Episode 700: Randy Kraft: The Scorecard Killer (Part 3) | Morbid

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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

Hey, what's up? Hi, how you doing? How you doing?

How you doing? That's a little Wayne, but you would not know that.

I did not know that. I just thought of Laura Dern.

I shortened it a little bit to be more respectful to my listeners.

You guys are dumb and old. Just kidding.

Somebody better get mad at her about that.

I'm America's sweetheart. I'm just kidding.

No, we were just talking happy things because we have lots of happy things happening.

And we were saying how we noticed that a lot of people were saying that they've noticed recently that we're like a little unhinged.

Yeah. Like kind of like old morbid. And I got to tell you, one, I'm really happy that you noticed that.

Yeah. And two... I feel like unhinged happy.

It's like how Stella got her groove back.

Yeah. It only took a few years. I'm feeling it.

You know, it's quick for you to lose your groove.

It's very quick to lose your groove. But yeah, when your groove gets punched in the jaw, it's easy to lose it.

Yeah, then you can't shake your groove thang.

It's like a lot happens when your groove is affected.

It's true. And you just have to come back from it slowly but surely.

And here we are. I think we're almost back.

To our groove. Yeah. We're almost back. It's feeling really good, though.

We feel happy. It's feeling... Seriously good.

Okay, we were not on the same page there, but yeah, it's feeling seriously good.

And groovy. It's feeling both of those things.

Our telepathy was not fully turned on at that point.

You know, it's later in the day. And we've been doing some things, so we've been busy.

It's true. So I don't think I told you guys how awesome the Boston Ghost Show was.

It was fucking rad. Hell yeah, brother. It was so good.

It was at TD Garden. And I'd never been to a show there before.

You really have never been to a show there?

I had been to Taking You to See High School Musical on Ice. there fuck yeah we saw that so what do you mean you never saw a show sorry what do you mean I guess I have seen a show there.

Was that not an experience for you? It was a good experience, but Ghost was also really great.

Yeah, that's a little more. And I met a lot of you at the Boston show.

So I just wanted to make sure you guys knew that that was fucking awesome meeting you.

In fact, I was right behind a couple of people, a couple of listeners.

I was right next to a couple of listeners and it was great. yay I loved it and again if you have a chance to go to a ghost ritual go to one Yeah, I like that they call them rituals.

Yeah, they call them rituals. There was a part of me that said, jump on a train and go to New York the next day.

But I said, responsibilities, Elena. John was like, do it.

You should go. And I was like, no. YOLO.

We're on a floating rock in space. If you want to disregard your responsibilities, you got to do it.

I probably should. It's your stellium in Capricorn that won't allow you, but we'll work on it.

Because you also have a stellium in Sagittarius, which is very like...

Let's go. Let's go travel. Let's go see the world.

But I have to see what house it is in for you.

In case you didn't know, I'm taking an astrology class and I'm getting a lot more well-versed in astrology.

She is. the houses now I'm pretty I'm pretty impressed I gotta say thank you but another concert we didn't tell them about We took Alina's mom, my grandma, we took Ma to go see Rod Stewart.

And we didn't know what to expect. Like, I like a couple of Rod Stewart songs, but I don't know a ton of them.

Yeah. And I was just like, what is this going to be like?

And I grew up with my mom and my dad, but my mom loves Rod Stewart.

She thinks he's sexy. Yeah, like, she, like, Rod Stewart is her, like, Tobias Forge.

And or Harry Styles. Exactly. So I grew up listening to Harry Styles songs. to Rod Stewart a lot.

Like I know all the songs. It's very nostalgic for me.

She just loved it. My dad loves them too.

So it's just a fun thing. And yeah, but we didn't really know.

I was like, what do I expect from a Rod Stewart concert?

And it's his like farewell tour too. So we took her to it because, you know, he's It's his farewell tour.

It was one of the best fucking concerts I've ever been to.

Rod Stewart? Goes hard. Puts on a motherfucking, and I hate telling you this now because it's his farewell tour.

You know what? He's still going other places.

And you don't have a lot of chances to see him again.

But if you can, if he's coming near you.

I'm telling you. Go see him. What did we learn?

Anything for Rod. Anything for Rod. That's what we learned that night.

We learned that right away. That song where he's like, do you think I'm sexy or whatever?

If you want my body and you. think I'm sexy I always forget that the next part is I sang it wrong I thought it said something about sugar babies you did it doesn't no Rob Stewart's not like that no he's not but during that song and like on the side thing it just said sexy question mark sexy And I thought that was the funniest fucking thing in the world.

He's still moving. around he's grooving he had five costume changes yeah like not even just like all like a minimal costume change oh no new shoes soup to nuts He knew everything.

He knew beyond. He had, and his voice sounds phenomenal.

I know, like, if you're like a Gen Z right now, you're like, what the fuck are you talking about?

You better discover Rod Stewart. But go discover Rod Stewart.

Rod Stewart. Anything for Rod. Because the other thing is, that song, Do You Think I'm Sexy, is going to get caught in your head for days. years to come it's it transcends time and space like we have been it's in john's head now too so like the two of us but like when we're always around the kids so like we can't just be like dude I feel like my body.

So both of us are just being like. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's a great song. I really wouldn't. So that's what we learned in the last couple weeks is that Rod Stewart fucking... puts on a banger of a show, and I would do it again in a second.

Yeah, I wish I knew sooner. Yeah, shit. But at least we got to see him.

I know, and Maggie Mae live. was the coolest thing I've ever seen because I've loved that song forever.

Infatuation. Great song. Infatuation. Oh, yes.

So good. So good. I have so much to say about it, but see for yourself.

Go see Rob. Go to Abu Dhabi. I think that's where he's finishing it.

He's ending it in Abu Dhabi. Yeah. But that man is crazy.

He's 80 years old going everywhere. And he's just shaking his bum on stage.

Good for him. Shake his butt. But yeah, it was great.

And again, we have some really fun stuff coming up with the re-watcher.

If you're not... If you're not on that train yet, I highly recommend you get on that train.

Well, we should probably say, too, and don't worry, we're going to get to the case, but this is actually like business.

We announced it on the rewatcher that we are going to be doing True Blood for season two.

Next season. So we're finishing up Buffy.

I think we're probably gonna be done with Buffy like around October.

Yeah, in the fall. Yeah, like in the fall.

Around that time. Don't quote me. Yeah, I don't know.

But then we're going to True Blood. True Blood.

We're starting it from the beginning and it's going to be so much fun.

And I have never seen a single episode. With Buffy, I had seen like an episode or two.

Not much. Not a single episode of True Blood.

Nothing. She has no idea what she's in for, so shh.

Yeah. And you've seen it through once. Yeah, I've seen it through once, but I haven't rewatched.

But then Mikey, who produces Morbid and is a co-host on Rewatcher, has seen it like a bunch.

So it's really staying true to the theme if you're already a Rewatcher that you know.

And we have a really cool little surprise that we'll let you know soon about that.

Literally so exciting. Life? Life has been – I just want to like shout out to the big you, the big universe up there.

She's – She's bestowing gifts. Yeah. Life is lifing.

It is. So I really appreciate that. In a good way. um but yeah now that we've just said life is lifing and the universe is great and everything's been wonderful um Sorry, I'm about to take you down.

This is going to be a long one. I was going to split this into four parts.

But when I was looking at them, one, it didn't feel like there was a natural way to split it that way.

Yeah. Just because they're long. That was the only reason.

And it felt like part two would have been... too dark and depressing and not any kind of like forward momentum if I had just split it into like another part.

Or you mean part three would have been more... Part three.

Yeah. Or no, part two would have. If I had split part two into like another part, it would have just been... Oh, I see.

Like two and three would have been a bit...

A bunch of victims being found in awful, awful ways.

And there wouldn't have been any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.

So that's why these are a little longer.

Hopefully you guys are cool with that. I just didn't want to split it, split it, you know.

I felt better this way. So this is going to be kind of a long episode, but it's the end.

We're going to get to some kind of resolution. at the end of this.

When we last left you guys, we had... on even more victims.

They had talked to Randy Kraft. They had brought him in for at least a couple of victims that they were suspecting him of being involved with.

But they didn't have anything to hold him on, so they just had to let him go.

And he was free to continue to keep going.

And he kept going. Yeah. So while investigators in Los Angeles were just struggling to determine which victims belonged with which killer... at this point, because there's so many and they're happening so fast.

1980 was off to kind of a great start for Randy Kraft.

