William Bonin

• 1. The Freeway Killer

  ›

  William George Bonin was an American serial killer, and the prosecution against him once called him "the most arch-evil person who ever existed." Between 1968 and 1980 he attacked boys and young men in southern California, and briefly in Vietnam. He left many of his victims beside freeways, and the press named him the Freeway Killer and the Freeway Strangler.

  A jury convicted him of 14 murders. He confessed to 21, and he is a suspect in additional cases.

  This documentary follows the questions his case left behind. How did a man whom psychiatrists and prison officials had released twice come to commit murder? Who stood beside him, and why did they join in? What finally led police to his van? And when his lawyers argued that childhood abuse had left him unable to control himself, how did the courts and the doctors answer?

  13172313

• 2. A Childhood Without Protection

  ›

  Bonin was born in Willimantic, Connecticut, on the 8th of January 1947, the second of three sons. His father was a World War II veteran, and both of his parents were alcoholics. His father beat his wife and children, and his older brother, Robert Jr., took the worst of it. His mother had severe mood swings and spent her evenings at a bingo parlor while the boys went unattended.

  In January 1950, his father gambled away the family home in Andover, Connecticut. The family moved in with Bonin's maternal grandmother. His mother often left the boys with her own father, a known child molester who had sexually abused her. She later speculated that he had molested her sons as well.

  In September 1953, Bonin was sent to the Franco-American School, a Catholic convent in Lowell, Massachusetts. Discipline there was harsh, and he recalled nuns forcing him to punch a fence when he misbehaved. Records suggest he functioned well in that structure. Witnesses said he was bullied, and in 1955 an older boy sexually assaulted him. Neither parent visited, and Bonin began to fear they had died.

  In May 1955, he returned to a house in Mansfield owned by his maternal grandfather. One worried neighbor supplied the Bonin boys with meals and clean clothes. With almost no supervision, Bonin stole hubcaps and license plates, and in 1957 he was placed in a juvenile detention center. An adult counselor there molested him. After his release he began abusing his younger brother Paul, who told their mother six months later.

  In early 1962, the family bought a tract home in Torrance, California, after his father found work as a machinist in Downey. At North High School, Bonin was an outcast with no known friends. By his teenage years he had pedophilic urges that his mother knew about, and they argued often. After he dropped out in 1966, he molested several neighborhood children, and his mother eventually evicted him.

  In December 1966, with his mother's encouragement, Bonin joined the U.S. Air Force. He also became engaged to a young woman named Linda, a match his mother hoped would quell his attraction to boys. During the engagement, he repeatedly told Linda about recurring nightmares in which a woman was sexually assaulted and murdered.

  517141749

• 3. War and Treatment

  ›

  Phu Loi Base Camp, in Vietnam, was where Bonin spent five months of active duty with the 205th Assault Support Helicopter Unit. He served as an aerial gunner and logged over 700 hours of combat and patrol time. On one occasion he risked his life under enemy fire to save a wounded fellow airman, and he received a medal for gallantry. He later confessed to sexually assaulting two soldiers under his command at gunpoint, around the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive.

  Bonin received an honorable discharge on the 25th of October 1968, at age 21. At home he learned that Linda, who had given birth to their son, had left him to marry another man. He moved back in with his parents in Downey and found work as a gas station attendant. Relatives noticed he had changed, but he refused to explain why.

  On the 17th of November 1968, Bonin picked up 14-year-old Billy Jones in Arcadia, California, and assaulted him. Over the following weeks, similar attacks on boys and young men were reported, and local police began hunting for a serial rapist. On the 28th of January 1969, a policewoman in El Segundo noticed Bonin driving with a visibly frightened 16-year-old runaway and arrested him.

  Psychiatrists examined Bonin in March 1969 and judged him a sexual psychopath with little control over his impulses. He pleaded guilty to molestation and forced oral copulation. On the 17th of June 1969, he arrived at Atascadero State Hospital as a mentally disordered sex offender. Tests there measured his IQ at 121 and found traits of manic depression, sexual sadism disorder and antisocial personality disorder. His mother, on whom he remained emotionally dependent, considered him "worthless as a human being."

  Staff at Atascadero often saw a helpful, conscientious patient. Bonin later admitted he had recited what he thought the psychiatrists wanted to hear, hoping to manipulate his way to early release. One psychiatrist wrote that he "wanted to straighten himself out, but doesn't know how to go about it." In 1971 he was moved to the California Medical Facility, declared unsuitable for further treatment after repeated sexual engagement with other inmates.

