‘Freeway Killer’ Bonin Executed by Injection

William G. Bonin, the notorious “Freeway Killer” who seared his way into the nation’s consciousness with a string of sadistic murders 16 years ago, was executed at San Quentin Prison early today, becoming the first person in California to die by lethal injection.

Bonin, a former Downey truck driver who confessed to raping, torturing and killing 21 boys and young men, was put to death in the prison’s converted gas chamber. He was declared dead at 12:13 a.m.

At 10:47 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a desperate, last-minute appeal by Bonin’s attorneys to spare his life. Earlier Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco--and then a larger panel from the same court--refused to block the execution.

Outside the prison gates, hundreds of death penalty opponents and supporters engaged in raucous, often angry demonstrations, becoming increasingly confrontational as the execution neared.

Bonin, 49, was the third prisoner in California to be executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

One of the most prolific killers in U.S. history, Bonin spent his final hours peacefully, prison officials said, reading his mail and chatting with relatives, friends and attorneys.

Moved at 6 p.m. to a special “death watch” cell beside the execution chamber, Bonin ate a last meal of coffee ice cream and pizza with pepperoni and sausage, and watched the television game show “Jeopardy.”

San Quentin spokeswoman Joy Macfarlane said he appeared relaxed but resigned, and met with a Catholic chaplain.

Earlier, he also found time to speak to a San Francisco radio station. In an interview with KQED-FM, Bonin said he had “made peace with it” and has even managed to joke with the prison warden about his impending death.

But the multiple murderer had chilling words for the family members of his victims, some of whom planned to attend his execution in an effort to find a measure of peace themselves.

“They feel that my death will bring closure,” Bonin said. “But that’s not the case. They’re going to find out.”

As the light faded, relatives of several of Bonin’s victims arrived at the prison to witness the execution. Some had to elbow their way through a crowd of photographers.

Authorities tightened security at the prison and throughout the area. Prisoners were locked in their cells and their recreation times were canceled. Freeway offramps into San Quentin were closed. Roads into San Quentin Village, a bayside hamlet beside the prison, were blocked.

Sheriff’s deputies and correctional officers swarmed in and around prison grounds, apparently to ward off any trouble from the death penalty opponents and supporters demonstrating outside. The crowd swelled, with people streaming into the area as midnight approached.

“I wish I could be in there watching,” said Erwin Baumgartner, a glazier and adamant supporter of capital punishment. “I think the man should die. . . . I don’t think it’s cruel and I don’t think it’s unusual. It happens all over the world.”

Michael Levine, a San Francisco middle school teacher, was videotaping the demonstrations to show to his class, which he said included several children of San Quentin inmates and the son of the prison chaplain.

Levine said he understood the views of death penalty advocates, especially after talking to relatives of several victims. “But morally, I don’t think the state should model killing,” he said.

Many in the crowd, which included actor Mike Farrell, were death penalty opponents. Some carried candles. Others chanted, strummed guitars and sang. Shouting matches broke out as demonstrators hurled insults back and forth.

Thursday afternoon, several of Bonin’s surviving victims and relatives of several others gathered near the prison for an unusual news conference.

“I just can’t wait to see [Bonin] take his last breath,” said Sandra Miller, the mother of Russell Duane Rugh, 15, of Garden Grove, who was last seen near his home waiting for a bus to take to work at a fast-food restaurant. His body was found March 22, 1980, beside California 74 next to the body of 14-year-old Glen Barker of Huntington Beach, another of Bonin’s victims.

Miller said she regrets Bonin’s death will be relatively painless. As she spoke, Miller hugged David McVicker, a Santa Ana deejay whom Bonin raped at gunpoint in 1975. McVicker was 14.

“I think they ought to give him over to the [victims’] parents and David,” Miller said. “We’d fix him.”

The planned execution prompted small protests in Southern California on Thursday night.

“What he did to those children is wrong. Those children were our future. . . .. He’s taken that away from us,” said Sister Catherine Vallejo, a Catholic nun who joined 22 other death penalty opponents for a rush-hour demonstration in Orange. “But to take Bonin’s life is not going to make anything right or teach us to be better human beings.”

About three dozen death penalty opponents held a candlelight vigil at Civic Center Plaza in Santa Ana, singing and praying in the chill air.

Bonin’s lawyers sought to block the execution by arguing that their client did not receive a fair trial and was denied a choice of the method of his execution.

Gov. Pete Wilson this week denied a separate plea that sought clemency on the grounds that Bonin received inadequate legal representation during a pair of trials in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Wilson, who could have reduced the sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole, said Bonin’s guilt was “beyond dispute.”

On Thursday, the governor said there was no reason to halt the execution, and described the Freeway Killer as a “poster child for capital punishment.”

Bonin was convicted of raping and killing 14 boys and young men, some of them hitchhikers, during a yearlong rampage that spread fear across Southern California.

Bonin’s rampage coincided with a similar series of murders later linked to serial killer Randy Kraft. Kraft was convicted in 1989 of 16 murders and awaits execution.

Bonin was arrested in Hollywood on June 11, 1980, while sodomizing a 17-year-old runaway from Orange County. In Bonin’s van, police found gear that Bonin had used to rape and strangle his young victims: wire, rope and a jack iron with which he twisted victims’ T-shirts around their necks.

Friends who helped Bonin carry out some of the murders implicated him as the mastermind and, in court testimony, portrayed a killer with an insatiable lust for young men.

In separate trials, Bonin was found guilty in 1982 of 10 murders in Los Angeles County and four more in Orange County in 1983.

The performance of Bonin’s lead trial attorney, William Charvet, became a focus of Bonin’s appeals. His legal team in the state public defender’s office sought a new trial, contending that Charvet made an inappropriate book deal with Bonin and failed to raise Bonin’s abuse-ridden childhood during the trials.

Born Jan. 8, 1947, Bonin grew up in a home run by a violent father who drank and gambled to excess, once losing the family home, according to a psychiatric report submitted for Bonin’s appeal. His parents often left Bonin and his two brothers alone, according to defense statements and doctors’ reports. His parents later sent him to an orphanage.

At age 8, Bonin was sexually assaulted while living in a Connecticut detention center, and he later fondled his brother and neighborhood boys, Bonin told doctors. His mother, Alice Benton, said she suspected her father had molested William as he had abused her, according to a court declaration by a New York psychiatrist who interviewed her.

Bonin served as a helicopter gunner in Vietnam, where, it was learned later, he assaulted two soldiers under his command. Later, Bonin was convicted in 1969 of sexually assaulting five boys in Los Angeles County.

In 1975, he was convicted of raping McVicker, whom he picked up hitchhiking in Garden Grove. Bonin told a police officer that he would not leave a living witness next time.

The murders began in 1979--a year after Bonin’s release from state prison--when the bodies of victims began turning up next to roadways and behind buildings across several counties.

Bonin has been on California’s death row for nearly 13 years.

The last California inmate put to death was David Edwin Mason in 1993. Robert Alton Harris, executed in 1992, was the only other California prisoner put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.

Ellingwood and Moehringer reported from San Quentin and Trounson from Costa Mesa. Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Dexter Filkins in San Quentin and Deborah Schoch in Orange County.