Really? He and his new boyfriend, Jeff Selig, had bought a small house in Long Beach, and Jeff's small candy business was doing well.

Wait, wasn't his last boyfriend's name Jeff?

Does he have a thing for Jeffs? Jeff, maybe he has a thing for Jeff.

Yeah. Yeah, was it Jeff? That's interesting.

I feel like it was. Started with a J for sure.

So Randy himself had also gotten back on his feet in, you know, a career sense.

He found work as a processor with Lear Siegler Industries.

He had even begun considering enrolling in University of Southern California's MBA program.

Wow. Remember... we're like, whoa, look at that.

And I'm like, wait, he just, he's murdered at least 18 people.

That would have allowed him to further climb up the corporate ladder if he was getting an MBA.

And he had actually even started getting a little active in politics again.

Interesting. Yeah, like speaking out on issues and all that stuff.

One of the perks of Kraft's new job with Lear Siegler was that he had like business trips every once in a while and they would kind of expense them for him.

And so that meant he got to explore that interest of his, which he did want to travel more.

But... It was a little limited. In the summer of 1980, Kraft was assigned his first out-of-state job on a project with peerless trailers. and that was going to be in the neighboring state of Oregon.

So he was in Salem, Oregon, and that's when the news broke in California that authorities had arrested William Bonin, the man they believed to be the freeway killer.

Oh. We've talked about William Bonin before.

We sure have. Yeah. After he was arrested, Bonin confessed to sexually assaulting, torturing, and strangling 14 young men and boys.

Mm-hmm. But he was suspected of at least seven additional murders.

He was even believed to have had an accomplice for the majority of his murders. which fit with what investigators knew or at least suspected about many of the murders in Southern California.

Even his active period matched that of Randy Kraft's, which was like 1968 to 1980.

The thing was, William Bonin was the man the press referred to as the freeway killer, but unbeknownst to just about everybody in Southern California, He was not the only one strangling young men and dumping their bodies alongside the highway.

They thought they got him. Okay. With as many of his crimes temporarily assigned to William Bonin now, Randy Kraft felt less restricted.

Because he was like, well, he's getting blamed for it.

He's taking the fall. And once again, he was free to pursue his really violent fantasies without any hesitation or restriction.

In the early morning hours of July 18, 1980, a man hauling beans to a cannery in Salem, Oregon, discovered the nude body of 17-year-old Michael Chanoff.

At the time of his death, Michael had been on a solo hiking trip before he was going to be starting his first year of college in the fall.

Uh-huh. The driver had stopped that morning because he thought he saw a large stuffed animal in the road.

But when he got out of the car and approached what he thought was a stuffed animal, he discovered that it was a body.

O'Fallon's hands were tied behind his back with shoelaces, which were secured to a second set of laces that bound his ankles together.

So he was like hogtied. Yeah. This is very graphic.

We said this in the first two episodes. There's a lot of graphic brutality in this.

There was also a shoelace tied around his scrotum and secured to the bindings around his ankles.

Oh wow. The medical examiner listed O'Fallon's death as being caused by strangulation, but Also noted that he did have high levels of Valium and Tylenol in his system at the time of his death.

Which is becoming a thing. Yeah, and he had consumed at least one or two beers in their interviews with his mother.

Investigators learned that he had left home a few weeks earlier and was intent on seeing parts of Canada before starting school in the fall.

He had wanted to travel light, so he brought only, like, the basic necessities he needed for camping, like a camera.

The camera would be found among the evidence confiscated from Kraft's home a few years later.

So he took the camera. He was also known to have been hitchhiking for a lot of his trip.

Because again, it was that time period where it was really not a big deal.

Just one day after O'Fallon's body was discovered in Salem, police in the nearby town of Woodburn found another body the day after.

This was the body of 30-year-old Larry Parks just off the side of the highway.

Like many of the other victims, Parks' body was fully clothed, but he was missing his belt and his shoelaces.

His cause of death was listed as ligature strangulation.

But the medical examiner also saw that there was high levels of Valium and over-the-counter pain relievers in his system at the time of death.

At the end of July, Randy... who had been in Oregon, returned to Long Beach.

Just one month later, another body was discovered.

One month later. Yeah. What this did was it effectively undermined the certainty investigators felt at having caught the man responsible for strangulation deaths in Southern California.

Right. Because in Oregon, they could at least say like, maybe this is someone else.

Now we're back in Southern California. On the morning of September 3rd, 1980, a group of boys playing near the El Toro Air Base found the body of 19-year-old Marine...

Robert Luggins Jr. He was wrapped in a plastic bag and dumped at the end of a dead-end street.

He had been found in the fetal position and was bound at the wrists and ankles, which feels a little, this is like a newer kind of thing.

Yeah. The only article of clothing found with his body was a single sock.

And... The medical examiner did theorize that it had been inserted into the victim at one point and become dislodged due to advanced decomposition.

Okay. The medical examiner estimated that the body had been in the location for nearly a week.

Wow. Which made identifying the exact cause of death pretty impossible.

Yeah, because remember, this is California.

Exactly. Yeah, as best as he could tell, the pathologist figured the most likely cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation, but indicated that smothering could also have been the cause.

At the time of death, Logan's blood alcohol level was quite high.

It was 0.25%. There was also high levels of antihistamines in his system, which that was with another victim, antihistamines were a thing.

Although it seemed less likely than strangulation, the ME acknowledged that the combination of alcohol and drugs could have contributed to the death.

But again, he wasn't sure. Robert was last seen on the night of August 22nd.

He and three friends had left the base. They were just going out for a night of drinking.

According to the three men he was with that evening, they had found a spot near the beach where they passed around a bottle of Soko.

Southern Comfort. When that was gone, the group visited a liquor store near the Huntington Beach Pier.

And at that point, Loggins said he wanted to sleep on the beach and walked off.

His friends tried to get him back to the car to return to the base, but they were unsuccessful.

He just wasn't going to go. The following morning, when Loggins failed to show up for work, they went out looking for him, but they couldn't find any evidence of him anywhere.

A few months later, in the spring of 1981, Kraft was sent back to Oregon.

On the morning of April 10th, police in Goshen, Oregon, received a report about a body that was discovered alongside Interstate 5.

When they got to the scene, investigators were shocked at the level of violence that this victim suffered.

The victim was 17-year-old Michael Kluck.

17. Just a baby. was discovered cluck's body was still warm indicating that this had happened pretty recently that's happening a lot more and it's so scary yeah like recently in the case yeah He was nude from the waist down and he had been sexually assaulted.

This is just graphic. According to the autopsy, his death resulted, quote, from 16 blunt force wounds to the back of the head, which had caved in the victim's skull.

Oh my God. When the results of toxicology came back, they showed large amounts of antihistamines, painkillers, and tranquilizers in his system. and he had a blood alcohol level of .09.

According to his mother, Michael had left home in Kent, Washington the day before. with the intention of hitchhiking to Bakersfield, California to get a job.

Under the circumstances, investigators theorized that he had been picked up by his killer while hitchhiking.

And the man gave him a beer, drugged him, assaulted him, and murdered him.

Yeah. same time that investigators were searching the scene for evidence, Randy Kraft visited the emergency room in Tualatin, Oregon.

He was looking to get treatment for a badly bruised foot. emergency room doctor that he had badly injured his foot around 3 a.m while moving around his hotel room barefoot in the dark trying to reach the television so he could watch the space shuttle launch I feel like you wouldn't injure your foot that badly in that scenario.

No. It would take several more years, but eventually Kraft would be connected to the victim when investigators found Cluck's shaving kit under some clothes in a dresser at Kraft's home.

Wow, he kept a lot. Yeah, he did. Now, in keeping with his new pattern, the killings in and around Long Beach stopped when Kraft was in Oregon. and they started again once he returned to California.

Then, following the murder of Michael Cluck and Goshen, they seemed to stop again without explanation.

Eventually, these breaks in the frequency of the murders would be attributed to his domestic routines and successes, apparently.

Like when things were going well in his life and he was experiencing less stress, there were fewer murders.

And when things in his romantic life were positive, there appeared to be less of an impulse to commit murders.

For instance, like the large break in activity following the murder of Mark Hall in December 1975. was attributed eventually to Kraft having begun his relationship with Jeff Selig, you were correct, around that time.

While his personal successes were definitely a factor, the opposite was unfortunately also true.

Yeah. Throughout the latter half of 1981, things between Kraft and Seelig appeared to have been going well, but by early 1982...

