Twisted Listers Presents TCC: The Toolbox Killer

This week, we look at what can only be described as a devastating case, truly one of the worst out there - The Toolbox Killer. This case again takes place in the 1970's, when multiple young girls were abducted, tortured, sexually assaulted, and killed by two trash bag humans named Larry Bittaker and Roy Norris. These two dirt bags met in prison in a jewerly making class and became fast friends while plotting to terrorize young women and girls when they were released, which happened way too quickly considering their laundry list of past crimes. We'll talk about the making of these monsters, how they met, and the terrible things they did to innocent young women, and please be warned, this is a big trigger warning case, as the facts are very disturbing, and we do include some of the details of these murders in this episode. Listen at your own risk, and be ready to be horrified, angered, and sadened by this absolutely awful case.

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Sources:
https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Lawrence_Bittaker_and_Roy_Norris
https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/48/1046.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lvu63Dqr4E
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/watchingrobertpickton88015/transcript-of-shirley-lynette-ledford-audio-record-t3312.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi there. I'm Cony Gallagher and I'm Ethan Flick, and
together we are the husband and wife team Behind and
Then They Were Gone a true crime podcast about unsolved
missing persons cases. Each week we take a deep dive
into a case that I have researched and written about
and that you have never heard of.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Right, and I react naturally and usually leave with a
whole lot of stuff to edit out with the podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Very true, but I do love getting your analysis and
a fresh perspective on these crimes that I've been spending
so much time learning about. So you can see us
on your favorite podcast app every Wednesday when we release
a brand new episode.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
And find us on the socials at attwgpod.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
And you can also visit us on our website and
Then They Were Gone dot com?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Could you hold the Key to bringing Someone Home?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
We are the Brutal, Bizarre, and Boozy podcast. I'm Declan
the Sun.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
And I'm Jane the Mom. This is the podcast where
we talk about brutal crimes like serial killers and the
random one off murder. We will tell you about bizarre
occurrences like alien abductions and monsters in the dark, and
we just might get you drunk with cocktails themed around
one of our stories.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
At the very end of every show, we like to
lighten things up and cleanse the palette from the tragic
and terrifying stories, so we end our time with a chaser.
You might get to hear crazy stories about our pets.
Are just silly movie recommendations.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Give us a listen. We are the brutal, bizarre, and
boozy podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Dark Cast Network.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Out of the shadows come the best indie podcasts.

Speaker 5 (02:06):
Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here. Hey everybody, welcome back to
episode nine of True Crime California. So just yeah, I

(02:30):
just started this podcast a couple months ago. It's already
been more successful than I could have ever imagined in
such a short time. Thank you to everybody who has
tuned in. Who's listening. You guys are incredible. The last
couple of weeks here in La I live in la
If people don't know, they've been real rough. There's been
you know, catastrophic fires. A lot of people I know

(02:51):
have lost their homes. Air quality has been terrible. Everything
kind of was in a standstill, you know, I'm safely
tucked away in the valley. I still lost my power
for eighteen hours and there was ash raining down. It
feels like Armageddon a little bit. It feels like the Apocalypse,
I guess, maybe more appropriately so. It's been a rough

(03:11):
couple of weeks here, but Los Angeles is one of
the most magic places in the whole world. It's magical,
it's fantastic, and I have no doubt that it will
come back better than ever, as long as we can
keep the fucking smart city and fast rail out, which
I really worry they're going to put where these families
have lived for a long time, so we'll see what happens.

(03:34):
Is jumping into my political hot takes here, I think
I wanted to start today with a little bit less
on the case because the case that I chose is
absolutely disturbing, like just next level awful. And for those
of you who listened to Twisted Listens, I actually asked Diva,

(03:56):
I said, you know, weirdly, I'm having troubled choosing cases
in California, or even really finding ones. It's like when
somebody asks you your favorite band and your mind just
goes completely blank. You're like, I don't listen to music,
you know. So I reached out to her and I
was like, can you can you give me some suggestions?
And boy did she And I think I forgot who
I was asking because Diva's like one of the gnarliest
people I've ever met in my life. So she of

(04:18):
course went for you know, the gnarliest cases, and by gnarly,
like she's wonderful, She's intelligent, brilliant, beautiful, wonderful, but like
when it comes to true crime, like she does not play.
And I just kind of blindly jumped into the case.
I knew the case, this case, but I.

Speaker 6 (04:34):
Don't think I knew it. I don't. I didn't.

Speaker 5 (04:37):
I definitely didn't know it the way that I needed
to in order to say, hell, no, I'm not touching
that with a ten foot pole. So I got myself
into this mess and we're just we're gonna get through it.
I'm going to cover the Toolbox Killer. And I mean,
this is honestly like a devastating, devastating case. I think

(04:57):
for me researching it, reading things, hearing things which I'll
talk about, and kind of knowing things in a more
first hand manner than the way that most podcasts disseminate.
The information really really messed with me, Like I've had
some general anxiety since researching this. I've been checking that
my doors are locked, I've checking on my son at

(05:19):
night more.

Speaker 6 (05:21):
This is one of the most disturbing cases.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
And I've been doing this, you know, my last podcast
I had for four years. So this is very very
much like a crazy, tough, horrible case. So I'm just
gonna get into it. I want to thank you Diva
for this gift. It's really horrible, so let's just talk
about it, believe it or not. As with the majority

(05:46):
of the cases I've covered so far on this podcast,
and I promise this will change. This mostly takes place
in the late seventies. It's in the LA area, definitely
a theme for our podcast, and the two main perpetrators
Devils are Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris. Now I think
Larry Lawrence Bittaker is sort of like the main guy.

Speaker 6 (06:10):
Like when you.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
Talk about the Toolbox Killers, you can also often just
find the toolbox Killer because it's pretty clear who the
main aggressor was, who the sadist was. I mean, they're
both super sadistic. But when people murder together, there's kind
of always a leader and a follower, and I would
say that Lawrence Bittaker was absolutely the leader, so much

(06:33):
so that sometimes, like I said, when you read about
this case, it won't even be plural. It'll just be
like he's the toolbox killer, and then Roy Norris was
like his sidekick. I'm going to get into some details,
and you guys can decide for yourselves. I think they're
probably like sixty forty, so neither one of them is
anything more than a complete waste of space in the world. Okay,

(06:56):
But now that I've kind of got that out of
the way. Lawrence Sigmund And Bittaker was born September twenty seventh,
nineteen forty in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Larry's parents were teens at
the time and did not really want him or his
older brother. His mother was a heavy drinker and his
father was abusive, so after a short while, their family

(07:18):
convinced them to give up the boys for adoption. Now
you will read a number of things about Larry Bittaker online,
and a lot of them are not true and have
been debunked much more recently, Like you know, in the
last few years, through interviews with Larry through like research
into his family. So if you look on Wikipedia, it's

(07:40):
going to tell you that he was in and out
of orphanages, I believe, and he was adopted by like
some random people.

Speaker 6 (07:45):
That's not true.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
He was actually raised by his parents for a short
time and then given up to an aunt an uncle
that were within his family. So he was adopted by
one of his aunts, but somehow, like didn't seem to
know who his real mother was at any point in
his young life, So I don't know how they worked
that around until he got older that he didn't realize
that like his actual mother was within his family. Even

(08:10):
as an adult after he found out he was adopted,
there wasn't as far as I could find, any sort
of like reuniting with his mother or meeting at all,
you know, which is interesting because it's an aunt, so
it's like what her sister probably was who adopted him.
But it's still felt very like detached in a way,
which is interesting. Maybe it was a very big family,

(08:31):
you know, maybe the siblings were very far apart in
age so it was easier to conceal it.

Speaker 6 (08:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (08:36):
What I do know is that this is somewhat similar
to our case last week with Marlene Olive. And this
is obviously a very you know, harsh form of trauma
for children sometimes to find out that they're adopted, and
for Laurence Spittaker this was definitely the case. It said
that even in his seventies, he was still talking about
his mother, which is a very like Ed Kemper moment.

