A jury convicted former Florida sheriff's officer Roy
Kipp Thursday of murdering his wife and her lover.
The panel of six men and six women deliberated less
than three hours before finding Kipp guilty of two counts of first-degree
murder and one count of burglary. The jury will reconvene March 14 to
decide whether to sentence Kipp, 44, to death or life in prison without
the possibility of parole.
As the court clerk read the verdict, Kipp sat at the
defense table with his hands in his lap. He showed no emotion.
Afterwards, the victims' families stood in the Punta Gorda courthouse
lobby hugging and crying.
Sandy Kipp, 35, and her boyfriend, sheriff's deputy
Jeff Klein, also 35, were slain in her new apartment May 20, 2000. Roy
Kipp testified he was shocked when he discovered the lovers in a
compromising position and fired at Klein after the deputy pulled a gun.
His wife, Kipp testified, was killed accidentally when she ran in front
of him.
No gun was recovered from Klein's body, but the
defense suggested officers removed Klein's weapon to make Kipp look more
culpable.
But with their verdict, jurors seemed to reject that
conspiracy theory and endorse prosecutor's claim that the murders were
plotted and the motive was jealousy. Prosecutor Marshall Bower told the
panel in his closing argument Thursday morning that Kipp was "a
controlling, obsessive husband" who turned violent when he realized his
wife was leaving him for another man.
"He couldn't stand it," Bower said.
The prosecution drew heavily on the testimony of
Kipp's friend and co-worker, Peter Lewkowicz, who said Kipp confessed to
him hours after the shooting.
"He said, 'I waxed 'em,'" Lewkowicz testified. He
said Kipp had suspected his wife of cheating with Klein, his friend and
former co-worker, for months and pledged to "(screw) him up" if he ever
got confirmation of the affair. The week before the shootings, Lewkowicz
said, Sandy Kipp told her husband she was moving out.
In Lewkowicz's account, Kipp tracked his wife to her
new apartment, peered through a window and saw the pair together.
Lewkowicz said he "lost it" and shot Klein repeatedly before turning the
gun on his wife who was screaming and threatening to call police. A
portable phone in dial mode was recovered just inches from Sandy Kipp's
body.
The defense called a string of neighbors and
acquaintances who said the Kipps doted on each other and their 8-year-old
daughter, Danielle. But Kipp served as his most important witness. On
direct examination, he portrayed himself as a loving husband who had no
idea his wife was being unfaithful until he stumbled upon her with a
lover. He said he fired his gun only after Klein pointed a weapon at him.
"As soon as I saw the gun, I reacted immediately ...
and I shot him." Klein never fired, he said.
On cross-examination, however, he appeared to stumble.
He said he could not remember talking to Lewkowicz after the shootings,
nor other incriminating conversations with his brother, his sister-in
law, nor his wife's best friend.
"Let me get this straight, you can remember the
traumatic events of what happened in that apartment, but you can't
remember a conversation several hours hours later," Bowers said.
"That's correct," Kipp answered.
Bower ridiculed that account as "preposterous."
"Sandy and Jeff are both gone because of that selfish
man," Bower said.
"I shot two people," the voice said. The startling
confession came from his friend Roy Kipp, another retired cop. He went
on to say he'd caught his estranged wife with another man, a sheriff's
officer in fact, and "went crazy...and ended up shooting them both," the
retired officer later recalled.
He hung up on Kipp and called 911. Deputies went to
the Naples apartment where Kipp's wife, Sandra, lived, but it was too
late. She and her friend Jeff Klein, a Collier County sheriff's sergeant,
were dead from gunshot wounds.
Now, almost two years later, Kipp is going on trial
for the double-murder and his alleged phone confession is at the heart
of the case against him. If convicted of two counts of first-degree
murder, the 44-year-old Kipp, who spent more than a third of his life
enforcing the law, could be sentenced to death.
The death of Kipp, a young mother with many close
friends, and Klein, an Air Force veteran considered a rising star in the
sheriff's department, shocked Collier County. Media coverage was so
intensive that Judge Daniel Monaco granted a defense request to hold the
trial 50 miles north in Charlotte County, where finding an impartial
jury would be easier.
Prosecutors are expected to paint Kipp as a jealous,
verbally-abusive husband who could not accept that his wife was leaving
him and starting a new relationship with Klein. His lawyers have kept
mum about their defense, but may suggest their client acted in the heat
of passion after discovering his wife and Klein having sex and is
therefore guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
A Downward Spiral
Royle Kipp Jr. joined the Collier County Sheriff's
Office in 1981 when he was just 23. Over the next 17 years, he rose
steadily in rank from a road deputy to the lieutenant.
His personal life was not as smooth. With his first
wife, Nancy, who he married in 1982, he fathered two sons. The marriage,
however, faltered. In 1989, Nancy Kipp told a judge her husband was
violent and made threats against her. The couple divorced in 1990.
The following year, Kipp married Sandra, a petite
blond customer service representative at the local hospital. After
several years, Sandra gave birth to a daughter, Danielle. The acrimony
from Kipp's divorce followed the couple. Nancy Kipp filed a complaint
against her ex-husband in 1992, alleging he threatened her and her new
boyfriend.
Sandra and Roy Kipp had their own problems. After her
death, Sandra Kipp's doctor told police that she had complained to him
over the course of five years about her husband's heavy drinking and
demeaning comments.
By 1998, Kipp had risen to the upper ranks of the
sheriff's office, commanding a police substation. Jeffrey Klein was one
of his co-workers. That year, a random drug test brought Kipp's career
to an end. He tested positive for marijuana and opted to retire and
preserve his pension rather than be fired. A year later, the state
revoked his law enforcement certification, ending any hope Kipp held of
one day returning to police work.
Through another retired cop, Kipp got a job with an
elevator company. His supervisor at the company, aware of Kipp's
history, told him that if he caught him drinking or using drugs, he
would be fired. The job was in Sarasota and Kipp had to live in the
city, away from his family and in a company apartment with other
workers.
About the same time, his marriage began to crumble.
Sandra Kipp continued complaining to her family and even one of her
husband's co-workers about his heavy drinking and bad temper. According
to the Naples Daily News, Klein and several other officers tried
to help their former co-worker stop drinking. The paper reported that
the officers visited Kipp and "nudged" him to get help without much
success.
Sandra Kipp had apparently had enough. She told her
sister that she did not love her husband anymore, and began taking steps
to free herself from the marriage. She enrolled in college courses in
hopes of getting a better job and being more independent. Her husband,
she confided in her doctor, was furious. He ridiculed her attempts and
according to her parents, was fond of telling people "he got her from a
trailer park and that she would be nothing without him."
In May, as Sandra Kipp was quietly making plans to
move out of the house and into her own apartment, Roy Kipp became
convinced that she was cheating on him. Prosecutors acknowledge only
that Jeff Klein and Sandra Kipp were friends, but forensic tests from
the crime scene indicate that at least on the night of their deaths,
they were lovers. A few weeks before the murders, Roy Kipp asked one of
her sisters, Wendy Poston, if she had met her new boyfriend and told
Poston "that if he ever caught Sandy with another man, he would kill
her."
Fatal Weekend
On Friday, May 19, 2000, Sandra Kipp told her sister
Bobbie Rogers that she had just moved her belongings to a temporary
apartment about five miles from the couple's home. Roy Kipp, she told
her sister, had begged her to stay, but she left anyway, refusing even
to tell him where the new apartment was. If he shows up, she said, I
won't let him in.
Danielle Kipp, then 7, remained with her father. The
girl spent Saturday playing in the neighborhood and visiting briefly
with her mother, who stopped by the house on a break from work. Her
father put her to bed that evening.