They'd hit a rough patch in their relationship and began seeing a therapist in late June.

That's when the murders began again. Yep.

So as soon as it starts going downhill, he's mad.

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On July 29th, 1982, an employee from the California Department of Transportation was sent to investigate reports of a strong, very unpleasant odor near the Hollywood Freeway in Echo Park.

When they got to the location, they did discover a body, that of 13-year-old Raymond Davis.

Oh my God. That's his youngest victim so far, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Raymond Davis was laying just off the road by the Rampart Boulevard exit ramp.

His wrists and ankles were tied behind his back with a shoelace, similar to that of the other victims, and he had been strangled.

Raymond Davis was from Pittsburgh, California, nearly 400 miles north of Los Angeles, and had come to the area to visit his mother for the summer months.

On the night of June 17th, he had left his house.

He told his mom he was going to visit a friend and then was never seen or heard from again.

Davis told reporters, his mother told reporters, he had a new friend.

He was always playing with him. I told him I wanted to know where he lived and a phone number, but her son never gave her the information.

For reasons that remain unclear, there were also reports that Davis had gone out that evening to look for a lost dog.

Okay. So I'm not sure what that's about. to the absolute horror of the person who found this body, the transit worker, about 100 feet from where Davis's body was lying.

There was a second body. The second body was 16-year-old Robert Avila Jr.

He had been reported missing about a week earlier.

They're like little kids. Yeah. What the fuck?

Children. Robert had been strangled to death with a length of wire.

And while Davis's body had been in that location for more than a month and was in an advanced state of decomposition, Robert was believed to have been there since July 21st.

Although there was no evidence that the two boys knew one another, it seemed pretty unlikely that they had been placed in the same location by coincidence.

Yeah. And investigators acknowledge that they, quote, believed one suspect killed both youths.

Now, in late November 1982, Kraft was sent back to Oregon to continue working on the project, and the killing continued once he got there.

In the early morning hours of November 24th, the body of 26-year-old Bryant Witcher was discovered alongside a residential road That was kind of parallel to Interstate 5 in Wilsonville.

This was a town that was like just outside of Salem where he was hunting before.

Yeah. Yeah. and there was obvious ligature marks around his neck.

His cause of death was listed as asphyxiation, but he also had a pretty high blood alcohol level.

And there was a large amount of, say it with me now, Valium in his system.

I don't know if it was going to be antihistamines, volume, Tylenol.

People all over the place. According to his friend Earl Davis, Brian was last seen on November 23rd, the day before, wearing distinctive clothing that Davis had given him, including a velour pullover jacket.

At the time of Witcher's disappearance and death, Randy Kraft was known to be working in nearby Tualatin, Oregon.

And when investigators searched Kraft's home after he was arrested later, Witcher's velour jacket was discovered in the garage.

Jeez. It's really insane how much he kept from these victims.

Like something from everybody. On the night of December 9th, just two weeks after Witcher's murder, the body of 19-year-old Lance Taggs was discovered on the side of Interstate 5 in Tigard, Oregon.

That's less than a quarter mile from the spot where Brian Witcher's body was found.

Right. The previous evening, Taggs had been seen leaving his house carrying a nylon tote bag with a town in Hawaii's name printed on the side.

But when he was found, the bag was nowhere to be seen.

At the time, he was dressed in a shirt and swim shorts, but he was missing his shoes and socks.

It also appeared like he had been redressed.

According to the autopsy, Tags' cause of death was asphyxiation, which was the result... of an orange gym sock having been shoved down his throat.

Jesus. While he was alive, he shoved an orange gym sock down his throat and he asphyxiated.

At the time of death, his blood alcohol level was 0.07, and there was a large amount of... Value.

...value in his system. Okay. During this period, Kraft was known to have been in the area working for Lear Siegler, and based on an expense report he submitted to the company for reimbursement, they were able to confirm that.

Also, when a detective searched Kraft's home the following year after he was arrested, Tag's nylon gym bag was discovered among his belongings.

Again, another one. A week later, on December 18th, another body was discovered on the side of a residential road adjacent to I-5.

It was that of 29-year-old Anthony Silvera.

According to Silvera's wife, Anthony, who was in the National Guard, had left home on December 4th to travel to Medford for guard duty.

The couple didn't have a car, so Anthony decided to hitchhike.

Because the body was in an advanced state of decomposition, the ME was unable to give a definitive concept of death.

But the ME was confident that the most likely cause of death was asphyxiation because that was supported by the very obvious ligature mark around his neck.

Yeah. He couldn't deduce it. The victim had also been sexually assaulted and was subjected to various other forms of torture before being killed.

Oh. The results of this toxicology report showed a blood alcohol level of 0.23 and there was a lot of Valium in his system.

Yeah. How is he getting all this Valium as well?

Do you know what I was thinking, actually?

And I almost said it, but... I wonder if when he – because you've also said that there were like antihistamines present in a lot of people's systems.

Yeah. Isn't Benadryl an antihistamine? I think so.

And Benadryl like really has like drowsy calming effects.

I wonder if when he was running low on Valium.

He would use the antihistamine. He'd give people large doses of that, yeah.

I think that's a valid theory because I think it definitely has similar effects. at the very least.

Yeah, I'm not sure how similar. That's the thing, I think in large amounts.

Yeah. So the same day that Anthony went missing, Randy Kraft drove from Oregon to Seattle to visit his friend Gary Newell.

The next year, in interviews with investigators, Gary Newell recalled that not long after arriving at his house, Kraft went out to the rental car...

Wow. He put this man's jacket on after brutally murdering and torturing him.

Because it had been more than a year, Newell couldn't be certain, but he told the detectives that the name on the jacket began with S and was a quote-unquote Hispanic-sounding name.

Like, what the fuck? During the visit, Kraft also mentioned to Newell that after he was done in Oregon, the company was sending him to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

So he was going to be starting a whole new place killing people.

Kraft arrived in Grand Rapids on December 5th to attend a seminar.

He arrived at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.

And at the time, there was also a large agricultural conference being held at the hotel.

And going to that conference was a 20-year-old man named Christopher Schoenburn and his 24-year-old cousin, Dennis Ault.

When Kraft's seminar ended on December 7th, he and a co-worker had dinner together and then visited the hotel bar.

That's where they met and then spent about an hour talking to Chris.

Christopher and Dennis. Then Kraft's coworker left after midnight and he was alone with the two of them.

Also in attendance at the agricultural conference was Dennis Alt's cousin, Thomas, who was in the bar with them that evening.

According to Thomas, Dennis had been drinking heavily and asked if Thomas would drive him around 11pm back to where he needed to go.

Thomas agreed, but wanted to talk with some friends and buy a round of drinks before they left, so he stepped away, and so he left Christopher and Dennis at the bar with...

Randy. Yeah. When he returned a short time later, they were nowhere to be seen.

Everyone was gone. So Thomas assumed they'd gone back to their hotel room.

Yeah. Kraft checked out of the hotel the following morning and returned to Oregon.

The next day, December 9th, the bodies of Dennis Ault and Christopher... were discovered about five feet from a rural road about nine miles from the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.

And remember, these are two full grown men.

Yeah. What? That tells you. Well, again, accomplice potentially.

Yeah, you're like, who is it? Like, Alt was fully dressed, but his pants were unbuttoned and he was exposed and his boots were missing.

When the autopsy was conducted, the medical examiner found high levels of volume in his blood.

And a blood alcohol level of twice the legal limit.

Alt's cause of death was listed as asphyxia by choking, which was supported by linear pressure marks discovered on his neck.

Christopher was nude with no signs of his clothing anywhere.

Like Alt, he had also been strangled, leading to asphyxiation.

He had a lot of volume in his system. and a blood alcohol level of 0.16.

There was also evidence that at least Christopher had been tortured. including having an Anway Grand-branded ballpoint pen inserted into his urethra. which caused quote, extensive hemorrhaging.

I would think. As with many of the other victims, clothing and personal belongings belonging to both of these victims would later be found in Kraft's home.

You also, and I don't know why I just thought of it, but you also wonder where he did all of these things. to people because he's doing these things while they're still alive.

Exactly. So you would think that there'd be screaming.

A place he could do it too. That's like, where is he doing this where nobody's hearing something?

But then I guess he's getting people near sedation sort of.

So maybe I think that's the key. Yeah. But you still think that people must hear something and see something weird.

Where is he taking that? them to do this.

He must take them like deep into the woods and then because he obviously moves a lot of the bodies.

