Randy Steven Kraft (1945-?) PART THREE
At 1:10am on May 14, 1983, 2 California Highway Patrol officers saw a Toyota Celica driving erratically on the Interstate 5 Freeway in the Orange County community of Mission Viejo. Having seen the vehicle perform an illegal lane change, the officers, suspecting the driver was drunk, signalled for the vehicle to stop. The driver slowed the vehicle down to a halt and got out of the car, throwing the contents of a beer bottle onto the pavement as he did. Officer Michael Sterling met the individual, who identified himself as Randy Kraft, at the front of his patrol car and saw that his jeans were unbuttoned. Sterling performed a sobriety test on Kraft. He failed. Kraft was arrested for driving while intoxicated. Sterling’s partner, Sgt. Michael Howard approached the Celica and saw a young man slumped with his eyes closed and empty beer bottles strewn around his feet. Howard tried to wake the man, and got no response to his verbal efforts. Howard tried to wake the man by shaking his arm, only to notice that the man had a very low body temperature. Having felt for a pulse, Howard noted that the man was dead – a ligature mark was visible around his neck. Lifting the jacket from the deceased man’s lap, Howard saw that the victim’s jeans had been opened to expose his genitals. The deceased’s hands had been bound with shoelace and his wrists showed welt marks. He had been strangled to death. He was later identified as 25-year-old Marine Terry Lee Gambrel, who had been stationed at El Toro Air Base. Kraft was initially charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and held in custody while detectives conducted a search of his vehicle. On the rear seat of the car they found a belt, the width of which matched the bruising around Gambrel’s neck. Other evidence found included alcohol, tranquilisers, various prescription drugs and stimulants. The passenger seat and carpet of the vehicle was heavily bloodstained but Gambrel had no open wounds. Investigators removed the upholstery for forensic analysis. The results confirmed that the blood was human. Beneath the carpet, investigators found an envelope with over 50 pictures of young men in pornographic poses. Many of the men in the pictures appeared to be either asleep or dead. Inside the trunk of Kraft’s car, investigators found a ring binder containing a hand-written list of coded notations. A search of Kraft’s home revealed more incriminating evidence, including clothes and personal possessions from numerous young men who had been murdered over the last decade. Fibers taken from a rug matched those found on victim Scott Hughes. The couch in Kraft’s living room was identified as being the one in the photos found in Kraft’s car.
The coded list of 61 printed terms and phrases found in Kraft’s car is believed to refer to each of Kraft’s victims. Many entries appear innocent, but each is believed to correspond to a specific murder victim or double murder. Several entries clearly refer to victims’ names (for example, “EDM” are the initials of Edward Daniel Moore, “Vince M” refers to victim Vincent Mestas). In other cases, entries indicate torture or mutilation inflicted on the victims’ bodies and/or places they were last seen. The entry “Marine Head BP” is believed to refer to victim Mark Marsh, a Marine found decapitated having last hitchhiking near Buena Park. Other entries refer to body dump locations. The entry “Golden Sails” refers to the fact that the body of Craig Jonaitis was discovered in the parking lot of the Golden Sails Hotel. The list also contains entries indicating at least 4 double murders – “GR2” (victims Dennis Alt and Christopher Schoenborn, last seen in Grand Rapids), “2 in 1 Beach” (victims Geoffrey Nelson and Rodger DeVaul), “2 in 1 Hitch” and “2 in 1 MV to PL” (neither of these entries has been linked to any double murder or disappearance to date). Investigators believe that 2 victims whose murders Kraft was convicted of do not appear on the list (Eric Church and Terry Gambrel), but since the list is coded, it is possible that Eric Church is included using a reference that police just haven’t linked to him. Terry Gambrel may also be on the list, but as Kraft was arrested whilst trying to dispose of the body, it is possible he may not have added an entry for him yet. These possibilities indicate that the scorecard lists a minimum of 65 and a possible 67 victims. The entry on Kraft’s scorecard reading “Navy White” is believed to refer to 17-year-old James Sean Cox, a Marine stationed at Mather Air Force Base who was last seen on September 29, 1974, hitchhiking near Interstate 5. His body was found several weeks later in Rancho Santa Fe. At the time of his disappearance, Cox was dressed in his white navy uniform. Another entry on the scorecard reading “Iowa” is believed to refer to 18-year-old U.S. Marine Oral Alfred Stuart, Jr. Stuart was born in Iowa and his body was discovered near a Long Beach condo in November 1974. He had died as the result of blunt force trauma. His body was unidentified until March 2012. Investigators noticed a similar MO in the murder and body dump of Oral Stuart to that of Kraft’s known victims. 22 of Kraft’s estimated 67 victims remain unrecovered and unidentified. This is large due to the fact that the killings occurred in several different states, with the bodies being dumped in various locations.
