Speaker 1: On the twenty second of March nineteen eighty, the bodies
of two teenage boys were discovered dumped together beside a
freeway in California. Sadly, they weren't the first, and they
wouldn't be the last.
Speaker 2: You've got this killer, and he is almost ghost like.
Speaker 3: He is dumping bodies and then he's disappearing into the night.
Speaker 1: Bodies of young boys, most of them hitchhikers, had been
discarded like trash. The victims had all been tied up
and sexually assaulted before being strangled.
Speaker 4: He was incredibly violent. He was evil, and he would
hurt you just to hear you scream.
Speaker 1: The killer was a local truck driver called William Bonnet.
This sadistic predator, together with a small band of accomplices,
spread fear amongst the community. It seemed that no young
man was safe.
Speaker 5: He enjoyed having the boy at his mercy and hearing
the boy cry and plead for his life, and Bill
felt powerful when he was in the act of murdering
a kid.
Speaker 1: In just thirteen months, the monster, dubbed the Freeway Killer,
was responsible for the murders of up to twenty one
young boys and teenagers. William Bonnin had been revealed as
one of the world's most evil killers. During the summer
of nineteen seventy nine, the naked bodies of young boys
were being discovered beside freeways and other majors votes across
southern California.
Speaker 6: It started very slowly.
Speaker 7: There would be a dead body found on the side
of a rock. Started out there was maybe one, maybe two,
and then when it got to like the fourth body
that had been found, then we started saying, wait a minute,
is there a pattern here?
Speaker 1: Victims were being targeted at an alarming rate, and a
wave of fear spread within communities across Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: These murders were very close together. It's almost like a
killing spree at times. And he does it because he can.
These people are there for the taking, they are vulnerable,
and when he figures out that nobody's coming after him,
well he just carries on.
Speaker 8: This was a man who premeditated everything. It was all
carefully thought out, carefully planned, and then executed meticulously.
Speaker 1: After his arrest in nineteen eighty, William Bonin confessed to
twenty one murders. His youngest victim was just twelve years old.
Prison psychologist Von Dea Pelto spent many hours talking to
the killer.
Speaker 5: I ask him one time about a killing, how did
it feel when you killed him? When he was crying
and pleading for his life and saying, please, please, don't
kill me? Did you feel anything? And Bill said I
didn't feel anything. I couldn't understand that. And I said, well,
was it like killing an animal? And Bill said, oh, no,
I have a lot of feeling for an animal.
Speaker 1: This killer story begins on the eighth of January nineteen
forty seven. William George Bonnin was born in Willemantic, Connecticut,
to parents Robert and Alice. He was the middle of
three brothers. Their father was an alcoholic and it was
an unhappy, abusive upbringing. Neighbors recall the Bonnin boys were
always hungry, dirty, and ill clothed.
Speaker 8: Bonin was then put in the hands of Alice's father,
who had abused her as a child, and he went
on to abuse her sons.
Speaker 3: Bonin experienced a lot of sexual abuse during his childhood,
and sadly, it was something that he just came to expect,
but he also learned that sexual abuse was a way
of gaining power and control over other people.
Speaker 1: When Bonin was six, he was sent to an orphanage.
His mother, Alice, claimed this was to protect her sons
from an abusive home life.
Speaker 5: Bill and his younger brother were put in the Catholic
run orphanage, and the parents never did come to see him.
He told me and said that for sure he thought
they had died because they didn't come to see him.
Speaker 1: From the orphanage, young William Bonin was sent to a
youth detention center. The reason why is unknown, but what
is certain is that his time there, at the age
of just eight, he was subjected to yet another sexual assault,
this time by an older boy.
Speaker 3: Allegedly, he asked for his hands to be tied during this,
and that signifies to me that this is somebody who
has been sexually abused. There is a familiarity with that
kind of behavior, and that is something that's incredibly disturbing
for me, especially at such a young age.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty nine, twenty two year old Bonn had
reconnected with his mother and was living with her in Downey, California.
After a brief career in the army, he'd turned to
a life of crime. He was arrested for sexually assaulting
five boys, and it also later emerged that Bonn had
raped two soldiers at gunpoint during his military service.
Speaker 3: He hasn't just turned into a sexual predator overnight. This
is behavior that will have developed over time, but it's
probably gone undetected up until this point. And to me,
this is somebody who is on a very clear trajectory
to becoming a very dangerous and a potentially homicidal offender.
Speaker 8: It's the oldest question in the book, isn't it what
came first? Was it nature or nurture? In this case,
I think it was both. Together they created a formidable combination.
Speaker 1: Bonnin's deviant behavior would inevitably land him in hot water.
Instead of serving time in prison, the young man wound
up in a state hospital where he actually honed his
predatory instincts.
Speaker 3: Now, during this time, he gets to learn about the
institutional environment. He gets to know the kind of things
he needs to say to staff at that facility, the
type of things that they need to hear to secure
his release. He's becoming more dangerous now because he's developing
that manipulativeness.
Speaker 1: After five years of incarceration, William Bonnin was a free man.
Far from rehabilitated. He was ready to strike again. In
early September nineteen seventy five, David McVicker was a fourteen
year old schoolboy enjoying the last long, warm days of summer.
Break Life seemed free and easy, and there was no
problem getting around to catch up with his friends.
Speaker 4: Everybody had There was no buses or anything like that.
At said the beach. At the end of the day,
it wasn't unusual to see one hundred and fifty kids
down and down there with their beachs tower and their thumber.
Speaker 1: Whilst the youth of Los Angeles focused on making the
most out of their time off, they were blissfully unaware
of the potential danger they were putting themselves in. At
five thirty pm on September the eighth, a sadistic sexual
predator was looking for a boy to pick up.
Speaker 4: I just said goodbye to my friends. I left their
house and gone to hitchhike home. And as soon as
I crossed this major street, a car pulled up next
to me, and this guy says, hey, can you tell
me where Euclid Street is? I said, it's about a
mile ahead, and he goes, well, where are you going?
I said, I'm going to go to Brookhurst and go
towards the beach, and he said, well, why don't you
jump in and I'll give you a ride. And I thought, cool,
that's perfect.
Speaker 1: But this kind motorist wasn't ast told what he seemed.
Speaker 4: I got in the car and everything was cool. At first.
He was really nice. You would have never thought anything
was wrong. And then about maybe five minutes into the ride,
he said something to ask if I had ever tried
anything like a gay act or something like that, and
it was kind of a shock. I was like, no, no,
I would never do that, you know. And then I
immediately tried to get out of the car. I said,
do my favorite. I said pull over to me out
of the car, and he didn't. He started going faster.
So I got really scared and I opened up the
door and I went like that and I turned around.
There was a gun right here. To get back in
the cars suit you.
Speaker 1: The driver was twenty eight year old convicted rapist and
pedophile William Bond. He drove around for some time, all
the while holding a gun pointed straight at David. As
the light faded, Boning parked up in a field.
Speaker 4: I was scared to death. I was petrified. I knew
that I was something really bad was gonna happen. I
didn't know if I was gonna ever die. I was
fighting for my life to try to get out of
the car. He grabbed me and started to beat me up.
I knew that if I didn't do what he said,
I was gonna die.
Speaker 1: David's ordeal that summer evening was the stuff of nightmares.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my t shirt around my neck with the tire iron,
you know, that just changed the tire. He had that
going through the sleeves of my shirt and he was
twisting it, strangling me while he was raving me. And then,
with what I thought was my last breath, because I
couldn't breathe it anymore, I just kind of went God
help and stopt.
Speaker 1: Amazingly, Bonnin let him go. Later that day, fourteen year
old David and his mother reported the assault to the police.
Several months later, David's school day was interrupted by a
visit from the Sheriff's officers. He was taken to the
Orange County Jail, where it arranged a lineup.
Speaker 4: We went into this little dark room and these six
guys come streaming out, and before they even started, I
saw the guy. I knew it was him, so I
said out loud, that's him. Number three.
Speaker 1: In December nineteen seventy five, twenty eight year old William
Bonnin was found guilty of lud and lascivious conduct and
sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison for unknown reasons.
He was released on parole after serving less than three
The thirty one year old settled back into the community.
Speaker 3: He appears to be creating some semblance of a normal life,
but what he's doing is putting in place the structures
that will make him into a more successful offender. So
he has this veneer of normality, this veneer of respectability.
Speaker 2: And when you look like a normal.
Speaker 3: Member of society, you're more likely to go unnoticed.
Speaker 1: Vllin secured a job as a truck driver and rented
an apartment. However, the following year he was arrested yet
again from molesting a teenage boy. He violated his parole
and should have been returned to prison.
Speaker 8: There's an administrative error. Bonin is not sent straight back
to jail. He's set free. When he's released, Bonin is
picked up by a friend and he tells the friend
this is never going to happen to me again. The
friend thought that that meant he was never going to
commit a crime again. Grotesquely, it meant that he was
never going to leave a victim alive again.
Speaker 1: The string of sexual convictions to his name didn't seem
to affect Bonin's social life. In fact, he was starting
to explore his sexuality.
Speaker 3: He's gay, and at this time, the late nineteen seventies,
this is still quite a stigmatized social identity in the
United States. So the fact that he's trying to make
connections with people like him.
Speaker 2: Is something that could appear to be quite positive.
Speaker 1: He became a regular at one of his neighbour's parties.
Speaker 8: Bonn's meeting up with people who were after exactly the
same as he is, sex, drugs, a great deal of alcohol,
and adventures. And it's at the friend's house that he
first encounters a twenty one year old young man called
Vernon Batz, who is a part time magician and works
in a porcelain factory.
Speaker 3: He's been described as being fascinated by and terrified by
bonn In, and that rings an alarm bell for me
in terms of coercive control. When you have a perpetrator
who basically tries to take away the identity and the
personhood of the individual they're in a relationship with. And
this sounds incredibly familiar when we look at this description,
So that's very concerning for me.
Speaker 1: Bonin was never going to resist the urge to assault
a young boy for long. On the fifth of August
nineteen seventy nine, Bonin and his new friend Vernon Buds
were out cruising in Bonyn's van. Bonin spotted Marcus Grabs,
a seventeen year old German tourist who was hitchhiking beside
Newport Beach. They pulled over and offered him a ride.
Speaker 3: At this point in time, a lot of people traveled
around hitching lifts with other people.
Speaker 2: It was a cultural norm.
Speaker 3: So I think to realize that this everyday mode of
transport has put you in a situation where you're going
to lose your life, that must have been absolutely horrendous
for him.
Speaker 1: Seventeen year old Marcus was subjected to a horrific assault
in which he was tied up and raped by Bonin.
Years later, Bonin described the attack in detail to prison
psychologist Von der pelto.
Speaker 5: Marcus Grabs was laying there in the back of his van,
and Bonnin had a knife, and he said, you know,
I just got to thinking I couldn't kill him, and
then Bonnin said, I just started stabbing him wildly. He said,
I just stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
Speaker 8: He was stabbed seventy seven times in an outburst of
violence that's almost unimaginable.
Speaker 1: The lifeless body of Marcus Grabs was found the following
day in nearby Malibu. The seventeen year old was naked
and had orange cords still wrapped around his head. Marcus
had been raped and murdered by William Bonnin, watched on
by his macabre cheerleader, Vernon Butts.
Speaker 8: Butts admitted later that he positively enjoyed watching bonin in action,
that he was both terrified of him and yet hypnotized
by him. The perfect accomplice, the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Speaker 1: The Deadly duo had made their first kill.
Speaker 3: There's almost a sense in which they're waiting to see
what's going to happen. Are the police going to catch
up with them? Is anybody going to come looking for them?
And when they realize that that's not going to happen,
they get that sense of power and that sense of
invincibility and think, well, why not do it again.
Speaker 1: Over the next five weeks, two more young men would
die at the hands of Bonin and his sidekick Butts.
Fifteen year old Donald Heyden and seventeen year old David
Marillo were both sodomized, strangled, and discarded along the Ventura Freeway.
Speaker 5: He was very clever so that the police were confused.
He would just scatter these kids all over the place.
They were trash. Once they were dead, they were trash
day they were nothing.
Speaker 1: The bodies of young male victims were being discovered in
various different counties in and around Los Angeles. Noticing a
similarity between the murders, investigators at the LAPD began to
contact other agencies. Larry Marlberg was investigating the murder of
seventeen year old Mark Shelton, who had been found beside
a freeway in the DeVore area of San Bernardino County.
Speaker 9: IPD brought it to met the case in the war
fit the cases from La County and Orange County, and
then that's what made me realize that we were dealing.
Speaker 4: With a serial killer.
Speaker 9: And we all met together, all the agencies, exchanging information
on murder cases, especially any type of murder cases that
involved a body being dumped anywhere near a freeway.
Speaker 1: The multi agency investigation identified at least five possible victims,
all of them boys under the age of seventeen. News
of the man the press were calling the Freeway Killer
soon spread. Over the next three months, four more young
victims were found that matched the killer's m O. Reporter
Dave Lopez remembers that the community was on a knife edge.
Speaker 7: There are a lot of bodies being found. All of
southern California was terrified. I mean, here was a guy
running around. They knew it was a van picking up kids,
and these kids were found dead. I mean, it was
a very, very terrifying time.
Speaker 1: And tragically, there would be many more victims at the
turn of the decade. The Freeway Killer had no intention
of stopping, but William Bonnin wasn't working alone. Over the
course of his murderous career, the thirty two year old
had a number of accomplices.
Speaker 3: When you've got a team killing situation, there's a participation
and spectator element to this, and there's a sense of
power in watching somebody else kill, and there's also a
sense of power in performing a murder before an audience.
Speaker 5: Growing up, Bonnin didn't have any friends, and so these
young killers were his friends and also his sexual partners.
Speaker 1: Another individual who was to become one of Bonnyn's chosen
few was an eighteen year old from Texas, old Gregory Miley.
He was illiterate and made money as a casual laborer.
Speaker 8: In February nineteen eighty, Bonin, this time with Miley, who
had met at one of those parties, was out searching
for a victim.
Speaker 1: Later, Miley described that night's events to prison psychologist Vonda Pelto.
Speaker 5: Gregory Miley had this pretty long blonde hair, I remember,
and he had an IQ of about fifty seven I think,
and he was definitely led by Bill.
Speaker 1: As Miley recounted to Vonder after his arrest, Bonin brought
up the subject of murder with.
Speaker 4: Your Julia and I see.
Speaker 8: I dragged down shoes.
Speaker 1: Their victim was fifteen year old Charles Miranda.
Speaker 4: Bond, the only son still tiring.
Speaker 9: Mom oh my, sure around.
Speaker 4: There, the.
Speaker 1: Bonning goaded Miley, asking can you do it? Let me
show you how to do this. Charles was raped and
strangled in the back of the van.
Speaker 5: Ready to stop one's son in.
Speaker 1: But the night was just getting started.
Speaker 5: Miley told me that I was ready to go home.
I was tired after we killed the first one, but
Bonn and said, no, I need another one. And that's
when they picked up the twelve year old, the youngest
of all.
Speaker 1: They found James McCabe waiting at a bus stop. He
wanted to get to Disneyland.
Speaker 3: They lose him into their vehicle under the promise that
they were going to take him to Disneyland, but they didn't.
Bonin raped him whilst Miley drove the vehicle and he
was beaten and he was strangled. So you now have
two murders in one day, and I think Bonin feels
a real sense of accomplishment as a serial killer now.
Speaker 1: The police soon discovered the lifeless bodies of both boys,
taking the number of the Freeway killers suspected victims to
at least twelve. As the media reported the latest slayings,
David McVicar found it all very familiar.
Speaker 4: It's like every time that I read about these kids
in the newspaper, it was like I just felt this
pit in my stomach right and it's like that happened
to me that happened to me. You know, I just
had this feeling it was him, right, But I knew
in my heart it couldn't be him because he's still
in prison, right.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't. William Bonin had been free for over
a year, in which time he'd claimed the lives of
many boys, and the sadistic serial killer was only just
getting started. On the fifteenth of March, the naked body
of another young man was found beside a freeway in
La County. Thirty three year old Bonin had so far
involved several accomplices, and he was about to recruit another.
He'd been introduced to a seventeen year old called Billy
Pew at one of his neighbour's parties, so.