But then there's been a couple of bodies that have been discovered in the woods.

So I wonder if maybe he just couldn't move them or he didn't have his accomplice during those.

Exactly. So he just left them where they were.

That's usually what he does. Maybe he's bringing them out to the woods and goes from there.

It's horrific. It is. Now, once he was back in Oregon, Kraft killed Lance Taggs.

Then he returned to California shortly after, assuming he'd gotten away with yet another murder.

So he was just on a little spree, just going home.

Now, while it was true that he had at least temporarily gotten away with it, Investigators in Oregon had started to see connections between the victims found along the side of the road.

So they were putting them together now. Yeah, obviously.

Given the pattern with which the murders occurred and the fact that the bodies were found again alongside the road...

They theorized their killer was some kind of salesman or other professional who traveled to the state with some kind of consistency.

Yeah. Since the trips seemed to be more frequent, they further theorized that the killer was probably coming from a nearby state like Washington or California.

So we're starting to... Closing operating on that assumption, detectives in Oregon put out a call to the law enforcement agencies in those states and quickly received a response from detectives in Los Angeles.

When you know it. They felt that the Oregon murders bore a remarkable similarity to the large number of victims from the previous 10 fucking years.

Ten years. Just going for it. Once he was back in Long Beach, Randy wasted little time getting back into his routine.

On the morning of January 27th, 1983, a California Transit employee, those poor California Transit employees...

He discovered the body of 21-year-old Eric Church alongside the 7th Street off-ramp near Seal Beach where some of the other victims were found.

That's why it sounds familiar. Church was fully dressed, not wearing any shoes.

Unlike some of the other victims however, it looks like the killer had come to a skidding stop at the location where he was found. rather than pushing him from a moving car.

Which is just interesting. Yeah, it is. the autopsy the ME found ligature marks around his wrists ankles and neck and determined the cause of death was asphyxia from strangulation He couldn't say with certainty, but the medical examiner also noted that Church had likely been sexually assaulted.

His blood alcohol level was within the legal limit and there was a large amount of Valium discovered in his system, which the medical examiner described as a, quote, Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Having gotten away with multiple murders for more than a decade, Randy Kraft was becoming much more brazen with his behavior.

Not only were victims showing up with much increased frequency at this point, he's just one after the other, but he's also demonstrated a capacity for handling more than one victim at a time yeah which is horrifying grown men like this that's crazy yeah to me Um, especially, and again, these are able, like, these are like strong, like, you know, not like, you know, these are grown ass men.

Yes. He's only. preying on children. He has done that in the past, but it's not... But he's not just going after, like, 13-year-olds, like... all the time.

It's like... But you have to wonder if that was when he had an accomplice with him.

Yeah, because it's like... When he's going after multiple women.

The Christopher and Dennis at the hotel.

Yeah. They were in their 20s. Yeah. Like they're like grown men and that's the one that he did the two.

But then you think about the fact that he's drugging them.

He's drugging them and getting them super drunk.

That's your answer right there. Like, it seems shocking, and it is.

But it's like when you really think about it, the fact that there's Valium found in high amounts in all of these cases, they are being incapacitated.

Yeah. Whether they're strong, grown men or not, it really kind of indicates that.

Because also think about the fact that at least one of these people, victims, has been found with enough Valium to put them in a coma.

In a moderate manner. mild to moderate coma like that clearly I think that was probably like accidental that he gave that much like over overdid it yeah So just two weeks after the murder of Eric Church, Kraft was out on the streets again looking for another victim.

So he is escalating. I feel like we have never covered somebody who has gone this long, this hard, this long.

Because I'm sitting here being like, it's got to end.

It's got to end. Now, in the early morning hours of February 12th, 18-year-old Jeffrey Nelson knocked on the door of the home of his friend Bryce Wilson in the town of Cyprus, which is just outside of LA.

Wilson's mother answered the door and said Bryce was sleeping and she wasn't able to get him out of bed.

So Nelson left in the company of his friend, 20-year-old Roger Duvall.

This was the last time anyone saw either young man alive.

Later that morning, LAPD officer Donald Backelder was on his way to work when he spotted Jeffrey Nelson's nude body lying beside the ramp in Long Beach.

Oh, no. Yeah. The officer jumped back into his car and drove to the nearest phone booth he could find to call emergency services.

But by the time they arrived at the scene, They were unable to find Nelson's pulse or detect any respiration.

So sad. It's unclear whether he was still alive when he was discovered.

The autopsy indicates that Nelson was dead when he was dumped from the vehicle, so I don't know if he just thought he saw that or what.

Okay. By that time, this was just a very familiar scene at this point.

There were tire marks on the pavement, looked like the killer had skidded to a stop before dumping the body.

There were ligature marks around his neck, which would later be associated with his cause of death, asphyxiation from ligature strangulation.

There was ligature marks around his right wrist, and he had had his genitals cut off, which the ME believed had occurred after death in this scenario.

Uh-huh. Witnesses told investigators that on the night they went missing, neither Nelson nor Duvall had been drinking or taking any drugs.

But when the autopsy was conducted, the ME noted that Nelson's blood alcohol level was 0.14.

Wow. And he had Valium and the blood pressure medication, Propanolol, I think it's called, in his system.

It's for hypertension. Why would he give him that?

Not really sure. It's a beta blocker. I was just going to say. according to the toxicologists the combo of these drugs as well would have made him very very noticeably sedated and possibly caused him to fall asleep yeah Now, in their investigation of the scene, crime scene techs discovered two distinct fibers that connected Nelson to the other victims.

Because remember, there was a couple of victims where they did find fiber on them.

They just didn't have anything to compare it to.

The first, a single maroon fiber, was determined to have come from the socks of the previous victim, Eric Church.

So this is not only... putting them together as having the same fibers on them.

This is connecting them as being in the same exact place.

The second fiber would later be identified as coming from the floor mats in Randy Kraft's car.

Huh. The following day around 3 p.m., a driver in the San Bernardino Mountains pulled into a turnout near Malt Baldy Road, and he discovered the body of Roger Duvall.

Thank God. God. So they've gone out together.

And so he's done it again with two. Yeah.

He was fully clothed, but his pants were unbuttoned and pulled down.

Duvall was wearing Nelson's jacket, immediately connecting him to the other victim.

Also connecting him to other victims was the cause of death, ligature strangulation.

Like Nelson, Duvall had ligature marks around one wrist, and there was also evidence he had been sexually assaulted.

At the time of his death, his blood alcohol level was 0.07 and there was Valium in his blood.

At least enough that Duvall would have been impaired if not unconscious.

And again, they were not drinking or doing drugs.

Right. So... For more than a decade, Randy Kraft at this point had been killing men in multiple states now, confounding investigators.

Yeah. They could rarely find even a shred of evidence in this case.

For 10 years. And he's leaving... barely any evidence I mean the evidence he's even leaving they're just now starting to connect just them to each other it's not even connecting them to an outside source right Now, in the end, though, it wouldn't be determined law enforcement or strong evidence that brought Kraft's reign of terror to an end, but it was just simple luck.

Really? Yep. What was it? In the early morning hours of May 14th, 1983, Sergeant Michael Howard and Officer Michael Sterling, the Michaels, of the California Highway Patrol were driving north on the I-5 when they spotted a car in the oncoming lane that appeared to be weaving from one lane to another.

Assuming the driver was probably drunk or impaired in some way, the officers turned on their overhead lights and indicated for that driver to pull over.

Before they were even out of the cruiser, the driver, Randy Kraft, was out of his car and walking towards them.

That's never what you're supposed to do.

Howard said we walked towards him and took him up to the front of his car so we could administer a field sobriety test.

We hadn't seen anyone else in the car at that time.

Oh. While Sterling conducted the sobriety test, Howard approached the car and started speaking to the man in the passenger seat that he just noticed.

Kraft said that was a hitchhiker he'd just picked up.

When he got no response from this man in the passenger seat, he moved closer and tapped on the window. which still didn't rouse the man.

It was then that Howard noticed the passenger, who was identified eventually as 25-year-old Terry Gambrell, appeared to be slumped over in his seat. with pill bottles and beer cans scattered at his feet.

When he looked closer, he noticed that the victim's pants were pulled down just below his groin. and his pants appeared to be wet with some kind of liquid.

Howard also noticed that there was, quote, indentations on his wrists that were similar to those of wide rubber bands, like that kind of indentation.

So they just caught this man mid-disposal of a body.

