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It’s been twenty-two years since Jennifer Lynn Marcum, a 25-year-old mother, daughter and sister, from Denver, vanished into the abyss of American cold cases. As the years have gone by, the FBI says investigators have never forgotten about her and appeals for information on her whereabouts continue to this day.
Her killer, “Hannibal”, a lifelong conman and former FBI informant, known formally as Scott Kimball, 58, pleaded guilty to the murders of Kaysi McLeod, 19, LeAnn Emry, 24, Jennifer Marcum, 25, and his great uncle, Terry Kimball. The only body that has never been recovered is Marcum’s.
Investigators believe that Kimball could be responsible for the murders of as many as 50 people.
Retired FBI agent Jonathan Grusing maintained in an interview with The Independent that, “As long as Jennifer is missing. They will keep it [the case] open.” Grusing stopped working on Jennifer’s case in 2021, having been misled by Kimball for years on the whereabouts of her body.
Kimball was found guilty of the murders, in addition to various check fraud charges, in 2009. He is serving out his 70-year sentence at the high-security U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. In 2018, Kimball pleaded guilty to plotting an escape from the prison.
He began working with the FBI in 2000, informing on his fellow inmates while he was serving time on check fraud charges.
Kimball’s crimes were often elaborate and especially cruel. The killing began shortly after his release from federal prison on check fraud charges in 2002.
He made contact with LeAnn Emry, 24, the girlfriend of his friend from prison, in late 2002. The pair went on a check fraud spree across Utah and Colorado throughout early 2003. The pair grew close as Kimball used his position as an FBI informant to accuse Emry’s boyfriend of plotting an escape plan, thus getting him thrown in solitary confinement, leaving him unable to contact her.
Emry, who also worked as a stripper, was later shot dead by Kimball while they were hiking in Book Cliffs, Utah. Her remains were found in March 2009.
Shortly after Emry’s death and just before Jennifer Marcum’s disappearance, Kimball, while posing as an FBI agent, began dating and eventually marrying Kaysi McLeod’s mother, Lori. The two wed after Kaysi, who struggled with meth addiction, had already vanished. He convinced his fiancee that her daughter was free to disappear and that she would eventually make contact.
In reality, he had abducted and murdered her. She was 19 years old.
Kimball and Lori spent their honeymoon camping and off-roading in an area where her daughter’s body was buried and eventually found.
Meanwhile, his “Hannibal” alias was used to get to Marcum. While working as an informant, Kimball created a ruse to get to know her through her boyfriend and his former cellmate, Steven Ennis.
Marcum was to help Kimball contact members of Ennis’ drug gang in order for the group to begin eliminating witnesses.
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“Scott had told me that he killed 21 people besides these four. He told his attorneys it was closer to 40 or 50,” Grusing said.
Describing the murders of Kaysi, LeAnn, and Terry, the investigator said Kimball was meticulous in avoiding being spotted at certain times of day, avoiding surveillance cameras, was careful with his DNA, and took his victims to “very remote places.”
“You’re not going to see Scott and Jennifer walking to a grocery store or whatever.”
Grusing said an array of unidentifiable remains have been found in the Utah mountains since his conviction – some may well be tied to Kimball, Grusing believes.
Despite his imprisonment, Kimball continues to be elusive regarding the locations of his victim’s remains. In the initial search for Marcum in 2003, detectives located her car parked at Denver International Airport.
“Parking the car at the airport was a red herring. The airport is northeast, he took her instead west,” Grusing said.
“If you ask today where we think she is, he first told the FBI agent handling him as an informant, that she was near Rifle, Colorado. It’s on the way to Utah and about 50 to 70 miles from where we were looking in those canyons where he alleged she was,” he added.
The FBI veteran said Kimball’s cell phone at the time pinged to a tower in Vernal, Utah – roughly 100 miles north of where investigators were originally searching. Kimball led investigators in twists and turns, taking them to a canyon spot just across the Utah-Colorado border.
“She’s somewhere in there,” Grusing shared.
Jennifer’s phone shut off on February 17, the same day she visited Ennis prison. She disappeared soon after.
Grusing revealed that the cold-blooded killer later told him that he had sedated Jennifer.
During this period, Grusing said that Kimball deployed his “uncanny and manipulative abilities” to convince several law enforcement agencies that he was giving legitimate and truthful information on murder-for-hire cases.
None of the agents who handled or worked with Kimball are still with the agency.
Grusing told The Independent the case of Jennifer became all too consuming, revealing that the killer would torment him with information he framed as new to try in order to ensnare him back on the case.
“For the last five years of my career, Scott kept sending me maps, new maps of where she might be, wanting me to come to talk to him again – which I would at times. But each time he would change too many variables, the site he would say she was at would make no sense, as they didn’t exist.”
The Independent also spoke with Jennifer’s father, Robert Marcum, on why his daughter’s story remains relevant in 2025.
“Jennifer was a wonderful person. She was a happy-go-lucky type of person, laughing a lot, and you know, it’s just not right the way it is,” he shared.
“We, my family, my wife and I, spent all the time trying to find our daughter to in the end help put this serial killer away. But yet, my daughter is still missing and it shouldn’t be that way.”
Robert disclosed that Kimball falsely promised he would take him and the investigators to the location of Jennifer’s remains so that she could be laid to rest. The killer has never given the grieving family an exact location.
“Jennifer should be buried somewhere in a coffin. Not just thrown on the ground, the way Scott left her.”
FBI Denver asks that anyone who may have information relating to Jennifer Marcum to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.