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in 1970s California Randy craft was a man of many Gees military veteran computer whz party animal and prolific
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serial killer what sets Mr craft apart from other Killers is the volume of his victims the young men craft targeted
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suffered a cruel and unusual fate he wanted those young men to really really suffer and he enjoyed it it would
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be unimaginable to a normal human mind what occurred with no leads and little evidence the Spate of horrific murders
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continued for 11 long years these were a bunch of Unsolved cases bad unsolved cases when craft was
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finally caught red-handed the police realized the extent of his depravity so the prosecutor found a list in his truck
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of his car um that was a quoted reference to his victims dub the scorecard killer Randy craft was a
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methodical determined sadist and undoubtedly one of the world's most evil killers
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[Music] [Music] shortly after 1:00 a.m. on May the 14th 1983 two Highway Patrol officers pulled
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over a car being driven erratically on the I5 freeway in Mission bejo California the driver was 38-year-old r
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de craft they test Randy Craft's alcohol level and announce of course that he is
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drunk and then they say what about the passenger who appears to be asleep the officer who went around to the passenger
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side of the car realized very quickly this was no ordinary driving offense and he tried to wake him up
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wasn't successful open the door the young man's pants were pulled down to his knees and he was dead a
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regular traffic stop had just become a major murder inquiry and the driver of the car was at the center of
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it this killer Story begins on the west coast of America in Southern California Randy craft was born in March
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of 1945 in Long Beach California Randy had a very religious upbringing and his family was pretty
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devout craft was the youngest of four children and his parents only son he was doted on by his mother and
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three Elder sisters a very much the sort of Mother's boy when Randy craft was 3 years old his
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family moved from Long Beach to Midway City in neighboring Orange County where craft was enrolled in a local school
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he was a good student he was bright and academic those on the High School tennis
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team played saxophone pretty good saxophone player had good friends went to Claremont College in
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California which is rather respectable very reputable College to study economics he was talkative
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gregarious quite thoughtful he's a very competitive guy love break cards and
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hated to lose one thing about Randy was nobody ever remembers him sleeping it was during his time at College in the
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mid 1960s that craft started to engage in highrisk behavior in spite of this really rather
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level childhood and Adolescence sort of began to go off the rails in his final year at
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clemont he started drinking quite heavily and taking drugs and gambling all of those kind of
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instant gratification things it was as if he wanted to throw off the past and he suddenly wanted to
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become oh I'm going to become my own man since adolescence craft had been coming to terms with his own
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sexuality for a while in high school he dated women although subsequently came out as
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gay being a gay man it would have been very very difficult but then a lot of prejudice and discrimination in those
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days as he went into the more liberal College environment he became more comfortable craft threw himself into his
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new lifestyle frequented gay bars picked up male Hustlers he made no secret of it to
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those who knew at that point he was definitely experimenting with how this was was
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going to impact his life in 1966 craft was arrested for lwd conduct after propositioning an undercover
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police officer but was let off with a warning it was the first of many incidents that demonstrated to craft
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that his sexuality would not be universally accepted after he graduated from college
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and came out to his parents his father just had a fit and refused to talk to him for a while after colleag hcraft
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ventured into the world of full-time employment and at the age of 23 embarked upon a career in the
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military Randy craft was in the United States Air Force in 1968 as rank was armman first
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class he was good at discipline good at order was quite successful not a combat role actually
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was painting test jets in the at Edwards Air Force Space at that time gay men were not permitted to serve in the
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military despite this craft revealed his sexuality to his superiors on July the 26th 1969 he
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received a general discharge from the service with medical grounds being cited as the
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reason General discharge is different than an honorable discharge craft objected to his discharge but was
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told he had no grounds so he goes back to home to live with his parents I wouldn't have said it was a very happy
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return we see that potentially his sexuality has had a massively detrimental effect on his future career
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and his aspirations 24-year-old Randy craft got a job as a bartender at a a local gay
