Morbid - Episode 698: Randy Kraft: The Scorecard Killer (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Throughout the 1970s, Southern California residents were held in the grip of terror as multiple serial killers stalked the streets, preying on victims from every walk of life, including the area’s gay community. From 1971 to 1983, Randy Kraft kidnapped, tortured, and murdered at least sixteen men and boys, but the real number of victims is believed to be considerably higher. When he was arrested in 1983, investigators searched Kraft’s home and found a list with cryptic references to what they believed were sixty-one victims in total. The discovery of that list led the press to dub Kraft “The Scorecard Killer.”Following his arrest in 1983, Randy Kraft was tried and convicted of sixteen counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Although the arrest and trial put an end to Kraft’s murder spree, several critical questions remain unanswered, including the most important aspect of the case detectives were never able to solve: who was Randy Kraft’s accomplice?Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesArnold, Roxane, and Jerry Hicks. 1983. "Kraft suspected in deaths of 14 men in 3 states, Gates says." Los Angeles Times, May 20: 73.Associated Press. 1983. "Five murders charged to computer analyst." Sacramento Bee, May 25: 2.—. 1978. "Police seek link in deaths of 18." San Bernardino County Sun, November 24: 3.—. 1983. "Freeway killing pattern repeats." The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, CA), February 19: 2.Bajko, Matthew. 2016. Gay serial killer breaks silence. November 2. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.ebar.com/story/246748.Grant, Gordon. 1983. "How a routine stop led to a big arrest." Los Angeles Times, May 20: 73.Hicks, Jerry. 1988. "Alleged 'death list' made public as Kraft trial opens." Los Angeles Times, September 27: 69.—. 1989. "Kraft condemned to death by jury for serial killings." Los Angeles Times, August 12: 1.—. 1988. "Kraft defense says marine found in car was not dead." Los Angeles Times, September 28: 76.—. 1989. "Kraft guilty of 16 sex slayings, jury decides." Los Angeles Times, May 13: 1.—. 1989. "Orange County jury gets Kraft serial murder case." Los Angeles Times, April 28: 76.—. 1988. "Two other states were closing in on Kraft." Los Angeles Times, January 4: 3.—. 1989. "Witness says Kraft drugged and sexually assaulted him in 1970." Los Angeles Times, June 6: 3.Hughes, Beth. 1982. "L.A. area's missing youths-a trail of mystery and murder." San Francisco Examiner, August 23: B5.Jarlson, Gary. 1983. "Suspect in 4 slayings also investigated in 6 Oregon murders." Los Angeles Times, May 19: 80.Kennedy, J. Michael. 1978. "Four deaths turn into four mysteries." Los Angeles Times, September 2: 17.Los Angeles Times. 1973. "Head of a man found in a bag at paper plant." Los Angeles Times, April 27: 23.—. 1988. "Randy Kraft's scorecard?" Los Angeles Times, October 2: 117.McDougal, Dennis. 1991. Angel of Darkness: The True Story of Randy Kraft and the Most Heinous Murder Spree. New York, NY: Warner Books. Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, weirdos. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends. Wondery Plus. It's like stepping into a haunted mansion where the floorboards creek with ad-free episodes and early access to new episodes lurks around every corner. So come join us, if you dare. Morbid is available one week early and ad-free only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast or Spotify. Morbid Network podcast. Think about the most disturbing government secrets you've learned from history. Now imagine discovering one that begins in a hospital room and leads straight to classified military operations that were buried for decades. Listen to a redacted medical mystery, a special episode from Redacted and Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, weirdos.

I'm Elena. I'm Osh. And this is morbid where we're really happy. We're happy. I just want to be happy. I'm trying and it's finally enough. You probably saw this multiple weeks ago. Who knows when? Who knows when?

We sure don't. But that will be a thing of the past. very soon because motherfuckas. We signed with Sirius XM. Starting September 1st, we are going to be part of the Sirius XM home, although it already feels like we're part of their home. Yes, we love them. The nicest people. They're lovely. We're very excited to be a part of that crew and for them to be a part of our crew and for it to be one big happy, happy family over here. It's awesome. Obviously, since we announced this by the time you're listening to this multiple weeks ago, we saw you have a lot of questions. Yeah.

We probably have already answered them through a video at this point, but we'll answer them again. Here we go. Yeah. It'll help us plan for the video that we haven't filmed yet, but that we will and that you've already seen. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Anyway, so addressing Wondery Plus, we will no longer be on Wondery Plus starting September 1st. We will not be on Wondery Plus September 1st.

No. Early in ad-free. Early will no longer be a thing. I think it just is really tough to be able to connect with you. We both feel this way. Yeah. To connect with you guys when things are not coming out simultaneously. So, Sirius has its own ad-free platform that you can sign up for if you so choose, where you can get the episodes ad-free, but everybody will get them at the same time. Yeah. So you can just choose whether you would like to pay for ad-free or not. That's your choice, babe. That's your choice. But you can hear us everywhere. We'll be on, you know, Amazon, music, Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening to it,

if it's not Wondery Plus, we will be on there. So nothing's going to change. The only good things that are going to change are good things because it just, you know, we're going to be coming out at the same time every week. Still two episodes. Actually. But. So yes, we're going to be doing a bonus episode.

That's going to come out in addition to the two episodes that already come out, one week out of the month, which I think we're going to do at the second week of the month, you're going to get a bonus episode. A third episode that's going to be anything from like a guest episode, us talking about like maybe like a cool documentary, maybe like we'll do like a book club or something.

Who knows? Yeah, it can be anything we really want. It could be just a smaller case or a smaller spooky thing. Like a mini morbid. We didn't really think belonged in like a full length episode like the regular other two episodes that week. But just kind of an overflow thing that we were like we want you to hear about this but now you get it as an extra thing you do not have to pay for this bonus episode it's

going to everybody yes so it's free for everybody and we're going to do it every month and it's fun so every month there'll be one week with three episodes yes and if you um like we're still doing listener tale episodes once a month that will stay at the i think it's the last thursday of every month yeah the same as it is now if you're watching those on youtube they're still going to be there have no fear literally like barely anything is changing it's only good things like you just said Yeah, exactly. We're just adding more episodes for you that are free and that we won't have such, we won't have a long time between recording and it coming out. So we'll be able to be a little more current with what's happening around us and feel more connected with you guys because, you know, that was a big deal for us. Yeah, exactly. But it's very exciting because everything's, you know, everything's going to be awesome. It's all happening, Sheena Shea. It's all happening, Shee.