Speaker 3: This individual could just as well have been one of
Bonin's victims as well as an accomplice. So he got
a ride home with him from a party and Bonyn
proposition Pew, and Pugh turned him down.
Speaker 2: He was quite.
Speaker 3: Shocked at this, and during this encounter, Bonyn tells Pugh
that he likes to abduct and kill young boys. And
what Bonin is essentially saying here is I could kill
you if I wanted to, and Pugh were quite fascinated
but also quite terrified by this.
Speaker 1: On the twentieth of March, less than a week after
his last killing, Bonnin, together with young Billy Pew, went
to Hollywood on the hunt for a victim. They lured
fifteen year old runaway Harry Todd Turner into the van.
Speaker 8: Harry Todd Turner was pray for the pair of them.
Once again, the boy is forced to strip. He's beaten, sodomized,
and strangled with a ligature.
Speaker 1: It wasn't enough to satisfy Bonin's growing desires. The following afternoon,
he was yet again cruising the streets. This time he
was alone.
Speaker 3: He's been killing with accomplices for quite a long time now,
and I think he wants to mix it up and
make things interesting. And he also has that confidence because
he hasn't been caught. So he decides, I'm going to
try killing on my own, and I think he feels
quite confident and he's going to get away with it.
Speaker 1: He came across fourteen year old Glen Barker hitchhiking in Westminster.
Speaker 3: Glenn Barker's mother had been hearing about other boys who
had been turning up dead and she was rightly incredibly
worried about this, so in order to encourage Glenn not
to hitch hike, she gave him money so he could
take the bus instead. But like any young lad, he's
not going to spend his money on the bus.
Speaker 2: He's going to save it up for other things.
Speaker 1: It was a mistake which cost Glenn his life, but
claiming one young victim wasn't enough for Bonin.
Speaker 8: That afternoon, Bonin comes across a young man of fifteen,
Russell Rue, who was on his way to an after
school job, but he'd called his employer to tell him
that he was running late. Tragically, he was hitchhiking and
was offered a lift by none other than William Bonnin.
Speaker 1: Glenn and Russell's bodies were found dumped together in a
remote location seventy miles out of the city in Orange County.
Speaker 3: I think the fact that Glen Barker and Russelbury's bodies
were dumped together is incredibly significant because what the killer
is doing, in terms of whoever finds those bodies is saying, look,
I've killed two people. I've done this on my own.
I am displaying these bodies for you to see. So
there's a real sense of a performance here.
Speaker 1: Forensic investigators discovered distinctive green carpet fibers on both victims'
naked bodies. This firmly linked these murders with four of
the freeway Killer's earlier victims. By late April nineteen eighty,
the body countertributed to the mysterious freeway killer had reached
a staggering nineteen and there was no sign of him
slowing down. It was all proving too much for David McVicar,
who'd survived an assault by bonnin in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: I know just something in my stomach that's told me
this is him. And these stories just kept going on
and on, and finally one day on TV, one of
the news reporters said that if you have any idea,
even if it's a guest, who could be doing this car?
And I thought, yeah, I have a guest. I have
a good guess. I finally got the sheriff's departments said
what happened to me?
Speaker 1: The net was closing in on William bonnind His name
had been firmly put on the police's radar, and someone
else was about to name him as a suspect too.
One of his accomplices, Billy Pew, had been arrested for
vehicle theft.
Speaker 8: While on remand in prison, he tells the authorities that
if you can make some kind of deal with them,
he knows who the freeway killer is, and he points
them towards William Bonnin.
Speaker 3: Looking at this from the outside, it would appear to
be completely bizarre that he is out of Bonning's clutches.
Now that coercively controlling dynamic has been broken down, He's
getting a sense himself back and he wants to protect himself.
Speaker 1: Unaware that he was about to be under the spotlight,
Bonin was recruiting yet another accomplice, an eighteen year old
named James Munroe, whom he'd taken under his wing.
Speaker 5: Bill picked him up, got him a job, took him
to live with him at his mother's house. And Bonnin
just said to Jim Monroe, what do you think about
us going out and picking up somebody, having sex with
him and then killing him. What do you think? And
Jim and Rowe told me he thought he was kidding.