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bar known as the mug here at closing time he would pick up men for late night sexual liazal heading to one of the many
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beaches of the Southern Californian Coastline and this is the point that his offending starts he really starts to
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escalate in the risks to himself and other people in March 1970 crafts now living with a housemate picked up a
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13-year-old boy near Huntington Beach started talking this when he says hey you want to come back to my car and
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have a beer the child told craft that he'd run away from home that day craft
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invited the boy back to his apartment in Long Beach where events took a horrifying
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turn the boys ped with drugs and alcohol and once he got him to the home he gave
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him U some Valium Valium is generally used as a minor tranquilizer in combination with
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drugs such as alcohol can so depress the brain that the person may either lose Consciousness or at least lose a level
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of Consciousness and not be able to act normally or have normal judgment or defend
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themselves here's very soon semiconscious un able to to resist any force that Mr craft would apply while
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the boy was powerless Randy craft forced him to perform a sex act on him craft then went on to violently sexually
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assault the teenager while he was too sedated to fight back he sexually assaulted a
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13-year-old boy a child who was incredibly vulnerable this is not an insignificant crime this is is the first
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Insight we get now that this man is escalating in Risk significantly after the attack craft
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carried on his day as normal and rra left and went to work the kid is just mortified and he's scared to
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death the boy is traumatized by the events he escaped and got help members of the public were quick to
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help the clearly intoxicated boy and call the emergency services and the police come and they K
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him to the hospital and they pump his stomach they take a story the kid never told the cops that he had been sexually
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molested he just said he' been abducted and given this alcoh with the police
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unaware of exactly what had happened at the apartment Randy cof got away with brutally assaulting the
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child the attack would come to be recognized as a practice Run for the the pattern of sadistic offending that would
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come to Define Craft's crimes an extreme sexual deviant and he unfortunately gets gratification from
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ways that aren't normal free to roam the streets of Southern California it was only a matter
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of time before craft took the opportunity to strike again with his veneer of respectability intact Randy
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CRA pursued a career in the newly emerging computer industry computers were just into
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existence but he was a whiz at computers already then that was his Forte he was smart enough guy if you'd
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have met him at a party you might think he was a little high strung but he seemed like a regular person and he had
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a social demeanor about him that would get him by so he's developed by 1970 into a a
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respectable computer scientist B A gregarious young man and C into a secret life he still goes to gay bars and he
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still picks up male prostitutes on the 5th of October 1971 around 60 M from Craft's home in
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Long Beach a naked body was discovered close to the the Orga Highway the body of a young man called
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Wayne Ducket is discovered he a 30-year-old gay bartender he worked in a bar called The Stables the man had been
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missing for 2 weeks his body was too decomposed for police to ascertain Foul Play and his death was put down to acute
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alcohol poisoning but it would turn out to be the first death in a disturbing epidemic
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from about the early' 70s bodies started appearing young men who'd been murdered several of them were found
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dumped along the freeway with Road Burns that looks like they'd been kicked out
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of a moving car in 1972 there was another victim a 20-year-old Marine Edward Moore he was
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discovered around Christmas near the offramp of a freeway he'd been beaten and strangled 6 weeks later a man in his
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late teens or early 20s was found alongside the terminal Island freeway in Wilmington he'd been strangled with a
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ligature two months after this in April 1973 the body of 17-year-old Kevin Clark
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Bailey was found in Huntington Beach he was the first one to be mutilated he was suffocated I believe
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the genitalia work cut off though each death was a tragedy and each was investigated by the police there was no
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Panic at this time that a serial killer was responsible the murders occurring across Southern California's vast Road
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Network were not immediately linked 8 days after Kevin Bailey's murder another
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body was found of an unidentified young man he'd been dismembered 3 months later
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in July 197 3 20-year-old Ronald weeb went missing Ronald left his mother's house to go to a bar and disappeared he
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was found 2 Days Later he's been strangled and sexually assaulted over the next 18 months four
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more young men were discovered murdered beside or close to Major roadways in Southern
