtain a memorandum dissecting the bureau’s handling of Kimball as an informant. The bureau refused to release the internal report.

Several law enforcement sources had told the Camera they believed Kimball was likely involved in other missing-persons cases, but they did not confirm that any investigations were ongoing.

Ted Peyton's sex offender registry photo, taken March 29, 2010

Ted Peyton, who was convicted of sexually abusing Scott Kimball in the 1970s and 1980s, registers with Boulder County as a sex offender after concerned mothers in Nederland contact the Sheriff’s Office about the fact that he is not registered.

Cmdr. Rick Brough, with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, said he wasn’t certain why Peyton wasn’t made to register in 1996, when he finished his prison sentence in the sex abuse case.

“I’m thinking that when he was released, a lot of the rules that are in place now weren’t in place then,” Brough said. “That’s why he slipped through. Things have tightened up over the years.”

In his first televised interview from prison, Scott Kimball tells Fox 31 News in Denver that he’s not a traditional serial killer, and there were reasons for every murder.

“I’m a cleaner,” he says. “I clean up somebody else’s mess. I make bad situations go away.”

He hints that he was involved in a vast criminal conspiracy that led to his victims’ deaths — a theory debunked by investigators — but insists he’s still a good person.

“Even a good guy can have a bad side,” he says. “We all make choices. I chose to be an outlaw.”

His only regret: “That I let my kids down.”

Katharina Booth, in her Boulder office. (Paul Aiken / Camera)

In a search of Scott Kimball’s cell in the Sterling Correctional Facility, an FBI agent finds several fraudulent documents.

Claiming that Kimball used discovery from his own case to create the fake FBI papers from behind bars, Boulder County prosecutor Katharina Booth files a motion trying to prevent Kimball from accessing anymore hard-copy files.

She contends Kimball disseminated the doctored reports to the media in an effort to show that other people were involved in the deaths of his four victims.

The Camera received several of Kimball’s bogus documents in late 2009. One had the plural header “Federal Bureau of Investigations.” It featured a February 2006 interview with Steve Ennis at the federal prison in Beaumont, Texas. However, U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials said Ennis was never housed at the Beaumont facility. FBI Special Agent Jonny Grusing, who purportedly conducted the interview, was still nine months away from being assigned to the case.

Read one of the fake documents. (PDF)

Kimball's DOC mugshot

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver upholds Scott Kimball’s 70-month prison sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Kimball had challenged the June 11, 2009, sentence, claiming that his ownership of a rifle was legal under the “sporting exception” in federal law because he used the weapon to ward off coyotes targeting his cattle on his Adams County property.

But the appeals court found that Kimball had lied during his testimony at the sentencing hearing and that the evidence indicated he wasn’t using the rifle solely for sporting purposes.

Kimball's DOC mugshot

Scott Kimball is sent to Sterling Correctional Facility to start serving his 70-year prison term.

He could first be eligible for parole in 38.5 years, at age 81, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

“I won’t spend the rest of my life in prison, ” Kimball later told the Camera through his cousin. (See story.)

Those are the desperate words of a man with nothing left to do but “sit in prison and rationalize his sentence and minimize his crimes,” Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett responded.

Garnett said he’s confident Kimball will die in prison.

Scott Kimball at his sentencing hearing in the Boulder County Justice Center. Camera file photo

Scott Kimball pleads guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of LeAnn Emry, Jennifer Marcum, Kaysi McLeod and Terry Kimball, and is sentenced to 70 years in prison.

In an emotional hearing at the Boulder County Justice Center, the victims’ families finally have a chance to face the man who killed their loved ones.

LeAnn Emry’s mother said her daughter was “no more important to him than the carcass of a dead animal.”

“He made the deliberate choice to murder, and he made that choice at least four times,” Darlene Emry said through tears.

Read More >>

When Terry Kimball's body is returned to his family, he will be buried next to his parents in Lafayette Cemetery. (Paul Aiken / Camera)

With the snow melted in Colorado’s high country, a search party follows a map drawn by Scott Kimball to a logging road near Vail Pass.

There, Lafayette police Detective Gary Thatcher finds Terry Kimball’s body wrapped in a gray tarp. He appears to have been shot through the head.

A bullet fragment found at the scene is later found to be consistent with Scott Kimball’s .40-caliber Firestar handgun.

Scott Kimball is sentenced in federal court in Denver to 70 months in prison for possessing a firearm as a felon.

Terry Kimball. (Courtesy photo)

Bloodstains found the previous summer in the carpet of Scott Kimball’s former  Adams County homes test positive as a match for his “Uncle Terry,” based on a DNA sample from Terry Kimball’s daughter.

A fragment from a brass-jacketed bullet found near LeAnn Emry’s remains in Utah’s Bryson Canyon is determined to be consistent with the .40-caliber Firestar handgun Scott Kimball owned.

The bullet fragment is found right where Emry’s skull would have been located, according to authorities.

Boulder County DA Stan Garnett. (Camera file photo)

Without Jennifer Marcum’s body, Boulder County prosecutors revoke their deal with Kimball.

In a December 2008 “memorandum of understanding,” Kimball had agreed to lead investigators to the bodies of LeAnn Emry, Jennifer Marcum and Terry Kimball. In return, he would face only one count of second-degree murder.

In a letter to Kimball’s public defenders, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett writes that Kimball is considered “in breach” of the deal.

Read More >>

Jennifer Marcum, at age 24. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

Scott Kimball participates in a third search for bodies, insisting that Jennifer Marcum is buried in the same area of eastern Utah that LeAnn Emry’s remains had been found the previous month.

But no new discoveries are made, and Kimball tells the FBI that Jennifer may be buried as far as 60 miles away from the site being searched.

Jennifer’s body has still never been found.

Investigators suspect that Kimball may be hanging on to the information as leverage, as a way of extracting something of value from someone somewhere down the road.

“If he thought giving up Jennifer’s remains would benefit him, he would say where they are,” FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing said.

Kimball says the FBI won’t provide him the resources to find Jennifer.

“From day one I told the FBI that finding Jennifer would be the hardest to find,” he wrote in response to questions from the Camera. “I’m willing to keep looking.”

The Utah site where LeAnn Emry's remains were found. (Courtesy of Howard Emry)

During a second hunt for bodies, Scott Kimball leads investigators to a wash in Bryson Canyon.

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing is the first to find a bone and then additional remains. They are later determined to be LeAnn Emry’s, based on DNA from her parents, Darlene and Howard Emry.

Boulder County prosecutor Katharina Booth said coming upon Emry’s bones was extremely emotional and moving.

A fragment of a brass-jacketed bullet is found the next day in the area where LeAnn’s skull would have been located when she was killed.

In a separate search for Jennifer Marcum’s remains, which Kimball insists are nearby, nothing is found.

Amy Okubo, also a chief deputy with the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office, said Kimball knows exactly where Marcum is and was simply “messing with us.”

Scott Kimball leads investigators and FBI agents on a hunt for bodies in eastern Utah, where he claims LeAnn Emry and Jennifer Marcum are buried.

Kimball and investigators pore over computer-generated maps and satellite photos in an effort to narrow down the search field. No remains are found.

Vail Pass. (colorado-counties.com)

Scott Kimball draws authorities a detailed map to the spot near Vail Pass where he left his uncle Terry Kimball’s body. But a search will have to be postponed until the snow melts in the high country.

Kimball later tells FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing that Uncle Terry’s body — stashed in the woods in his clothing, tennis shoes and eyeglasses — is wrapped in a grey tarp bound by about 100 feet of nylon rope.