Howard called for an ambulance, and while the officers waited for paramedics, they questioned Kraft, who had then failed the sobriety test and been placed in the back of a police car.

Kraft told the officers that he'd given Gambrell some beers and some of his atifant, but because he had just picked the man up, he didn't know whether he'd taken anything early in the evening.

And how do you explain all the other things, Randy?

Yeah, eventually the paramedics arrived and examined Gambrel, but at this point the man was already dead.

That's so sad. His body was removed to the nearest hospital where he was officially pronounced.

At the autopsy, the ME identified Gambrill's cause of death as asphyxia due to ligature strangulation.

The marks on his neck indicated that he had been choked with a strap, and the petechial hemorrhages in his neck indicated that the strap had been repeatedly tightened and loosened. before his death.

Like a garrote. Which remember, he has used a garrote before.

He also noted ligature marks around the victim's wrists.

And when he was removed from the car, he was missing his socks and shoes.

Oh, my God. So he was absolutely in mid disposal.

Yeah, because obviously he hadn't just picked this guy up at all if he doesn't have socks and fucking shoes.

No. Given the circumstances and the evidence collected before and during the autopsy, investigators strongly suspected that they had just found the man responsible for dozens of murders in Los Angeles over a fucking decade.

Yeah. Kraft was booked into the Orange County Jail on suspicion of murder, and his bail was set at $250,000.

I can't believe this is how he got caught.

Yeah. There have not been many cases where that has been the case.

Like... What a dumb sentence. That wasn't a dumb sentence.

It was a little crazy. It was just kooky.

There have not been many cases where we've seen that, is what I meant to say.

The fact that this just... It just came down to fucking luck of all the cars in Los Angeles.

Yeah. For these two officers to just happen to find themselves behind this car while he happens to be weaving.

Mid-disposal. Like, damn. What a dumbass.

Yeah, a complete dumbass. Like, thank goodness, but what a dumbass.

Yeah, thankfully. He is refusing to speak to anyone at this point, too.

Yeah, that checks. Investigators had confidently connected Kraft to the murders of Eric Church, Jeffrey Nelson and Roger Duvall.

And Kraft's arraignment was postponed in order to give him more time to find an attorney, which he definitely needs now.

Yeah, for sure. Or determine his eligibility for a public defender.

In the meantime, bail was increased to $750,000.

Because they said, we are finding out some more about you, sir.

I wonder in, what is this, 1983, I wonder how much $750,000 was.

I can let you know. You're always my go-to for that because I'm very interested.

It went from 250 to 750. 1983? Yeah. About 2.4 million.

Wow. Whoa. That. So they were like, you're not leaving.

It's cray cray. I had to just read that like three times to make sure I was right.

Damn. Yeah, about 2.4 million. Holy shit.

Damn. That's bonkers. Later that same day, authorities from Oregon who'd heard about the arrest... later contacted detectives in Long Beach about a possible connection between Kraft and six unsolved murders in their state.

Marion County Sheriff Chuck Foster told reporters, when the fellow was arrested in Orange County, that caused us to do a follow-up investigation. which produced evidence that leads us to list him as a definite suspect.

Within a week, investigators from various agencies had combined their research sources, which like, Finally.

Nice. In connected craft to 14 unsolved murders in three states.

But we know there's more than that. We sure do.

Sheriff Brad Gates told the Los Angeles Times, we have evidence which links him to 14 deaths in Southern California, Oregon, and Michigan.

We have made our information available to authorities from other jurisdictions which are interested.

The more detectives dug into his background and looked over the evidence, the more the number of suspected victims list grew.

Mm-hmm. On May 25th, 1983, Randy Kraft was arraigned on five counts of first-degree murder. for the deaths of Terry Gambrell, Robert Loggins, Eric Church, Jeffrey Nelson, and Roger Duvall.

In his statement to the press, Kraft's lawyer, Doug Otto, accused investigators of using his arrest as an opportunity to close old cases.

No, I don't think so. He was just, you know, like mid disposal.

Yeah. Of a man. There was that. Who was in the state that many men had been found in over the past decade.

In the same exact way. Yeah. He said they're living up every unsolved murder they can find.

They're clearing paper on this case. I don't think so.

I think your client's just an absolute piece of shit who's gross.

Shut the fuck up, Doug Otto. Here's the thing.

Yeah. Fuck off. You know what's like free to do?

To shut the fuck up. It is. That's the cool thing about shutting the fuck up.

Totally free. It costs you zero. Cost you nothing.

Yeah. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time detectives had used an arrest to close cold cases, of course, but that accusation seemed...

Especially when a few days later, investigators searched Kraft's home and car.

Sounds like they found a lot there. Where they found a mountain of evidence connecting him to a large number of victims.

In his car, technicians discovered a belt that matched the ligature marks on Gambrel's neck. as well as a large amount of atavant, valium, and alcohol, all of which had been found in the victim's blood.

In the passenger seat of the car, there were large dark stains from what was eventually determined to be human blood, which had soaked deep into the seat cushion.

Technicians also took samples of the carpet and they determined them to be a match for the fiber samples found on Roger Duvall's body.

The evidence collected in the car was enough to connect him to at least two murders, but it's what was found under the carpet that proved most damning.

In a large envelope strategically hidden under the carpet on the driver's side, technicians found a stash of more than 50 photographs. of young men in very lurid and very sexually explicit poses.

Some of the men in the photos, like Loggins, Church, and Duval, were among those on the victims list. while others were not known to investigators.

In some cases, the subjects in the photographs were clearly alive when the photos were taken.

Others, though, depicted images of men who were sleeping, unconscious or dead.

Not only did these photographs provide a lot of circumstantial evidence connecting him to the victims, They also connected the victims to Kraft's various homes over the years, since many of them were taken in those locations.

Dude. The photos were some of the strongest evidence investigators could find in this entire thing.

Pictures worth a thousand words. But the most sensational and consequential evidence was found in the trunk of his car.

Why was he just keeping... I mean, like, thank you.

He's just bopping around with all this stuff.

Super duper cool of you to, like, give them everything they needed in your literal vehicle, but...

Why are you keeping this all in your car, sir?

Exactly. What did they find? Technicians searched the trunk, and they discovered a three-ring binder. and inside they discovered a sheet of paper with 61 entries written in cryptic language.

Sixty. I'm assuming this is the scorecard.

This is where the scorecard killer name comes from.

This document eventually was referred to as his scorecard. and would prove significant at trial.

Sixty-one names. The prosecution and detectives argued it was a journal of sorts and listed all of Kraft's murders.

Although the scorecard was written in cryptic language with entries only appearing to reference certain aspects of the individual or the encounter.

In time, detectives were eventually able to associate certain victims with certain entries.

I'm not going to read the entire thing because a lot of it is like not connected to unsolved murder kind of thing. or unknown, but some of the names he would give the victims shows you how disconnected he was.

Like one of them is just EDM. Oh my, like what?

One of them's Harry Carey. One of them's Airplane Hill.

Marine Down. Van driveway. Two in one. Two in one?

Yep, Twiggy, Wilmington, Laguna Beach Marina, Pier 2.

So he's even just referring to some of these people as where he either found or dumped them.

Like driveway? Diabetic. Skates. Diabetic?

Uh-huh. Which also, how did you know that?

It must have come up in conversation. Portland, Navy white user parking lot.

Wow. parking lot was connected to Keith Crotwell I was wondering that deodorant dog teen trucker Seventh Street.

MC Laguna. Hoth Off Head. Hoth Off Head.

Two in One Hitch. New Year's Eve, Westminster date, jail out.

Oh, that was the victim who had just gotten out of jail that morning.

Two in one beach. He likes it when he kills two people in one or dumps two people in one.

He says two in one. That's disgusting. Hollywood Bus, Portland Blood, Portland Head. hike out lb boots oil and one of them is what you got what yeah It's just like so... yucky it's so disconnected it's so fucking cold you can tell he like thinks he's He thinks he's done something here.

Yeah, he's proud of this. Like he likes that he's just like calling them oil.

Dog. Like, that's so sad to be reduced to that.

Yeah. And the worst part is he probably knew most of their names.

Yeah. But he just didn't even bother. Right.

So the quote-unquote scorecard would prove essential to the prosecution's case against him.

I bet. But it was only one piece in a very big growing mountain of evidence that would eventually connect him to several of his victims.

Several fibers found on several of the bodies at the time of their discovery were found to be a match to fibers from furniture or carpets in Kraft's homes at the time of the murders, or the carpets in his cars.

