Scott Kimball’s attempt to steal tens of thousands of dollars from Armstrong four years earlier led to an investigation that eventually brought Kimball to justice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With no bodies and no witnesses, Booth and Okubo knew they had no murder case against Kimball. They homed in on the fraud case, planning to use Kimball’s six previous felony convictions to paint him as a habitual offender, allowing for a quadrupling of prison time if convicted of stealing $55,000 from Lafayette optometrist Cleve Armstrong.

Realizing that he wouldn’t easily shake this pair, Kimball came up with a nickname that the prosecutors came to wear as a badge of honor: the Boulder bitches.

“He realized that Katharina and I were not going away,” Okubo recalls. “The Boulder bitches weren’t going away.”

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.)

(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.

Dillon Road, between U.S. 287 and 96th Street, where Kimball's son fell from his Jeep. (Paul Aiken/Camera)

After two weeks in a coma, Kimball’s son recovers enough to tell his own story: He remembers his father telling him to turn around and dig a hole near the grate before it fell, then pushing him by the face from the speeding Jeep.

Because of the boy’s head injuries, though, doctors say he’ll be an unreliable witness.

Boulder County prosecutor Katharina Booth suspects Kimball tried to kill his son, but she’s unable to build a provable case.

Employees at the Lafayette insurance office of Scott’s mother tell investigators that Barb Kimball changed her grandson’s life-insurance policy as soon as she heard about the accident. Scott Kimball had been the sole beneficiary.

One employee says Barb Kimball suspected her son tried to kill his own child to cash in on the $60,000 policy.

Read the full accident report. (PDF)

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.)

Barb Kimball would fall in love with another woman, and Virgil Kimball eventually moved from Colorado to Montana and remarried.

(Date is approximate.)

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.