Defense Wants Jury to See Correspondence : Kraft Letters Trigger Latest Trial Dispute

In a group of jailhouse letters the defense wants jurors to see, convicted serial killer Randy Steven Kraft wrote to a friend that he was worried the public will liken him to the Hillside Strangler or the Freeway Killer.

“People will think I’m no different from (Kenneth) Bianchi, (William) Bonin, and all those others,” Kraft wrote from Orange County Jail shortly after his arrest six years ago. “They will assume I’m a loner, a weirdo, no friends, no responsibilities, which isn’t true.”

Kraft’s death penalty hearing in Santa Ana came to a standstill Wednesday as attorneys and the judge engaged in heated debate, with the jury gone, about the admissibility of the jailhouse letters.

Kraft’s lawyers say they show that Kraft is a caring, sensitive person. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown argued vehemently that it was simply an attempt by Kraft to communicate with the jury without having to take the witness stand and face cross-examination.

“What we’ve got here is a statement by Mr. Kraft that he is not a serial killer,” Brown argued to Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin.

Kraft, now 44, was arrested on May 14, 1983, when two California Highway Patrol officers found a dead Marine in the front passenger seat of his car. That led to an investigation which resulted in prosecutors claiming Kraft may be the most prolific serial killer in the country, with at least 45 victims, all of them young men.

Kraft was convicted in May of the murders of 16 Orange County men. Prosecutors have linked him to eight other murders in the penalty hearing, six in Oregon and two in Michigan. Kraft has claimed he is innocent of all the killings.

McCartin said he will decide after further argument today whether to allow the jury to see the letters. But the judge warned the defense he saw them as hearsay which should not be admitted.

“Mr. Kraft could basically write up his whole life story and put it into evidence via letter form, and the district attorney couldn’t do anything about it,” the judge said.

But Kraft lawyer C. Thomas McDonald argued that he was only trying to give jurors some insight into Kraft.

“If poetry can come in (to evidence), if art can come in, certainly correspondence, care for other people can come in, sensitivity for other people’s problems can come in,” McDonald argued. “These are all legitimate issues that this jury is going to have to deal with.”

One of the letters McDonald brought Wednesday was written to Johanna Ramsay, one of his investigators.

Ramsay, on the witness stand, explained that she had given Kraft a book about John F. Kennedy, and Kraft had written to thank her, describing how deeply Kennedy’s death had affected him.

Prosecutor Brown later chided McDonald for his “innovative” tactic in getting that letter’s contents before the jury.

McDonald was scheduled to conclude the defense in the death penalty hearing Wednesday. But the brouhaha over the letters slowed the trial. McDonald is now scheduled to finish today.

The jurors have just one issue to decide: whether to return a death verdict against Kraft or a verdict of life without parole.