Police crime lab supervisor retires after seeing revolutionary changes
| Friday, Jul 09 2010 06:35 PM
Last Updated Friday, Jul 09 2010 06:38 PM
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Bakersfield forensics supervisor Cathy Kibbey hugs secretary Deanna Frausto at Kibbey's retirement party on Friday. Kibbey left the Bakersfield Police Department after 34 years and 9 months on the job.
Cathy Kibbey reminisces in her office at the police department headquarters. Kibbey retired from the Bakersfield Police Department's crime lab after 34 years and 9 months on Friday.
Cathy Kibbey stands in front of a display case of antique forensics equipment, some of which she used during her time as a crime scene investigator at the Bakersfield Police Department. Kibbey retired on Friday after 34 years and 9 months with the BPD.
When Cathy Kibbey began working in the Bakersfield Police Department crime lab 29 years ago, she couldn't lift a fingerprint from a golf ball.
Now, as the 34-year veteran of the department heads into retirement, she and the lab technicians in the department can do that and a lot of other amazing stuff they never thought possible a couple of decades -- or even a couple of years -- ago.
Kibbey, 56, a supervisor in the department for the past eight years, reflected Friday on her last day with the department about how evidence gathering has changed to make it easier or quicker to "get the bad guy."
As her colleagues gave her a going-away cake Friday, police service technician James White joked, "We have a display of antique lab equipment downstairs. Cathy has used all of it."
Kibbey said she hasn't used all of it, "but it amazes me what we can do now compared to what we did when I was hired."
Not that a lot of people go around stealing golf balls, but sometimes burglars or killers touch rounded, irregular surfaces such as door knobs that 10 years ago probably wouldn't have yielded a fingerprint, she said.
But now there's a putty mixture technicians paste around an object, and with some black powder and a couple minutes of drying, the putty is peeled off and the fingerprint shows up.
When Kibbey started in the lab, she was able to use black powder and tape to lift prints, but the tape is useless on a rounded object, as technician Sherrie Hill demonstrated Friday on a light cover.
Today, just as in crime scene television shows, lab technicians use fumes and magnetic powder to get prints that in yesteryear were unobtainable, Kibbey said.
And the prints don't have to be as complete as they were in years past to make a match, she said.
Once a print is developed, computer databases generate a match, sometimes within minutes, she said. In one sexual assault case she recalled, thumb prints were lifted from a screen frame and a suspect was identified before the victim was finished with her hospital exam, she said.
And more fingerprints are in those databases, including juvenile prints, she said. In a 1997 rape case, Kibbey and Becky Stokes -- who on Monday will take over as supervisor of the six-employee department -- searched through individual paper files of juvenile prints for seven months before finding a match.
Another new part of the database as of about a year ago is palm prints, Kibbey said. That could help in cold cases if such evidence exists, she said.
The revolution in analyzing blood, semen, saliva and other bodily fluids with DNA came after Kibbey started in the lab. In her early years, lab technicians could identify the type of blood -- A, B or O, she said. "That couldn't be the only piece of the puzzle," she said. "You had to have something else to go with it."
But now DNA provides exclusions way beyond the 6.8 billion people on earth. Kern's first case in 1992 had a one-in-32,000 chance that someone else did it. But in a 1999 retrial, the DNA technique improved so that the same evidence showed there was a one-in-32-billion chance that someone else did it.
Kibbey said the latest refinement in DNA can place the odds as high as one in 73 quintillion. "There's 18 zeros behind that number," she said. There are nine zeros behind a billion.
Swabbing for DNA has also improved. For example, she found one car theft suspect by swabbing his saliva from half-eaten peanut brittle he left in the car.
Photographing crime scenes has vastly improved. No longer do technicians use big, heavy cameras with film. Now they use digital cameras and video cameras to document a crime scene, she said.
Another lab duty is making composite sketches of suspects. She said they used to use identi-kits that put printed features together, but now they have computer programs to instantly put in a bigger nose, a shorter chin or wider eyes.
A police officer came in about 11 a.m. Friday with a request to do a sketch of an attempted rape suspect from earlier that morning on the bike path. By 2 p.m., police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary DeGeare sent the composite to news media.
Kibbey's motivation? "I'm doing this to find justice for the victim," she said.
But the crime lab is not where Kibbey began her police career in 1975, a year after graduating from Bakersfield College with an associate degree in administration of justice.
She was one of the city's first "meter maids," she recalled. "You would get more complaints over a $2 parking ticket than a speeding ticket," she said.
During the cake ceremony Friday, Capt. Kevin Stokes said the department "greatly appreciates" all the work Kibbey has done.
He noted that despite all the tragedy she saw in her job, she's always "upbeat and smiling. She really is a ray of sunshine."
Homicide Sgt. Joe Aldana agreed, adding she was "extremely professional, and her very thorough work always enhanced our homicide and major crime cases."
Her staff's great work "is a tribute to her leadership," Aldana said.
Kibbey won't completely get out of the field. She's going to work eight to 12 weeks a year for National Crime Investigation and Training based in Northern California, going to police departments and training their officers in crime scene reconstruction.
Otherwise, she plans to travel in a motorhome with her husband, Tim, after they move to Nevada City.