With his daughter asleep, Kipp tried to contact his
wife. Caller ID logs show a call from his number to her new apartment at
10:11 p.m. About 15 minutes later, neighbors in the apartment complex,
about a six minute drive away, heard a volley of loud noises which they
believed were fireworks. No one called the police.
Sometime before 11:30 p.m., Kipp woke his daughter up
and drove her to his brother's house. Bill Kipp told police his brother
asked him to watch Danielle, but said little else. Danielle Kipp told
investigators her father also called an aunt and asked to borrow a car,
explaining that deputies would recognize his truck.
It wasn't until almost 1:30 a.m. that the sheriff's
department heard anything about a shooting. Then, former Naples Police
Officer Pete Lewkowicz called 911 to report the troubling call he had
received from Kipp.
Armed with that tip, deputies drove to Sandra Kipp's
apartment. They found the 35-year-old sprawled on the stoop outside her
front door. She was wearing a pink neglige and had a single gunshot in
her back. Inches from her hand was a portable phone, turned on and dial
mode.
Inside the apartment, officers found the body of Jeff
Klein, also 35. He was lying in the doorway of the guest bedroom, shot
eight times, including twice in the head. His uniform shirt was hanging
in the master bedroom closet.
The screened door to the lanai was cut as were the
phone lines into the apartment.
The Arrest
From information provided by Lewkowicz, police
tracked Kipp to the Sarasota apartment where he lived during the week.
When he left the apartment at about 7 a.m., Sarasota police arrested
him.
Detectives said Kipp seemed very upset and was
visibly shaking in the police station. He asked for a lawyer, but made
several incriminating statements. He said he "was going to make it easy
and turn himself in." He also told officers, "I should not have stopped,
I should have just kept going, the only reason I'm here is because I
stopped."
According to his lawyer, Kipp fell into a deep
depression after the shooting and is suffering from post-traumatic
stress disorder. He was treated with anti-depressants and kept on
suicide watch. Last February, a psychiatrist testified for the defense
that Kipp was unfit to stand trial. Judge Monaco, however, found him
competent.
Prosecutor's Case
Prosecutors Amira Dajani Swett and Marshall Bower are
expected to portray Kipp as a hot-tempered man obsessed with the women
who scorned him. It is unclear how they will describe Sandra Kipp's
relationship with Klein, but DNA tests on her body revealed semen
consistent with Klein's genetic profile.
The prosecutors may concentrate on the phone call
confession Kipp allegedly made to his friend Lewkowicz. According to
Lewkowicz, Kipp describes going to his wife's apartment, peering through
the window and seeing Kipp and Klein together on the couch. Kipp
allegedly said he became so enraged by the scene that he cut through the
screen door and shot Klein and then his wife.
Prosecutors are also likely to draw jurors attention
to a second call, the one he placed to his wife's apartment about 10
minutes before the shooting.
The murder weapon, a 9 mm pistol, in the case has
never been recovered.
The Defense Case
Public defenders Robert Jacobs II and Michael Orlando
have indicated they will argue a heat of passion defense and attempt to
get jurors to convict Kipp of a lesser charge because his actions came
immediately after allegedly discovering his wife's adultery. Last
summer, Jacobs said that a sexual relationship between Klein and Kipp
"is extremely important to our case."
"We would assert it mitigates the charge to heat of
passion," Jacobs told the Naples Daily News. A manslaughter
conviction carries up to 30 years in prison.
The defense has also seized on the missing murder
weapon and suggested that some of the bullets fired may have come from
one of two weapons Klein possessed. His off-duty weapon, a .40-caliber
gun, was found in a fanny pack in his locked truck, but his service
pistol, a 9 mm gun, is unaccounted for by either the defense or
prosecution.
During jury selection, Orlando asked potential jurors
questions suggesting police tampered with crime scene evidence to
protect Klein.
Defense lawyers have also claimed the phone lines
were cut earlier in the day by a cable company employee installing
television lines.
