May 13, 2025 • 10 mins
Let's dive into the chilling tale of The Scorecard Killer. This gripping story explores the mind and motives of a criminal who left a haunting mark. Join us as we unravel the mysteries surrounding this notorious figure!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever heard of the Scorecard Killer active in
Long Beach in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
That is this topic of our True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
The story is true, sounds true?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
No, it sounds made up. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Gerry and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Dan Salcito is a retired homicide detective with the Orange
County Sheriff's Department. He says he's not the media version
of what a killer looks like. If you put him
in a room filled with people, he's the last one
you'd pick. Talking about the Scorecard Killer.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
It's weird.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
So twelve thirteen years ago, Dan Salcedo was nearing retirement.
He and a partner were on a I guess you'd
say a field trip to visit Robert Craft Randy Craft, sorry,
different guy Randy Craft in San Quentin. And that been
about thirty years since Craft had been pulled over by
(01:03):
a couple CHP officers down in Mission Viejo, and they
found some pretty interesting clue that he may have been
a bad guy, the dead marine in his passenger seat.
Salcedo was already headed up to Santa Cruz part of
an active investigation, and decided he was going to stop
by San Quentin one more time, just take another shot
(01:24):
at Randy Craft, just to see if there was any
other information that he would be able to pull out
of him. And that description of not your normal serial
killer is kind of how he described it. He said
he looked like everyone else. To this retired detective, there's
nothing remarkable about Randy Craft's appearance or his persona. And
(01:47):
he said he had a kind of a pathetic, get
off my lawn attitude, but otherwise was utterly unimpressive. And
he didn't see what some detectives describe in the eyes
of killers. He didn't see the aura of evil or
the junkyard stare. Just a bitter old man, is the
way this retired detective described Randy Kraft.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
He was referred to as a scorecard killer for a
codd list of more than sixty entries believed to correspond
to his victims, mostly young men and marines, whom he tortured,
raped and murdered before dumping their bodies, sometimes on roadsides,
off ramps, public spaces, and for a decade he trolled
and terrorized the Southern a Southern California area while confounding
(02:32):
law enforcement. Up until that random traffic stop with the
dead marine in the passenger seat.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
When he was.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Convicted, he was believed to be the most prolific serial
killer in the country at that point.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
And although his total may have been eclipsed.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
He was convicted of sixteen murders, they said he's suspected
of at least sixty five more, and there are potentially
one hundred or more unsolved murders throughout California, Oregon, and
in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
He was born in Long Beach in nineteen forty five.
Parents had moved there from Wyoming, and they said the
ultra conservative nature of Orange County was befitting for him,
given high school classmates described him as somewhere right of
Attila the hun.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
He went to Claremont College. After he graduated, studied economics.
Big Berry goldwater supporter, supported the Vietnam War.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
He grew a beard.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
They said that he kind of fell into the worldwide
protest back in sixty eight, which would have been an
unusual spin for him. He just as voraciously supported the
efforts of Robert F. Kennedy, and in nineteen sixty eight
he came out as gay. He was dismissed from the
Air Force on account of what they referred to at
(03:54):
the time as medical problems.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
He went to Sun's at Beach a lot, the gay bars.
He would go back and forth from Laguna to la
He was fully entrenched in a newly gay social life,
apparently lived off a diet of meth and beer, diving
(04:17):
into excesses.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So it's about this time.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
That he starts running into people and decides that he
could take advantage of them. He ran into one overly
confident runaway, asked him for a cigarette and being obliged,
this guy was then lured in not only by the
prospect of having a place to say, but Randy seduced
(04:44):
him with the idea that there may have been a
lady waiting at his apartment to take the young runaways virginity.
So they go up to pch in Belmont Shore, some wine,
some pot, a couple of pills handed out like juice
and candy until the kid was basically knocked out. Randy
(05:05):
took advantage of him. When the boy had a chance
to stumble into Belmont Chores. He nothing of the said
nothing of that attack, including a sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
For thirteen years.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
He was so prolific and so active. They're still connecting
bodies to this guy. In twenty twenty five, we are
talking to or about the Scorecard Killer, the man who
created a lot of terror in the seventies, especially in
the gay man community, as he would troll the different
(05:38):
gay bars, ended up fixating on marines, young gay men
that he would drug and kill and dump along the
highways and byways.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
One of the reasons why I'd never heard of this
guy is because the southern California landscape of serial killers
was rampant, shall we say, in the seventies, especially for
young men, especially for hitchhikers, because not only did you
have Randy Craft again, the so called Scorecard Killer, but
you had William Bonnen, you had Patrick Kearney, and their
(06:11):
killing spreees overlapped. They are credited, is blamed, that's the
right word. They're blamed for at least one hundred and
fifty murders at different times. All of them were referred
to by the moniker the freeway killer because of the similarities.
