Double Life, Double Murder

Rhonda Lou Kriebel was born in Newton, Kansas, on August 21st, 1957, the daughter of Robert and Mary Lou Schmidt. She grew up there, went to college, and met Von Andros Kriebel. They married in 1980 and raised three daughters in what friends described as a happy, noisy house. Rhonda stayed at home, worked in nurseries, taught Sunday school and belonged to the Christian Women's Club, which met regularly at the Newton Inn.

details of the account remain covered until revealed Rhonda asked for the manager. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

On May 20th, 1994, Rhonda chaperoned a school field trip to Wichita with her two eldest daughters. She came home at about two o'clock with her six-year-old, Natalie, and Natalie's five-year-old friend, and gave the girls ice cream in front of the television. Shortly after three there was a knock. Rhonda told the girls to keep eating and went to the door. She came back down the hall with a tall, thin man in a red baseball cap bearing a Christian fish symbol and aviator sunglasses. She did not introduce him. Both went towards the master bedroom.

At around ten past three Natalie walked towards her mother's room and found the man standing alone in the hall. She asked where her mother was and got no answer. Looking past him she saw Rhonda on the bed, hands and feet bound, mouth taped, trying to speak. The man carried Natalie and her friend upstairs, pushed them into a closet in Natalie's room and shut the door. From inside they heard seven or eight heavy bangs and thought their mother was being shot.

The friend's mother arrived between half past three and twenty to four. Rhonda's car was in the driveway and the front door was unlocked, but nobody answered. She called repeatedly, then telephoned Von in Wichita, who rang a cousin, Kevin, who had a key. Kevin let himself in between four and a quarter past, found Rhonda's purse, heard muffled crying and opened the closet. Natalie told him 'the bad man hurt mommy'. He called 911 and was told to take the girls outside.

Newton police arrived at about half past four and found Rhonda dead in the master bedroom. She had been bound at wrists and ankles with her own pantyhose, gagged with white masking tape from a dresser roll, and a white tube sock had been knotted round her neck. She had been struck on the head thirteen times and her skull was fractured. The medical examiner found signs of an interrupted sexual assault. Everything used on her came from the house. Outside, under the living room window, police found quantities of cigarette ends; a pair of aviator sunglasses was found under the bed. Neither belonged to the family.

Detective Walton led the inquiry. Von was cleared at once, being at work thirty miles away. details of the account remain covered until revealed The case went cold. Months later the forensic artist Lois Gibson, who held the Guinness record for identifications from sketches, sat with Natalie and drew a long-haired, gaunt-faced man with piercing blue eyes in a red cap.

On September 16th, 1995, Janetta Jody McCown, a thirty-year-old woman working the streets on South Broadway in Wichita, got into a car with a man who offered her $200 for an overnight stay. A friend noted the licence plate. Jody never came back. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He had a record for theft, car theft and burglary, and had spent part of his childhood locked in closets by an alcoholic mother who died when he was thirteen.

His wife, Vicky, had known him only as Matt. She told police that two nights before Jody vanished she had gone looking for him at his rented storage shed and seen a blonde woman slumped motionless in the front seat of his car; he said she was a friend of a friend who had drunk too much. Police found nylon rope, duct tape and zip ties in the shed. The shed and the halfway house where he had lived were three blocks from Rhonda's home, and he walked past her house daily on his way to the inn.

Jody's body was found on October 11th, 1995, on the side of a rural road east of Newton. Her wrists and ankles were hog-tied with nylon cord, her mouth taped with an edge that matched the roll in the shed, and the cause was asphyxiation. Detective Walton said the scene was Rhonda's all over again. Vicky's marriage was annulled on October 25th, 1995. The same cigarette brand was found outside Rhonda's window, he wore aviators, and he came to work after the killing with a swollen eye.

this part of the story is covered for now Kansas had not yet reinstated the death penalty, so the prosecutor sought the hard 40. Late in the 1990s DNA from the sunglasses matched him, at odds of one in 5.5 billion. details of the account remain covered until revealed The judge called the crime especially heinous, atrocious and cruel and imposed another hard 40 and $21,272 in restitution. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He was last reported at Lansing Correctional Facility, having served about thirty years with fifty-eight still to go.