O.C. Victim Sees New Start in Bonin’s End

Laughing and joking, downing ice-cold beers, the six passengers in this lumbering motor home are headed north for a vacation in the Valley of the Shadow of Death--San Quentin Prison.

The leader of the group is 35-year-old David McVicker, a blue-eyed, open-faced man who holds a place in the annals of American crime: He is a surviving victim of serial killer William G. Bonin, whose execution he plans to witness at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

When he was 14 years old, hitchhiking in Garden Grove, McVicker fell into the clutches of Bonin, the so-called Freeway Killer, who kidnapped and raped him at gunpoint. Though he eventually killed 14 of his young male victims, Bonin--miraculously--drove McVicker home after the assault and set him free.

“We’ll meet again,” Bonin told the boy.

Twenty-one years later, it seems Bonin was right.

“I’m looking more forward to this than anything in my life,” McVicker says, passing out beers to his friends as the Winnebago climbs out of Orange County, where McVicker lives and works as a disc jockey at a Santa Ana nightclub.

“I have to see it,” McVicker says of the execution. “It will change the mental videotape in my head. I can see him dead. I can see his body carried out. He can’t rape me anymore. He’s dead.”

Bonin was convicted of molesting and murdering 14 teenagers and dumping their bodies along roadways in Los Angeles and Orange counties in 1979 and 1980. He was sentenced twice to die.

Along for the strange road trip are a few boyhood friends, an old girlfriend and McVicker’s sister, Doreen Bartholomew, who risked this excursion although her doctor warned her that any stress could prove fatal. She suffered a stroke two years ago and underwent heart surgery four years ago.

In quiet moments, she says, you can hear that artificial heart valve making a loud clicking noise inside her chest.

McVicker tells everyone to be very quiet so they can hear his sister’s heart.

The sound of Bartholomew’s own heart--which vaguely resembles that of an old grandfather clock--often keeps her awake at night. But everyone has their demons, and Bartholomew’s heart murmur is no match for the nightmares that play on an endless loop in her brother’s head.

Bonin pointing a gun at his neck.

Bonin telling him to undress.

Bonin hitting him when he refused.

At the moment Bonin succumbs to a lethal injection, when a doctor finds life no longer pulsing through Bonin’s body, McVicker will uncork a magnum of 1990 “J” champagne and share it with the families of other victims on hand.

Outside the prison walls, McVicker’s friends will be blasting specially selected tunes (“Highway to Hell” and “Dead Man’s Party”) and cheering.

“It has nothing to do with partying or getting drunk,” McVicker says, lighting a cigarette and watching the rocky countryside zoom by the window. “It’s symbolic of our closure. It’s not a ceremony, but a ritual. It signifies a new time.”

“I think it’s closure for all of us,” says Steve Medeck, who grew up with McVicker and remembers Bonin well.

Two weeks before Bonin attacked McVicker, he invited Medeck into his car. Medeck vividly recalls refusing Bonin’s invitation and shudders to think what might have happened if he had accepted.

Alex Ratcliff, an engineer who takes the first shift driving the Winnebago, volunteers that “it gives you a feeling in the pit of your stomach to look at all those victims” in newspaper accounts of Bonin’s killings. “And have you noticed that two or three look a lot like David?”

Medeck, riding shotgun, nods solemnly.

“I hope that dude is crapping his pants,” Medeck says.

“I think he’s getting the easy way out,” says Medeck’s wife, Penny, who used to date McVicker. “I think he should feel some pain.”

Suddenly, up ahead, the lights from a California Highway Patrol car can be seen. Another accident in a trip littered with bloody car wrecks. Something lying in the road.

“I hope it’s not a horse or a cow,” Penny Medeck says.

“I hope it’s not a body,” someone mumbles.

“Boy, this is a pretty exciting trip,” Bartholomew says.

“Wait till you get there,” McVicker says in a deep, ominous voice.

Opening another beer, McVicker talks about how anxious he is for that moment when a lethal dose of drugs swirls into Bonin’s blood. On cue, Ratcliff and the Medecks begin singing the Broadway tune “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love you, tomorrow. You’re only a day away.”

McVicker laughs and begins to fiddle with the elaborate video equipment he has brought to record the occasion.

Just then, there is an explosion. Something lands atop the Winnebago with a deafening crack.

“What was that?!” McVicker says.

Apparently, someone has thrown something at the Winnebago from an overpass. Bartholomew, in a bit of paranoia, suspects the anti-death penalty forces.

“We’re ready for them,” McVicker says, chuckling.

But one of “them” is sitting quietly in the corner, meditating about this trip and its moral consequences.

Mike Leitao, a restaurant manager and 20-year friend of McVicker, stares at the farms and sheep along Interstate 5 and wonders if his pal will find peace once Bonin is dead.

“I think if I were in Dave’s position, I wouldn’t be on this trip,” says Leitao, who once was friendly with the brother of another Bonin victim. “Dave talks about ending the nightmares. I don’t know. It might just change them. I don’t know if you can ever really close something like this.”

McVicker brushes aside such thoughts.

He considers the day he crossed paths with Bonin--Sept. 8, 1975--as the day his childhood ended. From that moment forward, his life was marred by an inability to concentrate in school and a self-loathing that led him to abuse drugs. Co-workers harassed him, while friends often told tasteless jokes about his ordeal. He drifted, he sobbed, he drank, he felt dirty and ashamed and poured his heart out to friends and counselors.

Now all that ends. When Bonin draws his last breath Friday, McVicker will finally breathe easy.

“This is going to end it,” he says. “End it. Throw me forward. I’m so ready for this. This is the beginning of my life.”