A convicted murderer confessed to killing a notorious serial killer in a California jail. Roger Kibbe, 81, who was known as the "I-5 Strangler," was found strangled to death in his prison cell in February.
Kibbe's killer identified himself as Jason Budrow in a five-page letter to the East Bay Times. Budrow, 40, was sentenced to life without parole in 2011 for strangling 48-year-old Margret Dalton to death.
Budrow wrote that he originally planned to kill so he could have a jail cell all to himself. He decided to target Kibbe after watching a TV special on the serial killer while he was working out. In the letter, Budrow claimed that he orchestrated the circumstances to ensure that he would become cellmates with Kibbe.
"My actions were drafted out with specific intent, cognitive complexity, and were generally more nefarious than a haphazard murder-spat," Budrow wrote.
"What had started out as my original bare-bones plan of doing a straightforward homicide of a cellmate to obtain my single-cell status evolved into a mission for avenging that youngest girl and all of Roger Kibbe's other victims," he added.
After Kibbe's body was discovered, Budrow was moved to the prison's administrative segregation unit. While he has not been charged, Budrow said he isn't concerned about the legal consequences of his actions.
"Should Amador County and/or the new Attorney General for the State of California elect to seek death penalty prosecution against me for murder-one with special circumstances (lying in wait, execution style, desecrating a corpse, whatever) they can go ahead and 'run that,'" Budrow wrote. "I am down to test my theory that no jury during a penalty phase of my potential death penalty trial will ever vote to see me executed for murdering Roger Kibbe, the 'I-5 Stranger.'"
Photo: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation