Morbid - Episode 699: Randy Kraft: The Scorecard Killer (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 18, 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. If you're shopping while working, eating, or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of the hunt. But are you getting the thrill of the best deals? Racketon shoppers do. They get the brands they love with the most savings and cashback, baby. And you can get it too.

Start getting cash back at your favorite stores like Uniclo, Best Buy, and Expedia. And even stack sales on top of cashback. to use and you get your cash back through PayPal or check. The idea is simple. Stores pay Rackerton for sending them shoppers, and Rackaton shares the money with you as cash back. Download the free Racketon app and never miss a deal. Or go to rackettin.ca to start getting the most bang for your buck. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N rackaten.ca. C.A. Morbid is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-on-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed. online. Who doesn't want to stand out and succeed? Get you a girl who can do both. Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price. No hidden fees or add-ons required. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure that your domain remains online and protected. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life, whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service. Squarespace gives you

everything that you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. From consultations, events, and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Plus, streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Head to Squarespace.com slash morbid for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code morbid to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid. This is morbid, and this is part two of a very, very intense series. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not getting better. I don't know. It's not getting easier in part two. I dare say it's getting easier in part two. I dare say it's getting worse in part two. Wow. Not really sure how, but it is.

It's going to be a three-parter. So there will be a resolution. Well, you said he gets apprehended in this part, and I like that part. He gets, um, so they get on to him. They're getting ideas. All right. You know, he's getting on the radar. Are we talking about anything first?

We can. We can get into a vibe and then crash it right down. Okay. if you would like have you ever seen my best friend's wedding um you want to hear something funny about me no you never seen it you'd hate it no yeah you would hate that movie so much yeah but one thing about me is that i love that movie so much i used to fall asleep to that movie for like years wow in my childhood i love julia roberts and i love cameron diaz and i like that guy that's in that movie but i forget his name yeah i don't remember everyone's probably yelling at me but it's fine

i found out this morning that they're doing a sequel oh and i'm a little bit nervous but i think everybody is returning. So speaking of part two's... Oh, same thing of my best friend's wedding is happening. And I'm excited. I'm apprehensively excited. Very adjacent. I just wanted to talk about it, okay? No, I get it. I, you know what's funny to me is that Julia Roberts always plays, I mean, can we be honest, she always plays that bitch in that movie that, like, steals your man. She kind of does. She just like, like America's Sweethearts. I've never seen that. She's that girl. She's that bitch that she's that girl that steals your man. It's like the chill girl. She's in Mystic Pizza, right? She's always the chill girl that's like, I'm not like other girls and I'll just steal your guy. Yeah, that's actually pretty fair. Like, that's kind of her type in movie. I don't think she steals anybody's man in Mystic Pizza. Maybe she does. I don't think she does. I think she's engaged. She wanted to. Probably. Run away ride. She's not stealing anyone's man. No. But she's running away. She finds a man. She finds a man.

man she does and it's not someone else pretty woman she's not stealing anybody's man no she finds a rich man she just you know she's got two movies where you do that might be two movies well now it could be three because who knows what's going yeah it might be three um but yeah I never saw that wow because that's what it's about right I just I remember like reading things about it so basically hearing people talk about it for anybody who hasn't seen my best friend's wedding this is so it's like it's from the 90s yeah but uh Julia Roberts I forget her the name of her in the I forget who she plays. Yeah.

But she loves this guy named Michael, and he's getting married to Cameron Diaz's character named Kimmy. And Kimmy's just, like, fucking crazy. Cameron Diaz. But we love her. Like, she's adorable and sweet. And I think it's Jules is her name, Julie Roberts' character, which should have been easy to remember.

I was going to say, wow. But she's basically trying to stop him for marrying Kimmy. Wow. When I said you would hate it, you would hate this movie. Wow. Elena. But it's just, like, enjoyable because it's, In the end, spoiler alert, he stays with Kimmy.

Oh, really? When she realizes that she shouldn't have done what she did and she feels bad for it. It's a rom-com, so it ends up happy. Oh, man, I would, yeah, that would make me angry. One time I was crying, and me and Karen watched that movie together, and it's one of my favorite memories. I love that a lot. Aside from the crying. Yeah, so now they're coming out with Part 2, and I'm excited.

This isn't an ad for it. I just heard about it this morning. This isn't an ad for that. It's not. Weirdly, I know you guys thought it was. It just seems like a very random topic for us to discuss that would have been. And I'm just like, yeah, that movie sounds like it sucks. You're like, no, it doesn't, I think.

It's kind of okay. No, it doesn't. I know it's a horrible subject, but sure. Yeah, but she steals a big delivery truck at one point. I can't even say, I can't even talk shit though because, I'm sorry, we're just going to talk for a second. No, we know what? I saw a lot of people the other day saying that they want us to talk more.

Oh, I love that. That's why I brought up this random topic of my best friends. It's also, this is going to be a very tough episode, and it's a very tough series. So we might as well get some levity in the beginning here. I can't even talk shit about my best friend's wedding because I used to love that movie something borrowed. And it's literally probably worse than that. Oh, you liked that movie?

I did like that movie. I hated her character. I can't believe you liked that movie. There's a girl named Darcy in that movie. Yeah. It's Kate Hudson. I can, okay, so you might like that movie. my best friend's wedding in that case. I don't know. I don't know. It's very similar

vibes. Yeah. It's actually almost exactly the same story. It's the same premise. I think I also love. It's actually better because Jules doesn't even sleep with Michael. Oh, wow. In the timeline. She did at one point. Oh. But in the timeline. In the timeline. You know, like in the timeline of the wedding. I felt like, you know what it did. I felt like something borrowed had the same vibes as he's just not that into you. And I also like that movie. It's the same actress. It's like a fun comfort movie, I think. Because it's just like, you can just sit there and just, you can turn into gooo watching that movie. I read that book when I was like 12. Did you really? Yeah, something when you were 12. Yeah, my mom and I used to swap books back and forth, but like I definitely

shouldn't have been reading. I love that. That bitch loved to be treed. She loved to be treated. She did. That and the other bull in girl. Which I wouldn't consider a petreed. But I did read that way too young. Yeah, you know. They were talking about that on sup the other day and I was like, why the fuck did I read that one I did? Yeah. It's talking about, like, Anne Boleyn and King Henry the 8th, like, fuck in. I'm serious. Yeah, you were way too young to read that. I was way too young to read that.

The fuck was going on there. I don't know. Damn. Yeah. Oh, and speaking of books. You have one? You can buy. I have a couple.

You can get the paperback version of the butcher game, August 12th that comes out. You can pre-order it now, anywhere you want. A new update. Not only does it fit in your pants pocket. Elaine is just telling people to put it in their pants now, the book that is. So I did a talk shop live. By the time this comes out, it will have happened to eons ago. Cars will be flying, so I don't think it'll matter.

But, you know, that'll be different later. But by the time this comes out, it won't really matter. But on the talk shop live, I showed you that you can, in fact, fit the butcher game paperback. which comes out August 12th and you can pre-order it now if you want to. You can fit it in your pants pocket and I said if you want to put it in your pants, that's your prerogative as well because you're an adult and I stand by that. Okay. I interrupted with the next question because I felt it was going to a weird place.

But new development in the butcher game, in the life of the butcher. You don't even have to fold it to fit it in your pants pocket. True. You can just right in there. So I was correct. You can put it in your pants. She was wearing stretchy pants. If you're wearing jeans, you'll probably have to fold it.

And you shouldn't do that. But again, do whatever you want. It's your prerogative, okay? As long as you read it. That's all I ask. Don't just put it in your pants without reading it. Yeah, don't just put it in your pants. And you know, like, because you know, who knows?