Kimball's mug shot. (Rocky Mountain News)

Boulder County prosecutors make a deal with Scott Kimball.

He pleads guilty to stealing $55,000 from Lafayette optometrist Cleve Armstrong as a habitual offender, and is sentenced to 48 years in prison.

In exchange, prosecutors draw up a memorandum of understanding in the missing-persons case. If he will lead investigators to the bodies of Jennifer Marcum, LeAnn Emry and Terry Kimball, he will only face a single count of second-degree murder.

They will otherwise pursue a first-degree murder conviction, punishable by life in prison without parole or the death penalty. But that will be difficult with only one set of remains — Kaysi McLeod’s — that show no evidence of the cause or manner of death.

For prosecutors Amy Okubo and Katharina Booth, the deal represents their only chance of finding the missing victims.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t do that without his help,” Booth said. “It was a deal with the devil.”

Read the Rocky Mountain News article.

Lori McLeod sits near her daughter's headstone at Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge in December 2009. (Mark Leffingwell / Camera)

Lori McLeod’s marriage to Scott Kimball is declared invalid.

Married since Aug. 31, 2003, the couple had separated years earlier.

The vacant Adams County home where Kimball once lived. (Paul Aiken / Camera)

In a search of Scott Kimball’s former Adams County home, at 14701 Huron St., investigators find bloodstains in the living-room carpet, carpet pad and floorboards. They cut out samples and sent them to the FBI lab for analysis.

Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher, left, and FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing, near the site where a hunter discovered Kaysi McLeod's body. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

A final DNA analysis at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va., identifies the remains found in Routt National Forest the previous fall as those of Kaysi McLeod.

Investigators, along with Kaysi’s family, will return to the site looking for evidence, but nothing is uncovered.

The receipt, found in a box of Kimball's belongings. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Nagged by a $17.95 grocery store receipt found in Scott Kimball’s possessions, FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing decides to take a closer look around Walden, Colo.

The receipt — dated Aug. 24, 2003, one day after the disappearance of Kaysi McLeod. — came from the North Park Supers store in the tiny northern Colorado mountain town.

Scott Kimball, who said he was alone in the mountains the day Kaysi disappeared, had later told Grusing that she might have overdosed on drugs somewhere on national forest land.

Grusing calls the Routt National Forest district office in Walden to ask for a map of the area, and a receptionist tells him it costs $8.

In no mood to fill out an expense sheet, Grusing asks to talk to someone higher up the chain of command.

He tells supervisor Sue Yeager he’s with the FBI and is searching for human remains. She says she’ll get some maps out right away.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she tells him to talk to the coroner. A skull, likely belonging to a young female, had been discovered by a hunter six months earlier in a remote area southwest of town.

“When she told me that, I pretty much knew it was Kaysi,” Grusing recalls.

An initial DNA analysis 2 1/2 weeks later will point to the same conclusion.

Scott Kimball pleads guilty in federal court in Denver to one count of possessing a firearm as a felon. He is scheduled for sentencing five months later.

Investigators find Kaysi McLeod’s Subway hat in a trailer owned by Scott Kimball. It is found in a black bag containing six zip ties, two rolls of electrical tape, and women’s shoes.

Steven Holley

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing and Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher interview Steven Holley at the federal prison in Florence, Colo.

They learn that his girlfriend, LeAnn Emry, had been with Scott Kimball in the month before she disappeared on Jan. 29, 2003.

Holley, who spent time in the same unit as Kimball at FCI-Englewood in 2002, said Kimball went by the name “Hannibal.”

Howard and Darlene Emry, with a photo of their daughter LeAnn.

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing calls Howard Emry at home in Payette, Idaho, and asks to speak to his daughter, LeAnn.

“She’s been missing for nearly five years now,” Emry replies.

He tells the agent he fears LeAnn was killed back in January 2003.

Find “Hannibal,” he says. “That’s who murdered my daughter.”

Investigating Jennifer Marcum’s disappearance, FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing and Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher interview Steve Ennis, who shared a cell with Scott Kimball at FCI-Englewood while dating Jennifer.

Ennis — being held at a federal prison in Seagoville, Texas — tells the investigators of another former FCI-Englewood inmate with an eerily similar story.

Steven Holley

Like Ennis, this inmate had become friends with Kimball behind bars in 2002. Like Ennis, he had put Kimball in touch with a girlfriend upon his release.

Both women went missing within weeks.

Talk to Steven Holley, Ennis told the investigators.

Holley, the inmate who had dated LeAnn Emry, had never had his own plea for an FBI interview granted.

Routt National Forest, where a hunter found a human skeleton in September 2007. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Bushwhacking through a dense section of Routt National Forest in the shadow of Little Haystack Mountain, a hunter finds a human skeleton.

“If I hadn’t been at that exact spot at that time of the morning with the sun glinting off the skull, I would not have seen it,” said the hunter, a Brighton resident who asked that his name not be used. “Something happened. Somebody wanted me to find it.”

With snow in the forecast, the hunter ties a rope to a tree to mark his find, packs the skull carefully in his backpack, and continues his trek.

He calls 911 the next day, and the Jackson County coroner takes possession of the remains, thought to belong to a young woman.

The Sheriff’s Office writes up a full report, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is notified, but news of the find doesn’t reach the FBI for six months.

Kimball's Montana Department of Corrections mug.

Scott Kimball is interviewed by FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing and Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher at the Cascade County Detention Facility in Great Falls, Mont.

Asked about the disappearances of Jennifer Marcum, Kaysi McLeod and Terry Kimball, he offers to provide information about Jennifer and his uncle if given immunity for his white-collar crimes. Kaysi, he tells the investigators, is still alive.

During the six-hour interview, Kimball makes statements like: “I can’t incriminate myself any further” and “I wish I could be honest with you.”

Investigators found this photo of LeAnn Emry on Kimball's laptop but did not yet know who it was. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

In a search of Scott Kimball’s Toshiba laptop, the FBI finds a search of the term “Jennifer Marcum missing” and pictures of various women, including LeAnn Emry, although investigators don’t yet know who she is.

They also find 291 graphic images “depicting women clothed and unclothed, being assaulted, forced into violent sexual activities or raped, bound and gagged, feigning or posing as being dead and threatened at gunpoint or knife point.”

The search finds that Kimball logged into Internet sex sites as “Beefman1996” and visited multiple rape video Web sites, including “Brutally Raped Young Girls,” “Rape Island TGP,” and “Japanese Girl Rape.”

Read the search-warrant affidavit. (PDF)

Scott Kimball is indicted in federal court in Denver on a charge of Felon in Possession of a Firearm.

Earlier in 2007, two guns belonging to Kimball had been found at a friend’s house in California. Kimball was prohibited from owning firearms according to the terms of his federal probation on an earlier check fraud case.

Kaysi McLeod, 2001. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Dale Stewart, Scott Kimball’s former Adams County landlord, admits to investigators that he lied when he told Lori McLeod he had seen her daughter driving around the property after she disappeared in August 2003.

Stewart said Kimball asked him to lie.

The receipt. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

FBI Special Agent Jonny Grusing and Lafayette police Detective Gary Thatcher find a receipt from North Park Supers grocery store, dated Aug. 24, 2003 — the day after Kaysi McLeod vanished — in boxes of old documents and receipts belonging to Scott Kimball.

They also find Kaysi’s date book and a map of the North Park area.

