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[switch clicks]
[voice playing on record]
These tapes, they were meant to be confidential.
They were never meant to be released.
[voice playing on record]
Knowing that these tapes exist,
I'm totally flabbergasted.
I can't even believe it.
[voice playing on record]
I've covered many many murder stories in my
forty eight year career on television.
And what happened on these murders,
and how these poor young victims died,
turned my stomach.
[voice playing on record]
It came a point where,
it was almost like you picked up the newspaper
and it would be another murder.
[voice playing on record]
This guy had to be stopped. And so, as a citizen,
I did what I had to do.
[waves splashing]
Well back in the '70s,
there was a feeling at that time that
people wanted to be free.
Hitchhiking was very popular.
The young people, specially the men, would hitchhike.
It was very perfectly safe.
My name is Ronald E Bowers. Back in 1979,
I was a senior prosecutor for the Los Angeles County
District Attorney's Office.
Marcus Grabs was a west German exchange student.
He'd come to the United States.
Didn't have a lot of money, so he was hitchhiking.
Marcus Grabs came to Newport Beach.
He spent the day or two there,
but then he wanted to go up the coast
and see more of California.
So he had his backpack all packed,
and he walked over to the Pacific Coast Highway...
[voices playing on record]
[man 1 speaking]
[man 2 speaking]
[newscaster] Marcus Grabs, seventeen, west Germany
was discovered stabbed to death in the Tapis Park area,
north of Malibu.
Forensic tests have shown that Grabs
had been sexually assaulted.
[camera shutter clicks]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Ronald] The police are wondering, this seemed very strange.
In such a remote location, a nude body of a young man.
But there were no clues. There was nothing at the crime scene
that tipped off who could've done it.
[siren blaring]
The police, they needed to find evidence.
But back in the '70s,
we didn't have all the forensic technology
that we have today.
That was when they contacted different homicide bureaus
asking them if there's any similar sex crimes
they're investigating. And they said, yes there was.
There was a young man in the San Fernando Valley
and he disappeared.
[Brenda] I always remember the '70s as
being the best time of my life.
This is the house that Tommy and I grew up in.
And back in the '70s,
there was a lot of kids playing in the street here.
We used to play baseball a lot.
My name is Brenda Axtell,
and I lived in the San Fernando Valley.
My brother Tommy was really, always hustled to get money.
And one of the things, he got a job
selling flowers on the street corners.
It was probably about seven o'clock in the evening.
My mother, she was acting very strange,
and I said what's wrong, and she said
"Tommy hasn't come home yet."
An hour went by, another hour went by
and then I was talking to my dad,
my dad was watching TV
and the 11 o'clock news came on.
[newscaster] The nude body of a young boy was was found off
Mulholland Highway today.
Stabbed multiple times, and sexually mutilated.
Investigators say the body...
[Brenda] I just remember my dad flying out of the chair.
He called the Sheriff's Department
and asked about it,
and they said why do you want to know about this and he said
because I think it's my son.
It was him.
And he was pretty much unrecognizable almost, so...
You can't even really explain it.
The devastation it causes.
[Ronald] In many cases, homicide detectives
don't have all the pieces.
But, in this case,
one of the few things they had to work on was
Marcus Grabs and Tommy Lundgren were
found in the very same area.
And there was also the coroner doing the autopsy,
noticed that each one of the boys had been sodomized.
So, is there a connection?
[Dave] In 1979, I was 29 years old.
And it had always been my dream to become
a reporter at a big time TV station.
My name is Dave Lopez.
I was the main street reporter in Southern California
in the late '70s.
I covered, you know, all kinds of stories.
Political stories, crime obviously,
but, on this young man,
a 13 year old boy, in the Valley...
People moved to the Valley to get away from the crime,
so they felt safe.
And so to have someone just disappear,
he's just a young 13 year old kid,
who wanted to make a few bucks and uh,
you know, minding his own business.
How preposterous is it,
that that person would become a murder victim.
In that particular area, obviously it becomes big news.
But it took a while before
the mainstream news media became aware...
"Hey, wait a minute. We've got a real
heavy duty sexual predator out there."
[newscaster] A body of an unidentified male was found...
[continues indistinctly]
Five days after Marcus Grabs body was found,
a third body was found in San Bernardino County.
That had been there for maybe a week.
It was Mark Shelton.
Homicide Sheriffs are wondering what is going on.
So the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department
contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
to see if there is
something that they might have that's similar.
And they said, yes, there was. There were some young men
who were nude, who were sexually molested,
and they were found in a remote location.
