Napa Deputy's Search for Family's Closure

This is a follow-up up to an earlier story on Patch about the of the remains from a 1977 murder. 

Earlier this year, Napa County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Bartlett decided to look deeper into an unsolved murder case. Lou Ellen Burleigh, who was 21 in 1977, left her Walnut Creek home for a job interview but never returned. Her vehicle was later found in Pleasant Hill.

In 2002, after years of investigation across multiple departments and counties, Roger Kibbe allegedly confessed to several murder cases that took place on Interstate Highway 5, earning him the press nickname the I-5 Strangler. Police said that he confessed to kidnapping Burleigh, tying her up and driving her to Lake Berryessa, where he allegedly raped and killed her. She was his first victim.

According to police, Kibbe said that he left her body in a dry riverbed near the lake, which prompted exhaustive searches in 2003 and 2007, with no recovery of her remains.

In February, Deputy Barlett, whose patrol area has been Lake Berryessa for several years, took an interest in the 34-year old case. He met with Napa County District Attorney's investigator Mike Frey, who had previously been on the case, and reviewed his reports, notes and maps.

"It bothered him that she was out there," Napa County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Jon Crawford said about Bartlett. "And he wanted to figure out [the case]."

With a fresh set of eyes, Bartlett, under Frey's direction, used old archives and photographs to help pinpoint a possible location Kibbe had buried Burleigh, according to Crawford.

After three weeks of on-site searching, while walking along a small creek near Lake Berryessa on March 10, something caught his eye.

"It was an amazing find -- it was just a small amount of white glinting in the water," Crawford said.

Bartlett had found a small piece of bone sticking out of some gravel on the creek bed's bottom. The bone was sent to an anthropologist at California State University at Chico, who confirmed the bone was a portion of a female pelvic bone. The pelvis was then sent to a DNA lab where an examination confirmed it belonged to Burleigh.

Walnut Creek police Sgt. Tom Cashion with other sheriff and police officials went to an area outside of Seattle to tell Burleigh's mother and two brothers about the identified remains on Friday.

"To actually find a piece of her was short of a miracle," Cashion said. "We gave them something they thought they would never receive."

Cashion said finding a part of their daughter and sister was a "really good thing for the family" and the mother is planning some sort of burial service for Burleigh. He said the family talked about burying her remains with the rest of the family in an Oregon plot.

"The family was very grateful to have some closure," Crawford said.

Kibbe was up for parole in 2009, when San Joaquin prosecutors charged him with the six other slayings. Now 72, Kibbe is currently serving his sentence in Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga.

No other remains were found near the creek.

By Bay City News Service and other sources