A rifle and handgun belonging to Scott Kimball are recovered at a friend’s house in Indio, Calif.

His girlfriend, Denise Pierce, identifies the handgun as one she saw Kimball shooting recreationally on an outing. The rifle was purchased for Kimball at a Thornton Wal-Mart by another girlfriend, Melissa Anderson, in December 2005.

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing. (Marty Caivano/Camera)

After Bob Marcum and Rob McLeod meet with the FBI about their missing daughters, Special Agent Jonathan Grusing is assigned to investigate the missing-persons cases surrounding Scott Kimball.

Working with Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher, Grusing launches an exhaustive investigation, looking for clues that Kimball had transitioned from a white-collar criminal to a serial killer.

Bob Marcum.

Rob McLeod.

Bob Marcum and Rob McLeod meet with Lafayette police Detective Gary Thatcher, who is investigating Kimball for check fraud, about their missing daughters.

They ask to have a bone pit on Kimball’s cattle pasture searched for human remains, but police find nothing.

The two fathers also meet with the FBI at the bureau’s Denver office and explain the similarities in their daughters’ cases. They tell the FBI about Terry Kimball, too, saying they don’t buy that he ran off to Mexico.

“You can look into this and see if it goes anywhere, or you can choose not to,” McLeod tells the bureau. “It’s your choice.”

Terry Kimball in 2002. (Courtesy of Karen Johnson)

Bob Marcum, who has flown out to Colorado, meets with Rob and Lori McLeod to search for clues to their daughters’ whereabouts.

They drive to Scott Kimball’s former condo in Lakewood, where Jennifer had left her furniture, and talk to the manager there.

They scope out his former Adams County property, and a nearby field where Kimball had run cattle. A pit on the property contains the bones of slaughtered cows.

Convinced that Kimball has claimed more victims, Marcum asks the others: “Is there anyone else Scott Kimball has been around who you’ve never seen again?”

In fact, Lori McLeod responds, Scott’s uncle Terry had vanished a couple of years ago after living with them for several weeks.

“She said it like she had never thought about it before,” Marcum said.

(Date is approximate.)

Still in jail after his California car chase, Scott Kimball’s suspended sentence in his 2001 Montana theft and escape case is revoked and he is ordered to serve his remaining time — nearly two years — behind bars.

A check forged on Cleve Armstrong's account. (Courtesy Lafayette police)

Boulder County issues a warrant for Scott Kimball’s arrest on suspicion of theft, forgery and false reporting.

The charges stemmed from the theft of $55,000 from Lafayette optometrist Cleve Armstrong.

In the course of that investigation, police also found a trailer on Kimball’s former property that he had reported stolen two months earlier.

Kimball had already collected a $10,000 insurance claim for the trailer.

Rob McLeod (Mark Leffingwell / Camera)

Reading a Westword article about a billboard erected for Jennifer Marcum, Rob McLeod spots Scott Kimball’s name.

McLeod’s ex-wife is still married to Kimball, who lived with their 19-year-old daughter, Kaysi McLeod, when she went missing three years earlier.

McLeod calls Jennifer’s father, Bob Marcum, who mentioned Kimball’s name to the Westword reporter as an acquaintance she stayed with before vanishing.

“Now we’ve got two people missing, and there’s only one commonality — Scott Kimball,” McLeod said.

A billboard of Jennifer Marcum outside Shotgun Willie's. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

Jennifer Marcum’s parents unveil a billboard outside of Shotgun Willie’s, the Glendale strip club where their missing daughter worked.

The billboard attracts media coverage, and in an interview with Denver’s Westword newspaper, Bob Marcum intentionally mentions Scott Kimball as an acquaintance of Jennifer’s.

Marcum had learned Kimball’s real name shortly after his surreal meeting with “Joe Snitch.”

Boulder County Jail. (Camera file photo)

Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher interviews Scott Kimball for the first time, while Kimball is held in Boulder County Jail for a brief period.

The conversation centers on optometrist Cleve Armstrong’s check-fraud case.

Scott Kimball is sentenced in federal court in Denver to 10 months in jail and six months in a halfway house for violating his supervised release in the 2001 Alaska check-fraud case.

He’d been arrested on a federal warrant in the case after a car chase and standoff in California two months earlier.

Boulder County prosecutors Katharina Booth, left, and Amy Okubo, dubbed by Scott Kimball as "the Boulder bitches," pose in Courtroom Q at the Boulder County Justice Center. (Marty Caivano / Camera)

Boulder County prosecutors Amy Okubo and Katharina Booth, assigned to the Lafayette check-fraud case against Scott Kimball, meet with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI in Denver, asking for a wider investigation.

Lafayette police Detective Gary Thatcher had found out about Kaysi McLeod’s disappearance, and had also been told by FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff that Kimball might be connected to the disappearance of Jennifer Marcum.

But neither federal agency launched a missing-persons probe.

Read More >>

Kaysi's schedule. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

In a box belonging to her estranged husband, Lori McLeod find her daughter’s hand-written work schedule for the week she went missing.

McLeod takes it to the Lafayette Police Department, which is already investigating Scott Kimball for check fraud.

Scott Kimball leads a contingent of U.S. marshals and Riverside County sheriff’s deputies on a high-speed chase through California’s Coachella Valley.

Reaching speeds up to 80 mph, he cranked Nickelback’s “Rockstar” through the speakers of the Ford F-350 and called his girlfriend, Denise Pierce.

She told Kimball to stop and turn himself in, but he refused, insisting the cops would kill him because he knew too much.

Kimball drove the full length of the valley in a televised chase, eventually turning onto dirt roads, careening through orchards and rolling over irrigation pipes in a farmer’s field in Mecca, Calif., just north of the Salton Sea.

Low on gas, he finally stopped but wouldn’t surrender for several hours.

He has not been out of prison since.

Read the lyrics to Nickelback’s “Rockstar.”

Equipment reported stolen along with the trailer. (Courtesy Lafayette police)

Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher finds the trailer reported stolen by Scott Kimball the previous December hidden at Kimball’s former Adams County home.

Kimball had already collected $10,000 in insurance claims.

Bryce Canyon National Park. (earthdocumentary.com)

Scott Kimball and his girlfriend, Denise Pierce, go to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah to shoot guns.

Pierce would later identify the handgun they used as part of a federal firearms case against Kimball.

A federal arrest warrant is issued for Scott Kimball for violating his supervised release on his 2001 Alaska check-fraud case.

Kimball’s probation officer says he failed to check in and had left Colorado on unauthorized trips.

Scott Kimball is officially deactivated by the FBI as an informant.

It’s not clear exactly when or why, but at some point in the fall of 2005, Special Agent Carle Schlaff had been removed from the case.

Kaysi McLeod, at 16. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

In investigating Scott Kimball for stealing $55,000 from optometrist Cleve Armstrong, Lafayette police Detective Gary Thatcher interviews Kimball’s now-estranged wife, Lori McLeod, and learns that her daughter has been missing for more than two years.

Lori McLeod says she has long suspected that her husband played a role in Kaysi’s disappearance.

Scott Kimball’s basement office at 801 S. Public Road. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher searches the basement of 801 S. Public Road in Lafayette, where Scott Kimball had been running a beef business.

He finds sheets of practice signatures; bogus subpoenas regarding the assault case against Kimball’s wife; and a counterfeit lien release for a Jeep — complete with company letterhead and an altered seal from his mother’s notary stamp — that Kimball had used to cash in on insurance proceeds after wrecking the vehicle the previous month.

Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher stands in front of the 801 S. Public Road building that in 2005 housed the offices of Cleve Armstrong, Barb Kimball and Scott Kimball. (Kasia Broussalian/Camera)

Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher is assigned to investigate the Cleve Armstrong check-fraud case.

He starts looking for Kimball, but to no avail.

Once Lafayette optometrist Cleve Armstrong calls police about his missing money, Scott Kimball leaves the state.

He ends up in California’s Coachella Valley, where he stays in a rented casita with Denise Pierce, his 31-year-old girlfriend.

Melissa Anderson, Scott Kimball’s 25-year-old girlfriend, buys him a .22-caliber Winchester Model 70 rifle at a Wal-Mart in Thornton for $437.

Anderson, of Thornton, fills out the paperwork, and Kimball lays out the cash.

He told Anderson he would teach her how to hunt, but once she buys the gun she never hears from him again.

[Show as slideshow]

Using pilfered personal financial information from family friend and Lafayette optometrist Cleve Armstrong, Scott Kimball begins moving thousands of dollars over the phone from Armstrong’s money market account to Armstrong’s checking account.

Over the next three weeks, he transfers $83,000 between accounts, then uses several accomplices to forge nearly $55,000 worth of checks to Kimball’s companies: Rocky Mountain All Natural Beef and Rocky Mountain Cattle Company.

When Armstrong returns from vacation in mid-January, he will immediately point police in the direction of Kimball, who had an office in the basement of the 801 S. Public Road building shared by Armstrong and Kimball’s mother.

A trailer reported stolen by Scott Kimball. (Courtesy Lafayette police)

Scott Kimball goes to the Lafayette Police Department to report that his white box trailer — filled with grilling equipment and coolers — has been stolen from outside his office at 801 S. Public Road.

He later collects $10,000 in insurance claims on the trailer.

Investigators later found this fake lien release in Kimball's office. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Scott Kimball wrecks his 1999 Jeep Cherokee and receives $10,799.16 in insurance proceeds 11 days later.

Investigators would later discover fake lien-release documents Kimball used to fool the insurance company into believing that he owned the vehicle outright.

And Lori McLeod would tell police that she heard her husband talking about purposely wrecking the vehicle to collect insurance money.

Scott Kimball meets Denise Pierce, then 30, while visiting his brother, Brett Kimball, in California’s Coachella Valley. They begin dating.

(Date is approximate.)

Scott Kimball is sentenced to three years in prison for escaping from a pre-release center in Helena, Mont., in 2001 and stealing $677 from the gas station where he worked.

The prison sentence is suspended, and Kimball goes free on supervised release.

Scott Kimball, when he returned Jennifer Marcum's furniture. (Photo by Bob Marcum)

In a second face-to-face meeting, Scott Kimball returns Jennifer Marcum’s furniture and belongings to her parents, Bob Marcum and Mary Willis.

Kimball, who’s had Jennifer’s items since she disappeared in February 2003, is accompanied by FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff.

They all convene in a strip mall parking lot in Broomfield for the exchange.

Scott Kimball rented this Lafayette house, at 12632 Flagg Drive, in the fall of 2005. (Cliff Grassmick / Camera)

Scott Kimball moves from the Adams County home he shared with Lori McLeod to a small rental at 12632 Flagg Drive in Lafayette.

His landlord, Wendy Phillips, said Kimball was “adorable” and a “perfect tenant,” until his rent checks started to bounce.

(Date is approximate.)

In another polygraph test about Jennifer Marcum, this one administered by the FBI, Scott Kimball is asked if he caused the disappearance of Jennifer Marcum.

His answers are categorized as deceptive.

In its final recorded payment to Scott Kimball, the FBI gives him $50 to cover expenses.

Less than two weeks after meeting “Joe Snitch” in a Broomfield park, Jennifer Marcum’s mother, Mary Willis, records a phone conversation with Scott Kimball, referring to him as Joe.

Willis demands to know more about Jennifer but says she won’t strip naked and let Kimball demonstrate how her daughter was killed.

“You had your chance,” says Kimball, who wanted Willis to sign a contract allowing him to have sex with her in an effort to re-create Jennifer’s murder.

Read More >>

Jennifer Marcum. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

Jason Price, an alleged associate in Steve Ennis’ drug ring, tells the FBI that he suspects Scott Kimball was involved in the disappearance of Jennifer Marcum.

Two years earlier, Kimball had told the FBI that Price killed Jennifer and showed him pictures of her dead body.

Price says he only recently realized that Jennifer had gone missing.

The contract found in Scott Kimball's possession, apparently meant for Jennifer Marcum's mother, Mary Willis. He used his FBI alias, Joe Scott, although his handler at the bureau introduced him as Joe Snitch. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Hoping to find out more from the man who has their daughter’s furniture, Jennifer Marcum’s parents meet with Scott Kimball, whom they know only as ‘Joe Snitch,’ at Broomfield’s North Midway Park.

Joe Snitch tells Bob Marcum and Mary Willis that Jennifer had been murdered, and he knows who did it and where they left her body. He tells Willis that if she’ll let him into her hotel room that night, he can demonstrate how Jennifer was killed.

Read More >>

Bob Marcum holds a picture of his daughter at age 8. (Kristen Schmid Schurter/for the Camera)

After trying for more than a year to find the man with their daughter’s belongings, Bob Marcum and Mary Willis fly to Denver and put up fliers of Jennifer Marcum all over town.

Bob Marcum talks again with FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff, pushing for information about the man with Jennifer’s furniture.

Schlaff won’t give up the man’s name, but eventually gives Marcum a cell-phone number for Scott Kimball.

Ask for Joe Snitch, the agent says.

(Date is approximate.)

Lori McLeod is arrested in Adams County for violating a restraining order that her husband, Scott Kimball, got against her after claiming she hit him with a vacuum cleaner.

McLeod says Kimball lied about the attack and wanted her in jail so he could bring his new girlfriend, Melissa Anderson, over to the house.

Read Lori McLeod’s arrest report (PDF).

(mexicobeachresorts.com)

Nearly a year after Terry Kimball’s disappearance, Scott Kimball’s father, Virgil Kimball, receives an e-mail at his Idaho home from terrylkimball@yahoo.com.

“In the e-mail, Terry claimed to be living in old Mexico with a woman named Ginger and added that Ginger liked living in Mexico,” FBI agent Johnny Grusing would later write in an affidavit. “Virgil recalled that supposedly Ginger never wanted to return to the United States, so Terry probably would not either.”

Police would trace the account to Scott Kimball’s computer two years later.

(Date is approximate.)

Still married to Lori McLeod, Scott Kimball starts dating 25-year-old Melissa Anderson, a waitress at a Perkins restaurant in Westminster.

Anderson later described Kimball as “gentleman-like” but also said he had an appetite for rough sex, including bondage.

(Date is approximate.)

Lori McLeod (Mark Leffingwell/Camera)

Adams County authorities arrest Lori McLeod on suspicion of third-degree assault, criminal mischief and domestic violence after her husband, Scott Kimball, claims she threw a vacuum cleaner at him and threatened to kill him.

Kimball gets a restraining order against her.

McLeod says he lied about the incident.

Read Lori McLeod’s arrest report (PDF).

Kaysi as a teenager. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Scott Kimball tells Lori McLeod that he’ll take a polygraph test to show that he’s not lying when he says he didn’t kill Kaysi McLeod or take her to the mountains back in August 2003.

He is tested at a private polygraph business in Englewood and passes.

