Randy Steven Kraft (born March 19, 1945) is an
American
serial killer. He was
convicted of 16 murders and is strongly suspected of committing at
least 51 others.
Early life
Kraft's
parents moved to California
from Wyoming
prior to his
birth. He was the fourth child, and the only son, in his
family.
In
1948, the Kraft family moved to Westminster, California
. Kraft was regarded as bright and scholarly
at
Westminster
High School, where he graduated in 1963.
After graduation, he
attended Claremont Men's College, now Claremont
McKenna College
, in Claremont, California
.
At CMC, Kraft joined the
ROTC (Reserve Officer
Training Corps). He demonstrated in support of the
Vietnam War and campaigned for
conservative presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater in 1964. The following year
he began working as a
bartender at a
local
gay bar. At this time, acquaintances
noted his extensive use of
Valium to ward off
stomach pains and
migraines. Kraft earned
his
bachelor's degree in
economics in 1968. By this time, Kraft's political
views had shifted to the
left, and he
began working for
Robert Kennedy's
political campaign.
In 1968, Kraft joined the
U.S.
Air Force. Because of his high scores
on aptitude tests and background checks, he was provided with
high-security clearances.
He was stationed at Edwards Air
Force Base
, in Los Angeles
County, California. In a job-related intelligence test
it was found that Kraft had an
I.Q. of 129,
which was rated "highly intelligent."
In 1969, Kraft disclosed to his family that he was
gay. He was discharged from the Air Force on "medical"
grounds the same year. Forced out of the military, Kraft resumed
his bartending career.
Late in 1971, police found the decomposing body of Wayne Joseph
Dukette, a 30-year-old gay bartender, beside
Ortega Highway. The coroner placed the date
of death around September 20, 1971, but found no obvious signs of
foul play. Dukette’s clothing and belongings were never found.
Dukette is thought to be Kraft's first victim.
Murders
During the
1970s and early 1980s, there were dozens of grisly homicides along the freeways
of California, with some victims turning up in the neighboring
state of Oregon
. The
victims were young men and teenage boys, most of whom were savagely
tortured and
sexually abused. Some had been burned with a
car cigarette lighter, and many had high levels of
alcohol and
tranquilizers in their blood systems,
indicating they were rendered helpless by alcohol and drugs before
they were
sadistically abused
and killed.
The method of murder varied, with some strangled, some shot in the
head, and others killed through a combination of torture and drugs.
Quite a number of victims were in the
military, hitching their way either to or from
their bases. Others were teenage runaways, hitchhikers, or were
picked up by the killer in gay bars.
Arrest
Kraft was nearly arrested in 1975. A 19-year-old high school
dropout, Keith Daven Crotwell, left Long Beach on
March 29,
1975, hitchhiking for
southbound rides. Over a month later, Crotwell's severed head was
found near the Long Beach Marina. Long Beach was scoured for the
car that took Crotwell on his last ride, and it was quickly
located. The registration was traced to Randy Steven Kraft. Police
questioned Kraft on
May 19,
1975. Kraft admitted taking Crotwell for a ride, saying
that they went "just wandering around," but claimed he left
Crotwell alive at an all-night café. Detectives reportedly wanted
to charge Kraft with murder, but
L.A. County prosecutors refused,
citing the absence of a body or known cause of death.
Kraft was
pulled over by the California
Highway Patrol on May 14, 1983, while driving along the San Diego Freeway in Mission
Viejo
. Kraft exited the car himself, dumping the
contents of a
beer bottle onto the pavement
while doing so. Officer Michael Sterling met Kraft at the front of
his patrol car and observed Kraft's jeans to be unbuttoned. Officer
Sterling had Kraft walk to the front of his vehicle to perform a
series of field
sobriety tests, which he
failed. Kraft was then arrested by Sterling for driving while
intoxicated. Sgt. Michael Howard approached the car and saw a man
in the passenger's seat, partially covered by a jacket and with
empty beer bottles around his feet. This turned out to be the
strangled body of Terry Gambrel, a 25-year-old
US Marine, Kraft's last victim. Other
incriminating evidence was found in the car, including alcohol,
tranquilizers, and blood not from
Gambrel's body. Officer Sterling and Sgt. Howard then turned Kraft
over to the Orange County Sheriffs Department for further
investigation. More evidence was found in the house that Kraft
shared with his partner. There were clothes and other possessions
belonging to young men who had turned up dead at the side of
freeways over the last decade, and many photos of victims either
unconscious or dead.
Kraft also kept a coded list of 61 cryptic references to his
victims, including four double murders, leading to a total of 65
listed victims. At least one of the victims, Terry Gambrel, was not
listed because of Kraft's arrest. Investigators maintain that Eric
Church was also not listed by Kraft for unknown reasons. Since the
list is in code, the possibility exists that Eric Church is listed
in a way that investigators cannot recognize, which would lead to a
total of 66 listed victims. However, it is largely held that Kraft
was responsible for 67 murders, if not more.
