Twisted Listers Presents TCC #5: Bill Bonin Part 1

Please join us on our new podcast page, True Crime California. These episodes will only post here for a short while longer!

This week, Cindy is doing a deep dive on the absolutely horrible, despicable serial killer, William "Bill" Bonin. This trash bag human assaulted or murdered upwards of 50 boys and young men, and had no signs of stopping when he was finally caught in the summer of 1981. Beyond the horrificness of his murders, this case really highlights the problems within the justice system, especially in the 1970's and 80's. Between paperwork issues, negligent doctors, and a wide hunting ground, Bill Bonin was able to prey on his victims for years. Luckily, once the killing began, he was stopped after only two years, but with the frequency of his attacks, that still meant many boys and young men would lose their lives before this killer was finally caught. 

Tune in to hear all about this horrific tale, and come back next week for part two!

Instagram: True Crime California

Sources:
https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/46/659.html
Without Redemption: Creation & Deeds of Freeway Killer Bill Bonin, His Five Accomplices & How One Who Escaped Justice (Serial Killer Books by Vonda Pelto, Ph.D. & Michael B. Butler)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bonin
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/freeway-killers-chilling-final-words-32031585
https://www.amazon.com/William-Bonin-Freeway-Historical-Murderers/dp/1519631197

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here. Hey, everybody, welcome back to

(00:20):
episode five of True Crime California. I am your host, Cindy,
and I just want to give a shout out to
everybody who has liked, rated, reviewed, followed the podcast. This
has been a much better start than when we did
Twisted Listers. Obviously, you know we have listeners coming over
from there, but I've also realized that some of you
just are not going to listen if I don't post

(00:41):
it on Twisted Listers. So for some of you, for now,
I will intermittently post these episodes there. But please, if
you hear this on the Twisted Listers podcast, come over, follow, like, rate, review,
True Crime California. That is the new podcast. It's just
me fly. Diva is too busy. Maybe someday we'll start again,

(01:03):
but for now, she's doing her thing, being a mom
and working a lot. So I'm just taking this on
by myself, and I'm coming at you with another California case.
And I hate to say it, but this again is
nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty The case obviously, starts
way earlier than that. And you know, this actually might

(01:24):
be a two parter. I know I said that about
a previous case, but this one actually has about twice
as much research, so I do think this might be
a two parter. So for those of you who hate
two parters, I'm sorry. For those of you who love
two parters, you're welcome. But yeah, let's just get into it.
The case that I chose to cover this week and
next is the Freeway Killer. One of the many men

(01:47):
known as the Freeway Killer, the one that I chose
to cover is William Bill Bonman. Now, I am going
to cover this case for better or worse, because I
started the research and I got into it. But I
can tell you, as the mother of a young boy,
this was not the case to cover. This shit is
fucked up and rough and really really gnarly, and I

(02:11):
think if I hadn't got so deep into research, I
probably would have not covered this because it is tough.
It's tough to hear, it's tough to read about. I'm
definitely gonna leave some of the crazier shit out, but
just so everybody knows, this is this whole case is
like one giant trigger warning. I mean, it's just gnarly,
gnarly trauma to young boys, including Bill Bonnan, kind of

(02:34):
from start to finish. So if that's not your thing,
totally fair. It's also not my thing. But it is
a case worth covering for sure. But it's crazy, so
just be warned. So let's just get into it. William
Bill Bonnan was born January eighth, nineteen forty seven, in Connecticut.
I did want to call out that he was born
the same day as David Bowie, so I feel like

(02:56):
that was the gods or whatever, like making sure that
things remained equal allowed a piece of shit like Bill
Bonnan to be born. But David Bowie was also born, so,
you know, kind of trying to even it out. He
had two brothers, older brother Robert Junior who went by Bobby,
and younger brother Paul, so he was the middle brother
here Bobby, Bill and Paul. His mother was raised by

(03:19):
there's no other way to put it, a child rapist
who would assault her and her siblings almost nightly, and
her mother did nothing to help her, you know, which
is often the case in these homes where there's abuse
like this. The other parent is either also a victim
or is just not equipped emotionally, physically, financially to help

(03:40):
the children, so it just sort of continues this really
horrific abuse throughout their lives. Alice dealt with this by
getting herself sent to a nunnery somehow. Like it wasn't
like she was in trouble, but she like asked to go.
She obviously didn't become a nun but she did get
married as soon as she was old enough so that
she could get out of her father's home and escape him. Unfortunately,

(04:05):
she chose a man who was very much like him,
not in that he sexually assaulted her, but that he
beat the shit out of her, to the point where
when she was pregnant with Bill, she thought that she
would either miscarry or that he might end up having
brain damage. And this is important for later and also
I think she was right. His father, Bill's father, Robert,

(04:27):
went to the war and came back a completely different man. Now,
he'd already been kind of a piece of shit, but
at this point he became a serious alcoholic and was
even more violent with Alice and with the children. As
a way of coping, Alice began drinking heavily as well, Now,
Robert also had a really terrible gambling problem and would

(04:50):
you know, repeatedly lose what little money the family had,
including grocery money. At one point, he lost the family
home in a back and they all had to move
in with Alice's parents. Now, this was obviously a terrible
situation considering her father, and at this point both Alice
and Robert Senior would leave for hours on end to