Scott Kimball pleads guilty to one count of theft and escape in his 2001 case from Helena, Mont. Prosecutors drop one count of theft in exchange.

Kimball remains out of prison pending sentencing.

Posing as his missing uncle Terry Kimball, Scott Kimball buys 21 head of cattle from High Plains Livestock Exchange in Brush, Colo., for $11,617.50.

The check bounces.

High Plains filed a complaint against Terry Kimball with the Department of Agriculture two months later.

High Plains' complaint against 'Terry Kimball.' (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Read the full complaint (PDF).

Scott Kimball starts Rocky Mountain All Natural Beef with his mother, Barb Kimball, and brother, Brett Kimball. It is headquartered at 801 S. Public Road in Lafayette.

(Date is approximate.)

(moneywalks.com)

Scott Kimball uses his uncle Terry Kimball’s credit cards at a hotel and gas station in Helena, Mont.

He will use them again Sept. 25-27 for a hotel and rental car in Alaska.

When investigators discover the usage years later, they talk to Lori McLeod, who says she accompanied her husband on both trips, but hadn’t seen Terry Kimball for weeks.

Terry Kimball at Christmas dinner in 2000. (Courtesy of Karen Johnson)

By Labor Day, Terry Kimball’s wife, Karen Johnson, hasn’t seen her husband for six weeks.

Knowing that he’s taken off on his own before, she begins to suspect he’s run off with another woman.

Johnson calls Scott Kimball’s house and hears the story that “Uncle Terry” won the lottery and left the country.

She tries to corroborate the story, but eventually files for divorce.

No one reports Terry Kimball missing.

(Camera file photo)

“Uncle Terry” Kimball goes missing a few weeks after moving in with his nephew, Scott Kimball.

Scott Kimball’s wife, Lori McLeod, recalls coming home one day in late August or early September to find her couch sitting outside, drenched in what looked like vomit.

Scott Kimball says one of the dogs threw up on the couch, but McLeod suspects “Uncle Terry” and asks where he is.

Scott Kimball claims his uncle won the Ohio lottery and cruised down to Mexico with a stripper named Ginger.

(Posting date is approximate.)

Terry Kimball with his dogs Badger, Dutch and Matilda in 1997. Dutch and Matilda, left, accompanied “Uncle Terry” on his trip to Colorado. (Courtesy of Karen Johnson)

Upon hearing that his nephew Scott Kimball’s eldest son has been critically injured, Terry Kimball, 60, comes to Colorado to visit.

He ends up staying to work with Scott Kimball’s beef business, Faith Farms, and moves into his nephew’s Adams County home. 

(Date is approximate.)

Kimball's Adams County rental property, where his 10-year-old son was hurt. (Paul Aiken/Camera)

Scott Kimball’s 10-year-old son is severely injured when a 200-pound metal grate falls on him while playing on Kimball’s rural Adams County property.

Rather than waiting for paramedics, Kimball rushes his son to Louisville’s Avista Adventist hospital, but the boy falls from the Jeep en route, Kimball tells doctors.

Read More >>

The trailer that Scott Kimball stole from his former fellow FCI-Englewood inmate John Alderman burns to the ground on Kimball’s Adams County property.

It was the same trailer that Kimball picked Kaysi McLeod up on the day she disappeared, according to her boyfriend.

Emergency officials deem the trailer fire accidental, but years later a witness — one of Kimball’s business associates — tells police Kimball intentionally burned it to destroy any evidence that Kaysi might have been in it and also to collect insurance money.

A federal judge in Denver sentences Scott Kimball to three years of supervised release as part of his plea deal in the 2001 Alaska check-fraud case.

Judge Marcia S. Krieger agrees to give Kimball a minimal sentence on his fifth felony, recognizing that he has been helpful in his cooperation with the government.

She orders him to pay Wells Fargo $8,287.94 in restitution, and chastises him for failing to be forthcoming about his personal finances even as he accepts “substantial funds” from the FBI.

Krieger says Kimball’s actions smack of an attitude of “I’m happy to turn other people in, but I don’t want to be held fully accountable for my own behavior.”

He is also barred from owning firearms.

Read a transcript of the sentencing hearing. (PDF)

Scott Kimball starts Faith Farms, a Westminster-based beef company. He buys cattle on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and sells them at auction.

Red Mountain RV Park. (struck.us/bikepics)

On Kaysi McLeod’s birthday, her mother is honeymooning with Scott Kimball at Red Mountain RV Park in Kremmling, Colo. But the new bride can’t get her mind off her daughter, missing for three weeks.

“Happy 20th birthday sweet love,” Lori McLeod writes in her diary. “I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying your day. I miss you and wish I could celebrate with you. Anticipating your arrival 20 years ago today, I was in the most severe pain I thought I would ever feel. That would also not be the last time I would be wrong in my life.”

McLeod would later learn that her new husband had murdered her daughter, and that their honeymoon camping trip took place less than 30 miles from the spot where she was left to rot.

Scott Kimball and Lori McLeod get married in Las Vegas, in a “drive-through” wedding devoid of romance.

McLeod says she married Kimball because she saw him as the only link to her daughter, Kaysi, who had been missing for eight days.

The frantic mother thought her new husband might be involved in the disappearance, but she also knew he worked for the FBI in some capacity and hoped he might help find Kaysi.

Throughout their marriage, Kimball kept McLeod’s hope alive by fabricating signs that Kaysi had been at the house but wasn’t ready to talk to her mother.

He looped Kaysi’s necklace – the one she was wearing the day she went missing – around her bedroom doorknob one day. He took her makeup box out of the bedroom. And he asked their landlord to lie about having seen Kaysi driving nearby.

The FBI pays Scott Kimball $18,000 for cooperating as a witness in the Alaska murder-for-hire case against Arnold Flowers and Sompong Khamsomphou.

The boyfriend-girlfriend team was convicted of criminal tampering with a witness, but acquitted of plotting to have four people killed.

Scott Kimball, an avid outdoorsman and hunter, insisted he’d been alone in the mountains scouting out bow-hunting grounds the night Kaysi McLeod disappeared. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Scott Kimball’s cell phone goes dead from 8:15 p.m. Aug. 23 through 4:38 p.m. Aug. 24.

When he turns his phone back on, its signal is picked up by a tower near Walden, Colo. A receipt later found in his belongings also shows that he bought pasta, meat, lighter fluid and spaghetti sauce at the North Park Supers market in Walden on Aug. 24.

When Kimball’s girlfriend Lori McLeod — frantic that her daughter Kaysi never showed up for work the night before — finally gets a hold of Kimball, he insists he’d been in the mountains alone, scouting out bow-hunting grounds.

He denies picking Kaysi up from her motel the night before, but he pledges to help McLeod track down her daughter.

Kaysi McLeod, pictured on a memorial Web site. (respectance.com)

Scott Kimball comes by the Motel 6 in Thornton, Colo., where Kaysi McLeod is staying with her boyfriend, Celestino Bovill.

After chatting with the couple in their room, Kimball offers to take Kaysi to her 6 p.m. shift at a Subway in Broomfield.

Kaysi leaves with Kimball in a pickup truck, with trailer attached, that he had stolen from fellow federal prison inmate John Alderman the previous spring.

Kaysi McLeod is never heard from again.

The Motel 6 in Thornton, where Kaysi McLeod stayed. (John Aguilar/Camera)

Scott Kimball shows up at his girlfriend Lori McLeod’s work with a vial filled with white crystals, claiming he found it at their home.

