TWO CHARGED IN TORTURE-SLAYINGS: THE HERALD, JULY 30, 1980
Seven weeks after Los Angeles police pulled William Bonin out of his van in the San Fernando Valley, he stood in Municipal Court beside Vernon Butts to hear the charges in what was already known as the "Freeway Killer" case. The United Press International story ran on July 30, 1980, on the World Roundup page of The Herald in Provo, Utah. The paper introduces Bonin as a 33-year-old trucker, a Vietnam veteran and a registered sex offender, now charged with fourteen murders along with robbery, sodomy and mayhem. Butts, his 22-year-old friend, it calls a magician; he was accused of helping in six of the killings. Both men asked for more time before arraignment and got it.
The paper explains the name. The victims, all young males, had been strangled, tortured and in some cases sexually mutilated, and their bodies left along or near freeways in five Southern California counties. Then it reaches far past the charges. It speaks of a string of as many as 41 killings going back to 1972, says the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department suspected Bonin in at least seven more, and reports that Orange County meant to charge him with five. Deputy District Attorney Aaron Stovitz said there were two other suspects; another prosecutor said three or four people might be involved. No deals had been made, the prosecutors said.
For Bonin's past the paper has a line from a psychiatric report: "He wanted to straighten himself out but doesn't know how to go about it." He had been locked up twice for sexually attacking boys before he killed one, and he was paroled the second time in October 1978. The killings began the next spring. Marcus Grabs, seventeen, was a German student backpacking along the coast. James Macabe was twelve, picked up in Huntington Beach. Steven Wells, eighteen, was hitchhiking the day the police began watching Bonin. Two more of his companions, Gregory Miley and James Munro, were soon arrested; both made deals and testified against him.
This early wire report rests on what police and prosecutors were saying weeks after the arrest, and much of it did not hold. The figure of 41 killings since 1972 is the paper's; by the court record Bonin began killing in the spring of 1979. He served in Vietnam as an Air Force aerial gunner, not in the Army, and in 1971 a court sent him from Atascadero to prison; his 1978 release was a parole from prison, not probation from the hospital. Orange County tried him for four killings, not five. He was convicted of fourteen murders, ten in Los Angeles in 1982 and four in Orange County in 1983, and was executed on February 23, 1996. Butts was never tried; he hanged himself in jail in January 1981.
The Herald of Provo, Utah, ran this United Press International story on July 30, 1980, under the standing World Roundup banner, credited "(UPI)" with no byline. Utah Digital Newspapers, at the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library, supplies the page, and its rights field for this issue reads "In Copyright (InC)": the library treats the issue as still in copyright. Neither the masthead nor the article carries a copyright notice, but a work published under the 1976 Copyright Act keeps its copyright without one. The library's rights statement and the citation are given beneath the scan.
The story is complete on page 20, and it was transcribed word for word from the scan with no word too damaged to read. A few quirks of the typesetting are kept: "22-yearold" with its missing hyphen, "Atascadero state mental hospital" in lower case, and a closing sentence in which prosecutors claim enough evidence to convict the two men "independently of the killings," an odd phrase but the one the paper printed.
Transcription
Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.
Two Charged in Torture-Slayings
LOS ANGELES (UPI) — A truck driver and a magician have been charged with 14 murders in the "Freeway Killer" case but authorities say there are at least two other suspects in the string of grisly murders involving as many as 41 young victims.
William Bonin, a 33-year-old trucker, Vietnam veteran and registered sex offender, and Vernon Butts, Bonin's 22-yearold friend and a magician, appeared in Municipal Court Tuesday on murder and robbery charges.
Bonin was charged with 14 counts of murder, 11 counts of robbery, one count of sodomy and one count of mayhem. Butts was charged with helping Bonin commit six of the murders and with three counts of robbery.
Both men requested and were granted delays in their arraignments, Bonin until Aug. 8 and Butts until Aug. 13.
The string of 41 killings, which began in 1972, became known as the "Freeway Killer" slayings because the victims' bodies were dumped along or near freeways in five Southern California counties. The victims, all young males, were strangled, tortured and in some cases, sexually mutilated.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday that Bonin was a suspect in at least another seven of the Freeway Killer slayings, and the Orange County Sheriff's Department said Bonin would be charged with five killings in that county.
Bonin, a registered sex offender on probation from Atascadero state mental hospital, was described in psychiatric reports as having had experiences with both sexes while in the Army in Vietnam.
He was released from the hospital because doctors said he was untreatable. One report said, "He wanted to straighten himself out but doesn't know how to go about it."
Despite the arrests of the two men, Deputy District Attorney Aaron Stovitz said there were two other suspects in the Freeway Killer case. Another prosecutor said there could be three or four other people involved.
Prosecutors said no deals had been made with either Bonin or Butts in exchange for testimony and that they had enough evidence to convict them independently of the killings.
Notes: Kept as printed: "22-yearold"; "Atascadero state mental hospital" (lower case). The last sentence says "independently of the killings" as printed. The page carries the standing "World Roundup" banner of United Press International news. No words were illegible.