State v. Higgenbotham

• Decision Date: 01 June 2001
• Docket Number: No. 84,813.,84,813.
• Citation: 271 Kan. 582,23 P.3d 874
• Parties: STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, v. CHESTER L. HIGGENBOTHAM, Appellant.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

271 Kan. 582

23 P.3d 874

STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, v.CHESTER L. HIGGENBOTHAM, Appellant.

No. 84,813.

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Opinion filed June 1, 2001.

Virginia A. Girard-Brady, of Lawrence, argued the cause and was on the brief for appellant.

Mary A. McDonald, special prosecutor, argued the cause, and Carla J. Stovall,attorney general, was with her on the brief for appellee.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

DAVIS, J.:

The defendant, Chester L. Higgenbotham, appeals his conviction of first-degree premeditated murder of Rhonda Krehbiel in Newton, Kansas.He contends that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of another murder he committed and by refusing to change the venue of his trial.We find no reversible error and affirm his conviction and sentence.

On May 20, 1994, Rhonda Krehbiel returned to Newton at approximately 2:10 to 2:20 p.m after accompanying her two daughters on a school field trip to Wichita.The kindergartners were dismissed to go home and the older children went back to class.Rhonda's daughter K.K., age 6, and a friend, D.G., age 5, went home with Rhonda.

On the way home, the group stopped by the home of Rhonda's mother to pick up Rhonda's youngest daughter.When no one was home at her mother's, Rhonda went to her own home.As they were eating ice cream and watching television, Rhonda answered a knock at the door.The children later related that Rhonda appeared in the kitchen with a man who neither girl recognized.D.G. thought that Rhonda looked scared.According to D.G., the intruder was wearing a red baseball cap with a fish symbol.Rhonda told the girls to go into K.K.'s room, close the door, and play.

After the girls had been playing for awhile, K.K. went to her mother's room.She opened the door to see her mother lying on the bed with her hands and feet tied behind her and with a gag in her mouth.K.K. later told police that her mother was trying to say something to her but could not because of the gag.At that point, the intruder grabbed K.K., carried her back down the hallway to her room, and put both girls in the closet.

While they were in the closet, the girls heard the doorbell ring and heard banging on the front door of the house.The intruder opened the closet door and ordered the girls to be quiet.Later, K.K. heard seven to eight bangs which led her to believe that Rhonda had been shot.

Another of Rhonda's daughters, K.E.K., who was 8 years old at the time, walked home with a friend after school dismissed at 3:05 p.m., stopping first at a neighbor's house.When K.E.K. arrived home, she found the front door locked, which was unusual because her mother was always there to meet her after school.K.E.K. rang the doorbell and knocked but did not get an answer.After checking the sliding glass door in the back of the house and finding it locked, she and her friend went to a neighbor's house as they knew someone would be home there.

Sometime after 3:20 p.m., D.G.'s mother, Marla, arrived at Rhonda's house to pick up D.G.She found no one at home but saw K.E.K. and her friend playing in the neighbor's yard.K.E.K. and her friend wanted to go with Marla, so Marla left a note on Rhonda's door telling Rhonda that K.E.K. was with her.When Marla arrived home, she tried to call Rhonda but did not get an answer.She was worried and began to call others to try to find Rhonda.Eventually, she called Rhonda's husband, Von Krehbiel, who was at work in Wichita.He told her he would make some calls.

Von tried calling both of Rhonda's sisters and her mother.He talked to Kevin, the husband of one of Rhonda's sisters, and asked him to go to the house.Kevin drove to the house and went around the back to where Von told him the spare key was kept.He noticed the sliding glass door was standing open.Kevin went inside the house and the telephone began ringing.The call was from Rick, the husband of another one of Rhonda's sisters.Kevin then looked in the garage and saw that the car was there.As he walked back through the house, the telephone rang again.This time it was Marla, who told Kevin that she had just sent her husband to the house.Kevin looked into the laundry room and noticed that Rhonda's purse was there.He proceeded into K.K.'s room where he found K.K. and D.G. in a closet.K.K. told him a man had put them there.Kevin started to go into Rhonda's room but reconsidered because of the children.Instead, he called 911 and reported that there was a possible intruder and he did not know if the intruder was still in the house.The 911 operator told Kevin to leave the house and he took the girls outside.The 911 call was logged at 4:25 p.m.

