Roy Lewis Norris pleaded guilty to the murders of five teenage girls who were abducted in Los Angeles County between June and October 1979. His partner in the killings was Lawrence Bittaker, a man he had met in a California prison. Norris was the one who talked. After his arrest he led police to the remains of two of the girls, pleaded guilty under a bargain that spared him the death penalty, and became the main prosecution witness at Bittaker's 1981 trial. A jury convicted Bittaker and he was sentenced to death.
Norris was sentenced to 45 years to life. He was refused parole in 2009 and again in 2019, and he died in custody on February 24, 2020, at 72. Bittaker had died on death row at San Quentin in December 2019. The press called the pair the "Tool Box Killers," a name taken from the tools used on the victims. Two of the girls, Lucinda Schaefer and Andrea Hall, were never found.
Almost everything known about how the five girls died comes from Norris's testimony, given by a man who had bargained for his life. The California Supreme Court, reviewing Bittaker's case in 1989, set out how that testimony was checked: against two recovered skulls, photographs, a recording found in Bittaker's van, a bracelet found in Norris's apartment, and the evidence of witnesses with no stake in his deal.
Very little about Norris's early life appears in court records or in reliable news reports. What the record does show is that he came to the crimes of 1979 with a rape conviction behind him. The California Supreme Court described him simply as a man who "had been convicted of rape," and the jury at Bittaker's trial was told of that conviction.
Norris met Bittaker while both were serving time in state prison. The two men, the court said, talked about their shared interest in rape and about ways of abducting women without being caught. Bittaker had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing a store clerk in 1974. He was paroled in November 1978 and took a room at the Scott Motel in Burbank. Norris was paroled in January 1979.
After his release, according to the court, Norris went to Colorado and raped a woman there, then came back to California and called Bittaker. Bittaker had bought a van with a sliding side door, a choice the court said made it easier to pull someone inside. In June 1979 Norris tried to rape a woman on his own, and she got away. He told Bittaker about it, and the two men agreed that from then on they would act together.
An Associated Press caption for a photograph taken in March 1980 describes Norris as an electrician from Redondo Beach. Bittaker, in United Press International's description at his sentencing, was a 40-year-old machinist from Burbank.
The girls ranged in age from 13 to 18. The Associated Press, drawing on state corrections records, gave their hometowns when Bittaker died in 2019: Lucinda Lynn Schaefer, 16, of Torrance; Andrea Joy Hall, 18, of Tujunga; Jacqueline Doris Gilliam, 15, of Long Beach; Jacqueline Leah Lamp, 13, of Redondo Beach; and Shirley Lynette Ledford, 16, of Sun Valley.
Little else is recorded about them as people, and what is recorded mostly concerns the last day each was seen. Lucinda Schaefer was known as Cindy. She was walking along the Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach when she was taken. Andrea Hall was on her way to Wilmington to visit her boyfriend. Jacqueline Gilliam, called Jackie in wire reports, and Leah Lamp, as the court calls her, were hitchhiking together in Redondo Beach. Shirley Ledford was hitchhiking home from her job. Friends and family of Cindy Schaefer and Andrea Hall testified at Bittaker's trial that neither girl was ever seen again after the dates on which Norris said they died.
The spelling of the first girl's surname varies. The California Supreme Court and the state corrections department write Schaefer; United Press International, reporting the 1981 sentencing, wrote Schaeffer.
The first killing, as the court dated it, was on June 24, 1979. Cindy Schaefer, 16, was walking on the Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach and turned onto a residential street. She was not hitchhiking. The men offered her a ride and she said no. Norris then seized her from the street and pulled her into the van.
They drove her to a fire road in the mountains. According to Norris's testimony, as the court summarized it, the two men disagreed about whether to let her live, and Bittaker insisted that she had to be killed. Norris said he tried to strangle her and that Bittaker finished the killing. Her body was thrown into brush and has never been found.
No physical evidence of her death was ever recovered. The court listed what supported Norris's account: the lack of any sign that she had gone away of her own accord, and testimony from residents of Bittaker's motel and from a jail cellmate about photographs and a drawing that referred to a girl called Cindy. At trial Bittaker denied any part in her abduction. He testified that Norris had told him he committed it with another man.
Andrea Hall, 18, was hitchhiking toward Wilmington when she was picked up. The California Supreme Court dates her abduction to July 4, 1979. The state corrections department, in its 2019 release on Bittaker's death, gave July 8. Another driver had given her a ride first, and she was in Redondo Beach when she got into the van.