That began the sharing of information between the
different homicide bureaus.
Because, was there a serial killer on the loose?
[newscaster] A body found on Monday was identified
as Donald Ray Hayden.
fifteen, of Hollywood.
He'd been stabbed to death and sexually molested
before being left in the dumpster
just north of the Ventura Freeway.
The Hayden murder is already being considered
the fourth body
in a series that includes three other killings
over the past few months.
[radio buzzing]
I remember talking to a couple of the
Orange county investigators.
I think I found out after the fourth murder,
that there was some kind of connection to this.
Only because of the way these kids were being
brutally killed in almost the same scenario.
The one thing that police had in those days is, you know,
they kept stats.
So when this came along, and you started having
an influx, an unbelievable rise in these
vicious, horrendous murders,
they knew something was wrong.
I kept bugging these guys, over and over again
about a connection.
[newscaster] This is a channel two special presentation.
The scene always looks the same,
a young, white, thin male, completely nude.
Signs of strangulation, many with rope burns
around the ankles and wrists.
And the big question is, who and how many people
are responsible for these murders?
We're not formulating any speculations beyond
this homicide now,
but neither are we closing our minds
to the facts that there are
other cases here in Los Angeles
and outside of Los Angeles that
are so far unsolved homicides.
Investigators are very reluctant
to answer that question.
[Vonda] Knowing that these tapes exist,
I'm mesmerized.
I'm about to listen to this man's voice
that I have not heard for 40 years.
I'm Dr. Vonda Pelto, Clinical Psychologist,
hired into the Los Angeles County Men's Jail
where I saw William Bonin on many occasions.
[man 1 speaking]
[man 2 speaking]
The thing I'm most taken with
is, he could be talking about the Dodger baseball game,
no affect, no remorse.
[switch clicks]
[man 1 speaking]
[man 2 speaking]
Clinicians rarely ever have an opportunity
to really listen to someone who is killed
without any kind of guilt.
[man 2 speaking]
It's unbelievable that this was sitting somewhere
and never exposed to the light.
[helicopter hovering]
[Wyatt] By 1980, law enforcement was concerned
that there was a serial killer out there.
We can usually go back to once we've identified the person
to where they were last seen by someone...
It can create panic on the public.
And so, I didn't want to be a part of confirming
it was a serial killer.
Hello. My name is Wyatt Hart.
I was the press information officer
for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
There are some similarities to the cases, yes.
[Reporter] Enough to make you think that it's the work
of the same person?
Yes, it could be.
[Wyatt] You have to be very careful about what you put out.
It's very important that you give them the information,
but it has to be filtered.
We can only assume that that information that is released to the press
is also released to the persons involved in these crimes,
which could hamper our investigation.
We kept recommending you know,
and putting out, you know, that, don't hitchhike.
[newscaster] At Marina Highschool in Huntington Beach
and at other high schools in Orange County as well,
the word is out.
Two days ago, in preparing this report,
a trip along Beach Boulevard,
and there were no hitchhikers.
Dave Lopez was a great help
to law enforcement from CBS News, for example.
Wyatt Hart was this old, wonderful, wonderful man.
Very kind. Very very patient.
And we worked together on television.
I told the story of what the hell was going on,
and he had required the help of the media
to get attention to what they were working on.
[reporter] Flyers have been given to students
and the message is clear.
Don't hitchhike.
[reporter] You're tall, you're thin, you've got blonde hair.
That fits a lot of the people that he has been killing.
Are you frightened?
Well, I can't hitchhike, you know.
I used to hitchhike just to go home.
But you can't really do that no more.
[man] The investigators were working
sixteen, 18 hours a day just on this case.
And, as the time went on, you know, series of the killings
just continues to build and build and build.
[reporter] 17 year old David Murillo was cycling to a movie theatre.
His body was found near the...
[man] Now we're in February of 1980.
[reporter] 18 year old Robert Wirostek
was hitchhiking to his job at a grocery store.
[man] By this time there had been 12 young boys
all viciously murdered in a span of nine months.
[reporter] ...is that of 17 year old Frank Dennis Fox...
It was a story that had engulfed us,
and a story that I had almost done daily reports on.
[reporter] ...dumped by the sides of freeways.
And is now being described as the freeway killer.
[Dr. Vonda] William Bonin was born in 1947
in a small town Willimantic, Connecticut.
William Bonin had an older brother and a younger brother.
Both of his parents were alcoholics.
