FULL TEXT: A woman suspected of trying to strangle her
2-year-old son has confessed to her mother that she drowned two of her infants
and smothered a third, the first when she was just 14.
Claudette Kibble, 23, was charged with murder Friday in the
1990 suffocation of 9-month-old Quinten Kibble. She was not charged in the
other deaths because she was a minor at the time, authorities said.
Investigators had long suspected foul play in the death of
Quinten, the 1988 death of 8-month-old Edward and the 1986 death of 1-year-old
Joshua, born when Kibble was 13, but they couldn’t prove anything until this
week, when she confessed to her mother, who contacted authorities.
“I want you to know this is horrifying. It’s a living nightmare,”
said Judy Hay, a spokeswoman for state Child Protective Services. “From the
very beginning we were suspicious … Without evidence, particularly a medical
examiner’s report, the hands begin to be tied.”
In all three cases, Kibble had taken the child to a
hospital, claiming he was suffering from seizures. The Harris County medical
examiner’s office ruled that two of the deaths were caused by seizures and left
the third undetermined.
Cecil Wingo, chief investigator for the medical examiner’s
office, said his office has reopened the case several times since 1990 at the
request of prosecutors, but the children bore no signs of abuse that would
allow officials to prove Kibble had harmed them.
“We knew that something was wrong. We just didn’t know where
to go to find out,” Wingo said. “We don’t have a crystal ball.”
On Tuesday, Kibble admitted drowning Joshua and Edward and
suffocating Quinten with a pillow. Police refused to discuss any motive she may
have given.
Kibble already is in custody on a charge of attempting to
strangle 2-year-old Calvin. A judge Friday ordered a psychiatric evaluation to
determine if she is fit to stand trial.
Calvin and his 6-year-old sister, Quintenett, have been in
state custody since July 1994, not long after Kibble took Calvin to
a hospital.
[Mike Drago (AP), “Mother Admits Killing 3 Of Her Kids
Confession To Her Own Mother Leads To Murder Charge,” The Spokesman-Review
(Spokane, Wa.), Sep. 24, 1995]
***
FULL TEXT: On August 4, 1986, an ambulance was dispatched to
9109 Laura Koppe in northeast Houston, where emergency medical workers found an
unconscious 17-month-old named Joshua Kibble. The toddler's 14-year-old mother,
Claudette Kibble, explained that he was an epileptic who had suffered a seizure
while she was bathing him. Seventeen hours later, Joshua Kibble was pronounced
dead at Hermann Hospital's pediatric intensive care unit. By 8 a.m. the
following day, his small body was on a stainless steel gurney at the Joseph A.
Jachimczyk Forensic Center, his now-rigid features starkly illuminated by the
skylights in one of the morgue's four autopsy rooms.
Dr. Eduardo Bellas, a forensic pathologist with the Harris
County Medical Examiner's Office, began his autopsy on the 21-pound corpse by
making the usual Y-shaped incision across the front of the abdomen. After
removing the child's heart and placing it in one of the two overhead scales,
Bellas noted that the organ weighed 35 grams. There were no thrombi, or
indications of clotting, in any of the organ's four chambers, and the valves
were intact. Bellas found nothing unusual about the pancreas -- it had the
usual hammer-shaped configuration and size. The child's liver, spleen and
kidneys were "smooth and glistening," the pathologist wrote.
Bellas also made incisions along the boy's back and lower
extremities that revealed no evidence of contusions or hemorrhages. An
examination of the head, which was 19 inches in circumference, did turn up a
bit of subgaleal hemorrhaging in the vicinity of the occipital bone, which
forms the bottom part of the skull. Removal of the back portion of the dead
child's cranium also uncovered evidence of a slight herniation of the
cerebellar tonsils and congested brain tissue. But those findings were not
sufficient to raise suspicion -- at least by Bellas -- that there was something
more to Joshua Kibble's death than what his mother had related. In signing the
autopsy report, Bellas ruled that the boy had died of natural causes "as a
result of epilepsy." The investigation into the child's death was closed.
In the next four years, the bodies of two more of Claudette
Kibble's children would be taken to the morgue to be autopsied. Kibble would
tell investigators that those two infant boys, like Joshua, died after
suffering seizures that only she had witnessed. On the face of it, that
explanation begged belief -- each of the three was born of a different father,
greatly reducing the likelihood that they shared some genetic defect that would
have contributed to their deaths. Nonetheless, the medical examiner ruled that
the demise of the second child, like the first, was due to natural causes. The
cause of the third death was listed as "undetermined."
Despite the suspicious circumstances, and in the face of
pressure by the Harris County District Attorney's Office and other agencies,
the Medical Examiner's Office steadfastly refused to change its rulings. It was
not until last September, after Claudette Kibble allegedly had confessed to her
own mother and murder charges were filed against the 23-year-old woman, that
the M.E.'s Office finally ruled that the three boys were homicide victims.
[Steve Vicker, “Autopsy,” Houston Press (Tx.), Jan. 25, 1996]
***
CHRONOLOGY
Oct. 9, 1971 – Claudette Kibble
born.
Aug. 4, 1986 – Joshua Kibble (17-month-old), drowned. CK is
13.
Jul. 1, 1988 – Edward Kibble (7-month-old), drowned.
Feb. 23, 1990 – Quenten Kibble (9-month-old), smothered with
pillow.
Jul 1994 – children Calvin & Quintinette (6) put into
state custody.
Sep. 1995 – Calvin (2), survived smothering with pillow.
Sep. 19, 1995 – confesses to murdering 3 children.
Sep. 22, 1995 – charged.
May 1996 – pleads guilty to two murders, and one injury to a
child.
Jan. 14, 1997 – Sentenced to 3 life terms, eligible for
parole in 15 years.
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