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Butchers of L.A. Season 1 Episode 2
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00:00Today, the nude body of a teenage boy was found propped up against a back alley door.
00:12He had been choked to death.
00:13This is the 33rd killing of the same type in the last few months.
00:18The bodies just kept piling up at a very disturbing frequency.
00:24This killer was relentless.
00:25Young hitchhiking kids are being picked up, raped, strangled, and dumped naked.
00:34There's no evidence left behind.
00:37They showed us a board, and there were 45 names at least on this chart,
00:42and it was titled Southern California Homosexual Murders.
00:46The crime rate was just unbelievable.
00:48A witness said she saw a hitchhiker gassed and pulled into a van.
00:52He nicknamed it. It was the death van.
00:55He would say, if you got in the death van, you didn't get out.
00:59The pressure of solving a case, you felt very personally involved.
01:04It was you against them.
01:25The adalah war.
01:26The support of solving a death van, you thought it would aeronel.
01:42But if you want to know more ABOUT an e-mails to explore, or you want to know more about the distress of people like this.
02:17And two murders surrendered here last Friday.
02:19Officers also wanted to talk to them about five other similar killings.
02:24Carney is arrested, put away in prison.
02:26He's not going to do any more killing.
02:29But from the spring of 1979 until early 1980,
02:33the bodies just kept increasing and piling up at a very disturbing frequency.
02:40This killer was relentless.
02:41Young hitchhiking kids from 15 to 19 are being picked up, raped, strangled, and dumped naked.
02:55They're beat up sometimes.
02:57They're not necessarily tortured.
02:59They're not kept prisoner.
03:00And there's no evidence left behind at all.
03:05The bodies are stripped down.
03:08All their identifications are done away with.
03:12This is also pre-DNA.
03:13So the forensic scene is a little less than we would think of today.
03:24A task force had been set up.
03:27They were patting themselves on the back of what they had accomplished.
03:30But they hadn't solved the freeway murders.
03:47Marcus Alexander Grabs, a 17-year-old German tourist, disappeared in August 1979.
03:53He was over here hitchhiking, and he was seeing Los Angeles, and he was down in Newport.
04:02Got his backpack, and he decided he was going to see go up Northern California.
04:07And a van comes along and picks him up.
04:11Marcus Grabs is found in Malibu Canyon, stabbed 70 times.
04:17And it's a horrific scene.
04:20The sheriff's department, they got it.
04:22The homicide team, they went out.
04:24They looked for evidence.
04:26His body is nude.
04:27He had a backpack.
04:28The backpack had been thrown on him.
04:30There's no evidence there.
04:32So the homicide detective didn't know what to make out of it.
04:37This is miles and miles from Newport Beach, in a very remote area.
04:49Donald Ray Hyden, 15, disappeared August 27, 79, in Los Angeles County.
04:56His body is found just a short distance away from Marcus Grabs' body.
05:01And his body is found in a dumpster.
05:03It's just been thrown in.
05:05Nude.
05:06It's been sexually molested.
05:08The sheriffs, you know, they're working that.
05:10And they're looking at the two.
05:11There's got to be something connecting these two because of the closeness where the bodies are found.
05:17The gruesome discoveries were covering six counties, from Kern County to the north of Los Angeles County, Orange County to the south, on into Riverside County, San Bernardino County, a very large area of Southern California.
05:36It became obvious that law enforcement authorities, the detectives, needed to get together and connect the dots geographically.
05:46Who is the serial killer or serial killers leaving bodies along the freeways?
05:50I was just out of the Army in 1966.
06:01I decided to go on to the police department.
06:03I had a brother in the department.
06:04He'd been there seven years.
06:06I was pretty impressed with where he had worked.
06:09He never worked homicide, but he used to talk about friends of his who were in homicide.
06:13And it was kind of intriguing to me.
06:14And I thought, I'd like to be an investigator.
06:16I was one of the youngest guys I actually started in homicide with five years on the job.
06:21I went Hollywood homicide.
06:24And that was quite an experience.
06:27John St. John was a personal friend of mine.
06:29He came to RHD in the mid-70s.
06:32Very likable.
06:33He was an older man.
06:34John came on the job three years before I was born.
06:37John was well known.
06:38He was the number one detective on the job.
06:40He had badge number one.
06:41John was interested in this West Side Rapist case that I'd handled.
06:45And John, being an older man, and he was probably in his late 50s at that time,
06:50John was very interested in what we did, what we did to solve it, and how we put people in jail.
