Roberta 'Bibi' Lee (李美华) a 21 year old student at University of California, Berkeley and member of the University Students Cooperative Association (USCA), was killed in November 1984. In 1986, her boyfriend Bradley Nelson Page was tried for her murder. A jury found him not guilty of murder and deadlocked on the alternate charge of voluntary manslaughter. In 1988, Page was retried and convicted of the same charge. Beginning in 1997, social scientists Richard A. Leo and Richard Ofshe published several works arguing that Page's conviction was based on a false confession.
Incident
Background Bradley Page and Roberta 'Bibi' Lee met in the fall of 1983 when both lived at Lothlorien, part of the University Students Cooperative Association, and began to date in early 1984. At the beginning of the fall semester, Lee moved to Fenwick, a USCA apartment residence, and her relationship with Page became tense, particularly right before her disappearance. At this time, Lee was 21 years old and Page 24.
Disappearance of Lee On November 4, 1984, Page and Lee, as well as 19-year-old Lothlorien resident Robin Shaw, went on a morning jog at the Skyline Gate of Redwood Regional Park in the Oakland Hills. During the drive to Skyline Gate, with Page driving, Lee reportedly appeared upset with Page, with the overall atmosphere in the car being tense. According to Page, he and Lee had argued the night before because of what Lee considered to have been a date between Page and another woman whom Page knew from high school.
After arriving at Skyline Gate, the three began running together with the atmosphere still being tense. When they reached Roberts Park, their predetermined destination, Shaw, who was lagging behind the others, saw Page turn in one direction while Lee veered off in another. Shaw followed Page, and the two made their way into the park. Lee was not seen again.
Page and Shaw jogged the two miles back to Skyline Gate to see if Lee had gone back to the car, but she was not there. They then decided that Page should drive back along the trail to look for Lee. He returned approximately 15 minutes later, telling Shaw that he had not seen Lee. Shaw noticed that he seemed upset, and would later describe him as looking “angry”, “worried”, and “somewhat scared and confused”. They discussed various ways that Lee might be able to get home on her own and after about ten minutes, decided to leave; however, Shaw was uncomfortable with this decision.
After Page returned to Lothlorien, he called Lee's apartment and asked her roommate if Lee was there. Shortly after, Page and several Lothlorien residents went on a prearranged trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco; Page was the driver. Lee had planned on joining them. Page's roommate recalled Page telling him that Lee had become “separated” during their jog in Oakland and might not be able to make it.
Page returned to Lothlorien around 6 pm; sometime later he called Lee's apartment and again spoke with her roommate, asking her if Lee was there and if she had picked up his earlier message. Page would later state that he stayed at the co-op for the rest of the day, with three Lothlorien residents testifying that they saw him during at least a portion of this period.
At about 11 pm, one of Lee's roommates called Page. His roommate answered the phone and shook Page awake; the roommate was concerned that Lee had not come home that night and asked Page if he had seen her. Page said he had not and, after hanging up, told his roommate that he and Shaw had lost Lee while they were running and had not found her. They ultimately decided they needed more information and went back to sleep.
At about 2 a.m., Lee's roommate called again; shortly after Page spoke with her, he got dressed and went to her apartment. After Page arrived, Lee's roommate called various police departments and emergency rooms but this proved fruitless. They decided Page would spend the night in Lee's room, and they would file a missing person report in the morning.
The following morning, Lee's roommate called the Berkeley police, and an officer came to the apartment. Page told the officer how Lee had disappeared, stating that Lee may have been moody or confused about problems with school, but denying that she was upset or angry that morning.
Investigation On November 5, in the evening, the Contra Costa Search and Rescue Unit conducted a “full hasty” search of the Roberts Park area. Approximately forty people participated in the search, this included five bloodhound teams, fourteen explorer scouts, several four-wheel drive vehicles, and two horses. The search team worked until around 1 a.m. but did not find Lee's body. A few days afterward, Page, Lee's family and friends and the USCA community set up “The Friends of Bibi Lee,” to conduct an organized search.
Several days after the search, police were contacted by Karen Marquardt, who claimed to have seen Bibi Lee struggling with a man the same day she disappeared, approximately two miles away from Roberts Park. She stated that on November 4, just after 12 pm she was driving in Oakland and saw a man pulling a woman up a street toward a parked van. The man was white, in his mid–40's, to tall, weighing with a prominent beer belly, beard and unkempt curly hair. She called the police several days later stating that she saw a picture of a missing woman on television and realized that the woman she saw on the street matched the picture and description of Lee. Her description of the man was later used on Friends of Bibi Lee flyers.
