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Serial Killer Documentary - William Bonin · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:05
Speaker 1: On the twenty second of March nineteen eighty, the bodies
0:08
Speaker 1: of two teenage boys were discovered dumped together beside a
0:12
Speaker 1: freeway in California. Sadly, they weren't the first, and they
0:18
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the last.
0:19
Speaker 2: You've got this killer, and he is almost ghost like.
0:22
Speaker 3: He is dumping bodies and then he's disappearing into the night.
0:27
Speaker 1: Bodies of young boys, most of them hitchhikers, had been
0:31
Speaker 1: discarded like trash. The victims had all been tied up
0:36
Speaker 1: and sexually assaulted before being strangled.
0:40
Speaker 4: He was incredibly violent. He was evil, and he would
0:44
Speaker 4: hurt you just to hear you scream.
0:46
Speaker 1: The killer was a local truck driver called William Bonnet.
0:51
Speaker 1: This sadistic predator, together with a small band of accomplices,
0:55
Speaker 1: spread fear amongst the community. It seemed that no young
0:59
Speaker 1: man was safe.
1:01
Speaker 5: He enjoyed having the boy at his mercy and hearing
1:06
Speaker 5: the boy cry and plead for his life, and Bill
1:11
Speaker 5: felt powerful when he was in the act of murdering
1:14
Speaker 5: a kid.
1:15
Speaker 1: In just thirteen months, the monster, dubbed the Freeway Killer,
1:20
Speaker 1: was responsible for the murders of up to twenty one
1:23
Speaker 1: young boys and teenagers. William Bonnin had been revealed as
1:28
Speaker 1: one of the world's most evil killers. During the summer
1:52
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy nine, the naked bodies of young boys
1:56
Speaker 1: were being discovered beside freeways and other majors votes across
2:01
Speaker 1: southern California.
2:03
Speaker 6: It started very slowly.
2:05
Speaker 7: There would be a dead body found on the side
2:07
Speaker 7: of a rock. Started out there was maybe one, maybe two,
2:10
Speaker 7: and then when it got to like the fourth body
2:12
Speaker 7: that had been found, then we started saying, wait a minute,
2:17
Speaker 7: is there a pattern here?
2:19
Speaker 1: Victims were being targeted at an alarming rate, and a
2:23
Speaker 1: wave of fear spread within communities across Los Angeles.
2:28
Speaker 3: These murders were very close together. It's almost like a
2:30
Speaker 3: killing spree at times. And he does it because he can.
2:35
Speaker 3: These people are there for the taking, they are vulnerable,
2:38
Speaker 3: and when he figures out that nobody's coming after him,
2:41
Speaker 3: well he just carries on.
2:44
Speaker 8: This was a man who premeditated everything. It was all
2:48
Speaker 8: carefully thought out, carefully planned, and then executed meticulously.
2:54
Speaker 1: After his arrest in nineteen eighty, William Bonin confessed to
2:58
Speaker 1: twenty one murders. His youngest victim was just twelve years old.
3:03
Speaker 1: Prison psychologist Von Dea Pelto spent many hours talking to
3:08
Speaker 1: the killer.
3:09
Speaker 5: I ask him one time about a killing, how did
3:12
Speaker 5: it feel when you killed him? When he was crying
3:15
Speaker 5: and pleading for his life and saying, please, please, don't
3:19
Speaker 5: kill me? Did you feel anything? And Bill said I
3:23
Speaker 5: didn't feel anything. I couldn't understand that. And I said, well,
3:28
Speaker 5: was it like killing an animal? And Bill said, oh, no,
3:33
Speaker 5: I have a lot of feeling for an animal.
3:37
Speaker 1: This killer story begins on the eighth of January nineteen
3:41
Speaker 1: forty seven. William George Bonnin was born in Willemantic, Connecticut,
3:46
Speaker 1: to parents Robert and Alice. He was the middle of
3:49
Speaker 1: three brothers. Their father was an alcoholic and it was
3:52
Speaker 1: an unhappy, abusive upbringing. Neighbors recall the Bonnin boys were
3:57
Speaker 1: always hungry, dirty, and ill clothed.
4:00
Speaker 8: Bonin was then put in the hands of Alice's father,
4:04
Speaker 8: who had abused her as a child, and he went
4:07
Speaker 8: on to abuse her sons.
4:11
Speaker 3: Bonin experienced a lot of sexual abuse during his childhood,
4:15
Speaker 3: and sadly, it was something that he just came to expect,
4:18
Speaker 3: but he also learned that sexual abuse was a way
4:21
Speaker 3: of gaining power and control over other people.
4:24
Speaker 1: When Bonin was six, he was sent to an orphanage.
4:27
Speaker 1: His mother, Alice, claimed this was to protect her sons
4:31
Speaker 1: from an abusive home life.
4:34
Speaker 5: Bill and his younger brother were put in the Catholic
4:37
Speaker 5: run orphanage, and the parents never did come to see him.
4:42
Speaker 5: He told me and said that for sure he thought
4:46
Speaker 5: they had died because they didn't come to see him.
4:50
Speaker 1: From the orphanage, young William Bonin was sent to a
4:54
Speaker 1: youth detention center. The reason why is unknown, but what
4:58
Speaker 1: is certain is that his time there, at the age
5:02
Speaker 1: of just eight, he was subjected to yet another sexual assault,
5:06
Speaker 1: this time by an older boy.
5:08
Speaker 3: Allegedly, he asked for his hands to be tied during this,
5:12
Speaker 3: and that signifies to me that this is somebody who
5:14
Speaker 3: has been sexually abused. There is a familiarity with that
5:18
Speaker 3: kind of behavior, and that is something that's incredibly disturbing
5:23
Speaker 3: for me, especially at such a young age.
5:27
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty nine, twenty two year old Bonn had
5:31
Speaker 1: reconnected with his mother and was living with her in Downey, California.
5:36
Speaker 1: After a brief career in the army, he'd turned to
5:39
Speaker 1: a life of crime. He was arrested for sexually assaulting
5:43
Speaker 1: five boys, and it also later emerged that Bonn had
5:46
Speaker 1: raped two soldiers at gunpoint during his military service.