(05:12):
go gambling, go drinking. Alice was really into bingo, and
they would leave the boys alone with this pedophile. Now,
Bill was Grandpa's favorite, which is, as we know, very
not a good thing. He would pay him to help
with work quote unquote, but this was before Bill was
even five years old, so I don't really know how

(05:33):
helpful he would be, and I think in reality we
all know what was actually going on. Eventually the family
ended up getting another house, but by that time both
Bobby and Bill were serious troublemakers, and at one point
Bill ended up in a month long reformatory school of sorts.
This school was very militaristic in its approach to children,
and Bill was harmed by the quote teachers there. In

(05:54):
the short time that he stayed. He was also picked
on by older boys, but had one boy who was
thirteen to help him out and keep him safe. Now, unfortunately,
this boy ended up asking Bill to have oral sex
with him. Bill was like, okay, probably because he'd already
had sexual encounters with his grandfather another man, so this

(06:15):
is already kind of setting things weird in his brain.
He doesn't really know any other way, so he's like, yeah,
I guess I can do that now. He's eight years
old at this time, this other kid is thirteen, and
what he said to the kid was, if I can
tie your hands behind your back so I feel safe,
I'll do this with you. So the older boy agreed
to do this, but broke free very easily and then

(06:35):
tied Bill up and raped him violently, both orally and anally.
So after one month of this insanity, he's back home,
being beaten by his father and left with his grandfather. Intermittently,
and in his spare time, he would skip school, pick
fights with other kids, and steal which like, yeah, I
mean he's acting out. Nobody is caring for him, nobody

(06:58):
loves him. He is only being hurt by all of
the adults that he's supposed to trust, every single one
of them is hurting him. So his parents again wanted
to be rid of their two oldest sons, the troublemakers.
They kept Paul, but they sent Bobby and Bill to
a Catholic orphanage, the Franco American School. And you can
read about this school. It's crazy and things there got

(07:22):
really violent. The nuns working here would regularly beat the children,
but would also do humiliating things like push their heads
into toilets, hold their heads underwater, and make them punch
a wood fence until their knuckles bled. There was also
on site a Catholic priest who I bet you can
guess sexually assaulted Bill and probably many other children during

(07:44):
this time. So overall, just a truly horrific experience, and
yet another situation where Bill has no love, no support,
no safety, only abuse. He's just surrounded by a horrible
people who hurt him endlessly. Now what's really weird in
this situation is that the nun said Bill did really

(08:07):
well with this amount of structure. Everything was timed out,
there was a routine, he couldn't really get into trouble
and it seemed to work for him. But still, like,
what the fuck? So finally, his parents who he thought
had died, because after they dropped him at the orphanage,
they never once came to see him, picked him up,
and moved him into a new home. He was only

(08:27):
about nine years old at this time and had already
had a lifetime of abuse, and also he was in
this orphanage for a little over a year. At this point,
his family moved closer to Alice's dad, and from fourth
to sixth grade, Bill attended a new school. His fellow
students noted he was weird, not like other kids, often dirty,
acted strange. There's no real specifics about what the kids

(08:48):
said about him at this time, mostly just that they
had a feeling that he was off now. Also around
this time, he met a forty year old florist named
Bert who began raping Bill. But at least to Bill,
this relationship was consensual and changed the way he viewed
his sexuality. Now. Obviously, a forty year old and a

(09:10):
not even ten year old cannot be having a consensual relationship,
but it was the first time that Bill had interactions
with an adult who wasn't openly harming him in a
way that was against his will, Which is so fucked
up that this is like the positive moment in his
life comparatively, you know, so fucked. Also, around this time,

(09:32):
Bill had become extremely codependent and refused to do anything
without his younger brother Paul with him, even though it
turns out Bill was sexually abusing Paul and also like
beating up on him like an older brother would. But
he was sexually abusing him. But he was also very
violent and hateful towards his brother, but also always wanted

(09:55):
him around. So it's a really weird sort of relationship.
We're in nineteen sixty two. He's I think Bill's about
thirteen fourteen years old, and his father got a job
as a machinist in Downey, California, so the family moved
to that area. Here, the boys continued to get in trouble,
with Bill being arrested for petty theft and burglary, but

(10:15):
somehow missing a trip to Juvie. It's noted in many
articles that he spent time in Juviu when he was ten,
but I think it may have been the orphanage that
they were referring to. But we'll just say his young life, obviously,
he was in and out of very abusive institutions pretty
much the whole time. Also during this time when he's
in like the Downy area, there were some adult neighbors

(10:37):
who sort of like befriended the boys and this was
actually a positive interaction. They would give the two younger kids,
Bill and Paul food and they would you know, try
to like help them out. And they said every time
they fed the brothers they ate like ravenously, like they
hadn't eaten in days. So this is just on top

(10:57):
of everything else. There's just straight up neglect going on,
you know, like they're not the parents do not give
a shit about these fucking kids. So it's just this
horrible trifecta physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. That's all
they're getting. Now. At this point, Bobby was like old
enough to kind of fend for himself, but we still
have this kind of thing. They're all still living at home,

(11:19):
so Bobby's beating the shit out of Bill, Bill is
raping Paul, and finally his mother, their mother, Alice, catches
them in the act and forces them to sleep in
separate rooms and thinks that like that's going to fix
the problem, and like maybe it did, I don't know,
but you know, that's that's the that's as much as
this woman can do, Like, that's the depth of her