Who knows if there's more? You know, who knows? So put in your pants. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah. So that's the butcher game. And also I'm going to start doing that like a thing

where I was, I, like, recommended, like, one book on my Instagram and I was like, oh, I want to do this. And then I just didn't do it again, like an asshole. Yeah. But I've had a lot of you have, like, message me or said, you really want me to do that more. Do it. So I'm going to do that more. Yeah. And again, by the time this comes out, hopefully I will have done that already. Well, and I feel like it's also something that we could do for the bonus episodes. Like another fun thing. Yes. You know, who knows what we'll do with those bonus episodes. But we could talk about books. Because remember, once we move to Sirius, you're going to get an extra episode. every single month, one week per month, you will not get two episodes, you will get three episodes, an extra episode. One week out of the month. And that bonus episode can be anything. So if you guys, you know, have things that you would like to hear us talk about, you can also suggest it, and maybe we can throw them on those bonus episodes. Hell yeah, brother. And they'll be for everybody again. They're free. They're for everybody. They're not locked anywhere. No. But yeah. So that'll be cool. So maybe we can do that to talk about books sometimes. and that'll be fun.

I love it. Because we're so excited for serious. Did you guys catch that we kept saying seriously in episodes? We've been saying it for a few weeks. We would go like, seriously? Seriously. Did you guys catch that? Seriously?

Ha-ha. We're so stealthal elf. Oh, I guess we should probably get into the rest of this case because it's an important case to talk about. It's just a very upsetting one. Yeah, as you guys probably noted in the first part of it. But it's fascinating. But it's fascinating, it's upsetting, and it's something that needs to be told, because I did not know about this case before this.

I think I had heard of like the name, like the killer's name, the moniker, yeah, but not any of the details whatsoever. Yeah, I definitely hadn't heard the details. So I feel like it's, it's important to get it out there, these kind of cases. I feel like they kind of like, unfortunately can get buried in the history of other, you know, and especially around this time in the 70s, 80s, and around this. location in California. There's a lot of serial killers happening. And I think a lot of the ones that a lot of people know off the top of their head, Zodiac and Kemper, Ted Bundy.

Hillside Stranglers, Charles Manson, all those, those kind of buried it. But this case is so upsetting. And there's so many victims. And there's so many victims that are unidentified to this day. It's like crazy. That is truly not. It's the same kind of thing with like John Wayne Gacy that there was a couple of unidentified victims. And a couple of them got, they got identified recently. So it's like

we should never forget about these things. Because you can identify people decades and decades later. Like don't give up on it. Like familial DNA, all the violence there. Just who knows what's going to, what's going to come next in technology. So I hope they don't forget about these. But yeah, when we last talked, they were, the investigators were trying to profile the killer along with the FBI's behavioral science unit. Which was like super new. Super new, like watch Mind Hunter. If you're interested in that, I'm telling you that show is so fucking awesome.

I know, for no good reason fell off the second season. I was thinking that. Oh, get back in there. When you, uh, I think you said it during part one. I need to finish that. You got to get back into Mind Hunter. I think I might just like rewatch it from the start. That show not continuing is a travesty.

I know. Because it is one of the most, I'm not going on a long tangent, I promise, but it's your show. It's your show. of the most well-done shows. No, it really is. And the cast is fucking perfect. I cannot believe how well they did on that show. Like, that show is honestly one of my top shows.

And the fact that it didn't go past two seasons is... Bullshit. Really gross. But go watch those two seasons because they're worth it. But yeah, in the last episode, we talked about how they were coming up with a profile for this killer. And it was helping them with a few things, like, you know, that there was probably more victims than the investigators even knew about at that time that they hadn't discovered that were connected to this killer, that the killer was not somebody who was going to feel

guilt or remorse, was not going to be one of those people that turns themselves in or begs the police to stop them because they can't help themselves. He doesn't give shit. No. And also that it was unlikely that he was ever going to stop unless he was caught. He was never going to stop on his own volition. No. So again, this was, I mean, this was a really great profile to have, but it wasn't exactly leading them to anyone because they had nothing to go on at this point. And within a couple of months of the last murder, which was Craig Jonitis, the killer was out again. It didn't take a lot.

Like, he was not taking time between these instances. And on the morning of March 29, 1975, 19-year-old Keith Crockwell caught a ride with some friends down to San Diego, which was about 40 miles from his home. And he was going to be spending the day at the beach. This was something that he had done a million times before. He did it alone. He did it with friends. This was nothing different.

I think most Californian teenagers could relate. Yeah, each day with their friends. Yeah, very routine. That afternoon, Keith met up with his friend, 15-year-old Kent May, and they just hung out all afternoon. It was getting near midnight, and they started to notice that while the parking lot had mostly cleared out by them, there was still one man standing nearby, just watching them. I hate that. Yeah. Ew.

The man came over and started talking to them and just started chatting. But they said they both, they felt pretty uneasy by his presence. And they just didn't like his overall vibe, but they weren't like scared of him. It was just like, this is a little... Yeah. A few minutes later, the two boys and their new friend were back at this man's car now, which was a 1974 black and white Mustang. And this stranger gave them two beers and, you know, their teenagers just hands them. He's a grown man.

That's bad. That's bad. And they all get in the car and went for a ride. And as learned through interviews later, May and Crotwell knew there was a certain risk with, you know, accepting rides or substances from strangers. But Croswell said that he, quote, deferred to Crockwell's judgment because he was the younger one. So he's deferring to the older ones. And since Keith thought the guy was all right, Kent decided there was really nothing to worry about. He's 15.

Yeah. He's just looking what's the older kid thinking? The amount of dumb-ass situations I got myself into at 15 because I was like following my older friends. Exactly. Is it recommended? No. But it's understandable. Yeah.

Not long after leaving the beach parking lot, the driver started passing around pills. Oh, fuck. And Crotwell quickly and easily identified these as Valium. That's not a party drug. Do we remember in part one, Valium was something found in one of the victims. Yeah. And also like, no one's taken Valium to party. And he warned Kent to go easy on the drugs.

Cromwell did. Keith did. It wasn't the first time either of them had taken tranquilizers. So they each popped a pill and they were just waiting for, you know, whatever to set in. But within 15 minutes after that, Kent said he started to feel something coming, but then it like left really quick. And what left him, what it left him with was like a numbing effect, like a very powerful numbing effect. And he described on it bordering on catatonia. The fuck? Yeah.

Doesn't Valium like chill you out to have? I've never done Valium. I thought it really chill you out. Yeah. But this was like to a numbing degree. Valium isn't supposed to numb you out into oblivion. Like especially one. Yeah.

You know, so this felt like it had something different. From where he was sitting, Keith seemed to be experiencing the same effect as well. And the driver, though, seemed to be. stone-cold sober. They drove around for what seemed like a long time, but Kent May said it was very hazy. He could recall very little of this trip. It was just like kind of in and out.

I mean, he's been drugged at this point. At some point, Kent passed out in the back seat. And the next thing he knew, he was waking up in his own bed at home. What the fuck? And he said the sunlight was coming through his windows, like middle of the day. That's horrifying.

He said the night before, total blank to him after that, after passing out, couldn't remember basic things like how he'd gotten home. And fortunately, Kent's roommate, Terry Dittmar, was able to fill in some of the gaps for him. According to Dittmar, he and his brother Frank had been partying at the home of another friend that night and decided to call it a night a little after midnight. After settling in at home, Terry stepped outside for some fresh air when a black and white Mustang pulled into the parking lot and the passenger's side door opened and Kent came tumbling out of the car.

Oh, kicked out of the car. Terry ran over to help his friend up and when he looked in the car he saw Keith Crotwell in the front side and he was passed out later Dittmire would describe the driver to the authorities as quote a confident sober face accented

with dark bushy brows blonde hair and cold blank shark size Oh not shark size fucks me up Yeah that because that that is Yeah that's a fucking description as hell. Yeah, that's intense.