Other critical pieces of evidence collected throughout the investigation were like semen samples that matched his blood type. hairs collected from various victims, which were a match for Kraft, and a fingerprint found on the broken bottle used to cut Mark Hall's body after he'd been murdered. they could not.

It didn't come up in the database. But then they finally figured it out.

They can now compare it and it matched. During a search of his home, investigators discovered a large amount of personal items, including belonging to several of the victims.

This included, among other things, the shaving kit known to belong to Eric Church, which still had Church's fingerprints on the outside.

The nylon gym bag and pair of nunchucks belonging to Lance Taggs.

A camera belonging to Michael O'Fallon. a keychain, bottle opener, and boots belonging to Christopher Schoenborn.

And a large assortment of belts and shoes belonging to various other victims and were connected to them.

Yeah. Given how huge this case was and the vast number of victims and the incredible incredible amount of press coverage that the case did receive at the time.

It took years for the prosecutor's office to build their case.

Yeah, I mean, this is over a decade. And they wanted to do it right.

Yeah. Now, among the more challenging tasks they face were determining which of the 37 suspected victims they could confidently and irrefutably connect to Kraft.

They couldn't mess around with these. And which ones they were unfortunately not going to be able to prosecute him for at that time, which is a tough task.

Especially going to like their families and explaining the why and what and everything.

Exactly. Ultimately, the DA went ahead with charges of first-degree murder for the following victims.

Edward Daniel Moore, Kevin Clark Bailey, Ronnie Jean Wybie, Keith Davin Crotwell, Mark Howard Hall, Scott Michael Hughes, Roland Gerald Young, Richard Alan Keith.

Keith Arthur Klingbeil, Michael Joseph Inderbeaten, Donald Harold Creasel, Robert Wyatt Loggins Jr., Eric Herbert Church.

Roger James Duvall Jr., Jeffrey Allen Nelson, and Terry Lee Gambrell, which are 16 victims.

Yeah. So that's who they could irrefutably connect him to.

There are many others that they can connect him to.

They just were worried that they didn't want to They wouldn't stand in trial.

16, to be able to prove 16 murders irrefutably is absolutely bonkers.

Wild. work especially when you think about this time period yeah they didn't have like a ton when it came to d like and it was relatively new for a jury to understand To have the confidence to bring 16 murders to trial and say this evidence is irrefutable is like...

Unheard of. Truly unheard of. Because usually when you have this, like you were saying, when you have this massive amount of victim pool going on, A lot of times we see that they can only grab like two or three of them at the most.

And even that is tough. And that's always like, whoa, I can't believe they were able to connect that.

I think even like Rodney Alcala had a very high number. of victims and they couldn't get a ton of his victims proved in court.

Because it's like, it's really, and when you want to make sure to nab this guy, you can't fuck around with ones that you're like, could they potentially nab us on this?

Or could they potentially question this one?

Or could this turn the entire trial? And then they'll question these ones and, like, we don't want to lose them because of this.

Right. And you have to think, too, of all the technicalities that he is definitely going to appeal on when he's ultimately proven guilty.

And with 16, they feel like they have it.

Yeah, that's bonkers. Crazy. Now, in addition to the murder charges, he was also charged with one count of sodomy against Michael Inderbeaten.

I'm actually shocked that it was only one count of sodomy.

One count of inflicting mayhem against Jeffrey Nelson and one count of sodomy against Roger Duvall.

What does inflicting mayhem entail? It involves maliciously maiming or disfiguring another person.

Oh, okay. So that absolutely makes sense.

There should have been a lot of those. In these cases, special circumstances were attached, making it a death penalty case.

Nice. Sorry, in this case, nice. Despite their best efforts, there remained many unanswered questions with regard to several of the cases, too, unfortunately.

Chief among them detectives were never able to determine who if anyone had helped him commit the murders or dispose of the bodies.

Randy Kraft was not a large man, and it seemed pretty unlikely that he would have been able to carry and dump a lot of those victims on his own.

He really isn't a big guy now. Also, at a few of the dump sites, there was evidence of another person having been there at the same time.

Yeah, like the footprints alongside the other set of footprints.

With William Laris's. crime scene. That's where the second set of footprints was.

There was also the matter of the photographs found in Kraft's car.

While some were taken with a Polaroid camera and didn't need to be developed, many more were taken with a traditional film camera and would have required traditional processing.

Kraft had no darkroom in his house, and he was not known to be familiar with film processing.

So who the fuck had a darkroom and was developing these sick photos?

Yep, that's what I'm saying. And that's the thing.

So investigators concluded that someone had to have developed that film for him.

What the fuck? And the fact that to this day, they don't know who it was.

Like, however many years later, almost 50 years later at this point, we still don't know.

Because no one else could have developed those.

Whoever developed those cameras saw what was in them.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially with that kind of developing back then.

So then in a dark room, you're literally like washing them, drying them, letting them like.

Because they're like, he couldn't have just brought it to a film developing place because those people would have seen it.

You see the photos. And it's like, so...

Either someone helped him with the murders, helped him with disposal, or at the very least knows about the murders, saw the pictures.

Right. Or all three. Or two. And realistically, it could be multiple people.

Yeah. Maybe one person had the whole photos and then maybe somebody else did the disposals.

Yeah. That could have been more than one person.

It's... Horrifying. And that nobody was willing to come forward and like no one decided to have a conscience.

And that he wouldn't. that he wouldn't break on that is interesting.

It's crazy. I mean, he really, when it's a death penalty.

And if that doesn't convince you that there's another person, in a small number of cases...

There was foreign DNA not belonging to Kraft or the victim found on the victim's bodies.

You hope that they still have that somewhere.

I hope. Process that shit. Let's use it, man.

We gotta find out who Absolutely. And with regard to the potential accomplice, investigators are obviously looking in the most likely place.

He had two known long-term boyfriends that he lived with.

So it's like you would think the person in the house with him is probably a likely suspect.

In the cases between 1971 and 1976, detectives believed it was very possible. that Kraft's then-boyfriend, Jeffrey Graves, had helped him dispose of the bodies after the murders.

Graves was interviewed several times and consistently denied having anything to do with the murders. but he died in 1987 shortly before Kraft's trial began.

Wow. And he died of illness. Okay. I was going to say.

Yeah. Like he wasn't murdered. Yeah. Jeff Selig was also considered as a possible murderer.

But like Graves, he denied any role, and there was never enough evidence to connect him to the murders.

Thank you. So after years of delays, his trial finally began on September 27th, 1988 in Santa Ana County. with Deputy District Attorney Brian Brown acting on behalf of the state, and C. Thomas McDonald representing Kraft.

In his opening statement, Brown referenced the large amount of evidence discovered over the years that connected Kraft to the murders. including the fact that at the time he was arrested, the defendant had been found with a victim in his car.

Despite his obvious attempts to stick to the facts and avoid any sensationalizing, McDonald nonetheless accused the prosecution of trying to inflame the jury and color their thinking so that they would arrive at a preconceived decision before they'd even listen to the evidence.

Brother, that's just a fact. They don't need to.

He was found with a victim. Yeah. In his car.

He was found with a dead body in his car.

His car is rife with evidence. And his house is rife with evidence.

There's photos. There's personal notes. There's blood.

This is one of those that as the defense attorney, you just got to go, all right, we just got to try to minimize at this point.

Like, you know what I mean? Like we shocked.

He didn't go for like an insanity defense or something like that.

In that case, you kind of have to go for that because you have to explain why he did this.

Because we can't claim that he didn't do this.

No. There's a dead body in his possession, brother.

Over the course of the trial, the jury heard from several witnesses who'd been with the victims before they disappeared. but exchanges with the witnesses frequently became heated upon cross-examination because Kraft was acting as his own co-counsel.

It had a tendency to be confrontational with witnesses.

What a fucking piece of absolute garbage.

Outside the courtroom, tensions between the press and the judicial system earn the story even more attention.

The judge publicly argued with the press over the release of sensitive information, like his so-called scorecard, which they published.

From the moment the trial opened, his defense was unusual and pretty bold. regard to the murder of Terry Gambrell, the defense argued that when the officers discovered Terry in the front seat of Kraft's car, the young man wasn't infected.

McDonald told the jury, of course he wasn't dead.

You do not have to have a pulse or a heartbeat to have viability.

Sir, what do you have to have to have viability?

I need you to go back to biology class in seventh grade and explain that.