I'm obsessed. And we got to do a fun photo shoot for it yesterday with our new friend, our new friend Johnny. Yeah. Definitely go. We tagged him in the post about the release. Yeah, I think his tag is literally just is a hermit. Yeah. And he's an amazing photographer. So definitely check him out. Hire him for all your photography needs. He made us feel fucking amazing. Yeah, I hate, I literally hate getting my picture taken. Yeah, we were both like panicking on the way there. I hate it. We both were like, why did we set this up? Do we, oh my God, what do we do? And then we got there. we were like, oh, this is so easy. Yeah, I genuinely hate. Like, I don't find photo shoots fun. Like, I'm not one of those people who gets excited for it.

I get very anxious and I just don't like it. I had a blast. No, it was so much fun. And he made me feel very comfortable. I love a photo shoot. I hate the part where you get the pictures back because you're like, oh, no. I didn't think that was going to happen. The only two people who have ever made me feel that way are Johnny, who we shot with yesterday.

And then my wedding photographer, Molly Quill. Yeah. two best photographers ever yeah so see it's all great yeah it's all good stuff everybody yeah we're excited about it and i'm really glad that i brought you all up um because i'm going to pile drive you down into the ground now thank you for that with one of the worst cases i have ever read in my life okay so uh so hold on to that serotonin i think because it whoops Hold on to your serotonin. Hold on to it.

Because today we are going to be talking about a case. I'm going to, this case is going to be three parts. It's a long case. Like this is not three parts that are short. Yeah. Pretty long. We're breaking it up. I'm going to break it up because, one, there is so much happening in this.

There are many, many victims, many, many intense details. and it took a long time to figure who this guy was and there's all kinds of other crazy stuff that we still haven't even determined yet about this case and it took place in the 70s and 80s essentially. So this is going to be a three-parter. This first one is going to be pretty long and it's going to be pretty rough.

So I just need to let you guys know ahead of time that this episode in particular is going to be a tough one. So yeah, in between this series, like this three-partner, and whatever we put out next, we're going to do a spooky episode as like a pallet cleanser. Yeah, because after these three episodes, you're going to need a minute to breathe.

So we're talking about Randy Kraft, also known by the press as the scorecard killer. So let's start way back in the 1970s. Southern California, I mean, people who lived in Southern California, they were held in terror because multiple serial killers were stalking their area. any given time. California really had a time where they just fucking went through it. Especially the 70s. It was like they were just, the 70s and 80s, they were really going

through it. And the thing is, like, these serial killers were preying on victims from like a lot of different walks of life. Mm-hmm. Yeah, like no one was safe. Yeah, no one was safe there. From 1971 to 1983, Randy Kraft, who we're talking about today, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered at least 16 men and boys. But the real number of victims is considered to be very higher than that. Yeah. Like much higher than that. When he was arrested in 1983, investigators searched his house and found this, like,

really cryptic list with like cryptic references to what they believed were 61 victims in total. What the fuck? Sixty-one. That's insane. Think, I need you to think about lining 61 people up in front of you. That's a lot of fucking people. That's like somebody's entire family. Yeah. Like extended extended family. I don't even know if our family reunions have that many people at them. And the discovery of that list is what led to the nickname the scorecard killer.

After he was arrested in 1983, Randy Kraft was tried and convicted of 16 counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death. In fact, don't worry, we'll go over all of that. But the arrest in trial We're definitely putting an end To the murder spree that it happened But there were some questions That weren't yet answered And this is the part of the case

That really threw me for a loop Because like that happens We arrest Randy Kraft He's sentenced, he's charged But then the question remained Who helped him? Oh, he had help? They think he had an accomplice

What? Yeah And they don't Still to this day, they were never able to figure out who it was. No, I fucking hate that. And when you hear the details of why they thought about this, it will chill your bones. I really hate that a lot. Because when you really look at the evidence of it, you're like, yeah, I think he had a help.

And the fact that they didn't find this person is just gut wrenching because of what they did. And they think he had to help in almost all of these? I think they do, yeah. Or at least some of them. Most of them. Yeah. Now, let's go back to 1972. It was in the early morning hours, December 26th of that year, just before 2 a.m.

A California Highway Patrol officer was driving near the 17th Street exit on the 405 freeway. And as he drove by, he saw like a group of people just standing on the shoulder of the off ramp, like gathered around something on the side of the road. So when he pulled up to them to be like, what the fuck are you doing, he gets out and sees that they're all standing at a decomposing body of a young man who was just laying there, crumpled on the ground, and appeared to, to be in his maybe early 20s. Now, from what the officer could tell,

the man had been dead for at least a day and his body had already started decomposing. He was fully dressed in a jacket, sweater, t-shirts, and pants, but he was only wearing one sock, no shoes, and his belt appeared to be missing. Okay. Now, this poor man had obvious ligature marks around his neck

and the officer saw that and was like, I suspect that's probably the cause of death. But as he looked closer, he also saw that this young man appeared to have been struck in the face with an object or a fist because there was severe bruising around his nose and mouth. Now, in the days that followed this, this man would be identified as 20-year-old Edward Daniel Moore. It's a baby. He was a serviceman stationed at nearby Camp Pedleton. He was last seen a few days earlier at the Army base, but he had a history of going AWOL. Yeah. So when he wasn't immediately located, no one really.

suspected anything bad had happened. He had a tough childhood. He was placed in foster care as a child because his parents were deemed unfit. So he probably had a very difficult upbringing. And so he ended up having a lot of disciplinary issues growing up because obviously he was acting out due to likely trauma.

Since then, though, he'd managed to get by on his instincts and know how. He was like a very savvy guy that way. Now, when the autopsy was done, the medical examiner determined that, his cause of death had been asphyxiation. But he found out that he had been garotted, not manually strangled. Oh, that always adds such a layer.

A garot is, you may remember hearing about it in the Jambeney Ramsey case, which is really awful. It's unfortunately always what I think of when that's brought up. It's usually when there's something put around the neck several times, usually, and it's tied into a mechanism usually, it can, you know, in Jambini Ramsey's case, it was the end. of a paintbrush. Yeah. And it is used to twist and tighten it like a machine almost. It's like medieval torture.

Yeah, it really is. It's an awful, awful. And whoever is doing the garotting can kind of loosen it or tighten it at will. Right. So it prolongs it. Yeah, it can prolong it. Now, in addition to the ligature marks around his neck, there were similar marks on his wrists and ankles, which indicated he had been restrained prior to death.

There was also a bunch of abrasions on his face from being beaten. This is going to get very graphic And just from here on out we're going to get very graphic And I apologize I had a time Because we're essentially talking about torture here There's a lot of torture happening in these And it's brutal His genitals had clear bite marks on them

And scratch marks It also appeared that he had been sexually assaulted And his missing sock Because he was only wearing one sock Had been found stuffed into his anus Oh, my God. Yeah. That is kind of a calling card.