As summer winds down, I am all about refreshing my wardrobe with staple pieces for fall. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait for comfy, friggin clothes. And Quince nails it with all the luxe essentials that feel effortless and look super polished, perfect for layering. Oh, my God, I can't wait for layering. season and mixing. Their styles are so versatile, I find myself reaching for them time and time again. Think chic, cashmere, cotton sweaters, starting at just $40, washable silk tops, and classic denim

pants, timeless styles that you're going to keep coming back to. The best part, everything with quince is half the cost of similar brands. I love quince. I love their cashmere. I love their denim. I love literally everything about them. I have a bunch of really cute silk skirts from them that pair really well with sweaters in the fall in winter but also cute silky tops in the summer in the spring. I am definitely going to be doing a refresh though of my fall wardrobe and I will be absolutely doing that with quince. Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with quince. Go to quince.com for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash morbid to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash morbid.

This is an ad by better help. Wellness, wellness, wellness, honey. Every time I open any of my For You pages, I have like 450 different people giving me advice for wellness. These days, it feels like there's advice for everything. Cold plunges, gratitude journals, screen detoxes, this, that, the other thing. How do you know it actually works for you? With the internet and information overload about mental health and wellness, it can be a struggle to know what's true and what actions to take these days. But using trusted resources and talking to live therapists can get you personalized recommendations to help you break through the noise. I love therapy and that has always been my experience in therapy. My therapist usually ends up knowing me better than I

know myself and I'm like, dang, you're right. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash morbid. That's BetterHelphelp.com slash morbid. Several days passed, and still no one had heard anything from Keith. And he's the older boy, right? Okay. So the roommate, Dittmar, and Kent May, convinced their parents to file a missing person's report for Keith. Yeah. Keith had come from a kind of troubled home and was living with friends at the time. So the police just assumed he was a runaway. Very 70s. It wasn't until

six weeks later that they learned how very wrong they were. On the afternoon... You would think that because of that, it would have, like, it wouldn't have been as long for them to realize that people weren't runaways, because they were still doing that in the 80s. Exactly. It's like all these people you lost in the 70s and realized that they hadn't just runaway, they'd actually been abducted by a serial killer. Yeah. Can we just have a process for this? Can we change this way of thinking? Yeah. And instead of assuming... Because also, again, overreact. If he's a runaway, then cool, you'll find out he's a runaway. You must not have gotten far. And yeah, you put some energy into it, but you found out that

he ran away and you can give up now. But if you do it, flip it the other way, it always turns out bad. Yeah. It never turns out good. Now, in the afternoon of May 8th, three teenagers at the Long Beach Marina were climbing over a rocky wall in search of small crabs and, you know, other marine life around there at the end of a jetty around 300 yards offshore. and one of them spotted something wedged in the rocks. The object had clearly been in the water for a few weeks and had been worn down by the constant movement of water over the surface, but it was pretty easily identifiable for what had at one spin.

It was a human head. Oh. They saw a human head wedged into some rocks at the end of a jetty. That is awful. Yeah. Investigators and divers scoured the area all afternoon, but they weren't able to find anything additional. They just found the head.

A few days later, a local dentist was able to identify the skull as matching the dental x-rays of Keith Crockwell. Once the skull had been identified, and the Crotwell and Dittmar families got in touch with investigators and gave them the information about the man in the black and white Mustang that they'd seen with Keith the night before he disappeared. Unfortunately, Kent May still couldn't remember anything from that night, but the lead about the car was still a good one,

And if they could find its owner, there was a good chance that Terry Dittmar could identify him because he was the one who saw him. His scary shark eyes. Yeah. Without a body or any forensic evidence, there was no way for the medical examiner to identify how Keith had died or what happened in the hours leading up to his death. He's literally got nothing. You know, without the presence of what would become the killer's signatures at that point, investigators really didn't have a reason to connect Keith's death either without like strangulation involved. Yeah. But investigators spread out across the area around Long Beach Marina in search of that

Mustang and its driver. They went door to door. They were talking to witnesses, anything they could. And five days later, they discovered a car matching the description provided by Dimmar. Nice. It was parked in front of an apartment building less than one mile from the beach. Whoa. A search of the DMV records indicated the car belonged to Randy Steven Kraft.

Yeah, I know that name. It was a man who'd recently relocated to the area from an address in Orange County. None of the neighbors seemed to know Kraft or even recognize the name, though, but fortunately for detectives, one of the local mail carriers knew the name and were like, this is where he lives. Here you go. When Detective Mike Woodward knocked on the door, and very average-looking man appeared and invited him right into the apartment. Average. From all appearances, Randy Kraft was a perfectly ordinary, middle-class man, pretty indistinguishable from the countless other people living on the beach. Yeah.

He did not stand out. I get it. It did occur to Woodward early on in their exchange that Kraft, apparently, he gleaned this by something that he was gay. Okay. He just said he knew. He said he spoke with a very mild, timid-type voice, and he appeared to me to have some gay tendencies.

That is a direct quote. I wish you could see the side-eye that I'm doing right now. What are gay tendencies? Thank you. The phrase gay tendencies. What are gay tendencies aside from sleeping with a male? And how does one appear to have them? Did you see him sleep with a man? That's the thing. How do you appear to have them?

No, you don't. Like, how do you just appear to see gay tendencies in someone? It's a very strange way. That's just being a judgmental piece of shit. Very 70s. Very 70s to say something like that. I just want to know what he did. That the guy was like, gay. He was like, must be gay. So Randy Craft's boss at Aztec Aircraft would later confirm Woodward's suspicion. Again, this is all going to be very offensive. but it's coming from 70s detectives and men.

So just, you know, know that. This is his employer, okay, at Aztec. Sorry, that Randy's employer? Yes, Randy's employer. He told Detective Woodward, he was like, yes, you are correct. He's so gay. He said, and I quote, oh, no. He was a little bit affected.

He held his fingers kind of like he was gay. How do you hold your fingers like you're gay? And talked effeminate a little, but he was a very good employee. People just talked like that. Like, the gayness didn't affect his work. I got to know. He held his fingers kind of like he was gay. What is a gay finger?

I'm not really sure. How is one finger straight? Is there a bisexual finger? Like, where? Mikey's trying to show me right now. Is there a bisexual finger? I'm just confused. That's a weird statement.

It is. I've never looked at someone. It didn't affect his work at all. Didn't affect his work being gay. His sexual preference never affected his work. He wasn't out here kissing dudes while he was working. And it's like, yeah. Jesus Christ, this is making me so angry.

The entire thing is, I need to see if my fear reading is like, you're stressed right now. You're stressed right now. He held his fingers kind of like he was gay. I'll never get over that. You know what I'm engaged right now, by the way. You're engaged. Engaged to be married. Engaged to be angry.

I'm engaged to be angry. But a simple check into Kraft's background proved that not only was he a good employee, but he was also held in high regard by just about anyone who knew him. All right. According to author Dennis McDougal, Kraft, quote, had a reputation among his friends

for loyalty, caring, and an even tempered nature. Damn, that's terrifying. He also had no arrest record or any interactions with law enforcement. And even the bartenders at the nearby Ripples bar, which we talked about before, spoke very highly of him.

What? And while it was true, he was he did happen to be gay there was a large percentage of the population in the belmont montshore neighborhood of long beach that was also gay so like i'm this is not the only one there's gay people in the world there's more gay people than just this one yeah and that fact even with the presence of the black and white mustang didn't make him a killer so i mean you can't just rely on that what do you have you got to have some forensic evidence here yeah uh initially when he was asked about the night keith crotwell and missing craft did not

having met either boy and claimed he was somewhere else that night. But Woodward didn't believe him and asked him to come to the station and talk to him. So take your gay fingers down to the station. And I think it was like, you do have a black and white Mustang and you are a mile away from this. Yeah, I mean, we better talk to you. Yeah. But at the station, Kraft continued to deny that he picked up Kent and Keith that night. But eventually, after a little more talking, his story started to change.

