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The World's Most Bizarre Murders. James Marrison
Читать онлайн.Название The World's Most Bizarre Murders
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781843586982
Автор произведения James Marrison
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Another item on the list was ‘jail out’, a reference to Roland Young. Young had been put in jail for public drunkenness and on his release was hitching his way home when Kraft picked him up. In a change from his usual method, this time Kraft stabbed Young four times in the chest and removed one testicle. As with DeVaul, Young had imbibed a large amount of alcohol and drugs, and would have been comatose as he was being killed.
Kraft was an adept murderer; he was only ever seen by witnesses once, and that was very early on in his killing spree. In March 1975, Kraft struck up a conversation with Keith Crotwell and Kent May in a parking lot in Long Beach. They agreed to come with him to his new car, a white Mustang, where he offered them pills and beer. May almost immediately passed out and the last thing he remembered was Kraft driving off with both of them still in the car. Kraft then returned to the parking lot and threw May out.
Two of their friends, who had come out looking for them, saw Kraft throwing May out of his car and then speeding off with Crotwell in the front passenger seat unconscious. Two months later, two young boys discovered Crotwell’s skull floating near a marina. In October, other children found what was left of him wrapped in a rug in a large pipe. In court, the prosecutor argued to the jury that ‘PARKING LOT’ on the defendant’s list referred to Crotwell’s murder.
Kraft continued to get away unpunished and the atrocities of his crimes worsened. On 3 January 1976, an off-duty policeman found the body of Mark Hall in the sand dunes in the area of Saddleback Mountain. This time Kraft had surpassed himself. The cause of Hall’s death was found to be a combination of suffocation and acute alcohol intoxication. Kraft had removed Hall’s genitals and filled his mouth and throat with dirt so that he choked. A print unearthed on a broken beer bottle near the scene of the crime was Kraft’s. Hall had last been seen alive on 31 December; Kraft had written on his list ‘NEW YEARS EVE’.
According to author Dennis McDougal, who wrote the bestselling book Angel of Darkness about Kraft, the killer may well have also had an accomplice: a seriously disturbed drifter. He certainly confessed to McDougal that he had been involved in some of Kraft’s most heinous crimes. Kraft wasn’t a strong man physically and it would have been tough to move those bodies by himself; what’s more, McDougal says, Kraft didn’t have access to a photo lab, nor did he know how to develop photos. It was also claimed that Kraft only listed his more memorable kills and hinted that the final tally could well have been as much as a hundred. McDougal further speculated that Kraft might have practised his drink-spiking technique by drugging an ex-girlfriend. In an article published in Long Beach magazine, she told McDougal that she would sometimes have a beer while Kraft drove and would wake up with a splitting headache and no recollection of what had happened.
Kraft’s body count is up there with some of America’s most infamous killers, yet, strangely, he doesn’t enjoy their celebrity status. He absolutely refuses to acknowledge any guilt and offers no glimpses whatsoever into the darker side of his nature. I talked to a long-term pen-pal of Kraft. Like many people who have got to know him over the years, she still finds it hard at times to believe that he is a killer.
‘Randy,’ she told me, ‘is intelligent, well read, has an excellent general knowledge, and is extremely literate; his letters are a pleasure to read. He is polite, considerate and respectful. He is also charming, but in a gentle, understated kind of way, and there’s a sweetness and warmth too in Randy that makes him very likeable, which causes you to start to think that maybe he really did not commit those dreadful crimes, and you want so much to believe that he didn’t. But I see too, at times, a certain tendency towards having high expectations, perhaps even a demand for perfection, but rather in himself, than in others.
‘I do believe, though, that, in many ways, Randy lives in a romanticised world, where families are perfect, loving, supportive and nurturing, almost like the early TV family sitcoms with the strong, morally upright, but caring father, the devoted domesticated mother and the happy, doted-upon younger children and fun-loving teenagers. Perhaps Randy’s own family was like this, but I think that it is more likely that this is how he wants to remember his past, rather than the way it actually was.’
This idealised version of events is reflected in Kraft’s childhood memoirs, recently posted up on his website, which is sponsored by an anti-death-penalty organisation. Kraft earnestly paints a picture of the all-American family and – ludicrously – comes across rather like a modern-day version of John Boy from The Waltons. It makes for tough reading. There is a whole story about the time his sister couldn’t cook pie crust properly and another gripping tale about going to the local shop and buying chicken feed (literally). There is also one story about whether he should buy a Christian Endeavours tie clip for himself or if he should save his hard-earned quarters and buy a nice new white Bible for his mom. Apparently, as a child Kraft was a paragon of virtue and most of his memoirs are littered with expressions such as ‘Neat O’ and ‘Oh Boy’ and even sometimes ‘Gee Thanks!’
In those memoirs, Kraft also gives his own explanation for the scorecard hit list that earned him his nickname. He says that the words on the list were related to his computer-programming job and that the police had cut and pasted the list to make him take the blame for 65 unsolved crimes.
The memoirs jump abruptly to a day in 1983, when Kraft remembers sitting out on the sun deck with a cold beer with his dog, Max. It was actually Friday, 13 May, and his last day as a free man. Kraft remembers that a sudden chill and feeling of impending doom descended on him and writes that he knew things wouldn’t be the same afterwards. Hours later he would kill again, but for the last time. At last the 12-year-long murder binge was drawing to a close.
His last victim was Terry Gambrel, a 25-year-old marine. Kraft was pulled over for suspected drink driving by the California Highway Patrol when they spotted someone in the front seat. Kraft claimed that he was a hitchhiker. According to court records, one of the officers ‘observed that Gambrel’s trousers were unbuttoned and pulled down between his waist and his knees so that his penis and testicles were supported by the crotch of the pants. The crotch area was wet. There were indentations on Gambrel’s wrists similar to those a wide rubber band would make.’
According to the autopsy, Gambrel’s death resulted from asphyxia due to ligature strangulation. Again, according to court transcripts, ‘The ligature consisted of a strap that had been tightened around Gambrel’s neck. There were also ligature marks on both of Gambrel’s wrists. Petechial haemorrhages in the neck organs indicated the killer had repeatedly tightened and loosened the ligature.”
Gambrel was 25 years old and engaged to be married. It is believed that he was hitchhiking his way to a party when he was picked up by Kraft.
It took five years before Kraft was sent to court. The trial lasted 13 months and cost the American taxpayer $10 million, making it one of the longest and most expensive trials in the history of the American judiciary system. Throughout the trial, Kraft maintained his innocence and even served as co-counsellor. After both sides had argued their case, the jury decided on the death penalty – a decision that was upheld by the judge – and Kraft was sentenced to die in the gas chamber in San Quentin on 29 November 1989. Referring to Kraft’s crimes, Judge A McCartin summed