Routt National Forest, where a hunter found a human skeleton in September 2007. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)
Bushwhacking through a dense section of Routt National Forest in the shadow of Little Haystack Mountain, a hunter finds a human skeleton.
“If I hadn’t been at that exact spot at that time of the morning with the sun glinting off the skull, I would not have seen it,” said the hunter, a Brighton resident who asked that his name not be used. “Something happened. Somebody wanted me to find it.”
With snow in the forecast, the hunter ties a rope to a tree to mark his find, packs the skull carefully in his backpack, and continues his trek.
He calls 911 the next day, and the Jackson County coroner takes possession of the remains, thought to belong to a young woman.
The Sheriff’s Office writes up a full report, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is notified, but news of the find doesn’t reach the FBI for six months.
Investigating Jennifer Marcum’s disappearance, FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing and Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher interview Steve Ennis, who shared a cell with Scott Kimball at FCI-Englewood while dating Jennifer.
Ennis — being held at a federal prison in Seagoville, Texas — tells the investigators of another former FCI-Englewood inmate with an eerily similar story.
Steven Holley
Like Ennis, this inmate had become friends with Kimball behind bars in 2002. Like Ennis, he had put Kimball in touch with a girlfriend upon his release.
Both women went missing within weeks.
Talk to Steven Holley, Ennis told the investigators.
Holley, the inmate who had dated LeAnn Emry, had never had his own plea for an FBI interview granted.
Investigators find Kaysi McLeod’s Subway hat in a trailer owned by Scott Kimball. It is found in a black bag containing six zip ties, two rolls of electrical tape, and women’s shoes.
The receipt, found in a box of Kimball's belongings. (Courtesy of Lafayette police)
Nagged by a $17.95 grocery store receipt found in Scott Kimball’s possessions, FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing decides to take a closer look around Walden, Colo.
The receipt — dated Aug. 24, 2003, one day after the disappearance of Kaysi McLeod. — came from the North Park Supers store in the tiny northern Colorado mountain town.
Scott Kimball, who said he was alone in the mountains the day Kaysi disappeared, had later told Grusing that she might have overdosed on drugs somewhere on national forest land.
Grusing calls the Routt National Forest district office in Walden to ask for a map of the area, and a receptionist tells him it costs $8.
In no mood to fill out an expense sheet, Grusing asks to talk to someone higher up the chain of command.
He tells supervisor Sue Yeager he’s with the FBI and is searching for human remains. She says she’ll get some maps out right away.
Then, almost as an afterthought, she tells him to talk to the coroner. A skull, likely belonging to a young female, had been discovered by a hunter six months earlier in a remote area southwest of town.
“When she told me that, I pretty much knew it was Kaysi,” Grusing recalls.
An initial DNA analysis 2 1/2 weeks later will point to the same conclusion.
Lafayette police detective Gary Thatcher, left, and FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing, near the site where a hunter discovered Kaysi McLeod's body. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)
A final DNA analysis at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va., identifies the remains found in Routt National Forest the previous fall as those of Kaysi McLeod.
Investigators, along with Kaysi’s family, will return to the site looking for evidence, but nothing is uncovered.
The vacant Adams County home where Kimball once lived. (Paul Aiken / Camera)
In a search of Scott Kimball’s former Adams County home, at 14701 Huron St., investigators find bloodstains in the living-room carpet, carpet pad and floorboards. They cut out samples and sent them to the FBI lab for analysis.
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.”
Scott Kimball draws authorities a detailed map to the spot near Vail Pass where he left his uncle Terry Kimball’s body. But a search will have to be postponed until the snow melts in the high country.
Kimball later tells FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing that Uncle Terry’s body — stashed in the woods in his clothing, tennis shoes and eyeglasses — is wrapped in a grey tarp bound by about 100 feet of nylon rope.
The Utah site where LeAnn Emry's remains were found. (Courtesy of Howard Emry)
During a second hunt for bodies, Scott Kimball leads investigators to a wash in Bryson Canyon.
FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing is the first to find a bone and then additional remains. They are later determined to be LeAnn Emry’s, based on DNA from her parents, Darlene and Howard Emry.
Boulder County prosecutor Katharina Booth said coming upon Emry’s bones was extremely emotional and moving.
