Randy Steven Kraft
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Randy Steven Kraft (born March 19, 1945) is an infamous Californian serial killer convicted of 16 murders and suspected of 54 others.
During the 1970s and early 1980s there were dozens of grisly homicides along the freeways of California, with some victims turning up in the neighboring state of Oregon. The victims were young men and teenaged boys, most of whom were savagely tortured and abused. Some had been castrated, others had been burned with a car cigarette-lighter, and many had high levels of alcohol and tranquilizers in their blood systems, indicating they were rendered helpless by drink and drugs before they were sadistically abused and killed.
The method of murder varied, with some strangled, some shot in the head, and others simply dying through a combination of torture and being plied with drugs. Quite a number of victims were in the US Military, hitching their way either to or from their bases. Others were teenaged run-aways or were picked up by the killer in gay bars.
Randy Kraft was arrested on May 14, 1983, whilst he drove along the San Diego Freeway in Mission Viejo, California. Two police officers had noticed his erratic driving so pulled him over. 38-year-old Kraft was promptly arrested when the strangled body of a 25-year-old US Marine was found in his car, along with alcohol and bottles of tranquilizer pills.
A lot of evidence was found in the house that Kraft shared with his gay lover. There were clothes and other possessions belonging to young men who had turned up dead at the side of freeways over the last decade, and many photos of victims either unconscious or dead. There was also a coded list of cryptic references to murders, a total of sixty-seven of them. As the final victim was not listed there, presumably because Kraft had not had time to make a note of it, this implied that he had murdered a total of sixty-eight young men.
Randy Kraft was eventually charged with sixteen homicides. He pleaded not-guilty at his trial in 1988, but he was convicted on all counts and sentenced to death. He is currently on Death Row at San Quentin prison where he continues to maintain his innocence.