Boulder County Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharina Booth first investigated Scott Kimball in connection with his son’s critical injury in 2004. She would remember his name when it came up in connection with another Boulder County case a year and a half later.
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.
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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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August 3rd, 2006
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.
December 17th, 2008
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.”
February 23rd, 2009
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.
March 11th, 2009
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.”
April 21st, 2009
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.”
May 11th, 2009
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.
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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.
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February 26th, 2010
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.