PATRICK KEARNEY: THE TRASH BAG MURDERER

“I disposed of the body… You aren’t going to find him”.  Patrick Wayne Kearney was a 1970s serial killer from California and this was his M.O.  During his twelve-year killing spree that lasted from 1965-1977, a total of thirty-two men were killed this way and only twenty-one of them received justice.
           
Patrick Kearney was born September 24, 1939 in East Los Angeles to a family that was, for the most part, stable.  He was the youngest child and had two older brothers. As a child, he was thin and quite feeble.  At school, he was tormented by bullies. In fact, many of his victims bore similarities to people who had harassed him in his youth. He was a reserved and quiet teenager and it was in his teens that he began fantasizing about murder. For work, Kearney was employed by Hughes Aircraft as an engineer. His overseer at Hughes Aircraft described him as a “model worker”.     
           
In his adult life, Kearney only married once. The marriage was short-lived and ultimately resulted in divorce. In 1967, Kearney relocated to Redondo Beach near Los Angeles with a younger man named David Hill. Hill became Kearney’s lover. Kearney and Hill’s relationship was far from perfect and consisted of frequent arguments. It was amidst these arguments when Kearney would escape in his Volkswagen Beetle.  It was two years before Kearney moved in with Hill that he committed his first murder in 1965, when he picked up a hitchhiker in Orange, California and murdered him. However, Kearney’s first confirmed murder was committed in 1968 when he lived in Culver City, California, about one year after he and Hill had begun to cohabitate. So when Kearney adventured off during these disagreements he would pick up male hitch hikers or young men from gay bars and kill them.  Physically, he did not outwardly appear as a man who could commit such brutal crimes. He stood at 5’5” and was of slender build. Even so, he gravitated toward victims that were larger than he was. Even though Kearney generally targeted young men to meet their untimely demise, it is established that there were child and teenage victims as well.
           
Kearney’s youngest victim was Ronald Dean Smith, age 5. Smith vanished in Lennox, California on August 24, 1974.  His body was discovered in Riverside County almost two months later on October 12, 1974. Kearney then murdered Michael Craig McGhee, age 13, on June 16, 1976. McGhee was from Redondo Beach, California and had an extensive juvenile delinquency history. Kearney picked up McGhee while the young man was hitch hiking from Lennox, California to Torrance, California, a trip of about 9 miles. Kearney told the police that he had made friends with McGhee and suggested that they go on a weekend camping trip to Lake Elsinore. McGhee ended up being killed after Kearney felt he was a threat. He executed him unexpectedly after McGhee had begun bragging about his criminal conquests and started questioning Kearney about whether or not he had burglar alarms in his home and the location of these alarms.  Another child victim of Kearney’s was Merle “Hondo” Chance, age 8. He lived in Venice, California and went missing on April 6, 1977.  Reports claim that Chance was riding his bicycle near Kearney’s place of business. Kearney told authorities that he suffocated the boy and took his body home with him that night. He later dumped the remains of the body in Angeles National Forest.  Chance’s decaying remains were found May 26, 1977. Before Chance’s death, police had looked at Kearney as a person of interest in another murder. This 8-year-old boy was Kearney’s last known victim. However, the victim that finally led to Kearney being arrested was John LaMay, a young man of 17.  Kearney murdered LaMay on March 13, 1977. At around 5:30 PM on March 13, LaMay disclosed to a neighbor that he was heading to Redondo Beach to meet up with a man named Dave that he had encountered at a local gym. This man was David Hill, Kearney’s lover, and the address that Hill presented to LaMay was Kearney’s home address. When LaMay got to the house that he would unknowingly die in, Hill was not there but Kearney was. He invited the young man in to watch television while they waited on Hill. Without inducement and by pure impulse, Kearney shot LaMay in the back of the head with his .22 Derringer.  Later, he mutilated the corpse and discarded the remains in the desert. LaMay’s remains were discovered on March 18, 1977.

Police had visited Kearney’s house during their investigation of the murder of John LaMay. Not long after, police found out that LaMay had been witnessed in the presence of Hill and Kearney. Kearney resigned from his job and he and David Hill took off to El Paso, Texas. It was at the request of their families that they turned themselves in. On July 1, 1977 back in California at 1:30 in the afternoon the pair went to Riverside County Sheriff’s office, recognized a WANTED poster with their faces on it and simply said, “We’re them”. Their bail was set a $500,000 each. David Hill was 36 at the time that they turned themselves in but he was ultimately cleared. The police decided that Hill was not involved in any of Kearney’s acts and Hill was released.  
             
Kearny completely cooperated with the authorities and, at first, admitted to 28 total murders and then to 7 more. In place of the death penalty, he acquiesced to pleading guilty and made a full confession. Kearney was charged with 21 counts of murder and pled guilty, as agreed. He was given 21 life sentences. Police were convinced that Kearney was guilty of the other seven murders that he had told them he committed, but they did not have any physical evidence to charge him.
           
It was during his reign of terror in the 1970s that his killing spree was at it’s peak and his strange urges went, for the most part, completely unexposed. Jerry Stevens, a local grocery store owner, told police that Kearney had a peculiar interest in knives.  He regularly bought butcher knives after carefully studying them and asking unnerving questions about different aspects of the steel. Stevens would proceed to tell police that he would classify Kearney as “a loner with an eerie sense of quiet about him”.
           
Kearney was fundamentally a necrophiliac and his methods of murder and disposal were consistent throughout his killing career. After his first few murders, and as time went on, Kearney polished his M.O. This allowed him to proceed with his crimes in a much more recurrent and productive manner.  He perfected his techniques of being a gay pickup artist from his previous encounters during his formative killing years in California. After targeting a victim along the highway or at gay bars in his VW Bug or his truck, Kearney would customarily shoot his victims in the temple above their ear with absolutely no warning with a Derringer .22 pistol. He kept the pistol in his right hand while simultaneously driving the car with his left hand. He also had to keep the vehicle maintaining the speed limit as to keep from arising suspicion from potential witnesses.  He primarily hunted partners in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. He was fluent in Spanish and maintained an avid interest in Latin American culture. He used these skills to his advantage to interact with potential victims. Due to his meek stature, he had no choice but to utilize a scheme of overpowering his victims that was improbable to fail.  This system put him in a position that was unlikely to put him at risk of any physical danger or opportunity of attracting unwanted attention.  Kearney was partial to acts of murder that were more immediate and productive. After killing his victims, Kearney would leave the bodies sitting up in the passenger seat then proceed to drive to a deserted location to sexually assault the corpse. After having sex with the dead bodies of his victims, Kearney would customarily disfigure and maim the bodies with a hacksaw before dumping them in various areas such as canyons, dumps, and freeways commonly in industrial trash bags, earning him the moniker The Trash Bag Killer. In some instances, Kearney would get rid of the bodies in the deserts where the bodies could be eaten by animals. Kearney sometimes drained the blood of the victims to eradicate the possibility of odors and would sometimes wash the corpses bodies before dumping them to diminish the existence of dried blood and omit fingerprints that could be used as evidence. Occasionally Kearney would physically abuse his victims post mortem. He viewed this practice as a purifying exercise and a beneficial way of relieving pent up anger and bitterness.  Beating his dead victims gave Kearney a feeling of power. Kearney said that the killings “excited him and gave him a feeling of dominance”. The thought of injuring and murdering someone sexually excited him.
           
Kearney later confessed to authorities that he had experimented with the bodies of his victims because he was curious. With one victim, he cut open the stomach.  This amateur autopsy was done after the murder had been committed and therefore the victim did not suffer any torture or resist at all.  He sustained no other injuries than the typical gunshot wound to the head before his death. On another one of his victims, he relocated the body to his bathroom where he mutilated the body and skinned him with an X-Acto knife. To try his best to ensure that he would not get caught, he made the decision to remove the bullet from the corpse’s head so that it could not be traced back to Kearney’s gun. After this victim, Kearney took a brief hiatus of a little over a year, mostly because he was afraid that the police would ask about the disappearance and murder. However, beginning in 1974, it is estimated that Patrick Kearney was killing victims on a near monthly basis.
           
Patrick Kearney was not a serial killer that was known for his sadistic behavior or administering pain upon his victims. After his arrest, Kearney demanded that he never sodomized his victims with any inanimate objects. His style of murder was not impaling, torturing, and strangling his victims. He was much more comfortable with a clean and easy single bullet wound to the head. Though to an extent very impulsive, Kearney was meticulous and paranoid about being caught. After the murder had been committed, he put down towels in his bathroom to prevent the bodies from spilling blood. This was done before the dismemberment of the bodies.
           
Patrick Kearney was arrested July 1, 1977. As of June 2013, he is still imprisoned at California State Prison, Mule Creek.