Bio 

Born in 1952, Martin James Kipp was a Native American man from the Blackfeet community who was adopted as a young child by a ranching family after being removed from his biological mother's care due to her alcoholism. While he excelled at boxing as a teenager, his home life became unstable when his strict adoptive father began drinking heavily. 

Kipp later served in the U.S. Marine Corps, stationed in Okinawa and California, before returning to civilian life in Southern California. Prior to committing murder, he had a documented history of violence against women, which included a 1981 conviction and prison sentence for the abduction and forcible rape of a woman he met at a Long Beach bar. Following his release in 1983, Kipp was registered as a sex offender in Southern California, just months before his lethal crime spree began.

Murder Story

On September 16, 1983, Tiffany Frizzell traveled to Long Beach, California, to begin attending Brooks College. Because her dormitory was not yet available, she stayed at a Ramada Inn on Pacific Coast Highway. The next morning, September 17, a housekeeper found Frizzell’s body in her motel room. She had been raped and strangled. Her belongings were later found discarded, and investigators connected Kipp to the room and to property belonging to Frizzell through fingerprint and possession evidence. The Ninth Circuit later described the Los Angeles County case as involving Kipp’s conviction for the first-degree murder, forcible rape, and robbery of 18-year-old Tiffany Frizzell.

About three months later, Antaya Yvette Howard, a 19-year-old from Huntington Beach, was last seen alive with Kipp during the night of December 29–30, 1983. They were seen together at the Bee Hive bar in Huntington Beach and later at an all-night restaurant in Newport Beach. Howard did not return home. Her car was later found in a Huntington Beach alley, and police discovered her body inside the vehicle. She had been beaten and strangled, and the condition of her clothing suggested an attempted sexual assault. Kipp’s fingerprints were found inside her car.

Kipp was questioned after surrendering on traffic warrants in January 1984. He denied knowing Howard and could not explain why his fingerprints were in her car. Prosecutors later charged him in the Howard case and also pursued the Frizzell case separately.

Kipp was tried first in Orange County for the murder and attempted rape of Antaya Howard. During that trial, prosecutors introduced evidence that Kipp had raped and murdered Tiffany Frizzell three months earlier. The jury convicted him of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of murder during attempted rape, and it returned a death verdict. He was formally sentenced to death in September 1987.

Kipp was later tried separately in Los Angeles County for Tiffany Frizzell’s murder. In that case, he was convicted of first-degree murder, forcible rape, and robbery, with the special circumstance of murder during rape. The jury again returned a death verdict. The California Supreme Court affirmed that death judgment in 2001.

Kipp’s appeals continued for decades. In 2020, the Ninth Circuit issued two important rulings. In the Orange County Howard case, the court held that the use of the unadjudicated Frizzell evidence violated due process and overturned that conviction and death sentence. In the Los Angeles County Frizzell case, however, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of habeas relief, leaving that conviction and death sentence in place.