Imprisoned bank robber Steven Holley introduced his girlfriend, LeAnn Emry, to Scott Kimball as part of a prison-escape plan.
April 16th, 2002
Steven Holley
Having returned to Colorado from Dallas, LeAnn Emry files for a divorce from Kevin Niner.
She becomes romantically involved with Steven Holley, an FCI-Englewood prisoner whom she met through Niner.
Holley, facing a life sentence on charges that he shot at an officer during a Lakewood bank robbery, is held in the same prison unit as Scott Kimball.
December 25th, 2002
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)
February 16th, 2003
LeAnn Emry’s boyfriend, FCI-Englewood inmate Steven Holley, writes a letter to her father, telling him he’s worried because he hasn’t heard from LeAnn in more than a month.
“So have you heard from her and is she alright?” he asks Howard Emry.
Holley's letter to Howard Emry. (Courtesy of Howard Emry)
February 24th, 2003
Frantic, Steven Holley writes another letter to Howard Emry from FCI-Englewood.
LeAnn is in “real trouble,” he warns.
“I don’t fully understand what the hell she thought she was doing, but I know she is way out of her league!”
Holley asks Howard Emry to call the FBI and have an agent come talk to him in prison.
An excerpt of Holley's letter. (Courtesy of Howard Emry)
Read Holley’s full Feb. 24, 2003, letter to Howard Emry. (PDF)
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.)
July 1st, 2003
Steven Holley
LeAnn Emry’s father, Howard Emry, meets with Steven Holley in prison.
Holley, who was dating LeAnn when she disappeared, again asks Emry to contact the FBI.
He tells Howard that LeAnn was under the care of “Hannibal,” but he won’t say who that is.
Emry calls the FBI again but never hears back.
(Date is approximate.)
October 11th, 2007
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.
October 31st, 2007
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.”