McLeod decides that her 19-year-old daughter, Kaysi McLeod, who has struggled with meth addiction, needs to talk to police.

After a fight at home, Kaysi goes outside with Kimball and ends up leaving on her bike. She ends up at a Motel 6 in Thornton, where she gets a room with her boyfriend.

Kimball assures McLeod that her daughter just needs time on her own.

Scott Kimball is issued a Colorado driver’s license under the name Joseph Lee Scott, his FBI alias.

Kimball's rental property in Adams County. (Lafayette police)

The FBI pays Scott Kimball $2,000 in relocation expenses so he can move from his Lakewood condo to a home in rural Adams County, at 14701 Huron St.

Kimball moves into the new property with his girlfriend, Lori McLeod, and her daughter, Kaysi.

Three weeks later, the FBI pays Kimball another $500 to cover expenses at his new house.

The FBI reactivates Kimball’s status as a “cooperating witness” 10 days after his release from Denver County Jail.

Scott Kimball, in a photo found on his computer. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

After a polygraph test determines Kimball is being truthful about seeing photos of Jennifer Marcum dead on a drug dealer’s computer, FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff contacts prison officials in Washington state and requests that they quash their warrant for Kimball.

Kimball, Schlaff says, is a valuable informant in the disappearance of Jennifer Marcum and needs to be freed to help figure out where she might be.

A judge in Spokane agrees to quash the warrant, and Kimball is released from Denver County Jail.

Read the motion and order to dismiss charges against Kimball. (PDF)

Jennifer Marcum in 2001. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

Behind bars at Denver County Jail, Scott Kimball tells his FBI handler, Carle Schlaff, that a drug dealer had strangled Jennifer Marcum, who’d been missing for four months.

Kimball had even seen pictures of her body — hands and legs bound, mouth taped shut — on the drug dealer’s laptop, he says. In fact, the killer offered to pay Kimball to find Jennifer’s corpse and remove her breast implants and IUD so the serial numbers couldn’t be used to identify her remains.

Kimball tells Schlaff he can help catch the killer.

Kimball's Denver mugshot. (Courtesy of Denver police)

At the behest of FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff, Scott Kimball is arrested in Denver on suspicion of violating his probation from his 1999 forgery case in Spokane, Wash.

A warrant had been issued three weeks earlier, accusing Kimball of failing to report to a supervisor with the Washington Department of Corrections.

Lori McLeod, then Kimball’s girlfriend, says Schlaff deliberately disabled Kimball’s Jeep so Denver police could swoop in on him and arrest him. She says it was Schlaff’s way of reminding Kimball who was boss in their agent-informant relationship.

Kimball was taken to Denver County Jail.

Arnold Flowers and girlfriend Sompong Khamsomphou are convicted by a jury in Anchorage of criminal tampering with a witness. They are acquitted of the more serious charges of plotting a murder-for-hire, which Scott Kimball had accused them of orchestrating 15 months earlier.

Kimball testifies at the trial.

A month later, Flowers is sentenced to eight years in prison and Khamsomphou gets five years behind bars.

(Date is approximate)

FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff revokes Scott Kimball’s protected status as a paid informant.

Reasons for the revocation are unclear, but a warrant for Kimball had been issued three days earlier. Plus Schlaff had questions for his informant about continued check-counterfeiting and Jennifer Marcum’s disappearance.

Spokane County Superior Court in Washington issues a warrant for Scott Kimball’s arrest on probation violations.

Kimball, who’d been convicted of three felony counts of forgery in 2001 stemming from a 1999 case, failed to report to a supervisor with Washington’s prison system.

Scott Kimball receives his first recorded payment from the FBI: $600 for services.

Statement from Alderman to FBI Agent Jonathan Grusing, reprinted in a Lafayette police report.

Scott Kimball absconds with $7,300 and a pickup truck and trailer from his former FCI-Englewood cellmate John Alderman.

Alderman, a doctor convicted of tax evasion, said he had just been released from prison and needed help getting on his feet. He asked Kimball to pick up the truck and trailer, which he planned to live in, and to cash his $7,300 check since he had no bank account.

Alderman, 69, never saw Kimball again.

No charges were pressed.

New York City. (photos4travel.com)

Scott Kimball’s FBI handler, Carle Schlaff, starts asking questions about Jennifer Marcum, who disappeared while Kimball was supposed to be keeping an eye on her in his role as an informant.

Kimball tells Schlaff that Jennifer bought a $600 gun and flew to New York City to kill a member of her boyfriend Steve Ennis’ drug ring.

Airline records show that Marcum never flew out of town the weekend her car was abandoned at Denver International Airport.

(Date is approximate.)

Scott Kimball consults with the FBI for three days in Seattle concerning the unsolved murder case of Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Wales, who was gunned down in his Seattle home in October 2001.

Jennifer Marcum, in 2001. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

After a final evening call to Jennifer Marcum, Scott Kimball’s cell phone goes inactive until Feb. 20. Kimball says later that he had gone to the mountains for several days and turned his cell phone off.

Phone records will reveal that Jennifer’s phone is inactive for the same three-day period of time.

After that, however, occasional calls will be made from Jennifer’s phone — to Kimball and others — before the service is disconnected.

Investigators believe Kimball was using Jennifer’s phone “for the purpose of misdirecting law enforcement in an attempt to make it appear as if she was still alive.”

At 9:30 p.m. the night before her planned trip to Seattle with Scott Kimball, Jennifer Marcum has a last conversation with her boyfriend, federal inmate Steve Ennis. The call was recorded by the prison:

Jennifer at 24. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

“You OK?” Ennis asked.
“Yeah.”
“You all ready to go?”
“Packin’.”
“Are you? Cool. Are you excited?”
“No, not really.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should be, you’ll have a nice time. … You taking a cab out to the airport?”
“Um, I’m not sure yet. I think I’m taking my car.”
“You’re gonna have fun up there. … What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll see you next Thursday, huh?”

Marcum is never heard from again.

Kimball's Lakewood condo, 8210 W. Eastman Place. (John Aguilar / Camera)

Two days before their planned trip to Seattle, Jennifer Marcum moves all of her furniture into Scott Kimball’s condo in Lakewood.

She had been staying in Colorado Springs with the father of her 4-year-old son, and commuting to Glendale, where she worked as an exotic dancer at Shotgun Willie’s.

But Kimball convinced her that he could help her quit stripping for a living. He claimed he ran an espresso-cart operation in Seattle and would help her learn the business.

Scott Kimball and Lori McLeod go on their first date on Valentine’s Day. They meet at a Bennigan’s in Westminster, and Kimball brings flowers.

“He was funny. He was fun. He was smooth,” McLeod remembers.

Within a matter of days, McLeod introduces her new boyfriend to her 19-year-old daughter, Kaysi.

The Lodge Casino at Black Hawk. (blackhawkcolorado.com)

Scott Kimball meets Lori McLeod at the Lodge Casino at Black Hawk, where the 39-year-old mother is a regular at Boston 5-card poker.

McLeod  is taken with Kimball, who is pushing his mother around in a wheelchair and attending to her every need. He has an easy smile, and pleasant demeanor.

McLeod, who lives in Westminster with her 19-year-old daughter, Kaysi, gives Kimball her number at the end of the night. “Wait,” she jokes, “You’re not a felon or anything, are you?”

(moneywalks.com)

Scott Kimball hires a prostitute in Indian Wells, Calif., a golf-resort town in the Coachella Valley.