What the fuck? You don't need a pulse or a heartbeat to have viability?

So what gives you viability? Are you just talking about the potential of brainwaves firing off or something like that?

That means he's... He still was murdered.

Like, what are you talking about? That's beyond.

What? Yeah. In response, the prosecution pointed out that regardless of whether...

Gambrel was still warm and possibly alive when Craft was pulled over.

He was pronounced dead a short time later, which makes him one of Craft's victims.

He didn't end up dead for no reason in that car.

Like they're like, I would've been like, did he spontaneously die in the passenger seat?

No. what the fuck dude he had a ligature mark around his neck are you kidding me and drugs in his system who did that right In time, it became clear that McDonald's strategy was to create enough reasonable doubt in the mind of the jurors that they could possibly reach any conclusions and would have to acquit.

But should he have, like, attempted to do that in an intelligent way?

You would think... Because if I was on that jury and that motherfucker said to me, you don't need a pulse or a heartbeat to have viability, I would have to raise my hand and ask the judge a couple questions.

You would have to go, your honor. Me and the jury literally, hello.

Can you clear something up for me? Do we have a science teacher in the room?

Hi, biology. Hi, hi. Basic biology. Hey.

Qua? What the fuck? Yeah. Now, in support of that, the defense presented of his strategy of like, let's just create...

Yeah, exactly. Let's create a fucking circus.

The defense presented a range of alternative suspects. which weren't exactly in short supply at that time in Southern California, unfortunately. investigators themselves had initially thought at least some of the victims had been killed by Patrick Kearney or William Bonin.

Right. and a variety of the supposed alibis for Kraft on the night of the murders he was still trying to use.

The defense's other tactic was to offer various alibis for him on the nights that this whole thing, all the things happened.

In the case of Keith Crotwell's murder, for example, they presented previously obtained testimony from Jeff Graves.

Remember... Jeff Graves was the one who supported the whole, he got stuck in the mud, he called me to come get, like he called me for help kind of thing.

Oh, yeah, because he was his boyfriend. go, oh, well, shit.

But now that you know that he had an accomplice and that they were looking at him as an accomplice, it gets a little muddy.

Literally. Yeah. Similarly, in the case of Mark Hall's murder, Kraft and several family members alleged he was at a New Year's Eve party at his parents' house all evening, and he returned very early in the morning that following day.

But in this case, a detective for the prosecution drove the route described by Kraft... and discovered that he could have left the party and returned the next day at an early hour and still had several hours in which he could have killed Hall.

There you go. I love that a detective was like, I'll try it.

And then just drove the route and was like, nope.

Well, McDonald's case may have been at times kind of compelling to watch.

I suppose, the prosecution had a significant and far more compelling, seriously compelling amount of physical evidence.

Yeah, like the fact that they have... things that these victims were last seen wearing or carrying in this motherfucker's house.

They also have photograph and blood and fibers.

And a dead body found in his possession, which I will never stop yelling from the fucking rooftops.

They had physical evidence, forensic evidence, witness testimony.

They had it all. he at least murdered the 16 men that they were presenting.

Much of that evidence was circumstantial, but for the defendant to have so many of the victim's belongings and photographs, like we were just saying, which had been taking before and after their deaths.

How are you arguing that Kraft was not responsible for the murders?

Yeah, that's beyond reasonable doubt. On April 29, 1989, closing arguments began in the trial.

In his arguments, Deputy District Attorney Brian Brown... pointed to the large amount of evidence in Kraft's possession and reminded the jury of the large amount of forensic evidence and testimony that they had just witnessed.

Finally, he reminded them of the victim list found in Kraft's possession, which he referred to as a, quote, dynamite piece of evidence. that connected 14 of the 16 victims to each other and back to Randy.

Mm-hmm. In his closing arguments on the other side, defense attorney James Merwin proceeded with their strategy of just...

Being a fool. Of acting a fool. Yeah, exactly.

Reminding the jury that while Thank you. killed them except for the fact that he has photos in his possession of them dead As for the supposed scorecard that Brown suggested was irrefutable proof, Merwin dismissed the idea that it was a list of victims and suggested, quote,

Are you fucking kidding me? That's a literal quote.

Are you fucking kidding me? Fucking kidding me.

Maybe no more than a guest list for a roommate's birthday party.

A guest list also, weirdly... that has dates attributed to each of those people.

Various dates. What do those dates mean?

How many roommates do you have? Also, did the roommate give every single one of these people a nickname?

Yeah. That include blood and head. And multiple have the same nickname, two for one?

Yeah. Portland Head? Who's that? I'd love to know.

Who's coming to his birthday party named Portland Head?

Get a grip. Like, get a grip. Get a fucking grip.

And a life while you're at it. at it get a literal grip get a life as my dad would say that's anybody that pisses him off it's my favorite thing that he says get a life He says it with such fucking.

He does. He burns. Hellsade and traffic.

Yeah. Get a life. It's pretty great. Fuck that guy, though.

Not my dad. This guy. On May 2nd, the jury—just in case that wasn't clear—

On May 2nd, the jury retired for deliberation, which lasted a full 11 days. which is wild to me.

Baby girls, why did it take you that long?

Yeah, like what is going on? Respectfully, no.

Disrespectfully, what took so long? before merging on May 13th to find Randy Kraft guilty of all 16 murders.

Iconic. as well as one sodomy charge and one charge of mayhem.

Good. When the verdict was read, the families of the victims wept and cheered the outcome.

Jeffrey Nelson's mother, Judy, told a reporter, I know he's guilty.

He knows he's guilty. Every mother in there had 16 beautiful sons and that guy destroyed them.

He should pay something. Absolutely. And you know what, Judy?

I fucking agree. Yep. Wholeheartedly. Quick little side tangent.

We haven't talked about the Idaho murders a lot.

One, because we are not... We're not covering it.

We weren't current either. Like while it was happening, we would have been three weeks behind everything.

So we didn't want to be like three weeks behind all the updates and be annoying.

It would just be like really disrespectful to everybody involved.

We're not going to cover them anytime soon.

That's the thing, not anytime soon. Yeah, anytime soon, because one...

It happened pretty recently. And two, those families are still like, they just went through that sentencing.

Not only that, but just thinking about this mother talking about that.

Brian Enten, who covers a lot of these, he covered like the Gabby Petito case while it was going.

He's like very up to date. He's a great journalist.

He's a very great and very respectful journalist from what I've seen.

He was in the sentencing for Brian Kohlberger. and he saw one of the victim's mothers receiving threatening text messages from some piece of shit internet person who was literally threatening her while she was at the sentencing for the man who brutally murdered her child.

Trying to say that Brian Kohlberger was not guilty.

Yeah. Meanwhile, his evidence, his DNA was found as evidence.

Yeah, I just won't even. I won't even. What are you doing texting a murder victim's mother like that?

That kind of shit pisses me off. Like, you gotta be the lowest form of, the same people who were sitting there saying that the roommates had something to do with it and all that shit.

Like, I'm not, I'm not gonna go far into this because again, I said I would not cover this, but just like, we gotta get it together.

We've all had moments where we thought something about a case and theorized.

We have been guilty of that before. Absolutely, we have.

But you got to evolve. Start evolving, everybody.

Evolve. It's 2025. We got to stop that. And realize that you don't know everything.

That's the thing, and it's like... And you never will.

You've got to evolve in the true crime world.

You do. You've got to know what... Start looking around.

Just start looking around. See how, you know, like they just like that really thinking about that poor woman getting threatening text messages from people who think they know more. just sent me into orbit and I was just thinking of this mother like sitting there being like all 16 mothers in that courtroom lost sons and I'm like fuck they did Just leave people alone.

Just leave these families alone. Have some fucking respect.

Yeah, for real. And I know it's not you guys listening right now.

No, it's not you guys, obviously. I'm not talking to you guys.

I'm saying like, fuck. When you look around and see those, you're probably getting pissed off.

You never know who's going to tune in. Yeah, you never know.

So back to they, you know, they came back.

They gave him the guilty verdict for all 16 victims.

And they returned to the courtroom on June 5th for the sentencing phase.

That lasted another two months. Wow. During this period, the defense made a number of arguments for leniency.

You can literally go fuck yourself with that.

Including arguing the head injury that Kraft had sustained as a small child.

Yeah. damage to his frontal lobe. I'm sure that it did, but it doesn't make you kill that many people and lose that amount of humanity.

The prosecution disagreed with that and encouraged the jury to return a death sentence.

