By Roman Gokhman, Contra Costa Times

Police have discovered the body of a Walnut Creek woman who was kidnapped and murdered in 1977 by the serial killer known as the I-5 Strangler.

The remains of 21-year-old Lou Ellen Burleigh were recently found in a dry riverbed near Lake Berryessa by a Napa County sheriff’s deputy who had taken an interest in the case, Walnut Creek police announced Monday.

Roger Reece Kibbe was convicted of the murder, as well as five others, in 2009. As part of a plea deal, he agreed to cooperate with authorities and locate Burleigh’s body.

At the time Kibbe claimed Burleigh was his first victim, and led police detectives around the lake on an unsuccessful search for her body. Burleigh was the only one of his victims who had not been found.

Burleigh was working for Heald Business College at the time of her killing and agreed to meet Kibbe to talk about a secretary job opening at a cosmetics studio on Contra Costa Boulevard.

When she met him on Sept. 10, 1977, in the 500 block of Contra Costa Boulevard, he told her his office was under construction and asked her to get in his van so they could talk about the job.

After they talked, he asked her to meet him again the morning after. She was seen for the last time around 9am Sept. 11.

Kibbe, who confessed to raping and murdering her, previously was convicted of killing 17-year-old Darcine Frackenpoh, whose body was found near the Old Meyers Grade on the South Shore in 1987, and has been in prison since 1991.

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