Kraft Condemned to Death by Jury for Serial Killings

Randy Steven Kraft, a 44-year-old computer expert portrayed by prosecutors as perhaps the most prolific serial killer in the country, was condemned to death by a jury Friday for the gruesome sex murders of 16 young men in Orange County.

Kraft sat with his hands folded, tapping his thumbs together as he heard the death verdict, but showed no emotion. He whispered to one of his attorneys to have the 10 women and two men on the jury polled individually about their verdict.

“He should die for what he did to all these people,” said juror Carol Neal, 33, of Tustin, outside the courtroom later. “I’ve had nightmares thinking about the horror of what this man has done.”

Juror Debora Garcia, 31, of Anaheim said: “I’m never going to be normal again. I was naive about so many things.”

The jurors, who had listened to the sometimes-grisly testimony since last September in the Santa Ana courtroom, said afterward that the choice between death and life in prison without parole--their only other option--was not close. After two days of deliberation, they took their first ballot Friday morning, and it was unanimous.

Most of the jurors hugged Shirley DeVaul and Judy Nelson, the mothers of two young Buena Park men whom Kraft killed together six years ago. DeVaul wore a tiny medallion on her blouse with a photo of her son.

“Justice has finally been done,” she said later. “It won’t bring back my son. But it’s a guarantee that Kraft won’t hurt anyone anymore.”

Nelson thanked the jurors and said later, “They could see my pain.”

Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin set a tentative sentencing date of Oct. 27. But Kraft’s lawyers told him they did not think they could be ready for a sentencing hearing by then.

On May 12, the jury convicted Kraft of all 16 murders presented to them. But during the penalty phase, prosecutors introduced eight more murders from Oregon and Michigan.

Authorities have linked Kraft to 45 murders altogether. But they say the numbers could be much greater, based on a list found in Kraft’s briefcase with 61 entries, which prosecutors have called his own “score card” of victims. The jurors saw fewer than half of the notations on the list but said afterward they had no doubt it was a death list.

Some jurors said they could find no reason to return a verdict less than death. Others said they felt some sympathy for Kraft’s many sisters, nieces and in-laws who testified about his character at the two-month penalty hearing.

“I feel like I know him better than his family does,” said juror Pat Marcantel, 37, of Fullerton. “I think his family needs to wake up. He was a manipulator.”

Several jurors said Kraft’s cool demeanor throughout the trial bothered them.

Marcantel said that when Kraft looked at her as the verdict was read, “It made me nervous. . . . I felt a pain in my stomach. This time, I just looked right back at him.”

Juror Garcia said she was convinced when the trial began that Kraft was innocent, because “he didn’t seem like he could do this. Then when I looked over the evidence myself, I went through everything with a magnifying glass. . . . Then I knew he was guilty.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown told jurors in closing arguments that Kraft’s arrest was “an end of an era, of Mr. Kraft flying freeways, murdering and dehumanizing people.” That rampage began in 1971 and ended with his arrest in 1983.

Law enforcement officials believe Kraft would pick up hitchhikers, ply them with alcohol and drugs, and then overpower them when they were too weak to resist. He would use their own shoelaces to bind their wrists, and then strangle many of them with their own belts. He would then dump their bodies along freeway ramps or in remote areas.

A favorite dumping ground was the maze of freeway connections at the juncture of the San Diego and San Gabriel River freeways in the northwest corner of Orange County.

The defense tried to show that evidence was not strong enough in some of the murders. In others, they tried to point to other suspects.

But juror Neal said very little that the defense did made any impact.

“I kept waiting, thinking, today is the day the defense is really going to come up with something. But it never happened,” she said.

Kraft attorney C. Thomas McDonald sat nervously outside the courtroom with the news media and the victims’ families for 30 minutes waiting for the doors to open for the 12:30 p.m. verdict. Because the jury had deliberated only two days, he said, “It doesn’t look very hopeful.”

Kraft’s family members, who had been surrounded by scores of news media people when the jury found Kraft guilty, did not appear in McCartin’s courtroom Friday.

The death verdict came almost 11 months after testimony began, making it the longest criminal trial in the history of Orange County Superior Court. Many legal experts believe it may also be one of the most expensive criminal cases California has ever seen. A judge, however, has sealed records of the costs from the public until all of Kraft’s appeals are exhausted.

