Inmate suspected in prison attack on Kristin Smart’s killer previously murdered ‘I-5 Strangler’
Paul Flores, left, appears with defense attorney Robert Sanger in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, California on Friday, March 10, 2023. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for murdering Cal Poly student Kristin Smart. (Laura Dic
COALINGA, Calif. - A California inmate accused of attacking Paul Flores this summer, shortly after Flores reported to prison to serve his conviction for murdering college student Kristin Smart, strangled his serial killer cellmate two years ago, officials said.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation this week identified inmate Jason Budrow as the suspect in the Aug. 23 attack on Flores at the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, about 185 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.
The department declined to share information about how Budrow allegedly was able to get to Flores or whether it is investigating how the attack happened on the agency’s watch in light of Budrow’s previous behavior while incarcerated.
"CDCR is limited in the amount of information it can provide on incarcerated people’s housing for safety and security reasons," the agency said in an email.
Budrow is serving life without parole for fatally strangling his girlfriend in 2010 in Riverside County. In a jailhouse interview that year with The Press-Examiner, he described himself as a "Satanist" and sported a "666" tattoo above his right eye. He also was convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting a teenager.
In 2021, Budrow strangled his new cellmate, serial killer Roger Reece Kibbe, who was known as the I-5 Strangler in the 1970s and 1980s. Kibbe strangled and raped at least seven women — several of them in the Sacramento and Stockton areas along Interstate 5 — and cut his victims’ clothing into odd patterns.
The killing of Kibbe in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Sacramento, earned Budrow another consecutive life sentence. An autopsy revealed that Budrow, then 40, strangled the 81-year-old Kibbe in their cell.
In a letter to The San Jose Mercury News, Budrow wrote that he killed Kibbe on the day they became cellmates, though he had planned the murder for months after he saw a TV special about him and had sought to share a cell so he could carry it out. Budrow wrote that although he wanted a single cell, he was on "a mission for avenging" Kibbe’s victims.