5:51
Speaker 3: He hasn't just turned into a sexual predator overnight. This
5:55
Speaker 3: is behavior that will have developed over time, but it's
5:58
Speaker 3: probably gone undetected up until this point. And to me,
6:02
Speaker 3: this is somebody who is on a very clear trajectory
6:05
Speaker 3: to becoming a very dangerous and a potentially homicidal offender.
6:11
Speaker 8: It's the oldest question in the book, isn't it what
6:15
Speaker 8: came first? Was it nature or nurture? In this case,
6:19
Speaker 8: I think it was both. Together they created a formidable combination.
6:27
Speaker 1: Bonnin's deviant behavior would inevitably land him in hot water.
6:32
Speaker 1: Instead of serving time in prison, the young man wound
6:35
Speaker 1: up in a state hospital where he actually honed his
6:39
Speaker 1: predatory instincts.
6:41
Speaker 3: Now, during this time, he gets to learn about the
6:43
Speaker 3: institutional environment. He gets to know the kind of things
6:47
Speaker 3: he needs to say to staff at that facility, the
6:50
Speaker 3: type of things that they need to hear to secure
6:53
Speaker 3: his release. He's becoming more dangerous now because he's developing
6:57
Speaker 3: that manipulativeness.
6:59
Speaker 1: After five years of incarceration, William Bonnin was a free man.
7:04
Speaker 1: Far from rehabilitated. He was ready to strike again. In
7:09
Speaker 1: early September nineteen seventy five, David McVicker was a fourteen
7:14
Speaker 1: year old schoolboy enjoying the last long, warm days of summer.
7:18
Speaker 1: Break Life seemed free and easy, and there was no
7:22
Speaker 1: problem getting around to catch up with his friends.
7:26
Speaker 4: Everybody had There was no buses or anything like that.
7:28
Speaker 4: At said the beach. At the end of the day,
7:31
Speaker 4: it wasn't unusual to see one hundred and fifty kids
7:34
Speaker 4: down and down there with their beachs tower and their thumber.
7:36
Speaker 1: Whilst the youth of Los Angeles focused on making the
7:40
Speaker 1: most out of their time off, they were blissfully unaware
7:43
Speaker 1: of the potential danger they were putting themselves in. At
7:47
Speaker 1: five thirty pm on September the eighth, a sadistic sexual
7:52
Speaker 1: predator was looking for a boy to pick up.
7:55
Speaker 4: I just said goodbye to my friends. I left their
7:58
Speaker 4: house and gone to hitchhike home. And as soon as
8:02
Speaker 4: I crossed this major street, a car pulled up next
8:05
Speaker 4: to me, and this guy says, hey, can you tell
8:08
Speaker 4: me where Euclid Street is? I said, it's about a
8:10
Speaker 4: mile ahead, and he goes, well, where are you going?
8:13
Speaker 4: I said, I'm going to go to Brookhurst and go
8:15
Speaker 4: towards the beach, and he said, well, why don't you
8:18
Speaker 4: jump in and I'll give you a ride. And I thought, cool,
8:20
Speaker 4: that's perfect.
8:22
Speaker 1: But this kind motorist wasn't ast told what he seemed.
8:26
Speaker 4: I got in the car and everything was cool. At first.
8:28
Speaker 4: He was really nice. You would have never thought anything
8:31
Speaker 4: was wrong. And then about maybe five minutes into the ride,
8:35
Speaker 4: he said something to ask if I had ever tried
8:38
Speaker 4: anything like a gay act or something like that, and
8:42
Speaker 4: it was kind of a shock. I was like, no, no,
8:44
Speaker 4: I would never do that, you know. And then I
8:46
Speaker 4: immediately tried to get out of the car. I said,
8:48
Speaker 4: do my favorite. I said pull over to me out
8:50
Speaker 4: of the car, and he didn't. He started going faster.
8:54
Speaker 4: So I got really scared and I opened up the
8:56
Speaker 4: door and I went like that and I turned around.
8:58
Speaker 4: There was a gun right here. To get back in
9:00
Speaker 4: the cars suit you.
9:02
Speaker 1: The driver was twenty eight year old convicted rapist and
9:05
Speaker 1: pedophile William Bond. He drove around for some time, all
9:10
Speaker 1: the while holding a gun pointed straight at David. As
9:14
Speaker 1: the light faded, Boning parked up in a field.
9:17
Speaker 4: I was scared to death. I was petrified. I knew
9:20
Speaker 4: that I was something really bad was gonna happen. I
9:23
Speaker 4: didn't know if I was gonna ever die. I was
9:26
Speaker 4: fighting for my life to try to get out of
9:28
Speaker 4: the car. He grabbed me and started to beat me up.
9:31
Speaker 4: I knew that if I didn't do what he said,
9:33
Speaker 4: I was gonna die.
9:38
Speaker 1: David's ordeal that summer evening was the stuff of nightmares.
9:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, my t shirt around my neck with the tire iron,
9:46
Speaker 4: you know, that just changed the tire. He had that
9:48
Speaker 4: going through the sleeves of my shirt and he was
9:50
Speaker 4: twisting it, strangling me while he was raving me. And then,
9:54
Speaker 4: with what I thought was my last breath, because I
9:56
Speaker 4: couldn't breathe it anymore, I just kind of went God
9:58
Speaker 4: help and stopt.
10:01
Speaker 1: Amazingly, Bonnin let him go. Later that day, fourteen year
10:07
Speaker 1: old David and his mother reported the assault to the police.
10:12
Speaker 1: Several months later, David's school day was interrupted by a
10:16
Speaker 1: visit from the Sheriff's officers. He was taken to the
10:19
Speaker 1: Orange County Jail, where it arranged a lineup.
10:23
Speaker 4: We went into this little dark room and these six
10:26
Speaker 4: guys come streaming out, and before they even started, I
10:30
Speaker 4: saw the guy. I knew it was him, so I
10:33
Speaker 4: said out loud, that's him. Number three.
10:35
Speaker 1: In December nineteen seventy five, twenty eight year old William
10:40
Speaker 1: Bonnin was found guilty of lud and lascivious conduct and
10:43
Speaker 1: sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison for unknown reasons.