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California Vincent Cruz MERS Malcolm Eugene little James Dale Reeves and Roger Edward
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Dickerson it was quite difficult for the police to link all of these murders together at the time
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because there didn't appear to be any strict consistency in the way those people were
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killed some had been strangled others asphyxiated some had been beaten or tortured more than one victim had had
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been restrained or even suspended by their wrists and ankles but certainly some of them were
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sexually assaulted there was physical evidence for that at least two of the bodies maybe
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more had socks stuffed up their rectum some of the victims were sexually mutilated and uh that was obviously a
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striking finding apart from the fact they were all young men there was also little to
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link the victims many of the victims were Marines and they didn't come from orang County
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or hitchhikers and there was this great alarm some of them were gay some of them
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were vulnerable in other ways maybe they were homeless maybe they were runaways it was the time of the Vietnam
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War when thousands of young men would have been away from home their whereabouts hard to track for their
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loved ones the fact they didn't come from orang they come from you know where
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they're drafted from in Wisconsin or Alabama or Colorado wherever they came from uh it wasn't a local boy all of the
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murdered men had been alone when they'd been picked up by their killer there
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were no Witnesses and no clues to link them to any suspects these are perfectly innocent
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people who have fallen into the hands of what can only be called a monster [Music]
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and the monster had no intention of stopping in January 1975 the bodies of high school student
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John lus and 21-year-old Craig jitis were found along the same stretch of Coastline both had been strangled with
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signs of as sadistic sexual motivation the same modus operand I applied to both they were young men and they were dumped
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by this time with 14 unsolved homicides across four counties in less than four years police had come to the horrifying
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realization they could all be the work of one serial killer local law enforcement called in specialist
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investigators a task force has been set up to see if they can track down whoever's doing it they have an FBI
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profiler the FBI told detectives they were likely looking for a methodical organized lust killer of above average
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intelligence they thought they might have had prior convictions or had been sent to a a mental facility the task
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force came up empty-handed but that spring though they did not realize it the police came agonizingly close to
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catching their killer on the 29th of March 1975 19-year-old old Keith crotwell and
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a 15-year-old friend were part of a group of teens drinking in a parking lot in Long
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Beach soon they noticed this this weird guy staring at them across the parking lot it's 5' 10 about 140 lb short
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haircut and very unassuming but but a great talker hey you guys want some beer he ended up being able to talk
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these individuals to getting in his car and leaving we don't know why the friends accepted a ride they also
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accepted the valum the man offered them from a stash in his car quickly becoming
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intoxicated sometime later the car returned to the parking lot he apparently did not want to deal with two
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people drives back to the parking lot near the Grenada and the Belmont Shores and the friend is literally
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thrown out of the car and crotwell is kept Keith cwell never came home Keith was missing for six weeks
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before his terrible fate became clear what was found of Keith was his head which is found in Long Beach
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marina Keith cell's devastated friends turned detective tracking down the stranger distinctive vehicle
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some friends who'd seen katwell and his buddy get into the car identified it and
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the police for the first time interviewed Randy craft 30-year-old craft told officers he and crotwell had
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driven around for a while until the car got stuck in mud on a dirt road once he got the car stuck Crowell had just gone
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and he was left with the car to investigate officers craft story was far from watertight maybe this guy killed Keith
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cwell so the cops take the case to the Los Angeles County DA's office and says
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we want to file a murder charge against rcraft the prosecutor refused the police
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had no physical evidence and no murder weapon Keith cell's death was filed as a
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potential drowning and Randy craft remained free to haunt the streets of Southern California
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there was nobody there was no evidence When a Killer is able to keep killing and
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nobody seems to notice and nobody comes knocking on his door and they're not
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arrested then of course they're going to become emboldened he just kept getting away
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with it and when you get away with something you become bullet proof in your own head both investigators and