(08:58):
I can always bring it back to Ed Big Ed
is like we will cover him. But Lawrence Bittaker here
was very bitter about his mother, I think, up until
his death, and even said that if he saw her
on the street that he would want to kill her,
which I think is very significant considering what happens. I
think it's significant that she's a teenager, or that she

(09:18):
was when he was born. I think it's significant that
she abandoned him, and I think it's very significant that
this stuck with him his entire life. And of course,
in typical serial killer sociopath fashion, he of course blamed
you know, his growing up, his life, his young life
on why he was the way he was. But I

(09:38):
think he's really significant to note that he never really
focused on his father.

Speaker 6 (09:42):
He was always on his mother.

Speaker 5 (09:44):
Another Ed kemper trait, but you know, he was just
very much angry at his mom his whole life, and
I think that's important to note. So he was raised
in a very strict and borderline abusive household, which only
you know, added to the te that he felt as
a child. One of the things that I definitely understand

(10:05):
personally as a traumatic kind of thing was that his
family moved a lot because his adopted father was in
aviation and had to.

Speaker 6 (10:14):
Move for work.

Speaker 5 (10:15):
This left Larry very isolated and unable to make long
term friends, because what's the point. I moved a lot
as a child, and it is really tough, and I
do understand that it does make it difficult to form
attachments to people because you're just going to lose them
in a short amount of time and have to start over,
and so that can be really traumatic as well. You

(10:35):
end up kind of feeling hopeless and you kind of
just give up on any sort of social stability. Larry
was very very smart. He had an IQ of one
thirty eight, which is borderline genius. But this can be
as much an issue as a good thing, especially when
you kind of are young but you know exactly what's
going on. You realize that you're being taken away from
people repeatedly. You realize that you're being ignored by your parents,

(10:59):
or that you maybe your parents don't love you. You
are immature, but you're smart, so you pick up on things,
but you don't have the ability to process them, just
because biologically you can't at.

Speaker 6 (11:10):
That point in life.

Speaker 5 (11:12):
And I think this can lead to a lot of
anger issues, especially in somebody like Larry.

Speaker 6 (11:16):
So.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
When he was pretty young, he started lighting fires. He
said he did this to get his parents attention, and
in return, his mother would do things like burn him
with cigarettes to teach him not to play with fire.
It doesn't make sense, but it's horrific. He also went
out at night and harmed animals, which I won't go into,
and as he got a bit older, he would sneak

(11:37):
out at night and start stalking people and spying on them,
mostly women, but men as well. He just wanted to
essentially learn how to stalk his prey. So we're going
down a path here for sure. By the time he
was twelve, he'd already been arrested for shoplifting, which you
can imagine did not go over well with his parents.
This happened a few more times over his teenage years,

(11:58):
and he would later make the excuse that he did
it because he had no love from his parents. So
again there he is blaming them for the way that
he is, the way that he's acting, when in reality
he knows better. Everything's just an excuse. Nothing his fault
is his fault. He downplays everything he does. It's just
an obvious pattern and so blatant, and for as smart

(12:19):
as he is, it's pretty sad that he doesn't realize
how transparent this is. So sometime in high school, so
he was in Pennsylvania at this time, and sometime during
high school his family moved to Los Angeles or I mean,
he had moved around obviously, but I think he mostly
like his home base was kind of Pennsylvania, and then
they moved to La just East I think, or maybe

(12:40):
even in Pasadena. He started school here and sort of
fell into the same patterns of crime and trouble. And
it's now nineteen fifty seven. At the age of seventeen,
Despite being super smart, Lawrence Larry drops out of high school. However,
before this, while still in high school, he was able
to get himself a girlfriend, a pretty blonde by the

(13:00):
name of mary Anne.

Speaker 6 (13:02):
She was a Catholic.

Speaker 5 (13:03):
Girl, so not fast by any means. And one of
the things the two of them would do together is
they would go hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains. Larry
knew these mountains pretty well as he was a bit
of a loner obviously, so he would show her around
to different areas, and this is very important for the
leader that they spent time in these mountains. It's also

(13:25):
significant to note that she wore a cross at all
times on her neck. And I'm just going to tell
you right now that he used to make some of
his victims wear crosses while he tortured them. So at
one point, Larry told mary Anne that he loved her,
and her reply to him was I like you a lot.

(13:49):
This was a big blow to Larry's ego and stuck
with him forever. In a later interview, he admitted to
recording himself making out with mary Anne without her consent
up in the mount mountains, which is really fucking weird.
He said he wanted to listen back to it later on,
and my assumption is because he wanted to masturbate to it,
because this is the kind of guy that he was,

(14:11):
and this is very wild to me and also indicative
of paraphilia. And right now I want to take a
moment to call out that there are so many similarities
between this case and Bill Bonnen's case, and not just
in the timing and location, which is also pretty crazy,
but Bill Bonnon also had paraphilia, which is quote a

(14:32):
persistent and intense sexual interest in atypical objects, situations, or
individuals that differs from conventional sexual behavior. It's a pretty
broad scope, but I think both of these guys fit
that in like every sense. So things like wanting to
record these quote sessions or wanting to hurt someone in

(14:53):
order to get off like these are very specific and
good examples of paraphilia. Already, we're seeing some weird behavior
from Larry, and it's not anything new in terms of
how serial killers behave, but it's important to note for
the story, so you know, just obviously again I say
going down a path. So of course they break up

(15:13):
during high school and Larry's back on his own and
starts getting into trouble again and gets arrested a few
more times, and eventually he's sent to the Tracy Dual
Vocational Institute in Tracy, California, which is like the middle
of nowhere, up the Fire Freeway. So he's like way
up in central California at this vocational institute, which is
essentially like it's a prison for like young young people.

(15:38):
I believe he's like seventeen at this time, and while
in this institution, he's given psychiatric evaluations and found to
be extremely disturbed, very angry and violent and not really
amenable to therapy. So a lot of big red flags here. However,
while he was there, he was underage, so they couldn't
keep him. They had to release him. He had really

(15:59):
done anything bad enough to keep him forever. They were
just like, holy shit, this guy's dangerous, all right, good luck,
so they let him go after a pretty short while.
When Larry was released, he went home, and I actually
found out that this is not exactly true.

Speaker 6 (16:14):
Timing wise.

Speaker 5 (16:16):
His parents disappeared on him, like stopped responding to him,
didn't let him know where they lived. And I read
that they did this while he was still a teen,
but it actually happened when he was in his early twenties,
so it wasn't like as soon as he got out
here he didn't have a home, but it was like
fairly shortly thereafter his parents moved. They left no forwarding address,
no number. They just didn't want to know him anymore.

(16:39):
So more trauma for Larry here. But at this point,
you know, he's old enough that his actions were what
led to this.

Speaker 6 (16:45):
He could have helped, he could have.

Speaker 5 (16:46):
Kept this from happening, but he's just refusing to take
responsibility or change his ways. So now Larry's out on
his own. He's living in the Hollywood area, and he's
not working, and he's just doing petty crimes to support himself.
He didn't have a job at any point before this
that I could find, which is something a little bit
different about him, Like even Bill Bonnan had to cover.

(17:07):
And later on Larry does get a job and does
kind of have a cover. But it's interesting that in
his younger life he was just kind of just a criminal, like.

Speaker 6 (17:14):
That's all he did.

Speaker 5 (17:16):
So over the next ten years or so, Larry was
in and out of prison for various increasingly violent crimes,
including robbery, all sorts of bad shit. Now, during this time,
he was further evaluated and found to be highly manipulative
and a borderline psychopath. He was given multiple long sentences
for up to fifteen years each, but kept getting out

(17:38):
after only a year or two in prison, only to
go back months later, only to be released again. It's
the tale as old as time with our California, with
our system in general, especially with rapes and things which
were not really taken seriously.

Speaker 6 (17:50):
At this point.