On May 16, 1983, Kraft was charged with the murder of Terry Lee Gambrel. By September 8, investigators had interviewed over 700 witnesses and gathered more than 250 pieces of physical evidence that pointed to Kraft’s guilt in a further 15 homicides committed between December 1972 and February 1983. Kraft was charged with these 15 further homicides (Edward Moore, Kevin Bailey, Ronnie Wiebe, Keith Crotwell, Mark Hall, Scott Hughes, Roland Young, Richard Keith, Keith Klingbeil, Michael Inderbieten, Donald Crisel, Robert Loggins, Eric Church, Rodger DeVaul, Geoffrey Nelson, Terry Lee Gambrel) as well as 2 counts of sodomy and 1 of emasculation on September 8. Kraft’s trial began on September 26, 1988 in Orange County before Judge Donald A. McCartin.
At trial, nearly 160 witnesses were called to testify on behalf of the prosecution and over 1000 exhibits were introduced as evidence. This evidence all pointed to Kraft’s guilt and included physical evidence such as bloodstains and hair/fiber evidence found at Kraft’s Long Beach home and in his vehicle, fingerprints found on glass shards found at the scene of Mark Hall’s murder, the negatives and photographs of young men who had been identified as murder victims found hidden in Kraft’s car which showed the youths either dead, drugged or asleep and which backgrounds revealed they had been taken in Kraft’s home or in his car, in addition to the belt used to strangle Terry Gambrel and the prescription drugs and buck knife found in his car. Other evidence included work and travel records and gasoline receipts which put Kraft in locations where victims had been abducted and/or dumped and the personal possessions of various murder victims found in Kraft’s possession following his arrest.
Kraft’s defence relied on alibis and alternate suspects. His attorneys dismissed much of the evidence as being circumstantial and they tried to portray Kraft as an articulate, hardworking, upstanding member of the community. They did not deny that the 16 victims for whose murder their client was on trial for were in fact murder victims, but they argued they were “victims of someone, but not Randy Kraft.” The defence stated that several of 16 victims had originally been believed by investigators to have been killed by 1 of 2 other serial killers (William Bonin and Patrick Kearney) and argued there was “no concrete evidence” that Kraft had killed any of the victims. The trial lasted 13 months and would be the most expensive trial in Orange County history. On April 29, 1989, each side began closing arguments, which lasted for 3 days. The prosecution again listed all of the physical and circumstantial evidence that suggested Kraft’s guilt and the defence argued as to the circumstantial case the prosecution had put forward that indicated all the murders were connected and accused them of “glossing over” the truth. The jury deliberated for 11 days before reaching a verdict. On May 12, 1989, the jury found Kraft guilty of 16 counts of murder, 1 count of sodomy and 1 count of emasculation.
On June 5, 1989, the same jury reconvened to hear further testimony from the prosecution and defence as to Kraft’s penalty. This phase of the trial lasted until August and at this point the prosecution introduced evidence of several more homicides committed in Oregon and Michigan which they were certain Kraft was responsible for and for which he had not been tried in Orange County. The defence dismissed the prosecution’s argument as being “highly speculative” and introduced new testimony relating to a PET scan performed on Kraft which, they claimed, showed abnormalities in the frontal lobes of Kraft’s brain, reducing his ability to control emotion and impulse. The prosecution rebuffed this argument by stating: “There is nothing wrong with Mr. Kraft’s mind other than that he likes killing for sexual satisfaction”, adding that the fact that his family and friends found it difficult to believe had killed anyone simply showed “what a good salesman he is.” On August 11, 1989, the jury recommended the death penalty. 3 months later, on November 29, Judge McCartin formally sentenced Kraft to death. The sentence was upheld by the California Supreme Court on August 11, 2000. Kraft remains on death row at the San Quentin State Prison. He continues to deny guilt in any of the murders, both convicted and suspected.