So Patrick Kearney is caught in nineteen seventy seven, they
(06:32):
figure their detectives think they got their guy. Bodies keep
showing up. William Bonnen captured in nineteen eighty and they
figure they got their guy, but they continued. These bodies
kept piling up until Randy Craft was caught. And again
we talked about that random traffic stop in nineteen eighty
(06:52):
three when he was caught on suspicion of drunk driving
with the corpse of our marine in the passenger seat.
These stories. He's convicted of sixteen. They believed that he
had a list of more than sixty in the car,
hence the scorecard, but that they're still finding victims.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yes, they have identified recently a man who was found
dead along the highway up in Oregon more than forty
years ago that they now believed was the work of
the scorecard killer. Oregon State Police Captain Kyle Kennedy says
the man found identified as a thirty year old Larry
Eugene Parks, a Vietnam veteran whose family had lost contact
(07:31):
with him in seventy nine. His body was found in
July nineteen eighty along the five a suburb of Marion County, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
There would burn and they didn't identify him.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
They just identified him last month and they have linked
his death Larry Parks to Randy Kraft.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Interesting because.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Parks's body was found just a day after a seventeen
year old was found along five, also near a different
exit there in Marion County. We're talking about the area
a long Eye five between Salem and Portland. And at
the time they said due to similarities in the evidence
and the conditions of the bodies and the age and
(08:14):
the gender, they suspected that the two murders were related.
But at the time the investigation into Parks's body into
Eugene Parks, it went cold. O'fallen, the seventeen year old
that was also found there, was later linked to Randy
Craft when investigators said they found a camera in his
(08:34):
garage after the drunk driving arrest in nineteen eighty three,
and it was Michael o'fallen's mother's initials that were inscribed
on the camera. During the trial that mom took the
stand was able to identify that camera. And again, as
I mentioned, one of the reasons why they had a
(08:55):
hard time figuring out who this was is that William
Bonnen was also active in the at that time.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
He was that truck driver out of Downey.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
And again they just assumed that there was there was
only one on their loose because why would you ever
assume that there were three serial killers that were active,
all at the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Eighty years old, he is still alive, you wonder.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I mean, what a time for serial killers the seventies
and the eighties and then DNA testing and all the things,
and people were.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
More attuned to this sort of thing. But I mean,
it's not like.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
DNA and environmental factors stopped producing serial killers.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
They're just not. You're just going to get caught these days.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Well, that is a question is will there ever be
serial killers like we saw?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And what are they doing in lieu of the killing?
They walk amongst us, not killing.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
But wanting to doing.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
What now something to think about when you go to
sleep tonight. You know what the good industry
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Answer that late night knocked at the door.
Have you ever heard of the Scorecard Killer active in
Long Beach in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
That is this topic of our True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
The story is true, sounds true?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
No, it sounds made up. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Gerry and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Dan Salcito is a retired homicide detective with the Orange
County Sheriff's Department. He says he's not the media version
of what a killer looks like. If you put him
in a room filled with people, he's the last one
you'd pick. Talking about the Scorecard Killer.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
It's weird.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
So twelve thirteen years ago, Dan Salcedo was nearing retirement.
He and a partner were on a I guess you'd
say a field trip to visit Robert Craft Randy Craft, sorry,
different guy Randy Craft in San Quentin. And that been
about thirty years since Craft had been pulled over by
(01:03):
a couple CHP officers down in Mission Viejo, and they
found some pretty interesting clue that he may have been
a bad guy, the dead marine in his passenger seat.
Salcedo was already headed up to Santa Cruz part of
an active investigation, and decided he was going to stop
by San Quentin one more time, just take another shot
(01:24):
at Randy Craft, just to see if there was any
other information that he would be able to pull out
of him. And that description of not your normal serial
killer is kind of how he described it. He said
he looked like everyone else. To this retired detective, there's
nothing remarkable about Randy Craft's appearance or his persona. And
(01:47):
he said he had a kind of a pathetic, get
off my lawn attitude, but otherwise was utterly unimpressive. And
he didn't see what some detectives describe in the eyes
of killers. He didn't see the aura of evil or
the junkyard stare. Just a bitter old man, is the
way this retired detective described Randy Kraft.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
He was referred to as a scorecard killer for a
codd list of more than sixty entries believed to correspond
to his victims, mostly young men and marines, whom he tortured,
raped and murdered before dumping their bodies, sometimes on roadsides,
off ramps, public spaces, and for a decade he trolled
and terrorized the Southern a Southern California area while confounding
(02:32):
law enforcement. Up until that random traffic stop with the
dead marine in the passenger seat.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
When he was.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Convicted, he was believed to be the most prolific serial
killer in the country at that point.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
And although his total may have been eclipsed.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
He was convicted of sixteen murders, they said he's suspected
of at least sixty five more, and there are potentially
one hundred or more unsolved murders throughout California, Oregon, and
in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
He was born in Long Beach in nineteen forty five.