Actually. He said he was walking to his car after leaving Ripples. when he saw a young couple in the parking lot arguing. Yeah. Craft told him, quote, finally the girl had eventually had it, and I believe she got in the car and left with some people. And the guy comes over and was talking to me right there in my car.

What? Craft claimed that the guy who's talking to him, meaning Keith, was soon joined by another man and that they all had beer and decided to go for a drive. Not a man, honey, a 15-year-old. Exactly. Craft claimed that the three of them drove around for a while, Then they returned to the parking lot where Kent got out of the car and rejoined his friends.

Nope. But Keith wanted to keep drinking, so Kraft kept driving with him. At that point in the interview, Kraft's story began to spin out into a very convoluted story about Keith driving the car and getting it stuck in the mud, at which point Randy decided to walk several miles to a restaurant where he called his roommate for help and left Keith with the car. He left a stranger with his car. Here's something that everybody should learn. Everybody should learn this right now. The more details that comes spinning out

and the more convoluted it comes, the more they are lying. Yeah. There's not, no, you don't need all those details, buddy. It's like, when you call in sick for work when you're really doing something else, and you get way too detailed with it, and your boss is like, yeah, come on in. Yeah, like, I know you're bullshitting me.

Now, when Kraft got back to the car, he said Keith was nowhere to be found. He told Woodward, we were pretty drunk, so it crossed my mind that he might have passed out. And when he finally got the car, unstuck, you know, from the mud. Kraft says he went out to get some breakfast and didn't think another thing about Keith Croutwell.

Okay. He just disappeared. That's not my problem. Crazy that you were like the last person to see him before he disappeared and his head was found wedged into a jetty. Yeah, it's crazy. Investigators checked out Kraft's story with his roommate, Jeff Graves, who confirmed that Kraft had called him for help that night and he met him at a restaurant.

They even went as far as driving out to the area where he claimed the car had become stuck and they discovered a service road with tire ruts deep enough to have caused trouble for a driver. Okay. These two discoveries seemed to confirm Kraft's story. Yeah? Yet something about the whole thing didn't feel right to Woodward and his partner. They at least had that sense of like something's off here. Well, that's good.

The detective decided there was enough suspicion and there was enough some circumstantial evidence to file charges against Kraft for the potential killing of Keith Grottwell. But when he brought it to the case to the district attorney, he was told, forget about it. I kind of get that. There's really not a lot there. They said they don't have a body just a head and there's no forensic evidence tying craft to this head. Yeah.

All they had was conflicting stories and that wasn't enough to build a case. And to be honest... You wouldn't be able to convince a jury on that. No way. You didn't have enough there at all. Like if I didn't know the outcome, I'd still be sitting here like,

I don't know if that guy did all this. I don't know. The coroner's official cause of death for Keith Crotwell is listed as accidental drowning. still and the rest of his remains are believed to have sunk somewhere in the ocean oh they never found yeah where even if they were discovered they would obviously be too badly damaged to be of any use in any criminal case woodward and his partner did the best to keep the case alive but after a month or so of an action other cases came in and they were just given priority and it kind of got shoved to the

side that's really sad yeah so who is randy craft though please tell me everything who just entered the chat here. So for five years, investigators had just spun their wheels and just tried and tried to no avail to connect these murders. In a case where the killer had left absolutely not one shred of evidence to lead to him. Now, they finally had some suspect, at least something, you know, like this is at least in one of the cases that they believe is connected. But they couldn't come up with anything to hold him. So now he's there and they can't hold him. Still, that didn't stop detectives from looking into Kraft's background. And much of what they learned in hindsight fit a more modern profile of a serial killer, to be honest.

So Randy Kraft was born March 19th, 1945 in Los Angeles, California. That doesn't make him, is he an Aries? Pisces. Yeah. He's right on the cusp, though, because March 21st is Ares. I don't know what that means, but. Pisces, you know what? I will say, ever since I started taking my astrology class, you really can't glean all the information about one person just based on their sun sign. Yeah. But Pisarian people are usually like very dreamy. Okay. That's interesting. They're usually like artsy. Okay. But I'm assuming he doesn't really have the positive qualities of a Piscerian. No, I don't think he's got those. He doesn't have a lot of positive attributes. He was the fourth child born to Harold and Opel. craft. That's a pretty name. I know. Isn't that

adorable? According to Dennis McDougal, the obstetrician, and this is a quote, the obstetrician who delivered him reported no congenital malformations, no birth injuries, and no complications. Hey, that's great. It's great, normal birth. Sick.

Congrats. That's awesome. That's what you're trying to hear. Super happy about that. The family lived in Long Beach where Harold and Opel worked the production lines and Douglas Aircraft. Meanwhile, at home, Randy's three old sisters watched over and doted on their baby brother while their parents were at work. Cute.

According to his sister Doris, Randy was, quote, a very calm baby, but that didn't prevent him from getting hurt every now and then. Yeah, he's a kid. A little after his first birthday, he fell off a couch and broke his collarbone, which is upsetting. Then a year later, while the family was looking at a new house, he fell down the front steps and hit his head on the concrete and actually lost consciousness. Oh, that's not good. We don't love an early head injury.

We hate an early head injury. Harold and Opel rushed him to the nearest hospital, and he did regain consciousness and was released to his parents, and they said there was no complications later. But they also didn't have a lot of information or insight into that? No, they did not. As the only boy in this family,

he was definitely spoiled by his parents, very doted on, treated better than his sisters could ever remember being treated by their parents. If you have a brother and only one brother, you totally know how that's how that goes. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, while the entire family was very, very devoutly religious and very active in their church community, Randy didn't really have an interest in church. And so he didn't want to attend. And he didn't have to. But the girls had to. That's such bullshit. I think that's such bullshit. So of the time. Also, none of his sisters recall Kraft being abused in any way at home or anywhere else in the community. And any medical records that would have shown abuse are gone. So like it doesn't. But obviously we can't.

tell for sure if he was abused or not. But we do know that nobody in his home, school, or anywhere else in his community, reported or thought there was any abuse present in that home. He ends up saying that he was abused, huh? It's just one of those things. Okay. So at school, Randy was quickly singled out by teachers for being highly intelligent. Oh.

And he was placed in very accelerated classes very early on. He was, according to McDougal, who we have cited in the show notes, he was quote a likable egghead always good to crib homework assignments from but not a first round draft choice for the flag football team all right you know but while randy was clearly a good and capable student he wasn't always compliant and his former teacher lee manley said he was one of those people who felt the rules didn't apply to him which is not great when he wasn't in class he played saxophone in the school band and would be found otherwise with his two best friends billy manson and Paul Whitson. They dubbed themselves the three musketeers. They were like inseparable. And they weren't really exactly inclusive

when it came to other students, but like they were a very tight-knit group. Okay. They always managed to be looked upon pretty well by their peers. And, you know, they succeeded in, you know, romantic endeavors from time to time. They didn't have trouble with the ladies.

All right. But, you know, Manson recalled later, there were a batch of girls that we ended up spending a lot of time with in rotation almost. Oh, what a way to put that, sir. I said, dang. Dang, Billy.