Yeah, me as well. On August 12, 1989, the jury did indeed sentence Randy Kraft to die for the crimes he committed.

One juror said he should die for what he did to all those people.

I've had nightmares thinking about the horror of what this man has done.

Another juror agreed with this, telling a reporter, I'm never going to be normal again.

I was so naive about so many things. You have to think, like, what people on juries go through.

What jurors go through. Yeah. In a case like this.

In these kind of things. Yeah. That really will change you.

Because you are seeing things that the public is not seeing.

You are seeing crime scene photos. You are seeing autopsy photos.

You are seeing the worst kind of shit. On such a minute level, you and I have talked about this before, I feel changed from doing this for so many years.

I'll never... I will never stop thinking about the Morris murders case.

You just said that. and that immediately popped into my head.

Yeah, when I accidentally stumbled upon a picture that I did not want to see.

I was not looking for it. It came up in the... the course of something else.

I will think about it until the day I die.

It's the pictures. It's the brutal details.

And like, I'm not saying that... Like none of us should have an interest in true crime or anything like that.

But like it does change you. Yeah, it absolutely changes you.

It should change you. I think it definitely should change you.

So the judge, Donald McCartan, chose to reserve a lot of his commentary until Kraft had exhausted his appeals.

But he did have some strong words for the defense regarding their conduct. during the trial.

Oh, I bet. He told McDonald and Merwin in a harsh tone before admonishing them for the constant delays and attempts to stall.

This trial should have been over in three months.

Yeah. McCartan pointed to the trial of Richard Ramirez, which had began on the same day as Kraft's trial and ended in just two months.

Wow. Yeah. Isn't that crazy that they started on the same day?

Yes. Three months later. Yeah, California's been through it.

Yeah. Three months later, on November 29th, Judge McCartin formally sentenced Kraft to death, and he remained in custody of the state and then was removed to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.

Because California has gone back and forth over the legality of the death penalty in their state, Very few executions have occurred in the years since he was convicted, and none have occurred since 2006.

Today, the death penalty is legal, but there has been a moratorium in place since 2019 that bars the practice.

As a result of this whole thing, Randy Kraft remains on death row at San Quentin without any date for his execution.

He's 82. Damn. In the years since his conviction, he has appealed several times, but has yet to successfully overturn his conviction or sentence.

The challenges he's brought to the appeals courts have ranged from the unlawful admission of evidence to the legality of the death penalty itself.

But in most cases, the court just failed to find his arguments persuasive at all. for the crimes themselves, Kraft has consistently denied any responsibilities for the murders and maintains that he is innocent of the charges.

That's a joke. Even after all that evidence.

That's a joke. Also, sorry, he's 80. For the most part...

Randy Kraft has denied requests for interviews and did not testify on his own behalf or speak during the sentencing phase.

Finally, in 2016, he agreed to speak with the Bay Area Reporter, an LGBT news organization in California, about the case and trial.

He told the reporter, I'm getting older.

I'm going to die here. If I don't say something, it will never be said.

According to Kraft, he met Terry Gambrell at a bar called The Brig, and the Marine was very drunk and incoherent.

He said he was sitting down holding stuff in his lap near the trash can in the parking lot.

He looked out of sorts and I asked him if he was okay.

Oh, you're such a humanitarian. He didn't say anything to me other than he said El Toro.

I thought he was drunk or whatever and would take him to the base.

He claimed that at the time he was noticed by police, he wasn't weaving because he was drunk, but because he was trying to help Gambrel.

He said, I was shaking him, trying to wake him, shouting at him, trying to see if anything was in his mouth blocking his airway.

That's so crazy because like who strangled him then?

Yeah, looking to see if he was wounded or bleeding.

Oh, my God. He said, then I noticed the lights of the CHP patrol car that was pulling me over.

Shit like this shouldn't even get published.

No, it shouldn't. And I love that he also had, which I believe is personally, I believe this is him getting a little funny, funny out of his, his statement here. when he said he wanted to make sure that nothing was blocking his airway.

Really? Like the several things that you force fed down people's throats and suffocated them with throughout the years?

Yeah. Like that was a cute little addition.

Nice. You fucking piece of shit. Throughout the interview, he continued to assert that the supposed scorecard the prosecutor made so much about was...

Just a list of guests for an upcoming birthday party.

Why did it have different dates then? And different states.

Dates, states, names. What the fuck are you talking about?

And why are you waiting? Wasting people's time.

He said one column was the names of people I wanted to invite and the other column were maybes.

It was in code so he wouldn't recognize it because he was going to surprise his roommate.

And what were the different dates and states about?

Don't worry about it. As for all the other evidence against him, that was all manufactured by the prosecution.

I bet. Wow. Yeah. Whether he did or didn't get a fair trial, he remains on death row to this day, and he will likely remain there until he fucking dies.

In the meantime, the authorities in California are continuing to work on identifying those additional victims. both those on the quote-unquote scorecard and those who don't appear there, but are nonetheless believed to have been victims of Randy Kraft, the scorecard killer.

So there's more than the 61 on that card that they think are attributed to him.

That's crazy. And that is the case of the scorecard killer, Randy Kraft.

That was truly unlike anything we have ever covered.

Truly. Some of the things that we talked about in the past few days are... unimaginable and just like that juror i feel changed i feel completely changed by this case Those poor families having to sit there and hear the fucking atrocities that were done to their children.

Yeah. By this piece of absolute garbage.

That's a crime in and of itself that they had to sit there and hear about that.

Yeah. That's awful. It never ceases to amaze me that people like this exist.

That's the thing. What happens to make people this way?

Yeah. It is fascinating to look into it.

There's not some simple, he bumped his head.

No, it goes so far beyond that. Yeah. People are twisted, my dude.

Twisted? I mean, this is like... Worst... Nightmare shit.

I can't even come up with a word for that.

I mean, monstrous, grotesque, atrocious... every abhorrent abominable like it's just like everything is he he's and that and there's so many Like it got to a point when I was going through this that I was like, when does it stop?

Yeah. Like when does it stop and when does he get caught?

Because I can't read about another one of these.

But then I was like. Like, you have to read about another piece because it's all matter.

Like, no matter what. And it's like, holy shit.

What was it, ultimately 12, 13 years he was killing?

Yeah, it was like over a decade. Yeah, like that is.

In three states. Like, several counties, like, thank goodness for DNA.

And thank goodness those... jurisdictions started talking to each other.

I know. And opened it up to other jurisdictions.

They never would have connected this. I know.

And you just you really hope that with the and I've said it like so many times, but I really hope that with the advancements and. forensic sciences, they can figure out who the fuck helped him with this and who that other DNA belongs to on some of those bodies.

Yeah. I hope so because I want to get some of those people identified.

Nobody should have to be unidentified for that long.

Yeah. And like the accomplices should not be able to live the rest of their lives.

No. With what they did. Yeah. The accomplices, we need to find out who the fuck did that.

Like. Yeah. Yeah. He had help. Who the fuck is it?

And he's not going to turn on anybody because he's not admitting that he was even involved.

He never will. And that would ruin his whole, like he's a little bitch.

Which is dumb because you're on death row no matter what.

You're in your 80s. You're dying there. So it's like, just admit it, dude.

Clear your fucking conscience. And it's like, not that you have one.

Evil to the core. But he's holding onto his shit.

So he knows if he starts pointing fingers, he's now admitting to what he did.

So he's never going to do it. That's why he hasn't pulled anyone in.

And I'm shocked by it. Yeah, it is nuts.

But it's to save his own ass. But I don't know why, because I'm like, you're dying there.

But he wants, like, he doesn't want that legacy.

He wants to pretend that he's innocent and he was just railroaded.

That's crazy. Well, like we promised, our next episode will be spooky.

I think we're going to do spooky games. Yeah, we found some really cool ones that we just want to get like fun with.

They're scary. They're scary. We're going to a paranormal place.

Yeah. Just for one episode so we can just take a second. yeah and then i think after that we've got listener tales yeah um so yeah well with all that being said we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it Not so weird that you don't go do something nice for yourself today.

Yeah, treat yourself. Treat yourself. Thank you.

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.

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[The Scorecard Killer: The Chilling Crimes of Randy Kraft]-[Episode 700: Randy Kraft: The Scorecard Killer (Part 3)]

📋 Summary

The Unmasking of a Serial Predator

The Modus Operandi and Forensic Evidence

The Infamous Scorecard

The Luck of the Catch

Trial and Legacy

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript