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.

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

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.”

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.

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

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.

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.

Investigators later found this fake lien release in Kimball's office. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Scott Kimball wrecks his 1999 Jeep Cherokee and receives $10,799.16 in insurance proceeds 11 days later.

Investigators would later discover fake lien-release documents Kimball used to fool the insurance company into believing that he owned the vehicle outright.

And Lori McLeod would tell police that she heard her husband talking about purposely wrecking the vehicle to collect insurance money.

Kimball remains out of prison pending sentencing.

The check bounces.

High Plains filed a complaint against Terry Kimball with the Department of Agriculture two months later.

High Plains' complaint against 'Terry Kimball.' (Courtesy of Lafayette police)

Read the full complaint (PDF).

(moneywalks.com)

Scott Kimball uses his uncle Terry Kimball’s credit cards at a hotel and gas station in Helena, Mont.

He will use them again Sept. 25-27 for a hotel and rental car in Alaska.

When investigators discover the usage years later, they talk to Lori McLeod, who says she accompanied her husband on both trips, but hadn’t seen Terry Kimball for weeks.

Terry Kimball at Montana's Lake Como, 1996. (Courtesy of Karen Johnson)

Someone begins kiting checks on Terry Kimball’s account.

The activity continues through Nov. 18, 2004, and totals $23,083 in the end.

Terry Kimball’s bank, MBNA America, filed a suspicious activity report with the FBI’s Denver office, but it’s unclear when the report was made or whether the bureau did anything about it.

Scott Kimball was not charged in the theft, but a teller identified him as the person who presented the last check on Nov. 18, according to police records.

It was the same trailer that Kimball picked Kaysi McLeod up on the day she disappeared, according to her boyfriend.

Emergency officials deem the trailer fire accidental, but years later a witness — one of Kimball’s business associates — tells police Kimball intentionally burned it to destroy any evidence that Kaysi might have been in it and also to collect insurance money.

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)

Reasons for the revocation are unclear, but a warrant for Kimball had been issued three days earlier. Plus Schlaff had questions for his informant about continued check-counterfeiting and Jennifer Marcum’s disappearance.

Kimball, who’d been convicted of three felony counts of forgery in 2001 stemming from a 1999 case, failed to report to a supervisor with Washington’s prison system.

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.

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.

Read Kimball’s plea deal, March 10, 2003. (PDF)

(moneywalks.com)

Scott Kimball hires a prostitute in Indian Wells, Calif., a golf-resort town in the Coachella Valley.

Police believe he paid for her services by giving her LeAnn Emry’s credit card.

The card is soon used fraudulently in the Los Angeles area.

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)

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.