06:54Because he had never worked a serial killer case.
06:57And that was the only thing that put us on a level playing ground, because I always said,
07:00I want to know what St. John has forgotten.
07:03I was pleased to work with John.
07:04I never had a problem.
07:05We were partners, never had an argument.
07:07We worked together for about three or four years.
07:09But in 79, these bodies were really starting to pile up.
07:14Even though we didn't have our own case at that time, we were assigned to monitor these cases,
07:18because we had found out that a lot of these victims were being abducted out of Los Angeles
07:23and then dumped elsewhere.
07:25It was important for us to stay on top of this with the Sheriff's Department and Orange County
07:29Sheriffs, and we pretty much went to all their meetings.
07:32At one time, they showed us a board, and there were probably 45 names at least on this chart.
07:38And it was titled Southern California Homosexual Murders.
07:42And we always felt like if there's bodies dropping around the county, eventually we're going to probably get one.
07:49And, of course, jurisdiction lies with where they find the body.
07:51John and I got our first call out.
08:00Central detectives called us in our office, which is only about a mile away from the dump site.
08:04And they said they had a nude young boy in a dumpster on Harlem Place off of 2nd Street.
08:15When we got here, there was a black and white unit here and central detectives.
08:20And they pointed it out to us where the body was.
08:22So we approached the dumpster carefully, told the patrol officer, say, stay back.
08:27We don't want any more people around the dumpster than we absolutely had to have, because it's a crime scene, basically.
08:33So then we just examined as much as we could, looking into the dumpster.
08:37I'm 6'4", and I had to kind of stand on my tiptoes to look in, because he was down a little ways.
08:42And I could see that it was a nude young boy.
08:45It was fresh.
08:46In fact, it looked more like he was asleep than decomposing.
08:50By that time, we called the coroner's office, took a real hard look inside the dumpster.
08:55It was apparent that there was some kind of sexual assault since he was nude.
09:01And we figured he probably abducted from somewhere else and then just dumped here.
09:06So we didn't have a lot of confidence that we were going to find a lot of evidence here.
09:10But we did have the coroner's office come out, and we did a good search of the whole dumpster and put the body in a body bag.
09:16The first thought we had when we saw the body, it was so similar to all the others that had been occurring all through 1979.
09:23And, of course, this was early into 1980, and we thought, oh, boy, we're in for a rough year.
09:27We had about nine different bodies at that time, but all similar situation along freeways and in back alleys like this, behind gas stations.
09:37This just really, we were pretty convinced it was connected.
09:46We identified the body as Charles Miranda, 15-year-old boy.
09:50And we found out that he had been hitchhiking around the Starwood area in West Hollywood, and he wound up here where they dumped the body, of course.
10:00For a killer that knew his way around, you'd almost have to know these alleyways in downtown Los Angeles because you only just stumbled into one of these alleys.
10:07And we figured there were two of them, to lift a body that's 165, 170 pounds that high, it would probably take two guys to do it right.
10:16So that's when we really were pretty convinced that the killer had an accomplice.
10:20Looking at the body, it was disturbing to me for a lot of reasons.
10:27One, because he was about the age of my oldest son at the time.
10:30The body was badly bruised.
10:32It was hard to tell too much until the autopsy.
10:36And the autopsy kind of revealed that he had ligature marks and he'd been strangled and sexually assaulted.
10:41That particular method of operation was pretty consistent with this new wave of killings.
10:49And so now John and I were, it was game on for us because now we're not only monitoring, we have a case.
10:58After Charles Miranda, there was a real uptick between March and May of 1980.
11:04Beginning with Thomas Lundgren, 13 years old, May 1979 in Los Angeles County.
11:13David Louis Murillo, 17, disappeared September 9th, 79.
11:18Found the next day in Los Angeles County.
11:21More and more young men were found nude, molested.
11:27Who's doing it? No one knows.
11:29Robert Wierosteck, he was 18 when he disappeared September 17th, 1979.
11:35Found a week later in Orange County.
11:38James McCabe, 12 years old, disappeared and found February 3rd, 1980 in Los Angeles County.
11:45Ronald Craig Gatlin, 18, disappeared March 14th, 1980.
11:51The police try to cover it up.
11:54They don't want the public to panic.
11:55They don't want to have the politicians breathing down their neck.
12:02So it's hushed up and it's kept under the radar.
12:06J.J. Maloney is a reporter who ends up in Orange County.