Parents had moved there from Wyoming, and they said the
ultra conservative nature of Orange County was befitting for him,
given high school classmates described him as somewhere right of
Attila the hun.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
He went to Claremont College. After he graduated, studied economics.
Big Berry goldwater supporter, supported the Vietnam War.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
He grew a beard.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
They said that he kind of fell into the worldwide
protest back in sixty eight, which would have been an
unusual spin for him. He just as voraciously supported the
efforts of Robert F. Kennedy, and in nineteen sixty eight
he came out as gay. He was dismissed from the
Air Force on account of what they referred to at
(03:54):
the time as medical problems.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
He went to Sun's at Beach a lot, the gay bars.
He would go back and forth from Laguna to la
He was fully entrenched in a newly gay social life,
apparently lived off a diet of meth and beer, diving
(04:17):
into excesses.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So it's about this time.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
That he starts running into people and decides that he
could take advantage of them. He ran into one overly
confident runaway, asked him for a cigarette and being obliged,
this guy was then lured in not only by the
prospect of having a place to say, but Randy seduced
(04:44):
him with the idea that there may have been a
lady waiting at his apartment to take the young runaways virginity.
So they go up to pch in Belmont Shore, some wine,
some pot, a couple of pills handed out like juice
and candy until the kid was basically knocked out. Randy
(05:05):
took advantage of him. When the boy had a chance
to stumble into Belmont Chores. He nothing of the said
nothing of that attack, including a sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
For thirteen years.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
He was so prolific and so active. They're still connecting
bodies to this guy. In twenty twenty five, we are
talking to or about the Scorecard Killer, the man who
created a lot of terror in the seventies, especially in
the gay man community, as he would troll the different
(05:38):
gay bars, ended up fixating on marines, young gay men
that he would drug and kill and dump along the
highways and byways.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
One of the reasons why I'd never heard of this
guy is because the southern California landscape of serial killers
was rampant, shall we say, in the seventies, especially for
young men, especially for hitchhikers, because not only did you
have Randy Craft again, the so called Scorecard Killer, but
you had William Bonnen, you had Patrick Kearney, and their
(06:11):
killing spreees overlapped. They are credited, is blamed, that's the
right word. They're blamed for at least one hundred and
fifty murders at different times. All of them were referred
to by the moniker the freeway killer because of the similarities.
So Patrick Kearney is caught in nineteen seventy seven, they
(06:32):
figure their detectives think they got their guy. Bodies keep
showing up. William Bonnen captured in nineteen eighty and they
figure they got their guy, but they continued. These bodies
kept piling up until Randy Craft was caught. And again
we talked about that random traffic stop in nineteen eighty
(06:52):
three when he was caught on suspicion of drunk driving
with the corpse of our marine in the passenger seat.
These stories. He's convicted of sixteen. They believed that he
had a list of more than sixty in the car,
hence the scorecard, but that they're still finding victims.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yes, they have identified recently a man who was found
dead along the highway up in Oregon more than forty
years ago that they now believed was the work of
the scorecard killer. Oregon State Police Captain Kyle Kennedy says
the man found identified as a thirty year old Larry
Eugene Parks, a Vietnam veteran whose family had lost contact
(07:31):
with him in seventy nine. His body was found in
July nineteen eighty along the five a suburb of Marion County, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
There would burn and they didn't identify him.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
They just identified him last month and they have linked
his death Larry Parks to Randy Kraft.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Interesting because.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Parks's body was found just a day after a seventeen
year old was found along five, also near a different
exit there in Marion County. We're talking about the area
a long Eye five between Salem and Portland. And at
the time they said due to similarities in the evidence
and the conditions of the bodies and the age and
(08:14):
the gender, they suspected that the two murders were related.
But at the time the investigation into Parks's body into
Eugene Parks, it went cold. O'fallen, the seventeen year old
that was also found there, was later linked to Randy
Craft when investigators said they found a camera in his
(08:34):
garage after the drunk driving arrest in nineteen eighty three,
and it was Michael o'fallen's mother's initials that were inscribed
on the camera. During the trial that mom took the
stand was able to identify that camera. And again, as
I mentioned, one of the reasons why they had a
(08:55):
hard time figuring out who this was is that William
Bonnen was also active in the at that time.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
He was that truck driver out of Downey.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
And again they just assumed that there was there was
only one on their loose because why would you ever
assume that there were three serial killers that were active,
all at the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Eighty years old, he is still alive, you wonder.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I mean, what a time for serial killers the seventies
and the eighties and then DNA testing and all the things,
and people were.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
More attuned to this sort of thing. But I mean,
it's not like.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
DNA and environmental factors stopped producing serial killers.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
They're just not. You're just going to get caught these days.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Well, that is a question is will there ever be
serial killers like we saw?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And what are they doing in lieu of the killing?
They walk amongst us, not killing.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
But wanting to doing.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
What now something to think about when you go to
sleep tonight. You know what the good industry
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Answer that late night knocked at the door.
Popular Podcasts
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.