The prisoner suspected of murdering California's notorious "I-5 Strangler" serial killer in his cell has laid out his motives for the crime.
In a five-page letter to the Bay Area News Group, Jason Budrow admitted to strangling 81-year-old Roger Kibbe with a choke hold the very same day they became cellmates at Mule Creek State Prison in late February. Budrow, serving a life sentence without parole for a Riverside woman's murder, said he initially came up with the plan so that he wouldn't have to share a cell.
"My actions were drafted out with specific intent, cognitive complexity, and were generally more nefarious than a haphazard murder-spat," Budrow wrote in the five-page letter shared by the Mercury News.
He went on to say that as he learned more about Kibbe, his idea of having the cell to himself "evolved into a mission for avenging that youngest girl and all of Roger Kibbe’s other victims."
Budrow claimed to have carved "a crude inverted pentagram (without a circle around it)" into Kibbe’s body after killing him. He said he decided on killing Kibbe as early as November 2020 and spent months "grooming" him, according to the paper.
Kibbe is believed to have raped and killed at least seven women and girls. Some of his victims - including two East Bay women - were taken from their vehicles and dumped along highways, leading to the "I-5 Strangler" moniker. He was serving consecutive life sentences at the time of his death.
Budrow added that he wasn't concerned about legal consequences.