12:11Someone dumps an envelope on his desk in early 1980.
12:14And it says, gay boys getting killed.
12:18And it's all these clippings of all these young boys are being found all over Southern California.
12:23And he sees a pattern here and he goes to his editor.
12:25He says, this is going on.
12:27The police are stonewalling us.
12:28It's our obligation to do this story.
12:32And his editor agrees.
12:34And on March 24th, 1980, they break the story.
12:38And Maloney coins the term, freeway killer.
12:41Today, the nude body of a teenage boy was found propped up against a back alley door.
12:50He had been choked to death.
12:51This is the 33rd killing of the same type in the last few months.
12:55The latest possible victim of the freeway killer was found Monday behind this mobile station in Huntington Beach.
13:00This is the sixth victim found in Orange County.
13:04And he superficially resembles the boy described last week by a witness who said she saw a hitchhiker gassed and pulled into a van.
13:12Behind the service station here at Beach and Adams, the nude body of 18-year-old Stephen Wells was found last Tuesday.
13:18The Huntington Beach police are asking for help in finding Stephen's killer.
13:21The television reporters, the newspapers, were starting to really focus on this.
13:30And there started to be a panic about what was happening in Southern California.
13:35Why were all of these young men, teenagers and younger, being kidnapped and murdered and then dumped all throughout Southern California?
13:45I was a sergeant at the training academy, and they promoted me to lieutenant and then transferred me into the investigation bureau.
13:57And at this time, the assistant sheriff had decided that they needed, we needed someone to handle the press because we were getting larger and more and more activity and having more and more contact with the media.
14:13Actually, I started the first PIO press information office in Orange County.
14:19My job as a PIO was to answer their questions so that they wouldn't interfere with the investigation or be bothering the investigators while they're trying to work.
14:29One of the really things about serial killers is that people have a rush, and especially the public.
14:37Oh, you've got a serial killer.
14:39You've got another Kearney out on the streets.
14:41No, we can't say that yet.
14:44And we used to take a lot of heat for that.
14:45They'd say, oh, you've got it.
14:46You know, it's coming.
14:48No, we're not ready to say that there is a serial killer.
14:52We're still putting things together.
14:53So it took us quite a while before we admitted that there was a serial killer out there.
14:58The terror increased, especially in the gay community, because it became obvious that many of these victims were either gay or bisexual or suspected of being gay.
15:12The gay community has been targeted with violence ever since the gay community has existed.
15:18So it's not new to have people targeting the community and trying to pick people off.
15:26In the past, the police usually wouldn't do very much about it either.
15:30Once you get into the 1970s and the political climate is a little bit different, the police are a little more obligated to at least go through the motions that they are investigating this.
15:44The perception in the gay community at that time would have certainly been that the police isn't going to lift a finger to help us with this, unless it makes them look bad somehow.
15:56They don't care about us.
15:57They've been targeting us for a century.
16:00We had a murder that involved homosexuals, but we didn't handle them any different than any other human beings or human beings.
16:07So there might have been a prejudice in some areas toward gay people, but we couldn't afford that.
16:15We had to be pretty much neutral and put our feet in the shoes of the victim and find out who did it.
16:22That was kind of our attitude.
16:24The feeling of law enforcement knows we have a problem and we've got to do something about it.
16:28We had a lot of information coming in.
16:30We had people making phone calls.
16:33We had people writing letters.
16:34We had people that show up.
16:35I have information, I think, maybe on a suspect.
16:39It was my job to take the information that came in relative to Los Angeles murders that were occurring with that M.O.
16:47They all had to be categorized and thoroughly investigated.
16:50And that's where I came in, just on that particular M.O. of the young boys.
16:55Then the police get a break because of Maloney's headline.
17:00A young offender sees one of the headlines, and he had been part of it to a certain degree.
17:12And he realizes if the headline is correct, then the person in question, he thinks he knows who it is.
17:21Now, he doesn't know for sure, but he's got an idea.
17:23We had handled the case in Van Nuys, and John and I, we were up all night, 36 hours at a crime scene, and we were both pretty beat.
17:33We got a call from the office, and we had pagers then.
17:36So my pager beeped.
17:37I called the office, and our lieutenant said, we have a kid over at Los Pedrinos, a juvenile facility, who thinks he knows something about the freeway killer.
17:49So John and I thought, well, we got a lot of clues like this.
17:52Tom and I, Tom had given us clues similar to this.