He does that. This killer does that a lot. Yeah, this is kind of a thing. And the medical examiner believed that he had been redressed after being killed. That, first I'm, I mean, for so many reasons, is so freaky. That's a chilling detail. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, what are you doing? There was also a lot of superficial scratches on his arms and other exposed body parts, which looked like they were like he had fallen on gravel. And the medical examiner believed they were consistent with the type of injuries one would get if they had fallen on gravel or been pushed but from a moving vehicle. Oh, wow. So they believe that that's what happened. In fact, the medical examiner told investigators, it probably slowed down, but it didn't stop. So maybe when he was pushed out or dumped?

Yeah. Okay. Like when they believe he was probably killed and pushed out of a moving vehicle on the side of the freeway. A few days later, the results of a toxicology test showed that there were no drugs. in Moore's system, and his blood alcohol was well below the legal limit. Detective Bill Tynes knew the most reasonable place

to start their interviews would be with the other soldiers at Camp Pendleton, but because there was like a very particular sexual nature of Moore's injuries, he also expected that they should interview people he may have socialized within the community, anyone he may have had a relationship with at some point.

Investigators soon learned that Eddie Moore had only just turned 20 a few months earlier. He was basically 19. And his tenure in the military had been pretty short. He'd come to Camp Pendleton after enlisting in the South. And before that, he and his brother had spent their youths bouncing from one foster home to another. That's awful. Yeah. So fellow soldier Charles Vines said, told investigators, my impression of Eddie is that he is a lonely kind of person and kind of lost. Yeah. Eddie and Charles had had a very close relationship for a bit before his murder. And he said, Eddie is the kind of person

that would befriend or try to become friends with anybody who would talk to him for very long if somebody in a restaurant or on the beach or any place would stop and talk to Eddie for four or five minutes Eddie would want to become that person's friend and that just shows he probably like that's a direct result of like abandonment you know absolutely like you're just looking for love

and just connections yeah although there were no suspects or leads and evidence was very slim a picture of Eddie Moore was beginning to kind of like emerge that was suggesting just how he may have been lured to the beach in the first place. Vine said told the detective that Moore had hitchhiked a lot. He liked to go to that beach. Yeah. He liked to go there to escape the stress of life. You know, that was a military place. He was also fairly irresponsible and impulsive, according to Vines, often acting without

regard for consequences. Yeah, he's just a 20 year old. So it seemed pretty reasonable to assume that he had either been picked up by or gone off with a stranger who had shown him just some kindness. Yeah. Which was also like very normal at that time. Exactly. After a month of slow investigation,

Detective Times hadn't made much progress on the Moore case and then a second body was discovered under very similar circumstances. This time, this body was discovered on the muddy bank of the Terminal Island Freeway in Wilmington. The town of Agda in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.

But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn. The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption. His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant. Then there's a mysterious phone calls that lower. people have been getting. I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos. As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties,

I would like to address you all. Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson and journalist Leo Schick for the Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic. Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mayor exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondry Play. Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Wondry app. On the afternoon of February 6, 1973, investigators in Wilmington were called to Seal Beach

for what was described as the discovery of a murder victim. When LAPD detective John St. John arrived at the scene, he saw that the victim, a young man in his late teens or early 20s, was lying nude in the overgrowth near the off-ramp. to the Terminal Island Freeway. According to the medical examiner, this young man had only been dead for about six hours. And like Eddie Moore,

the cause of death appeared to be asphyxiation from gauding. And the garrot was a steel wire. Oh. Now, to Detective St. John, there was a lot of similarities between these two cases, like right off the bat. Not only had the victim been strangled with a garot

and seemed to have been pushed out of a slow-moving vehicle on the side of the highway, again, but the victim also had the sock placed where it had been placed in the first case. Yeah. Otherwise, the two young men were similar in age and build, so that was also something to look at. But unlike the Eddie Moore case, detectives were unable to identify this young man found near Terminal Island through fingerprinting or any other kind of identification. Several sketches and digital renderings have been made of this victim in the years after

this, no identity has been found for this young man. That's awful. That fucking kills me. And how old was he? Did you say? He was like, they think he was like late teen, early 20s. Oh, that's, that's so sad. It's like, why has nobody come forward and claimed this person? Like, what the fuck? No one has claimed him? That's so sad. It's really, really sad. But it just, like, it goes to show people, these serial killers can sense that in somebody and they pray upon it. Oh, and it's so awful. Nearly six weeks passed since the discovery of the second body when on April 17th, Huntington Beach police received another early morning call from a driver

who claimed to have found a body by the side of the road. Another one. This was in an area known locally as Airport Hill. So investigators get to the scene, and they found the body of a young man again in his late teens or early 20s lying near the side of the road. This boy appeared to be between 18 and 25, anywhere in there. He had blonde hair.

He was average. build. He was dressed in a shirt, pants, and socks, but he was wearing no shoes and his belt was missing. Based on his appearance, detectives at the scene believed his cause of death had been blunt force trauma to the head. Oh, wow. When an autopsy was performed later that day, it turned out that the cause of death was not blunt force trauma. It was suffocation. But the medical examiner couldn't tell whether it was by strangulation or, quote, by a gag or something put over the nose and mouth. In addition to the suffocation, there was also evidence. of considerable anti-mortem trauma to the body,

including ligature marks on the wrist, bruising around his mouth and nose, and his genitals had been removed. Oh. He had lost at least two pints of blood because of that. And he was still alive when that happened, they think? Mm-hmm. Oh, my God.

There was also evidence of sexual assault and post-mortem road burns and cuts all over his exposed parts of his body, which indicated that he, too, had been pushed out of the vehicle. The victim had no idea on him, and they ran his fingerprints through the state database, and nothing came back. Like the previous victim, a composite sketch was made and circulated, but no one in the area seemed to recognize this young man or know who he was. And he's still unidentified? It seemed, well, we'll get to it.

It seemed surprising to the officers that somebody, especially someone this age, would disappear and not be reported by anyone. Yeah. But as they would later find out, that was because they were looking in the wrong place. Okay. In March 1995, so we're skipping ahead, nearly 22 years after this body was found in Huntington Beach, Kurt Marine, a Santa Ana County deputy coroner, merged his California fingerprint database with that of the wider Western United States and received a match on the fingerprints. The young man from 1973 turned out to be 18-year-old Kevin Clark Bailey.

