Scott Kimball and Lori McLeod go on their first date on Valentine’s Day. They meet at a Bennigan’s in Westminster, and Kimball brings flowers.
“He was funny. He was fun. He was smooth,” McLeod remembers.
Within a matter of days, McLeod introduces her new boyfriend to her 19-year-old daughter, Kaysi.
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.
At 9:30 p.m. the night before her planned trip to Seattle with Scott Kimball, Jennifer Marcum has a last conversation with her boyfriend, federal inmate Steve Ennis. The call was recorded by the prison:
Jennifer at 24. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)
“You OK?” Ennis asked.
“Yeah.”
“You all ready to go?”
“Packin’.”
“Are you? Cool. Are you excited?”
“No, not really.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should be, you’ll have a nice time. … You taking a cab out to the airport?”
“Um, I’m not sure yet. I think I’m taking my car.”
“You’re gonna have fun up there. … What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll see you next Thursday, huh?”
Marcum is never heard from again.
Jennifer Marcum, in 2001. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)
After a final evening call to Jennifer Marcum, Scott Kimball’s cell phone goes inactive until Feb. 20. Kimball says later that he had gone to the mountains for several days and turned his cell phone off.
Phone records will reveal that Jennifer’s phone is inactive for the same three-day period of time.
After that, however, occasional calls will be made from Jennifer’s phone — to Kimball and others — before the service is disconnected.
Investigators believe Kimball was using Jennifer’s phone “for the purpose of misdirecting law enforcement in an attempt to make it appear as if she was still alive.”
Scott Kimball consults with the FBI for three days in Seattle concerning the unsolved murder case of Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Wales, who was gunned down in his Seattle home in October 2001.
Scott Kimball signs a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Denver on the theft and fraud charges stemming from his 2001 arrest in Alaska.
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.
New York City. (photos4travel.com)
Scott Kimball’s FBI handler, Carle Schlaff, starts asking questions about Jennifer Marcum, who disappeared while Kimball was supposed to be keeping an eye on her in his role as an informant.
Kimball tells Schlaff that Jennifer bought a $600 gun and flew to New York City to kill a member of her boyfriend Steve Ennis’ drug ring.
Airline records show that Marcum never flew out of town the weekend her car was abandoned at Denver International Airport.
(Date is approximate.)
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.
Kaysi's driver's license photo, copied by Westminster police
Kaysi McLeod is charged with felony theft and forgery after admitting to buying more than $3,400 worth of merchandise with a stolen credit card, according to Westminster police.
She went on her alleged week-long shopping spree starting in late February 2003.
Scott Kimball, according to the victim in the case, took Kaysi into a room for 45 minutes when she was first accused of the theft. She emerged from the room and admitted to using the card fraudulently.
Scott Kimball receives his first recorded payment from the FBI: $600 for services.
Spokane County Superior Court in Washington issues a warrant for Scott Kimball’s arrest on probation violations.
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.
FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff revokes Scott Kimball’s protected status as a paid informant.
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.
Arnold Flowers and girlfriend Sompong Khamsomphou are convicted by a jury in Anchorage of criminal tampering with a witness. They are acquitted of the more serious charges of plotting a murder-for-hire, which Scott Kimball had accused them of orchestrating 15 months earlier.
Kimball testifies at the trial.
A month later, Flowers is sentenced to eight years in prison and Khamsomphou gets five years behind bars.
(Date is approximate)
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.
Jennifer Marcum in 2001. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)
Behind bars at Denver County Jail, Scott Kimball tells his FBI handler, Carle Schlaff, that a drug dealer had strangled Jennifer Marcum, who’d been missing for four months.
Kimball had even seen pictures of her body — hands and legs bound, mouth taped shut — on the drug dealer’s laptop, he says. In fact, the killer offered to pay Kimball to find Jennifer’s corpse and remove her breast implants and IUD so the serial numbers couldn’t be used to identify her remains.
Kimball tells Schlaff he can help catch the killer.
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)
The FBI reactivates Kimball’s status as a “cooperating witness” 10 days after his release from Denver County Jail.
Carle Schlaff, from his Facebook page. (Facebook.com)
FBI Agent Carle Schlaff files an affidavit in federal court in Denver seeking a warrant to search Jennifer Marcum’s car, which was found abandoned at DIA earlier in the year.
“The whereabouts of Jennifer Marcum cannot be determined and there is probable cause to believe that she is a victim of a homicide,” Schlaff concludes.
He notes that Scott Kimball had contact with Jennifer before her disappearance but doesn’t finger him as a suspect.
Kimball's rental property in Adams County. (Lafayette police)
The FBI pays Scott Kimball $2,000 in relocation expenses so he can move from his Lakewood condo to a home in rural Adams County, at 14701 Huron St.
Kimball moves into the new property with his girlfriend, Lori McLeod, and her daughter, Kaysi.
Three weeks later, the FBI pays Kimball another $500 to cover expenses at his new house.
Scott Kimball is issued a Colorado driver’s license under the name Joseph Lee Scott, his FBI alias.