When Bonin's father came home from the war,
he was extremely violent.
And would take out these fits of anger on his wife and children.
A lot of the men came home from the war damaged.
This had a real affect on the family.
He took up gambling and excessive drinking.
The mother, in order to with the husband's abusive behavior,
she would drink excessively.
The kids were almost always dirty and hungry.
When Bonin was young, he always dreamt of running way.
But he told me he didn't have any place to run to.
[Dave] Back in 1980, you didn't feel safe
knowing that there was someone out there
that was doing these things especially as we were getting
more information leaked to us about just exactly what was happening.
I mean, we knew that this freeway killer
loved to torture his victims.
In one victim, an ice pick
was shoved into his ear almost three and a half inches.
Things that you wouldn't even dream of comprehending what was happening.
There was another in here, just a 12 year old little guy.
He was on his way to Disneyland.
You have to wonder,
but then you have to think back at what the times were like.
Who today would let a 12 year old boy
go to Disneyland by taking the bus by himself?
You wouldn't do it.
Back then, it wasn't that unusual.
McCabe was beaten, he was strangled with his own shirt.
His neck was crushed with a jack handle.
He left his body next to a dumpster in the city of Walnut.
[Ronald Bowers] By 1980, there was many different things
that were going through the detectives minds.
One of the things that did come up,
they were all sexually assaulted.
So could this mean he's connected to homosexual activity?
[Don Kilhefner] In the '70s, it was a difficult time being gay in California.
Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians
was assassinated in his office in City Hall in San Francisco.
I am Don Kilhefner,
and I am the co-founder of something in Los Angeles
called the Gay Community Services Center.
[Kilhefner] What you have to remember there was a law in California
that a man could be arrested
for just touching another man.
The church defined us as evil people.
And it affected the entire community.
[Kilhefner] But there were many who were involved
in fighting back at that time.
The first gay pride parade in Los Angeles.
35,000 people turned out.
A new world was being created.
What you saw happening
were young gay men heading towards those major cities.
They were leaving their small town
with very very little in the way of resources.
Here in Los Angeles we had a major influx.
The gay community thrived to the center.
We provided housing for them, meals for them.
Here with these young men who had no money,
and so their way of getting around was by hitchhiking.
Sometimes working as prostitutes.
The freeway killer exploited that.
Used that to his nefarious ends.
[Freeway killer speaking]
When we found out that the victims
of the freeway killer fitted the profile
of a young gay man that we were trying to help,
we were shocked, angry, sad.
At the community center, we had signs out
of warning young gay people to not be hitchhiking because it was dangerous.
So we did what we could do to warn people,
but not everybody was reached.
I remember Wyatt Hart
told us members of the media that there was a connection.
They just weren't quite sure of who it was.
[telephone ringing]
The taskforce was working feverishly.
They were terrified that the media would put something out
a little too much and that would then either drive
the one person or the group of people who ever doing this
underground or they go away or they stop or they go somewhere else.
They just did not wanted to do anything that was going to jeopardize this case.
Wyatt, he would tell us a lot of things off the record.
There was more to this than what we can tell you.
[David Foster] Mr. Bonin was polite and articulate.
He was difficult in the sense of having a very great difficulty
either remembering his traumas or be willing to talk about them.
My name is David Foster.
I was the clinical psychiatrist
in William Bonin's appeals trial with federal court.
There is an account of one of his own school friends.
And if you don't mind, I'd like to read that.
She says, "Billy Bonin was in my sixth grade class.
One of his neighbors said the boys would dig up potatoes at night from their gardens
and eat them raw and unwashed because they were so hungry.
He was smart but he didn't talk much to the other kids.
Certain kids always made fun of his ill-fitting clothes and shoes.
They called him "Bugsy Bonin."
He never fought back, but you could see the hurt in his eyes.
Back then, I thought of him as a gentle and very sad soul
who never tried to harm anyone."
There was a tremendous amount of data
that I had available to me about what he had been through.
My findings were William Bonin was subjected at an early age
to severe physical abuse by his father.
This created front lobe damage in his brain.
And then he was also extremely neglected by his mother.
This had a profound effect on his developing brain,
specifically the connections in the right hemisphere
which impaired his ability to connect socially and emotionally.
All this creates the devastation and tragedy that we see,
not only with Mr. Bonin, but also of course for all of his victims.
[Dr. Vonda] The mother finally comes to the conclusion
that she really can't handle these three kids.
So she sends the two older boys,
Bonin and his brother Robert to an orphanage.