17:55But we thought, well, we better go do it now.
17:57So we went over there, and we get this kid, William Pugh, and he's in custody for Grand Theft Auto.
18:03And he's a pretty street-wise kid, and he's kind of hustling.
18:08You can see he's hustling us, trying to get a deal, because he doesn't want to do any hard time in juvenile authorities.
18:14I said, I'll have to hear what you have to tell us first, and then we can talk to juvenile authorities.
18:18We'll see what we can do.
18:19So he said, well, I've been hanging out with this guy.
18:21He's an older guy, and he has a van, and he keeps a bunch of newspaper clippings in his glove box about the freeway killer.
18:29He lives in Downey, and he has a lot of young boys coming to his house.
18:33He's got kind of a mean streak.
18:35I've seen him really get mad.
18:36And I said, what's his name?
18:39He said, William Bonin.
18:41That was like the light bulb just went off.
18:49William Bonin was born in 1947.
18:51His parents had moved to Los Angeles at the beginning of World War II to work in the defense industry.
18:58His father got a job with an aircraft company.
19:01His parents left a great deal to be desired.
19:04Both his parents were alcoholic.
19:06His father physically abused his wife and the kids.
19:09The father lost the family home gambling at one point, and the kids were sent to convent schools.
19:17And Bonin had some trouble there, said he was bullied.
19:20He had a little bit of a tough time being gay, trying to hide that he was gay.
19:26At one time, he did have a girlfriend.
19:28That was something to please his mother.
19:31His mother placed him with the grandfather.
19:34And unfortunately, he was a pedophile and molested the children, especially William Bonin.
19:40Then she thought, well, maybe the best thing would be putting him in an orphanage.
19:44And he was molested by the older kids there, the other boys.
19:48He was also at one point held as a juvenile delinquent, and supposedly the adult counselor there molested him.
19:57So this is a young man who had homosexual feelings at a very young age, and those were punished at a very young age.
20:05Then, about a year or two later, his father got a job out here in Downey in Southern California.
20:11Downey, California is famous for three things.
20:27It has the oldest McDonald's that is in existence, still operating there.
20:32And he's famous for the Carpenters, the musical group.
20:35There was Karen Carpentier, Richard Carpenter.
20:37And, of course, they're not too happy about the other thing they're famous for, and that is William Bonin.
20:43When he moved in there, he had been abused, and he wanted to control the neighborhood kids.
20:53They would come by, and he would give them alcohol or drugs or whatever for sexual favors.
20:59And you can imagine how the neighbors were not really happy with having William Bonin in their neighborhood.
21:06He's, say, 14, 15.
21:10He's in a new environment.
21:12He doesn't socialize well.
21:14He doesn't want anyone to find out his secret about the fact that he might be attracted to boys.
21:19His mom goes to the track a lot.
21:21His dad's out drinking and gambling, so he's kind of on his own.
21:25He ends up getting in trouble with the law.
21:26He stole a car.
21:27He gets arrested.
21:29In high school, he starts just skipping school.
21:32And he basically becomes a high school dropout by the time he's a junior in high school.
21:37So this is, say, 67.
21:40The Vietnam War is heating up, so his mother talks him into joining the Army when he turns 18.
21:46She thought it might be good for him.
21:48It might give him some structure.
21:50He agreed, and he convinced a friend to join with him.
21:54And this is also part of Bonin's persona.
21:56He hated doing things alone.
21:58He ends up in Vietnam right before the Tet Offensive, which is the most massive battle in the Vietnam War.
22:10He was stationed there during his Air Force term as a gunner in an aircraft and actually was awarded at one point for his bravery.
22:19He ran out of his helicopter, pulled a wounded soldier out under fire, dragged him back in, saved his life.
22:28He also raped somebody at gunpoint, a fellow soldier in Vietnam, which he doesn't get in trouble for that.
22:39He must have seen a lot of heavy-duty action up and down because he was there when it was really intense battles.
22:48He also sees something, which later plays in.
22:51He sees South Vietnamese troops shackling prisoners and then extracting information from them.
23:00At the end of his military service, there were a lot of disturbing signs about William Bonin.
23:05In 1969, Bonin was convicted of sexual assault against children.
23:11He's only back two or three months, and he's already raped four boys who were hitchhiking.
23:17He's sent to the Tascadero, to a mental institution, to see if they could rehabilitate him.
23:24And they tried, and they gave up, and they said, just send him to the state prison, and he was sent to state prison.