Officers entering Rhonda's bedroom found Rhonda's body nude from the waist down lying on the bed.Her wrists and ankles had been tied together behind her with a pair of pantyhose.White masking tape was sealed over her mouth and a white tube sock was knotted around her neck.She had been killed by multiple blows to the head from a blunt object which had fractured her skull.Her right eye was swollen and discolored and she had bruises on the inside of her mouth and on her legs.Pieces of her torn underwear were laying next to the body.Officers found a pair of sunglasses laying partially under the bed.A roll of masking tape similar to that used to seal Rhonda's mouth was found in the dresser along with pantyhose and white tube socks.

The case remained unsolved in September 1995, when police began to investigate the disappearance of Jonetta "Jodi" McKown.McKown, a resident of Wichita, was last seen at 1:30 a.m. on September 16, 1995, getting into a car registered to a man named Michael Murphy.It was discovered that Murphy was a fictitious name used by the defendant, Chester Higgenbotham.

Officers called the defendant, who lived in Newton.The defendant told them he had picked up a prostitute named Jodi and the two of them had driven around.The defendant told police he had given Jodi $50 for her companionship and dropped her off near the bus station.Upon investigating the defendant's story, the officers discovered that the bus station was not open at the time the defendant stated he dropped Jodi off.Based on these findings, the officers traveled to Newton to question the defendant personally and executed a search warrant on his vehicle and house.

The defendant's wife, Vicki Murphy, was also questioned.She was not aware that her husband's real name was Chester Higgenbotham.She told police that on the morning McKown disappeared, she awoke early and became concerned because the defendant had not come home.She decided to see if she could find him.As she was driving by a storage unit the defendant had rented in Newton, she saw one of the defendant's cars parked at the unit.The defendant was there and she noticed a female in the front seat of the car.The female was slumped over in the seat and was not moving.When she asked the defendant about the female, he responded that it was "J.D. or a Jolene" and that she was just a friend of his who needed someone to talk to.The defendant told his wife to go back home and he would drop the female off and be home shortly.

When confronted with his wife's story, the defendant insisted to the officers that the person at his storage unit was not the Jodi that he had picked up earlier in the evening but, rather, her name was J.D. or Jolene.The defendant stated that he knew her from a bar in Newton and she had come by the storage unit after he stopped there to drop off car parts.

The defendant consented to a search of his storage unit.A wadded up piece of green duct tape with human hairs on it was found in a car parked in the storage unit along with a role of green duct tape, black plastic ties, and a white button.

On October 11, 1995, McKown's body was discovered in a rural ditch east of Newton.McKown was lying on her stomach with her hands and feet tied behind her with black plastic ties and nylon rope.There was another piece of rope around her neck.Her shirt was pulled down to her waist and her underpants had been removed and were laying by the side of her body.Green duct tape had been wrapped around her mouth and she had been gagged with a bandana.The black plastic ties used to bind McKown, as well as the duct tape wrapped around her head, were similar to items found in the defendant's storage unit.The buttons on McKown's shirt also matched the button found in the unit.

McKown's body had decomposed, making it impossible to tell if she had sustained beating injuries.An autopsy concluded that McKown had died of asphyxiation, as there was no evidence of another cause of death and because the duct tape wrapped around McKown's head had covered both her mouth and her nose.

The defendant was eventually charged with and convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in McKown's death, and this court affirmed the defendant's conviction.SeeState v. Higgenbotham,264 Kan. 593, 957 P.2d 416(1998).

Detective T. Walton, who had worked on both the McKown case and the Krehbiel case testified that when he saw McKown's body he was immediately reminded of Rhonda Krehbiel's murder because McKown's body was bound in a similar fashion.After further investigation, police discovered that at the time of Rhonda's death, the defendant had been living in a halfway house three blocks away from her home.

Police also learned that a week before Rhonda's murder, Rhonda had attended a meeting of the Christian Women's Club at an inn in Newton.The club held meetings there on a regular basis and was normally given a reduced rate for meals.However, on that day the restaurant attempted to charge full price.An argument over the matter ensued between Rhonda, as treasurer for the group, and an assistant manager.That assistant manager was the defendant.

A woman who worked with the defendant at the inn testified that she had heard the defendant talk about Rhonda several times...