(11:41):
ability to help her children. Bill dropped out of high
school in nineteen sixty five and started working with his
dad in Downey. He also started bringing young boys back
to his house, giving them beer and showing them pornograph
And he was nineteen at the time, and these kids

(12:02):
were all like, not adults, like teenagers or preteens only
His mother later said she started having nightmares about him
being arrested for this, and they would often fight about
it as she was afraid that he was gay. It
wasn't even necessarily that he was like potentially raping children,
it was just that he was gay. She was not
happy about that, which is, you know, just it aligns

(12:25):
perfectly with everything we know about her parenting. In nineteen
sixty six, at his mother's urging, and I think as
an act of just kind of not knowing what to
do with himself, Bill signed up for the army. And
he did this only after he could convince his friend
to sign up with him, because he hated doing anything alone.

(12:45):
And now Bill didn't have a lot of friends. But
whoever this friend was was down to get into the
Army with him, so I guess it was kind of
a good friend. He went to Vietnam in November nineteen
sixty seven, and he did see combat. He was a
gunner on a head helicopter, and at one point he
was given a commendation for saving another soldier's life by

(13:06):
pulling him into the helicopter while it was under fire.
So he actually saved someone at great risk to himself,
which I will say is the only time we're gonna
hear anything like that about this man. Also, at this
time in Vietnam, he spent a lot of time with
both male and female sex workers, and it is it

(13:26):
was later found out that he violently raped at least
two fellow soldiers repeatedly during their time over there, while
holding them at gunpoint. He came home from Vietnam and
found that his girlfriend, who he had started dating to
make his mother happy, had married another man. He was
very angry, but more at being rejected than anything, because

(13:47):
he probably wasn't actually interested in women. Now. I did
hear that at some point he was married, and he
did even like father a child, but this marriage was
not enough to even really be mentioned most places. Was
honestly like you know, a couple of months, and then
they never talked again. So I don't know. What I
do know is that being single allowed him the freedom

(14:09):
to be his full true self, and he began the
first leg of his long and horrific career as a
rapist and eventually a murderer. Now, his first attack was
on November seventeenth, nineteen sixty eight, when he picked up
a kid in the Arcadia area, which is directly north
from Downey by about I don't know, like twenty miles
or so. This boy, fourteen year old Billy Jones, was

(14:32):
either waiting for a bus or walking home, and Bill
stopped him for directions. He convinced this boy to get
into his car to give him a ride home, but
then he started asking him about sex and blowjobs, and
when Billy said he wanted to get out, Bill locked
the car doors and became violent. Billy begged him not
to hurt him, and Bill beat him unconscious after telling

(14:53):
him he would kill him and then sodomize his dead body.
When Billy woke up, he was dropped at a bus
stop and threatened. Bill then went on his way back
to the South Bay area. Now, while he was unconscious,
Billy was raped by Bill, and he went home and
told his mother, and he and his mother reported the
attack that same night, but Bill was already miles away

(15:15):
back home near Downey. Over the next few months, four
more attacks just like this took place. All of the
victims were under eighteen, and thankfully every single victim reported
the attack, which is like awesome because he creates a
paper trail, although we'll see later that doesn't really matter. Also,
I should note that at this time Bill was riding

(15:35):
around on a motorcycle, so he was only able to
perpetrate these attacks when he could borrow his mother's car,
because he was attacking these people in his own mother's car,
which is like gross. Now, ultimately using his mother's car
is what got him caught. I mean, any car would have,
but multiple witnesses saw the car and even a few
got the license plate number or part of it. So

(15:56):
while driving one night, he picked up a sixteen year
old hitchhiker and began his little pattern of horrificness, but
was promptly pulled over by police who saw his mother's
car and noted it matched the description given by multiple
victims and witnesses. He was arrested, I think at the
end of nineteen sixty eight, and charged with multiple counts

(16:17):
of kidnapping, crimes against nature, crimes against children, and sex perversion.
So the fact that he started this in November and
was caught that same year and had attacked five people,
you can see that this is this is like a frenzy.
This is like a very crazy just like boom boom boom.
And we'll see this later as well. It's noted in

(16:38):
many places that when he was arrested, he told police
that had they not pulled him over, he would have
killed the boy in the car with him, which is
just fucking great because, as you can guess, he was
not in prison long enough to keep him from becoming
a fucking serial killer. So good job cops, right, So
he goes to court, he chooses to plead guilty because
there were all these living victims who were going to

(16:59):
testify against him, and he immediately begins trying to manipulate
the situation by asking for leniency and to be sent
to a mental hospital instead of prison. His mother also
wrote a letter asking that he'd be released to her.
But like, yeah, right, he's doing this in your car,
like clearly, you do not have control of this person. However,
he was evaluated and he was sent to a Tascadero

(17:21):
State Mental Hospital, which is kind of between the Bay
Area and Los Angeles, but like along the coast, where
he was taken for treatment. Now, this is a prison
hospital for sexual psychopaths. Nowadays it's actually I think for
all mentally ill criminals, and it's one of the most
dangerous maximum security prison hospitals in the country. But at
that time I think it was just for like sexual psychopaths.