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Keith cell's friends were sure that craft had killed and decapitated the teenager a month later in June
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1975 Randy craft was arrested for loot conduct and spent 5 days in jail in October
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1975 skeletal remains were found close to where craft said he'd last seen Keith
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crotwell but they would not be identified as the teens until 1983 after a 7-month Hiatus in the Spate of
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violent sexual murders that had plagued the area another young man disappeared the next victim was a man
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called Mark Hall it was New Year's Eve 1975 he'd been to a number of parties and they were drinking and his
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friend was continuing to party and he noticed Mark Howard hall pass out on the couch when 22-year-old Mark's body was
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found 3 days later and almost 60 M away it was clear that Randy craft had escalated in his horrendous
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brutality he had been tortured and sexually molested over an extended period of time his genitals had been
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emasculated and a lot of sand and mud was found in his mouth and in his throat the victim had been traumatized
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while still alive was called anti morm before death the victim was horribly tortured including
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the cigarette was punched in the cigarette ladder and heated up and burned him on several parts of his body
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on left nipple and upper torso on on his face on his eyes so the victim could close his eyes to what was happening to
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him the torch was happening to him when people kill serially they are inevitably going to
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develop their technique some people may use torture or sadism they want that person to really suffer and they may
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experiment as they find sadism actually pleases them who knows how when horror these
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young men went through before they were killed it's a tragedy nobody knew how he
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disappeared he was simply at a party and then he wasn't there anymore toxicology tests revealed Mark
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Hall's blood alcohol level was fatally high at 0.67% Valium was also found in his
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system I don't think anybody could drink that much that sounds like somebody pouring
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alcohol down his throat a level of drug such as alcohol could render a person unconscious when
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combined with Valium could be lethal many aspects of the murder were familiar to investigators the intoxication
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torture and extreme sexual violence but Mark Hall's murder bore a novel feature
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craft had tied him to a small tree posed for whoever would find him he got some sort of a thrill out of advertising it
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he wanted to shock people who saw the bodies why would you pose it they was proud of what he was doing the 1970s
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would be seen in hindsight as a risky time to be a young man in Southern California as well as the many victims
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found castrated sodomized and tortured there were dozens of other unsolved murders of young men and teenage boys
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who'd been picked up on the network of freeways in 1977 a man named Patrick Kerney handed
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himself in to police in Riverside California and he was known as the trash bag killer cuz his bodies were mainly
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dumped in trash bags Kerney admitted to killing 35 men the following year he was given 21 life
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sentences and imprisoned at San Quentin detectives hoped that young men would now be safe from attack but in reality
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they were far from certain that Kerney was responsible for all of the unsolved murders on their books for a start his
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method of killing was always a gunshot to the temple the police will be heavily reliant on their linkage analysis so
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they have to find consistencies across all of these bodies that were appearing Patrick hery did not torture
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or name the victims Patrick Cy said I'm not the sake in the butt kind of guy I'm
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not him I'm not the worst of the worst this other guy is the other guy Kerney
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was more than likely referring to was Randy craft Kerney claimed to be disgusted by the macabra nature of many
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of the unsolved killings and refused to take responsibility for them and very soon more mutilated bodies
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started turning up with features that were disturbingly familiar victims they were molested they
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were injured kept alive while I was torturing them hard to describe and it makes me just sick to think about
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him one of the things he did was he put ballpoint pins in their penises who in Heaven's name would even think of doing
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that maybe this is about sexuality his own potential internalized homophobia where he has a
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hatred for the men that he finds attractive maybe he hates them because they have this power over him that he
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can find them attractive and it and he doesn't like that in himself the bodies
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of the mutilated young male victims continued to pile up nine more through 1978 and 197
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79 in the summer of 1980 the police once again believed they had caught the culprit William Bonin who confessed to
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21 murders gaining the Monica the freeway Strangler but just two months later the
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nightmare for victims and detectives began again boning was caught but the killings
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went on so it couldn't have been boning for a while there we thought that the F killing St over and they got the