Police believe he paid for her services by giving her LeAnn Emry’s credit card.

The card is soon used fraudulently in the Los Angeles area.

Scott Kimball’s cell phone records no activity from 8:15 p.m. Jan. 28 until 1:13 a.m. Jan. 30.

Kimball tells FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff that he’s going to California to see his brother.

LeAnn's Super 8 receipt (Courtesy of Howard Emry)

During a two-week trip across the West, LeAnn Emry writes a cascade of bad checks, overdrawing her account by $4,000.

She bounces checks in Laramie, Wyo., Baker City, Ore., Vancouver, Wash., and Reno, Nev., leaving a paper trail that her father will piece together after her disappearance.

Investigators later place Kimball in some of the same spots at the same time, but he also goes to Seattle on FBI business.

At a pawnshop in Hermiston, Ore., Emry buys the .40-caliber Firestar handgun that will become her murder weapon.

She is back in Colorado by Jan. 27, when she checks into a Super 8 motel in Grand Junction.

She checks out two days later.

LeAnn, in a photo later found on Kimball's computer.

LeAnn Emry leaves her home in Centennial, where she lives with her parents, Howard and Darlene Emry.

She tells them she is going on a caving trip to Mexico with friends.

Instead, she secretly leaves on a whirlwind voyage through five states, intermittently meeting up with Scott Kimball, aka “Hannibal.”

Before heading out, LeAnn called her younger sister, Michelle, with a message: If anything bad should happen, Michelle should know her sister loved her.

E-mailing her cousin, LeAnn Emry wrote that "Hannibal" was a major blessing in her life. (Courtesy of Howard Emry)

In e-mails to her cousin, LeAnn Emry writes about her relationship with “Hannibal,” the alias Scott Kimball used with her. She claims they’re having sex, and makes vague references to criminal activity they’re involved in.

“I need him to get what I want and desperately need,” LeAnn writes. “He doesn’t ask much in return, and he never abuses the situation that I am in, even though he could very easily.”

“He’s a major blessing in my life. Major.”

But she knew he had a dangerous side, too.

“Hell, if Hanable knew I was talking to you, he’d fucking have me killed in a second,” she wrote the same cousin four days earlier. “Plus, he’d have you killed too.”

Read more of LeAnn’s emails to her cousin (PDF).

LeAnn, in a photo found on Kimball's laptop. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

LeAnn Emry uses her debit card to buy Scott Kimball a $1,685 Toshiba laptop computer at Best Buy in Lakewood, Colo.

When investigators search the laptop years later, they find a photo of LeAnn, dated 11 days before her death.

Jennifer Marcum at 23 or 24. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)

Wearing a wire, Scott Kimball meets with Jennifer Marcum and secretly records their conversation in his role as an FBI informant.

He claims Jennifer and her boyfriend, federal prisoner Steve Ennis, are plotting to kill a member of Ennis’ drug ring.

Jennifer doesn’t solicit Kimball to kill anyone, but she does say the drug dealer is a “scumbag” who “deserves to die.”

In the first six weeks of 2003, Kimball meets with Jennifer a dozen times and speaks with her on the phone daily.

He convinces her that he can help her stop stripping by setting her up in an espresso-cart business in Seattle.

Ennis tells his girlfriend she should trust Kimball and try a career change.

Read More >>

After his release from FCI-Englewood as an FBI informant, Scott Kimball calls LeAnn Emry for the first time. He introduces himself as “Hannibal.”

Emry’s boyfriend, federal inmate Steven Holley, knew Kimball behind bars, and asked him to connect with LeAnn to share the details of a plan to help him escape prison.

Holley told LeAnn to listen to Hannibal, that if everything went off as it should, the couple would soon be able to unite in Mexico and start a new chapter in their lives.

Holley writes LeAnn: "You can trust Hannible." (Courtesy of Howard Emry)

A fake birth certificate, later found among Kimball's belongings, listed the alias he used as an FBI informant. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

After claiming that his cellmate, Steve Ennis, asked him to kill a fellow drug dealer, Scott Kimball is released from FCI-Englewood “to actively cooperate with the FBI on the Steven Ennis matter.”

Ennis, Kimball claims, told him his girlfriend — Jennifer Marcum — would help carry out the hit.

As a paid FBI informant, Kimball is given the name Joe Scott and told to keep an eye on Marcum.

His contact at the bureau is Special Agent Carle Schlaff.

The FBI activates Scott Kimball as a “cooperating witness” while he is an inmate at FCI-Englewood.

He tells an agent that his cellmate, Steve Ennis, asked him to kill a fellow drug dealer, and that Ennis’ girlfriend, Jennifer Marcum, would help.

FCI-Englewood, in Littleton, Colo. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

Scott Kimball is transferred from the Alaska prison system to FCI-Englewood, a federal penitentiary in Littleton, Colo.

He had told federal authorities that seven Alaska inmates wanted to kill him for cooperating with the government.

Scott Kimball, locked up in the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility in Alaska, tells a U.S. Secret Service agent that his cellmate, Arnold Flowers, and Flowers’ girlfriend, Sompong Khamsomphou, asked him to hire a hit man to kill a federal judge, federal prosecutor, and two witnesses.

Flowers and Khamsomphou are indicted by a grand jury the next month on charges of murder-for-hire, witness tampering and attempted murder of federal officials.

Cordova, Alaska. (city-data.com)

Kimball is arrested in Cordova, Alaska, after writing nearly $25,000 in counterfeit checks using his brother’s name.

He went to Alaska after escaping from prison in Montana, and had gotten engaged to a woman who never knew him as anyone but Brett Kimball.

Police recovered $11,300 in hundred-dollar bills in a Cordova hotel where Kimball and his fiancee stayed.

Tom Wales (walesfoundation.org)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Wales is shot to death in his Seattle home. Police believe an assailant fired through the prosecutor’s basement window while he was working on his computer.

Scott Kimball will later tell federal authorities that he has information on the murder, which remains unsolved.

It’s unclear what details Kimball claimed to have in the case.

[Show as slideshow]

After being moved to a pre-release prison camp in Helena, Mont., Kimball worked as a cashier at an EZ Stop gas station, reporting back to the center at the end of each shift.

While working at the station alone on July 29, 2001, he steals $677 and hits the road in a stolen work truck.

Authorities in Montana’s Lewis & Clark County issue a warrant for his arrest on felony escape charges.

Leo Gallagher, the county attorney there, would repeatedly push for Kimball’s arrest on the escape charge, but the FBI consistently asks for delayed hearings.

Read the police report for Kimball’s escape/theft. (PDF)

Scott Kimball, 34, in the middle of his Montana prison term, is convicted of  three felony counts of forgery stemming from an October 1999 case in Spokane County, Wash. He had been charged with the crime just a few days earlier.

Kimball is sentenced to eight months in jail.

Kimball's Montana mugshot. (Courtesy of Boulder County DA's Office)

Scott Kimball is sentenced to 10 years in Montana State Prison for violating his probation on the 1988 Missoula County conviction of issuing bad checks.

Five years of the sentence are suspended.

A judge writes that Kimball has been given three opportunities for rehabilitation since 1988, failing each time.

“The Defendant is impossible to supervise in a community setting,” District Judge John S. Henson writes.

He goes on to quote Kimball’s probation officer: “You’re irresponsible, untruthful and simply do what you want to do regardless of the rules and conditions imposed by this Court.”