  On the 11th of June 1974, Bonin walked free after doctors concluded he was "no longer a danger to the health and safety of others." In September 1975 he assaulted 14-year-old David McVicker, who had been hitchhiking in Garden Grove. When police arrested him on the 11th of October 1975, he told them: "next time, there won't be any more witnesses."

  Bonin was sentenced on the 31st of December 1975 to one to fifteen years at the California Men's Facility in San Luis Obispo. He completed mathematics courses and machinist training and made progress in individual therapy. He was released on the 11th of October 1978 with eighteen months of supervised probation. Three weeks later, he moved into an apartment in the Kingswood Village complex.

  145171750

• 4. Fraser's Parties

  ›

  Everett Scott Fraser, a 43-year-old neighbor in Kingswood Village, threw parties where young men, drugs and alcohol were on hand. Bonin became a regular attendee. Fraser considered him respectful, and the two talked openly about their homosexuality.

  At those parties Bonin met 21-year-old Vernon Robert Butts and 18-year-old Gregory Matthews Miley. Butts had been raised in Norwalk and was nine when his father died. Acquaintances described him as "shy and easily led" by others. He abused drugs and alcohol, had been imprisoned for burglary and arson, and had attempted suicide three times before meeting Bonin.

  Butts later said he was both enamored with and terrified of Bonin, who held a "kind of hypnotic" control over him. Bonin remembered it the other way around: "He had it all together. Everybody liked him; it was cool having him like me... made me feel real important. I never had no friends." The two soon began a relationship.

  Miley came from Lakewood, California, where his mother had been severely neglectful and had a series of dysfunctional marriages. He was illiterate and had dropped out of high school. Bonin had a sexual relationship with him as well.

  Police would eventually identify four accomplices in all. Bonin later confessed that with them he felt a sense of belonging he had never known with anyone else. Years afterward, he told his lawyers and correspondents that Butts had been the real ringleader and that he had merely followed. Stirling Norris, the prosecutor at the Los Angeles trial, rejected that account. He said Bonin "was the leader, and he chose weak people he could use."

  Bonin's parole supervision ended in April 1979. That year he bought a Ford Econoline van while working at his older brother's plumbing business.

  3517497030

• 5. Method on the Freeway

  ›

  On Fridays and Saturdays, Bonin cruised the freeways looking for victims. They were aged 12 to 19, mostly hitchhikers, schoolboys and male prostitutes, and predominantly Caucasian or Latino, slender, pale and long-haired. He enticed or forced them into the van.

  Once a victim was inside, he was restrained with handcuffs, wires or cords. Bonin had removed the handles from the passenger-side front and rear doors so that nobody could escape. The van also held knives, pliers, ligatures and wire coat hangers. Most victims were killed by strangling, typically with their own T-shirts and a tire iron.

  Bodies were left near freeways, often in counties far from where the victims had been abducted. Investigators believed this was an effort to mislead them. In at least twelve murders, Bonin had help from one or more accomplices.

  The earliest murder for which Bonin was eventually charged involved 13-year-old Thomas Lundgren of Reseda, last seen leaving home on the 28th of May 1979. He had told friends that a man offered to photograph him at a skatepark for a skateboarding magazine. His body was found in Agoura that afternoon, and Butts had assisted Bonin.

  Bonin collected newspaper clippings about the murders in a scrapbook and boasted about the reports to Butts and Fraser. Co-workers at the trucking firm Dependable Drive-Away, who knew nothing of his crimes, thought he seemed obsessed with the case. He would remark, "this guy is giving good gays like us a bad name."

  During the murders, forensic psychologist Dr. Albert Rosenstein sketched the unknown killer. He predicted an intelligent sex offender in his late twenties or early thirties, abused as a child and previously held in a psychiatric facility. He added that the man, though bisexual, had never been comfortable with his homosexuality and was repulsed by his own actions.

  Bonin described something like an addiction. In the hours before a murder he felt extreme restlessness, excitement and sexual frustration. One of his trial attorneys compared his escalating brutality to a drug addict who needs ever-greater doses.

  On the 9th of August 1979, Bonin was detained for molesting a 17-year-old boy from Dana Point. The parole violation should have sent him back to prison, but an administrative error before his court date led to his release. When Fraser drove him home on the 13th, Bonin said: "No one's going to testify again. This is never going to happen to me again." Fraser took it as remorse. Bonin skipped his court appointment, and the killings resumed.