Kraft was eventually charged with 16 homicides. He pleaded not
guilty at his trial in 1988, but he was convicted on all counts and
sentenced to death on
November 29,
1989.
The death
sentence was upheld by the California Supreme Court
on August 11, 2000. He is currently on death
row at San Quentin State Prison
.
Of Kraft's suspected 67 victims, 22 bodies remain unrecovered and
unidentified.
Missing accomplice
Certain details surrounding some of Kraft's murders have caused
many to suspect that Kraft did not always act alone.
- Forensic evidence in two cases
point to an accomplice — an extra set of footprints and semen that did not match Kraft's DNA. (During the trial, members of the prosecution
admitted privately that they did not charge Kraft in several
murders that they were sure he had committed because of these
facts.)
- Kraft would have had difficulty moving around 200-pound
corpses; dumping them from cars alone would also be difficult to do
unnoticed.
- The snapshots Kraft had of the dead men were processed
somewhere, but no developer reported Kraft's morbid images to the
police. (Kraft himself had no darkroom expertise or darkroom
equipment.)
Jeff Graves
During the trial, the prosecution believed the inconsistencies
could be explained away because Kraft had not acted alone in his
initial murder spree. His roommate, Jeff Graves, occasionally
helped him, according to members of the prosecution team. Graves
died of
AIDS before police could question him,
so the question of Kraft's accomplice was never raised in
court.
Bob Jackson
Dennis McDougal wrote a book,
Angel of Darkness, about the
Kraft case. McDougal also published an article about the case in
Beach magazine in January 2000.
McDougal recounted his
interviews with Bob Jackson, who reportedly confessed to murdering
two hitchhikers with Kraft, one in Wyoming in 1975 and
Colorado
in 1976 (Authorities in Colorado and Wyoming are
unable to confirm these confessions.). Jackson also told
McDougal that the list included only Kraft's "more memorable"
murders, saying the total body count stood closer to 100. McDougal
reported these allegations to the police and provided tape
recordings of the interviews. Detectives quizzed Jackson and
finally persuaded him to enter a
mental hospital, but no murder charges
were filed.
Kraft
sued McDougal and the publisher of
Angel of Darkness (ISBN 0-446-51538-8), a book about
Kraft's murders and trial, because, Kraft said, it smeared his
"good name" and unjustly portrayed him as a "sick, twisted man,"
which hurt his "prospects for future employment." Kraft sought $62
million in damages. The lawsuit was dismissed as frivolous in June
1994.
After
publishing Angel of Darkness, McDougal was contacted by a
former Marine from Mission Viejo
. McDougal said the Marine "told me he'd
hitched a ride from Camp Pendleton
to Tustin
with Kraft back in 1972 and very nearly became one
of his victims. The ex-Marine said Kraft offered him a beer
and he drank it, realizing almost too late that the beer had been
laced with something a lot more powerful than alcohol. He forced
Randy to pull over, stumbled out of Kraft's car in a daze and
continued to have nightmares for years afterward about what might
have happened if he hadn't been so insistent."
McDougal was also contacted by Jan Oliver, Kraft's college
girlfriend. He said of the conversation:
Like the ex-Marine, Oliver was an early guinea pig for Kraft. She remembers him offering
her beers during marathon drives through the foothills and back
roads of Southern California.
Sometimes, she could down two or three beers and it didn't faze
her, but there were other instances in which she knew she'd
consumed more than lager, as "I'd have no more
than three or four sips and it would knock me out!" Years later,
following Kraft's arrest, those times she passed out in his car and
woke up hours later with a headache came back to her with alarm.
She also recalled a few times when Kraft showed up at her door
after midnight, years after they had broken up and Kraft had
come out of the
closet. They remained friends, so she opened her door to him
even at odd hours.
"He came over once red-faced and hyperventilating," she said. "It was late —
maybe one or two in the morning — and he was very agitated,
rambling. I never did find out what was upsetting him, although I
wouldn't really call it 'upset' so much now, as 'excited.' He
seemed very excited."
That was sometime in the early 1970s, and Jan Oliver is now
convinced that what she witnessed in the front room of her
apartment that night was the glassy-eyed transformation of a
thrill killer, trying to calm his
predatory lust before resuming his day-to-day role as a "normal"
human being.
Other "Freeway Killers"
Occasionally, Kraft
(sometimes called the Southern California
Strangler) is confused with
William
Bonin. Both have been called "The Freeway Killer", and both
murdered young men and often left their victims roadside. Bonin
would stop his vehicle to dump the bodies of his victims, while
Kraft shoved his victims out of a fast-moving vehicle, often to
gruesome effect. The similarity of the crimes often confused
investigators, who were initially surprised that the murders
continued after Bonin's arrest.
A third "Freeway Killer",
Patrick
Kearney, also happened to select young men as victims from the
freeways of Southern California during the 1970s.
External links
Footnotes
-
http://beach.littoral.net/04.05.2000/features/kraft_1.30.2000/
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