(17:44):
And anyway, at this time he was there for treatment,
but it really did not go well. While doctors said
that Bill verbalized wanting to get better, when it came
time to do the work, he simply could not or
would not do it. He was noted as being defensive
and aggressive with people, and many inmates described him as
irritating because he had a braggadocious manner. He was labeled

(18:07):
as immature and unable to come to terms with who
he was, and in fact, in one therapy session this
is crazy. When fully confronted with the reality of who
he was and what he had done, Bill lost consciousness
for a number of minutes. It was as though his
brain refused to admit who he was to the point
of literally shutting down rather than processing the cold, hard

(18:32):
truth about himself, which is fucking crazy, like I've never
heard of that before, and it's just so wild that
that's how hard his denial was that it actually became
like a physical denial. It was also later noted by
doctors that he was most comfortable when making others feel scared, unsure,

(18:53):
or anxious, which also comes into play later. So he
was kind of doing like a preemptive strike against an
anybody and everybody as a way of protecting himself because
one he was never able to protect himself as a child,
and two all he knows is abuse and attacks and
like bad, everything is bad, so he's trying to do

(19:13):
it first before somebody does it to him. Again. This
also kind of plays into his needing someone around for
everything he did in his life. So first it was
his brother, and later we'll see he has a number
of criminal associates of various involvement in his murders and rapes,
so it's just a very interesting psychology. He spent a
total of nine months in the hospital, which was where

(19:35):
he wanted to be because prison you know, is not
good for people who rape little boys, you know. So
this was a very self serving thing where he continued
to say, you know, I want to change, I know
what I'm doing is wrong. He was sort of just
saying the things that he needed to say. And the
interesting thing was that the doctors all knew this. They

(19:56):
noted it, but they kind of continued to let it
play out to see if finally maybe his actions would
align with what he was saying. Unfortunately, this was not
the case. During this time, these nine months, he was
caught three times for having sex with other inmates, all

(20:17):
of which were people who were not mentally capable of
making these decisions. So he was preying on people who
could not say no, who could not really process what
was going on, so really really crazy predatory behavior. Finally,
after being caught a third time Forsopdomy, he was just

(20:37):
straight up transferred to prison. They were like, we don't
want to deal with you anymore. You know, you're not
amenable to treatment, and according to doctors, like he was
barely on the line of maybe being treated from the start,
so he had a lot of chances. They give him
nine months to turn his shit around and he obviously
did not do it now for whatever reason, because he's
really good at manipulating the system. He ended up in

(20:59):
Vaca at another prison treatment type space, and again was
found to make little or no progress there either. Finally,
after only five years in these prison hospitals and prison,
he was released despite showing no signs of improvement. Why
you ask, well, because of a paperworker. Of course. Somehow

(21:21):
he was marked as no longer being a threat to others,
despite doctors saying otherwise up to the month before he
was released. And that should really tell you how broken
the system is, because nobody noticed or questioned this mistake.
He was released in nineteen seventy four and briefly got
an apartment in Hollywood and tried to become a part
of the gay community there. However, he had little to

(21:42):
no social skills and quickly ended up back at his
parents' house, just living with them and being kind of
a loner. He got a job first as a bartender,
then as a delivery driver, and he used this delivery
driver position to start trolling the streets for boys again.
September eighth, nineteen seventy five is his first post prison
attack that we know of. Now he finds fourteen year

(22:06):
old David mcvickers and picks him up while he's hitch hiking.
Now in the seventies and eighties, so much of this,
it's all the same kind of pattern in all of
these stories. Hitch Hiking is totally normal. Young kids running
around all night on their own is totally normal. And
this is like a really good story about it's kind

(22:29):
of a scary tale as to why we don't fucking
do this shit anymore, why we don't let our kids
run around faral all night anymore. So he picks up
fourteen year old David mcvickers and he starts asking him
sexual questions, and when David tried to get out of
the car, he pulled a gun on him. Bill then

(22:49):
drove to a secluded area and pulled over, then made
David touch him. He touched David. He then forced him
into oral sex and then raped him while David cried
and begged for his life. He said it hurt so
much he thought he might die, And for some reason,
this begging actually made Bill stop. He even apologized for

(23:12):
hurting David, but then decided to keep him in the
car while he masturbated. But then eventually drove David home.
When he dropped him off outside of his house, he
said something along the lines of I'll see you again,
which is absolutely terrifying. David and his mother reported this
to the police immediately, and meanwhile, the next day, Bill

(23:32):
propositioned another young boy who told him no. Bill got
so angry at the rejection he attempted to run the
boy over. Both boys reported these attacks, and this boy
had Bonnin's license plate. October tenth, he was arrested and
in December he was sent back to prison for one

(23:53):
to fifteen years for these horrific attacks. However, because he
was a good prisoner and took some math classes, he
was released after serving less than two years. So I
just want to call out that at this point we're
noticing a pattern not only of Bill Bonnan here where

(24:15):
he picks up young kids, hitchhikers, kids out on the
street by themselves like teenage boys, and then asks them
scary questions and then attacks them. But we're also noticing
a little bit of a pattern with the justice system
where they continually release this man, they continually underestimate him,
even when their own doctors are saying he's incurable. He

(24:38):
is a problem. They are continuing to just let him
out and let him go back into the world and
escalate his behavior. And they did it again here. So
in nineteen seventy eight, November nineteen seventy eight, he moved
into an apartment about a mile from his parents' house.
He had a neighbor there, forty three year old Everett Frasier.

