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At the end of
1979, Southern California was in a state of near panic. Parents were
afraid to let their children out of the house, and it appeared that
the police were powerless to stop a vicious killer who liked to
rape, strangle and stab. The Freeway Killer could practice his
grisly trade at will.
The first to die
was an exchange student from Germany named Marcus Grabs. The
17-year-old was on a backpacking tour of the United States. Marcus
was last seen hitchhiking on the scenic Pacific Coast Highway in
Newport Beach on August 5, 1979. His last mistake in this world was
accepting a lift from William Bonin.
Sometime between 6
p.m. and 10 p.m., according to police, Bonin and a friend, Vernon
Butts, picked up Marcus, sodomized and beat the German and left his
nude body in Malibu Canyon. Grabs had been stabbed more than 70
times and was found with a yellow nylon rope around his neck. An
electrical cord was wrapped around one ankle.
William later told
a friend that he had killed Marcus Grabs out of self-defense,
although this explanation is unlikely to be true.
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| Vernon Butts |
Vernon Butts was a
lowlife drifter with a long criminal record of petty offences who
was what prosecutors refer to as “doing life in prison on the
installment plan.” He had been in and out of penal institutions,
and was excited by sadistic homosexual activities – undoubtedly
something he had picked up during one of his stays behind bars.
Butts accompanied
Bonin on several of his killing forays, and was as depraved and
twisted as William. Together, they would prowl the highways of
Southern California in Bonin’s olive drab van, looking for teens
to ravage.
Butts would
eventually be arrested for his role in the freeway killings and
saved the taxpayers of California a great deal of time and expense
by hanging himself in his Los Angeles County jail cell.
Three weeks after
Grabs’ nude body was found in Malibu Canyon, 15-year-old Donald
Hyden of Hollywood turned up dead and mutilated in a trash bin near
the Ventura Freeway. He had last been seen near the Gay Community
Services Center in LA. Bonin and Butts had struck again. Hyden was
raped and strangled with a ligature. His throat had also been
slashed and an attempt had been made to castrate him.
On September 12,
1979, the body of David Murillo, 17, was found near the Ventura
Freeway. He had disappeared while riding his bike to the movies
three days earlier. His head had been bashed in with a tire iron, he
had been sodomized and strangled with a ligature.
For some time, Orange and Los Angeles County officials denied that
they had a serial killer on their hands. Although the modus operandi
of the three killings were similar, it wasn’t until several more
slayings occurred that authorities acknowledged what the media had
been reporting for weeks. But the facts were there: somewhere in
Southern California a serial killer was loose leaving few clues and
seemed free to murder whenever the mood struck.
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