Speaker 5 (17:51):
So it's pretty easy for him to go in for
a violent crime and then come back out, which is
exactly what happened over and over and over. Above all else,
this institutionalized him, which made him both used to and
very comfortable with being in prison, which is super scary
because it means that he's not really afraid of punishment,

(18:12):
and not being afraid of going to prison will absolutely
embolden a criminal to continue criming. They're going to keep
doing the crimes, you know, because they don't give a fuck.
Then what are they afraid of? So that's very scary
to consider. We're now in nineteen seventy four and thirty
four year old Larry is high on drugs and alcohol

(18:34):
and he goes to a Ralph's in Hollywood, which I
believe to be the rock and roll Ralphs in Hollywood.
It's on Sunset and they called it the rock and
Roll Ralps because it's where like all the hair bands
and like rock stars would go after they were done,
like on the Sunset Strip, like doing their thing. Nowadays
it's just like a grimy ass Ralphs in like kind
of what West Hollywood ish and it's just gross. But

(18:54):
in its heyday, it was called the rock and Roll
Ralphs and you would go there to like see, you know,
rock stars. This it was just a Ralphs And this
is where he went. And just based on kind of
the location and what I read about him, I think
that's where he was. So anyway, he goes in here
and he tries to steal a steak by putting it
down his pants. A clerk working there caught him and
chased him into like the back of the store. Larry

(19:15):
turned around and stabbed the clerk with a pocket knife
he had brought with him. Now, when Larry retells the story,
he is so it's so ridiculous the way he does this.
According to him, he barely remembers anything, of course, you know,
because he's so high, and he says things like, quote,
apparently I had a pocket knife in my hand, so

(19:36):
really just removing him from the situation as best he can, Like, Larry,
how'd you get that pocket knife where it just appeared
somebody just like willed it into your hand, Like come on,
you brought it with you, you pulled it out, and you
stabbed the man. And it's just like every single time
he tells a story, it's very passive on his part.
Some of the things that he does are the most
horrifying things I've ever heard, and the way that he

(19:58):
tells it is so insulting and so obvious. I think
I've said this a few times, but it really just
can't say it enough. So another example of this, I
apparently I had a pocket knife in my hand, like
get out of here, get out of here, guy. So unfortunately,
this gets him sent to the California Men's Colony CMC,
which is a prison in San Luis Obispo, which is
on the coast in central California. Now I've read that

(20:22):
he was sent to a mental health ward due to
this attack, and that is general and because of his
general demeanor and past evaluations, And upon doing more reading,
I did find that this prison has those facilities, so
I think that he was being treated at this prison.

Speaker 6 (20:34):
But I don't know.

Speaker 5 (20:35):
What I do know is that if he was, it
did not do anything. He's a sociopath. He was diagnosed
as such and more as I've noted. But anyway, this
it's unfortunate he got sent here because this situation changed
his life and the lives of so many innocent young
girls in ways that I don't think anybody ever saw coming.

(20:55):
The way that this happened is that this is where
he met his future partner in murder, Roy Norris. Roy
Norris was a serial rapist who had been given a
sentence of three years to life after being prosecuted for
a rape in nineteen fifty seven. Now there's a lot

(21:16):
of misinformation about Roy Norris out there, and I'll talk
about this for a moment and then I'll clear up
some of the issues. Roy Norris was born in Greeley, Colorado,
in nineteen forty eight, he said, to unwed parents who
got married to avoid the stigma, but quickly gave him
up to foster care as his mother was addicted to
drugs and his father was mostly absent.

Speaker 6 (21:36):
He said.

Speaker 5 (21:37):
He went in and out of these homes and would
sometimes live with his family, but it was very unstable,
and I'm sure that you know this is his excuse
and what led to him hating his mother and women
in general. Now, he also said that he was sexually
abused at a young age in one of these homes,
which I'm sure would have you know, contributed to his
later sexual deviancy when he was sixteen and living with

(22:00):
his birth parents. Now this did happen, because this is
something he actually said was real. When he was sixteen,
living with his birth parents, he made a move on
an older family member who told his father.

Speaker 6 (22:13):
Roy said.

Speaker 5 (22:14):
He then attempted suicide by injecting air into his arteries
but failed. His parents, at this point told him they
no longer wanted him and would divorce when he left home. Now,
this is what he says. This is what he wrote
to his pen pals after his arrest. In reality, it
turns out he had a really stable life with loving
parents who took great care of him and his siblings.

Speaker 6 (22:34):
The only real issue.

Speaker 5 (22:35):
In his young life was that his father's mother hated
his mother. But like, welcome to the world, my dude. Like,
that's one of the most common issues in families.

Speaker 6 (22:43):
Ever.

Speaker 5 (22:43):
The women don't get along like the moms and the wives.
It's tale as old as time, to be honest, so
not really a big deal. But he did come on
to that family member, so that is something that happened.
But what the point is is that he created this
whole narrative with people where he was like a victim
and that's why he was the way that he was,
and in reality, he's.

Speaker 6 (23:03):
Just fucked up. There's something wrong with him.

Speaker 5 (23:06):
So either way, when he was about seventeen, he did
in fact going to the Navy and was sent to
Vietnam in nineteen sixty nine. This fucked him up royally,
as it did to many young men, which is why
I say, fuck war, Fuck imperialism. It's absolutely not okay
to kill innocent people and young children for profit.

Speaker 6 (23:22):
It's not okay.

Speaker 5 (23:23):
He was honorably discharged after a year and sent out
to wander in the world, angry, sexually, devant, and ready
to hurt people. And I do want to note that
he was discharged for a series of rapes that he
committed while in Vietnam, which is insane to me that
he was honorably discharged, Like way to go US government. Anyway,

(23:43):
I'm sure this emboldened him and he went to work
harming innocent women pretty much immediately upon his release. His
first arrest for both rape and attempted rape was that
same year, in nineteen sixty nine, so either just before
or right after being released, and I believe that this
led to Navy psychiatrists diagnosing him with schizoid personality disorder
before discharging him, so we.

Speaker 6 (24:05):
Have an idea of what he's about.

Speaker 5 (24:06):
But again they just let him go, which is crazy
to me. In nineteen seventy, he attacked a woman on
the San Diego on a San Diego college campus, either
in San Diego State or you see San Diego. Sorry,
you see San Diego, beating her on the head with
a brick. After stalking her for hours, he then took
her head and beat it on the sidewalk until police arrived. Now,

(24:27):
she survived this attack, but like, what is going on?
Why is he doing this? Where did this come from?
She's just walking for this. He was given a whopping
five years in a Tascadero State hospital before being released
as no further danger to society. This was after being
classified as a sexual deviant and after multiple rapes and
this attack, which is also the sexual deviant part is

(24:50):
something that he shared with Larry. Larry was also classified
as a sexual deviant, and both of these men just
keep getting released. Three months after this last release, he
raped a woman shocking and was arrested about a month
after that as she spotted him. She found his motorcycle
and called the police and were like, come do your jobs,
and they arrested him, and this is when he was

(25:13):
sent to the men's colony, which is where he met Larry. Now, harr,
I want to note that obviously rape wasn't taken seriously
in the seventies. I mean, it's still not really, but
back then it really wasn't, which is obviously a big problem.
I kind of already talked about it. But it's really
problematic that these two met in prison and then were
like pretty quickly released after all of the things that
they did, which is nuts. I mean, at this point,

(25:35):
Larry wasn't arrested for rape, but he was arrested for
like pretty much attempted murder, and both of them are
just like, all right, do a couple of years and
go back out into the world. There isn't really anything
funny about this story. But one thing that I thought
was a little comical was that these two men bonded
in prison over making jewelry. There's actually like photos of
jewelry that they made together while in prison, which is

(25:57):
incredibly random and so off the wall, but it's what
brought them together. And during this time, while they were
making jewelry, they were also planning out how they would
attack women once they were free again, which like, because
of course they're going to be free again, so they
had all the time in the world here to plan
it out, and then once they're out they put it
in action. They plan out all the small details, including

(26:18):
agreeing that they would kill their victims to avoid going
back to prison. They thought they were going to get
a van, they were going to find a dumping ground.
I mean, they went all in on this plan, and
they went back and forth on like the different things
that they could do where they could go, Let's find
a cave, let's do this, let's do that. But they
really were like putting the pieces in place, and they
even told another inmate about it, though he wasn't really
invited to join for whatever reason, maybe he wasn't going

(26:40):
to get out of prison. I don't know, but one
of the most insane parts of their plan was their
agreement to murder a girl for every teen year thirteen
through nineteen, which is really extra sickening that this is
just like a game to them. So they planned this,
and then in nineteen seventy eight, near the end of

(27:01):
nineteen seventy eight, Larry is released from CMC and he
actually gets a job in Los Angeles as a skilled machinist. Now,
this paid him about one thousand dollars a month, which
is about forty eight hundred dollars I'm so sorry one
thousand dollars a week. He made one thousand dollars a week,
which is about forty eight hundred dollars a week in

(27:22):
today's money. Now, he started to rent a room in
a CD motel in Burbank, California, which I am recording
in Burbank, California right now. The motel called the Scott Motel,
which is after a nearby street, is still there and
it's still like CD and gross, but it's not nearly
as bad as it was in the seventies. The motel's

(27:44):
located like by the freeway, kind of off a beaten path,
Like really, you're not going to drive there very often
unless you're going to the freeway.