His father, Clark Bailey, after receiving a phone call about this, said, I was a little stunned. Yeah. Clark Bailey had divorced his wife when Kevin was just four years old, and he hadn't seen either of his children since then. Oh. According to records, Kevin Bailey had grown up in Middleton, New York, and had been living in Corvallis, Oregon,

nearly a thousand miles away from Huntington Beach, as recently as five days before his murder. Oh. In fact, he had been fingerprinted on April 4, 1973, when he was picked up for loitering around a school yard, which is how they were able to get the match on the fingerprints. Oh. Had police in Huntington Beach had the capability of searching fingerprint records,

like around where that area was, they would have matched those two, and he would have been identified immediately. Yeah, it was just the fact that it was too early on. Now, it would have been pretty helpful for investigators to identify Bailey's body at the time it was found, but that doesn't really mean that they would have found the killer. Yeah, no.

In addition to not knowing the identity of the very, victim. They also had literally no forensic evidence and no leads. In fact, just about the only thing they did have was a very strong suspicion that the Moore case and the two identified cases were all the work at the same killer. Yeah, you would think so at this point, which is nothing really. Yeah. And they had barely any time to even like sit here and ponder on this because what April 22nd, investigators received a call about several body parts having been found in locations around Wilmington. And this is just like month to month. Yeah, this is literally like days at this point.

So they arrive at the scene, and detectives learned that, as had been described to them over the phone, locals had indeed found one leg, two arms, a torso, and human skin had been found in four green plastic bags on Terminal Island, not far from where the second victim was discovered. Human skin? Yeah. Just a bag of human skin. Yep. Holy shit.

it, dude. According to the press, quote, the torso, that of a young man had been mutilated. A few days later on the morning of April 25th, the victim's other leg was discovered in a dumpster behind a bar, just off the Pacific Coast Highway. Unlike the other limbs, it had been wrapped in cloth and placed in the trash. Two days after the leg was discovered, the victim's head was discovered in a paper bag by an employee loading paper waste on a conveyor belt in the Pioneer Paper Stock Company. Jesus. Because the company processes paper waste from all over the L.A. area, there was no way to know where the head had originally been discarded. Nevertheless, investigators were like 99% sure that the head belonged to the dismembered victim found on Terminal Island.

You would think. You know, one of the odds. Yeah. According to the medical examiner, all the limbs, quote, were severed with a dull knife. Oh, what the fuck. This is like horror movie shit. just thinking that. As with the previous two victims,

investigators were unable to identify this dismembered victim, and the remains are still unidentified to this day. You have to think... Another one. That's awful, but that that's still unidentified that person is. And you have to think, too, the

enjoyment that this person must be, like the killer must be getting out of this. Because think about how long we've talked about it taking to dissect a body with a good knife. Like, that's a project. That's going to take some time. But a dull knife? A dull knife?

Yeah. That's going to take a long time. Days, I would think. A long time. And they knew at this point, they were like, this is definitely the work of the same killer. I mean, this is just. This person is depraved. Now, whenever there are multiple victims discovered over kind of a short period of time,

investigators obviously have to consider whether they should even disclose these connections to the public, because that might cause panic. Yeah. This was particularly true in Southern California in the 1970s, where residents had also kind of already been traumatized by multiple serial killers like Herbert Mullen, Ed Kemper, the Zodiac killer. But with the discovery of the fourth body,

investigators were like, we got to let the public know. Like you can't hold that forever. You need to be vigilant. Yeah. They were like, you know what, we're pretty sure there's a killer operating in the area. But this time, preying on young men. Yeah.

And a press conference held after the discovery of the body, parts. An LAPD spokesperson told reporters, quote, there may be more than one sex maniac loose in the area, but they had yet to identify a motive for the murders and had no suspects. Now, just to go broadly speaking, the murder of gay men or men who authorities just assumed to be gay, because they did a lot of that back then, have not been pursued with the same kind of enthusiasm as straight victims or, you know, like there's the missing white woman syndrome that happens. also investigations into the murder of gay men have historically been kind of influenced by a lot of assumptions about not the killer but the victims yeah and a lot of biases go into it a lot of time

it's just fact like you can look back on it we've covered a lot of cases like this Ronald Dominique the Bayou Strangler we talked about it's the same kind of thing there's a lot of assumptions that go into it a lot of well whatever they got themselves into the it's the same thing that happens to sex workers a lot yeah you know and Ronald Dominique was before the, or was after this. Think about the bias that was going on in the 70s, I'm sure. Yeah. And the thing is, with the victims in this case, they represent, when we go through them,

various sexual identities across the spectrum. Like, they're not locked into one. Yeah. I mean, most people, too, you know? Yeah, they weren't all gay. They weren't all bisexual. At least a couple of them had, were definitely didn't have any interest, you know, sexual interest in men at all.

So we're part of that spectrum But when it came to the four bodies They now believe to be the work of the same killer Detectives Bill Tynes and George Troop Were pretty confident that the victims And I quote No Had a one night stand with a boyfriend

And things got out of hand Four of them And also got out of hand Got out of hand? There's also just no evidence to support that Literally no indication Whatsoever First of all you don't

have a one-night stand with a boyfriend. That doesn't usually work that way. Those two things are usually mutually exclusive. All four of them had a one-night stand with a boyfriend. Only two of them are identified so far. So half of them you don't know, but you're saying they had a one-night stand with a boyfriend. And I'm sorry, things got out of hand. Like, I'm sorry, one of them was dismembered with a dull knife. And most of them have had socks in parts where they shouldn't like there was a bag of human skin part of this case that's beyond out of hand Jesus Christ yeah it just shows that that kind of like flippant like just whatever they had a night stand and things that whoa it's such a lack of tact that you're like who lets you talk to people

who lets you say things that are going to be written down for records yeah these are young guys with family out of high school kind of young with like and it's like fuck like you're just like flippantly being like, well, whatever, I don't, if that was the case, even if that was the case, that it was in a one-night stand gone wrong, so they deserve it? Like, what does that mean? Well, and it's just so far beyond. Or that we shouldn't investigate it as far, because, no, someone still did this to them and should be locked up for it. Absolutely. We're just going to be like, oh, yeah, it's fun. It's the things getting out of hand for me. Well, what's nice to me is that that theory completely shat in their face very quickly. Good. I fell apart on July 30th, 1973, when the body of 20-year-old Ronald Weeb was discovered at the 7th Street exit near Seale Beach, almost exactly where Eddie Moore's body had been discovered.

Oh, okay. According to his mother, Ronald had left her house in Los Alamitos around 8.30 p.m. on July 27th, and was headed to the sportsman's lodge to have some drinks with friends. He was last seen at the bar a little before 2 a.m. when he said goodbye to his friends and left. Okay. That night, Ronald had driven to the bar, but got a flat tire along the way and parked near a tire store, short distance from the lodge.

