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.

Kaysi McLeod’s relatives, clockwise from top left, Charlene McLeod, Katherine McLeod, Ginger McLeod, Samantha McLeod and Michelle Strick listen to a live feed outside of the packed courtroom. (Kasia Broussalian/Camera)

Kaysi McLeod’s father said his daughter would have been 26 if she were alive.

“I was present, right there, the very moment that Kaysi took her first breath in this world,” Rob McLeod said. “Scott Kimball was there to take her last.”

Lori McLeod faces her former husband in court and says God has received her daughter.

“I believe that Kaysi has forgiven Scott Kimball,” she says. “I choose to forgive Scott Kimball.”

Jennifer Marcum’s family reiterated their plea for Kimball to show them where he left Jennifer’s body.

“There is not going to be any place for your soul until you truly repent and you tell me where my sister is,” Tammy Marcum demanded.

Jennifer’s father told the court that Kimball “has destroyed our lives.”

“How many other people are missing as a result of his life?” Bob Marcum said. “It’s time for Scott to be a man and give back what he took from us.”

Kimball remained silent.

After the hearing, his cousin and self-described spokesman, Ed Coet, said Kimball was sorry but laid much of the blame at the FBI’s feet for the agency’s decision to use him as an informant.

“I do want the families of all the victims, and the public, to know that although I must be held accountable for my crimes, none of this could have occurred, and the victims would not have been killed had the FBI not driven me into the extremely dangerous underworld in which both I and the murdered victims found ourselves,” Coet said on Kimball’s behalf.

[Show as slideshow]

Read the plea deal. (PDF)

Read Rob McLeod’s statement to the court. (PDF)

Read a transcript of Lori McLeod’s statement to the court. (PDF)

Read Darlene Emry’s statement to the court. (PDF)

Read Howard Emry’s statement to the court. (PDF)

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.”

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

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

Kimball remains out of prison pending sentencing.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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)

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

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.

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.

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.