Prisoner murdered ‘I-5 Strangler;’ ‘mission to avenge’ his victims
Jason Budrow, the California prisoner accused of strangling to death the serial killer known as the “I-5 Strangler” in the prison cell they shared, confessed in a five-page letter to this news organization, writing that he spent months “grooming” his intended victim for murder.
Budrow strangled 81-yearold Roger Kibbe to death “with a triangle choke hold” the same day they became cellmates at Mule Creek State Prison, he wrote. The late February homicide had two motives, according to Budrow: he originally wanted to be placed in a single-man cell, but as he learned more about Kibbe’s case, it became “a mission for avenging” Kibbe’s victims.
“My actions were drafted out with specific intent, cognitive complexity, and were generally more nefarious than a haphazard murderspat,” Budrow wrote. He later added, “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.”
The letter was entitled “Ascension …may their souls go to heaven…”
Budrow — who is serving life without parole for a Southern California woman’s
murder — wrote that he wasn’t concerned about legal consequences. Thus far, no criminal charges have been filed in Kibbe’s death, court records show.
“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.’”
He added that he wanted to apologize to “doctors, professors, and instructors” he’d been working with for the past eight years in various prison educational programs, writing that he “lied to, and deceived, people who considered themselves my friends and advocates.” He added, “I did not do this to get attention, nor do I believe that I should be complimented.”
Kibbe was serving multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole and is believed to have raped and killed at least seven women and girls. His modus operandi was to offer a potential victim a ride and murder them in a secluded area. He was known to cut pieces of his victims’ hair of clothing as a trophy.