Mothers Testify in Death-Penalty Phase : Victims’ Possessions Are Linked to Kraft

Two mothers from Michigan who testified during the penalty phase of Randy Steven Kraft’s murder trial Monday contributed more than just emotional testimony about their sons’ deaths. They linked their sons’ possessions to the computer consultant.

One identified her son’s car keys, found in Kraft’s hotel room. The other identified her son’s jacket, belt and boots, found at Kraft’s Long Beach home.

The bodies of their sons, Christopher Alan Schoenborn, 20, and Dennis Patrick Alt, 24, were found dumped along a rural roadside a few miles north of Grand Rapids, Mich., on Dec. 9, 1982. Schoenborn, nude and grotesquely mutilated, had been strangled. Alt, partially disrobed, had been choked with a belt, or something similar.

Michigan Murders

Kraft, 44, was convicted in Santa Ana last month of murdering 16 young men in Orange County. But Orange County prosecutors have linked him in court papers to a total of 45 deaths, including six in Oregon and the Alt/Schoenborn murders in Michigan.

For the penalty phase of Kraft’s trial, now in its second week of testimony, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown has chosen to add to his case only the Oregon and Michigan murders in seeking the death penalty. Kraft’s attorneys will ask the jurors for their only other option, life in prison without parole.

Jurors will not decide whether Kraft killed the Oregon and Michigan murder victims, but prosecutors are using those cases to bolster their argument that Kraft’s crimes go beyond Orange County and warrant the death penalty.

Brown, who presented all but one of the Oregon deaths last week, is expected to rest his case today. Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin has announced that he will give the defense until July 17 to begin its side.

Kraft’s attorneys asked very few questions of any of the witnesses concerning the Michigan murders, as they did with the Oregon deaths last week. Although they point out that Kraft still insists he has never murdered anyone, defense lawyers contend that it makes little sense to challenge the eight out-of-state murder cases when jurors already believe that Kraft is a serial killer.

Kraft’s Character

Their defense, they say, will concentrate on Kraft’s character and his background, not the new murders.

In the Michigan murders, like most of the Oregon murders, the evidence linked to Kraft is considerable.

Alt and Schoenborn had gone to the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in downtown Grand Rapids for a horticulture convention on Dec. 7, 1982. Kraft was at the hotel for a seminar for Lear Siegler Inc., the Santa Monica-based firm where he worked at the time.

A Lear-Siegler colleague of Kraft’s, Ronald G. Titgen, testified Monday that he and Kraft spent more than hour that night with Schoenborn at Tootsie’s, one of the hotel’s bars. Their boss, Roger L. Thomas, joined them for part of the time.

“Chris (Schoenborn) was kidding us about being rich city folks, while he was just a poor dirt farmer,” Titgen related.

When the group broke up, Titgen said, he went up to his room, but Kraft said he had to make some telephone calls first. Kraft had already left town when the two bodies were found two days later.

But keys found in his hotel room fit Alt’s car. Alt’s mother, Thelma, told jurors that she recognized them. Schoenborn’s mother, Carol, provided the most detail. She identified her son’s jacket in detail, down to the Velcro pocket flaps and marks where an identification tag she had made had been torn out.

She was able to describe the belt not only in size, 34, but in width--she had taken her tape measure to the store when she bought it for him to make sure that it would go through the belt loops of his pants. She also identified two feather inlets in the belt, one on each end.

She identified the boots by the thick black heels and the laces.