Kraft Told Friend Death Was Sexual Thrill, Police Report Says

Randy Steven Kraft once told a friend that death was the ultimate sexual experience, according to a police report made public at a non-jury hearing Thursday.

It was the first public revelation of any motive for Kraft, who is suspected of killing 45 people between 1971 and 1983.

However, Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin refused to let jurors hear the statement after Kraft’s attorneys protested that the friend, Leonard Brouett of Seattle, has since qualified it.

“It’s shaky . . . I could go into my reasons why, but I won’t,” the judge said.

The judge added that he thought that the statement was “too fraught with problems” for the jury to hear it.”

Kraft, 44, was convicted last month of the murders of 16 young men in Orange County. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown claims that Kraft’s killing spree resulted in a total of 45 deaths, including six young men in Oregon and two in Michigan. Most of the victims, between 18 and 25 with few exceptions, showed signs of sexual mutilation or abuse.

Testimony from pathologists and other crime lab experts have indicated that many of the victims were abused either after death or when they were in the throes of death. But no indication had ever been made public before as to whether the actual death was a factor in the attacker’s sexual aberrations.

The revelation about the Kraft statement was made during the last day of testimony for the week in the penalty phase of Kraft’s trial. The jurors who found him guilty of 16 murders must decide when the hearing ends whether to return a verdict of death or life without parole.

Brouett and his roommate, Gary Newell, are key witnesses against Kraft in one of the Oregon murders, which is how the statement about the ultimate sexual experience came up in court.

According to court records, Brouett told an Oregon investigator on July 16, 1983, two months after Kraft’s arrest, that Kraft had made that statement to him “off the wall” when they were in Kraft’s car. Brouett said he was surprised to hear Kraft say it and quickly changed the subject.

But Kraft attorney William J. Kopeny said Brouett told a defense investigator that he wasn’t sure if Kraft made that statement or if he imagined Kraft said it after the Seattle pair learned about his arrest.

Prosecutor Brown, however, offered a different view based on his interview with Brouett Thursday morning before court. Brown said Brouett told him that while he was now unsure about the statement, he is sure that he was telling the truth when interviewed by the Oregon investigator in 1983.

Brown quoted Brouett as telling him: “That is an accurate statement of what I said at that time, but since 1983, my memory has faded.”

Even without the statement, the testimony from the two Kraft friends was extremely damaging to the defense.

Kraft, a computer consultant, had been working at the Peerless Trailer Division, a Portland, Ore., division of the Santa Monica-based Lear Siegler Inc., during the first four days of December, 1982.

It was Dec. 3, 1982, when 29-year-old Tony Silveira was last known to be alive. He had told his family he would be hitchhiking south of Portland down Interstate 5, which is within a few miles of where Kraft was working. Silveira had been on National Guard duty that week and was returning to his home in Medford, Ore.

On Dec. 4, after leaving Peerless, Kraft drove a rental car to Seattle to visit Newell and Brouett. Both men testified that he had with him a green fatigue jacket with a name stenciled on it. They both recalled the name sounded Latino and began with an “S.” Brouett testified that it sounded something like “Silvestry.” They both said that they took Kraft out for a drink with friends and that one of them told Kraft, after looking at the fatigue jacket he was wearing: “You don’t look Hispanic.”

The next day, Kraft left them to fly from Seattle to Grand Rapids, Mich., where he was scheduled to report to another Lear Siegler division, CCSD. Prosecutors claim that he killed two more young men in Grand Rapids.

The fatigue jacket with the Silveira name was found on the floor where Kraft was staying in Grand Rapids, just 12 feet from his door.

Silveira’s body was not found until more than a week later, dumped in a ditch off a rural road near I-5 a few miles from where Kraft had been staying.

Kraft, who sported a bow tie in court Thursday, appeared undisturbed when the statement about sex was debated. But Kraft had a huge smile and nodded hello when Newell appeared in court to testify.

Brouett testified that Kraft had gone back out to his rental car to retrieve the jacket because they had decided to smoke some marijuana and Kraft had some in the jacket’s pocket. Kraft lawyers were successful in getting the marijuana statements stricken from the record, but not before the jurors had heard it.

Brown is expected to conclude evidence in the last of the six Oregon murders Monday and finish discussing the Michigan deaths Tuesday.

The defense will not begin its case until July 17.