(24:59):
He was a gay man who at frequent parties at
his house that were filled with young men. And it
was here that Bill met either all of his accomplices
or all but one of his accomplices, which is interesting
to me, like, how do all these people hang out together?
All these people who are willing to like rape and
kill children are all just hanging out at the same party.
Very very strange. One of these men was twenty one

(25:21):
year old Vernon Butts. Yes with two teas and it's
a name he deserves. Bonnin was in his early thirties
at this point, so definitely hanging out with younger guys
for sure, which really makes sense for kind of his
mo And he also around this time met seventeen year
old Gregory Miley, who it was later found had an
IQ of around fifty six now for reference, this is

(25:45):
classified as a mental delay, which means he's likely very
easily influenced and controlled, which is perfect for Bill Bonnen.
He loves a weak follower. Gregory, for his part, saw
Bonden as a figure, but they also had a consensual
sexual relationship as well, so that's really fucking twisted. But

(26:06):
right on par Vernon, Buttz was a drifter who had
had a lot of family trauma early on. His father
died when he was only nine years old, and from
there he just had a pretty rough life. He had
an extensive criminal record and also identified as bisexual. He
also had an extensive record of mental illness, and people

(26:27):
who knew him noted he was quote easily led. So again,
there you go, two guys that are perfect for Bonnan.
He's going to control them, he's going to show off
for them. He's got all the power, he's got his audience.
Now we are going to get into the murders, which
are extremely violent and graphic. So if that's not for you,
it's time to come back in a week or two,

(26:47):
because I think this is going to be two episodes.
Here we go. Now, at the time the murders started,
he was either a plumber or a delivery driver at
this time, and then Bonnan later became a truck driver.
Case Around this time, he bought a green Ford Conoline
van and modified it to be a straight up murder mobile.

(27:08):
He removed the handles from all of the back doors.
He had a number of horrific tools and weapons in
his van, so basically nobody could get out, and anytime
he wanted to torture or murder someone, he would have
things at the ready. As far as his mos concerned,
his victims were all or almost all teenaged, and he
mainly went for people who were hitchhiking, who were sex workers,

(27:30):
and sometimes he would even just go for random people
on the streets, which is a much bigger risk, but
I think in those instances he just really liked the rush.
So now we're in early or mid I guess nineteen
seventy nine. He's released from prison at the end of
nineteen seventy eight, and by May of nineteen seventy nine
were getting into it. At this point, I think he

(27:50):
should have been in prison for life. I mean, he
has a fucking laundry list of like similar sexual assaults,
each one escalating from the last. But police only care
about property crime, so there you go. His first victim
was Thomas Glenn Lundgren, who was only thirteen years old
when he was abducted on May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy five.

(28:12):
Oh I'm sorry, nineteen seventy nine. He actually intentionally chose
to hitch a ride with Bonnin in the green van,
and Vernon Butts was present during this this murder, Thomas
told a friend he was going to meet a guy
at a skate park to take photos of him for
a skate magazine, but obviously never made it because instead
he met Bonnin. This one, I mean, all of the

(28:34):
murders are rough, but this one feels really rough to
me because I found pictures of him, and I just
he looks like somebody that I would hang out with,
So it just feels a little more personal. I don't know.
I'm sure that's silly. All of these murders are terrible,
but he honestly looks like a kid that I was
friends with or would have like had a crush on.
And I was like, my brother was a skater, So
when I read this about it, it made me really sad.

(28:58):
So he gets in the van with bon In and
you know, I think basically it's kind of the same
thing that's going to happen every single time they ask
him the leading and scary questions, because you know, Bonnin
liked to strike fear into his victims, and then he
attacked him. When he attacked him, he raped him brutally,
then stabbed him multiple times, but not in a way

(29:19):
that would kill him, just in a way to hurt him,
to torture him. And the most insane part of this
story in particular is that they cut off his genitals,
possibly while he was still alive. They then strangled this
poor thirteen year old boy to death while Vernon Butts
hit him over the head with a heavy object, likely
attire iron. Thomas was found later that day, his body

(29:43):
dumped in a field, with his clothing and genitals nearby,
thrown away like garbage. His next victim, we're just going
to get right into it was seventeen year old Mark Shelton,
who agreed to exchange sex for money with Bill and Vernon. Now,
this last one was May twenty eighth. It was his
first murder, so I think there was a bit of

(30:03):
a cooling off period. But Mark Shelton was killed on
August fourth, It said that Mark consentually engaged in oral
sex with Bill, but was then attacked and tortured so
extensively that he actually died of shock. He was raped
by at least Bonnin, maybe also Vernon Butts, and was

(30:24):
also raped with objects, including a stick. Now, this absolute
trauma to his body sent him into a state of
shock from which he died. So that's how extensive and
horrible the torture is. And this is only the second murder.
And as I've mentioned, he escalates, and he continues to escalate,
so we are all in for a pretty rough ride here.

