A prisoner has confessed to murdering 81-year-old Roger Kibbe, a serial killer who became known as the I-5 Strangler.
Kibbe is believed to have strangled and raped at least seven women, and was serving multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.
He was found unresponsive in his cell at Mule Creek State Prison, California, on 28 February, with officials saying earlier this month that he had been fatally choked.
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An autopsy revealed Kibbe had been manually strangled, with the Amador County Sheriff's Office saying the death was a homicide.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said in a news release: "At approximately 12:40 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 28, a MCSP correctional officer was conducting institution population counts when the officer observed inmate Jason Budrow, 40, standing in his cell with Kibbe, Budrow's cellmate, lying unresponsive on the floor.
"Medical staff immediately responded to the incident and transported Kibbe to the institution health care facility for a higher level of care. Life-saving measures were unsuccessful and Kibbe was pronounced deceased at 1:23 a.m. by institution medical staff."
Budrow has since claimed responsibility to the killing, having explained how he spent months 'grooming' his victim for the murder in a five-page letter sent to the Bay Area News Group.
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He said he strangled Kibbe to death with a 'triangle choke hold' on the same day they became cellmates.
He claimed he had two motives, as he originally wanted to placed in a single-man cell, but later learned more about Kibbe's case and wanted to avenge his victims.
Budrow wrote: "My actions were drafted out with specific intent, cognitive complexity, and were generally more nefarious than a haphazard murder-spat."
He continued: "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."
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In the letter, titled 'Ascension ...may their souls go to heaven...', Budrow said he wasn't worried about legal consequences.
Budrow - who is serving life without parole for the murder of a Southern California woman - went on to say: "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'.
"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 Strangler'."
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Budrow said that, after he killed his cellmate, he carved a 'crude inverted pentagram [without a circle around it]' into Kibbe's body.
He explained how he spent months 'grooming' him, having decided to murder Kibbe as early as November 2020.
Budrow - who has '666' tattooed above his eyebrow - had found out more about what Kibbe had done when a TV special about him aired while he was working out.
He said he took the 'coincidental' airing as a 'dark omen and spiritual calling', which he claims was later backed up by two dream visions.
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Kibbe was originally convicted in 1991 for the murder of a 17-year-old woman, but in 2009 confessed to six additional murders between 1977 and 1986 in a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
LADbible has contacted the CDCR for comment.
Featured Image Credit: CDCR