Kraft Was Suspect in ’75 Murder That Preceded 26 More

On the night he disappeared, 19-year-old Keith Daven Crotwell was seen leaving the Belmont Plaza parking lot in Long Beach in a Mustang driven by an older man in a sailor’s cap.

Six weeks later, after a severed head found in Long Beach Harbor was identified as Crotwell’s, his friends tracked down the Mustang, scouring beachfront neighborhoods--and led police to Randy Steven Kraft. That was in May, 1975, eight years before Kraft would be charged with Crotwell’s murder.

Twenty-six of the 37 young men Kraft now is accused of killing died during those eight years, and some Long Beach investigators involved in the Crotwell case in 1975 say those slayings could have been prevented if prosecutors had filed charges against Kraft then, as they requested.

As one Long Beach police officer put it: “Let’s just say the Crotwell case is a sore point around here.”

“We have so many homicides we have to look into, we usually don’t have the luxury of working a case more than 30 days if we aren’t getting anywhere,” another Long Beach police officer, Sgt. Robert Bell, said recently. “Crotwell was always an open case, and we knew damned well who killed him. But we just had to finally put it on the back burner and go on to other cases.”

All Young Men

Kraft, a former computer consultant who turns 42 this month, has been formally accused by Orange County prosecutors of 37 murders in three states; no one has been convicted of that many serial killings in U.S. history. All of Kraft’s alleged victims were young men; many were hitchhikers. Most were drugged, sexually molested and strangled; some were mutilated.

The Crotwell murder was the fourth of 16 with which Kraft has been formally charged in Orange County Superior Court. If Kraft is convicted, the jury will be told about the other 21 killings that prosecutors say he committed--including six in Oregon, two in Michigan and 13 others in Southern California--during the penalty phase of his trial, when evidence will be offered in an attempt to ensure a death sentence.

Kraft’s attorneys claim there still is not enough evidence to bring Kraft to trial for the Crotwell murder. While prosecutors have declined to discuss the strength of their case, they did present considerable evidence at a preliminary hearing in November, 1983.

Transcripts of testimony at that hearing show that on the night Crotwell disappeared, he and some friends had gone to Belmont Plaza, a beachfront area near some small shops and restaurants in Long Beach. Crotwell and Kent May, who was brooding about an argument with a girlfriend, met a man in a sailor’s cap in the parking lot, according to the testimony. The man in the cap asked them if they wanted to get high, May remembered later, and if they wanted to go for a ride.

Crotwell Remained in Car

May told police the man gave both of them drugs, in the form of yellow pills. And May passed out, he said, from a combination of drugs and alcohol, and was taken back to Belmont Plaza at his own request after he regained consciousness. But Crotwell remained in the car, a white Mustang with a black hardtop.

The severed head was found by some youngsters looking for starfish along a jetty on May 8, 1975, 40 days after Crotwell disappeared, and was identified two days later. An autopsy was inconclusive on the cause of death, and the coroner’s report labeled it a “possible drowning.”

But Crotwell’s friends were convinced the man in the Mustang knew something about his death. So May, Randy Cooper and brothers Frank and Terry Ditmar scoured beach area neighborhoods for the black and white Mustang. It was Terry Ditmar and Cooper who found it, near 1st and Gaviota streets in Long Beach, on May 13, 1975. They called Long Beach police.

Police investigator Michael C. Woodward traced the car’s license-plate number through the Department of Motor Vehicles and found that it was registered to Kraft, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing.

The vehicle registration did not show a Long Beach address, however, so Woodward began asking mail carriers in the neighborhood if Kraft was on their routes. One of them knew the name, and Woodward found Kraft at 1727 1/2 Ocean Blvd.

At first, Kraft told police he didn’t remember picking up Crotwell. Then he reluctantly agreed to be interviewed at police headquarters. There, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing, he said he and a man he met at Belmont Plaza had driven to Orange County after dropping off the young man’s friend.

In Orange County, Kraft told police, they turned onto El Toro Road and then onto a dirt road. There, his car bogged down in the mud and he went for help, Kraft said, and when he returned Crotwell was gone.

Kraft’s car was searched, but he was never arrested.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office was headed then by the late Joseph P. Busch. The decision not to file charges against Kraft would have been made in the Long Beach branch office, however. No one can remember now who made that decision, but two prominent prosecutors who were in the Long Beach office in 1975 defended it recently.

“It’s not enough to think you know who a killer is,” said Curt Livesay, now the No. 3 lawyer in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. “You have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt before 12 jurors.”

Sgt. Bell says the district attorney’s office in Long Beach had a reputation in 1975 for rejecting tough cases because of a desire to maintain a high conviction rate.

‘We Had Enough’

“The D.A.’s office in Long Beach at that time did not want any cases unless they were slam-damn, an open and shut case,” Bell said. “I thought then, and still think today, that we should have had a filing (of murder charges) against Kraft at that time. We had enough to do that.”

Livesay insists that the standards for determining whether to file charges were the same in the district attorney’s office then as they are now. But he is not surprised to hear the Long Beach prosecutors accused of being too conservative in the Crotwell case.

“Historically, the Long Beach branch of the district attorney’s office has always had a reputation of demanding good cases before going to trial,” Livesay said.