(30:48):
The very next oh, I'm so sorry, they threw his
body out of the car. They just chucked it out
of the car on the side of the road after
he died because they were upset that they didn't get
to kill him the way they wanted to. They also
decided that they were not satiated, so the very next day,
August fifth, they picked up seventeen year old Marcus Grabs

(31:09):
or Grabes. I'm not sure I should note that between
the first murder of Thomas Langren and these two murders,
Bonnon was arrested for rape yet again, but due to
a paperwork error, was released before his court date and
just never showed up, so he was released from jail
before he had to face the judge, and he just

(31:29):
chose not to and they just left it at that,
So that's awesome. Anyway. Marcus was a seventeen year old
German boy who was visiting California backpacking, kind of just
having one last hurrah before going into adulthood, which is
super fucking sad. He had allegedly agreed to being tied

(31:50):
up by Bonnin and Butts when he got into the car.
I mean, this is what Bill Bonnen says, so who
fucking knows, But the fact that he was tied up
just shows that Bonnin has this need to do that
stemming from childhood, as we had talked about before. So
once again, it's supposedly a consensual encounter or starts as such,

(32:11):
but he's tied up and Bonnin then starts threatening him
with a knife. He's then raped and tortured in the van,
then taken to Bill's mother's home because of course, you know,
Bill lives with his mom. Again, with his parents, he
can't hack it on his own for more than a
month or so, so they take him back to the
house and they torture him more, and at one point

(32:33):
Marcus was able to break free and he actually punched
Bill in the face and this sent him into a frenzy.
He ended up stabbing Marcus seventy seven times before strangling
him to death. And I did want to note the
way that Bill Bonnon liked to strangle his victims was
by using their own T shirts and like tying them

(32:54):
around their neck and then using a tire iron to
twist the T shirt until it was so tight that
his victims died. So it was really horrific, and it
kind of adds to he's a very much like an
insult to injury kind of killer, where he really wants
the people to suffer because he's just a horrible piece
of shit. And I feel like this way of using
their own clothing to kill them is very on par

(33:16):
It's very on brand for this motherfucker. After he was dead,
his body was dumped in Malibu just along the side
of the road, which is again very insulting and very
on brand. Now, during this time, Bill Bonnon wasn't just
murdering people, as I noted, he was also actively molesting

(33:36):
and raping local boys. Neighbors said they would see the
young boys accompany him to his home, which he again
shared with his parents, and then neighbors would hear screaming
and crying, and we all know what that means. And also, like,
if the neighbors are hearing this, what are his parents hearing,
especially since his dad was disabled and at home all
the time, like didn't work, didn't leave the house. Really,

(33:57):
obviously he was doing this with the least one parent's knowledge,
which is beyond twisted, but again kind of makes sense
and that's just me guessing, but it's it just makes
sense if if dad's home all the time and neighbors
know this is happening, they know, they've got to know anyway,
So there could be a lot more victims than we

(34:19):
know about. One of the reasons that this is thought
because it is like widely suggested that he may be
killed more than we think, is because after he was
arrested for raping that young boy where the paperwork mishappened,
he got out before his court date. He told his
neighbor Frasier, that he was going to make sure there

(34:40):
would never be a witness to testify him against him again.
Which is interesting because later when they're talking about this guy,
this neighbor, he was saying, Oh, I had no idea
that he was doing this, and it's like he made
it pretty fucking clear, like he told you, I'm going
to keep raping boys, and I'm gonna make sure they're
not around to testify against me. So I feel like
there was a lot of opportunity for this guy to
be stopped or caught, and it was just the inaction

(35:02):
of literally everybody around him that kept him able to
keep murdering and being a piece of shit. His next
victim was eighteen year old Robert Wirosteck, who was picked
up in Huntington Beach on August twentieth, so like barely
two weeks, almost three weeks, I guess after the last murder,
or just over two weeks, yeah, fifteen days, and he

(35:22):
was picked up while riding his bike to his job
at a grocery store. It's unclear if he went into
the van of his own volition or if he was
forced with a gun or other threat, but once inside
the van, it was much the same thing as it
was with Marcus. Rape torture that was mental, physical, and sexual,
and then being strangled to death and dumped. Now very sadly,

(35:45):
Robert had another sibling, a brother, who died only five
years later at age twenty one. I do not know
what his cause of death was. I do believe he
was in trouble a little bit, and I would go
out on a limb and say that it definitely could
have had something to do with his brother's murder anyway.
Seven days later, August twenty seventh, Bonnen and Butts picked

(36:07):
up fifteen year old Donald Ray Hayden. Now Donald had
lived in the La area for only around two years
after his parents had divorced and his mother, brother, and
sister moved to California from Cincinnati, Ohio. Donald to that
point had had a pretty decent childhood, but after the
divorce he just took it really hard. He had a

(36:28):
really hard time dealing with his parents divorce, and he
would run away from his mother's home from time to
time and sometimes was even sent to live with his grandparents. However,
more recently, he had finally realized how much he missed
his mom and siblings, so he decided to move back
in with them full time, and so they all lived
in the Santa Monica area down near the beach in

(36:49):
Los Angeles. He was last seen in Hollywood the night
of his abduction and thought he was hitchhiking home when
he was picked up by Bonnen and Butts. He was
ray tortured, beaten, and strangled with a ligature that had
also been tied around his ankles and wrists. So this
time it wasn't the T shirt. It was like a