What, damn. I bet those girls wouldn't like to hear that. Yeah, holy shit. Not a rotation. I think in my early 20s was when I realized that my day-to-day spending habits really had impact on my long-term financial stability. You know, like my credit score and stuff, I didn't really become. aware of that until later in life. But now, through Chime, you can be smarter about how you manage your credit scores. Build credit history with everyday purchases and regular on-time payments. That's a

biggie. Plus, get access to credit tracking tools and personalized tips for a stress-free credit experience. All without credit checks, minimum deposits, annual fees, or interest. Visitchime.com to get started. It can make it easier to borrow with better terms for life's unexpected expenses. You have access to lower rates on car and personal loans, and expanded eligibility for apartments and houses. A good score equals better chances. There's also no annual fees, interest, or credit checks. You can use it everywhere visa credit cards are accepted, and you can build credit with money that you set aside. Make everyday purchases count with Chime secured Credit Builder Visa Credit Card. Get started today at chime.com slash morbid. Chime feels like progress.

The Chime Credit Builder Visa credit card is issued by the Bank or Stride Bank N.A. Chime checking account required to apply. Money added to credit builder will be held your secured deposit account is collateral, and is your credit builder cards available to spend amount. This is money you can use to pay off your monthly charges. Out of network ATM withdrawal and OTC advance fees may apply. Late payment may negatively impact your credit score. Results may vary. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for details. So you're saying this airline forces the cabin crew to work for free? Tell me you're at least paid for boarding and deplaning.

No. Safety checks. No. Not even medical emergencies. No, but we'll always show up. But they're charging flyers more than ever. And we're putting in thousands of unpaid hours. Where is that money going? Canada's airline, hey? Unpaid work is a true crime.

Visit Unfair Canada.com to hear the whole story. A message from the Air Canada component of Coupie. Now, years later, Randy Kraft would acknowledge that he knew he was gay at this time, obviously, but he never let on to anyone else. And it seems that no one ever suspected it either. Okay. That's just how it was. Nobody saw his gay fingers back then.

Nobody noted. Nobody noted. This is gay fingers. Yeah. Yeah. Gay fingers goes crazy. That goes crazy. So it turned out that although Randy was genuinely liked, you know, by his peers, by adults in his life, not everyone thought highly of him, which I don't think anybody can say that.

You never get 10 out of 10. Steve Manley said, which was one of his friends, I didn't trust him and I didn't like him. Shit. All right. So this was one of his. Steve Manley put it blunt. This wasn't like one of. one of the three musketeers obviously it was like an acquaintance of his but like he did like him

really um he was four years younger than randy and was in the same boy scouts troop with craft with craft um he said he was the kind of person who'd say one thing to the parents and then do almost the opposite i didn't ever feel comfortable around him and i never understood why huh so that guy had like a gut instinct yeah after graduating from high school randy was accepted claremont men's college on an academic scholarship and in the the fall of 1963, he began his first year. He participated in Claremont's Reserve Officers Training Corps program, ROTC. It's a military training program designed to like, you know, it helps students pay for college, also kind of training them to go into the military. They had that at one of my

high schools. Yeah, ROTC is a pretty common thing. Yeah. But by 1965, the war in Vietnam was ramping up a little bit. And many young people, Kraft included, began speaking out against the military activity in Southeast Asia. It was a very big movement. Randy had always been interested in politics. So the war gave him something to speak out against. He felt he also, he wanted to pursue a political career at one point. He was very interested in that. Most of his teenage and young adult life, he spoke out very actively politically. In the summer of 1966, he moved to Huntington Beach with a friend from college. And that same year, he was arrested there after he was picked up in a vice raid on one of the known cruising spots by the beach. And he was charged

with lewd conduct. Oh, so there was that. Or nor. So it is funny that later he was found to have no arrest record. Yeah, because he was arrested. Fortunately, he was let go with a warning because it was his first offense. Was he 18 at this point? He might have been like 17. That's a great question. Yeah, it might have been that. But he was living a secret life at this point. Nobody knew who he really was. You know, he wasn't. out. Yeah. So, but he was also trying to maintain this like public persona a little bit.

So, and it was taking a toll on him. Yeah, that's a lot. I imagine that is very tough. Yeah. Later that year, he developed serious anxiety and it led to migraines, stomach problems. And this led to him becoming a regular user of Valium and other pain killers. Mm. In 1968, Randy was out of college and his deferment, which had kept him out of the army,

had expired. So he was going to be drafted. He decided to be proactive and he joined the Air Force. He figured it was safer than the Army or the Marines. That was just his reasoning. After enlisting, he was sent to Texas for boot camp and technical training. But rather than being sent to fight in Vietnam, he was assigned to the Air Force Test Center as a protective coding specialist,

also known as a painter of test planes, which is interesting. Things got worse the next year, though, because he did come out to his family the next year. According to Dennis McDougal, quote, His father went into a rage, howling that no son of his could possibly turn out queer. His mother was more understanding, if disapproving. She held out hopes that he was just going through a phase and would get over it.

That's the worst thing you could ever say to your kid when they come out as gay. Not the worst, but it's up there. I imagine that's horrifically traumatic. Yeah. Don't ever say to your kid like this is just a phase. Don't ever say to your, don't just let your kids be who they are. And trust them when they tell you who they are. Your love for your child should not be conditional.

And also, if you're worried that you're going to have a gay kid, you probably just shouldn't have a kid. Yeah, because guess what? Just have a kid. Chances are pretty high. Who gives a shit? Yeah. As long as they love a consenting adult, you know, like to get, like, it's like that's, as long as they're not hurting anybody and no one's hurting them. Yep.

What are you disapproving of? Yeah. Let them live their life. Let them live. Randy's sister Kay, on the other hand, blamed his sexuality on having attended an all-male college, but she tried to be sympathetic and understanding of his situation. Regardless of whatever attempts Kay made, Randy's relationship with his family was very strained after this. I can imagine. And it appeared to worsen his anxiety. Although his family wasn't

supportive, he did find a supportive community outside of the family. He frequented bars in the area and started actually going on dates, like just starting to actually live authentically, you know. Unfortunately, as he suspected, his newfound openness got him discharged from the military. Insane. Yeah. But he was given a general discharge rather than a dishonorable one. Whatever positive feelings he may have had at this point of his like, you know, being

so authentic and being who he was, there was no denying at this point that being openly gay in the 60s and 70s had a lot of drawbacks. Yeah, it came with a cost. For one thing, it pretty much destroyed any chance he had at running for public office, which he was interested in. And that had been like a dream of his, to be honest. And since being out had earned him a discharge, he found himself unemployed,

which means he couldn't pay his rent. Yeah, that's a very tough position to be in. As a result, he had to move back in with his parents and found a job tending bar at one of the local bars. The arrest for lewd conduct a few years earlier had been Randy's first experience with the law enforcement, but it certainly wasn't going to be his last. In March 1970, 13-year-old runaway,

Joseph Fancher went to the police in Long Beach, 13 years old, and reported that Randy Kraft had picked him up hitchhiking and taking him back to his apartment where he gave him drugs and alcohol. What Joseph didn't tell police at the time was that after giving him drugs and alcohol, Kraft had repeatedly sexually assaulted him. Oh, no.

Years later, when he was asked why he didn't tell this information to the authorities, Joseph replied, how do you tell something like that to your mom, something you don't understand yourself. Yeah, 13 years old. He was 13. That will change you for a long, long, long time. That poor baby.

I know. In his courtroom testimony given nearly two decades later, Joseph Fancher explained that he'd met Kraft at the Huntington Beach Pier and the man had taken him back to his apartment where he showed him black and white porn and offered to find a woman for him to have sex with. He was 13.

Jesus. Eventually, he started showing him images of himself having sex with other men. And then he gave him a large amount of pills and wine and sexually assaulted him. After the whole ordeal was over, Fancher got dressed and left the apartment, but he was stumbling so much because he was very inebriated that a passerby stopped and helped him to a nearby restaurant and somebody called an ambulance. It's very reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Fearing that no one would believe him and knowing that an accusation could reflect badly on him, Joseph chose not to tell anybody about the sexual assault. Just lived with that. That's a lot for a 13-year-old to just stuff down. According to Joseph, police took the report of him having been drugged and physically assaulted and got a warrant to search Kraft's apartment. But because Joseph had admitted to taking the drugs voluntarily, which I'm like, he's 13.