Speaker 6 (27:51):
There is like a park that.

Speaker 5 (27:52):
Is kind of like a mouth into actually like a
really nice neighborhood. But it's really weird because the road
that it's on almost like splits it. There's like the
freeway side and then there's like the nice side. So
he was on like the freeway side, and it's just
not a good area of town. That being said, this
was the only time in his life that he really
ever made friends, and his friends would describe him as
generous and friendly and helpful. He donated money to the

(28:15):
Salvation Army. I mean, here's where this like manipulation comes in,
where he's putting up this front, and I think this
was all in service of his greater plan to murder
these women. Because if you remember, before he met Roy,
before they concocted this plan, before he had like an ally,
he was just sort of floating through life. He didn't

(28:36):
have a job, he didn't really care if he was
in prison. He wasn't really doing anything to help himself
out or to make himself hide in plain sight. And
now he's got this other guy just like him, and
he's got something to work towards, and it's just disgusting
that this is what he's working towards. Roy Norris got

(28:56):
out about i think three months after Laurence Bittaker, and
they pretty much immediately linked up. Their relationship was described
as that of student and teacher, with Bittaker as the
teacher and definitely the leader and definitely the smarter one,
whereas Bittaker was the larger one, so he was like
the bron and Bittaker, like Norris, was the bigger one, sorry,
and Bittaker was the smarter one. Bittaker told Norris he

(29:20):
wanted to get a van with a sliding door to
get victims in and out more quickly, so that's what
they chose to buy. They got a silver gmc van,
one of those big seventies ones, and they called it
the Murder Mac because it was the size of a
Mac truck according to them. And if you've seen those vans,
they are really big, and they've got like the carpeting

(29:42):
in the back. They're very like very seventies. Now this
reminds me again of Bill Bonnen, as does the next thing.
What these two did was they tricked this out for
torture and murder. They added a bed in the back
They included a toolbox full of torture item like plyers, screwdrivers,

(30:03):
ice picks, all manner of horrific items. And this is
of course where the toolbox Killer nickname comes from. The
two after getting this fan went and found their dumping grounds,
and I'll give you all three guesses where they.

Speaker 6 (30:18):
Ended up going. That's right, they went to.

Speaker 5 (30:22):
The San Gabriel Mountains to look for places to dump bodies.
This is absolutely because of the connection to his only
girlfriend and the last woman who meant anything to him
and who rejected him. They found an old fire road
up there with a padlock on it, and they cut
the lock, replacing it with their own. They figured, and
they were seemingly correct, then nobody would notice as long

(30:42):
as there was a lock on the gate. Also, as
a note, the area that they found was called Camp
Crystal Lake, and I'm just going to leave that there
for any horror fans because that's just too perfect. And
they actually took at least two victims there. Now, during
this time, they actually took photos of each other in
this area and sent them to their friend in prison
without any like context, so they didn't say, like, here's

(31:04):
where we're gonna kill the girls, but he knew what
the plan was, so seeing those photos was their way
of proving that they were moving forward in their plans.
These photos can actually be found online and they're super weird.
It just looks like the two of them, Like one
of them is like Larry inspecting the lock. One of
them is Royd with like his hand out, like look
at the mountain, but it's like basically, here's where we're

(31:24):
gonna dump the bodies. So very very weird, but not
nearly as weird or horrifying as the other photos they
take in the coming weeks and months, which we'll talk about. Unfortunately,
it's now early nineteen seventy nine and thirty eight year
old Larry Bittaker and twenty nine year old Roy Norris

(31:47):
start practicing picking up girls. This is something a lot
of killers did again, including Ed Kemper, where they give
kitchhiker's rides and work on how to engage with them
without scaring them too much, so that they can sort
of figure out how to get people into their van,
how they can coax them in so they could get

(32:07):
them to come willingly, and then they can take them
up to the mountains. Torture rape, kill them, and then
dump their body. And they figure when they dump the
bodies in the mountains, they're not going to be found
and they're going to be scattered by animals. So it's
like the perfect place. It's a great way to not
get caught. Now, during this time, Roy Norris was still
actively attacking women, but was able somehow to avoid capture

(32:29):
or even suspicion. And I'm not really sure how. Like
one woman, he raped her and then he just dropped
her in the desert, and as far as we know,
she survived, but she never turned him in. Finally, the
two pick a date and they decide to go out hunting.
They're ready, they've done their trial runs. Everything's in place,
they have their dumping ground, they have their murder mac.

Speaker 6 (32:50):
They're good.

Speaker 5 (32:51):
And on June twenty fourth, nineteen seventy nine, they went
to Redondo Beach to look for a victim, and they
found sixteen year old Lucinda Cindy Schaeffer walking from her
church to her grandparents' house. It does not get more
wholesome than that, which makes this all the worse. So

(33:15):
on seeing her, they knew that's not the kind of
girl that's gonna accept a ride from us, So they
threw their plans out the window and just rolled up
and grabbed her straight off the street. They just picked
her up, threw her into the van, and tied her up.
At first, Cindy screamed, but they both said that she
eventually fell quiet, almost as if resigned to her fate.

(33:38):
According to both men, she ended up being almost cooperative,
which is something that Bittaker in particular loves to mention
when recounting the rape and murder of this child, not
only because it makes them sound less culpable, but because
rapists they just love when victims quote give themselves over,
you know, because it's part of the power trip. Be like, oh,

(33:59):
she really wanted I wasn't raping her, like she was
a part of it, and it's fucking disgusting. And the
way that we know that this is true, that she
really did sort of like stop fighting, was that In
addition to Larry saying this, Roy Norris also said this,
so both of them had sort of the same story
about this victim. He however, Roy Norris was more accurate

(34:21):
in his description of Cindy, saying that she was detached,
like she seemed far away from everything happening to her,
which I think was like shock. She was in shock
and so that's why she was that way. So they
drove her to the mountains. Bittaker then took a walk
while Norris raped her for about an hour. They then

(34:42):
switched and Bittaker had his turn, and from there I
think they switched off a couple of times, I hate
to say, and then they argued over what to do
with her. Now, Roy Norris was getting cold feet and
didn't want to kill her, but Larry said, we have
to or she'll give us up. Do you want to
go back to prison after one? Like we agree to
kill the victims. At one point, Cindy, sort of picking

(35:03):
up on what was going on, asked them, are you
going to kill me? She said, if you are, please
just let me pray first. The response from the men
was no, we're not going to kill you, but they
also laughed at the request, as if she was an
idiot for even asking. They then did, in fact kill her.
They started to strangle her and they did not allow

(35:23):
her time to pray.

Speaker 6 (35:24):
Of course.

