Kraft to Face Single Trial in Multiple Murders

In a bitter blow to the defense, a judge ruled Saturday that Randy Steven Kraft will face the 16 murder charges against him at a single trial, not multiple trials.

The rare Saturday hearing on the issue also produced the most vehement argument yet by Kraft’s lawyers against allowing jurors to see a list found in Kraft’s car, a list which prosecutors claim is Kraft’s own handwritten score card of his victims.

Two more entries from the list--one of them most significant--were made public for the first time Saturday. But Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin remained steadfast in his refusal to make public the complete list, which has more than 60 entries, until Kraft’s trial is under way.

Kraft’s attorneys left McCartin’s courtroom in Santa Ana grim-faced and said they will immediately appeal the one-trial ruling to the 4th District Court of Appeal.

But unless the appellate court agrees to hear the issue and orders a stay, postponing the trial indefinitely, McCartin’s ruling should clear the way for the long-delayed Kraft trial to begin next month.

Jury selection in the case is scheduled to begin July 19. McCartin held the weekend session in part to make sure the case remained on schedule.

Defense lawyers had great hopes that McCartin would break up the case into 16 separate trials, or at least several trials.

“Unless this case is severed (into several trials), Randy cannot get a fair trial,” said Kraft attorney James G. Merwin.

The defense contends that the sheer number of slayings would so overwhelm a jury that its members would be inclined to convict him without a close look at the evidence.

Kraft, now 43, a former computer consultant from Long Beach, was arrested May 14, 1983, on the San Diego Freeway in Mission Viejo after two California Highway Patrol officers who stopped his car for a routine traffic violation found a dead Marine in the passenger seat next to him.

Though Kraft was eventually charged with 16 murders, Orange County prosecutors have accused him in court papers of another 21 “uncharged” slayings, including six in Oregon and two in Michigan. Prosecutors say they will use these 21 as evidence in an attempt to convict him of the 16 Orange County slayings, and to get a death verdict.

All 37 victims in the prosecution’s case were young men, mostly between 18 and 25. Most of them either had been drugged, sexually abused or mutilated.

Though the handwritten list found in Kraft’s car has been sealed for almost five years, 11 entries on the list were made public at Kraft’s preliminary hearing in 1983: EDM, Jail Out, Euclid, Marine Carson, MC HB Tattoo, 2 in 1 Hitch, Airplane Hill, New Year’s Eve, Marine Down, 7th Street, and Parking Lot. A 12th entry--2 in 1 Beach--was made public last year in prosecution papers.

Prosecutors apparently made other references to the list in written response to the defense’s severance motion. But McCartin this week ordered the prosecution brief sealed from the public.

Nevertheless, a defense lawyer made one item from the list public Saturday. The judge mentioned a second one himself.

Kraft attorney William J. Kopeny, in a lengthy and heated argument opposing admission of the list, mentioned “Angel” from the list to make a point. And McCartin mentioned “Portland ECK” from the list.

Because of the court order, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown said he could not say which names among the 37 victims he connects with those two notations. He also was not free to explain what “ECK” meant.

Oregon Cases

But clearly, prosecutors are claiming that “Portland ECK” connects Kraft to one of the six Oregon victims. It also helps explain for the first time why Oregon investigators were so quick to travel to Orange County after Kraft’s arrest.

Oregon investigators on the six unsolved slayings near Interstate 5 in that state had talked with Orange County investigators several times before Kraft was even a suspect. The two jurisdictions were convinced, because of the similarities, that the same person had committed all of their unsolved killings.

Oregon investigators until now have said nothing publicly about the list. But one Oregon law enforcement source agreed to discuss it with The Times if the Oregon connection to the list came out in an Orange County courtroom.

“You can bet we got excited when we learned what was on that list,” the source said. The source claims that the list contains two Oregon references which police believe are connected to two Oregon victims.

Defense attorney Kopeny argued strongly that once jurors see the list, it will be too easy for them to gloss over other prosecution evidence that may be weak.

“This document would become the focus of the prosecution’s case,” Kopeny argued. He added that prosecutor Brown could point to the list in his weaker cases and say “We know (Kraft) must have done it. He confessed. Here it is.”

Dispute About List

Kopeny said Brown can only speculate on what the list really is, adding that it could be interpreted as references to “sporting events, or events in history.”

In rebuttal, Brown said that with only two exceptions in the 16 Orange County slayings, “the death list is common to all of the charged cases.” Brown said the entire list must be in evidence to help authenticate the references he believes connect Kraft to those 14 murders.

While McCartin issued no ruling on the list itself, his decision indicated that he did not accept the defense arguments against it.

McCartin said he had four pages of notes about why he should not split the Kraft case into more than one trial. But he ruled without giving any explanation.

Brown said after McCartin’s ruling that he was relieved the Kraft case would remain a single trial.

“It was clearly the most important issue facing us before the trial,” Brown said.