Alleged ‘Death List’ Debated : Orange County Jury Gets Kraft Serial Murder Case

The extraordinary, 16-count murder case against computer consultant Randy Steven Kraft was submitted to a jury Thursday after prosecutors and defense attorneys debated whether Kraft carried with him a “death list” of his victims.

The list, with 61 entries, has prompted Orange County prosecutors to allege that Kraft is one of the worst serial killers in the nation’s history.

But defense attorney James G. Merwin argued Thursday that the handwritten list, found in the trunk of Kraft’s car, may be no more than a guest list for a roommate’s birthday party.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown called it “a dynamite piece of evidence” which ties together 14 of the 16 murders Kraft is accused of committing.

Prosecutors have linked Kraft in court papers to a total of 45 murders. Six killings occurred in Oregon, two in Michigan and the rest in Southern California. If the list is a score card of victims, the death toll would amount to 65.

The mammoth task of preparing a defense against so many murders has led Kraft’s lawyers to seek more than a dozen trial delays since his arrest almost 6 years ago.

While his trial may not last as long as some--the Hillside Strangler serial murder trial, for example, ran for 2 years--some legal experts believe the Kraft case could become the most expensive criminal case ever tried in California.

Kraft’s lawyers were deeply concerned Thursday about whether jurors will be able to judge each of the 16 murders individually.

“Don’t convict Randy of a crime he did not commit,” Merwin urged the panel.

“Mr. Brown would like for the jury to see the charges as just a blur, all of them related,” said Kraft co-counsel C. Thomas McDonald afterwards. “But they are conscientious jurors. We can only hope that they don’t.”

The jurors were sequestered at a hotel Thursday night, and will return at 9 a.m. today to begin their deliberations. Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin had announced earlier that the jury would be isolated during deliberations, a step rarely taken in criminal cases.

“Say your goodbys to the outside world,” McCartin told jurors before a brief lunch recess.

McCartin ordered the sequestration over the strenuous objections of Kraft’s lawyers, who argued it might put subtle, undue pressure on the jurors to rush to a verdict so they can return home sooner. But McCartin said he did not want the jurors to be subjected to any discussions or news about the case from friends, neighbors or the media.

McCartin has been impatient with the pace of the trial, particularly since the defense began in January. Most of the time, the defense could not schedule enough witnesses to fill a full day of testimony.

Nevertheless, the trial has moved more quickly than some had predicted. For example, the “Night Stalker” trial in Los Angeles, in which transient Richard Ramirez is charged with 13 murders, began on the same day last July as the Kraft trial. The Ramirez defense is not scheduled to begin until next week.

The difference in the two cases is the length of time it took to select a jury. The Kraft case was ready for testimony in September, the Ramirez case not until January.

Kraft was arrested May 14, 1983, after two California Highway Patrol officers found a dead Marine--25-year-old Terry Lee Gambrel--in the front passenger seat of Kraft’s car when they stopped him for a traffic violation on Interstate 5 in Mission Viejo.

Gambrel had been strangled with his own belt, found in the back seat of Kraft’s car. Drugs found in his system matched prescription drugs made out to Kraft. The drugs were also found in Kraft’s car.

Brown argued to jurors that the only reason Kraft was caught weaving his car across the traffic lanes was because he was sexually molesting Gambrel’s dead body.

Besides the list found in Kraft’s trunk, the most dramatic evidence against him were pictures of young men, some nude and appearing lifeless, found under the floorboard on the driver’s side of the car.

Those pictures linked Kraft to four unsolved deaths. One showed a victim, 20-year-old Rodger James DeVaul Jr., with a wrist bound and a ligature mark on his neck. In the picture, he is wearing a jacket that he had borrowed and had worn only on the night he disappeared.

Trying to Get Help?

Kraft lawyer McDonald argued to the jurors that the pictures alone did not prove murder. In the Gambrel death, he suggested that it was at least possible Gambrel might have been in distress when Kraft picked him up and that Kraft was only trying to get help for him.

But Kraft, who was driving under the speed limit when stopped, had told the officers nothing about Gambrel needing help.

“If Kraft was trying to get help for him, what would be the first thing he would do when you saw a police car? He’d stop that thing and tell that policeman to get on his car radio and get the paramedics.”

The most heated argument of the day came when Brown placed in front of jurors color photographs, some of them showing gruesome sexual mutilations, of all 16 victims in an attempt to convince the panel that the deaths shared common characteristics.

McDonald accused Brown of “highly inflammatory” tactics. Brown argued, however, that it was important to show all 16 deaths together.

“These murders are all related, and we need to show it,” Brown answered.