23:30And eventually, the state prison didn't know what to do with him, and he's released.
23:33So this is the type of individual we have, a person who could not control their emotions as to sexual molesting young children, especially young boys.
23:46He moved back home with his parents, tried working as a bartender, and then got a job as a truck driver.
23:54And he made a statement to himself, I will never allow anybody to survive.
24:08Most serial killers work by themselves.
24:12Bonin, interestingly, had five accomplices at one time or another.
24:24Vernon Butts was the big one, because it was with Vernon Butts on an August evening at the drive-in theater.
24:34They're sitting there, watching the movie, and they start talking about killing somebody.
24:39And all of a sudden, they decide to do it.
24:43So they left the drive-in, and they drove down to a freeway entrance where Bonin knew that kids were hitchhiking.
24:50And they pick up this kid, Mark Shelton, and they take him up into the Cajon Pass, which is up in the hills.
24:58And they beat him up, and they rape him.
25:01And now they're at the point where they can step back, but they kill him.
25:09It's like they walked through the dark panel into the new country.
25:14Bonin has now got the taste.
25:16And it's the taste that then keeps him going.
25:20It's the power.
25:23Bonin knew so much as to snatch some victims.
25:27When you snatched them, obviously they're not going along.
25:30They're not cooperating.
25:32So he had a van with a sliding door that didn't have to open out.
25:36It was a Ford van.
25:37It had been specially made so that it had no windows.
25:42You couldn't unlock the doors in the back from the inside.
25:46It had carpeting in the back.
25:49And he had curtains up front so you couldn't see into the back.
25:53He nicknamed it.
25:54It was the death van.
25:56He would say, if you got in the death van, you didn't get out.
25:59He was just always looking for someone he could pull up on at a stop sign or a bus stop,
26:08coax him into his van somehow.
26:11He'd get him comfortable, you know, especially if there were hustlers.
26:15He detested hustlers.
26:17And he would get them into the van.
26:19And then he had a rope and a knife hidden away.
26:24And so as soon as they were in a compromised position,
26:29he would put the knife to their throat, tie them up,
26:33maybe work them over a little bit, then rape them, and then strangle them.
26:39Generally, you would take the T-shirt and strangle the individual with their own T-shirt.
26:45Sometimes he would take them to various locations.
26:50Sometimes he would take them to his friend Vernon Butts' house.
26:54Sometimes he would take them to his house in Downey, where he would molest them.
26:59And then he would kill them.
27:00Then we'd have to take the body out, put it back in the van,
27:03haul it someplace, and then dump the body along the highway somewhere.
27:09He would steal money from their pockets.
27:11There was a castle where they would go and buy food.
27:15Fast food, and come back and eat it right next to the bodies that they had just killed.
27:20And Bonnen would look over and say, thanks for this.
27:24We're in the southern part of Downey.
27:26And we come across the freeway here, and we come to where William Bonnen lived with his mother.
27:35You can see what the house looks like.
27:38It looks like an old track house.
27:41He would come in at nighttime, go through the door there,
27:44and a lot of times he would take the potties, and sometimes they were tied up, and sometimes they walked in.
27:51One of the cases was Darren Kendrick.
27:53They brought him down here, and he walked into the house.
27:56As soon as he got in the house, they closed the door, and they tied him up.
28:00And then he was molested, and he was mutilated.
28:04They made him drink hydrochloric acid, which, you know, his face and his throat, the pain that he must have gone through.
28:14Bonnen had used an ice pick and pounded it into his ear.
28:19He was not dead.
28:21They stuck the ice pick in, and you can imagine it goes into your brain, and, you know, it causes a seizure, but it doesn't kill you.
28:32What type of human being, what is going through your mind, and then what is the satisfaction that you're receiving from that?
28:46Pugh is a young kid.
28:48He's kind of a juvenile ruffian, and the reason that Bonnen met Pugh is because Bonnen used to party at this place owned by a guy named Scott Frazier.
29:01Frazier was a drug dealer, and he had a lot of homosexual-type parties with a lot of drugs.
29:07He called up Bonnen and said, hey, there's a guy going to be over here. I know you're going to like him.
29:13He knew the type of young guys that Bonnen liked, young, slim, blonde.
29:18He said, you should meet Billy Pugh.
29:20So Bonnen comes over, and they hit it off immediately because also they have something in common.
29:27They're both incarcerated, and their two favorite subjects to talk about are sex and violence.