A fragment of a brass-jacketed bullet is found the next day in the area where LeAnn’s skull would have been located when she was killed.
In a separate search for Jennifer Marcum’s remains, which Kimball insists are nearby, nothing is found.
Amy Okubo, also a chief deputy with the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office, said Kimball knows exactly where Marcum is and was simply “messing with us.”
Jennifer Marcum, at age 24. (Courtesy of Bob Marcum)
Scott Kimball participates in a third search for bodies, insisting that Jennifer Marcum is buried in the same area of eastern Utah that LeAnn Emry’s remains had been found the previous month.
But no new discoveries are made, and Kimball tells the FBI that Jennifer may be buried as far as 60 miles away from the site being searched.
Jennifer’s body has still never been found.
Investigators suspect that Kimball may be hanging on to the information as leverage, as a way of extracting something of value from someone somewhere down the road.
“If he thought giving up Jennifer’s remains would benefit him, he would say where they are,” FBI Special Agent Jonathan Grusing said.
Kimball says the FBI won’t provide him the resources to find Jennifer.
“From day one I told the FBI that finding Jennifer would be the hardest to find,” he wrote in response to questions from the Camera. “I’m willing to keep looking.”
Boulder County DA Stan Garnett. (Camera file photo)
Without Jennifer Marcum’s body, Boulder County prosecutors revoke their deal with Kimball.
In a December 2008 “memorandum of understanding,” Kimball had agreed to lead investigators to the bodies of LeAnn Emry, Jennifer Marcum and Terry Kimball. In return, he would face only one count of second-degree murder.
In a letter to Kimball’s public defenders, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett writes that Kimball is considered “in breach” of the deal.
A fragment from a brass-jacketed bullet found near LeAnn Emry’s remains in Utah’s Bryson Canyon is determined to be consistent with the .40-caliber Firestar handgun Scott Kimball owned.
The bullet fragment is found right where Emry’s skull would have been located, according to authorities.
Bloodstains found the previous summer in the carpet of Scott Kimball’s former Adams County homes test positive as a match for his “Uncle Terry,” based on a DNA sample from Terry Kimball’s daughter.
Scott Kimball at his sentencing hearing in the Boulder County Justice Center. Camera file photo
Scott Kimball pleads guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of LeAnn Emry, Jennifer Marcum, Kaysi McLeod and Terry Kimball, and is sentenced to 70 years in prison.
In an emotional hearing at the Boulder County Justice Center, the victims’ families finally have a chance to face the man who killed their loved ones.
LeAnn Emry’s mother said her daughter was “no more important to him than the carcass of a dead animal.”
“He made the deliberate choice to murder, and he made that choice at least four times,” Darlene Emry said through tears.
Kaysi McLeod’s relatives, clockwise from top left, Charlene McLeod, Katherine McLeod, Ginger McLeod, Samantha McLeod and Michelle Strick listen to a live feed outside of the packed courtroom. (Kasia Broussalian/Camera)
Kaysi McLeod’s father said his daughter would have been 26 if she were alive.
“I was present, right there, the very moment that Kaysi took her first breath in this world,” Rob McLeod said. “Scott Kimball was there to take her last.”
Lori McLeod faces her former husband in court and says God has received her daughter.
“I believe that Kaysi has forgiven Scott Kimball,” she says. “I choose to forgive Scott Kimball.”
Jennifer Marcum’s family reiterated their plea for Kimball to show them where he left Jennifer’s body.
“There is not going to be any place for your soul until you truly repent and you tell me where my sister is,” Tammy Marcum demanded.
Jennifer’s father told the court that Kimball “has destroyed our lives.”
“How many other people are missing as a result of his life?” Bob Marcum said. “It’s time for Scott to be a man and give back what he took from us.”
Kimball remained silent.
After the hearing, his cousin and self-described spokesman, Ed Coet, said Kimball was sorry but laid much of the blame at the FBI’s feet for the agency’s decision to use him as an informant.
“I do want the families of all the victims, and the public, to know that although I must be held accountable for my crimes, none of this could have occurred, and the victims would not have been killed had the FBI not driven me into the extremely dangerous underworld in which both I and the murdered victims found ourselves,” Coet said on Kimball’s behalf.
