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

Hey, weirdos. Before we unleash today's macabre mystery, we were wondering, have you ever heard of Wondery Plus? It's like a secret passage to an ad-free lair with early access to episodes.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking.
Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being. Audible has an incredible selection of over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible originals all in one easy app.
Find the genres you love and discover new ones. Explore bestsellers like my sister's title, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time.
I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me. She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk and I am absolutely loving it.
I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.
There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free.
Visit audible.com slash morbid. I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.
It's mine, not yours. Just kidding.
You can have some too. This is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough.
It's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli. I'm obsessed.
It's pillowy. It's satisfying.
I feel indulged. I just love it so much.
I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now. My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece, which like, hello, that's amazing.
My mochi is gluten-free and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks. Do I eat two a night? Yeah, yeah I do because they're that good.
And guess what?

My Mochi is the number one mochi ice cream in the U.S. of A.
The strawberry flavor is bursting with fresh picked fruit flavor that tastes incredibly refreshing. I love, love, love them after dinner.
This August, look for the purple box of My Mochi ice cream at your local grocery store and feel joyfully chill with the coolest treat around, My Mochi. 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 happy i'm trying and it's finally enough uh 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 motherfuckers, we signed with SiriusXM. Starting September 1st, we are going to be part of the SiriusXM 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.
But 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 exactly we will and that you've already seen isn't that weird yeah anyway so uh addressing wondery plus we will no longer be on wondery plus starting september 1st we will not be on wondery plus september 1st no um early and 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 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 Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening to it.
If it's not Wondery Plus, we will be on there. Facts.
So nothing's going to change. The only good things that are going to change are just um you know we're gonna be coming out at the same time every week still two episodes actually but so yes we're gonna be doing a bonus episode that's gonna come out in addition to the two episodes that already come out one week out of the month which i think we're gonna do at the second week of the month you're get a bonus episode.
A third episode that week. 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 yes.
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 like we 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. Yeah.
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, Sheena Shea.
I'm obsessed. And we got to do a fun photo shoot for it yesterday with our 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 and 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.

Thank you for that. One of the worst cases I have ever read in my life.
Okay. So hold on to that serotonin.
Here it is. Whoops.
Hold on to your serotonin. Hold on to it.
Because today we are going to be talking about a case. I'm this case is gonna be three parts um it's a long case like this is not three parts that are short yeah pretty long um we're breaking it up i'm gonna 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 out 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, you know, 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-parter and whatever we put out next we're going to do a spooky episode as like a palate cleanser yeah because after these three episodes you're going to need a 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 at any given time.
California really had a time where they just fucking went through it. Especially the 70s.
This time period. 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. 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? 61. 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. Exactly.
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.
Ah. 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 and trial were definitely putting an end to the murder spree that had 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 Randyandy craft he's sentenced he's charged but then the question remained who helped him oh he had help he they think he had an accomplice what yeah and they don't still to this day they were never able to figure out who was no i fucking hate that and when you hear the details of why they thought about this, it'll 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 a help in almost all of these? I think they do, yeah.
What? Or at least some of them. 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 be in his maybe early twenties. 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. 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.
That was a serviceman stationed at nearby Camp Peddleton. He was last seen a few days earlier at the army base, but he had a history of going AWOL.
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 yeah and so he ended up having a lot of disciplinary issues growing up because obviously he was acting out due to likely trauma yeah um since then though he'd managed to like get by on his instincts and know-how he was like a very savvy guy that way now the autopsy was done, the medical examiner determined that his cause of death had been asphyxiation, but he found out that he had been garrotted, not manually strangled. Oh, that always adds such a layer.
A garrote is, you may remember hearing about it in the Jomini Ramsey case, which is really awful. It's unfortunately always what I think of.
Yeah, 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 JonBenet 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 garrotting 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 ahead of 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. This killer does that a lot.
Yeah, this is kind of a thing um and the medical examiner believed that he had been redressed after being killed that for some 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 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 believed 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 with in 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 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.

He sounds awesome.