10:49
Speaker 1: He was released on parole after serving less than three
10:53
Speaker 1: The thirty one year old settled back into the community.
10:58
Speaker 3: He appears to be creating some semblance of a normal life,
11:02
Speaker 3: but what he's doing is putting in place the structures
11:04
Speaker 3: that will make him into a more successful offender. So
11:07
Speaker 3: he has this veneer of normality, this veneer of respectability.
11:12
Speaker 2: And when you look like a normal.
11:14
Speaker 3: Member of society, you're more likely to go unnoticed.
11:19
Speaker 1: Vllin secured a job as a truck driver and rented
11:22
Speaker 1: an apartment. However, the following year he was arrested yet
11:26
Speaker 1: again from molesting a teenage boy. He violated his parole
11:31
Speaker 1: and should have been returned to prison.
11:34
Speaker 8: There's an administrative error. Bonin is not sent straight back
11:39
Speaker 8: to jail. He's set free. When he's released, Bonin is
11:45
Speaker 8: picked up by a friend and he tells the friend
11:49
Speaker 8: this is never going to happen to me again. The
11:54
Speaker 8: friend thought that that meant he was never going to
11:57
Speaker 8: commit a crime again. Grotesquely, it meant that he was
12:03
Speaker 8: never going to leave a victim alive again.
12:08
Speaker 1: The string of sexual convictions to his name didn't seem
12:12
Speaker 1: to affect Bonin's social life. In fact, he was starting
12:15
Speaker 1: to explore his sexuality.
12:18
Speaker 3: He's gay, and at this time, the late nineteen seventies,
12:22
Speaker 3: this is still quite a stigmatized social identity in the
12:25
Speaker 3: United States. So the fact that he's trying to make
12:28
Speaker 3: connections with people like him.
12:30
Speaker 2: Is something that could appear to be quite positive.
12:35
Speaker 1: He became a regular at one of his neighbour's parties.
12:39
Speaker 8: Bonn's meeting up with people who were after exactly the
12:43
Speaker 8: same as he is, sex, drugs, a great deal of alcohol,
12:48
Speaker 8: and adventures. And it's at the friend's house that he
12:52
Speaker 8: first encounters a twenty one year old young man called
12:56
Speaker 8: Vernon Batz, who is a part time magician and works
13:00
Speaker 8: in a porcelain factory.
13:03
Speaker 3: He's been described as being fascinated by and terrified by
13:07
Speaker 3: bonn In, and that rings an alarm bell for me
13:10
Speaker 3: in terms of coercive control. When you have a perpetrator
13:14
Speaker 3: who basically tries to take away the identity and the
13:17
Speaker 3: personhood of the individual they're in a relationship with. And
13:22
Speaker 3: this sounds incredibly familiar when we look at this description,
13:25
Speaker 3: So that's very concerning for me.
13:28
Speaker 1: Bonin was never going to resist the urge to assault
13:31
Speaker 1: a young boy for long. On the fifth of August
13:35
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Bonin and his new friend Vernon Buds
13:40
Speaker 1: were out cruising in Bonyn's van. Bonin spotted Marcus Grabs,
13:45
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old German tourist who was hitchhiking beside
13:49
Speaker 1: Newport Beach. They pulled over and offered him a ride.
13:53
Speaker 3: At this point in time, a lot of people traveled
13:56
Speaker 3: around hitching lifts with other people.
13:58
Speaker 2: It was a cultural norm.
14:00
Speaker 3: So I think to realize that this everyday mode of
14:03
Speaker 3: transport has put you in a situation where you're going
14:06
Speaker 3: to lose your life, that must have been absolutely horrendous
14:08
Speaker 3: for him.
14:10
Speaker 1: Seventeen year old Marcus was subjected to a horrific assault
14:14
Speaker 1: in which he was tied up and raped by Bonin.
14:18
Speaker 1: Years later, Bonin described the attack in detail to prison
14:22
Speaker 1: psychologist Von der pelto.
14:25
Speaker 5: Marcus Grabs was laying there in the back of his van,
14:31
Speaker 5: and Bonnin had a knife, and he said, you know,
14:35
Speaker 5: I just got to thinking I couldn't kill him, and
14:39
Speaker 5: then Bonnin said, I just started stabbing him wildly. He said,
14:44
Speaker 5: I just stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
14:48
Speaker 8: He was stabbed seventy seven times in an outburst of
14:53
Speaker 8: violence that's almost unimaginable.
14:56
Speaker 1: The lifeless body of Marcus Grabs was found the following
14:59
Speaker 1: day in nearby Malibu. The seventeen year old was naked
15:04
Speaker 1: and had orange cords still wrapped around his head. Marcus
15:08
Speaker 1: had been raped and murdered by William Bonnin, watched on
15:11
Speaker 1: by his macabre cheerleader, Vernon Butts.
15:16
Speaker 8: Butts admitted later that he positively enjoyed watching bonin in action,
15:23
Speaker 8: that he was both terrified of him and yet hypnotized
15:28
Speaker 8: by him. The perfect accomplice, the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
15:35
Speaker 1: The Deadly duo had made their first kill.
15:40
Speaker 3: There's almost a sense in which they're waiting to see
15:42
Speaker 3: what's going to happen. Are the police going to catch
15:45
Speaker 3: up with them? Is anybody going to come looking for them?
15:48
Speaker 3: And when they realize that that's not going to happen,
15:50
Speaker 3: they get that sense of power and that sense of
15:53
Speaker 3: invincibility and think, well, why not do it again.
15:57
Speaker 1: Over the next five weeks, two more young men would
16:01
Speaker 1: die at the hands of Bonin and his sidekick Butts.
16:04
Speaker 1: Fifteen year old Donald Heyden and seventeen year old David
16:08
Speaker 1: Marillo were both sodomized, strangled, and discarded along the Ventura Freeway.
16:15
Speaker 5: He was very clever so that the police were confused.
16:21
Speaker 5: He would just scatter these kids all over the place.
16:24
Speaker 5: They were trash. Once they were dead, they were trash
16:28
Speaker 5: day they were nothing.