29:32And that night, through Bonnen's clever manipulations, he convinces Pugh to go out and pick up somebody and murder him that very night.
29:47And they kill this kid named Harry Turner, and he's dumped in downtown L.A., and it's dumped right in an alley, so he's found immediately.
29:56And LAPD obviously knows it's the same guy.
30:00It's got all the earmarks of the same person.
30:03And Bonnen and Pugh basically talk one more time, and then they never see each other again.
30:08Because Pugh gets arrested, and he ends up in a juvenile facility, and he was a juvenile when they did this murder.
30:21William Bonnen's name had come up at a couple of our different meetings with other agencies.
30:27Bonnen was an MDSO, mentally disordered sex offender.
30:30And Bonnen had been under surveillance by Orange County sheriffs at one time, but there was nothing untoward about his activities at that time, so Orange County dropped him as a suspect.
30:43We couldn't get back the office fast enough.
30:45We got back, called a meeting right away with our captain or lieutenant.
30:49We decided that we've got to put surveillance on this guy right away.
30:52So we knew where he was.
30:53John and I started a background immediately, getting as much information as we could, photos, everything we could possibly gather to give the service.
31:01The sad thing about that surveillance was just within about 12 hours or so, they watched Bonnen and one of his accomplices put a big box in the van.
31:11They couldn't make the approach.
31:12They didn't know what they had.
31:15They couldn't make that approach.
31:16We found out later it was probably the last body that Bonnen had actually killed.
31:21But they stayed with the surveillance.
31:23Bonnen was under surveillance.
31:29He had taken this path all the way along the Hollywood Freeway.
31:32He got off here on Santa Monica Boulevard.
31:35And he made a left here on Santa Monica.
31:38There's usually seven or eight teams.
31:39So they're scattered, trying to cover any direction he might go.
31:45It's quite an art when you work, when you go with these guys, you see how good they are at it.
31:50Bonnen in his van now, he's cruising through here.
31:52This area in here, there would be young boys on the corners.
31:57And Bonnen would pull over and talk to him.
32:00And as surveillance was watching him, he'd have a conversation.
32:04Maybe they didn't want to get in a car with him for whatever reason.
32:07So he would just move on and kept pulling over and talking to different ones.
32:12And then finally, up here around, not this light, but the next light, he stopped to talk to a kid.
32:18The kid got in the van and they watched that.
32:22And then Bonnen came back out and went back on Santa Monica Boulevard.
32:26Now they have to really stay on him.
32:29You can't risk losing him.
32:31So now they're watching him.
32:33And he wasn't slowing down like he was looking for a place.
32:36He seemed to know exactly where he was going.
32:38Surveillance followed Bonnen on Santa Monica Boulevard over the Hollywood Freeway and wound up here in this parking lot.
32:44We are just east of the Hollywood Freeway.
32:48He pulled into this parking lot and Bonnen backed up his van.
32:53Of course, surveillance couldn't tell what was going on in the van.
32:56So they just sat and then they watched.
32:59And they thought, we better look closer.
33:01So one of the surveillance officers came out, snuck around the parking lot.
33:05It was pretty dark out here.
33:06There were no lights or anything.
33:07He snuck up on the van, crawled underneath it to listen.
33:11And he heard a lot of moaning.
33:13And then he could smell some really bad, bad smells.
33:17And that's when he signaled to the other surveillance guys, we've got to take him down.
33:22So they break their way into the van.
33:25And he's in the act of sodomizing this young boy he had just picked up on Santa Monica Boulevard.
33:29And there's no doubt in my mind that he was going to kill the kid eventually, because Bonnen liked to have sex and strangle him at the same time.
33:36The kid was completely nude.
33:41And there was no bar, and the kid's clothes were right there.
33:44They were probably within minutes of this kid dying.
33:46They got the kid out.
33:51The kid was terrified.
33:52He was a runaway from Orange County somewhere.
33:55Got him safe, got him dressed.
33:57They took Bonnen into custody, of course.
34:00They had a unit sit on the van until we could get a tow truck.
34:02Tremendous amount of evidence in the van.
34:05Not only tools that he used to murder these young boys, but also carpet fibers that matched fibers they found on several of the bodies, which was pretty conclusive.
34:16We didn't have DNA at that time, and there was a lot of blood and body fluids on the carpet, in the carpet.
34:25If we would have had DNA then, we probably could have identified certain victims, but that wasn't the case.