Speaker 5 (35:26):
Now, Roy Norris first tried to strangle her, but after
about forty five seconds he saw the terror in her
eyes and he backed away, wretching as it actually made
him sick, which is the proper response. So Larry Bitaker,
fucking sociopaths psychopath, took over, and while he didn't have
any problem emotionally with doing this, he wasn't actually strong

(35:48):
enough to finish the job, so he ended up letting
go of her neck after a few minutes in. As
a result, Cindy began convulsing on the floor of the van,
and I can only hope that she was unconsciou and
not aware of what was going on, because that's just
fucking horrific. So to get her to stop, Bittaker then
took a coat hanger and pliers out of the toolbox

(36:09):
and wrapped the hanger around her neck, tying it so
tightly that it cut into her skin. Eventually, she stopped
moving and breathing and was dead. They then rolled her
into a shower curtain and threw her body down the
mountain side. There's a really interesting documentary about Larry Bittaker
on Peacock, and honestly it's about the cases, but it's

(36:31):
more about Larry, and in one of the interviews, he
does everything he can to downplay this murder. But it's
like you had a shower curtain ready to roll her
body in in your van, Like, how do you deny
for a thought when you have a murder toolbox and
a shower curtain. Again, it's just another example of him
like thinking he's smarter than everybody and clearly not being.

(36:52):
Now that's murder one. About fourteen days later, on the
eighth of July nineteen seventy nine, these two go out
again to find another victim, and this time they pick
up eighteen year old Andrea Hall, who was hitchhiking from
Manhattan Beach to I've read a couple different places, but
I think it was Wilmington or Long Beach to go

(37:13):
see her boyfriend. Now, this one is crazy because these
two men wanted to pick up Andrea, but before they
had a chance, another man picked her up first, so
they followed his car. They followed him while he gave
her this ride, waiting for him to drop her off,
hoping that he wasn't taking her to her final destination.

(37:34):
And unfortunately that's exactly what happened. And also unfortunately she
never realized that they had been following her. So she
gets out of the car and Roy Norris hid himself
under the bed in the back of the truck while
Larry or in the back of the van while Larry
picked her up. I don't know if I mentioned this,
but they also built a bed into the back of
the van, which is another like you cannot say that

(37:57):
wasn't on purpose. And he's like, oh, I needed it
as a backup house. And it's like, you make one
thousand dollars a week, you could buy a house outright
with cash, but you need a bed in your van, Like,
get out of here, guy. So again, she gets into
the car or into the van with Larry. He tells her, Oh,
I've got a cooler of cold drinks in the back,
go ahead and grab one. So she jumps up, goes

(38:18):
into the back to grab one, and Roy Norris pops
out and attacks her, tying her and gagging her before
they made their way to the mountains once again. And
I wanted to call out that Andrea fought like so bravely,
and she almost overpowered Roy Norris, who was over two
hundred pounds and over six feet tall.

Speaker 6 (38:38):
He was a big.

Speaker 5 (38:39):
Man, and it was so bad that at one point
Larry had to slam the brakes on to break them apart,
because she was actually winning this fight and was maybe
going to get away. Unfortunately that is not what happened.
But I did want to call out that she fought
her hardest, and that doesn't make her a better victim
than Cindy or anybody else. But I just want to

(39:01):
call out that she tried so hard because I think
it's important to know who she was and that she
fought for her life. So they get her in the van,
they overpower her, and they drive up to the San
Gabriel Mountains and this time they actually go past where
Cindy was killed, and they pull over and they take
turns raping Andrea again. You know, one will leave, all

(39:25):
the other attacks her, and then they move her. They
move her up the hill because I thought, I think
a car was coming, and Larry actually went up there
with her on his own and took his polaroid camera
with him. Now, another thing they had their toolbox was
a pair of walky talkies so they could stay in
contact to know when to come back to the van
or just in case like the girls got away or

(39:47):
you know, it's just another piece of their sort of planning.
So he was gone with Andrea for two hours and
took multiple photos of her in various poses and also
forced her to perform oral sex on him. And yeah,
this is it's getting to the point, like it's making
me a little sick to talk about this, but we're
gonna keep going. So one of the horrible things that

(40:09):
he did. So he did a lot of fucked up things,
but one of the things that he did was he
would make the girls pretend that they were enjoying themselves
while they were having sex with him. He would make
them talk like they were having a good time, like
they wanted to be there. And this is all part
of that like weird sadistic thing, but also him wanting
them to like give themselves over and so you know,
later on he could say, well, they were into it,

(40:31):
they wanted it whatever. It's super twisted. But he also
had like a purely sadistic side that wanted to see
the girl suffer. And so two of the polaroid photos
that were later found showed Andrea and her face and
this horrified look on her face. And it was this

(40:51):
way because he took a picture, took these two pictures
of her moments after he told her that he was
going to kill her, and he said, I'm going to
kill you. You need to think of as many reasons as
you can as to why I shouldn't. So just very
over the top sadistic shit, like really just getting off
on the fear and anguish that he's causing her in
this moment. So they took her back down the hill

(41:15):
and Noras stood by while Bittaker did the killing. And
this one was as bad as the rest of it,
or more terrible.

Speaker 6 (41:22):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (41:24):
To kill Andrea Hall, Bittaker took an ice pick out
of his toolbox and shoved it through her ear into
her brain. Now this did not kill her immediately. He
did not get it far enough into her ear, so
she's just in an intense amount of pain but not dead,
but probably immobilized by this. He then pulls it out
and shoves it into her other ear and jumps on it,

(41:46):
meaning she's laying on the ground, so he's jumping on
this handle and her head, pushing this thing into her brain.
This is what this man does. And he actually did
this until the handle broke, and then just to make
sure that she was dead, he strangled her body. He
then rolled her down the hill now I'm not sure
if he recorded her rape and murder. Actually I do

(42:08):
believe that he did, but I know he took audio
of the next murders, including one that we'll talk about
that this is like a big trigger warning case.

Speaker 6 (42:17):
A lot of this.

Speaker 5 (42:18):
It's gonna get worse from here. So one of these
recordings I'm going to talk about in some amount of detail,
and so if that's not your thing, I will give
a warning. But this was sort of his thing, was
recording these attacks. So we will get there. When we do,
I'll let everybody know. But yeah, it's just really twisted.
So Andrea is.

Speaker 6 (42:40):
They've killed her, they rolled her.

Speaker 5 (42:41):
Body down into the canyons, and their next victims, we're
just gonna get into it. We're thirteen year old Jacqueline
Leah Lamp she went by Leah, and fifteen year old
Jacqueline Jackie Gilliam. These two girls were hitchhiking near Redondo
Beach looking for ride to the beach. In fact, and

(43:02):
Bitaker later said he had no idea why they were hitchhiking,
is they were literally minutes from the beach, even on foot.
He was like, it made no sense why they would
be hitchhiking, but they were so we picked them up,
which is absolutely fucked they of course, you know, these
men took them back out to their spot, this time
actually to Crystal Lake, which was the super hidden area

(43:22):
the abandoned cabins that I kind of talked about that
was way up on the top of one of the mountains.
I should note that nowadays this is a popular hiking trail,
and part of me wants to go check it out.
Part of me wants to stay as far away from
it as possible because I don't know how I'll feel
when I'm there. But it is interesting that this is
just like a place that people go hang out now anyway.
So they get up there and the torture begins. Before this, though,

(43:45):
I did want to call out that the girls nearly escaped,
and it's so awful to me and so sad that
they didn't, because for whatever reason in this instance, the
men cannot wait to attack the girls. So Norris hits
one of them in the head with a sock full
of bebes like metal bebes, knocking her unconscious temporarily. He
does this to Leah. I think what was happening is

(44:06):
the man they were like sharing a joint in the
back of the van, and the girl started to notice, like, hey,
we're not driving toward the beach. We should already be there,
Like what's going on? So they're starting to get nervous.
And instead of like I don't know, I don't know
making an excuse like who knows the thing that they
practice for so long, you know, he just Norris pulls
out this thing of Bebe's and hits her on the head. Now,

(44:29):
Leah passes out and he goes and he then tries
to overpower Jackie, and so he's tying Jackie up. When
Leah regains consciousness, opens the van door and runs screaming
out of it, And somehow they're next to a tennis
court and there's people playing tennis. Norris runs out or
no not, Norris Bittaker got out of the van and

(44:51):
went around it and punched her in the face as
hard as he could and then shoved her back into
the van. Tennis players this people at this location saw this,
and what he said to them is she's having a
bad acid trip, and then throws her back in the
van and they drive away. Nobody ever called the cops,
Nobody ever did anything about this. This is a thirty

(45:12):
eight year old man and a thirteen year old girl
and a fucking molester van and they're just like whatever,
I'm gonna keep playing tennis. And it makes me so
mad that this is the way that people dealt with this,
because it was just such a fucking It was just
such a close call, you know, and these little girls
just did not get to escape because people just didn't
want to. I don't know, be involved, don't I don't

(45:33):
really know. Each and every one of these murders is
horrific in its own special way, but this one, to
me would be particularly horrifying because what they did was
they took these girls up to the mountains and they
tell Leah, oh, you're too fat and ugly, we don't

(45:54):
want to have sex with you, which, like of all
the things they do, this is still it still bothers me.

