SOUTHLAND : Serial Killer Randy Kraft Should Die in Gas Chamber, Jury Recommends
“Score card killer” Randy Kraft should die in the gas chamber for his two-decade spree of sexual violence and mutilation that left at least 16 young men and boys dead, a jury decided today.
The jury had convicted Kraft of 16 murders May 12. They began deliberations Wednesday on the penalty.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin will sentence Kraft on Oct 27. He can reduce the punishment to life imprisonment. A death sentence will automatically be appealed.
The verdict follows months of grisly testimony about the deaths, which took place from 1972 to 1983. Kraft, a 44-year-old computer consultant, picked up hitchhikers, disabled them by plying them with drugs and alcohol, sexually tortured and mutilated them, and then strangled them, prosecutors said.
The 16 murder convictions are one of the nation’s biggest killing rampages, but prosecutors contend that they are fewer than half of Kraft’s bloody legacy. He has been linked to at least 21 other slayings in California, Oregon and Michigan.
A so-called “death list” in Kraft’s car, which prosecutors say contains coded references to his victims, led Kraft to be dubbed the “score card killer.”
He was arrested May 14, 1983, when Highway Patrol officers pulled him over for erratic driving and discovered a strangled Marine in the car.
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