At one point, a priest in the orphanage
sexually molested Bonin.
And then later on,
he was placed in the boys correctional home.
There, unfortunately, he was again sexually abused by an older boy.
What a horrible tragic thing for this young child,
already being abused in the orphanage,
and now being in this boys home and again abused.
What chance at life could this little young boy have?
We don't know the precise combination
that makes up a serial killer.
We just know that certain risk factors seem to contribute to it.
Having a cold mother
who is incapable of giving love.
Physical and sexual abuse.
And then frontal lobe damage.
By the age of ten, Bonin already had all of these.
When Bonin was 15, the whole family moved
from Willimantic to Downey, California.
Where Bonin changed from being the victim to the perpetrator.
[Wyatt] Law enforcement was called,
I believe it was by a hiker.
Two young men bodies were found just off the Ortega Highway.
[Wyatt Hart] We had a swarm of media personnel out there.
[reporter] Just where they located the...
There is on these side of the on-ramp.
Probably about, one is about 15 feet down the side,
the other is about 20 feet.
[reporter] Any signs of strangulation?
We can't tell any sort of cause of death or anything.
We just can't tell yet.
[reporter] Lieutenant, at this stage,
what's the process that now begins?
Well, we'll search the surrounding areas for what might be obvious clues.
[Hart] Investigators are never surprised by what they find
and what people can do to other people,
but to find two of them out there,
it kind of put a different perspective on the investigation.
[reporter] And neither one is fully clothed?
No. One is nude, the other one is partially clothed.
That was when we realized that something is going on here.
Immediately we started thinking, well, wait a minute.
We've got two. It's pretty hard for one guy
to take on two at one time.
So, do we have more people involved?
[reporter] Two teenage boys found together in the Cleveland National Forest
resemble a string of other slaying across...
Further escalations in the murders connected to the so called...
Detectives are now working feverishly in their search...
There's been at least 17 murders in less than a year.
[Ronald] Bodies were discovered in Ventura County.
And even up in Kern County.
We know there was one from San Bernardino County.
And many of them from LA County.
And eventually some from Orange County.
They were long distance away,
so who could be moving around from county to county easily like this?
In 1980, my job was to pick up and deliver trucks
around the California area.
Traveled up and down highway 101,
several times working with Bill Bonin.
I decided to do this interview
and I thought it would be beneficial
for the people to know what actually happened.
I don't wanna conceal my identity
because of guilt by association.
When I first met him, he seemed like a very nice guy.
Uh, I even had him at my house a couple of times for coffee.
I had no recollection that he was nothing but a decent person.
On one occasion, William Bonin and I
did a little trip up to Northern California.
I mentioned to him that I heard that there was another victim
of the Freeway Killer.
I've just referred to the fact
that I wish that they'd catch the guy that was doing this,
and Bill said to me, "Yeah, I wish they catch him too."
When we were on our way back,
the vehicle I was driving, uh, started to act up,
and, uh, we pulled off.
Bill suggested that we leave him there
and I'd drive the vehicle he was driving,
because we had farther to go home than he had.
By the time I had gotten back to City of Industry,
Bill Bonin had been there for approximately ten minutes.
He had a young man with him.
Light tint, he had sandy color hair,
and, uh, he had injured upper lip.
Then I left and, uh, went home.
I didn't see Bill for, probably, a couple of weeks after that.
[reporter] The nude body of a young man found in a service station
might be another victim of the so-called Freeway Killer.
[detective] I feel that there is a similarity,
at least, generally, in so much as,
uh, this fits the pattern of young males, nude,
uh, clean looking,
dropped near a freeway area, who have died from strangulation.
Larry Sharp, it shook me up pretty good.
[chuckles] Uh...
What's the chances that I was working with a freeway killer?
Little did I know I was sitting next to him.
[reporter] Homicide detectives believe the killer has now claimed...
Target force across Southern California is working night and day.
They are rapidly expanding investigation
before the death toll rises any further.
[Ronald] Homicide detectives couldn't keep up.
It put even more pressure on the detectives,
you know, "We gotta catch this guy."
[Ray] In the turn of the 1980s,
South Gate California was going through a transition.
The city was changing,
General Motors was closing down,
we had some notorious gangs
that were infiltrating the junior highs and the high schools.
My name is Ray Carvajal.
I was the youth pastor
at South Gate Foursquare Church,
South Gate California
during the time of the Freeway Killer.
There were kids coming in here and they're
asking for help.
Getting out of certain groups is sometimes difficult
and sometimes you have to walk away.