So it's assumed that he began walking or hitchhiking in order to get home. The following morning, when his sister became worried and went out looking for him, she found his car parked near the tire store. The tire obviously flat. Now, Ronald's body was discovered two days later just off the highway. And to investigators on the case, everything looked pretty familiar to what they had been seeing. Like Edward Moore, Ronald was fully dressed, except he was missing his belt, shoes, and one sock. His pants were unbuttoned, and he was exposed. There was also a quarter-inch-wide ligature mark around his neck.

There was also superficial scratches all over-exposed parts of his body. He had clearly been pushed out a moving vehicle. An autopsy was performed that day, and it basically just confirmed the link between him and the other victims. Ronald's cause of death was asphyxiation from ligature strangulation and the M.E. estimated that he had been killed approximately two days earlier so it all lined up.

That would place his time of death a short time after he left the sportsman's lodge. They determined that he had also been hit with a blunt instrument at least two or three times hard enough to fracture his skull. Jesus. And there was ligature marks on his wrists and ankles. This next part

are really just disturbs me. The way the blood had settled suggested that he had been suspended at the time of death. Wow. Suspended in the air. I don't think we have talked about that since we talked about, um, Willie Picked in. Yeah. That's another fucking level. Yeah.

Of sadistic. To determine that he had been suspended in the air when he was killed is, I don't know why. It's something about that part of it. It's all obvious. I don't think I even need to say it. It's shit you hear and shit you see in a horror movie. It just doesn't feel like real life. Like you're like, people do that to other people.

There's poor people. It's awful. Who is this fucking dude, Randy? You know, like some of the other victims, there was evidence of sexual assault and the sock was found where it was found with the other ones. This time, though, there was little evidence of anti-mortem torture or post-mortem mutilation. there was no drugs found in his system his blood alcohol level was 0.02

far below the legal limit what are the more troubling aspects of the crime scene was the position and location of where the body was found it was obvious that the body had been dragged or dropped on the road but it was discovered laying right

next to an ice plant which is a kind of succulent apparently common in California to tines and troop which this is interesting it seemed very unlikely that a body pushed from a moving vehicle would have landed in exactly that spot

not disturbing the plant in any way. Yeah. They then considered that the killer may have drove to the location and carried the body from the car, but he would have had to move very quickly. Yeah. And even though this man only,

he only weighed about 130 pounds, that much dead weight would still be very difficult for one person to carry. Yeah, that's a lot. So, in fact, it seemed more likely, and like alarmingly so, that the killer had some help moving the body. This is when they first said, wait a second.

This doesn't just happen one person. And they still have no idea. I hate that so much. During their investigation, Times and Troop learned a lot about about Ronald Weeb. And all of it seriously undermine their initial must be an angry one-night-stand boyfriend theory. At the time of his death, Ronald was living with his father after becoming estranged from his wife. Obviously, gay men can marry women. Yeah.

It has happened. It still happens. But in this case, he had become estranged from his wife because he was having an affair with another woman. So he was a straight man. Yeah. And he was dating this other woman at the time of his death. Okay. So he was presenting very straight.

Also, no one who knew Ronald had even the slightest suspicion or inkling that he had any kind of romantic interest in men. Okay. You know, and nothing about his life suggested that. It just wasn't the case here. The details of his personal life changed the investigation a lot. Previously, investigators assumed the killer was preying on members of the gay community or on what they were calling hustlers who lived on the margins of society. Oh, my God.

Yeah, like people must be drug addicts, must be. people, you know, hustling and putting themselves in danger, essentially. It's crazy how much people hate gay people. Yeah. Like, it's actually insane. When you sit and you hear it and you think about it, it's like, it has nothing to do with you. So why do you give a fuck?

That's the thing. I say it every time we cover a case like this, but every time it just echoes in my brain, why do you give a fuck? How does it affect you? All right. It fucking doesn't. It literally does not. It's so, like gay.

panic to me is insane. It's the weirdest way to live your life to be, like, worried about what consenting adults are doing. Because all you are like, I literally don't care. It says so much more about you to be freaked out and like up and arms about gay people than it does about the gay person. People just living their lives. Because it's like, y'all, this is just about who we sleep with. So that's real fucking weird that you're that worried about that. Who gives a shit? Yeah. In fact, there was, while I was researching this case, there was like some quote from one of these investigators and I brought it up

to Mikey and Ash because I was like am I crazy or does this just not matter and it was talking about one of the victims and it was like oh and this person

that they interviewed they had a sexual relationship but it never made I was looking further into it and I was like why did they even like why would this matter? Yeah

like I was like this isn't pertinent and from am I being crazy or like you know it's too it's like kind of like a microaggression to be like

oh like gay people sleep with like have a lot of relationships you know it's like no yeah because it's like you you hear about interviews all the time they interview family friends acquaintances all that stuff very little i mean i don't care it straight gay buy anything i don't care if those two people slept together once or twice because it doesn't have an effect on the story at all if they're becoming a suspect sure that might become pertinent absolutely but if they're not why the fuck do i care if they're just giving information about their

their friend who maybe they had a relationship with like that's why it happens it just doesn't matter like a gay person will sleep with anybody yeah it's like that's the thing it just doesn't and they have so many partners like shut the fuck yeah so yeah it's just it's very strange to me it's strange behavior it's strange that it's still so it's it's it's it's annoying yeah that's the thing it's like it's it's very inferior because it's like no these are people who are murdered and we can just investigate it as if these are people who are murdered and it Like, I know we're talking about something from the 70s, obviously it's, like, so different. But it's really not because these are still things that the community faces today.

It's so irritating. Yeah, absolutely. Like, we should just investigate deaths of humans the same across the board. To make sure that the people who are killing humans are not just floating around. Keep your weird comments to yourself. Yeah, exactly. So, again, they were assuming that this was, you know, victims were only, part of the gay community or like they said quote unquote hustlers who lived on the margins of the

community truly unreal but now they had to consider the potential victim pool was much larger including any young man who seemed at least even slightly susceptible to whatever ruse the killer was using to get his victims alone because remember he might not be luring them in being like hey want to fuck yeah i think that's the assumption that these like idiots are making at first they were just like, well, that has to be it. And it's like, no, maybe he just offered them a ride. Yeah, and then did awful, awful things. This guy had, like, Ronald had a flat tire. Yeah. He could have easily been lured in with, hey, I can drive you to this place or I can drop you off down the road. Like, yeah, it's just wild. Unfortunately, again, there was very little evidence collected at this dump site, and no one had seen or heard from Ronald since he left the bar that night.