Yeah, he can't take drugs voluntarily. He can't consent to do that. Like, let's be real. The officers had no cause to arrest craft. And ultimately, it just went nowhere, the report. yeah what a world we used to have so in the aftermath of the whole thing Joseph claims his family abandoned him

at which point he descended into a life of petty crime and substance abuse that plagued him for decades his family abandoned him because he came forward with this isn't that awful yeah what a shit family in the years after that Randy got involved with several people but none were really long-term dating prospects he was just dating around in fact it wasn't until he met

Jeff Graves, who, Detective Woodward assumed to be his roommate, that Randy started dating someone seriously. Oh, so he was actually his partner? Yeah. Okay. But in the beginning, when Woodward talks about it, he's like, oh, it was his roommate. In the meantime... Well, he was he his mom.

He's just a proving mom. Yeah. That's just his friend. That's just his friend. In the meantime, he found more steady work at the aircraft factory working with electronics. And for the first time in his life, he was feeling like he was starting to make something for himself, but then he ran into a streak of. of bad luck starting in 1975.

Being picked up and questioned in the Crotwell case was just the first of many frustrations. So we're up to the point where he is picked up for the Crotwell case. So he's already been through some shit before that. Not long after he was questioned by Woodward, Randy was laid off from his job

at the aircraft factory and began working as an independent computer consultant. It's wildly inconsistent work, barely paid enough for him to get by. Then at the end of 1975, he and Jeff Graves' relationship ended, and Graves moved out. Because Graves was like, hey, why are the police here? Yeah, he's like something is wrong here. It seemed to Randy, like everything he'd worked to achieve in the previous 10 years had just slipped away in a matter of

months. Now, years later, the significance of Kraft being questioned in the Crotwell case would not be lost on investigators. For four years, they had been searching for a brutal killer who'd left more than a dozen bodies. But they'd made almost no progress. And although they didn't know it at the time, they had the man they'd been looking for in their custody pretty briefly, but without any evidence to charge him with a crime,

they just had to let him go. Maybe it was because of all the chaos happening in his life at the time, or maybe the arrest scared him. But whatever it was, Randy Kraft's killing spree, which had been averaging a new victim every five or six weeks, came to an abhorral.

abrupt halt after he was interviewed by Detective Woodward, scared him. Then, on January 3rd, 1976, an off-duty Santa Ana police officer was riding a dune buggy with friends near Silverado Canyon when they came upon the body of 22-year-old Mark Hall. According to his friends, Mark Hall had gone out drinking with another friend on New Year's Eve, and they had visited a bar before attending a party at a friend's apartment later in the night. at the party Hall drank a lot and smoked some pot but by the end of the night he was like very intoxicated he's at a party yeah deciding they wanted to go to another party Hall and his friend walked about two blocks to another friend's apartment but by the time they got there Mark was so drunk that he passed out as soon as he laid down on the couch

you know whatever shit happens later that night when the party was kind of winding down Mark's friend Philip Homer was looking for him so they could leave together but according to Homer Mark was nowhere to be found assuming his friend had found it just another way to go home. Homer eventually left the party and figured he'd just check on Mark the next afternoon after he slept it off. A few days later, Mark's body was discovered just feet from the road. To anyone familiar with the other murders and the circumstances in which the bodies were

discovered, there was really no doubt that Mark Hall was a victim of the same killer. But this time, everything seemed a little worse, if you can imagine that. Markal's body was nude and he had clearly been tortured brutally before death his mouth and trachea were quote densely packed with dirt and leaves which the coroner believed had become impacted

from his having been force-fed debris what the fuck he was alive when it was shoved down his throat like force-fed dirt and debris Dirt and leaves and debris. Yeah. Jesus. He had also been burned with a car cigarette across various parts of his body, or car cigarette

lighter, excuse me, with various parts of his body, including his eyes, nose, and nipples. Oh. And his genitals had been removed. While he was alive? Most of this was done while he was alive. The medical examiner also found that a swizzle stick had been shoved into his urethra. into his bladder.

Oh, my God. And the genitals had been inserted into his rectum. I didn't know it could get worse, but it got worse. It sure did. Like, how? How? How? Am I never hearing about this case ever?

Yeah, that's insane. That's the thing. Like, this is one of the worst. any of these details ever, ever, ever. Like, that's nuts. This is top brutality I've ever heard. Top. And I, it's, oh.

And nearby the body, detective discovered a broken bottle with blood on it, which they believe was used to cut the body post-mortem. Wow. A broken bottle? Yeah. There were also clear ligature marks around Hall's neck, and the medical examiner listed the cause of death as a combination of alcohol poisoning

and suffocation from the blockage in the airway. He suffocated on the debris. Of course he did, yeah. At the time of death, Hall's blood alcohol level was 0.67. For context, the blood alcohol level of around 0.45 or 0.50

would pretty much result in death. Wow. So Hall was well beyond that at the time of his death. Later, when the evidence and photographs were shown in the courtroom, the prosecutor referred to this the worst of Kraft's murders due to the brutality

and the extent to the wounds and the fact that the victim was alive when most of these injuries were inflicted. Yeah. Like that is... Used a car cigarette lighter to burn his eyes. Unthinkable. Yeah.

Now, initially, investigators were hesitant to publicly declare Hall a victim of the same killer, which is shocking to me. I mean, he escalated so much. For sure, he did. But still, I mean, that's kind of to be expected after a cool-off period, I would think. That's the thing. And they did acknowledge that while it was sheer speculation, there were similarities in the murders. I understand they're trying not to, like, jump the gun.

And again, create mass hysteria. More importantly, this time, the killer hadn't gotten away with leaving no evidence this time. Because on the broken bottle used to slash Hall's body, forensic investigators found a latent fingerprint that didn't belong to the victim. Nice. Because it had been used to cut the victim, it stood to reason that the thumbprint on the glass belonged to the killer. Unfortunately, when the print was run through the database,

it didn't match any prints on file. Run it through another database. That left detectives waiting for another victim in the hope that the next crime scene could produce maybe a little more evidence. You all just can't talk to somebody else with a different database? Come on.

This is the most frustrating. That wait turned out to be much longer than anyone had predicted. But for a killer who had been leaving victims with like very consistently and quickly, the unknown suspect had seemingly disappeared after this murder. In the months that followed, authorities in California had arrested Patrick Kearney, who confessed to the murder and dismemberment of 28 boys and men over the span of 15 years. At first, it seemed as though investigators finally caught the person responsible, but like for these killings. but the hope definitely fell apart quickly because when the cases were compared,

there were similarities, but there were far more dissimilarities. Most importantly, all of Kearney's victims have been shot in the head. And there was no evidence of torture in those cases. Yeah, that's very different. Ultimately, investigators would wait nearly two years before they had their next crime scene. And how many more people lost their lives.

Exactly. I'm Saruti, one of the hosts of Red-Handed, a multi-award-winning weekly true crime podcast, and we have just taken a big old deep dive into the case everyone is talking about. Aaron Patterson and the Mushroom Mass Murders. On the 29th of July, 2023, in the small town of Leanne Gatha in Australia, five people sat down for lunch. Within a week, three of them would be dead, and one of them would be in a coma for two months. Was the host, Erin Patterson, the world's most unlucky cook, or a cold-blooded killer? To find out, join us over two episodes as we analyse all the gritty details, including what happened at that fateful lunch, the aftermath, the investigation, the trial, and of course, all the lies.

