Scott Lee Kimball is telling investigators where to find the remains of two missing women, but he has denied killing anybody, a sheriff in Utah said Friday.
While being interviewed about missing victims, Kimball, a Colorado man suspected in the deaths of at least four people, has been vague in describing where the bodies are.
On Wednesday, bones that appear to belong to a woman were found in the Book Cliffs, a mountainous area north of Interstate 70 in eastern Utah. The remains were located 150 yards from an unmanned natural-gas well.
Grand County sheriff’s investigator Brent Pace and Sheriff James Nyland told The Salt Lake Tribune they are not certain whether Kimball truly doesn’t remember where the bodies are or if he is avoiding incriminating himself.
Kimball’s attorney in a Colorado case, Megan Ring, could not be reached for comment on Friday, and his federal attorney, Lynn Pierce, did not return a call seeking comment.
“He would say, ‘It is an area like this,’ ” Pace said as he stood in a canyon in the Book Cliffs.
In December, Kimball was sentenced to 48 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a Boulder County theft case. The sentence was enhanced because he admitted that he is a habitual criminal.
While Kimball has been in custody, authorities have been searching for remains and evidence in the disappearances of Kaysi McCleod; Jennifer Marcum; Kimball’s uncle, Terry Kimball; and Leann Emry.
The remains of McCleod — who was the 19-year-old daughter of Kimball’s former wife — were found in Jackson County in September 2007, five years after she disappeared.
Marcum was a dancer at a Glendale strip club, and her car was found parked at Denver International Airport in February 2003.
Emry, who lived in Centennial, vanished in January 2003 after she told her father she was going camping.
The area where the remains were found is about an hour away from Moab, where Emry’s abandoned car was found, but no positive identification on the bones has been made.
“He told them that my daughter was buried in a grave, but that Jennifer (Marcum) was on a rock ledge and covered with rocks,” said Emry’s father, Howard Emry, in an interview Friday with The Denver Post.
He said the FBI took aerial photographs of the canyon to find disturbed land, and when they found what looked like a rock slide, agents decided to search the area.
“So they started removing the rocks and looking down underneath and saw remains,” he said.
But while the FBI told Emry it believes the bones they found probably belong to his daughter, he is not sure because he was told that Kimball said Marcum was covered with rocks and his daughter was buried.
Emry says he’ll wait for the DNA analysis to be completed over the next couple of weeks before he feels any sense of relief.
“As a parent, you always have hope that if one of your children disappear that somehow they are going to be alive even if all the evidence shows they are not,” Emry said. “I have no hope anymore of her being alive and that hurts a lot. The reality of it is now facing me. She’s dead.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
