Kristie Lee Kobs came to this earth in the year 1977 on April
21st. Kristie Lee Kobs left this earth by violence on 16th day of
May in 1998. She will forever be 21. She will forever be my angel.
This is her story as told by me, her mother. She had just bought
a mobile home for her and her son Jayden Tyler. Her car was paid for
and she was planning to start Boise State University in the fall.
Her whole world was coming together. She had been in her home for a
year and had done all the remodeling herself, and was doing a great
job. She tackles jobs I would have been afraid to.
On May 15 my husband and I took the baby to her house. She had
called us and told us that she was feeling better. She had been so
sick with the flue that I had been taking care of the baby for about
a week to a week and a half. She felt that she could care for him so
we made arrangements to take him in to Boise for her on Friday May
15,1998. When we drop him off she was so happy to have him back then
the phone rang and it was a friend she had not heard from in a long
time. He had been modeling in LA and had got her number from her dad
that lives in Mt. Shasta CA. She was still talking to Tyler when we
left to go get our granddaughter. That was the last time I saw her
alive. Before we left she ask us if we would baby sit for her on
Saturday night so she could go to a comedy club with some friends,
we told her we would pick up the baby the next day because we had to
come back in to Boise to do some shopping and we would pick him up
then.
May 16, 1998 we went and did our shopping and we kept calling
her, she didn’t answe her phone we thought that her and the baby
were taking a nap. So we continued finishing our stuff. About 4:15
pm my husband, Mike, said that something was wrong. They should have
been up and our cell phone should have been ringing off the hook. It
would take Kristie forever to get ready to go anywhere. She had to
look just right and that meant redoing her hair and makeup a million
times. We left the store and drove straight to her house. When we
came around the corner her jeep was gone. Mike said he wondered
where she went, I told him that maybe her boyfriend had pick up the
jeep for some reason. We pulled into her driveway and Mike got out,
went up to her door and knocked. The door swing open and Kristie was
lying on the floor in front of her futon that she has just gotten as
a birthday present from her boyfriend. I came in right after my
husband. We could hear the baby crying, Mike pushed me towards the
baby’s room and I went in and got him, I threw his blanket over his
head and went back into the living room. Mike pushed me on out the
door and won’t let me go back in. For some reason I knew that she
had been murdered. Mike called the police and they and the
paramedics came. They went in and then came back out. I was still
praying that she was alive. Then the coroner came and when she came
back out and left I knew that Kristie was gone. I was in shock and
disbelieve, everyone liked Kristie, who would have done this? I knew
that if they found her jeep they would find who had done this. If
her boyfriend had taken it, he would have left the car seat and it
was not there. We got home about 12:00 am and after a sleepless
night started another day of disbelieve. They were still processing
her house so there wasn’t any thing we could do. We went through
Sunday and on the News at 10:00 pm Sunday night the news run a
description of her jeep. By 10:15 pm they were at the jeep. The
Detectives run Kristies caller ID and saw that a called had been
made from a phone at an apartment building just ½ blocks away from
the jeep. The detectives went to the apartment where the call was
made and the Girl there told them that a guy who lived downstairs
with his sister had used her phone about 2:00 am Saturday morning.
The detective went to the downstairs apartment and arrested Jorge A.
Contreras for a probation violation. The Detective called us and
told us they had a suspect at about 10:30pm, at 5:00am they called
to tell us that he had confessed. He also confessed to leaving drugs
in her house to make it look like it was drug related. He had gotten
off on another stabbing by making it look drug related. He was on
probation for stabbing 2 guys, one in the back, the other in the
chest when he showed up uninvited to a party and was asked to leave
he lost his temper. Judge Daniel T. Eismann gave him a rider, which
is six months in cottonwood and then probation, of which he had
violated before he was out of jail very long. His Probation Officer
had seen him earlier that week and tried to stop him but he lost the
Probation Officer. He was also arrested in our hometown but bailed
out before the Officer found out he was wanted for a probation
violation.
We had no idea who this person was or what the story was. I
finally found out that he was living with one of Kristies’ friends
and that he was abusive to her friend. Kristie had talked her into
breaking up with him. Her friends’ mom and dad had moved him out of
her friends’ house. They had left him about 10:00 pm Friday night at
his sister’s house. He got a ride to Kristies house with some guys
who were partying at his sisters’ house. I’m not clear if he thought
his ex-girlfriend was at Kristies house, because he kept saying he
was going to see his girlfriend. I know that Kristie didn’t answer
her phone at the time he called because she would of turned it off
as not to wake the baby, who’s a light sleeper. That was why she
slept in the living room when he was there because she was such a
sound sleeper. Her car keys were stolen about 2 weeks before this
and someone broke into her house one night, they used her house key
on the bottom lock, we had installed a dead bolt that took another
key, they broke the dead bolt and went in and turned up her heat.
She didn’t tell us or we would have replaced the dead bolt. I
believe that he had her house key and let himself in, took a knife
from the kitchen and stabbed her 4 times in the neck. The coroner
said that she was laying down when the attack started and that she
was possible asleep. She had a lot of defenses wounds on her arms
and face, plus two hands full of his hair. His fingerprints in blood
were all over her house and a footprint on a blanket in blood. There
was overwhelming evidence against him, but because of no signs of
break in and he used one of her knifes he was charged with
second-degree murder instead of first-degree. We never found her car
keys or her jeep keys, they were on separate rings.
He pleaded guilty to second degree-murder and was sentenced to
Life with 30 years fixed. He will be eligible for parole in November
2027. It is also in his records that he never be granted parole
because of his violent temper.
We found out that he had belonged to a gang in San Diego and he
had quite a police record. He had 10 misdemeanors, 4 of them had
been plea- bargained down from felonies. If those 4 had not been
plea- bargained down he would have been in prison in California and
I Believe that is why he left California and came to Idaho. We do
not have the 3 strikes your out law. He had 2 felonies on his Idaho
record from stabbing those two guys. That would have been 6 felonies
and he was only 21 when he murdered Kristie.
Judge Eismann said that he did not regret his decision in giving
Contreras only six months and probation because he saw potential in
his eyes. Judge Eismann never apologized to us he sent a spokesman
on TV to give his statement. I wished he could of seen the potential
in my daughters’ eyes. She was an A, B student. She was a loving
daughter and mother. She didn’t have a police record and she was
going places in her life. Contreras dropped out of school, dealt
drugs as well as did them. He told Judge Bails that he had never
held a job nor could he read to fill out a job application, he had
supported himself by dealing drugs
Note: Judge Eismann was elected to the Idaho Supreme Court this
last election, with no help from my family or I. He will now be
reviewing murder cases that are being appealed. That is a very scary
thought to me.