Only on Red-handed. Listen to Red-handed wherever you get your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music or Wondry Plus. On April 16th, 1978, Anaheim police received a call about the discovery of a body laying about five feet from the road beside the on-ramp in the Riverside Highway. When they arrived, they found the fully-clothed body of 18-year-old Scott Michael Hughes, a marine stationed at nearby Camp Pendleton. The third person. Hughes had obviously ligature marks around his neck, which were consistent with a belt. And his body showed signs of road burn. indicating that he was pushed from a slow-moving vehicle. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as cerebral anoxia,

which was the result of strangulation. There was also anti-mortem abrasions, possibly from being tossed out of a moving vehicle. And the killer had cut open Hughes, this is horrifying and brutal, just putting that out there. The killer had cut open his scrotum and removed one of his testicles. There was no sign of alcohol in his system at the time of his death, but the medical examiner did note diazepam was present at about three times the therapeutic level, which would have caused sleepiness and mental confusion.

According to administrators at Camp Pendleton, on April 14th, Hughes had told another Marine that he was planning to hitchhike to Washington to visit his brother, who was suffering from cancer, after which he was scheduled to be reassigned to a base in Okinawa, Japan. Wow. So he was going to be out of here. Completely out of here. The next time anyone saw Scott was two days later when his body was found on the freeway.

Also, the crime scene itself yielded a few clues and almost no evidence again. But there was very distinct carpet fibers found on the victim's body, which were collected, and they hoped that they could at least use them in some way. For two years, there had been silence, and it seemed like he had come back and was apparently trying to make up for lost time. because in the early morning hours of June 11th, just two months after the murder of Scott Hughes, a driver on Irvine Center Drive called the police

to report she saw what she thought was a body on the side of the road. About 20 minutes later, a Santa Ana firefighter called police with a similar report, and the officers were sent to the scene where they found the lifeless body of 23-year-old Roland Young. Just hours before the body was discovered, Young had been released from the custody of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

after being picked up on a misdemeanor charge of public drunkenness. They had let him sober up. So he was totally sober when he was let out. Investigators theorized that after being released from custody, he was likely picked up by the killer when hitchhiking. Yeah. Which is like, what the fuck? What are the odds?

To those familiar with the case, this was very eerily familiar crime scene. Young wasn't wearing a shirt, but the killer had obviously redressed him and everything else, which always gives me the release. I don't know what it is. He wasn't wearing a left shoe or his belt. He was also missing the shoelaces from his right shoe,

and his jeans were soaking wet from a large amount of blood. During the autopsy, the medical examiner noted that his cause of death was blood loss following four stab wounds to the chest, all of which struck the heart. Oh, wow. This was a deviation from the killer's usual method of strangulation, but there were other hallmarks. Yeah.

According to the medical examiner at, and this is a quote, At or near the time of death, a sharp knife had been used to cut the scrodle sack and remove one testicle and some skin from the penis. Sorry, you said while he was still alive. Yeah. At or near the time of death. Okay. Young's blood alcohol at the time of death was around the legal limit, 0.08. But there was a large amount of alum in his system, which, when combined with the alcohol, would have made him lethargic, if not unconscious.

Definitely. detectives on the young case had barely begun processing this evidence on June 19th when a Los Angeles firefighter discovered the body of 20-year-old Richard Keith laying on the side of Moulton Parkway. Like most of the other victims, Keith had been strangled, and there were ligature marks on both wrists as well. It indicated, obviously, he had been bound. His blood alcohol level was 0.07,

but the medical examiner also noted a large amount of volume in his system and the combination had apparently caused him to choke, unquote, white froth, which was found in his throat. Oh. Yeah. Upon investigation, it turns out that Richard Keith was yet another Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton.

Number four now. According to Keith's girlfriend, he had gone with her to visit her mother on June 18th the day before, and he left around 11 p.m. Because he had no car and didn't arrange for a ride, he hitchhiked to his girlfriend's house and was presumably planning to return to Camp Pendleton the same way.

Otherwise, there was little else about the body or crime scene that would give them anything else to go on. Almost like clockwork, another body was discovered on July 6th. Oh, my God. This one, just off the side of the road on Interstate 5. After receiving the report from a driver on the I-5 around 3.30 a.m., officers came to the scene to find the body of 23-year-old Keith Klingbile, laying half in and half out of the slow lane.

So, like, on the highway. When they arrived, officers were expecting a dead body, but upon closer examination, they discovered that cling bile was unconscious and had a very weak pulse. What? He was still alive. Paramedics were called and he was rushed to the hospital,

but he died shortly after arriving. He was found alive. There were obvious ligature marks on his neck. indicating strangulation, but according to the autopsy, his cause of death was determined to be acetaminophen overdose, with ligature strangulation, a contributing factor. Acetaminophen, isn't that, like, Advil? Yeah.

Tylenol, right? Tylenol. Yeah, because Advil is ibuprofen, right? Yeah. So, yeah. The ligature marks weren't the only thing, though, tying Keith's murder to the other victims. He had also been burned repeatedly with a car cigarette lighter, including on the eyes, face, and apparently the left nipple is his, like, thing that he burns.

And it happens in a lot of these cases. It'll happen a few more times. Maybe it's because he's right-handed or something? I don't know. But Keith had recently hitchhiked to California from his home in Everett, Washington. He was apparently visiting his mother who lived in San Diego. Among the items found in his pockets were a number of matchbooks from various businesses, including one from a Chevron station in Long Beach,

which was another piece of evidence tying him to craft's growing list of victims. Other aspects of the case that linked him to the other victims included his missing laces from one of his hiking boots and the fact that, like many of the others, he had been pushed from a moving vehicle on the side of the road. Like the previous cases, investigators strongly suspected the four most recent murders were definitely committed by the same individual.

And now the press was calling this killer, the freeway killer. That's what was named because they hadn't yet found the scorecard. So he was initially called the freeway killer. I hope there already was another freeway killer. There probably is. But they were reluctant to say that much in press conferences that there was a connection between these four bodies. The investigators weren't. Detective Willie Stansberry told the press during one of the conferences,

we have to give a lot of consideration as to them, being committed by the same person. So they're like, we're considering it. Yeah. Still, while they felt confident that at least these latest four killings were connected, detectives readily admitted that the investigations were already starting to go cold just a few weeks later, even though they were connected. Yeah.

Stansbury said, it's virtually at a standstill because we have no place to turn. That must be in-adaming. Vuriating. Yeah. Two months later, another body was discovered along the highway in Sandburg. Nodino County. It's like, where does it end? But this case was even more vague and void of evidence than the others. On September 30th, 1978, a driver reported seeing a body along the interstate 83, and it turned out to be 20-year-old Richard Crosby. Richard was known to be a regular hitchhiker, and that night he was just headed to the movie theater. Crosby's cause of death was listed as suffocation, and his body's body showed a lot of signs of torture, including the same burn marks in the same spots with a car cigarette lighter. Less than a month later, on November 18th, the body of 21-year-old Michael Inderbeaten was discovered along the side of the 7th Street exit on the 405 freeway, just a few

yards from where the first victim, the very first victim, Edward Moore, had been found years earlier. According to friends, Michael had gone out to some nightclubs along the Pacific Coast Highway the night before his murder, where he and some others eventually found a ride with some other patrons. Yeah. Because the car was full, one of the young women was sitting on Michael's lap. And, you know, according to Ports Later, he started to pinch her in what she said was a not very good area.