Read the judge’s ruling against Kimball. (PDF)

Scott Kimball lands back in Montana’s Missoula County Jail, this time for violating terms of his probation regarding travel, conduct and reporting.

He remains in the jail until April 18, 2000, when he is sent to prison.

Scott Kimball’s ex-wife, Larissa Hentz, makes a second rape report against him.

She tells Spokane, Wash., police that he broke into her house with the help of a locksmith friend, pressed a gun to her head while she lay sleeping, and raped her repeatedly.

Afterward, she says, he drew her a bubble bath to destroy any evidence, then stole $370 from her purse.

Police do not pursue the case, for lack of evidence.

Excerpt from Spokane police report.

Larissa Hentz calls police in Spokane, Wash., to report that Scott Kimball, her ex-husband, kidnapped her at gunpoint, raped her and forced her to drive to Montana with him and their sons.

Several witnesses, however, say nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, and police do not pursue a rape case for lack of evidence.

The couple had continued seeing each other after their divorce, and Kimball tells police his ex probably made the complaint because he wanted to end the relationship.

Hentz tells a detective that if Kimball took a lie-detector test he would pass, because “he knows how to beat those things,” according to a police report.

Excerpt from the Spokane police report.

Scott Kimball works with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as an informant on a stolen-gun investigation. Kimball points to several suspects, but investigators are never able to make a case.

His relationship with the ATF, for which he’s paid $1,865, ends in November 1999.

(Dates are approximate.)

Scott Kimball starts a 27-day stint in Missoula County Jail, for reasons unclear.

Scott Kimball and Larissa Hentz, the mother of his two sons, get a divorce.

While Kimball largely managed to stay out of jail during the couple’s four-year marriage, he constantly had people chasing him down who felt cheated by him, Hentz said.

“It was not uncommon to have a process server on our porch every other week serving us papers,” she said. “He always had an excuse. It was never his fault.”

Hentz claims that Kimball slept with prostitutes, pulled off brazen logging scams, and swindled money from her dentist and the bishops at her church.

(Date is approximate.)

Scott Kimball and his wife, Larissa Hentz, file for bankruptcy.

Scott Kimball’s youngest son is born, to Kimball and his wife, Larissa Hentz.

Scott Kimball’s first son is born, to Kimball and his wife, Larissa Hentz.

Scott Kimball marries his second wife, Larissa Hentz.

Kimball had been married briefly once before, but few details of that union are available.

Kimball and Hentz met in Hamilton, Mont., in 1988. They moved in the early ’90s to Spokane, Wash., where Kimball got into the timber business.

(Date is approximate.)

Theodore Peyton

Theodore Peyton is sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting Scott Kimball and another boy a decade earlier.

He would spend five years, three months and two weeks in prison before being released on Oct. 6, 1996.

Writing to a Boulder district judge considering a sentence reduction for Peyton in July 1992, Scott Kimball said the crimes “cost me and my family very dearly.”

“Ted Peyton denied me my right to a normal, healthy innocent childhood,” Kimball wrote. “Because of Ted Peyton’s selfishness and his need for sexual gratification he has damaged my life forever.”

Peyton, now 74, still lives in the Nederland cabin where he molested the boys in the early-1980s.

“That was a long time ago,” Peyton said when asked recently about the abuse.

Turning slowly, he walked back up the driveway to his home on the northern shore of Barker Reservoir.

Read Kimball’s letter to the court. (PDF)

Theodore Peyton

Theodore Peyton is convicted of molesting Scott Kimball and another boy a decade earlier at his Nederland cabin.

A Boulder County jury deliberates less than three hours before finding Peyton guilty of six counts of sexual assault on a child.

“The effect of this defendant’s behavior haunted them for years and still haunts them,” the prosecutor says of the victims.

A Montana judge revokes Scott Kimball’s two-year suspended sentence in the 1988 Missoula County bad-check case.

He is given a new suspended sentence, this time for 10 years.

Two days later, a judge revokes Kimball’s sentence in the 1988 Beaverhead County case, as well. The new, five-year sentence is also suspended.

Theodore Peyton

Theodore Peyton is arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting Scott Kimball and another male when they were young boys.

Most of the assaults took place at Peyton’s Nederland cabin.

Some time in the 1980s, after his attacks on Kimball, Peyton became a volunteer Big Brother, but was ousted from the program because of contradictory reports about his activities with the child in his care, according to Daily Camera archives.

On a hunting trip with his brother in western Montana, Scott Kimball puts the barrel of a .30-30 rifle against his forehead and pulls the trigger.

The bullet, which glances off his skull, combines with the backblast from the shot to tear a hole in his forehead.

He remained in critical condition for several days and remains visibly scarred to this day.

Kimball’s cousin Ed Coet says Kimball “was never the same” after the suicide attempt.

“It’s like he lost his conscience,” Coet said.

In the wake of the shooting, the truth about the sexual abuse he endured as a child emerges.

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office investigates.

(Date is approximate.)

Kimball, following his Broomfield arrest. (Courtesy of Boulder County DA's office)

Scott Kimball, 22, is convicted of his third felony, on one count of attempted theft in Broomfield, Colo.

He’d been arrested the previous October on charges of stealing a fishing pole, two rifles, a shotgun, golf clubs and tools from two Broomfield homes.

He is sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay $232 in restitution.

Scott Kimball gets his second felony, for passing a bad check in Missoula County, Mont.

He is given a two-year deferred prison sentence. Because the crime occurred in a different jurisdiction, it never triggers the deferred sentence Kimball had been given for his first felony just a few months earlier.

Kimball, 1988. (Courtesy of Boulder County DA's Office)

Scott Kimball lands his first felony conviction at age 21, after passing $1,139 in bad checks at motels in Beaverhead County, Mont.

His three-year prison sentence is deferred, meaning it will be dropped if he stays out of trouble.

Main Street, Hamilton, Mont. (hamiltonmontana.com)

At the start of his freshman year, Scott Kimball moves to Hamilton, Mont., to live with his father and younger brother, Brett.

He attends Hamilton High School, in the town of 4,000 people an hour south of Missoula, but drops out as a senior.

(Date is approximate.)

Theodore Peyton

Theodore Peyton, 41, a Lafayette neighbor of Kimball’s grandmother, begins hanging out with 10-year-old Scott and another boy, inviting them to his cabin in Nederland.

Over a seven-year period, he plies the boys with booze, takes pictures of them naked and tied up, and forces oral and anal sex on them.

Peyton warns Scott not to tell, even brandishing a gun on one occasion and threatening to kill his father if he squealed.

(For database purposes, this post is dated Sept. 21, 1976, Scott Kimball’s 10th birthday. It’s unclear exactly when Peyton and Kimball met, but the boy was 10 at the time.)

Scott Kimball at age 5 or 6. (Courtesy Ed Coet)

Scott Lee Kimball is born at Boulder Community Hospital to Virgil and Barb Kimball.

He would grow up in Old Town Lafayette, attending Lafayette Elementary and Lafayette Middle schools.

“He wasn’t one of the popular kids,” said Tina Goeden, 42, who went to elementary school with Kimball. “He was pretty quiet.”

But police knew early on that Scott Kimball could be trouble.

Lafayette police Cmdr. Mark Battersby remembers responding to a call involving the adolescent Kimball within a few years of joining the force in 1976.

The boy had gotten a hold of one of his father’s guns and was shooting out of his home, hitting other houses, Battersby said.

“I knew he was going to be a handful.”

Kimball also attended Centaurus High School in 1981, but withdrew after one month and moved to Montana.