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)

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.

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.

Kimball's Lakewood condo, 8210 W. Eastman Place. (John Aguilar / Camera)

Two days before their planned trip to Seattle, Jennifer Marcum moves all of her furniture into Scott Kimball’s condo in Lakewood.

She had been staying in Colorado Springs with the father of her 4-year-old son, and commuting to Glendale, where she worked as an exotic dancer at Shotgun Willie’s.

But Kimball convinced her that he could help her quit stripping for a living. He claimed he ran an espresso-cart operation in Seattle and would help her learn the business.

LeAnn's Super 8 receipt (Courtesy of Howard Emry)

During a two-week trip across the West, LeAnn Emry writes a cascade of bad checks, overdrawing her account by $4,000.

She bounces checks in Laramie, Wyo., Baker City, Ore., Vancouver, Wash., and Reno, Nev., leaving a paper trail that her father will piece together after her disappearance.

Investigators later place Kimball in some of the same spots at the same time, but he also goes to Seattle on FBI business.

At a pawnshop in Hermiston, Ore., Emry buys the .40-caliber Firestar handgun that will become her murder weapon.

She is back in Colorado by Jan. 27, when she checks into a Super 8 motel in Grand Junction.

She checks out two days later.

Tom Wales (walesfoundation.org)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Wales is shot to death in his Seattle home. Police believe an assailant fired through the prosecutor’s basement window while he was working on his computer.

Scott Kimball will later tell federal authorities that he has information on the murder, which remains unsolved.

It’s unclear what details Kimball claimed to have in the case.

Kimball is sentenced to eight months in jail.

She tells Spokane, Wash., police that he broke into her house with the help of a locksmith friend, pressed a gun to her head while she lay sleeping, and raped her repeatedly.

Afterward, she says, he drew her a bubble bath to destroy any evidence, then stole $370 from her purse.

Police do not pursue the case, for lack of evidence.

Excerpt from Spokane police report.

Several witnesses, however, say nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, and police do not pursue a rape case for lack of evidence.

The couple had continued seeing each other after their divorce, and Kimball tells police his ex probably made the complaint because he wanted to end the relationship.

Hentz tells a detective that if Kimball took a lie-detector test he would pass, because “he knows how to beat those things,” according to a police report.

Excerpt from the Spokane police report.

While Kimball largely managed to stay out of jail during the couple’s four-year marriage, he constantly had people chasing him down who felt cheated by him, Hentz said.

“It was not uncommon to have a process server on our porch every other week serving us papers,” she said. “He always had an excuse. It was never his fault.”

Hentz claims that Kimball slept with prostitutes, pulled off brazen logging scams, and swindled money from her dentist and the bishops at her church.

(Date is approximate.)

Kimball had been married briefly once before, but few details of that union are available.

Kimball and Hentz met in Hamilton, Mont., in 1988. They moved in the early ’90s to Spokane, Wash., where Kimball got into the timber business.

(Date is approximate.)