  1749507082

• 6. The Net Closes

  ›

  By early 1980, the murders were drawing considerable media attention. To deter a wave of homophobia, leading gay rights activists offered rewards totaling $50,000 for information leading to a conviction. Investigating jurisdictions around Southern California concluded that many of the cases were linked and began sharing information. Six officers from three of those jurisdictions formed a task force.

  On the 28th of May 1980, William Pugh, in custody for auto theft, heard details of the murders on a local radio broadcast. He confided to a counselor that he recognized the method, which Bonin had described to him two months earlier. The tip reached Los Angeles Police Department officer John St. John, who interviewed Pugh the next day. Pugh concealed that he had accompanied Bonin on one murder, but what he did say led St. John to suspect Bonin.

  David McVicker had reached the same suspicion. Bonin had spared him in 1975 by stopping mid-assault and apologizing. Police treated his call as one of many public tips. Bonin's record of convictions for assaulting teenage boys soon pushed him up the list, and St. John assigned a surveillance team.

  In June, an 18-year-old vagrant named James Munro moved into Bonin's house. Munro remembered thinking Bonin was "a good guy" who was "really normal." On the 1st of June, Bonin told him he wanted them to abduct and murder a hitchhiker. Surveillance began on the evening of the 2nd of June, one hour before Bonin and Munro left the body of 18-year-old Steven Wells at an abandoned gas station in Huntington Beach. It was found five hours later. Bonin hinted to Munro that silence was his safest course.

  Nine days of watching produced nothing, and then came the 11th of June 1980. Plainclothes officers saw Bonin drive through Hollywood and fail to lure five separate boys into his van before one agreed. They followed him to a service station near the Hollywood Freeway. Hearing screams and banging, they forced their way inside and found him assaulting 17-year-old runaway Harold Eugene Tate, who was handcuffed and bound.

  Bonin was initially charged with raping a minor and held on suspicion of murdering Charles Miranda, with bond set at $250,000. When Bonin's girlfriend told his boss the arrest was linked to the Freeway Killer case, Munro became frantic. He stole Bonin's car and fled to Michigan.

  Inside the van, investigators found restraints, knives, a tire iron and the removed door handles. The scrapbook of clippings sat in the glove box. Carpet fibers on seven victims matched the van's carpeting precisely, and hair on three bodies matched Bonin's. Six murders shared a windlass strangulation method that a prosecutor later called Bonin's "signature" or "trademark."

  Bonin first claimed innocence. Then he read a letter from Sean King's mother, who begged him to reveal where her son's body lay. He confessed to St. John, but made clear it was no kindness. King lay in San Bernardino County, and the long trip there meant police would likely buy him a hamburger. Over several evenings he described each killing in graphic detail. He showed no remorse, only extreme embarrassment and regret at being caught.

  9817306455

• 7. Two Trials

  ›

  On the 25th of July 1980, police searched Butts' property in Lakewood and found evidence linking him to several murders. Butts first claimed innocence, then confessed, explaining, "It was either go, or become the next victim." He rejected a plea offer of life with a minimum of 25 years and refused to testify against Bonin. Munro was arrested in Port Huron, Michigan, on the 31st of July. Miley was arrested on the 22nd of August after discussing the Miranda and Macabe murders in a recorded phone call from Texas.

  On the 2nd of January 1981, Bonin pleaded innocent at a preliminary hearing to 14 first-degree murder charges. Butts was arraigned five days later. Four days after entering his plea, Butts died by suicide in his cell. His attorney theorized that the coming release of transcripts, in which Butts had graphically described the victims' torture, had deepened his depression. With his testimony now inadmissible, charges in three murders were dropped.

  Miley and Munro agreed to testify against Bonin. Munro escaped the death penalty and had sodomy and robbery charges dismissed. Miley pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, in exchange for two concurrent life sentences with parole possible after 25 years. William Pugh pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and later received six years in prison.

  The Los Angeles County trial opened on the 19th of October 1981 before Judge William Keene, and Bonin faced charges for 12 victims. Norris sought the death penalty on every count. He argued that Bonin killed as a group sport, with accomplices he had groomed because of their "low mentality." Bonin's lawyers, William Charvet and Tracy Stewart, attacked the credibility of the witnesses and pointed to the abuse of Bonin's early life.