And Jim said he didn't want to sound like you know,
he was afraid to do that.
Speaker 1: On the second of June, whilst the LAPD began to
organize at twenty four hour surveillance operation on William Bonnin,
their new prime suspect for the freeway killer. Bonin and
James Munroe had picked up another young man.
Speaker 3: What stands out about this is that it didn't just
happen in the back of a van down a road somewhere.
Stephen Wells was taken to the house where Bonnin's mother lived. Now,
taking a victim to a house where you live is
incredibly risky, so Bonin really does feel completely invincible at
this point in time.
Speaker 5: They killed Stephen Wells in Bonnin's house and then took
him over to Vernon Budd's house, and they said to Vernon, hey, Vern,
come on out in the van and look what we've got.
And vern went out there and kind of poked the
kid and said, oh yeah, that's a good one. And
Bill said to vern what do you think we are
to do with him? Vern said, well, you could keep
him as a souvenir or just dump him off and hey,
no big deal, you can always get another one.
Speaker 1: The surveillance team set up outside Bonnin's house just in
time to witness him and Munro return in the van
after disposing of Stephen's body. As investigators watched the callers
Duo Jobialie enter the house, they had no idea what
horrors had happened there. Just hours of all the police
could do was watch and wait. Nine days later, on
the eleventh of June, they got their opportunity.
Speaker 3: The police had witnessed him talking to a number of
young men on street corners. As they were following him,
a one seventeen year old actually got into his van.
Speaker 8: The detectives who had been standing watching the van could
see it moving. They could also hear sounds, groans, a
physical attack could be about to take place, and at
that point they decide to get into the van.
Speaker 7: They caught him literally right in the act, right smack
in the act.
Speaker 6: They save the kid and the carbond and red handed.
Speaker 1: William Bonnin was in police custody. The man who was
believed to be responsible for the murder of twenty one
young men and boys was safely behind bars. As the
news broke, the whole of la and one keen viewer
in particular freed a huge sigh of relief.
Speaker 4: We were watching the news and all of a sudden
this flash comes Iron Freeway killer arrested in it.
Speaker 1: Was William Bonin was charged with a sodomy and oral
copulation of the teenage boy who was rescued from his van.
He was due in court for a preliminary hearing, and
unless investigators could prove he was also a murderer, it
was likely he would be released on bail. At the
very last minute, officers searching Vernon Butt's home discovered large
amounts of blood.
Speaker 4: In his shower.
Speaker 3: That's had probably been told by Bonny In. Don't worry,
there's no evidence, deny everything.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 3: But then the luminole shows up, this blood, which is
completely unexpected. Now, up until this point, everything had been planned,
everything had been predictable.
Speaker 2: It was going fine.
Speaker 3: But this is a real curveball, and this is when
things start to unravel.
Speaker 1: But immediately started talking. He confirmed that he and Bonin
had been responsible for several of the murders. Bonin was
kept in jail. In the meantime, forensic investigators had been
examining every inch of Bonnin's van. They'd had a breakthrough.
The rear had been lined with green carpet, which was
a match for the distinctive fibers that had been found
on eight of the victims.
Speaker 8: They lift up the green carpet in the back of
the van and discover blood. Now there are convincing links
between the killings.
Speaker 1: As the case against William Bonnyn mounted, the news that
so many boys and teenagers had been savagely abuse used
and killed was difficult for David McVicar to hear.
Speaker 4: I can only imagine what those other kids went through,
because I know that at first they would have seen
the same person that I saw. They would have seen
somebody who once have fun and inviting him be your
friend and maybe smoke a joint or something, you know,
and then right after they would have found out that
they had messed up really bad and he was incredibly violent.
He was evil, and he would hurt you just to
hear you scream.
Speaker 1: The police finally had their mad investigators worked tirelessly to
put the case against the freeway killer together. Six months later,
on the sixteenth of December nineteen eighty, William bonnin tried
to make a deal. He would give them information about
his numerous victims on the understanding that his confessions could
not be used as evidence against him. He was hoping
that if he helped the prosecutors wouldn't seek the death penalty.
Detective Larry Malmberg received a call from the LAPD.
