Events in the news this week.
Testimony is scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of Randy Steven Kraft, 43, who has been charged with 16 Orange County murders. If Kraft is convicted, prosecutors plan to introduce the names of 21 other slaying victims they believe are linked to Kraft in an effort to secure the death penalty for him.
Kraft was arrested May 14, 1983, on Interstate 5 in Mission Viejo by two California Highway Patrol officers who found the body of a young man in the front passenger seat of his car. The victim, Terry Lee Gambrel, a Marine, had been drugged and strangled with his own belt. Prosecutors claim that 14 of the 16 murders named in the charges plus an undisclosed number of others can be linked to Kraft through a handwritten list found in the trunk of his car at the time of his arrest.
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