So the case was almost kind of cold from the start. Wow. With nothing to go on, investigators had to just, kind of like wait until the next victim was discovered, which is the most horrifying thing I've ever heard. Yeah. And this would take at least six months, actually. But detectives were pretty sure it was going to happen. Like even through that six months, they were like, he's not going to stop. It's actually crazy that it took six months after this whole, everything you've said happened

so quickly. But now when we look back, that scorecard that he had, quote unquote, scorecard. There were victims in between them. There might have been more in between that that just weren't linked to him. And like maybe not even discovered. traveled. Maybe he went different places. Like, who knows? That's so scary. Now, on December 29, 1973, hikers in the San Bernardino Mountains discovered the body of 23-year-old Cal State Art student Vincent Cruz Mestis in a ravine near the base of the mountain. It was

immediately clear to investigators that Vincent was killed by the same man. He was fully dressed, except for his shoes, and he was missing one sock. According to the medical examiner, the cause of death was asphyxiation. But according to the medical examiner, the cause of death was asphyxiation. But according to the medical examiner, the cause of death was asphyxiation. And like the others, the victim had been tortured before being killed and his body was mutilated after death, which that was a little different from the other ones. In addition to the sock that had been found, there was, and this is awful, there was a pencil or large toothpick pushed into his urethra. Oh my God. Which the medical examiner believed happened before death.

Oh, my God. His hands had also been cut off and placed into plastic bags. While he was alive or they don't know. The wounds had been covered with plastic bags. Oh. The hands have never been found, by the way. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Also, the medical examiner said that, in addition to the various injuries, and looked like the killer had shaved his face and head after he had murdered him. Ew. Ew. Ew, because that's so creepy. Yeah. They're like, what is the pathology behind that? Like when people, when killers will wash their victims or set them up or dress the, it's so. There's many different pathologies with that, you know, each different thing.

It's, ugh, I hate it. According to friends, Vincent was, you know, he was young. He was, like, adorable. He was slightly naive and was known to be bisexual. Well, he was young. We're all fucking naive. Yeah, exactly. At 23, I was the most naive I've ever been. Exactly. In fact, Vincent had been picked up by police a few times for sex work around

the apartment he shared with a roommate. So it didn't seem unreasonable that he would go off with a stranger. That's what they were kind of linking that to. Yeah. Particularly if there was some transaction that had happened. Vincent was last seen by his roommate three days before his body was found. According to the roommate, Vincent had said he was, quote, going into the mountains to do some drawing. And he had taken his sketchpad and pencils with him. Stop it. He just wanted to get away and relax.

Exactly. Those items weren't found with the body and have never been found. In fact, there was very little evidence collected in that ravine and nothing that would point to the killer. Like, he was not leaving anything at these scenes. Now, nearly half of all murder victims are killed by someone they know. Yeah. But the rate is all, like, very much higher for women.

These are the cases that are pretty easily and eventually solved because there's some evidence that's going to lead to that connection, you know? In cases where the victim's killed by a stranger, though, it is so much fucking harder. Because it can be anyone. There's no connection. It can be anyone in the entire world. And he's not leaving anything. So the, exactly. So those kind of cases almost always are solved because of luck.

Yeah. Just share luck. No, it's true. In the case of the murdered men in Southern California, investigators just, weren't having that luck. It wasn't happening. They were getting left nothing. There was no connection between these guys. So there was nothing to go on. Yeah. Now, because there was similarities in all the cases, investigators were confident that Vincent's case was connected to the other killed men. But whoever was killing these men again was not leaving any witnesses, any evidence,

nothing. And six months passed with pretty little progress in the case again. Then on June 2nd, 1974, the body of 20-year-old Malcolm Little was discovered, sitting propped up against a mesquite tree along Highway 86 just south of Salton Sea. Now, despite being more than 150 miles from the area where the other bodies were found, 150 miles away. Yeah, that's very far. His body bore many of the signatures and mutilation investigators had come to recognize from this killer.

He had been strangled. his genitals had been cut off. This is awful. There was a mesquite branch inserted into his rectum. Oh. Now, at first, investigators questioned

whether Malcolm Little's killer was the same man who'd killed the others in L.A. because of the distance. Yeah. But as soon as they started interviewing friends and family, everything started piecing together.

Malcolm was an out-of-work truck driver from Selma, Alabama, who just arrived in California a week earlier. Oh, my God. To visit his brother in Long Beach, not far from where the killer usually hunted. And he was just visiting his brother. But not long after he had arrived in California,

his girlfriend called from Alabama, piss that he had left without taking her with him. Oh. Yeah, so the girlfriend demanded that he come back to Alabama and they could go to California together. And he was on his way? And Little explained that he didn't have enough money to get a bus ticket back and two additional tickets to get them back to California.

But she was like, no, you've got to come back and get it. me. So he was like, okay. So he agreed. So on May 27th, Bill, who's Malcolm's brother, dropped him at the intersection of the Garden Grove in Santa Ana Freeways, where he intended to hitchhike his way back to Alabama. Because remember, it's the 70s. Yeah, everybody was doing it. This was the last time Bill saw his brother alive. That's so sad that he was so committed. Yeah, he was helping his girlfriend. Yeah. Malcolm Little's cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation from strangulation and the majority of the mutilation had, I guess, thankfully, occurred post-mortem. After identifying this victim and verifying some of the information, Malcolm Little was added

to the growing list of victims. But if detectives were thinking that, you know, something about this latest victim was going to break the case, they were very disappointed. Yeah. Like the other cases, no clues found at the place he was found. Nothing. He had only been in the state for a little, you know under a week at that point too so there were no leads right nothing that was going to point to any kind of connection right this time investigators wouldn't have to wait long though for another victim to be discovered on june 22nd just a few weeks after malcolm little's body was discovered the nude body of 18 year old roger dickerson was found at the end of a dead end road in laguna beach near a private golf club which is a very affluent area yeah i'm sure we all know yeah exactly

Dickerson had been sexually assaulted. There were bite marks on his genitals, and his cause of death was asphyxiation from strangulation. This time, though, there was something new that hadn't been a factor in the other cases. In addition to a small amount of alcohol in his system, there was also the presence of diazepam, which is the generic form of Valium.

Once they identified this victim, who turned out to be U.S. Marine, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton. Oh, detectives got to work interviewing, you know, associates, friends, family. And this is the second person from Camp Pendleton. Second one. According to his fellow Marines at the base, Dickerson had just been granted Liberty, which is an authorized absence from the base, I guess.

Oh, like you could go out on your own. For a short period. And he wanted to visit Los Angeles. On the night he went missing, he and several other Marines had went out to Bud's Cove Bar in San Clemente, where he told them of his plan to go to L.A. for a few days. Yeah. According to those friends, he had found someone to drive him to L.A., but he didn't mention that person's name.