Speaker 9: They said, hey, Bonnan is going to talk to us,
and you're invited to come down. And I went down
to the courthouse and there were officers from a tremendous
amount of agencies that all had victims.
Speaker 1: The LAPD had prepared charts with profiles of dozens of
victims they had reason to believe may be connected to
the case.
Speaker 9: Kind of went through him by date and name and
photographs and identified the ones that he had murdered.
Speaker 1: He even went on to describe where he dumped the
body of a young boy that had never been found.
Speaker 9: He told us that it was out here in Samudadino
County off the ten freeway, So arrangements were made to
bring Boning out the next day by la Kenny Shus
pointed out an area where the body had been dumped.
They set up a grid and started doing his search
and ultimately found bones.
Speaker 1: Bonin identified the victim from a photograph as being missing
teenager Sean King, who was fourteen years old. His mother
had been waiting anxiously for news of her son for
seven months. Larry remembers that Bonn was a wolf in
sheep's clothing.
Speaker 9: If you walked into a bar and sat down and
he was sitting in a chair next to you, he
would think it's a nice guy. It hurt emotionally talking
to him and seeing that he is actually the kind
of person you could carry on a conversation with and
not even realize what an evil, no good, rotten piece
of garbage he is.
Speaker 1: Without being able to use Bonin's confessions as evidence in court,
the confirmation that he had indeed been responsible for so
many killings was of limited help to the prosecution. However,
as the year came to an end, several of his
accomplices agreed to plead guilty and testify against Bonin in
return for leniency in their sentencing. Meanwhile, journalist Dave Lopez
had been visiting Bonnin in jail. On the ninth of
January nineteen eighty one, he had another opportunity to meet
with the killer.
Speaker 7: There had been a lot of speculation about what was
going to happen with a trial and what have you,
and I said, you know, there's a rumor that you're
going to cop out to all this, and he goes,
I don't know if I'm going to do that or not,
but you got a.
Speaker 6: Little bit of time.
Speaker 7: I go yeah, and he says, yeah, I did it.
Speaker 6: I said, you did what? He says, I killed them?
And I go how many? And he said twenty one.
Speaker 1: It was a confession that Dave had not been expecting.
Speaker 7: It was just a weird feeling, knowing that he was
telling me all this, and here I'm just sitting right
across from him and saying to myself, you know, he
didn't have the look of a wild murderer, but by
he should talk like one.
Speaker 1: Two days later, on the eleventh of January, Vernon Butts,
Bonin's accomplist, who'd admitted his part in the killings and
been charged with six of the murders, committed suicide in jail.
It was a massive blow for the prosecution.
Speaker 8: Now Butts has agreed to testify against Bonin, providing the
death penalty is taken off the table, but the moment
the Butts hangs himself, all those confessions become inadmissible in court.
Speaker 3: Bonin was in jail at the time, but in order
to keep him there, the prosecution needed to prove his guilt. Now,
they couldn't use his confessions against him because that was
the agreement. They couldn't use Butts's testimony either. So both
of these murderers have admitted to their crimes, but the
evidence can't be used to prove them guilty.
Speaker 1: Six months later, in June, there was a revelation. Dave
Lopez went public with the news that Bonin had confessed
to him.
Speaker 7: We put together the story and broadcast the fact that
he confessed to me. Twenty one killings went in a
little bit of detailed, not a whole bunch and man
then the proverbial you know you know what hit the fan.
Speaker 1: It made the reporter a vital witness and he was
put under pressure to give evidence in court.
Speaker 7: Everybody and their brother was coming after me, and they
were trying.
Speaker 6: To subpoena me.
Speaker 7: And now, at the time, California had what they call
a shield law, which basically protected reporters from having to
testify in a court of law.
Speaker 6: If you want it, you can.
Speaker 7: Subpoena them, but they can only testify to what they
had reported on the air or what they had written.
And the state of California tried like the to try
to get me to testify, and I wasn't going to testify.
Speaker 1: As prosecutors tried every trick in the book to get
Dave on the witness stand, Bonyn seemed happy to spill
the beans on his life of crime to prison psychologist
Von Depelto. Over the coming weeks, he went into detail
about the depraved killings.
