Former Associates Say Kraft Was Likable

A parade of Randy Steven Kraft’s neighbors and former co-workers testified Tuesday that he was neat, clean, likable and a cheerful person to work with. Their testimony for the defense contrasted sharply with Orange County prosecutors’ claims that Kraft is a sadistic serial killer responsible for the murders of at least 45 young men.

The character witnesses’ testimony came after Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin decided not to let jurors see an anonymous letter of confession sent to authorities after Kraft was arrested in 1983.

The letter was from someone named “Les” who confessed to numerous murders of young men in Orange County and who said that Kraft was being falsely blamed for them.

In the letter, Les stated: “I am the new Zodiac . . . come to liquidate the evil boys and men of this area. My method will or has been the rope.”

Prosecutors and law enforcement officials claim the letter is a phony. But Kraft’s attorneys had sought to have the letter admitted into evidence for the defense. McCartin ruled Tuesday that the letter does not even come close to meeting the standards of being admissible to a jury.

Jurors did, however, hear M. Carol Barnett say of Randy Kraft: “He was a fine person; he was considerate, thoughtful. I liked him.” Barnett works for J.L. Products in Gardena, where Kraft worked as a computer consultant for several years until his arrest.

Most of the jurors--and Kraft himself--laughed when Barnett said people could always tell when Kraft was irritated because “his neck would get red.”

Kraft, 43, who had been living quietly in Long Beach’s gay community at the time of his arrest, is being tried in Santa Ana for 16 murders committed in Orange County. Prosecutors have filed court papers accusing him of another 29 murders, which they may include at a separate penalty hearing if he is convicted.

That Kraft could be guilty of murder at all is a thought that shocks Pennie DeWees, his neighbor in Long Beach for several years.

DeWees said Kraft was always willing to help her, and she described how she would see him walking his dog, Max, later described as part pit bullterrier, part bulldog. “He was a wonderful neighbor,” she said.

CHP officers arrested Kraft shortly after 1 a.m. on May 14, 1983, when they found the body of a Marine, Terry Lee Gambrel, 25, in the front seat of Kraft’s 1979 brown Toyota Celica.

Some acquaintances of Kraft who testified Tuesday helped fill in some of his activities in the days before Gambrel’s body was found.

John Robert Moutier, an executive at Lear Siegler, where Kraft worked as a consultant in 1983, said Kraft helped the company install some new computer systems on Thursday, May 12 at its Compton office, and that Kraft returned on Friday, May 13, and spent most of the day there.

Moutier said he had gone out for a late lunch at 1:30 p.m. and that when he returned, Kraft had left him a note saying he was finished for the day and would return on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Clayton Herringer, a friend of Kraft and his roommate, Jeff Seeling, testified that the three of them and two other men were at the Kraft/Seeling house in Long Beach sometime after 3 p.m. that Friday, loading supplies for a chocolate show at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Seeling is a candy maker.

Herringer said that they left sometime around 5 p.m. and that Kraft had not gone with them. Kraft was arrested 8 hours later along the northbound Interstate 5 in Mission Viejo.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown objected several times that much of the defense testimony about Kraft was irrelevant. McCartin allowed most of it, although he did become irritated after Barnett took nearly an hour to read off a list of about 80 dates on which Kraft had worked at J.L. Products. When both prosecutor Brown and the judge complained that the list was of doubtful relevancy, Kraft attorney C. Thomas McDonald told them it was just as relevant to his case as the lengthy inventory of items found in Kraft’s car had been to the prosecution.

In the audience Tuesday was Shirley DeVaul, mother of Rodger James DeVaul Jr., one of the 16 victims in the charges. She is the only one of the parents in the case who, until Monday, had not missed a single day in court since the trial testimony began last September.

In explaining her absence for Monday, DeVaul said that her son’s birthday occurred over the weekend and that she would not have felt right coming to court near that date. He was found dead on Feb. 13, 1983. A picture of DeVaul, wearing the jacket he had only worn the night he disappeared, was found in Kraft’s car, with an abrasion on his neck.

“The pain was too great” for her to have attended Monday, she said.