I wanted to give them something that they can rely on.
And that's the word of God.
Sean started coming to the youth group.
He was 14 years old.
He was looking for a change.
It was just exciting to see
these kids become part of your life.
And you're trying to impact them in a, uh,
in a positive way.
May of 1980 was a day I will never forget.
Well, we're at the, uh, location where,
uh, we ran into Sean.
We pulled right up here
and, uh,
I look to my right as I'm getting ready to exit
and I said to my wife, "That looks like Sean."
And she looked over and she goes, "That is Sean."
So he continued walking this way
and he came around the car.
I can still see the blonde hair and those big blue eyes.
He's like a kid that is just starting off life.
We started talking about, obviously, the transition he's making.
The, uh, starting over at a new junior high.
I said, "I see you walking, did your mom drop you off
at the corner or something like that?"
He goes, "No, I take the bus," you know, "I live at Firestone Boulevard."
I said, "Well, you... you have a good day."
Little did I know that that morning was going to be the last time I saw Sean.
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
We got home from work and, uh, I get a call from Sean's mom.
And she goes, "Sean has not arrived."
I said, "Hmm."
I took a drive looking for Sean.
I remember calling our youth president
and I said, "Hey, can you get everybody to..."
Just start calling all of... all the kids
and say, "Hey, is Sean with you?"
And then we see that breaking news...
[reporter] ... 14-year-old boy has disappeared in a suspected kidnapping.
He was last seen at Firestone Boulevard.
And one of the kids, kind of, looked back,
"Isn't that where Sean takes the bus?"
And it's like, all of a sudden, we, kind of, knew.
[Bonin speaking]
[Ray] I mean, where do you look?
Where are they headed? Nothing. You have zero to work on.
We heard of the Freeway Killer through the news,
I said, "You know what, they've been trying to break this case,
all the indicators were there
and they have not been able to break this case."
And the kids said, "Let's just pray."
[Bonin speaking]
Uh...
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
There is nothing we can do.
[Dave] I interviewed Sean King's mother a number of times.
She's a very, very, very sweet woman.
You met these people, you met family members,
you met the brothers,
you met the sisters, you met the moms, you met the dads.
I mean, they were just absolutely heart-broken.
And you felt so bad
'cause you felt so helpless that you couldn't do anything.
More than once, after I would be finished, I would go home,
you know, a lot of times it'd be late at night
and my kids were growing up at that time, they were small,
and, uh, I would just look at them
and just, you know, almost have a tear come to my eye
knowing how lucky and fortunate I am
that they're safe and sound.
You count your lucky stars at a time like that.
Sean King's mother,
like so many other people that I had interviewed,
they were... they just wanted to know why.
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
[Dr. David] In spite of the fact that William Bonin's brain
did not develop normally,
and he did not have the capacity
for normal affiliation and empathy,
he still had this longing for connection.
[Bonin speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
[Dr. David] If we got into the details
of what happened when he was growing up,
we would see what he did was replicate the type of abuse.
He was bound by the older boys in the juvenile system
who would rape and, um, beat him.
He was strangled by them.
We form bonds under intense emotional experience.
So he forms these sadomasochistic bonds
by being bound and choked and raped
by 12 to 19-year-olds.
Who are those he kills?
Twelve to 19-year-olds.
He needed someone who could
share his experience and so he went about trying to create
those who were victimized like he was victimized.
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
[Dr. David] He exclusively states
what he enjoyed was not... It wasn't about the sex.
It was about the feeling of control,
about feeling of dominance.
The worst feeling for a human being is helplessness.
All of his life he's just a helpless wave.
When it finally explodes forward
and he has no right hemisphere to evaluate,
terror,
rage,
despair.
It's inevitable.
There's nothing that he could do to stop it.
[reporter] For Steven, June 2nd started like most days did
in the last three months of his life.
He left this small Downey apartment where he lived alone
and he took a bus to work in Los Angeles.
When last seen alive,
Steven was at this bus stop
shortly after 3 o'clock.
Sometime between 8:00 p.m. and midnight,
that's when Steven was strangled,
his nude body then dumped
and discovered shortly before 1:00 a.m.
behind this dark, deserted gas station in Huntington Beach.
[reporter] These bodies of young boys are now being discovered...
On a murderous rampage across Southern California
appears to be escalating.
[Ronald] Back in the '70s and the '80s, the homicide detectives
didn't have all the tools available to them
as homicide detectives do today.
We didn't have DNA, the computers.
They had to be very creative.