Speaker 6 (45:59):
Then, on top of everything else they.

Speaker 5 (46:00):
Did that, they think Jackie Gilliam is good looking, so
they begin taking turns raping her. And I believe that
they would have done this either way. But it's said
that when Bittaker found out she was a virgin, he
decided that he wanted to record the rapes using the
tape recorder, which I think he would have done anyway,
because that's what he did. I believe that he did

(46:20):
actually tape Andrea Hall. I think had he kept going,
he would have produced more of these tapes.

Speaker 6 (46:25):
So he takes a tape.

Speaker 5 (46:27):
Player out and records her screaming while he's raping her,
and then he also makes her pretend to like it
and records that. They tie up the girls. They gag
them after this, like horrifying, you know, abuse, and then
they make them sleep with them in the van overnight
up on the mountain like they're camping or something. So
these little girls endured this torture and rape for nearly

(46:48):
forty eight hours. And now, like I said, Leah was not,
as far as I know, raped, but Jackie was. So
the next morning after like the first day of abduction,
Lawrence Bittaker takes Leah up somewhere and he does take
sexually explicit photos of her, but again, at least according
to him and according to Norris, neither one of them
actually raped her. But he did make her get naked

(47:10):
and take these humiliating, horrible photos of her and made
her pretend that she liked it. He then raped Jackie
Gilliam at least three times in total, and recorded all.

Speaker 6 (47:19):
Of these rapes.

Speaker 5 (47:20):
The recordings of these have not been released, but it
still said in them that he tells her to pretend
she's his cousin, tells her to feel free to express
her pain that she's feeling, and he also tortured her
by stabbing her breasts with an ice pick as well
as tearing part of her nipple off with a pair
of pliers, which is insane. She's fifteen, I mean, any age,

(47:44):
but like, what the fuck? He also has Roy Norris
take polaroids of him and her together, including while he's
forcing her to have oral and vaginal sex with him,
so he's raping her. These photos are online, not the
ones of them together, but the nude photos of her.
They're online and they are haunting. He makes her smile

(48:05):
for these photos. In one of these photos, she's smiling
and you can see that she has a black eye.
I mean, it's it's just beyond it's so insane, and
we're not even to the trigger warning part yet, if
you can believe it. So, after about forty eight hours
of this terrible rape, torture, just humiliation of these two

(48:28):
little girls. They then of course murder them. Now, first
they took them to town to get supplies. Again it's
like a little fun camping trip with friends. But then
they go back up to the mountain and they somehow
separate the girls. Bittaker murders Jackie Gillium, and despite Noras
saying like we should kill her quickly because she was
so cooperative she did everything we asked, Bittaker said no, because, quote,

(48:49):
they only die once anyway, so apparently he needs to
make it count. He then stabbed her in the ear
with the ice pick, then took it out because she
was still alive, and stabbed her in the other ear.
He was not able to remove the ice pick from
her ear this time, so he just rolled her body
down the hill with the pick still in her head.
He then made Leah get out of the van, and

(49:11):
as she walked out, he made Roy Norris hit her
on the head with a sledgehammer seven times. Now, this
was in part because Roy had not actually killed anybody yet,
even like Cindy, when he tried to kill her, he
couldn't do it, so this was his turn, so he
was gonna kill Leah because Bittaker killed the other two.

(49:32):
Bittaker then went to strangle her, and when he realized
she was still alive, he also hit her on the
head with the hammer and rolled her body down the
hill as well. These men are absolute devils, like truly, truly,
these two young girls had been abducted on September two
and died September third, nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
And we have one more.

Speaker 5 (49:53):
Victim to go over, which I'm very happy to say
there's only one more, but this one is our trigger
warning murder. Now, this is the last victim was sixteen
year old Shirley Lynette Ledford. Now she went by Lynette,
but her name was Shirley Lynette Ledford. Because of all
the recordings, you can actually find a piece of this

(50:13):
one online and it will ruin your week if you
listen to it, or if you read a transcript of
the attack, which I did. I regret it immensely, so
I would suggest you don't go looking.

Speaker 6 (50:25):
It's really bad.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
This poor sweet little girl, like what they did to her,
and really like knowing about it, hearing about it. It's
just it's too much, you know, it's just too much.
It's so much different when you hear a recording, or
you see something happen or you read about it, than
when you're being told it in a story. For some reason,
when somebody else is telling you the story, it takes

(50:46):
you out of it just enough that it's not quite
as sickening. And I know that sounds crazy, because this
is super sickening, but this is just like, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (50:54):
It's this messed me up.

Speaker 5 (50:58):
So Early was a sweeter Lynette, I should say, was
a sweet, quiet girl who lived in Burbank and worked
at a restaurant that Bittaker frequented. I think it was
like the McDonald's in Sunland, and I do believe they
used to have like table service and waitresses, so I
think she was kind of like a waitress there, and
so he knew her from those interactions. In any case,

(51:19):
it was Halloween night, October thirty first, nineteen seventy nine,
and Lynette was hitchhiking home from a party when Bittaker
and Norris picked her up. It's thought that she was
willing to go with them because she knew Larry, which
is extra twisted. They get her in the van, they
offer her weed. She actually said no. She was like, no,
I'm good I don't do that. So then they just

(51:41):
kind of cut to the chase and they pull a
knife on her. And this time they don't drive.

Speaker 6 (51:46):
Up to the mountains.

Speaker 5 (51:47):
And I think this was because Laurence Bittaker wanted to
taunt the police. The police at this point didn't even
know that he was operating in the area because it
was only four girls. They treated everybody like a runaway
at that time, you know, like any young girl that
goes missing, they're like, oh, she ran away, like call
us in a month. So they didn't really know that

(52:10):
he was doing what he was doing. And so it's
believed that, on top of everything else, he wanted the notoriety,
and so he was taunting them with this kill. So
he did not go up the mountain this time. Instead,
they just drive around the city. They just drive around
Burbank and Sunland. And while they're doing this, I guess

(52:32):
they actually pulled over somewhere in Burbank. I do not
know where. I don't really want to know where, but
it's off the beaten path. And here Bittaker rapes her violently.
He tortured her, He tore at her nipples with pliers,
He raped her orally, vaginally, and he sodomized her. He
beat her with his fists while demanding she scream louder

(52:53):
and louder. He will get to more. But the only
way you can find any part of the online now
is from a newsman who was recording outside of Bittaker's
trial later on, And every time someone came out of
the courtroom, the door opens for a moment, and you
can hear the recording. You can hear her screaming, And

(53:14):
the door opened quite a few times because so many
people were escaping the courtroom while this was playing, because
it was so beyond disturbing and horrifying, And even the
little bit that I heard was more than I should
I should have heard.

Speaker 6 (53:28):
It was a mistake. It was a mistake.

Speaker 5 (53:30):
I also looked up the transcript and it fills in
the blanks and is one of the most depraved things
I've ever read. Don't do it, trust me, like I said.
But some snippets of the transcript of this these few
hours they spent with surely include surely being forced to
say she enjoys what's happening to her telling noris I'll
scream if you stop hitting me repeatedly screaming oh no,

(53:53):
and no, no, no, no, and then the men laughing
and ordering her to say and do horrific things. There's
also the sounds of her being beaten, the sounds of
her crying during the attack, and you can hear this
as well. I didn't hear it, but it's on the recording,
so someone heard it. Bittaker took the pliers and stuck
them inside of her rectum, tearing it open, and then

(54:17):
sodomized her again during this horrific it was actually only
about two hours, which is two hours too long. But
during this abuse, Norris Roy Norris, not wanting to be
left out, took a sledgehammer and hit Shirley on the
elbow twenty five times until her bone was completely pulverized.