In May, 1975, when prosecutors refused to file charges against Kraft, investigators had no weapon and no physical evidence linking him to the body; in fact, investigators point out, they had no body.

“You have to understand that all we had was the boy’s head,” said William Collette, the Long Beach police investigator now in charge of the Crotwell case. “We didn’t have a body. We couldn’t even prove it was murder.”

Kraft’s attorneys claim that no one has yet refuted the explanation Kraft gave in 1975 of how he and Crotwell parted company, and they have argued in court documents that the evidence “allows no more than the inference that (Kraft) drove off with (Crotwell) after they and others shared some recreational drugs of an unknown nature.”

Had Remains Re-examined

In October, 1975, the skeletal remains of a headless body were found in Orange County within two miles of the site where Kraft told Long Beach police he had last seen Crotwell.

After Kraft’s 1983 arrest, Orange County sheriff’s investigators had those remains examined by forensic anthropologist Judy M. Suchey, who was given access to Crotwell’s medical records. She testified at Kraft’s preliminary hearing that she was “extremely certain” the remains were Crotwell’s.

Why it took so long to link the headless body to the Crotwell case remains a mystery.

“I’m sure we got a teletype from Orange County when those bones were found,” Long Beach investigator Bell said. “But we get flooded with teletypes. Maybe it came in on my day off, or when I was out on assignment. Maybe whoever saw it in our office didn’t think to make a connection.”

But even without the body, Bell says, investigators were convinced in 1975 they had enough evidence to ask prosecutors to file charges against Kraft.

Investigator Woodward met with someone in the district attorney’s Long Beach office soon after Kraft was interviewed to discuss arresting him. The official complaint states that the police asked prosecutors for a charge of furnishing drugs to a minor, which was denied. But Bell says police investigators also asked for a murder charge against Kraft.

Agrees With Decision

“The response was, ‘Come back when you’ve got more,’ ” Bell said. “But we never got anything more.” Bell says he cannot recall in detail but believes that little was done on the Crotwell investigation after a month or so.

The head of the Long Beach branch of the district attorney’s office at the time, John M. Provenzano, says he does not remember the Crotwell case. But after reviewing the facts recently, he said he agrees with the 1975 decision not to charge Kraft with murder.

“It’s not at all surprising to hear a police officer complain that we didn’t pick up a case,” said Provenzano, who is now back as head of the Long Beach office. “But that’s why in this state we don’t let the police officer go ahead and file charges against someone. We reserve that duty for lawyers trained to know if there is a good chance of conviction.”

HISTORY OF THE CROTWELL INVESTIGATION

March 30, 1975--Keith Daven Crotwell last seen driving away from Belmont Plaza parking lot in Long Beach with older man in a white Mustang with a black top after Crotwell’s friend, Kent May, is pushed out of the car in a drunken state.

May 8, 1975--An unidentified head is found along a jetty in Long Beach Harbor.

May 10, 1975--Long Beach police release the name of victim as Keith Daven Crotwell after dental-chart identification.

May 13, 1975--A friend of Crotwell sees the Mustang near First and Gaviota streets in Long Beach and reports it to police.

May 19, 1975--Long Beach police investigator Michael Woodward, after interviewing friends of Randy Kraft, locates Kraft’s address through local mail carriers. Questioned at his apartment, at 1727 1/2 Ocean Blvd., Kraft says he doesn’t recall meeting Crotwell but agrees to come to police headquarters later for an interview.Kraft is placed under surveillance,but shows up at police headquarters on schedule. He tells Woodward and investigator Bob Bell that he was with two young men at Belmont Plaza in the early hours of March 30 but that he does not remember their names. He says he dropped one of them off in the Belmont Plaza parking lot after the three drove around for 20 minutes. Then, Kraft says, he and the other man drove to El Toro Road in south Orange County and his car bogged down in some mud on a dirt road. He says that he went for help and that when he came back the young man was gone. Kraft agrees to a search of his car. He is later released.

May, 1975--Long Beach prosecutors decline to file charges against Kraft.

June 21, 1975--Kraft is arrested at a beach restroom in Long Beach and charged with misdemeanor lewd conduct. He receives a $200 fine and five days in jail.

June-July, 1975--Crotwell case, still listed as a possible drowning, is put on the back shelf by investigators who have to turn their attention to other murder cases.

Oct. 19, 1975--Skeletal remains of a body, with the head missing, are found in a culvert in Laguna Hills within two miles of where Kraft said he and Crotwell had been when his car bogged down. Long Beach investigators in the Crotwell case are unaware of the discovery.

Nov. 4, 1975--Forensic anthropologist Judy M. Suchey examines remains and reports that it’s the body of a young man, but no identification is made.

May 14, 1983--Kraft is arrested by California Highway Patrol officers in Mission Viejo.

May 14-15, 1983--Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators learn from Long Beach police about the Crotwell case.

Aug. 30, 1983--Forensic anthropologist Suchey, provided with Crotwell medical records, re-examines the 1975 skeletal remains and identifies the victim as Crotwell.

Nov. 7, 1983--Pathologist Walter R. Fischer testifies at Kraft’s preliminary hearing that Crotwell’s head was severed with “a sharp yet strong, sturdy knife.”