By 1980,
they were looking for a break in the case.
They were using, uh,
pc tape, or scotch tape
and they would put it on different parts of the body of the victims
to see if they could detect any type of hair,
any type of fiber.
And they noticed on Steven Wood,
it was a green fiber,
and they compared it up to other,
uh, fibers that were taken off the other victims
and it was the same.
[Wyatt] They took all that in to the labs
and they came up with a fiber
that was from a carpet
that was sold to vans,
and actually found the type of carpet,
the manufacturer of the carpet,
then they start looking at where it was sold the most.
[Ronald] This was a big break.
Now they knew there was, uh, a scientific connection
between these cases.
But nothing was uncovered
to point a clue as to who that suspect could be.
And then sometime later,
in the most bizarre way, everything changed.
There was a young juvenile,
Billy Pugh was his name and he was a car thief.
Stole one, he got caught.
[reporter] In the majority of cases, the bodies had been dumped near freeways.
So the suspect investigators are looking for
has been dubbed the Freeway Killer.
[Ronald] He was in custody, waiting for his case to come up,
and for some reason he heard on the radio
somebody talking about the Freeway Killer,
and the nude bodies, and the remote locations, and so forth.
Now, Billy Pugh didn't like the fact that he got caught,
so he was willing to make a deal.
So, he said to his counsellor,
"I think I know who that could be."
The counsellor
took that information
and contacted a police officer on the case,
Jigsaw John.
He came out the next day and talked to Billy Pugh.
And that's when Billy Pugh said,
"You know, I was at a party one time and I...
I left the party, I came outside
and a guy offered me a ride.
Then he started kinda playing around with me,
touching me, which I didn't like.
He started telling me how he liked to kill people.
He liked to molest people.
Billy Pugh was kind of afraid.
He wanted to get away.
And when he got to his house,
the guy said to him, "Okay, I'm gonna let you go
because people saw us together."
Billy Pugh explains to Jigsaw John that, uh,
his name was William Bonin.
As soon as Jigsaw John finished the interview,
he went back down, talked to the task force.
And he ran the name "William Bonin" through the rap sheet.
They couldn't believe what they were reading.
One offense after another offense,
after another offense.
All of the sex crimes that he had been convicted of.
The fact that he had been sent to Atascadero,
the mental hospital for California.
Then he was sent to the state prison
because there wasn't anything that they could do with him after the whole situation.
Well, this was a big break in the case.
[Dr. Vonda Pelto] When Bonin was convicted in 1969,
he was convicted of sexually abusing
four teenagers.
Would you bring the patient in, please?
[Dr. Vonda Pelto] And so, the court decided to have him,
uh, interviewed by a psychiatrist
who then put the label of mentally disordered, sexual offender.
Then he was sent off to Atascadero
for hospitalization
to be cured of these tendencies
with homosexuality and raping young boys.
[narrator] Whilst in his cell, a man's condition should be checked often.
It's not unusual for mentally disturbed people
to have moods that swing from one extreme to the other.
[Dr. David Foster] At the time that Bonin was there,
they would use, uh, extremely aversive techniques.
Um, shocks, using electro-convulsive therapy.
Not as treatment, but as a way of softening someone up.
They have this ancient notion that
if you had a homosexual orientation,
you could force someone into a conversion to heterosexuality.
[Don Kilhefner] We tried to intervene at Atascadero State Hospital
and bring some sanity into that, um, arena.
There are record of gay men as young as 14 being sent there.
They could do whatever they wanted to there.
Chemical emasculation.
A whole new mental illness was created around us.
It wasn't only at Atascadero, it was happening all over the country.
[Dr. David Foster] I think the understanding of these things
was so primitive at that time.
The methods were so limited
that the efforts were more damaging than helpful.
The tragedy of what made Bonin who he is is incalculable.
[Dr. Vonda Pelto] Ultimately, he was in Atascadero
because the staff was saying that he was not cured.
But the psychiatrist said there's still hope for him.
So ultimately, Bonin, after years of treatment in Atascadero, imprisoned.
He was released in late '78.
[Ronald E Bowers] Well, what's interesting about it was that
just six months or so later
was the genesis of the freeway killer serial killings.
And in his diary, he says,
"From now on, there will not be any more victims left alive."
[Dave Lopez] William Bonin should have never been released from prison.
This was definitely a lost opportunity.
One of the victims was 12 for God's sake.
You're at the prime of your life. You're just beginning living.
