William George Bonin (January 8, 1947 – February
23, 1996) was an American
serial
killer and a twice-paroled
sex
offender, also known as "the
Freeway
Killer", a nickname he shares with two other serial killers.
Along with several accomplices, Bonin
raped and
killed as many as 36 young men and boys. He was convicted and
eventually
executed for 14 of
these murders.
Early life
Bonin was
born in Connecticut
in January, 1947 the second of three
brothers. His father was a
compulsive gambler and
alcoholic, and his mother frequently left Bonin
and his brothers in the care of their grandfather, a convicted
child molester. At
the age of eight, Bonin was arrested for stealing license plates,
and he soon ended up in a
juvenile
detention center for other minor crimes; here, he was
sexually abused by older boys. By his teens,
back home with his mother, Bonin began molesting younger
children.
After high school, Bonin joined the
U.S. Air Force and served in the
Vietnam War as a gunner, earning a
Good Conduct Medal.
After a brief marriage
ended in divorce, Bonin moved to California
.
In 1969, at age 23, Bonin was arrested for the first time for
sexually assaulting young boys, and
was indicted on five counts of kidnapping, and four counts of
sexual assault. He was released in May 1974 after doctors concluded
he was 'no longer a danger to others' but was back behind bars just
sixteen months later for
raping a 14-year-old
hitchiker named David McVicker, for which he was sentenced to
between one and fifteen years in prison.
In October 1978, Bonin was once again released, with eighteen
months probation. Bonin took a job as a truck driver, rented an
apartment in Downey and even found a girlfriend. In 1979, Bonin was
again arrested for molesting a teenage boy. This parole violation
meant that he should have been sent back to prison, but an
administrative error meant he was released. Bonin reportedly told a
friend that he had no intention of going back to prison; not
because he was going to give up preying on youngsters, but because
he had no intention of leaving witnesses.
Murder spree
It appears that Bonin's first two victims were killed in April
1979, just one month before his first known victim. Danny Jordan,
the brother of Lord Walter Jordan, and Mark Proctor were traveling
to Laguna Beach and were never heard from again. Proctor's body was
found about a week after they were reported missing. Jordan's was
found a few years later. Both of the young boys bodies were found
in Palmdale off a hiking trail. Amounts of Chloral hydrate
consistent with its use as a sedative were found in their systems.
However, Bonin was never charged with either of these two
murders.
The first murder for which Bonin was charged was that of a
14-year-old hitchhiker named Thomas Lundgren. The youth was
kidnapped, assaulted and killed on the
morning of May 28, 1979. An
autopsy showed
that he had been
emasculated, stabbed,
and strangled to death. Bonin carried out the crime with his
primary accomplice,
Vernon Butts, a
22-year-old factory worker who is suspected of accompanying Bonin
on at least six of the murders. Butts also boasted of being a
wizard, and slept in a
coffin.
Cruising around in his van, Bonin (sometimes accompanied by one of
his four known accomplices), would hunt for victims in and around
Los Angeles, usually selecting young male hitchikers, schoolboys or
prostitutes as victims. The victims were
either enticed or forced into his van, overpowered, had their hands
tied behind their back, sexually assaulted, tortured and then
usually killed by strangulation with their own t-shirt, although
some were stabbed or battered to death. Between August and December
1979, Bonin had killed seven more teenage boys. The last victim of
1979 was a 15-year-old boy named John Kilpatrick whom Bonin killed
in December.
On January 1, 1980, Bonin brutalized and killed 16-year-old Michael
McDonald.
A month later, on February 3 in Hollywood
, Bonin abducted and killed 14-year-old Charles
Miranda, this time assisted by a young man named Gregory
Miley. The victim was
garroted, and
his nude corpse dumped in an alleyway. Bonin then suggested to
Miley, "I'm horny, let's do another one", and so they went hunting
for the second victim of the day. A few hours later, they abducted,
raped, and killed James McCabe who, at age 12, was Bonin's youngest
victim. He was picked up while hitch-hiking to Disneyland.
Bonin killed four more boys in March, another three in April and
one in May. The final victim was a teenager named Steven Wells, who
was killed on June 2, 1980. Bonin was assisted in this final murder
by his roommate, 18-year-old
James
Michael Munro.
By early 1980, the murders committed by the
Freeway Killer, as he was known in the press,
were receiving considerable media attention. One of Bonin's
surviving victims suspected Bonin may be behind the killings and
reported his suspicions to the police and, upon investigating
Bonin's background and discovering he had a string of convictions
for sexually assaulting teenage boys, the police decided to put him
under
surveillance. On June 11, they
arrested him in the act of assaulting a 15-year-old boy, identified
as "Harold T".
Victims
Bonin and his four known accomplices in murder were convicted of
fourteen murders, however, the 'Freeway Killer', was suspected of
at least 21 murders. The victims Bonin was convicted of killing are
shown in
italics
| Name |
Age |
Date of disappearance |
| Thomas Lundgren |
14 |
May 28, 1979 |
| Mark Shelton |
17 |
August 4, 1979 |
| Marcus Grabs |
17 |
August 5, 1979 |
| Donald Hayden |
15 |
August 27, 1979 |
| David Murillo |
17 |
September 9, 1979 |
| Robert Wirostek |
16 |
September 27, 1979 |
| John Doe found |
Unknown |
November 30, 1979 |
| Dennis Frank Fox |
17 |
December 2, 1979 |
| John Doe found |
15-20 |
December 13, 1979 |
| John Kilpatrick |
15 |
December 20, 1979 |
| Michael McDonald |
16 |
January 1, 1980 |
| Charles Miranda |
14 |
February 3, 1980 |
| James McCabe |
12 |
February 3, 1980 |
| Ronald Gaitlin |
18 |
March 14, 1980 |
| Harry Turner |
15 |
March 20, 1980 |
| Glen Baker |
14 |
March 21, 1980 |
| Russell Rugh |
15 |
March 22, 1980 |
| Steven Wood |
16 |
April 10, 1980 |
| Lawrence Sharp |
18 |
April 10, 1980 |
| Darin Lee Kendrick |
19 |
April 29, 1980 |
| Sean King |
14 |
May 19, 1980 |
| Steven Wells |
18 |
June 2, 1980 |
Although Bonin was cleared of killing Sean King in 1980 and Thomas
Lundgren in 1979, he subsequently confessed to both killings.
Confession and execution
In custody, Bonin confessed to abducting, raping, and killing 21
boys and young men. Police also suspect him in approximately 15
other murders. He was eventually charged with 16 of the murders to
which he confessed and upon which the prosecution believed they had
sufficient evidence to obtain a conviction. He expressed no
remorse and told one reporter, "I couldn't
stop killing. It got easier each time." Bonin's trial began on
November 5, 1981, and lasted until January 1982. Convicted on 10
counts, but cleared of the murders of Thomas Lundgren and Sean King
(to which he subsequently confessed), Bonin was
sentenced to death.
He was later brought
to trial in Orange County
, charged with the murder of four further victims
who had been found murdered between December 1979 and April 1980,
and was convicted of all four murders. It was not until
February 23, 1996, 16 years after his arrest, that he was executed
by
lethal injection inside the old
gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison. He was the first person to
be executed by lethal injection in the history of California. In
his last statement, given to the Warden one hour prior to his
execution, Bonin again expressed no remorse for his crimes and left
a note which simply stated "I would advise anybody thinking of
doing something serious against the law to go somewhere quiet alone
and think about it seriously". Bonin was 49 at the time of his
execution.
His main accomplice, Vernon Butts, was accused of taking part in
six of the murders. After he was arrested, he told police the
killing spree had been "a good little nightmare". On January 11,
1981, he
hanged himself while awaiting
trial.
Gregory
Miley, a 19 year old casual labourer from Texas
, was given a
sentence of 25 years to life for
the murder of Charles Miranda in February, 1980.
James Michael Munro was
sentenced to 15 years to
life, for
the murder of Steven Wells. Munro has been trying to
appeal, claiming that he had been tricked into
accepting a
plea bargain.
A fourth accomplice, aged 15, who had been present at the murder of
Harry Turner, aged 15, in March 1980, was given a six-year sentence
for voluntary
manslaughter.
Other "Freeway Killers"
Young men and boys continued to turn up dead along the freeways of
Southern California after Bonin's arrest, leading police to
initially believe that he had other accomplices who were still
active. However, these later murders turned out to have been
committed by
Randy Steven Kraft,
who acted entirely separately from Bonin but who happened to have a
similar
modus
operandi.
In fact, there was a third freeway killer,
Patrick Kearney, who also happened to select
young men as victims from the freeways of Southern California
during the 1970s. The three independent killers collectively may
have claimed up to 130 victims.
See also
References
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