That was the last time any of them saw him alive. A little over a month later, on August 3rd, another body was discovered. Jeez. This time, found in an oil field in Long Beach. Oh, that's chilling. That morning, oil field workers arrived for their shift and discovered the fully clothed body of 25-year-old Thomas Lee. Like some of the more recent victims, Lee's body had been

dumped in a less obvious location, because before they were, like, right in the open. Yeah. It's like shock value. Yeah, and he was placed at the bottom of a steep incline, though clearly still in an area where it would be found kind of quickly, but still a little further out. Yeah. Lee had a high blood alcohol level at the time of his death, and the cause of death was listed as a spixia from a strangulation.

Upon further investigation, detectives learned that Thomas Lee worked as a waiter at Princess Louise, which is a popular San Pedro restaurant. He was also a regular at area bars like Lil Lucy in Long Beach and the Diamond in Wilmington. Both areas were places where the killer had found other victims. Lee was also known among the gay community as one of the more active cruisers in the area. And a lot of people they talked to said he was a one-night stand guy. He had a lot of friends, you know. He was hanging out.

Yeah, he was hanging out at the best. He was living. That is, you know, he's something he's allowed to do. He's a consenting adult, and he's doing it with other consenting adult. Live your damn life. But unfortunately, this would make him a perfect target for this killer. Right. The last time anyone had seen Lee was around closing time the night before his body was discovered on August 3rd.

Investigators had barely time to blow their nose when on August 12th, another body was found. Jesus. These is days. Yeah. Hours, really. Yeah. This time, this body was found at the bottom of an embankment off the Azo Parkway in Orange County. Although the victim, 23-year-old Gary Wayne Cordova, is considered to be one of the victims in this case.

It's a little confusing why, exactly. According to his friends, Gary had said he was moving from Pasadena and was going to hitchhike to Oceanside. He was fully dressed when he was found. I think this is probably why they started to connect him. He didn't have any shoes or socks on. Okay. And his cause of death was determined to be acute intoxication from drugs and alcohol, specifically diazepam. So maybe from one of the last victims.

It's believed apparently that, like this is the theory that they came up with, that connects him to this. They believe that the killer picked Gary up while he was hitchhiking because he was and intended to assault and kill him like the others, but Gary began overdosing before that could happen. Oh, okay. So that is a possibility. He is counted among the victims. Interesting. The final victim discovered that year was found on November 29th. It was shortly after 4 p.m. When Irvine police received a call about a body found near the San Diego Freeway.

When they got there, investigators found the body of 19-year-old James Dale Reeves, about 25 feet from the road, not far. He was clothed in just a blood-soaked t-shirt and was laying face down between two trees, just a few feet from the rest of his clothing, all of which were soaked in blood. Although the medical examiner wasn't able to identify a cause of death, he suspected suffocation.

Also, when the body was discovered, the killer had inserted a four-foot tree branch. Four foot? Yes. A four foot tree branch. Yeah, I told you. This is just horrific in every way.

It's like it gets worse and worse. How is that even possible? Yeah. It's awful. And he's like, again, he's 19 years old. These are like kids. That's, like, beyond brutal. You know, now according to his family,

James had asked to borrow the family. family car on the afternoon of November 27th, he drove down to the newly formed gay community church in Costa Mesa, where he had Thanksgiving dinner with other members of the community. Then he drove over to Ripples, which is a popular bar in the Belmont Shores neighborhood. When investigators searched the area, they found the car was still in the parking lot of Ripples, indicating that James had been picked up at the bar, likely by the killer who dumped his body on the highway. It will never not be strange to hear what people do in their last hours and to picture that in your head.

Yeah. You just had Thanksgiving with your friends at the newly formed church for your community. Right. And you have no idea after celebrating what was probably like a nice, we just formed this church together. We have this community. We're supporting each other. And then to have this happen. And just to think like obviously nobody has any idea that this is happening. happening and they're thinking about their plans for the next couple hours or their plans for the next day. The next couple days. It will never, it will never cease to like fuck me up. It will never. Now, in their statement to the press, investigators hedged their bets on this one. They said, so JJ, I'm going to fight them. I'm going to fight them.

I'm going to fight them. We're not necessarily saying he's homosexual, but he certainly praise on homosexuals and engages in homosexual activities with his victims. So they're like, we're not like saying the killer's gay we're not saying he's not gay because he sexually assaults these guys so like but like wow i just i'm like wait ahead your betch on that one yeah truly we're not saying he's necessarily gay but like he might be it's like thank you that's so helpful i'm not sure about all that thank you for that now after so many murders and so little evidence investigators were looking for any help which i understand that they have nothing to go on um and so they started turning to the gay community to be like, can you help us identify who this could be?

Because he might be praying in these certain areas. But the gay community was very reluctant to speak with detectives for obvious reasons. J.J. Herbert said, we can't find anyone who can put the victim and the killer together. However, we feel there must have been cases of someone being picked up by this guy who got away and just hasn't come forward. Which is very possible. Yeah. But they might feel, you know, they might feel like, ashamed about it they might feel scared they might feel like they're going to be pinned for it somehow or in trouble somehow yeah because it's not like they haven't seen this happen a million times to their community right so of course they're not going to run and be like let me help yeah

now unfortunately for the detectives you know and the other investigators they had just formed a newly formed task force for this but no one came forward with any suspicious members of the community or providing tips on anything that they had seen which also there's a possibility you know and saw anything that they figured was worth noting or had been picked up

by this guy and let out he might not let anyone go so for George Troop and the other detectives on the case it was obvious these were the victims of the same killer obviously but it seemed impossible that someone could commit so many murders

and not leave any evidence behind or be seen by anybody ever equally frustrating was the fact that while they were struggling to make progress the body count was just rising and less time was happening between discovery victims yeah so the new year comes and they immediately get a call for a newly discovered body in the killer's hunting ground oh no this time a teenage boy 17 year old john williams laris was last seen boarding a bus carrying a pair of roller skates

oh yeah the day before his nude body was discovered january 4th 1975 He was floating in the surf off sunset beach. Oh. According to the bus driver, John got off the bus at a stop near Ripples Bar, where previous victim James Reeves disappeared from a month earlier. Like many of the other victims, Laris had been sexually assaulted, and there was a foreign object, which was later identified as a wooden surveyor's stake inserted into his anus, and he had been strangled to death.

Jesus Christ. 17 years old. 17 years old. In addition to the discovery of another victim, what was probably most alarming was that there were drag marks in the sand where the killer had dragged the body to the water, and alongside those were two sets of footprints. Oh, fuck that. Yep. As some investigators had suspected already, the killer likely had an accomplice. Yeah, I mean, at this point, that's just a fact.

