<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The man accused of strangling the California serial killer known as the “I-5 Strangler” won’t face the death penalty, a prosecutor said Wednesday.</p>
<p>Amador County District Attorney Todd Riebe said he had filed first-degree murder charges against Jason Budrow and will seek a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, the Sacramento Bee <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article250502039.html">reported.</a></p>
<p>Budrow, 40, is accused of strangling Roger Reece Kibbe, whose body was discovered on Feb. 28 in their shared cell at Mule Creek State Prison southeast of Sacramento. </p>
<p>Budrow already is serving life without parole for strangling his then-girlfriend in 2011 in Riverside County.</p>
<p>Death penalty cases are costly and lengthy affairs that include automatic appeals. California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006 and Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued a moratorium on capital punishment while he is in office.</p>
<p>Kibbe, 81, was initially convicted in 1991 of strangling Darcine Frackenpohl, a 17-year-old who had run away from her home in Seattle. Her nearly nude body was found west of South Lake Tahoe below Echo Summit in September 1987.</p>
<p>Investigators said then that they suspected him in other similar slayings.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t until 2009 that a San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office investigator used new developments in DNA evidence to connect him to additional slayings in Northern California counties. </p>
<p>Kibbe pleaded guilty to six additional killings in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. </p>
<p>Those victims were Lou Ellen Burleigh, 21, in 1977 and Stephanie Brown, 19; Lora Heedrick, 20; Katherine Kelly Quinones, 25; Charmaine Sabrah, 26; and Barbara Ann Scott, 29, all in 1986.</p>
<p>Kibbe was serving multiple life terms without possibility of parole when he was killed.</p>
<p>In a letter to The Mercury <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/31/exclusive-ca-prisoner-admits-to-murdering-serial-killer-known-as-the-i-5-strangler-calls-it-a-mission-for-avenging-his-victims/">News</a> last month, Budrow said he killed Kibbe on the same day they became cellmates, initially so he would have a cell to himself.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
