UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast · UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast

Scott Kimball: A Serial Killer Under FBI Protection

·42 min·5 clips

James Buddy Day opens on the Northern Colorado landscape where Kimball left victims behind. The place feels quiet, remote, and stretched thin with distance. That quiet matters because the story keeps coming back to what was hidden in plain sight. Kimball speaks directly to Day through letters and phone calls. He tries to present himself as something other than a typical serial killer. The episode does not let that framing stand on its own. It lays out the basic chronology: murders beginning in 2003 and ending three years later. It also includes Kimball’s claim that the total may have exceeded 21. Day then moves backward into Kimball’s prison relationships. There, Kimball befriends men like Hawley and Ennis and makes himself seem useful. He tells them he has connections. He also gives the FBI a blend of truth and fabrication that helps him appear credible. By 2002, the bureau persuades a judge to release him without probation so he can operate as an informant. That decision gives him exactly what he wants. He is trusted by everyone and accountable to no one. The episode emphasizes that the FBI pays him large sums and provides what he needs to keep feeding them information. Kimball then uses that access to identify and gain access to victims while working as an informant. The narration treats confidential informants as structurally unreliable, especially when money and liberty are on the line. It argues that Kimball did not merely exploit a broken system; he was enabled by it. The final effect is grim and direct: the murders happened inside a machine that mistook cooperation for safety.

As heard by us

A serial killer's access through federal protection becomes the story.

Scott Kimball sits at the center of an episode about a serial killer moving through the system as a paid FBI informant. The episode stays close to the documented facts: at least four murders from 2003 to 2006, Kimball's own claim that the toll was higher, and the disturbing…

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Why you'd press play

You want a true-crime case where the horror is partly institutional.

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