Yeah. 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.
Oh. Like, ugh.
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 for connections.
Yeah, 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 emerge that was suggesting just how he may have been lured to the beach in the first place. Vines had told the detective that Moore had hitchhiked a lot.
He liked to go to that beach. He liked to go there to escape the stress of life.
That was kind of a sanctuary place. He was also fairly irresponsible and impulsive, according to V often acting without regard for consequences yeah he's just a 20 year old um 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 um which was also like very normal at that time.
Exactly. After a month of slow investigation,

Detective Tynes 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.
morbid is sponsored by square Thank you. 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. You know those photos sitting in your phone, the ones that make you smile every time you scroll past them? Well, at smallwoodhome.com, they believe that you deserve better than that.
Smallwood Home transforms your favorite memories into stunning gallery-quality artwork that tells your story. All you have to do is upload your photo to smallwoodhome.com, choose your style from classic framed prints to elegant wrapped canvases, and they'll handle the rest.
With natural wood finishes like stained, almond, black, or white, plus options for sleek acrylic fronts, there is a perfect match for every home. And the best part? Every Smallwood Home piece is handcrafted right here in the USA by real artisans who care about quality.
No assembly lines, no shortcuts, just beautiful personalized art that is made to last. I love a handcrafted thing.
Over 3 million happy customers have already discovered why SmallwoodHome.com is just different. They deliver gallery quality at prices that make sense and ship in just days.
I have so many photos in my phone

that I'm about to send over to them that I can finally hang up on my walls and I'm really excited

about it. Right now, get 30% off when you use code morbid at smallwoodhome.com.
That's promo code

morbid to get 30% off your first order at smallwoodhome.com. Give your memories the showcase they deserve.
On the afternoon of February 6th, 1973, investigators in Wilmington were called to Seal Beach for what was described as the discovery of a murder victim. When LAP 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 garroting.

And the garrot was a steel wire.

Oh.

Now, to Detective St. John...
the cause of death appeared to be asphyxiation from grotting and the grot was a steel wire oh now to detective saint 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 grot 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. 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? 19? He was like, they think he was like late teen, early 20s.
Oh, that's so sad. It's like, why has nobody come forward and claimed this person? No one has claimed him? that's so sad it's like why has nobody come forward 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 and yeah they just prey upon it oh and it's so awful now nearly six weeks passed since the discovery of the second body when on apr 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 ID 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. 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 4th, 1973, when he was picked up for loitering around a schoolyard, 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.
That 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 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 of 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 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 learn 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, 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 LA area, there was no way to know where the head had originally been discarded yeah nevertheless investigators were like 99 sure that the head belonged to the dismembered victim found on terminal island you would think you know what are 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 i was just thinking that um 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 another one that's awful that that's still unidentified that person is and you have 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.
Yeah, 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. Mm-hmm.
But with the discovery of the fourth body, investigators were like, we gotta 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. In 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 in, you know, 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 times.
It's just fact. Like you can look back on it.
We've covered a lot of cases like this. Like Ronald Dominique.
The Bayou Strangler we talked about. It's the same kind of thing.
There's a lot of assumptions that'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 are not locked into one yeah um i mean most people do 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 um so weren't part of that spectrum. But when it came to the four bodies they now believed to be the work of the same killer, detectives Bill Tynes and George Troop were pretty confident that the victims, and I quote, 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 four of them and also got out of hand got out of hand there's also just no evidence to literally no indication whatsoever first of all you don't have a one-night stand with a boyfriend that's that doesn't usually work those two things are usually mutually exclusive all four of them had a one-night stand with a boyfriend but it two only two of them are identified so yeah so far yeah and 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 it was a bag of human skin socks yeah in parts where they shouldn't like there was a bag of human skin for a part of this case. That's beyond out of hand.
That's not getting out of hand. Jesus Christ.
Yeah. It just shows that kind of like flippant, like just whatever, they had a nightstand and things like 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? these are young guys like barely 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 even if that was the case even if that was the case that it was a one night stand gone wrong so they deserve it like what does that mean well and it's just so or that we shouldn't investigate it as far as far because no someone still did this yeah to them yeah and should be locked up for it absolutely we're just gonna be like oh yeah it's fine it's the things getting out of hand for me well what's what's nice to me is that that theory completely shat in their face very quickly good i'd fell apart on july July 30th, 1973, when the body of 20-year-old Ronald Wiebe was discovered at the 7th Street exit near Seal 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. That night, Ronald had driven to the bar but got a flat tire along the way and parked near a tire store a 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 of 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 ME 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 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've talked about that since we talked about um willie picton 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 it's something about that part of it it's all obvious i don't think i need to say it but shit you hear and shit you see in a horror it just doesn't feel like real life like you're like people do that to other people these 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. One of 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. 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. though this man only um he only weighed about 130 pounds that much dead weight would still be very difficult for one person that's a lot so in fact it seemed more likely and like alarmingly so that the killer had some help moving the body right this is when they first said wait a second this doesn't just't just happen in one person.
And they still have no idea. I hate that so much.
They say that time waits for no one. Neither should Payday.
To keep your money moving in the direction of your dreams, get Earnin'. What is Earnin', you ask? Honey, Earning is an app that lets you access your pay as you earn it up to $150 a day with a max of $750 between paydays.
Earning is the app that is helping millions of Americans take charge of their pay and avoid falling into debt traps. Earning's mission is to make financial momentum accessible to everyone.
It's your money, so put it in your own hands with Earning. I just feel like Earning is good for so many things.
Like, you know, every now and again, you get in your car and you say, oh, wow, who knew that I was on empty? I should have known that, but I didn't. And then you look at your bank account and you're like, oh, crap, I haven't been paid yet.
Well, you'll never run into that problem if you have Earning. An unexpected trip to the vet will not ruin your day because you'll have the money to pay for it.
Download Earning today, spelled E-A-R-N-I-N, in the Google Play or Apple App Store. When you download the Earning app, type in Morbid under podcast.
When you sign up, it will really help the show. Morbid under podcast.
Earning is a financial technology company, not a bank. Access limits are based on your earnings and risk factors.
Standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees. Expedited transfer is available for a fee.
Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service. Available in select states.
Terms and restrictions apply. Visit earnin.com for full details.
Download Earnin now and take control of your pay. You know what's even more stressful than a packed calendar? Realizing you're out of coffee right before a meeting.
That actually happened to me the other day, and it's exactly why I stocked up during the Thrive Markets Back to School sale. Even if you're not going back to school, I'm not,

