Jury May Never Hear It : Kraft Lawyer Blames Bonin for One Killing

An attorney for Randy Steven Kraft filed new court documents Monday claiming that convicted “Freeway Killer” William G. Bonin was responsible for the Jan. 1, 1976, murder of Mark Howard Hall, one of 16 Orange County killings that Kraft is being tried for.

But it isn’t likely that Kraft’s jury will ever hear about it. Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin told Kraft’s lawyers last Friday that he did not think the admissibility of the evidence “is even a close issue” and ruled against it.

However, at the request of the district attorney’s office, the judge said he would wait until this week to make his decision final so that lawyers for both sides could file additional documents.

Kraft, now 44, is on trial in Santa Ana in one of the biggest criminal trials in the state’s history.

Hall, a 20-year-old Santa Ana man, was last seen at a New Year’s Eve party in San Juan Capistrano at the end of 1975. His body was found on Jan. 3, 1976, in Silverado Canyon, near Bedford Peak. He had been emasculated, and his windpipe was packed with dirt. Prosecutors have introduced evidence that Kraft’s fingerprints were found on a vodka bottle next to the victim’s head.

But Kraft attorney James G. Merwin claims that Bonin associate Vernon Butts, who committed suicide at the Los Angeles County Jail 9 years ago, was responsible for Hall’s death, which he called a “ritualistic” killing. Merwin claims that Butts killed Hall for Bonin, who already was in prison at the time on a conviction for child molestation. Merwin said Bonin and Butts had made a pact to continue killings if one of them was in jail to throw off the police.

“I think there is more evidence pointing in this direction than there is pointing at Randy, if we’re going to apply the same standards,” Merwin said.

But Kraft prosecutor Bryan F. Brown, who also prosecuted Bonin, told the court Monday that it was not possible that Butts was involved. Brown said his office can offer proof that Butts and Bonin did not even know each other at the time of Hall’s death.

Bonin was convicted in the early 1980s of murders of 10 boys in Los Angeles County and four more in Orange County and is now on Death Row. His two death sentences have been upheld by the state Supreme Court. On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Bonin’s appeal in the Orange County case.

The first Bonin killing, Brown said, came in 1979, nearly a year after his release from prison. It was then, not in 1975, that Butts and Bonin made their pact, Brown told the court. Three other co-defendants were arrested in the Freeway Killings besides Bonin and Butts.

“At the time of Mark Hall’s death, Bonin doesn’t know any of these guys,” Brown told the court.

But Kraft’s attorneys say that a ritualistic sign was carved into Hall’s skin, which makes his murder significantly different from the other 15 deaths in the Kraft case. Also, his body was not found dumped near a roadway or freeway ramp, as most of the others were.

“I really believe that Hall’s death was at the hands of a satanist,” Merwin said. “I think the jurors should hear about this.”

Merwin also said he could show that both Butts and Bonin were familiar with Silverado Canyon, and that Bonin once rented a house on Silverado Canyon Road, about 4 miles from the Hall crime scene, and that he and a brother once operated a bar in the area, 6 miles from where Hall was found dead.

Merwin was not in court Monday and said later that he would have to read a transcript of what Brown told the court before commenting. Merwin said he did not know of any evidence that Butts and Bonin did not know each other at the time Hall’s body was found.