16:30
Speaker 1: The bodies of young male victims were being discovered in
16:34
Speaker 1: various different counties in and around Los Angeles. Noticing a
16:38
Speaker 1: similarity between the murders, investigators at the LAPD began to
16:44
Speaker 1: contact other agencies. Larry Marlberg was investigating the murder of
16:49
Speaker 1: seventeen year old Mark Shelton, who had been found beside
16:52
Speaker 1: a freeway in the DeVore area of San Bernardino County.
16:57
Speaker 9: IPD brought it to met the case in the war
17:00
Speaker 9: fit the cases from La County and Orange County, and
17:07
Speaker 9: then that's what made me realize that we were dealing.
17:11
Speaker 4: With a serial killer.
17:12
Speaker 9: And we all met together, all the agencies, exchanging information
17:17
Speaker 9: on murder cases, especially any type of murder cases that
17:21
Speaker 9: involved a body being dumped anywhere near a freeway.
17:25
Speaker 1: The multi agency investigation identified at least five possible victims,
17:30
Speaker 1: all of them boys under the age of seventeen. News
17:34
Speaker 1: of the man the press were calling the Freeway Killer
17:38
Speaker 1: soon spread. Over the next three months, four more young
17:42
Speaker 1: victims were found that matched the killer's m O. Reporter
17:46
Speaker 1: Dave Lopez remembers that the community was on a knife edge.
17:51
Speaker 7: There are a lot of bodies being found. All of
17:53
Speaker 7: southern California was terrified. I mean, here was a guy
17:56
Speaker 7: running around. They knew it was a van picking up kids,
18:00
Speaker 7: and these kids were found dead. I mean, it was
18:03
Speaker 7: a very, very terrifying time.
18:05
Speaker 1: And tragically, there would be many more victims at the
18:09
Speaker 1: turn of the decade. The Freeway Killer had no intention
18:13
Speaker 1: of stopping, but William Bonnin wasn't working alone. Over the
18:18
Speaker 1: course of his murderous career, the thirty two year old
18:21
Speaker 1: had a number of accomplices.
18:24
Speaker 3: When you've got a team killing situation, there's a participation
18:29
Speaker 3: and spectator element to this, and there's a sense of
18:32
Speaker 3: power in watching somebody else kill, and there's also a
18:36
Speaker 3: sense of power in performing a murder before an audience.
18:42
Speaker 5: Growing up, Bonnin didn't have any friends, and so these
18:46
Speaker 5: young killers were his friends and also his sexual partners.
18:53
Speaker 1: Another individual who was to become one of Bonnyn's chosen
18:57
Speaker 1: few was an eighteen year old from Texas, old Gregory Miley.
19:01
Speaker 1: He was illiterate and made money as a casual laborer.
19:07
Speaker 8: In February nineteen eighty, Bonin, this time with Miley, who
19:12
Speaker 8: had met at one of those parties, was out searching
19:15
Speaker 8: for a victim.
19:18
Speaker 1: Later, Miley described that night's events to prison psychologist Vonda Pelto.
19:24
Speaker 5: Gregory Miley had this pretty long blonde hair, I remember,
19:29
Speaker 5: and he had an IQ of about fifty seven I think,
19:34
Speaker 5: and he was definitely led by Bill.
19:37
Speaker 1: As Miley recounted to Vonder after his arrest, Bonin brought
19:41
Speaker 1: up the subject of murder with.
19:48
Speaker 4: Your Julia and I see.
19:54
Speaker 8: I dragged down shoes.
20:02
Speaker 1: Their victim was fifteen year old Charles Miranda.
20:06
Speaker 4: Bond, the only son still tiring.
20:09
Speaker 9: Mom oh my, sure around.
20:14
Speaker 4: There, the.
20:18
Speaker 1: Bonning goaded Miley, asking can you do it? Let me
20:22
Speaker 1: show you how to do this. Charles was raped and
20:25
Speaker 1: strangled in the back of the van.
20:29
Speaker 5: Ready to stop one's son in.
20:36
Speaker 1: But the night was just getting started.
20:40
Speaker 5: Miley told me that I was ready to go home.
20:43
Speaker 5: I was tired after we killed the first one, but
20:47
Speaker 5: Bonn and said, no, I need another one. And that's
20:50
Speaker 5: when they picked up the twelve year old, the youngest
20:53
Speaker 5: of all.
20:55
Speaker 1: They found James McCabe waiting at a bus stop. He
20:59
Speaker 1: wanted to get to Disneyland.
21:02
Speaker 3: They lose him into their vehicle under the promise that
21:05
Speaker 3: they were going to take him to Disneyland, but they didn't.
21:08
Speaker 3: Bonin raped him whilst Miley drove the vehicle and he
21:11
Speaker 3: was beaten and he was strangled. So you now have
21:16
Speaker 3: two murders in one day, and I think Bonin feels
21:19
Speaker 3: a real sense of accomplishment as a serial killer now.
21:23
Speaker 1: The police soon discovered the lifeless bodies of both boys,
21:27
Speaker 1: taking the number of the Freeway killers suspected victims to
21:31
Speaker 1: at least twelve. As the media reported the latest slayings,
21:35
Speaker 1: David McVicar found it all very familiar.
21:39
Speaker 4: It's like every time that I read about these kids
21:41
Speaker 4: in the newspaper, it was like I just felt this
21:43
Speaker 4: pit in my stomach right and it's like that happened
21:46
Speaker 4: to me that happened to me. You know, I just
21:48
Speaker 4: had this feeling it was him, right, But I knew
21:50
Speaker 4: in my heart it couldn't be him because he's still
21:53
Speaker 4: in prison, right.
21:55
Speaker 1: But he wasn't. William Bonin had been free for over
21:59
Speaker 1: a year, in which time he'd claimed the lives of
22:02
Speaker 1: many boys, and the sadistic serial killer was only just
22:06
Speaker 1: getting started. On the fifteenth of March, the naked body
22:10
Speaker 1: of another young man was found beside a freeway in
22:14
Speaker 1: La County. Thirty three year old Bonin had so far
22:18
Speaker 1: involved several accomplices, and he was about to recruit another.
22:23
Speaker 1: He'd been introduced to a seventeen year old called Billy
22:26
Speaker 1: Pew at one of his neighbour's parties, so.