(37:09):
cord that strangled him. He was then dumped at a
construction site on the one on one freeway. And this
is this is super rough, so trigger warning if you
haven't already been feeling that. The coroner, after seeing his body,
said that his rectum was so distended that it looked

(37:31):
as though he had been impaled with something. It was
later noted that he had likely been assaulted with a fist,
so the torture of this fifteen year old boy was
very much next level. Bonnan's accomplices would later all say
that the more pain his victims were in and the
more they screamed and the more scared they were, the

(37:54):
happier Bill became, which makes sense, you know, it seemed
obviously par for the course. Again, he fed off their
pain and fear and misery, which is just truly fucking psychotic.
His next victim was seventeen year old David Lewis Murrill
or Marillo. He was writing his bike to a movie,
somehow ended up in the van and unfortunately met with

(38:15):
a similar fate to the other boys to that point.
His head, in addition to all of the beatings, had
been bashed in with a tire iron and he was
strangled to death, so again similar but a little worse
on the beatings. The next victim, who was killed Honor
around November one, nineteen seventy nine, is to this day unidentified,

(38:37):
which makes me very sad that no one ever claimed
his body, but it aligns with the type of people
that Bonnin would target. It is believed he's between the
ages of eighteen and twenty four, so maybe a little
bit older than some of the other victims, but also
that's just a guess since they don't know, so he
could definitely still be a teenager. On top of all

(38:57):
the other torture. Bonnin, who must have talked with him
a bit and found out he was a runaway during
the murder, told this unidentified boy that his parents had
paid Bonnen and Butts to find him and kill him.
So on top of raping, torturing and killing him, they
were also like mentally torturing him, really trying to like
fuck with him and just make him you know, as

(39:20):
scared and as sad and miserable as possible, which is disgusting.
After he was dead, Luckily, after Bonnin tried a new
weapon on him, he stuck an ice pick into his head.
This will come into play later and maybe not always
when the victims are dead. Unfortunately. November thirtieth, they killed

(39:40):
seventeen year old Frank Dennis Fox, who had a checkered
past but wasn't like everybody who knew him was like,
he wasn't a bad kid at all. He was just
really smart and really bored, so he would get into
trouble because he just didn't know what else to do
with himself. Dennis, as he was called, was reading and
writing by four years old. I never had to study
a day of his life to get good grades. He

(40:03):
also had some behavioral issues, including getting kicked out of
Catholic school at only five years old for sneaking out
and ringing the bell in the bell tower. Like I said,
his younger brother said, you know, he's just bored. He
just needed something to stay busy. At the time of
his death, he was already living on his own, using
money from his father's untimely death the year prior to
pay for an apartment for himself while he figured out

(40:24):
what he wanted to do. People who knew him said
he could talk his way out of almost anything. He
was very charming, but very sadly, he could not talk
his way out of Bill bon In's van. I read
too much about him, and now I really don't want
to get into his death because he just seems like
such a great kid. But I will say that the
torture was being ramped up at this time, with more
use of the ice pick and burning of the skin

(40:47):
with cigarettes, which is horrible. Dennis's body was found on
the Ortega Highway just two days after he was murdered.
The next victim killed on December twelfth night, teen seventy nine,
was fifteen year old John Kilpatrick. He, according to Bonnan,
took money for sex, and I did read that he

(41:09):
was kind of like a runaway and doing what he
had to to kind of, you know, make ends meet.
I find it interesting how many of these victims bond
and said, like, got into the car willingly, engaged in
sex willingly, but at the same time, he has no remorse,
so he never seems to like lie about what happened,
because I don't think he gives a shit when he

(41:30):
gets caught, he's kind of like, yeah, I did it,
here's the details. Couldn't care less. So I don't know,
but I just want to call out, like I hate
that so much of this about these children is being
presented like, oh, they were willing sex workers, and it's
like children cannot be willing sex workers, Like that's not
that's not a thing. They were desperate victims of violence
in the world of bad homes. You know, I just

(41:53):
want to call that out. Anyway, he was violently raped again,
and you know, John agreed to having sex with him
John Kilpatrick, but only oral. And then when Bill tried
to not rape him, tried to have sex with him,
he said something along the lines of I don't get fucked.

(42:15):
So you can imagine that Bonnan would love to overpower
this kid who said that because he's such a sadistic
piece of shit. So definitely raped him again, very much
against his will, and then murdered him his body was
dumped near Rialto and because he had a history of
running away, he was not reported missing until February so
a couple of months later, and was a John Doe

(42:37):
when he was found. It took two tattoos on his
body for his family to identify him. His next victim
was sixteen year old Michael Francis McDonald, another troubled teen
who he learned into his van with the promise of drugs,
telling him you can sell these drugs for money. Weirdly,
his body was found fully clothed, and it took until

(42:58):
March twenty fourth to identify his body. Also weirdly and
maybe connected to the fully closed thing. This was one
of Bonnen's only solo murders, so he did this without
any of his little cronies there to watch, which is
why maybe it wasn't necessarily less brutal, but definitely a
very different type of killing. And I think the reason

(43:18):
he didn't have anybody there is because Vernon Butts was
kind of trying to get away from him, Like Vernon
was like, I don't really like this, so he was
trying to kind of distance himself. But I think he
was always also afraid of Bonnen, so he was trying
to be careful about it. Now, I want to say,
at this point, police have not put together that there
is a serial killer out there, which is absolutely fucking bonkers,