At the very least, someone was helping him dispose of bodies. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's an accomplice. Yeah. Unfortunately, detectives had barely started to even contemplate the implications of this, that there's a second set of footprints. Less than two weeks later, another body is discovered. It almost makes, and obviously this is not the case, but it makes you feel like with two

people, it would be easier to find them, you know? You would think. I don't know why. It just feels like more people to fuck up. Right, exactly. Humans are fallible, so you would think with two of them. And two people to turn on each other. Yeah.

On the morning of January 17th, construction. workers arriving to a job site next to the Golden Sales Hotel off the Pacific Coast Highway discovered the body of 21-year-old Craig Jonitis. In this case, he was fully clothed, except he was missing his shoes and socks. There was a dark red ligature mark around his neck indicating that he'd been strangled. But there was very little evidence found at the scene, nothing that could help them trace anything back. And despite the lack of forensic evidence or witness statements, for Troop and the other detectives, they were like, there's a profile

that can be taken out of this at the very least. With three exceptions, all of the victims were gay or had some sexual interest in men that was, like, discovered in their background. So it was fair to assume they'd gone with the killer willingly, perhaps.

Yeah. Like, at least some of the time. And he definitely had a type. Young, white men with a medium build. They all were. It was also obvious that, rather than cover up the crimes, the killer appeared to be leaving his victims

in places where they would be discovered by either police or the public. You know, on the side of the highway, public beaches, like that kind of thing, near golf courses. Right. During the investigation, something else occurred to Troopentines

that may have revealed something about the killer's background, actually. In many of the cases, a sock had been inserted into the victim's anus. Yeah. Similarly, many of the victims were discovered with white tissue

either on their body or inserted in, to their nostrils. Oh. At first, they initially took this. They didn't even reveal this at first, and then later when they did, they talked about how this, they believe this could have been some kind of like, you know, fetish or some kind of signature.

But eventually, Troop made an interesting association with this. It turned out that plugging orifices in that manner was something commonly done in the military in circumstances where a servicemen has been killed, but won't be immediately transferred to a hospital or morgue because investigators believed the killer had used this to keep the bodies from purging while they were being transported to a dump site.

I don't, I don't. It's apparently like a thing. Okay. Yeah. So it gave them at least something that they could at least... I know, there's no words for it, but it gave them something that they could touch upon to say, maybe he knows of this practice.

which would indicate and it narrows down the pool yeah it's it's that's literally all they have that's literally all they have holy shit and i also i feel like either way it's sexually rooted in nature like he's i think he's getting like for him he's getting some kind of kicks from that yeah for sure it's i'm interested in like the tissue in the nose yeah that's interesting that's an interesting but the other yeah is different so to the local investigators on the case the idea of a killer, you know, systematically choosing, killing and dumping victims was a relatively new and foreign concept, actually. It's not that California obviously didn't have its fair share of, you know, serial killers. But it was the way that this killer was behaving that was new

to them. Like, you know, they had Charles Manson who, like, reveled in the adoration of his cult members. Zodiac killer sought fame more than anything else. This killer seemed to be pretty highly intelligent in the worst kind of way and knew exactly what he was doing and maybe he didn't know why he was doing it but he knew what he was doing he was a hunter he was getting more skilled each time and he was leaving nothing while getting the attention he was also leaving absolutely nothing for them to go on knowing that they wouldn't catch their killer without some kind of insight into the psychology here the task force reached out to the FBI and And the behavioral analysis unit was doing, at this time, like, super innovative work in studying killers and other violent predators.

Go watch Mind Hunter. Yes. In his profile of the killer, FBI agent Howard Tetan categorized the suspect as a lust killer, someone whose periodic murders were usually committed to satisfy a sexual urge. Yeah. Another analyst on the team, Dr. E. Mansell Patterson from the California College of Medicine, describe the killer in a way they got something out of these profiles but this is a wild description.

Okay, getting ready. Describe the killer as a man who, quote, desires to feel masculine and virile, but does not feel masculine. He vicariously identifies with the masculine image of the victim, sodomizing the victim affirms that he is a potent, aggressive, virile, heterosexual male. So he's essentially saying this is a guy

who hates himself. Okay. And wants to feel masculine but isn't. So he's like taking masculinity from his victims. He's kind of assuming that this is a gay killer as well. So he's like putting it in there that like this is obviously a gay man who doesn't feel masculine and feels masculine by taking masculinity away from other men. Okay.

Which is just like a, it's a strange way of saying it. Yeah. It's got a lot of assumptions in there. Yeah, lots of implications there. Some kind of bizarre way of looking at it. Frankly, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. No, it could have been way worse. That's the thing.

There was parts of it that were worse that I don't choose to say. Love that. But we did. What I wanted to take from this is like from those two different analyses, we got a few things from them. Okay. One, there was likely more victims than were known to investigators, which we confirm later. Which we do. Two, the killer felt absolutely no sense of guilt or remorse because he's a lost.

killer. He doesn't give a shit. Yep. Three, it was highly unlikely he would stop on his own volition. Yeah, no way. I mean, clearly not. Yeah, he can't stop. The urges are too much. Now, the insight provided by the profilers and psychologist was of some value, obviously, to the task force, but it didn't really do anything to point them in the direction of a fucking suspect, which is what they were trying to do this all time.

Yeah. In the meantime, within a couple of months of murdering Craig Jonitis, the killer was back out on the streets looking for another victim already and he's going to find one and that's where we're going to end for part one because because we all need a collective minute the amount of men who have died in part one and so in horrific violent just graphic atrocious ways yeah is something I think we need to take a minute from yeah um because part two is going to pick right up there with some more victims because we are not done

with this piece of shit unfortunately and we are going to get into how they discover who Randy Kraft is okay love that I love the part where they're apprehended we are going to get that part where they're not stresses me out so much so we will get there

but yeah this is a real this is a hard one this tough one yeah because of the era it happened in like for so many ways obviously because of the brutality of the entire thing but also because of the era it happened in and the way that things were talked about in the press and by investigators,

it's just, it's tough to, like, chew on while you're learning all the details of all the brutality that happened to these poor men, to hear how it was described and certain assumptions that are made about victims, mostly, is like what makes it really tough to swallow. That's why it's just like, I got to take a minute. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So, we'll be back with a lot more. All right. It's where. we'll see you then because we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you don't come back for part two honey hey oh bye bye bye I'm gonna I'm gonna

I'm gonna I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm and I'm

I'm I'm going to be the I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm I'm I'm going

on the I'm I'm on I'm I'm going to be able to be. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.