22:31
Speaker 3: This individual could just as well have been one of
22:34
Speaker 3: Bonin's victims as well as an accomplice. So he got
22:38
Speaker 3: a ride home with him from a party and Bonyn
22:41
Speaker 3: proposition Pew, and Pugh turned him down.
22:45
Speaker 2: He was quite.
22:45
Speaker 3: Shocked at this, and during this encounter, Bonyn tells Pugh
22:50
Speaker 3: that he likes to abduct and kill young boys. And
22:54
Speaker 3: what Bonin is essentially saying here is I could kill
22:57
Speaker 3: you if I wanted to, and Pugh were quite fascinated
23:01
Speaker 3: but also quite terrified by this.
23:04
Speaker 1: On the twentieth of March, less than a week after
23:07
Speaker 1: his last killing, Bonnin, together with young Billy Pew, went
23:12
Speaker 1: to Hollywood on the hunt for a victim. They lured
23:15
Speaker 1: fifteen year old runaway Harry Todd Turner into the van.
23:21
Speaker 8: Harry Todd Turner was pray for the pair of them.
23:25
Speaker 8: Once again, the boy is forced to strip. He's beaten, sodomized,
23:31
Speaker 8: and strangled with a ligature.
23:33
Speaker 1: It wasn't enough to satisfy Bonin's growing desires. The following afternoon,
23:39
Speaker 1: he was yet again cruising the streets. This time he
23:42
Speaker 1: was alone.
23:44
Speaker 3: He's been killing with accomplices for quite a long time now,
23:48
Speaker 3: and I think he wants to mix it up and
23:50
Speaker 3: make things interesting. And he also has that confidence because
23:53
Speaker 3: he hasn't been caught. So he decides, I'm going to
23:56
Speaker 3: try killing on my own, and I think he feels
23:59
Speaker 3: quite confident and he's going to get away with it.
24:01
Speaker 1: He came across fourteen year old Glen Barker hitchhiking in Westminster.
24:07
Speaker 3: Glenn Barker's mother had been hearing about other boys who
24:11
Speaker 3: had been turning up dead and she was rightly incredibly
24:13
Speaker 3: worried about this, so in order to encourage Glenn not
24:17
Speaker 3: to hitch hike, she gave him money so he could
24:19
Speaker 3: take the bus instead. But like any young lad, he's
24:23
Speaker 3: not going to spend his money on the bus.
24:24
Speaker 2: He's going to save it up for other things.
24:27
Speaker 1: It was a mistake which cost Glenn his life, but
24:31
Speaker 1: claiming one young victim wasn't enough for Bonin.
24:34
Speaker 8: That afternoon, Bonin comes across a young man of fifteen,
24:39
Speaker 8: Russell Rue, who was on his way to an after
24:42
Speaker 8: school job, but he'd called his employer to tell him
24:46
Speaker 8: that he was running late. Tragically, he was hitchhiking and
24:51
Speaker 8: was offered a lift by none other than William Bonnin.
24:56
Speaker 1: Glenn and Russell's bodies were found dumped together in a
25:00
Speaker 1: remote location seventy miles out of the city in Orange County.
25:05
Speaker 3: I think the fact that Glen Barker and Russelbury's bodies
25:08
Speaker 3: were dumped together is incredibly significant because what the killer
25:12
Speaker 3: is doing, in terms of whoever finds those bodies is saying, look,
25:16
Speaker 3: I've killed two people. I've done this on my own.
25:19
Speaker 3: I am displaying these bodies for you to see. So
25:22
Speaker 3: there's a real sense of a performance here.
25:25
Speaker 1: Forensic investigators discovered distinctive green carpet fibers on both victims'
25:30
Speaker 1: naked bodies. This firmly linked these murders with four of
25:34
Speaker 1: the freeway Killer's earlier victims. By late April nineteen eighty,
25:39
Speaker 1: the body countertributed to the mysterious freeway killer had reached
25:44
Speaker 1: a staggering nineteen and there was no sign of him
25:47
Speaker 1: slowing down. It was all proving too much for David McVicar,
25:51
Speaker 1: who'd survived an assault by bonnin in nineteen seventy five.
25:56
Speaker 4: I know just something in my stomach that's told me
25:59
Speaker 4: this is him. And these stories just kept going on
26:03
Speaker 4: and on, and finally one day on TV, one of
26:05
Speaker 4: the news reporters said that if you have any idea,
26:09
Speaker 4: even if it's a guest, who could be doing this car?
26:11
Speaker 4: And I thought, yeah, I have a guest. I have
26:13
Speaker 4: a good guess. I finally got the sheriff's departments said
26:17
Speaker 4: what happened to me?
26:18
Speaker 1: The net was closing in on William bonnind His name
26:22
Speaker 1: had been firmly put on the police's radar, and someone
26:26
Speaker 1: else was about to name him as a suspect too.
26:29
Speaker 1: One of his accomplices, Billy Pew, had been arrested for
26:33
Speaker 1: vehicle theft.
26:35
Speaker 8: While on remand in prison, he tells the authorities that
26:39
Speaker 8: if you can make some kind of deal with them,
26:41
Speaker 8: he knows who the freeway killer is, and he points
26:45
Speaker 8: them towards William Bonnin.
26:49
Speaker 3: Looking at this from the outside, it would appear to
26:51
Speaker 3: be completely bizarre that he is out of Bonning's clutches.
26:55
Speaker 3: Now that coercively controlling dynamic has been broken down, He's
26:59
Speaker 3: getting a sense himself back and he wants to protect himself.
27:04
Speaker 1: Unaware that he was about to be under the spotlight,
27:08
Speaker 1: Bonin was recruiting yet another accomplice, an eighteen year old
27:12
Speaker 1: named James Munroe, whom he'd taken under his wing.
27:16
Speaker 5: Bill picked him up, got him a job, took him
27:19
Speaker 5: to live with him at his mother's house. And Bonnin
27:23
Speaker 5: just said to Jim Monroe, what do you think about
27:27
Speaker 5: us going out and picking up somebody, having sex with
27:30
Speaker 5: him and then killing him. What do you think? And
27:34
Speaker 5: Jim and Rowe told me he thought he was kidding.
27:38
Speaker 5: And Jim said he didn't want to sound like you know,
27:41
Speaker 5: he was afraid to do that.
27:43
Speaker 1: On the second of June, whilst the LAPD began to
27:47
Speaker 1: organize at twenty four hour surveillance operation on William Bonnin,
27:51
Speaker 1: their new prime suspect for the freeway killer. Bonin and
27:55
Speaker 1: James Munroe had picked up another young man.
27:59
Speaker 3: What stands out about this is that it didn't just
28:01
Speaker 3: happen in the back of a van down a road somewhere.
28:04
Speaker 3: Stephen Wells was taken to the house where Bonnin's mother lived. Now,
28:09
Speaker 3: taking a victim to a house where you live is
28:12
Speaker 3: incredibly risky, so Bonin really does feel completely invincible at
28:17
Speaker 3: this point in time.
28:20
Speaker 5: They killed Stephen Wells in Bonnin's house and then took
28:24
Speaker 5: him over to Vernon Budd's house, and they said to Vernon, hey, Vern,
28:28
Speaker 5: come on out in the van and look what we've got.
28:32
Speaker 5: And vern went out there and kind of poked the
28:36
Speaker 5: kid and said, oh yeah, that's a good one. And
28:40
Speaker 5: Bill said to vern what do you think we are
28:43
Speaker 5: to do with him? Vern said, well, you could keep
28:47
Speaker 5: him as a souvenir or just dump him off and hey,
28:53
Speaker 5: no big deal, you can always get another one.
28:56
Speaker 1: The surveillance team set up outside Bonnin's house just in
29:00
Speaker 1: time to witness him and Munro return in the van
29:04
Speaker 1: after disposing of Stephen's body. As investigators watched the callers
29:09
Speaker 1: Duo Jobialie enter the house, they had no idea what
29:13
Speaker 1: horrors had happened there. Just hours of all the police
29:17
Speaker 1: could do was watch and wait. Nine days later, on
29:21
Speaker 1: the eleventh of June, they got their opportunity.
29:26
Speaker 3: The police had witnessed him talking to a number of
29:28
Speaker 3: young men on street corners. As they were following him,
29:32
Speaker 3: a one seventeen year old actually got into his van.
29:36
Speaker 8: The detectives who had been standing watching the van could
29:39
Speaker 8: see it moving. They could also hear sounds, groans, a
29:45
Speaker 8: physical attack could be about to take place, and at
29:47
Speaker 8: that point they decide to get into the van.
29:52
Speaker 7: They caught him literally right in the act, right smack
29:55
Speaker 7: in the act.
29:56
Speaker 6: They save the kid and the carbond and red handed.
30:00
Speaker 1: William Bonnin was in police custody. The man who was
30:04
Speaker 1: believed to be responsible for the murder of twenty one
30:07
Speaker 1: young men and boys was safely behind bars. As the
30:11
Speaker 1: news broke, the whole of la and one keen viewer
30:14
Speaker 1: in particular freed a huge sigh of relief.
30:18
Speaker 4: We were watching the news and all of a sudden
30:20
Speaker 4: this flash comes Iron Freeway killer arrested in it.
30:24
Speaker 1: Was William Bonin was charged with a sodomy and oral
30:29
Speaker 1: copulation of the teenage boy who was rescued from his van.
30:33
Speaker 1: He was due in court for a preliminary hearing, and
30:36
Speaker 1: unless investigators could prove he was also a murderer, it
30:40
Speaker 1: was likely he would be released on bail. At the
30:44
Speaker 1: very last minute, officers searching Vernon Butt's home discovered large
30:49
Speaker 1: amounts of blood.
30:51
Speaker 4: In his shower.
30:53
Speaker 3: That's had probably been told by Bonny In. Don't worry,
30:56
Speaker 3: there's no evidence, deny everything.
30:58
Speaker 2: It's fine.
31:00
Speaker 3: But then the luminole shows up, this blood, which is
31:03
Speaker 3: completely unexpected. Now, up until this point, everything had been planned,
31:07
Speaker 3: everything had been predictable.
31:08
Speaker 2: It was going fine.
31:10
Speaker 3: But this is a real curveball, and this is when
31:12
Speaker 3: things start to unravel.
31:15
Speaker 1: But immediately started talking. He confirmed that he and Bonin
31:19
Speaker 1: had been responsible for several of the murders. Bonin was
31:23
Speaker 1: kept in jail. In the meantime, forensic investigators had been
31:28
Speaker 1: examining every inch of Bonnin's van. They'd had a breakthrough.
31:33
Speaker 1: The rear had been lined with green carpet, which was
31:36
Speaker 1: a match for the distinctive fibers that had been found
31:39
Speaker 1: on eight of the victims.
31:42
Speaker 8: They lift up the green carpet in the back of
31:45
Speaker 8: the van and discover blood. Now there are convincing links
31:51
Speaker 8: between the killings.
31:53
Speaker 1: As the case against William Bonnyn mounted, the news that
31:56
Speaker 1: so many boys and teenagers had been savagely abuse used
32:00
Speaker 1: and killed was difficult for David McVicar to hear.
32:04
Speaker 4: I can only imagine what those other kids went through,
32:07
Speaker 4: because I know that at first they would have seen
32:09
Speaker 4: the same person that I saw. They would have seen
32:12
Speaker 4: somebody who once have fun and inviting him be your
32:15
Speaker 4: friend and maybe smoke a joint or something, you know,
32:19
Speaker 4: and then right after they would have found out that
32:21
Speaker 4: they had messed up really bad and he was incredibly violent.
32:27
Speaker 4: He was evil, and he would hurt you just to
32:31
Speaker 4: hear you scream.
32:33
Speaker 1: The police finally had their mad investigators worked tirelessly to
32:38
Speaker 1: put the case against the freeway killer together. Six months later,
32:43
Speaker 1: on the sixteenth of December nineteen eighty, William bonnin tried
32:48
Speaker 1: to make a deal. He would give them information about
32:51
Speaker 1: his numerous victims on the understanding that his confessions could
32:56
Speaker 1: not be used as evidence against him. He was hoping
33:00
Speaker 1: that if he helped the prosecutors wouldn't seek the death penalty.
33:04
Speaker 1: Detective Larry Malmberg received a call from the LAPD.
33:09
Speaker 9: They said, hey, Bonnan is going to talk to us,
33:13
Speaker 9: and you're invited to come down. And I went down
33:17
Speaker 9: to the courthouse and there were officers from a tremendous
33:22
Speaker 9: amount of agencies that all had victims.
33:25
Speaker 1: The LAPD had prepared charts with profiles of dozens of
33:29
Speaker 1: victims they had reason to believe may be connected to
33:33
Speaker 1: the case.
33:35
Speaker 9: Kind of went through him by date and name and
33:39
Speaker 9: photographs and identified the ones that he had murdered.
33:45
Speaker 1: He even went on to describe where he dumped the
33:47
Speaker 1: body of a young boy that had never been found.
33:51
Speaker 9: He told us that it was out here in Samudadino
33:54
Speaker 9: County off the ten freeway, So arrangements were made to
33:57
Speaker 9: bring Boning out the next day by la Kenny Shus
34:01
Speaker 9: pointed out an area where the body had been dumped.
34:04
Speaker 9: They set up a grid and started doing his search
34:07
Speaker 9: and ultimately found bones.
34:08
Speaker 1: Bonin identified the victim from a photograph as being missing
34:13
Speaker 1: teenager Sean King, who was fourteen years old. His mother
34:17
Speaker 1: had been waiting anxiously for news of her son for
34:20
Speaker 1: seven months. Larry remembers that Bonn was a wolf in
34:25
Speaker 1: sheep's clothing.
34:27
Speaker 9: If you walked into a bar and sat down and
34:29
Speaker 9: he was sitting in a chair next to you, he
34:31
Speaker 9: would think it's a nice guy. It hurt emotionally talking
34:36
Speaker 9: to him and seeing that he is actually the kind
34:40
Speaker 9: of person you could carry on a conversation with and
34:43
Speaker 9: not even realize what an evil, no good, rotten piece
34:47
Speaker 9: of garbage he is.
34:49
Speaker 1: Without being able to use Bonin's confessions as evidence in court,
34:54
Speaker 1: the confirmation that he had indeed been responsible for so
34:58
Speaker 1: many killings was of limited help to the prosecution. However,
35:02
Speaker 1: as the year came to an end, several of his
35:05
Speaker 1: accomplices agreed to plead guilty and testify against Bonin in
35:10
Speaker 1: return for leniency in their sentencing. Meanwhile, journalist Dave Lopez
35:16
Speaker 1: had been visiting Bonnin in jail. On the ninth of
35:19
Speaker 1: January nineteen eighty one, he had another opportunity to meet
35:24
Speaker 1: with the killer.
35:25
Speaker 7: There had been a lot of speculation about what was
35:27
Speaker 7: going to happen with a trial and what have you,
35:30
Speaker 7: and I said, you know, there's a rumor that you're
35:33
Speaker 7: going to cop out to all this, and he goes,
35:37
Speaker 7: I don't know if I'm going to do that or not,
35:38
Speaker 7: but you got a.
35:40
Speaker 6: Little bit of time.
35:40
Speaker 7: I go yeah, and he says, yeah, I did it.
35:45
Speaker 6: I said, you did what? He says, I killed them?
35:48
Speaker 6: And I go how many? And he said twenty one.
35:53
Speaker 1: It was a confession that Dave had not been expecting.
35:57
Speaker 7: It was just a weird feeling, knowing that he was
36:00
Speaker 7: telling me all this, and here I'm just sitting right
36:03
Speaker 7: across from him and saying to myself, you know, he
36:08
Speaker 7: didn't have the look of a wild murderer, but by
36:13
Speaker 7: he should talk like one.
36:14
Speaker 1: Two days later, on the eleventh of January, Vernon Butts,
36:18
Speaker 1: Bonin's accomplist, who'd admitted his part in the killings and
36:22
Speaker 1: been charged with six of the murders, committed suicide in jail.
36:27
Speaker 1: It was a massive blow for the prosecution.
36:30
Speaker 8: Now Butts has agreed to testify against Bonin, providing the
36:35
Speaker 8: death penalty is taken off the table, but the moment
36:38
Speaker 8: the Butts hangs himself, all those confessions become inadmissible in court.
36:45
Speaker 3: Bonin was in jail at the time, but in order
36:48
Speaker 3: to keep him there, the prosecution needed to prove his guilt. Now,
36:51
Speaker 3: they couldn't use his confessions against him because that was
36:55
Speaker 3: the agreement. They couldn't use Butts's testimony either. So both
36:59
Speaker 3: of these murderers have admitted to their crimes, but the
37:02
Speaker 3: evidence can't be used to prove them guilty.
37:06
Speaker 1: Six months later, in June, there was a revelation. Dave
37:10
Speaker 1: Lopez went public with the news that Bonin had confessed
37:14
Speaker 1: to him.
37:15
Speaker 7: We put together the story and broadcast the fact that
37:18
Speaker 7: he confessed to me. Twenty one killings went in a
37:22
Speaker 7: little bit of detailed, not a whole bunch and man
37:25
Speaker 7: then the proverbial you know you know what hit the fan.
37:29
Speaker 1: It made the reporter a vital witness and he was
37:32
Speaker 1: put under pressure to give evidence in court.
37:36
Speaker 7: Everybody and their brother was coming after me, and they
37:39
Speaker 7: were trying.
37:39
Speaker 6: To subpoena me.
37:40
Speaker 7: And now, at the time, California had what they call
37:43
Speaker 7: a shield law, which basically protected reporters from having to
37:47
Speaker 7: testify in a court of law.
37:49
Speaker 6: If you want it, you can.
37:50
Speaker 7: Subpoena them, but they can only testify to what they
37:54
Speaker 7: had reported on the air or what they had written.
37:57
Speaker 7: And the state of California tried like the to try
38:00
Speaker 7: to get me to testify, and I wasn't going to testify.
38:03
Speaker 1: As prosecutors tried every trick in the book to get
38:06
Speaker 1: Dave on the witness stand, Bonyn seemed happy to spill
38:10
Speaker 1: the beans on his life of crime to prison psychologist
38:14
Speaker 1: Von Depelto. Over the coming weeks, he went into detail
38:18
Speaker 1: about the depraved killings.