34:32That was one of the biggest cases I ever handled, so it was a relief to have him in custody, believe me.
34:38And I probably slept better that night than I have in a long time.
34:41It was pretty incredible.
34:46The police arrest him.
34:49Sergeant St. John is there to greet him.
34:53Bonnen writes about it in his jailhouse diary.
34:55He describes the scene with St. John, realizing that it's all over.
35:02And he says in his diary, he starts crying.
35:04I had put him in the interview room, and I was a little rough on him.
35:08John was probably a little more professional than I was.
35:12I kind of lost it a little bit, and I was a little emotional.
35:15John advised him of his rights, and he started to talk a little bit, and then he just clammed up.
35:19And John kind of looked at me and said, so we went outside the interview room.
35:23He says, you know, I think he's a little nervous.
35:27He keeps looking at you, and he says, like you're staring at him, you know.
35:31He says, let me have a shot at him.
35:32He says, I'm going to do a little fatherly thing with him.
35:35Good cop, bad cop, everybody hears about that.
35:37It's true.
35:38It works.
35:40It worked with Bob and John.
35:41John was the elderly man.
35:43I think John was almost 70 years old when he was working that.
35:47He was a calming influence.
35:49Bob would just stand up there, he's 6'4", 6'5", and just glare at you.
35:54And that's very effective, especially to somebody like a Bonham, who was deathly afraid of him.
36:01So John started talking to him, and pretty soon, John pulled out some pictures of the victims and said,
36:05we got you dead bang, buddy.
36:07We know you did it.
36:08We got witnesses.
36:08And Bonham started talking and laying out all these cases he'd done and what have you.
36:14That arrest was just the beginning of the investigation, because now we're getting more and more information every time he sits down.
36:21He was very cooperative.
36:22He was kind of proud of what he did.
36:24He was talking in detail of how he killed these kids and what they did.
36:29Some of them they took to his house, where they torture him and murder him.
36:32They had already got a confession from Bonham, but it was on the grounds that they wouldn't use it, because he took them to other bodies.
36:44He was a very manipulative guy.
36:47That's where I became important to them.
36:49The night Bonham was arrested, everybody went to the mother's house in Downing.
36:58I saw this lonely figure of a woman sitting at the kitchen table.
37:01It was his mother.
37:02So the next day, I said to the newsroom, I said, look, I think I can get her to talk to me.
37:07Let's give me a crew.
37:07Let me see what happens.
37:08So I go back the next day, and sure enough, I got an interview with her.
37:13And she said how he was a wonderful boy, and he had a little trouble in the Army, and she didn't know he was gay, and she just can't believe he would do it.
37:21You know, it's a typical mom protecting her son.
37:24Bonham's in court a couple days later.
37:26His attorney named Earl Hansen, who came up to me and gave me his card, and he said, listen, Bonham really appreciates the way you talk to his mother, and he'd like to talk to you.
37:39Show this card when you go to the jail, and you'll be able to go in.
37:44That would never happen today.
37:46Never.
37:47It's just, it's impossible.
37:49So I show the card, I get in, I go into where the attorney's room is, in comes Bonham.
37:54He's behind a plexiglass.
37:56I was surprised at how small he was.
37:59He's a big man, but he's not tall.
38:01You know, I figured this guy would be overpowering all these kids, you know, and put him in a hog tie and everything, big, massive, muscle.
38:07He said, no.
38:08I was there for about an hour and a half, no notes, because I wasn't allowed to take any notes, and he told me how he killed 26 kids.
38:1526 kids.
38:16What really sent chills down my spine was when he said, I would never stop unless I was arrested.
38:22He says, I was never going to stop.
38:25I asked Bonham, what was the thrill?
38:28And I remember he said he loved the sound, and he loved the terror in their face.
38:34It was haunting, just plain haunting.
38:36I mean, he just really enjoyed killing.
38:43So that investigation went on and on, and we had to prepare for trial.
38:47And he was laying out, of course, his accomplices.
38:49And meanwhile, I didn't realize at first that all these accomplices were testifying against him.
38:55Butts is prosecuted.
38:57His attorney at some point said, hey, we could make a deal.
39:02He will testify against William Bonham.
39:06Now, the DA's office needs something.
39:09They can't.
39:10There are no witnesses who saw Bonham pick these people up, kill these people, or dump the body.
39:18He comes in, and he testifies at the preliminary hearing.
39:21And he does it all, just down the line.
39:24We had our case.
39:24Everything was made.
39:26It was perfect.
