Witness Tells of Bridge Game With Kraft on Night of 2 Slayings

Randy Steven Kraft was playing bridge with friends the night that two men he is accused of killing were last seen alive near Cypress College, a defense witness testified Tuesday.

But Orange County prosecutors, who have charged Kraft with 16 murders, view that bridge game in 1983 as highly beneficial to their own case.

Several defense witnesses at Kraft’s trial in Orange County Superior Court have testified about his activities the weekend that two men, Geoffrey Alan Nelson and Rodger James DeVaul, died. The attorneys contend that Kraft did not have time to kill them, dump their bodies 48 miles apart, and still be at places where witnesses saw him.

Nelson, 18, and DeVaul, 20, were last seen at about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, Feb. 12, 1983. Nelson’s body was found at 5:30 a.m. that morning along the Euclid Street on-ramp to the Garden Grove Freeway in Garden Grove. DeVaul’s body was found near Mt. Baldy in the Angeles National Forest the next day, Sunday, but evidence showed that he could have been dumped there as early as Saturday morning.

A co-worker of Kraft has placed him in Rolling Hills Estates, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, at St. Ives Laboratories at 9 a.m. that Saturday. On Tuesday, Harry Eylar, a friend of Kraft, testified that on the Friday night before the victims were last seen, he was with Kraft at a poker and bridge party at a friend’s house in Huntington Beach. Kraft played bridge, Eylar said, until the games broke up at almost midnight.

But prosecutors were excited about Eylar’s testimony for several reasons:

One is that it places Kraft in Orange County the same night Nelson and DeVaul were last seen. It also leaves an hour and a half between the time he left the party and the time the victims disappeared.

But also important to prosecutors was the revelation that the card party was in Huntington Beach. They have contended that an entry of “2 in 1 Beach” on a list found in Kraft’s car stands for the Nelson and DeVaul killings. That is because what appeared to investigators as beach sand was found on DeVaul’s body.

But now prosecutors are wondering whether “2 in 1 Beach” refers to the fact that Kraft played cards in Huntington Beach the night that he found two men together.

Prosecutors contend that the list with 61 entries found in Kraft’s car is his own score card of people he has killed. Kraft’s attorneys argue that the list is meaningless.

Kraft attorney C. Thomas McDonald has also said he believes that the defense has shown that it was virtually impossible for Kraft to have killed Nelson and DeVaul. He would had to have done it all either between 1:30 a.m. and 5:20 a.m.--evidence shows Nelson’s body was dumped immediately before it was found--or between 5:20 a.m. and 9 a.m., when he was at work at St. Ives.

Prosecutors contend that the time parameters set out by the defense’s own witnesses show it was possible.

Pictures of DeVaul were found in Kraft’s car and house. In several of them DeVaul is nude, and in others a mark is clearly shown on his neck. Pathologists say the neck mark is the result of pressure on the neck which killed him. Also, DeVaul is wearing Nelson’s jacket in the pictures, which he had only borrowed for that night.

Other defense witnesses Tuesday included two men who worked with Kraft at Lear Siegler Inc. in 1980, when another of the men Kraft is accused of killing was found.

The victim, Wyatt Loggins, 19, was last seen alive the night of Aug. 20, 1980, near the Huntington Beach Pier.

Witness Ben Wroblewski said he had a business lunch with Kraft in San Diego on Saturday, Aug. 21, after they had worked together that morning.

“Did he appear to be preoccupied with anything?” asked Kraft attorney James G. Merwin.

“Not at all,” Wroblewski said.

“Out of sorts in any way?”

“No.”

“Disheveled? Businesslike?”

“Businesslike,” Wroblewski answered.

Pictures of Loggins on a couch were found in Kraft’s car and home.

The Kraft trial, which began with jury selection last July, is now into the third week of the defense’s testimony. Attorneys for Kraft, 43, so far have touched on just five of the 16 deaths with which he is charged.