Under California law, Judge McCartin has the authority to set aside the jury’s verdict and sentence Kraft to life without parole. But no Orange County judge has ever done that under the current capital-punishment law, and none of the principals involved expect McCartin to break that pattern. McCartin has already sentenced six men to death. All of them are at San Quentin State Prison awaiting the results of their appeals.

Lawyers and judges involved in Kraft’s case say it could be more than a decade before his appeals are exhausted and he is executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

Kraft never testified at his trial. But he wrote to friends from the Orange County Jail that he was innocent. He told The Times in a November, 1983, interview: “I don’t belong here.”

Kraft was arrested at 1 a.m. on May 14, 1983, when two California Highway Patrol officers stopped him for weaving across a lane on the northbound Interstate 5 in Mission Viejo. They found a dead 25-year-old Marine in the front passenger seat of his car. Kraft said the man was a hitchhiker but offered no explanation for his death.

Within 24 hours, Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators had linked Kraft to more than a dozen murders, based on evidence found in Kraft’s car and his home in Long Beach. That evidence included pictures of some of the victims after their deaths, and in clothes they had worn when last seen, personal belongings of some of the victims, and the list in the briefcase, which had coded items such as “New Year’s Eve,” “Marine Carson” and “2 in 1 Beach.”

“The pictures and the stuff at his house--the defense never explained any of it,” juror Neal said.

The motive for the killings, officials say, had to be sexual depravity. Many of the victims were emasculated or their bodies were mutilated with cigarette lighter burns or other objects.

Because Kraft has never admitted to the killings, the only motive ever attributed to him came from a close friend. The friend told police that Kraft once told him he had heard that “the ultimate orgasm is in death.” The authorities did not know if Kraft meant the death itself, or that sexual gratification was heightened at the moment of death.

Whichever way, prosecutor Brown said he believed that it was the motive for the killings. Judge McCartin, however, refused to let jurors hear it, based on vehement defense objections.

After Kraft’s conviction, his lawyers put on more than 50 character witnesses at his death penalty hearing. They all described Kraft as caring, loving and extremely bright. One poignant anecdote came from Carol Barnett, an elderly computer programmer who proudly described herself as one of Kraft’s proteges. It was Kraft, she said, who recognized she was being discriminated against within the company because of her age. Barnett said he went out of his way to help her learn about computers.

“He didn’t shun me aside like some of the others,” she told the jurors.

But prosecutor Brown suggested to jurors that Kraft was a man with a mask. He wore the mask at work and with family and friends. But on his nighttime excursions hunting for hitchhikers, Brown said, “we got to see what Randy Kraft was really all about.”

Before his trial began, Kraft’s lawyers had argued for 16 separate trials.

“It’s simply impossible for anyone to get a fair trial when a jury is told he has committed 16 murders,” said Kraft attorney James G. Merwin. But Judge McCartin refused to split up the case.

“Once we lost that, it was all over, even the penalty phase is probably a foregone conclusion,” said Kraft attorney William J. Kopeny during the trial.

Many of the jurors said the Kraft case has permanently affected their lives. The longer it went on, they said, the more shocking were the horrors they heard about.

“I tossed and turned every night; every death seemed to replay itself,” said Jim E. Lytle, 29, of Garden Grove, foreman for the penalty phase of the trial.

Juror Neal said she had always had doubts about the validity of the death penalty, but not now.

“We’d see the most horrible photos of what happened to some of these victims, and I’d look at Kraft and think, ‘Did you really do that?’ ” Neal said. “Then after I’d heard all the evidence, I’d look at him and think, ‘You really did do these things. . . . You deserve to die.’ ”

Staff writers Lily Eng and Mary Lou Fulton contributed to this story

RANDY STEVEN KRAFT

Born March 19, 1945, in Long Beach

Grew up in Westminster. Graduated from Westminster High School in 1963 with honors; was active member of debating team and one of top varsity tennis players.

Attended Claremont Men’s College; majored in economics and graduated in 1968.

After graduation, served one year in the U.S. Air Force as airman basic; discharge related to homosexuality.

Previous arrest record: two arrests for lewd conduct--1966 in Huntington Beach and in 1975 in Long Beach. Spent five days in jail and was fined $125 in the Long Beach incident.

Was working as a self-employed computer consultant.

Has been a Long Beach resident since 1970.

Compiled by Susan Davis Greene

IN PART II--One victim’s family. Page 1.

It was the longest trial in the history of the court. Page 4.

It was one of the most costly trials in state history. Page 4.