(43:39):
considering there were more than one in this area at
this time. There was literally another freeway killer, Randy Kraft
killing at this time as well as Bonnen. So not
only are there multiple serial killers, there are multiple serial
killers called the freeway killer, and cops are just like, nope, nope,
no serial killer. These are not linked, and they're so

(44:01):
obviously linked. The T shirt strangulation, the same type of
ligature is being used, the rape, the torture. I mean,
it's obvious that these are linked. But cops, I think
and many agree, that they ignored the obvious in order
to not have the pressure of having to solve a
serial killer case, which like I don't know, too fucking bad,
you know, like sorry, there's more pressure for you to

(44:21):
do your job. Fucking do your job. But they didn't
want the public in a panic, was their excuse, but
I don't really buy it. It's really disappointing also that
they didn't come out with this information because it could
have saved some lives. As could have keeping bondin in
prison when he was supposed to be in there. But
you know, multiple paperwork errors, miscommunications, all of this. I mean,

(44:41):
it's just the way things went. I guess I don't know.
All that said, he was free and did continue his spree.
On February third, nineteen eighty. He wants to kill again
and Butts is not around, so this time he takes
seventeen year old Gregory Miiley with him. The two went
out cruising for a murder victim and found fifteen year
old Charles Miranda. Charles Miranda, I can't say that name.

(45:04):
Hitchhiking outside of the Starwood Club. Now, if you've listened
to my previous episodes, of which there are whopping four,
you might remember the name Starwood Club as it was
the punk club owned by Eddie Nash, who, in about
a year's time from when this takes place, would mass
murder four people in a revenge killing over a robbery
in his home. If you want to know more, it's

(45:25):
the Wonderland Murders episode. You can go listen to it
when you're done here. Anyway, this poor kid, Charles was
outside the club and was of course picked up by
Bonnin and Miley. At first, they only robbed him of
the six dollars he had, but then they started with
the rape and torture. Miley attempted to rape Charles as well,
but was not able to stay erect, and because this
embarrassed him, he instead raped him with sharp objects in

(45:48):
the van while the poor boy screamed and cried in
pain and fear. Eventually, Charles was so injured that Bonnin
said to Miley, the kid's gonna die. He's gonna diele
He said they should just let him go, but Bonnin
already knew that wasn't going to happen. He told Miley
no because the kid could identify them, But in reality,
it's more likely because he enjoyed killing children and had

(46:10):
no intention of ever letting him go. But I think
he was maybe trying to sort of ease Miley into
the murders and not scare him off. Obviously, that didn't
end up being an issue, as Miley got so into
it that while Bonnin showed him how to strangle Charles
using the t shirt entire iron method, Miley took to
jumping up and down on his chest until he died

(46:31):
from strangulation. And also trauma again. He was fifteen years old.
They dumped his body in an alleyway in downtown Los
Angeles and immediately, like not even five minutes later, went
looking for another victim. This is another especially horrific one,
as this poor child was only twelve years old and
was picked up while waiting at a bus stop to

(46:53):
go to Disneyland for the day. So they started looking
for this guy, this new victim, at like two in
the morning. They didn't find him till the next morning,
kind of early. Now, this victim was staying with his
older brother while his parents were out of town, and
it wasn't uncommon for kids his age to ride the
bus to places like Disneyland and go to Disneyland on

(47:16):
their own. Hence, I dare say, the age of serial killers,
it was easier to find a victim back then. This
boy's name was James McCabe, and he went willingly into
the van thinking he was getting a ride instead of
having to wait for the bus. He was raped repeatedly
over several hours while also being beaten, and after Bonnin
was done with him, Miley joined in and they strangled

(47:37):
him to death with his T shirt and the tire iron.
They then dumped his nude body next to a dumpster.
Bonnin later said he was quote the easiest one to
kill of all his victims, which, fuck you, fuck you,
you disgusting maggot. I just hate this man so much.

(48:01):
Very Luckily, right after this time, Bonnin was arrested on
a parole violation and spent some time in jail, about
like a month or two. Not a long time, but
with how quickly he was killing, this time away likely
saved some lives. He was released in March, and his
reign of terror continued. But I'm going to save that

(48:25):
for next week because we have to stop somewhere, and
I felt like this was a good breaking point. He's
back in prison, even if for a short while, and
this will be a good time to take a little
mental break from the insanity of this case, and we
can come back to it next week and finish it up.

(48:46):
I hope you guys were able to hang in there.
This was real, rough, real gnarly, and there's more to come.
I hate to say it, but he's got some time left,
and with the rate at which he's going, we've got
some more people to talk about. So thanks everybody, thank
for listening, for hanging in there my first two parter.
I'm pretty excited. Hopefully you guys are enjoying, for lack

(49:07):
of a better word, and please like, rate review, share
with your friends, share with everybody. I'm still posting on
my old podcast platform, just so that people get an
opportunity to listen, but really trying to grow this one.
So if you guys can follow me, listen, like, rate review,
share with your friends, share on your social media, whatever
it is, it's all very appreciated. Thanks again for tuning in.

(49:31):
I'll be back next week and until then, everybody stay safe.
God damn