Kraft Sentenced to Death : He May Be Worst U.S. Serial Killer

Judge Donald A. McCartin sentenced Randy Steven Kraft today to death in the gas chamber for the murders of 16 young men in Orange County, calling the 44-year-old computer consultant’s mutilation of many of the victims “just hard for me to comprehend.”

“I can’t imagine doing these things in scientific experiments on a dead person, much less someone alive,” McCartin said.

Kraft responded before judgement was pronounced: “I have not murdered anyone, and any reasonable review of the record will show that.”

Prosecutors claim that Kraft, whose Orange County murders spanned more than a decade, may be the worst serial killer in the nation’s history. They have accused him in court papers of 45 murders, including six in Oregon and two in Michigan. But they say the numbers could be more than 65, based on a “death” list found in Kraft’s car. It had 61 entries, with several indicating double murders.

Many legal experts believe that Kraft’s case, which took five years to bring to trial, could be the most expensive in the state, though the defense costs since Kraft’s arrest have been sealed by court order.

Kraft was arrested at 1:10 a.m. May 14, 1983, on the I-5 Freeway in Mission Viejo, half a mile north of the Oso Parkway exit, when two California Highway Patrol officers who stopped him for a traffic violation found a dead Marine in the front passenger seat of his car.

By the end of the week--after three separate searches of his Long Beach home and a search of his car--law enforcement authorities had enough evidence to link him to more than two dozen deaths of young men.

That number grew to 36 by the end of the year. A 37th was added to the prosecutor’s list two years later, and eight more, all from Los Angeles County, were attributed to Kraft just shortly before his trial began in the summer of 1988.

Orange County prosecutors used only 16 murders in their jurisdiction for the guilt phase of Kraft’s trial. During the penalty phase, evidence of eight more murders in Oregon and Michigan was presented to the jury.

McCartin noted that during his years on the bench he has sentenced at least eight others to death, but that the crimes of all of them put together “do not match Mr. Kraft’s record.”

McCartin said death was the only appropriate sentence for Kraft because “he’s got it coming.”

Kraft’s family--he has three sisters, parents, and numerous nieces and nephews, most of whom live in Orange County--chose not to attend the sentencing hearing, although they have been highly supportive of Kraft.

“Just say about us that Randy comes from a very strong family; we believe he is innocent, we don’t believe he received a fair trial,” said his sister, Doris Lane of Midway City. “I will never believe that Randy ever killed anyone.”

Kraft is under indictment in Oregon and Michigan but will not be tried there because he could not face a death penalty in those states.