(54:38):
After the first time he hit it, she told him
you broke my elbow, and he hit her twenty six
times after that. Finally, after this horrific torture and rape,
the two strangled her to death with a wire hanger that,
when removed from her neck later, was about the size
of a silver dollar And if people don't know, it
was like two inches three inches. I mean, I'm sure

(55:01):
it cut through her skin and not just cut through it,
but like very much damaged her. Shirley's last words were
do it just kill me, and those are in the recording.
For a sixteen year old to ask for death in
that manner really drives home how horrible this was. And
to add insult to all of this, the men posed

(55:22):
Shirley on someone's front lawn in Sunland, just leaving her
splayed out completely visible. She was found the next morning,
either by the resident or by a jogger jogging by.
Now as a note, at this time, Shirley was the
only body found, so again police have no clue what's
going on. And I believe that if these two had

(55:45):
been able to kill more girls, they would have started
to leave their bodies around to draw attention, because I think,
in addition to everything else, that's.

Speaker 6 (55:51):
What they wanted. They wanted the notoriety, or at least Bitaker.

Speaker 5 (55:54):
I think Norris less so, but he was the follower,
so he was going to do whatever Bittaker wanted. And
I say they wanted the notoriety because I think in
addition to leaving Shirley's body to be found, they also
had big fucking mouths about these murders Bittaker himself had
told multiple people at the motel, going as far as
showing them photos like the polaroids of these young girls

(56:16):
and saying these young girls wouldn't be able to come
forward because they were dead. He told at least three
people about these murders, and at the time none of
them came forward. However, they did all testify it later. Now,
before they killed Shirley, the two had attacked another woman
inside her parking garage where she was trying to go
from her car to her house. In this case, they
maced her, but she started screaming, and so the neighbors

(56:40):
came out and the men took off. This put the
scare into Bittaker, so he was laying low for a while.
But then about a month later he killed and posed Shirley.
So what I'm wondering is did he enjoy the rush
that feeling of almost getting caught, So did that become
like the.

Speaker 6 (56:56):
New thing he wanted to do.

Speaker 5 (56:58):
I don't know if that you know is the case,
but I do know that in addition to this attempted abduction,
there are at least two others other attempts, at least
according to Bittaker. So this was all really terrible and
it was a really gnarly case. But now we're going
to kind of talk about how they got caught, which
is definitely my favorite part of this so far, because

(57:20):
again it's just these idiots having two big mouths and
getting themselves caught and maybe, you know, they want to
go back to prison. Like I said, they were institutionalized.
They spent so much of their lives there. The psychology
behind this is really interesting. To be sure, I'm not
a psychologist, so I can't really get into it, but
it's definitely interesting to kind of think about why the

(57:41):
things transpired.

Speaker 6 (57:42):
The way that they did.

Speaker 5 (57:44):
But in any case, in November of nineteen seventy nine,
just after Shirley's murder, Roy Norris reconnected with a friend
from prison, a serial rapist named Joseph Jackson. The two
met up and we're hanging out, both free and I
guess ex cons do. They are hanging out and shooting
the shit and out of nowhere. Roy just straight up

(58:05):
tells Joseph, hey, I've been killing people with.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
Larry.

Speaker 5 (58:11):
We've been killing all these little girls. Joseph, a father
of two girls himself, was horrified, even though he's a rapist.
He later said like, well, I have young daughters and
it freaked me out. And he hid it very well
from Roy. He didn't lean on. He didn't let on.
I mean that he was gonna tell anybody. Later he

(58:33):
said he thought about how Roy would ask about his
daughters and he would do it in this way that
made him really uncomfortable. So when he told him about this,
he was, you know, very sure that he didn't want
to keep this to himself because as a father, he
was like, these this could be my daughters, like any
he could have killed them, you know. So Joseph Jackson
then goes and speaks with his lawyer, who advises him,

(58:54):
you know, take this information to the police, and he
does just that. From there, the case was sent to
the Hormocid Beach Police Department, where Detective Paul Binham was
assigned the case. Now, from the start, he believed Jackson
at least enough to investigate the claims seriously and immediately,
including going to a woman in Oregon who had reported
being raped by two men in a van, and he

(59:16):
went up there and showed her their mugshots. She immediately
picked out Bittaker and Norris from a lineup of like,
you know, twelve mug shots. This was enough for police
to start putting the two men under surveillance, and pretty
quickly they found that Norris was dealing drugs, Like they
pulled up on his car and they found a bag
full of weed, like tons and tons of weed. So

(59:38):
he gets arrested for this, and then very quickly thereafter,
they arrest Bittaker for the rape because he had an
actual job, so there wasn't really anything going on that
they could use to arrest him. But pretty quickly after
they arrest Norris, they're just like, fuck it, We're just
gonna arrest Bittaker for the rape. Let's get him off
the street. Let's start, you know, the search of his home,
of his van, let's just let's just do this now. Unfortunately,

(01:00:01):
Bittaker had a little hint that something was up because
he'd actually called Roy Norris during the police raid, and
he went and cleared out his van of all items
just before his arrest. So he gets rid of the toolbox,
he clears the bet out, any you know, blood, anything
else that's obvious. He takes out of his van except

(01:00:23):
for one item that he forgot to remove. This item
was the two hour long torture tape of Lynette Ledford,
which he had of course been listening to and failed
to remove from the tape player. This piece of evidence
is obviously very damning. But police also searched Larry's motel

(01:00:47):
room and there they found some of his polaroid collection,
So now they have an audio source, they have photos.
I mean, the cases coming together. I also wanted to
call out the police. All so found several bottles of
acid in his room, like the kind you burn skin with.
So this man is really starting to ramp up the

(01:01:10):
torture and he was definitely going to start torturing his
next victims using acid. Now in Roy Norris's home, they
found even more polaroids, in fact, over five hundred, including
tons from Hermosa and Redondo Beach where I guess they
were just taking photos like of girls on the beach,
and they even found some from girls from Burbank, like

(01:01:33):
girls walking to and from high school, so absolutely terrifying.
They also apparently had their next two victims picked out,
including a thirteen year old, so they're just already, you know,
they're continuing their plan. They're stalking more, they're planning more
they're ramping things up. It's terrifying. It's so good that
they were caught when they were so the men, like

(01:01:55):
I said, they're arrested and before they go to trial,
Roy Norris strikes a deal with prosecutors so he was
able to avoid the death penalty, which was a thing
in the state at the time, and in return he
would both testify against Lawrence Bittaker and also take police
to the locations of the bodies. In return, he would

(01:02:15):
only get a life sentence and not face the death penalty. Now. Unfortunately,
they were only able to recover Jackie and Lea's bodies,
while Cindy and Andrea's were not found during these searches,
but at least it's something. At first, Norris completely denied
any involvement in the crimes, but after being interrogated for
a while, he sort of just like spilled the beans

(01:02:37):
and he talked about all five victims. He also said
that they attempted to pick up many, many more, but
had been rejected pretty often, which is really good to hear,
because who knows how many more they would have killed
given the opportunity. That being said, it was later found
that nineteen of the girls in their polaroids had been
reported missing, which is very concerning because who knows what

(01:03:00):
happened to them. And what's more, there was a photo
of a girl with the two of them in the
mountains in similar circumstances to the victims, and she has
never been identified, so we don't know if she was
a victim and they just chose not to mention her
or what the situation was. So we really don't know
how many girls they killed. We know they killed five,
but we don't know if they killed more. Anyway, so

(01:03:23):
the two go to trial, they of course blame each other.
Bittaker even took the stand at his trial, which was ridiculous,
and he tried to blame Roy Norris. He even went
as far as saying there was yet another unnamed man
involved in at least one of the rapes. He also,
of course, said that most of the victims were sex
workers and accused Lynette Ledford of being a drug adduled psycho,

(01:03:47):
saying that the screaming on the video was because she
was on drugs. It was just absolutely ridiculous, completely insulting
to victims, just unreal. At one point, this motherfucker broke
down crying obvious crocodile tears, like just unbelievably terrible acting job.