it's the perfect time to reset. Thrive makes it easy to shop for high-quality pantry staples,

snacks, vitamins, even skincare, without the errands or the ingredient labeled deep dives.

I just restocked with Aloha Protein Bar, Simple Mills crackers, and my favorite poppy drinks. I love them so much.
Everything is delivered super duper fast, and I saved up to 25% on all of that. Their filters make shopping by diet or lifestyle a breeze, and their healthy swap tool actually helped me upgrade my usual buys with zero label stress.
I love the lesser evil popcorn.

I get my chomp sticks from there.

I love Thrive, and you will too.

Now's the best time to try Thrive Market.

You'll get up to 25% off select items,

and new members get 30% off their first order,

plus a free gift.

Who doesn't love that?

Go to thrivemarket.com slash morbid to start saving.

The sale ends 831.

Don't miss it. During their investigation, Times and Troop learned a lot about Ronald Wiebe.
And all of it seriously undermined 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 um 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 really wild.
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.
Gay panic to me is insane. It's the weirdest way to live your life it truly is worried about what consenting adults are doing because all you're like i literally don't care it says so much more about you to be freaked out and like up in arms about gay people than it does about the gay person 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 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 me 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 information am i being crazy or like 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 bi anything i don't care if those two people slept together once or twice because it doesn't have an effect as long as they're like if are they becoming a suspect sure that pertinent.
Absolutely. But if they're not, why the fuck do I care? If they're just giving information about their friend who maybe they had a relationship with.
No, but that's why it happens. It just doesn't matter.
A gay person will sleep with anybody. Yeah, that's the thing.
It just doesn't... And they have so many partners.
Shut the fuck up. So yeah, it just it's very strange to me it's strange behavior it's strange that it's still so it's it just grinds my gears yeah that's the thing it's like it's very infuriating because it's like no these are just people who were murdered and we can just investigate it as if these are people who were murdered and it's like i know we're talking about something from the 70s it's like so different, but it's really not because these are still things that the community faces today.
Yeah, of course. It's so irritating.
Yeah, absolutely. Like we should just investigate deaths of humans the same across the board.
As deaths of humans, you know. To make sure that the people who are killing humans are not just floating around.
And just 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 roost 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 idiots were 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, 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.

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 just weren't linked to him.
And like maybe not even discovered. Maybe he traveled.
Maybe he went different places. Like who knows.
That's so scary. Now, on December 29th, 1973, hikers in the San Bernardino Mountains discovered the body of 23-year-old Cal State arts 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 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 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 um in addition to the sock that had been found um there was and this is, 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, 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, it looked like the killer had shaved his face and head after he had murdered him.
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, it's so eerie.
There's many different pathologies with that, you know. Each different thing.
It's, oh, I hate it. according to friends Vincent was you know he was young he was like adorable

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 when we're young. 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 sketch pad

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. No.
Now nearly half of all murder victims are killed by someone they know. Yeah.
But the rate is 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.
In cases where the victim's killed by a stranger, though, it is so much fucking harder to call. Because it can be anyone.
There's no 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 sheer luck no it's true um 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 There was no connection between these guys. So there was nothing to go on.
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 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, pissed that he had left without taking her with him. 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 got to come back and get 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 and 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 going back together. To 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 break the case.
They were very disappointed. Yeah.