Speaker 5: He said that he went out and picked up these
kids because he wanted sex. He wanted to rape them.
And then he said that he had like this epiphany.
I guess where he realized and admitted to himself. It
wasn't the sex at all. He enjoyed the killing. He
enjoyed having the boy at his mercy and hearing the
boy cry and plead for his life.
Speaker 1: On the fourth of November nineteen eighty one, at the
Los Angeles Superior Court, Bonyn's trial be again. He was
indicted for twelve murders in Los Angeles County.
Speaker 8: The trial was a sensation. People cued for hours to
get into the public gallery. It was the most extraordinary spectacle.
Speaker 1: Without any of Bonin's confessions on the record, there was
a real chance that he could get away with murder.
After six weeks of trial and testimony, the fate of
the freeway killer hung in the balance.
Speaker 6: Once they started closing arguments, that's it.
Speaker 7: The case is over. You know, it's no more testimony,
no more nothing. And I hadn't testified yet, and I
got a phone call saying that the closing arguments were delayed.
I go, why, well, because Bonnin was in the houlding
cell with another inmate. The inmate realized who he was
and he beat the living crap out of him to
the point where Bonnin was physically unable to go to court.
Speaker 1: This unexpected news had a profound effect on Dave.
Speaker 7: I do believe that there are sometimes when you get signs,
whether it be subtle or whatever.
Speaker 6: You however you want to believe it.
Speaker 7: But the way I looked at it, I said, it
was so unusual for a guy to be beaten up
the day of the closing arguments and the closing environments
were delayed.
Speaker 6: I said to myself, you know I better adding more
of this.
Speaker 7: So I called the prosecutor and I said, hey, look,
you know you still need me.
Speaker 6: I'll testify.
Speaker 1: Dave Lopez was on the stand for two days. He
detailed the twenty one murders Bonin had confessed to him.
Speaker 8: In many ways, it was a controversial decision because as
a reporter myself and I've covered many trials, you're supposed
to be there as an observer and to remain impartial.
It is extremely rare for someone to leave the press
box for the witness box.
Speaker 1: On the sixth of January nineteen eighty two, thirty three
year old William Bonin was found guilty of ten murders
in Los Angeles County and given the death penalty. The
following year, Bonin was tried and found guilty of a
further four murders in neighboring Orange County. He received a
second death sentence, and.
Speaker 7: You know a lot of people said, well, I was
the main reason that he got convicted.
Speaker 6: I don't think that at all.
Speaker 7: I think, if anything, I was just icing on the
cake for the jury.
Speaker 1: All of Bonin's surviving accomplices were also found guilty and
sentenced to time in jail. Despite taking the police directly
to the location of fourteen year old Sean King's body,
Bonin was acquitted of that crime without being able to
use his confession in court. There was insufficient evidence for conviction.
Speaker 4: The sad thing is is that he admitted doing twenty
one murderers, but they only busted him convicted him for
coming fourteen. So there were seven families that didn't get
their case assaw justice even though the guys that he
admitted it.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, after fourteen years on death row,
William Bonnin became the first prisoner executed by lethal injection
in California. David mcvico was present during those final moments.
Speaker 4: It was probably like six feet away from him, something
like that, and he just eventually turned purple and he
went like that and that was the end of it.
But it was for me total release. It was like
these demon nightmares were just coming out.
Speaker 1: William George Bonnin was pronounced dead at twelve thirteen am
on the twenty third of February nineteen ninety six. He
never showed any remorse for his crimes.
Speaker 7: He said, there are some guys that were born on
this world to do certain things.
Speaker 9: I was born to be a killer. They were all
kinds out there. Bonin is one of the most evil ones,
in my opinion, certainly the most evil I ever talt with.
Speaker 5: I asked Bill one time, do you have any regrets?
And he said, well, I did kill two in one day,
but he said I always wanted to kill three, and
he said I really regret not having that opportunity.
Speaker 1: Bonin was a sexual predator who killed for sheer pleasure.
He was convicted of murdering fourteen boys, but is believed
to have been responsible for many more lost lives. He
targeted those who were vulnerable, and by his own admission,
would have continued to kill if he hadn't been caught,
making William Bonnin one of the world's most evil killers.