Researching Scott Kimball

Kimball was sexually abused in his teens, which led to a suicide attempt and a life of crime. He is a skilled forger who, while he ran a legitimate business buying and selling organic beef, primarily enriched himself by passing bad checks on the accounts of others and using forged documents; by 2003 he had faced criminal charges in four Western states. These white-collar crimes also enabled his murders by allowing him to create evidence that his victims were still alive after he had killed them; he also used their checking accounts and credit cards to further his schemes after they were dead.

Two of Kimball's victims were people close to him: the daughter of the woman who became the third of his four wives, and his own uncle. His second wife, who bore his two sons, claims he twice kidnapped and raped her; there was an open arrest warrant for him from the second, which occurred after he absconded from work release, at the time the FBI hired him as an informant. Members of Kimball's family and some investigators believe that a 2004 accident which severely injured his oldest son was actually an attempt to kill the boy for insurance money; charges were never brought because of conflicts between the jurisdictions where it could have been prosecuted.

An investigation into a 2006 check fraud scheme eventually led law enforcement to uncover the murders. Since Kimball violated the terms of his plea agreement when he could not lead police to the body of one of the four victims (which has never been found), all otherwise located in remote areas of Colorado and neighboring Utah, he faced murder charges for all four in addition to the fraud charges that had prompted the investigation. Under Colorado laws which quadruple sentences for those found to be habitual offenders, he was sentenced to a combined 70 years for the frauds and the murders after pleading guilty. While in state prison, he additionally pled guilty to a charge of attempted escape. He is currently serving his sentence in federal prison, at the United States Penitentiary, Coleman, in Florida.