She was taken into the mountains. Norris testified that he restrained her and that Bittaker killed her, and the court accepted that Bittaker was the one who caused her death. Her body was thrown over an embankment. Like Cindy Schaefer, she has never been found.
Photographs corroborated this part of Norris's account. One photograph of Andrea Hall was received in evidence, and residents of the motel testified that Bittaker had shown them pictures of her. Bittaker's own version, given from the witness stand, was that his encounter with her had been sexual and that she had agreed to be photographed. Norris pleaded guilty to her killing along with the others; news reports of his plea describe one of his five murder counts as second-degree murder, and the reports do not say which killing that count covered.
On September 2, 1979, the men picked up Jacqueline Gilliam, 15, and Leah Lamp, 13, who were hitchhiking together in Redondo Beach. They took both girls into the mountains and kept them in the van overnight.
According to Norris, Bittaker killed Jackie Gilliam, and both men took part in killing Leah Lamp; Norris admitted that he struck her. Both bodies were thrown over an embankment into brush.
These were the killings for which the physical evidence was strongest, and the reason was Norris's own help after his arrest. Police, guided by him, found and identified the skulls of both girls. The court recorded that the condition of each skull matched what Norris had said about how she died. Photographs of Jackie Gilliam were also received in evidence. Some of them had come into the hands of Bittaker's defense lawyer, who turned them over to the police. A jail inmate, Lloyd Carlos Douglas, testified about what Bittaker had told him of the two killings, and residents of the motel again described photographs.
On September 30, 1979, the men tried to abduct a woman at an apartment garage. She screamed, neighbors came out, and Norris drove the van away while Bittaker fled on foot. She testified at Bittaker's trial, and the court found that her account matched the one Norris gave. Bittaker admitted the incident but claimed he had been testing a can of Mace. She survived.
The last killing was on Halloween, October 31, 1979. Shirley Ledford was hitchhiking home from her job late in the evening when the men picked her up. They took her to a secluded area and then drove around with her held in the van.
Norris testified that he strangled her. Unlike the earlier victims, she was left where she would be found: her body was placed in a bed of ivy in a suburban neighborhood, and a jogger found it the next morning. The condition of her body when it was found, the court said, supported his account.
This was the killing in which Norris's own hand was clearest, and the evidence did not depend on his word alone. Her bracelet was found in his apartment. A tape recording made during the attack was found in Bittaker's van after the arrests. Bittaker, for his part, testified that he had left her with Norris.
The sources disagree about her age. The California Supreme Court gives 18. The state corrections department, the Associated Press and United Press International give 16.
The arrests were made by two police departments working together. The California Supreme Court records that Norris was arrested first, by the Hermosa Beach police. Sergeant Bynum of the Hermosa Beach department then asked the Burbank police to arrest Bittaker. The warrant for Bittaker rested on Bynum's sworn statement that a woman had picked Bittaker out of a photo lineup and on a police report connecting him and his van to the crimes. She is a survivor of a sexual assault.
Six or seven uniformed Burbank officers went to the Scott Motel. After officers had been posted at the windows, one knocked; Bittaker opened a window and asked who was there, and the officers kicked in the locked door. Bittaker told them he did not object to a search of his room. Police took photographs, a camera, police scanners, a replica pistol and chemicals. They seized the van as an instrument of the crimes and searched it three days later, finding the recording of the Ledford attack and other items in plain view. Bittaker later challenged the arrest and both searches; the California Supreme Court upheld them.
The court's opinion does not give the date of the arrests, and the date was not otherwise reported. State corrections releases give the period of the crimes as June 24 to November 20, 1979.
Norris made a deal. Under his plea agreement, as the California Supreme Court described it, he would not face the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole. In exchange he agreed to help investigators locate the bodies and other physical evidence, to testify at Bittaker's trial, and to plead guilty to five counts of murder without special circumstances, two counts of rape and one count of robbery. The agreement required him "to give a complete and truthful account of both his and Larry Bittaker's participation in the murders."
His help produced the skulls of Jackie Gilliam and Leah Lamp. It did not produce Cindy Schaefer or Andrea Hall.
An Associated Press photograph from March 1980 shows Norris in a courtroom in Torrance. According to the caption, he pleaded guilty under a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, and his lawyer was Ray Legg. News reports published at his death list the counts as four counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, two counts of forcible rape and robbery. The court opinion describes the five murder counts only as murder without special circumstances.
Bittaker's trial was held in Los Angeles in early 1981, and Norris was its central witness. United Press International called him the prosecution's chief witness, then 33. He described the abductions and the killings. By the news agency's summary, he testified that he killed one of the girls himself and blamed Bittaker for the other four.
Because Norris was an accomplice, his testimony could not convict Bittaker on its own. The trial judge told the jury that Norris was an accomplice as a matter of law and that his testimony had to be corroborated by other evidence. The California Supreme Court later held that instruction correct. The corroboration came from several directions: the skulls, the bracelet, the photographs, the woman who escaped on September 30, and residents of the Scott Motel, among them Richard Dryburgh and Mike Horn, who described pictures Bittaker had shown them and things he had said. A jail cellmate, David Lambert, testified about a nickname Bittaker used in jail.
The recording found in the van was played for the jury. Bittaker's lawyers did not object to it at trial, and the California Supreme Court held that he could not challenge it for the first time on appeal. CBS San Francisco reported in 2020 that recordings the men made during some of the attacks were played in court and moved many people in the courtroom to tears.
The jury was also told about Norris's earlier rape conviction. The Supreme Court later noted that, under the law at the time of the trial, that conviction should not have been admitted to impeach him, but it found no reasonable chance that the error changed the result.
The trial had a place in California legal history. United Press International reported that it was the first felony trial in the state to be recorded by television and still cameras and tape recorders over the objection of the defense.
Bittaker's defense was that Norris, not Bittaker, was responsible for the murders. According to United Press International, Bittaker claimed Norris had killed all five girls.
To support that, the defense called Richard Shoopman, a convict who knew both men. He testified that Norris had often talked about wanting to rape young women, and that Bittaker seldom talked about sex with him. Bittaker took the stand himself. He said he had nothing to do with Cindy Schaefer's abduction and death, that his encounters with Andrea Hall and Jackie Gilliam had been sexual and photographed but not violent, and that he had left Shirley Ledford with Norris.
The jury did not accept it. On February 17, 1981, the jurors, seven women and five men, convicted Bittaker of five counts of murder with special circumstances. A week later they chose a death sentence over life without parole. The state corrections department lists his convictions as 26 counts in all, including five counts each of murder and kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, rape and other sexual offenses, and possession of a firearm by an ex-felon. He was sentenced to death in March 1981; the department gives the date as March 22, and United Press International named the judge as Superior Court Judge Thomas Federicks.
Norris was sentenced after Bittaker. United Press International reported in March 1981 that his sentencing was set for April 24. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation gives the date he was sentenced in Los Angeles County as April 28, 1981, and records that he entered state prison on May 8, 1981, to serve 45 years to life.
The term reflected the bargain. Prosecutors did not seek a death sentence, and the plea to murder without special circumstances left parole possible in law. The California Supreme Court described the result in two ways in its 1989 opinion: as 45 years to life in its statement of facts, and as a life sentence with parole possible in its discussion of the agreement.
On June 22, 1989, in an opinion by Justice Broussard for a unanimous court, the California Supreme Court affirmed Bittaker's convictions and his death sentence. Part of the appeal was an attack on Norris's bargain.
The court found nothing in the agreement that required or allowed Norris to lie. "Nothing in the bargain requires or permits Norris to testify falsely against defendant," it said. It did criticize one feature. The agreement left it to the district attorney, subject only to limited review by a judge, Edward Hinz, to decide whether Norris had testified truthfully. The court advised against that language and said the final say on whether a witness had told the truth should rest with the court rather than the prosecutor. It found that the flaw did not require reversal.
The court also dealt with the photographs. Bittaker argued that the prosecutor should not have suggested to the jury that missing photographs showed violence, because Norris and others who had seen them said they did not. The court held that the prosecutor could argue that evidence a defendant had hidden was unfavorable to him.
Bittaker also challenged his convictions in federal court. In June 2003 an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Alex Kozinski in Bittaker v. Woodford, ruled on a narrow question in that habeas corpus case: whether the state could use his trial lawyer's files, opened to it in the habeas proceeding, against him at any retrial. The court held that it could not. The opinion does not mention Norris. Bittaker was never executed. California carried out no executions in his last years on death row, and in 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on executions while he remained in office, the Associated Press noted.
Norris served his sentence in the state prison system. In December 2019, when Bittaker died, the state corrections department said Norris, then 71, was held at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County.
He first came before the parole board in 2009. He was found unsuitable for parole, and his next hearing was set ten years away, CBS San Francisco reported. At his second hearing, in March 2019, parole was denied again. According to the corrections department, as reported by CBS San Francisco, his next hearing would not have taken place until 2029.
What Norris said at either hearing was not reported.
Lawrence Bittaker died at 4 p.m. on Friday, December 13, 2019, at San Quentin State Prison. He was 79. The corrections department said he died of natural causes and that the Marin County coroner would determine the cause. He had been on death row since March 30, 1981. The Associated Press, reporting his death, noted that Norris remained in prison.
In the week before he died, Norris was moved from Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, a prison hospital in Northern California, the Associated Press reported. He was pronounced dead there at 8:40 p.m. on Monday, February 24, 2020, KTVU reported. He was 72. Prison officials said he died of natural causes, and the state corrections department announced his death the next day.
The reports of his death quote no relative or official.
Proven by final judgment: Norris's guilt of five murders, two forcible rapes and a robbery, by his own guilty plea in Los Angeles County. His plea was never withdrawn or set aside, and no appeal by him was reported. Bittaker's guilt of the same five murders and of kidnapping and other crimes was proven by a jury verdict affirmed by the California Supreme Court; Bittaker died with his death sentence in place but unexecuted.
The division of the killings between the two men rests mainly on Norris's word. By his account as the courts summarized it, Bittaker killed Andrea Hall and Jackie Gilliam and insisted on killing Cindy Schaefer, the two men together killed Leah Lamp, and Norris strangled Shirley Ledford. United Press International's summary of his testimony was that he admitted killing one girl and blamed Bittaker for four. Bittaker, in turn, blamed Norris for all five. The jury believed Norris on the points it had to decide, and the physical evidence matched his account where it could be checked, but no witness other than the two men saw any of the killings.
Dates. The California Supreme Court dates Cindy Schaefer's abduction to June 24, 1979, and Andrea Hall's to July 4, 1979. The state corrections department's 2019 release gives June 14 for Schaefer while also dating the crimes from June 24, and gives July 8 for Hall.
Shirley Ledford's age. Eighteen in the court's opinion; 16 in corrections releases and in United Press International and Associated Press reports.
The sentencing dates. Corrections records give April 28, 1981, for Norris; United Press International had reported it as set for April 24. For Bittaker, the corrections department gives March 22, 1981, while United Press International reported the sentencing in a story dated March 24.
The second-degree count. News reports at his death say one of Norris's five murder counts was second-degree murder. The court opinion speaks only of murder without special circumstances. Which killing the second-degree count covered was not reported.
The missing girls. The remains of Cindy Schaefer and Andrea Hall have never been found. No later search that located them has been reported.
1974: Lawrence Bittaker stabs a store clerk, for which he is convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.
Before 1979: Norris, convicted of rape, meets Bittaker in state prison.
November 1978: Bittaker is paroled and moves into the Scott Motel in Burbank.
January 1979: Norris is paroled; he later goes to Colorado, rapes a woman there and returns to California.
June 1979: Norris tries to rape a woman, who escapes; he and Bittaker agree to act together.
June 24, 1979: Lucinda (Cindy) Schaefer, 16, is abducted in Redondo Beach and killed; her body is never found.
July 4, 1979 (court; July 8 in corrections records): Andrea Hall, 18, is abducted in Redondo Beach and killed; her body is never found.
September 2, 1979: Jacqueline Gilliam, 15, and Leah Lamp, 13, are abducted in Redondo Beach and killed.
September 30, 1979: an attempt to abduct a woman at an apartment garage fails when she screams.
October 31, 1979: Shirley Ledford is abducted and killed; her body is found the next morning.
After October 31, 1979 (date not established): Norris is arrested by Hermosa Beach police; Burbank police arrest Bittaker at his motel.
After the arrest: Norris leads police to the skulls of Jackie Gilliam and Leah Lamp.
March 1980: Norris pleads guilty in Torrance under a plea bargain.
Early 1981: Norris is the chief prosecution witness at Bittaker's trial in Los Angeles.
February 17, 1981: Bittaker is convicted; a week later the jury chooses death.
March 1981: Bittaker is sentenced to death (March 22 in corrections records).
April 28, 1981: Norris is sentenced to 45 years to life.
May 8, 1981: Norris enters state prison.
June 22, 1989: the California Supreme Court affirms Bittaker's convictions and death sentence.
June 2003: the Ninth Circuit decides Bittaker v. Woodford.
2009: Norris is found unsuitable for parole at his first hearing.
March 2019: parole is denied again; next hearing set for 2029.
December 13, 2019: Bittaker dies at San Quentin, aged 79.
February 2020: Norris is moved from Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility to the California Medical Facility.
February 24, 2020: Norris dies of natural causes at the California Medical Facility, Vacaville, aged 72.