Dead And Buried: A True Story Of Serial Rape And Murder. Corey Mitchell
knelt down to touch the bag and recoiled. He felt human flesh.
It was Rachel Newhouse’s decomposed body.
She had been missing for more than five months. Her body, caked in damp dirt, contorted at an unnatural angle. According to Agent Kice, her legs were near her torso and her feet were located right next to her head. Her feet had decomposed; however, they could make out her toenails. The men gently used paintbrushes to remove the dirt. It fell from her body rather easily.
The only thing about Rachel Newhouse that was recognizablewas a silver bracelet still wrapped around her left wrist with her name etched on a small plaque.
It still shone brightly.
The exhumation of Rachel Newhouse lasted until 3:00 P.M. After that work was completed, the men turned their attention up the road. They walked down the driveway that David Zaragoza had nervously entered one month earlier. The supportcrew went around to the back of the house. They saw the yellow tape just twenty feet from Rex Krebs’s bedroom window.There they would find the body of Aundria Crawford.
The men walked up to the garbage pile enclosed within the crime scene tape. One of the men brushed away a plastic GNC bag, a crushed aluminum Pepsi can, and a black frying pan. He then grabbed his shovel and began to penetrate the solid earth beneath his feet. He dug for several minutes when he spotted what remained of Aundria Crawford.
Aundria had been missing for more than one month. Though not as decomposed as Rachel Newhouse’s body, Aundria’s death scene was just as horrifying a discovery.
Special Agent Kice described Aundria as being in a “fetal position on her back, with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms underneath her back.” He noticed that Aundria was wearing some type of dark-colored knit fabric. He also noticed some type of fabric on her head. There were also what appeared to be plastic flex ties, or “flex cuffs,” on her arms and legs.
Rachel Newhouse and Aundria Crawford had led lives of beauty, hope, and trust. They sought to better themselves in one of the most gorgeous locations in the entire United States. They had dreams and wishes they were on the verge of fulfilling.Instead, they ended up in shallow graves beneath piles of trash on one man’s property.
Rex Krebs. A paroled sex offender.
Krebs’s neighbors still had no idea what was going on. When the news spread, and it spread like a Southern Californiawildfire around town, they were predictably shocked. They had no idea Krebs just got out of Soledad State Prison after serving ten years of a twenty-year sentence. He had been sentenced in 1987 for sexual assault of a twenty-one-year-old woman in Oceano and attempted sexual assault of a thirty-one-year-oldwoman in Arroyo Grande, both towns just south of San Luis Obispo and part of San Luis Obispo County.
The California Board of Prison Terms had paroled Rex Krebs in September 1997. The board, made up of several appointeesfrom the then-governor Pete Wilson (Republican), cited his strong work ethic and good behavior while in prison.
Upon his release, Krebs moved to the town of Atascadero on Bajada Street. Krebs’s stay in the small northwestern suburbof San Luis Obispo County was short-lived. One neighbor who was not impressed with the city’s newest additionwas Diane Morgan. She lived next door to the woman who rented a room to the ex-convict. She did not feel comfortablein his presence.
“He was really creepy,” Morgan recalled. “You could tell he just got out of prison. All buffed up, all tattooed. He would drive by and just stare us down.”
Instead of just feeling uncomfortable, however, Morgan decidedto do something about it. She decided to pay a visit to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office. Once there, she asked the officer at the front desk if she could look at the Megan’s Law list on CD-ROM.
Megan’s Law was a bill signed on May 8, 1996, by then-PresidentBill Clinton. “Megan” refers to Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old New Jersey rape and murder victim. Her killer, two-time convicted child molester Jesse Timmendequas,lived across the street from the Kankas. Megan’s parents had no idea they lived so close to a paroled sex offender.At the time police departments could not disclose such information.
Megan’s Law would change that policy.
The state of California adopted its own version of Megan’s Law on September 25, 1996.
Diane Morgan used the Megan’s Law CD-ROM to look up Rex Krebs. She discovered that he was a recent parolee who had spent time in prison for sexual assault with a knife.
“After we found out, whenever I saw him driving down the street, it was sickening,” Morgan’s friend Shelly Dye rememberedwith disgust. The two women, however, were not satisfied simply to know that a sexual predator was in their midst. They decided to do something about it. The women organizeda campaign to get rid of their new, unsavory neighbor. Morgan wrote an anonymous letter, made numerous copies, and secretly placed them in all of their neighbors’ mailboxes. The letter informed the citizens of Atascadero of their newest neighbor and the horrible crimes that he had committed.
Morgan went a step further and wrote a note just for Krebs. She let him know that she was on to him: “We know who you are. We know what you did. The whole neighborhood is watchingyou.” She relentlessly hounded the sheriff’s department.
“We kept asking them, ‘What can we do to get him out of this neighborhood?’ ”
Despite their honest feelings about sex offenders in their county, the sheriff’s department informed Morgan that paroled rapists have rights too.
By July 1998 the pressure from Morgan and Dye worked. Sue Peterson, Morgan’s next-door neighbor and Krebs’s landlord,contacted Debra Austin, Krebs’s parole officer, who, in turn, suggested to Krebs that he pack up his bags and head elsewhere.
“Old Rex the Rapist,” as he had become known in Atascadero,did just that. He decided to relocate.
Larry Wright, Rex’s coworker, informed him that his mother had an attached barn apartment for rent, deep in the Davis Canyon area, less than five miles from Avila Beach. He met with Muriel Wright and told her about his past criminal history. He also informed her that he had been framed. Wright felt sorry for Krebs and agreed to rent out the barn apartment, which was located right next to her house. She failed to mention to her neighbors that her new tenant had just been released from prison.
Nine months later, everyone knew.
On Saturday, April 24, 1999, Fresno Bee crime beat reporterMichael Krikorian drove more than 135 miles to the San Luis Obispo County Jail. He was determined to get more information from the suspected murderer Krebs. He had a story ready to go that he believed would get him access to Krebs. Krikorian had spoken with Krebs’s mother, Connie Ridley. His plan was to let the guards know that he had a messagefrom Ridley that she needed desperately to pass on to her son. Krikorian showed up at 7:30 A.M. for his 8:00 A.M. visit and signed in at the front desk. As he put his pen to the sign-up sheet, he noticed the name Roslynn Moore. She too signed up that same day to visit Krebs. He took a seat and waited patiently. He sat next to a thin, fair-skinned African American woman. He correctly assumed it was Roslynn. He later wrote in his article about meeting Krebs’s girlfriend:
A young woman also had signed up to see him. While we waited for the 8 a.m. visit, we struck up a conversation.She said she was a friend of Krebs and was coming to say goodbye to him.
“I have some things I want to tell him,” she said. “But I really don’t know what I’m going to say.
“Yeah, Rex was a friend of mine. But I had no idea at all. I didn’t know that Rex.”
The woman was about 5-foot-3 and 110 pounds. Her black glasses, covering big brown eyes, rested halfway down her small nose. She was casually but stylishly dressed in baggy white linen pants and a snazzy windbreaker.She was of Caucasian and African-American ancestry. Her black, curly hair bounced on her shouldersin the wild morning wind.
After we had chatted for a few minutes, I told her why I was there to see Krebs. Then I noticed her stomach.She appeared to be pregnant. It hit me.
“Is