  Psychoanalyst David Foster testified that Bonin, abandoned as a child, never received the nurturing he needed and had grown confused about the difference between violence and love. Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz disagreed. He found that Bonin had planned his actions, and that his sadomasochism and antisocial personality disorder did not create uncontrollable impulses.

  Reporter David Lopez waived his shield-law protection to testify about seven interviews Bonin had granted him between December 1980 and April 1981. Lopez had at first refused, but changed his mind after Bonin talked to other reporters despite a promise not to. Asked what he would be doing if still free, Bonin had replied that he would still be killing, because "it got easier with each one."

  The jury began deliberating on the 28th of December and on the 6th of January 1982 convicted Bonin of ten murders. It acquitted him in the Lundgren and King cases. Bonin had led police to King's body under an agreement that this could not be used against him. In Lundgren's case, according to Lopez, Bonin had strenuously denied the killing in their interviews. The jury unanimously recommended death, and in February 1982 Judge Keene sentenced Bonin to die for the ten murders.

  Before his second trial, Bonin was beaten by a gang-member cellmate and held in solitary confinement. Charvet asked twice for a change of venue because of publicity, and Judge Kenneth Lae refused both times. Bonin's Orange County trial opened on the 21st of March 1983, with four more murders at issue. Selecting a jury required questioning 204 prospective jurors, and sixteen were chosen by June.

  Prosecutor Bryan Brown noted that each victim's neck bore a ligature impression and that fibers from the van's carpeting matched those on the bodies. Charvet argued that Bonin was a scapegoat for four unsolved murders. One of his two defense witnesses was Munro, who conceded that Bonin had asked him to lie. The jury deliberated for under three hours and found Bonin guilty on the 2nd of August 1983. On the 26th of August he received four further death sentences, and he was returned to San Quentin State Prison.

  13676669

• 8. The Last Years

  ›

  On death row, Bonin painted and wrote a series of short stories called Doing Time: Stories from the Mind of a Death Row Prisoner. He became close friends with convicted murderers Douglas Clark, Jimmy Lee Smith, Lawrence Bittaker and Randy Kraft. Kraft shared his nickname, the Freeway Killer. Bonin also corresponded with many people, including the mothers of some victims, to whom he showed no regret and from whom he withheld what they sought to know.

  Bonin filed numerous appeals, citing jury prejudice, the effect of victim impact statements and inadequate defense. New lawyers argued that Charvet should have stressed his bipolar disorder and childhood sexual abuse to "humanize" him. In 1989, the Supreme Court scorned Judge Keene for allowing Charvet to serve despite a warning that Munro had discussed being represented by him. The court called Keene's actions "inexplicable," yet found that Charvet had cross-examined Munro effectively. It agreed that the defense should have been allowed to stipulate to the testimony of victims' parents, but ruled that this did not change the verdict.

  A final submission to the United States Court of Appeals arrived in 1994. It argued ineffective counsel, denial of due process, unmentioned brain damage, and a wrongly refused change of venue. The judges rejected it in 1995 and found no evidence that the 13 jurors in the Orange County trial were biased. Dr. Dietz said Dr. Foster had exaggerated the evidence of abuse and mistook Bonin's Babinski reflex for a sign of brain damage.

  California had recently chosen lethal injection for executions. Robert Alton Harris, the state's first execution in decades, had died in the gas chamber, which was found to be a "cruel and unusual punishment." Bonin was scheduled for lethal injection in 1992, the first such execution in the state. On the 20th of February 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his plea for clemency.

  On the 23rd of February 1996, near midnight, Bonin was executed by lethal injection inside the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison. He was 49, had spent fourteen years on death row, and was the first person executed by lethal injection in California. Governor Pete Wilson, who had refused clemency three days earlier, called him the "poster boy for capital punishment."

  In his final radio interview, less than 24 hours before the execution, Bonin said he had "made peace" with dying. His one major regret, he said, was not pursuing bowling long enough to turn professional. He said he thought the death penalty is wrong, yet denied responsibility for his actions, claiming he had no control over them. At 6 p.m. he was moved to a death-watch cell and ordered a last meal. He spent his final hours with five people he had chosen, including his attorney and chaplain, who detected no remorse.

  About one hour before the scheduled execution, the Supreme Court refused to hear his last plea. The Court of Appeals added that his attorneys should not have waited until the last minute to submit arguments for overturning or postponing the execution.

  132310285