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free killer but then the body started to come again and and we realized there was
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somebody else out there uh and the cops admitted it too in the meantime 35-year-old Long Beach computer
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programmer Randy craft had got a new job for an aerospace firm and had begun traveling around the US on business
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Michigan and Oregon were places he frequently visited in December 1982 in Grand Rapids m michig detective Ed
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rusticus from the Kent County Sheriff's Office was alerted to the discovery of
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two male bodies I was sent as an investigator to kind of a remote location it was December 7 we did have a
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lot of frost and snow the bodies were quite frosted over in fact when they were taken in they had to be
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unthought before work could be done on them police were quick to identify the two victims who disappeared two days
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earlier they were called Dennis Al and Christopher shernan they were cousins and they were both going to
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Horticultural show there happened to be a huge convention in Grand Rapids at the Amway
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Grand and this huge convention f focused in on the Apple industry that's why
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these young fellas were at that convention it just so happened that Randy craft was also at that
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hotel and they were never seen alive again the double murder was an unusual crime in the agricultural Heartland of
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Michigan these cases had a profound effect on community of Grand Rapids because the victims were from well known
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well-respected Farm families they themselves had no criminal behavior and this was totally
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incomprehensible when chief medical examiner Steven Cole inspected the bodies he found that both young men had
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been strangled to death no easy feat for a single attacker how did he get these two young men into a situation where he
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was able to strangle them without a great struggle the one fellow was a very popular wrestler at West Catholic High
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School the fact that he could subdue two means he must have got him drunk or under the influence or some way to have
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control over him Toxicology test discovered both men's blood alcohol levels were twice the legal driving
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limit not enough to probably render them unconscious however combined with the Valium they certainly could have been
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unconscious or at least lethargic and not able to vigorously defend themselves from being
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strangled one of the victims had been left nuded the other had his pants pulled down I found that a pen from the mway
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Grand Hotel had been inserted up the urethro I haven't uh seen anything like
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that before or after detectives in Grand Rapids had little to go on to solve this
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brutal and unusual crime we basically had no evidence no knowledge of individuals and we researched a lot of
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things with a lot of people to try to ascertain who might be responsible we did some things that I
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would never in my life do is watch horrific movies involving sex crimes to try and get into somebody's mind who who
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is this guy we didn't know what we were even dealing with rusticus and his team
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followed every line of inquiry contacting police forces across the United States in pursuit of similar
00:31:41
cases 5 months later they heard about a traffic stop in Southern California that
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stopped investigators in their tracks at 1:10 in the morning of May the 14th 1983 two California Highway Patrol
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officers spot a Toyota Celica weaving down the road as the officers approached the car
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they saw two men in the front the driver was identified as 38-year-old Randy cof the officer
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noticed a young man looked unconscious in a passenger seat and he tried to wake him up wasn't
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successful but of course he's not asleep he's dead the patrol officers on the I5 freeway in
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Mission beo had been expecting a routine traffic stop with a suspected drug driver instead they encountered a
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suspicious death that would launch a murder inquiry his passenger was 25-year-old Marine Terry gambell he was
00:32:46
dead Li at your marks around his throat as if somebody were behind him with maybe a belt the young man's pants were
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pulled down to his knees the weaving and erratic driving occurred is because he was
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actually literally cutting off his penis as he was driving it was clear to patrol officers that they'd happened
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upon something highly unusual and the mutilated Marine was just the beginning when the police searched
00:33:21
crafts vehicle they found a lot of drugs they found photographs of unconscious or
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deceased males even more significantly in the boot there is discovered a ring binder with
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61 notes the sheet of line paper was a handwritten list in two neat columns beginning with stable and ending with
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what you got when homicide detectives examined the list and the dozens of pornographic photos it dawned on them
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that they'd stumbled on the killer they'd been hunting for over 10 years craft is simply charged with the
00:34:07
murder of Terry gambell the police of course get a search War for his house and discover
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all manner of trophies things he's taken from people littering the house it's a
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sort of Treasure Trove of forensic evidence in the garage was a collect ction of mismatched shoes belts clothing
