California Inmate Admits Murdering '1-5 Strangler' In Prison, Claims It Was To Free The Souls Of His Victims

The California inmate accused of strangling the so-called “1-5 Strangler” to death behind bars last month has apparently confessed to the murder, calling it an act of vengeance for the serial killer’s victims.

Corrections officers discovered 81-year-old Roger Kibbe dead in his cell in late February at Mule Creek State Prison, according to a news release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. 

Kibbe’s cellmate Jason Budrow, 40, was apparently found standing in the cell next to his body. Budrow has now apparently confessed to killing Kibbe — who raped and killed at least seven women — in a letter to Bay Area outlet Mercury News.

In his five-page letter to the outlet, Budrow claimed that he had spent months “grooming” Kibbe, all while plotting his murder. In the letter, he confessed to killing Kibbe, who was known for strangling his victims, “with a triangle choke hold” the same day the two became cellmates. Budrow wrote that he killed Kibbe because he didn’t want a cellmate — but also to avenge the killer's victims.

“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,” he wrote.

Budrow claimed that he “drafted out” out the murder “with specific intent” and “cognitive complexity.” Mercury News points out that the letter was titled, "Ascension …may their souls go to heaven…” 

Budrow wrote that he believes that now the souls of Kibbe’s victims “have been released from the possession of their killer and I pray that they now rest in peace.”

Budrow also has “666,” a number associated with Satan, tattooed above his right eyebrow.

“As my design for orchestrating my way into becoming Roger Kibbe’s cellmate reached fruition to culminate in the outcome that occurred, I consecrated the inception of the waning lunar cycle with his ‘death throws’ during a human sacrificial offering in a ceremonial rite of homage to the ‘God Most High,'” Budrow wrote in his letter. 

Budrow is serving life without parole for killing by strangulation — just as Kibbe was prior to his prison murder. He was sentenced in 2011 for the 2010 murder of his 48-year-old ex-girlfriend, Margret Dalton, whose body he drove to a police station in Southern California after strangling her to death, the Press Enterprise reported in 2010. At the time, he referred to himself as a Satanist who had ritual bloodletting done to his body, according to the outlet. 

Budrow was also a sex offender; he was convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in 2004.