Like the other cases, no clues found at the place he was found. 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.
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 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 a U.S.
Marine, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, detectives got to work interviewing 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 it's called liberty. Oh, okay, like you can go out on your own um for a short period and he wanted to visit los angeles on the night he went missing um he and several other marines had went out to bud's cove bar in san uh san clemente where he told them of his plan to go to la for a few days yeah according to those friends he had found someone to drive him to LA, 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. 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.
Lee had a high blood alcohol level at the time of his death, and the cause of death was listed as asphyxia from 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 Little 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..
Yeah. 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 adults. Live your damn life.
But unfortunately, this would make him a perfect target for this killer. 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. These are days.
Yeah. Hours, really.
Yeah, yeah. This time, this body was found at the bottom of an embankment off the Ozzo Parkway in Orange County.
Although 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't have any shoes or socks on. Okay.
And his cause of death was determined to be acute intoxication from drugs and alcohol. Okay.
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.
If your dog could talk, they'd warn you about what's lurking in their bowl. Mass-produced kibble isn't just unappetizing.
It could be a crime against canine health. Mysterious byproducts, unpronounceable preservatives, and who knows what fillers.
Sounds more like evidence from a crime scene than dinner. Ollie is here to crack the case on pet nutrition with fresh human-grade meals made with the highest quality ingredients.
No mystery meats, no artificial junk, just real minimally processed food made in U.S. kitchens.
It's the kind of clean eating that keeps tails wagging and nose sniffing for more. With five fresh protein-first recipes like beef with sweet potatoes and turkey with blueberries, your pup won't have to wonder what's in their food ever again.
Because when it comes to their health, the only mystery should be where you hide the treats. Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food.
Head to ollie.com slash Wondery, tell them all about your dog, and use code Wondery to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they for a happiness guarantee on the first box.
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. gets 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 he's like kids that's that's like beyond you know now according to his family james had asked to borrow the 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 Ripple's, 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 Ripple's, indicating that James had been picked up at the bar. Yeah.
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.
You just had Thanksgiving with your friends at the newly formed church for your community. Right.
And you have after celebrating what was probably like a nice we just formed this church together we have this community this is our thanksgiving together and then to have this happen and just to think like obviously nobody has any idea that this is happening and they're thinking about their plans for the next couple hours or their plans for the next couple days it will never no 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 this they said so jj um detective jj hurlbert told reporters we're not necessarily saying he's homosexual but he certainly preys 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 way to hedge your bets on that one yeah truly we're not saying he 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. 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 gonna be pinned for 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 gonna run and be 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 there's a possibility no one saw anything that they figured was worth noting.
Right. Or had been picked up by this guy.
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. Yeah.
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. 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 Ripple's 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 stake, inserted into his anus, and he had been strangled to death.esus 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 victim where the killer had dragged the body to the water and alongside those footprints were two sets of footprints oh. 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. Yeah, you would think.
I don't know why. It just feels that way.
It's just more people to fuck up. Right, exactly.
Humans are fallible, so you would think with two of them, it's just more. 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 Jonaitis.
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.
Right. 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 Troop and Tines 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. Similarly, many of the victims were discovered with white tissue either on their body or inserted into 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 they believe this could have been some kind of 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 serviceman has been killed but won't be immediately transferred to a hospital or morgue because investigators believe the killer had used this to keep the bodies from purging while they were being transported to a dump site.
I don't... Yeah.
It's apparently like a thing. Okay.
Yeah. So it gave them at least something that they could at least...
I 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 one. 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 the behavioral analysis unit was doing, at this time, like super innovative work in studying killers and other violent predators. Go watch Mindhunter.
In his profile of the killer, FBI agent Howard Teton 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, described the killer in a way, they got something out of these profiles, but this is a wild description. Okay, I'm getting ready.
Described 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, I mean, clearly not.
Yeah, he can't stop. The urges are too much.
Now, the insight provided by the profilers and psychologists 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've been trying to do this whole time. Yeah.
In the meantime, within a couple of months of murdering craig jonaitis 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 atrocious ways.

Yeah.

Is something I think we need to take a minute from yeah um because part two is gonna 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 craft is okay love that i love the part where they're apprehended we are going to get the part where they're not stresses me out so much so we will get there um 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 gotta take a minute absolutely yeah yeah so well we'll be back with a lot more all

right it's rough 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. Heyo.
Bye. Bye.

Bye. Thank you.
I'm I'm I'm 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.