March 1st, 2003
Howard Emry (Matthew Cilley / for the Camera)
Howard Emry contacts the FBI in Denver, and talks to an agent about the alarming letter he received from Steven Holley, his daughter’s boyfriend.
The agent calls Holley a liar, and says he will not waste his time visiting him in prison to talk.
(Date is approximate.)
March 10th, 2003
Scott Kimball signs a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Denver on the theft and fraud charges stemming from his 2001 arrest in Alaska.
Kimball pleads guilty to two counts of counterfeiting a check, and agrees to continue cooperating with the government.
In exchange, prosecutors recommend that he get the lowest sentencing range, which could include probation rather than prison time.
March 27th, 2003
Denver International Airport
Jennifer Marcum’s 1996 Saturn, abandoned in a parking garage at Denver International Airport, is impounded.
The car had been parked since Feb. 18, but surveillance video doesn’t show who was driving it.
Two certified letters were sent to Marcum’s last address, but they went unanswered.
June 17th, 2003
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.
June 19th, 2003
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.
June 20th, 2003
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)
June 30th, 2003
The FBI reactivates Kimball’s status as a “cooperating witness” 10 days after his release from Denver County Jail.
July 10th, 2003
Carle Schlaff, from his Facebook page. (Facebook.com)
FBI Agent Carle Schlaff files an affidavit in federal court in Denver seeking a warrant to search Jennifer Marcum’s car, which was found abandoned at DIA earlier in the year.
“The whereabouts of Jennifer Marcum cannot be determined and there is probable cause to believe that she is a victim of a homicide,” Schlaff concludes.
He notes that Scott Kimball had contact with Jennifer before her disappearance but doesn’t finger him as a suspect.
December 1st, 2003
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.
August 22nd, 2005
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.)
August 28th, 2005
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.
February 3rd, 2006
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.
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.
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May 22nd, 2006
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.
October 16th, 2006
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.”
June 4th, 2007
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.
January 22nd, 2008
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.
June 11th, 2009
Scott Kimball is sentenced in federal court in Denver to 70 months in prison for possessing a firearm as a felon.
January 15th, 2010
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.
March 1st, 2010
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.”