'kife' vs. 'kipe'

[David Bowie]

Jeanne, my wife, came across a slang variant i'd never heard before. I'd
grown up with one of the available slang terms for 'to steal' being 'to
kife', as did Jeanne. (For reference, we're both 29yo, from opposite ends of
Maryland.) Her boss, however, who's 40-something and from the US Northwest,
insists that the correct pronunciation is 'kipe'.

There's one other woman (early 20s) in the office from the US Northwest, and
she agrees that it's 'kipe'.

The other three people in the office, all in their early 20s and IIRC from
somewhere in the Intermountain West, say that the correct pronunciation is
'kife'.

This is a terribly small sample, of course, but at first glance 'kife'
appears to have wider geographical distribution, but i've got an earlier (in
apparent time) attestation of 'kipe', so it's unclear which one's the
original form and which one's the innovation. Anyone know anything about the
history of this term/have judgments of their own?

David Bowie                                       Department of English
Assistant Professor                            Brigham Young University
db.list at pmpkn.net              http://humanities.byu.edu/faculty/bowied
   The opinions stated here are not necessarily those of my employer