And to let... Have society let someone out like a Bonin roam free,
not fair, it's not right, and sure, it leaves me angry.
[reporter] Investigators now believe the death toll has reached 21 bodies.
Putting the murderer in league with America's most deadly serial killers.
Homicide detectives say that they're pursuing a number of suspects in the case.
[Ronald E Bowers] After Jigsaw John had gotten the information from Billy Pugh,
this gave law enforcement the opportunity to zero in.
But they had no evidence on this William Bonin.
The ball is now in the court of the detectives
to figure out a way. How are they going to build a case?
They decided, "We gotta catch him in the act."
On the ninth day, William Bonin drives to the Hollywood area.
The surveillance team is trying to follow him.
He's driving up and down, and he pick up a young man.
There's some type of transaction that takes place.
They drive to an isolated area.
After a while, the van starts shaking.
But at what stage do the detectives get out and go over there
and look inside to see what's going on?
If they waited too long, what could happen?
That victim could be the next person killed.
And immediately, they could see that, uh,
this victim was tied up. Was... I think, was handcuffed.
They realized that he was being sexually molested.
This victim was 17 years old.
That meant that they could arrest William Bonin
for committing an insidious act on a minor.
Now, if he had been an adult, they most likely would not have been able to arrest him.
There was kind of a green shag carpeting in the back.
Uh, very similar to the fibers that they had found earlier.
But also in the side of the van,
there was a cord, pliers, a carjack.
There was a tire iron.
There was blood spatter on the walls,
there was blood on the floor.
In the glove box, we found newspaper clippings of the freeway killer.
But also, there were no handles on the door.
If you were a victim in that van,
there was no way of escaping.
So, he's arrested.
Now they know they have him off the street.
But they didn't arrest him for being the freeway killer,
they arrested him for eluding the city's conduct on a minor.
Now they had to see if they could find any concrete evidence
that they could tie him to these serial killings.
They needed the smoking gun.
[reporter 1] Los Angeles Police Department said last night
they have arrested a man in connection with
-the so called freeway killer. -[reporter 2] ...very cautious right now.
[reporter 3] So far, 33 year old William Bonin...
[reporters talking indistinctly]
[reporter 4] William Bonin remains in custody
as investigators process the evidence
obtained during the search of his home.
Authorities from various jurisdictions are trying to see if...
[Dave Lopez] The night that Bonin was arrested
put up the address of his, uh...
the house.
Every station in town was there. Every reporter was there.
There must have been 20 to 30 detectives just swarming.
It was a mad house.
This was the home of his mother.
Through all of this bedlam, I saw this woman.
Thought almost right away that this was his mother.
And she was all by herself.
Obviously she was in shock.
And I felt sorry for her.
You know, just sitting there in all this commotion all around her
and she looked like the loneliest person in the world.
I took note of it. Said, "You know what, I'm gonna come back."
The next morning, I showed up, and to my surprise, there was absolutely nobody.
I mean, nobody was in front of that house.
She, uh, answered the door and I introduced myself.
I told her who I... Who I am. And would she like to talk about her son.
About what she went through last night.
And what she has to say about it. About... About him.
And to my shock, she agreed.
I spoke to his mother in an exclusive interview,
and she freely talked about her son and about his tendencies.
I know he's a homosexual.
And they'd been trying to cure him of it.
But, uh, he's not a murderer.
[Dave Lopez] Does he talk to you openly
-about his homosexuality? -Yes. He's very...
He's very frank with me. He's very honest.
He would not lie to me.
The stories that boys in the neighborhood were saying yesterday
about how he's offer other boys money,
how he'd always want to be on the lookout for hitchhikers.
Is that true?
I believe it is.
Does he ever explain to you or tell you in detail
-what he does when he picks up these boys? -No.
You were telling me earlier that... That he has admitted to you
that he put handcuffs on some of those boys he would pick up?
When he'd first come back from Vietnam,
he was violent, yes.
Tell me a little more about that, if you will.
Well, he...
In the courts, when it was said
that he did that, he...
They put handcuffs on them and...
He would put it on them and...
do his act and then let them go.
He never hurt them.
What's it been like for you the last couple of hours,
the last... The last day I guess
-since this... -Horrible.
I never knew someone could go through, like...
Something like this without breaking down.
He's innocent. I know he is.
We'll prove it some way or another.
[Ronald E Bowers] The police, they knew they had the right person.
But they needed concrete evidence
in order to convict William Bonin.
And so, they needed witnesses to cooperate
and come forward to provide information.
So, the next thing that the task force does,
they start asking around.