(01:04:07):
It was just a really silly thing and sad because
he actually thinks he's going to fool someone and it's like, sir,
you aren't fooling anyone. It took the jury a little
more than two days to come back with the guilty verdict,
and they believe the reason for this was that people
were going back and forth over the death penalty. There
was no, you know, question of his guilt. It was

(01:04:30):
more a question of the penalty. And they did come
back and give Laurence Bittaker the death penalty for sure.
Roy Norris was given the forty five years to life
sentence that he had agreed upon, and it was sort
of a done deal. The death penalty, though, was actually
really significant because the DA at the time was opposed
to the death penalty, but he allowed it to be

(01:04:52):
used in this case, which I would say is understandable.
I personally don't believe in the death penalty, but in
cases like this it's kind of hard to defend that
a little bit. I mean, I'm still against it, but
you know, it's hard sometimes. I've said that before. Now
during the trial. Just to kind of drive home why
the death penalty was sought and given as an option,

(01:05:16):
the prosecution played seventeen minutes of the two hour long
torture of Lynette Leadford, and during this time jury members
and those in the courtroom openly wept, with many of
those who were able to leave literally running out of
the room. There was not a single person in the
courtroom who wasn't completely horrified by the tape. FBI agents, police,

(01:05:37):
and even the prosecutor on the case said it was
the worst thing they've ever heard in their careers. The
prosecutor said that he had nightmares for months about this
man murdering girls and him not being able to save them,
which is really sad and also very sweet, but just
generally horrifying. There was a reporter outside the courtroom who
interviewed people as they left, and many of these people

(01:05:58):
were in tears. I mean, people were just sick over it.
Everyone except of course for Larry Bittaker, who, during the
playing of this tape sat there stone faced, reading along
to the transcript, and I guarantee you he was enjoying
every minute of it. This man is just pure evil.
It's absolutely insane. Despite being given the death penalty, which

(01:06:20):
was a very you know, out of the ordinary thing
at this time. He was somehow able to procure a
full stay of execution after delaying his death sentence twice.
He got it delayed once in nineteen ninety again in
nineteen ninety one, and then they just.

Speaker 6 (01:06:35):
Gave him a full stay of execution.

Speaker 5 (01:06:38):
Usually, you know, it takes years and years for somebody
to be put up for death after being accused, but
this was within like a ten year timeline. So they
were really trying to get him put to death, and
he fought back and somehow was able to get out
of it. Crazy, and now you know, there's a moratorium
on the death penalty in California, so you know a

(01:06:58):
lot of people who are on death or sort of
just they're just in prison now. While in prison, Roy
Norris was pretty boring. There's not a lot to say
about him. But Bittaker made everybody's lives hell. He filed
so many frivolous lawsuits he was actually barred from filing
without a lawyer or judge's permission. He was filing over
things like being served a broken cookie at lunch, citing

(01:07:19):
that as cruel and unusual punishment. So, I mean, he's
very smart, but he's just an annoying like a troll.
You know, He's just a piece of shit in every way.
He also gave a ton of interviews throughout his time
in prison, but never once expressed any remorse, and in
fact often said he wishes he could go back to
his life, which I'm sure you know he meant that,

(01:07:41):
you know now. Later on, closer to his death, he
did a series of interviews with a woman named Laura
Brand who did an extremely deep dive with Larry while
he was in prison. And I think I talked about
this up at the beginning of this. It was like
a documentary that came out, and it's really just kind
of based on her experience with him. She later said
they became friends, which really scares me because it goes

(01:08:04):
to show how good this guy is at pulling the
wool over people's eyes. I mean, she was there as
an in an official capacity. She's a criminologist. She's interviewing
him basically to get more information about like where the
bodies were, you know, trying to like help the victim's families,
and somehow she ends up coming to visit him with
her son in San Quentin, like it's wild now. To

(01:08:26):
be fair, she did get him to draw her a
map of the location of Cindy and Andrea's bodies. But
it's been, you know, nearly forty years since the murders,
so as of now, even with those maps, they still
have not been found. But at least now we have
like a general idea of where they may be, and
so if people continue to look, hopefully one day they
will find them so they can be put to rest

(01:08:47):
and their families, you know, can get some closure. But
I just want to call out that it's really crazy
that this woman actually said, like, I do believe that
he felt some remorse, and I do believe that he
cared for me, and I just like no, like no,
I really don't think that's the truth. And it scares
me that he's that good anyway. Lawrence Bittaker died in

(01:09:09):
prison after being diagnosed with cancer and suffering a series
of heart attacks. He died, aged seventy nine, on December thirteenth,
twenty nineteen, in sam Quentin. Just before his death, I
said he drew Laura that map. I don't think I
had anything to do with the victims of the families,
but rather with his own mortality. You know, he didn't

(01:09:30):
want the death penalty. He didn't want to die. He
cried on the phone to her after his heart attacks.
So I think, like everything else, his drawing this map
was self serving. It was like his way of making
himself feel better somehow. Anyway, he died, and not even
three months later, on February twenty fourth, twenty twenty, Roy
Norris died at age seventy two in the Vacaville Medical Center,

(01:09:52):
also in California. It's very interesting that they died so
close together, but I'm very glad they are both dead,
and that's about it. The documentary on Peacock is called
The Toolbox Killer. It's really interesting. It's definitely not a
deep dive in terms of the specifics of the case,
which I think is great because some of those specifics
are pretty awful. But even without those specifics, it's still

(01:10:14):
a very unsettling but ultimately very informative documentary. So I
do suggest everyone check it out. Do not check out
the audio or the transcript from Lynette's murder. Please just
don't do it.

Speaker 6 (01:10:25):
Don't do it. It's awful, it's not worth it.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
One more thing that I kept forgetting to write down
in my notes. The detective who was assigned this case,
Paul Binham, he actually committed suicide after this case. And
in his suicide note, he mentioned Lawrence Bittaker, and he
said he thought that if he got out of prison,
which it's fair to assume he would he did over
and over, that he would come after him and his family.

(01:10:49):
And he thought that if he killed himself that Lawrence
would spare his wife and children. So that is just
another note about how scary this man is, how horrifying
this case was. And I don't think that this man
committed suicide only because of this case, but I do
believe that it was the straw that broke the camel's
back because detectives, especially in the seventies and eighties, the

(01:11:12):
horrific crimes that were taking place, it's a lot. It's
a big mental load. And honestly, like just researching this case,
I mean, I think I made it pretty clear how
tough it was, so I can't imagine what it was
like for the detectives or the lawyers, the prosecutors, anybody
dealing with this. These men were horrible monsters. I am
so glad they are dead. I know a lot of
people are upset that they died natural deaths, but I

(01:11:35):
feel like as long as they were off the street
and couldn't hurt anybody else, that's fine. Just get them
out and a way and don't let them hurt anybody else.
So all right, this is a tough one. This is
an awful case, really devastating, really disturbing. Thanks everybody for
hanging in there. You know, it's a little longer than
my standard cases, but I didn't want to split it

(01:11:56):
up into two because I don't think any of us
can handle this for more than a week. So thanks
everybody for hanging in there with this one. I know
it was rough. Please like rate review, share with your
friends and family. If you know of any cases that
you want me to cover, please feel free to email me.
My email is true Crime californiapod at gmail dot com.

(01:12:17):
I'm always looking for good cases, and if I keep
going to Diva, they're going to be like this. So
let's get some variety in there. Let's get a little fluff.
I mean, there's no fluff where murder is concerned, but
maybe some disappearances, something a little less hardcore Please feel
free send me anything and everything, and again thanks again
for listening. I appreciate all of you, and until next week,

(01:12:37):
stay safe,