39:27The DA couldn't have been happier.
39:30Then they checked out Butts' cell.
39:33He's hanged himself.
39:35Now, we don't have a case.
39:38All of those cases that Butts said, I was with him, I drove the van, we can't do those.
39:45We couldn't prosecute on the ones that Butts had told us that William Bonham had done.
39:54My conscience started bothering me, and all the investigators and different police agencies said, look, you know, we need you.
40:01And finally, six months into the fact, I said, okay, that's it.
40:05I can't, I can't handle this anymore.
40:07And I broke the story that I, that Bonham had confessed to me.
40:10He said that once he got a man, the talk of sex came up, he always had a knife handy.
40:16He'd put a knife at their throat occasionally.
40:18And he says he had, he bragged about the idea that he had a great ability to tie people up very quickly.
40:22That is really a no-no in the reporter world, giving up your source or conveying information that he gave you.
40:33I admired him very much for what he did with Bonham.
40:36I've never had another reporter do that.
40:39I just felt it was the right thing to do.
40:41I'm glad I did.
40:42I mean, I got crucified by some members of the media.
40:45I got hammered by the TV Guide, which was a big publication back then.
40:49I had to do what I had to do, and I, uh, I don't regret it to this day.
40:55I firmly believe that when the question comes up, are we journalists or citizens first, we are citizens first.
41:01The public has a right to know.
41:03The jury has a right to know.
41:05Every mother and father who ever loved a child have a right to know.
41:09The jury came back about two days later and found him guilty on all ten murders.
41:16They always go with the best cases.
41:18He was responsible for more than 25, and then he was subsequently held on four additional charges in Orange County.
41:26He got two separate life sentences, and actually capital punishment.
41:31When Bonham is arrested, immediately the first thing they do is they winnow out the cases they know that they believe Bonham committed.
41:41And quickly, within a couple of weeks, St. John tells the press, because there are articles saying he killed 45 people.
41:50Based on our investigation and incarceration of Bonham at these times, we believe he was responsible for 22 murders.
42:00They know that someone else is out there.
42:01All of a sudden, there are more bodies that are turning up, and the bodies are really mutilated.
42:08Some of them are chopped up, genitals cut off, found along various highways.
42:14What's going on?
42:15A Los Angeles judge set an execution date today for convicted freeway killer William George Bonham.
42:24Bonham was sentenced to death for the 1982 sex murders of 10 boys.
42:30The judge ordered the former truck driver to die on June 23rd in the San Quentin gas chamber.
42:34William Bonham had been on death row more than a dozen years and had gone through all sorts of appeals, as is required, for death penalty convictions, when, in February of 1996, he was finally executed.
42:49He is put up as the poster boy for capital punishment.
42:54There are protests outside San Quentin saying the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, and then there's others, like the victims' families who are in attendance, who, you know, their lives have been wrecked by this unrepentant guy.
43:13I was called as a witness for the execution in San Quentin.
43:16And it wasn't a celebration, because there were the mothers of victims, fathers, and then, of course, a lot of the cops who were involved in the investigation.
43:25And there were probably 75 people, I think, total in the room.
43:30John St. John died 18 months before the actual execution.
43:34And John had told me when we first convicted Bonham, he said, I want you to do me a favor.
43:40I might not be here if Bonham ever does get executed, but I want you to do something for me.
43:46And I said, what's that?
43:47He says, I want you to get up close, and I want you to say something to him.
43:51And I said, OK, I'll do that.
43:53John told me what he wanted me to say.
43:55So at the execution, I'm in the room.
43:58Bonham's on a gurney.
43:59He's already gotten the first stage of the lethal injection.
44:03And I didn't think he'd hear me, but I had to fulfill my promise to John.
44:07So I got up real close to the window, and I said, adios, mother
44:10Orange County investigators are dealing with a possible mass murderer and a list of victims
44:23that continues to get longer.
44:25The bodies continue to pile up in Southern California.
44:29The madness has not ended.
44:31I didn't actually feel like I was getting the job done, because we were having so many
44:34of them.
44:35And just when they thought they'd have something, another body would show up.
44:38And we're going back and looking at the chart.
44:40We're saying, wait a minute.
44:40There might be a third guy here, because that animal was even a little bit different.
44:44She was the most sadistic out of all of them.
44:47The details about how they died, nothing can match the sickening descriptions.
44:54It's like a trilogy of terror with these three guys.
45:24I'll see you next time.
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