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a razor and a backpack none of which appeared to belong to Randy craft Michigan detective Ed rusticus was
00:34:38
alerted to Craft's capture by Californian investigators who recognized the similarity between their unsolved
00:34:45
cases and the murders of cousins Dennis Al and Christopher shorn the young men had fallen into Craft's clutches while
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he was on a business trip in the Grand Rapids area I was part of the search warrant at his
00:35:02
home in Long Beach and we actually found our victim's personal items in Randy
00:35:10
Craft's house he kept a souvenir from each victim at least one souvenir when details of Craft's reign
00:35:20
of terror were shared police in Oregon also came forward with at least six similar unsolved murders it appeared
00:35:28
that every business trip had been an opportunity to kill by studying the Polaroid photos of
00:35:36
dead young men detectives from across three states were able to link a number of their Cold Case victims with craft
00:35:44
but the killer refused to confess I don't think craft talked at all I know several of the detectives
00:35:51
that I dealt with out in LA and they said he never talked never said nothing no didn't acknowledge anything there was
00:36:00
no information gathered other than physical evidence which tied him to so many different
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scenes there was a beer bottle on one of the victims it was broken and his thumb
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print was identified as being at the bottom of that bottle in May 1983 craft was charged
00:36:25
with four more California murders from earlier that year including victims Jeffrey Nelson Robert Loggins Roger
00:36:34
Deval and Eric Church The Following month craft was charged with the 1975 torture killing of
00:36:43
Mark Hall meanwhile investigators set to work to decipher Craft's coded list from the
00:36:51
boot of his car the list was very convincing to me that that was a list of people he' killed
00:36:57
was 60 or 70 names on but they weren't names it was shorthand like uh Marine the law enforce able to interpret
00:37:09
the list and come up with the names of victims that fit the description on the quoted
00:37:14
list for example it would be jail out and the victim was abducted after his release from jail or airplane hill was a
00:37:21
location where this one victim was abducted it's thought by the police the acronym him for Ducket was stable
00:37:30
because he worked in a bar called The Stables parking lot referred to Keith crotwell the victim he'd got away with
00:37:38
killing in 1975 the coded item two in one hitch was believed to reference two young men he
00:37:46
picked up hitchhiking together in February 1983 photos of both deceased victims were also found in his home
00:37:58
[Music] in many ways he killed so many times it was a way to itemize it because he
00:38:10
really would want to relive these murders by September 1983 craft had acred 39 criminal charges
00:38:21
for murder robbery sodomy and Mayhem committed in California between 197 2 and 1983 5 years later in 1988 he stood
00:38:33
trial at the Orange County Courthouse accused of 16 murders two counts of sodomy and one of
00:38:42
emasculation prosecutors felt confident they could prove to a jury Beyond reasonable
00:38:48
doubt he had the Michigan cases in the Oregon cases they were brought into trial but he wasn't charged with them in
00:38:55
California it was an extraordinary Affair more than 160 Witnesses thousand exhibits 16 victims Frederick McBride
00:39:09
was a criminal defense lawyer assigned to the case for the preliminary hearing craft pleaded not guilty
00:39:17
refusing to accept his lawyer's advice the evidence was absolutely overwhelmed they found a dead body in
00:39:24
his car with him they found momentos at his house he found his fingerprints of the scene nobody was ever ever going to
00:39:31
convince a jury he didn't do it he wanted to get on the stand and convince everybody he wasn't that kind of
00:39:39
person he was getting a kick out of being in trial and M be the center of attention the trial went on for 13
00:39:48
months becoming one of the most expensive trials ever held in California $10 million in those days a great deal
00:39:56
of money the prosecution painted a picture of a Relentless sadist who prayed on innocent
00:40:03
young men Randy craft is like a shark a killer shark always circulating at night always
00:40:14
looking to kill somebody to eat somebody his eyes never shut he just kept on driving always looking always on the
00:40:20
hunt Randy craft had a way of dealing with people and he ended up being able to talk these individuals to getting in
00:40:30
his car and leaving the defense allegation was that he was an upright Citizen and he had
00:40:40
done none of these things they were all the victims of William boning and Patrick
00:40:46
Kenney nothing to do with Randy craft it's an outrage to suggest they were in the face of overwhelming
00:40:55
evidence the jury did not believe 44-year-old Randy cra's protestations finally in May 1989 Randy
00:41:06
craft is convicted of all the murders and of one count of sodomy and one of emasculation it took the jury 11 whole
00:41:14
days to come to that conclusion you feel grateful that you've been able to ascertain who the Killer
00:41:24
is but your most gratifying thing is for the family members that may have some closure but how can family members even
00:41:35
have closure when they have their loved ones killed craft was also accused of other crimes during the penalty phase
00:41:43
including the molestation of the 13-year-old boy in 1970 the murder of six young men in
00:41:50
Oregon and Dennis alt and Christopher shanborne the two cousins in Michigan on the 29th of November 1989 Randy cof
00:42:01
was sentenced to death and sent to San Quentin prison in California he got to death penalty I
00:42:10
don't think anybody struggled with it too hard despite Craft's convictions for
00:42:15
16 murders a chilling Theory persists that this was merely the tip of the iceberg if as detectives believe the
00:42:24
scorecard was a tally of victims his Killing Spree could have been over four times that with scores of unidentified
00:42:32
bodies that remain unrecovered to this day for those involved in the case it's
00:42:39
one that will stay with them forever I've investigated a lot of murders in my career and these murders
00:42:47
were extensive brutal killings that involved mutilation of body parts these are more
00:42:57
than evil Killers never had I ever had anything to do with anybody like Mr craft or his
00:43:06
crimes and the truth of it it changed the way I looked at the world it comes into my
00:43:14
head frequently you did what how is that possible you would do such a thing it's
00:43:20
like he's not a human being between 1972 and 1983 Randy craft hunted for for
00:43:27
innocent victims across Southern California he drugged raped mutilated and murdered at least 16 young men but
00:43:36
the list that earned him the nickname the scorecard killer suggests that more than 60 innocent people suffered
00:43:43
agonizing deaths at his hands for the brutality of his murders and the sheer number of victims Randy craft will
00:43:51
forever be known as one of the world's most evil killers [Music] [Music] for