38:21
Speaker 5: He said that he went out and picked up these
38:25
Speaker 5: kids because he wanted sex. He wanted to rape them.
38:29
Speaker 5: And then he said that he had like this epiphany.
38:34
Speaker 5: I guess where he realized and admitted to himself. It
38:39
Speaker 5: wasn't the sex at all. He enjoyed the killing. He
38:44
Speaker 5: enjoyed having the boy at his mercy and hearing the
38:49
Speaker 5: boy cry and plead for his life.
38:53
Speaker 1: On the fourth of November nineteen eighty one, at the
38:56
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Superior Court, Bonyn's trial be again. He was
39:01
Speaker 1: indicted for twelve murders in Los Angeles County.
39:05
Speaker 8: The trial was a sensation. People cued for hours to
39:09
Speaker 8: get into the public gallery. It was the most extraordinary spectacle.
39:15
Speaker 1: Without any of Bonin's confessions on the record, there was
39:19
Speaker 1: a real chance that he could get away with murder.
39:23
Speaker 1: After six weeks of trial and testimony, the fate of
39:26
Speaker 1: the freeway killer hung in the balance.
39:30
Speaker 6: Once they started closing arguments, that's it.
39:32
Speaker 7: The case is over. You know, it's no more testimony,
39:35
Speaker 7: no more nothing. And I hadn't testified yet, and I
39:38
Speaker 7: got a phone call saying that the closing arguments were delayed.
39:44
Speaker 7: I go, why, well, because Bonnin was in the houlding
39:47
Speaker 7: cell with another inmate. The inmate realized who he was
39:50
Speaker 7: and he beat the living crap out of him to
39:52
Speaker 7: the point where Bonnin was physically unable to go to court.
39:56
Speaker 1: This unexpected news had a profound effect on Dave.
40:01
Speaker 7: I do believe that there are sometimes when you get signs,
40:05
Speaker 7: whether it be subtle or whatever.
40:06
Speaker 6: You however you want to believe it.
40:08
Speaker 7: But the way I looked at it, I said, it
40:09
Speaker 7: was so unusual for a guy to be beaten up
40:14
Speaker 7: the day of the closing arguments and the closing environments
40:18
Speaker 7: were delayed.
40:19
Speaker 6: I said to myself, you know I better adding more
40:21
Speaker 6: of this.
40:22
Speaker 7: So I called the prosecutor and I said, hey, look,
40:25
Speaker 7: you know you still need me.
40:26
Speaker 6: I'll testify.
40:28
Speaker 1: Dave Lopez was on the stand for two days. He
40:32
Speaker 1: detailed the twenty one murders Bonin had confessed to him.
40:37
Speaker 8: In many ways, it was a controversial decision because as
40:41
Speaker 8: a reporter myself and I've covered many trials, you're supposed
40:45
Speaker 8: to be there as an observer and to remain impartial.
40:49
Speaker 8: It is extremely rare for someone to leave the press
40:53
Speaker 8: box for the witness box.
40:56
Speaker 1: On the sixth of January nineteen eighty two, thirty three
41:00
Speaker 1: year old William Bonin was found guilty of ten murders
41:03
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles County and given the death penalty. The
41:07
Speaker 1: following year, Bonin was tried and found guilty of a
41:11
Speaker 1: further four murders in neighboring Orange County. He received a
41:15
Speaker 1: second death sentence, and.
41:18
Speaker 7: You know a lot of people said, well, I was
41:19
Speaker 7: the main reason that he got convicted.
41:23
Speaker 6: I don't think that at all.
41:24
Speaker 7: I think, if anything, I was just icing on the
41:26
Speaker 7: cake for the jury.
41:28
Speaker 1: All of Bonin's surviving accomplices were also found guilty and
41:32
Speaker 1: sentenced to time in jail. Despite taking the police directly
41:36
Speaker 1: to the location of fourteen year old Sean King's body,
41:40
Speaker 1: Bonin was acquitted of that crime without being able to
41:44
Speaker 1: use his confession in court. There was insufficient evidence for conviction.
41:48
Speaker 4: The sad thing is is that he admitted doing twenty
41:51
Speaker 4: one murderers, but they only busted him convicted him for
41:55
Speaker 4: coming fourteen. So there were seven families that didn't get
41:59
Speaker 4: their case assaw justice even though the guys that he
42:02
Speaker 4: admitted it.
42:04
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, after fourteen years on death row,
42:09
Speaker 1: William Bonnin became the first prisoner executed by lethal injection
42:13
Speaker 1: in California. David mcvico was present during those final moments.
42:19
Speaker 4: It was probably like six feet away from him, something
42:22
Speaker 4: like that, and he just eventually turned purple and he
42:27
Speaker 4: went like that and that was the end of it.
42:31
Speaker 4: But it was for me total release. It was like
42:34
Speaker 4: these demon nightmares were just coming out.
42:39
Speaker 1: William George Bonnin was pronounced dead at twelve thirteen am
42:44
Speaker 1: on the twenty third of February nineteen ninety six. He
42:48
Speaker 1: never showed any remorse for his crimes.
42:51
Speaker 7: He said, there are some guys that were born on
42:54
Speaker 7: this world to do certain things.
42:55
Speaker 9: I was born to be a killer. They were all
42:58
Speaker 9: kinds out there. Bonin is one of the most evil ones,
43:03
Speaker 9: in my opinion, certainly the most evil I ever talt with.
43:07
Speaker 5: I asked Bill one time, do you have any regrets?
43:13
Speaker 5: And he said, well, I did kill two in one day,
43:18
Speaker 5: but he said I always wanted to kill three, and
43:22
Speaker 5: he said I really regret not having that opportunity.
43:29
Speaker 1: Bonin was a sexual predator who killed for sheer pleasure.
43:34
Speaker 1: He was convicted of murdering fourteen boys, but is believed
43:38
Speaker 1: to have been responsible for many more lost lives. He
43:42
Speaker 1: targeted those who were vulnerable, and by his own admission,
43:46
Speaker 1: would have continued to kill if he hadn't been caught,
43:50
Speaker 1: making William Bonnin one of the world's most evil killers.