Approximately a week after its creation, “The Friends of Bibi Lee” was joined by Patricia Chavez, a volunteer with the Missing Children's Project and a former nurse who had experience conducting searches. Under her guidance, the search organization set up headquarters in a donated cooperative apartment that became known as "Treehaven", began systematically getting out the word that Lee was missing, and set up a phone bank to receive leads. Overall, more than 2,000 volunteers participated with approximately 3 million flyers distributed along the West Coast. On November 16, following the massive publicity, the FBI joined the Berkeley and Oakland Police departments to form an official task force devoted to the search.
On December 9, the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit conducted a walking search of the Redwood Park area, during which Lee's body was found close to the area she was last seen along the trail. She was located in a thicket of heavy brush some from the eastern edge of Skyline Boulevard, approximately south of the entrance to the Roberts Park parking area. She was resting on her back in a depression, covered with a few inches of dirt and compost material. Small animals had apparently been gnawing at her decomposing flesh, and there were vines growing in the compost material on top of her body. Lee's largely decomposed body was clothed in black and white striped jogging shorts, a blue-green long sleeve shirt, a black T-shirt, and jogging shoes. Her shirts had been pushed up to the bottom of her breastbone. There were three open wounds at the back her head, ranging in size from one to three inches. The back of her skull was severely fractured. There were also two smaller crush-type breaks to the rear of her skull and a “ring” fracture encircling the base of her skull.
The pathologist concluded that the fractures to the back of Lee's head were caused by one to three “blunt force traumas.” These injuries could have resulted from someone hitting Lee in the head with a rock or club, or forcing her head down on a hard stationary object, such as a rock or tree trunk. They had never seen injuries similar to those suffered by Lee resulting from a simple fall backward. It was determined that blunt force traumas were the cause of her death, which probably occurred within minutes of those injuries. The pathologist also found fractures to Lee's nose bone and right eye socket, which could have been caused by someone administering a backhand blow to her nose, or by kicking, hitting, or striking her face with a blunt object. The pathologist found no other injuries.
Interrogation and confession On December 10, the morning after Lee's body was found, Page was summoned for questioning at the police department. Waiving his Miranda rights, he was questioned by two officers, starting just after 10 a.m. Consenting to his statements being recorded, Page explained how he got to know Lee and that they fell in love with each other. He explained how, the night before Lee disappeared, he had gone to a party with a woman he knew from high school. When he met Lee the next morning to go running, she seemed upset to the point of being irrational. During the drive up to Redwood Park, the mood in the car was “painful” while the atmosphere during the jog was tense. Lee was silent and trailing behind him. Page remembered last seeing Lee at the main driveway in Roberts Park, continuing to jog, and not seeing her when he looked back again. He and Shaw looked for Lee in the Roberts Park area and then ran back to the car at Skyline Gate, where they again failed to find her. Shaw stayed at the parking lot while Page drove back to Redwood Park in search of Lee. He didn't stop, get out of the car, or call Lee's name during the 15 minutes he searched for her. When Page returned to Skyline Gate, he convinced Shaw to leave without Lee, telling her he knew Lee better than she did and that it was his decision. They drove back to Lothlorien, but Page did not tell anyone there about how Lee had disappeared.
Polygraph test and initial admission Page was repeatedly questioned to determine if he was angry at Lee for disappearing in the park. He admitted to being very upset, but repeatedly denied injuring her. After the first recorded session, Page agreed to do a polygraph test. Around 1 p.m. he was brought into a polygraph room, and the polygraph specialist placed the necessary attachments on Page before beginning the test. During the test, the specialist asked the same set of questions several times. During the third questioning, when asked if he had physically injured Lee, Page began making crying noises. He became very distraught and was unable to continue the test. The specialist noted that afterward, Page did not show any physical signs of crying. The specialist interpreted Page's responses as deceptive when he was asked if he had physically injured Lee and told Page that, based on this, he thought Page was lying. Around 3 p.m., Page was returned to the interview room and left alone. When officers entered about twenty-five minutes later, Page had his head in his hands and was making a low moaning or wailing sound, saying, “I really loved her, but I really loved her.”
The second interview session began with the two officers repeatedly impressing upon Page that they believed he had something to do with Lee's death, telling him that their suspicions were based on, among other things, the fact he had failed the polygraph test, had only superficially searched for Bibi in the park, had convinced Robin Shaw to leave, and had not told anyone what had happened when he got back to Lothlorien. When faced with these accusations, Page said that if he did do something, he must have blacked it out. The officers insisted that Page was lying and that they did not believe his “selective amnesia theory". They told Page to close his eyes to try to remember what had actually happened. He did so and after a moment said that he remembered hitting and kicking her and "going off" on her, but did not remember when or where this occurred. This admission came at 4:10 p.m. or about six hours after Page had first come to the police station.