Oh. So she slapped him in the face. And he became angry. And he demanded to be let out of the car. Okay. His friends reported to police that that was the last time they saw him. He was walking towards the Pacific Coast Highway in the direction of his home. now Michael was discovered wearing only a pair of pants which had been pulled down slightly

like many of the others he had been burned in the eyes and other places that we discussed with a car lighter and his scrotum testicles and skin from his genitals had been removed wow all of which was likely happened when he was still alive oh my god all of that the cause of death was listed as anoxia due to suffocation but while there were ligature marks around both wrists, there were none around his neck indicating he had not been strangled. Interesting. But he was suffocated. His blood alcohol level at the time

was 0.16, which would have rendered him drunk, but only mildly really. Yeah, not like crazy. He also had Valium and Sico Barbatol, both tranquilizers in his system. The combined effect of those two would have made him heavily sedated at the least, if not possibly

unconscious. So that seems to be the pattern here. Yeah. In their statement to the press, investigators remained pretty reluctant to connect his murder to the larger pool of victims, but with a total of 18 victims now across three counties. 18. It was getting pretty hard to ignore the obvious connections being made to the press. But when he was pressed about the connection,

the sergeant GF Buzzard would only concede that Michael's death may be connected with the others. That's all he would say. All right. Because the murders were occurring across multiple counties in Southern California in law enforcement agencies from those counties didn't always. always communicate. Well, we've talked about that. If they communicated at all, the connection between one victim and the others wasn't always apparent immediately. Also, information about potential suspects, light as it may have been, wasn't always passed along or discussed in interagency

meetings. Because remember, they all have egos and they don't want to share their shit. Yeah. You know, if anyone had considered Randy Kraft a suspect in these murder cases, it doesn't appear that his name was circulated widely, nor was he ever identified as a suspect during this time. Wow. To investigator surprise, following the discovery of Michael's body, Michael Interbeaten, the murder stopped again for nearly seven months. Okay. Then on June 16th, 1979, another U.S. Marine was found dead on the side of the 405 highway. According to one of the Marine station at the base, 20-year-old Donald Cressel was last seen around 1.30 a.m. on the night of the 16. When he told a fellow Marine, he was going to go to a restaurant, like, close to the base.

At 9.30 p.m., a driver on the 405 spotted Creasell's body along the side of the road and called the police. When the first officer arrived at the scene, he felt for a pulse, didn't find any, but he did note that the body was very warm and there was blood coming from his nostrils, indicating that he had been killed very recently. Yeah. His body had many cuts and scrapes that came from him being pushed out of the car. When the autopsy was performed, the Emmy noted the obvious ligature marks on his neck, but the cause of death was attributed to an overdose of multiple drugs. Okay. In addition to a blood alcohol of 0.06,

Cresel had unusually large amounts of Cetamine, two antihistamines, and phenocetin, and chlorfeneramine, both prescription painkillers. Okay. That was difficult to say. Yeah. The autopsy also showed that his left nipple had been burned with a car cigarette light. So those working the case, the killer seemed to be defying any kind of pattern for when he would kill. They were trying to come up with, like, is there a random pattern, you know, like anything?

Sometimes bodies would appear like they were on a cycle, and then he would just disappear for large stretches of time, and they couldn't predict what he was coming back. Yeah. This time the next body showed up on August 29th, but not in the usual method either, like having been dumped on the side of the road out of a car. On the morning of August 29th, police in Long Beach received a call about human remains having being discovered behind the Union 76 gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway. And they meant human remains. When they arrived, investigators found a human head, torso, and left leg and garbage bags in the station's dumpster. There was no indication of the person's identity, but there was a sock stuffed into the anus, strongly indicating who the killer was. Okay. It would take many years, but eventually this victim was identified.

It was 21-year-old British tourist Keith Jackson. Oh my God, just the fact that he was on vacation here. And unfortunately, despite like really intense efforts from authorities, they never could find the rest of his remains, which is really sad. Just two weeks later, on September 19th, the remains of 19-year-old Gregory Jolly were discovered in a plastic bag along the side of the highway 3.30 in San Bernardino. The first discovery was a headless torso.

But the following day, investigators found Jolly's head and what the press reported as, quote, other body parts and trash bags, about 25 miles from where the torso was discovered. Now he's just scattering body parts? Yeah, like, what the fuck? So unable to identify the body, the sheriff's department reached out to the FBI,

who ran the fingerprints through the national database and found that it was Jolly. It turned out that he was from Jackson's, in Ville, Florida, and nobody seemed to know why he'd come to California or who he might have been with on the night of his murder. Huh. According to his parents, he left home two months earlier, and they hadn't seen or heard from him since.

In talking to his friends, detectives learned that Gregory had said he was hitchhiking to California, quote, because he wanted to see Disneyland. But he also indicated that he might look for work as a dishwasher while he was there. Yeah. That broke my heart. Yeah, that's absolutely heartbreaking. Like, truly broke my heart. He was only 19.

Yeah. The victim's injuries, particularly the removal of the genitals, were what led investigators to suspect he was definitely one of the victims. Years later, several items belonging to Jolly were discovered in Brandy Craft's home. Which confirmed their suspicions later. During their investigation, detectives learned that Gregory was, quote, known to wear military clothing and tell people he was a Marine, which is probably how he came in contact with Kraft in the first place.

Oh, no. In the following months, after Jolly's murder, murder, several young men matching Kraft's preferred victim profile went missing or were murdered in an Iran, Los Angeles. At first, investigators on the Interagency Task Force considered whether more than two dozen new victims could be attributed to this unknown killer. But eventually, only one of the victims, 19-year-old Mark Allen Marsh, is believed to have been killed by Kraft. Like many of the other victims, Marsh was a Marine stationed at a base in El Toro, just outside Irvine. The last time anyone saw him, he was seen.

hitchhiking in the direction of Buena Park, a city in Orange County. It's about 20 miles, I think, south of Los Angeles. Yeah. On February 18th, 1980, his body was found alongside the I-5. The killer had cut off his head and hands, and, quote,

a large object had been stuffed into a body cavity. Oh. I'm unfortunately going to leave you there because I need a minute. Yeah. After that. And we will get to part three where Randy Craft will be.

be discovered and arrested um and this will all come to an end so he was like a little bit apprehended but it didn't really work out this time they got him but they had to let him go next time it's gonna work out okay there's hope um that was a lot that was a lot of bodies that was a lot of victims a lot of young men who are just going about their business one night this is just just like some of their stories too like they're like the ones who like didn't have a great relationship with their family, just kind of like setting off on their own. This poor fellow who was just going to see

Disneyland. It's heartbreaking. Like the poor guy who was literally just here as a tourist. Yes. Like that's the thing. It's like what the fuck? I just... That's heavy. This is a heavy case. It's a heavy case and it's just upsetting. It really is. And the way it was reported on

is upsetting. The things that come out of some of the investigators' mouth is upsetting. The things that come out of some of these employers' mouths is upsetting. And it's just like the fact that I didn't know, I mean, maybe I'm, maybe I'm in the, in the, like, minority here that I didn't. And I feel very remiss that I didn't. But I feel like this, this isn't talked about a lot. Yeah, no. I haven't seen this one. I've never heard it covered before. It's very upsetting. Yeah. But it's a lot. Yeah. So take a minute after that. Read for Ledger or something, you know, just do something like.

have some hot cocoa go watch bravo i know it's like 90 degrees hug someone you love yeah do something that isn't manifest the fall manifest the fall with us let's all manifest the fall we need that i'm really manifesting early fall same especially right now and you should too um but take a beat and we'll we'll get back to you with the third third and final part of the series so in that case we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but that's so weird that you decompress I'm going to be the I'm going to ...ohs,

...and... ...which... ...to... ...and... ...the... ...that... ...when... ...you...

...and... ...you... ...withal... ...than... ...withal... ...the... ...and... I'm gonna

I'm gonna I'm Yeah I'm I'm I'm I'm Oh

I'm Oh I'm 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 Wondery.com slash survey. I'm John Robbins, and joining me on How Do You Cope this week is Sophie Willam. I remember reading all this stuff and thinking, there's no way I'm going to be okay. Look at this. I'm a mess. I'm not what I thought I was. I thought I was going to be this success.

And actually here, I'm being told I'm not going to be that. So that's How Do You Cope with me, John Robbins. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.