"Who knows William Bonin?"
They go wherever he has had contact.
Someone said, "Yeah, yeah. You know, we've seen William Bonin."
He hangs out with Vernon Butts.
-So, they find his address and they go over to his house. - [siren blaring]
Vernon Butts, he says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know who William Bonin is."
"I sometimes drive his van."
But then he starts talking about "We... We would drive at night
and pick up hitchhikers."
Immediately, that police officer thinks,
"Wow, we got something here."
Vernon Butts said Bonin would get in the back of the van
and they would pull the curtain.
Vernon Butts could hear different things going on.
Screaming. He could hear sexual activity.
Constantly, Buss is downplaying his involvement.
But the detectives realized, "Wow. You know, he's confessing."
This was a big break in the case.
And so, detectives arrested Vernon Butts.
He was essential for the prosecution.
And we were willing to make a deal with him.
That if he would testify, well, against William Bonin,
we would not go for the death penalty.
And he did it.
He gave some names. He said, "You better check these people out."
And they couldn't believe what was uncovered.
[Ronald E Bowers] William Bonin, when, uh, committing his crimes,
he had all these accomplices.
He was smart in a way of knowing how to use people.
Manipulate people.
And that's why he would pick on people who weren't that bright.
Vernon Butts was the main accomplice who would do the driving.
He testified that also there was a Munroe.
He was homeless. He helped him at the very end do a killing.
Greg Miley, he was one that could be talked into it.
Did it a few times for him.
But the one that was most surprising,
was Billy Pugh.
Billy Pugh was the one that blew the whistle.
These young men would help him out in
picking up hitchhikers, driving the van,
so that he could molest the victim in the back of the van.
Very strange for a serial killer to use another person.
When you have somebody else, another accomplice,
that means that person could be a witness against you.
I met all of his recruits, and they were all very dependent, passive,
homosexual young boys, who were not very bright.
One of them had an IQ of 56, and normal is 100.
Bonin took these boys in and made them his lovers,
and then asked them to kill.
He corrupted them and made them victims also.
When we prosecuted the case, we filed 14 murders against William Bonin.
The District Attorney's office,
in order to make a decision on whether they should seek the death penalty,
they needed to hear from the defense, as to any mitigating evidence.
How remorseful you are, or whether you really did it or not.
So, they gave the defendant, William Bonin, an opportunity to say whatever they wanted.
It was on the understanding that it would not be used against him in a court of law.
So, that's where these tapes come from.
[detective speaking]
[Bernie speaking]
[Bonin speaking]
I think we can safely, with William Bonin, that no, he was not an innocent person.
No, he could not be rehabilitated.
Uh, so there could be a strong argument
that he was deserving of the death penalty.
[Bonin speaking]
Once we had made the decision to go for the death penalty,
we were never gonna use those tapes in any way, shape or form.
They were meant to be confidential,
and they were never to be, uh, told to the public.
Vernon Butts was a man with many problems,
but he was essential for the prosecution
because he was the main accomplice.
Butts became distraught
about being pressured into testifying against Bonin.
And he loved Bonin.
So, he hung himself in the jail.
[Bernie] This was a severe blow to the prosecution.
We needed Butts' testimony.
How is William Bonin gonna be prosecuted now?
As a result of that, we had to re-evaluate the case,
we had to dismiss some of the murders,
because we knew we couldn't prove them without his testimony.
That was when we brought in these other accomplices.
We had to use them, but it was very difficult.
Because of limited IQ, they're terrible witnesses in court.
And so, the case could go down the drain.
[Dave] Bonin had an attorney by name of Earl Hansen.
I remember, one time, waiting to get an interview with Earl,
and he says to me, pulls me aside and says,
"Dave, I gotta tell you something.
Uh, saw the interview you did with Bonin's mother. My client saw it.
And he was very happy with the way you treated his mother.
Here's my card. Take this card." And he wrote something on the back.
It says on the back, "Permission to talk to Bonin."
What happened back in 1980 would never happen today.
There is no way in the world that a reporter on a major case like this
would get permission from anyone
to get to the jail and talk to the defendant.
So, here I am.
I go in and I show the card.
The guard says, "Okay, fine, go here."
In comes Bonin.
I though, "Wow, this is incredible."
And I was surprised by his size. He wasn't all that big.
But there was something about him that terrified me.
We just started a casual conversation.
He said to me, "I wanna thank you for being kind to my mom."
I didn't even ask him if he committed these crimes or not.
I wanted to tread very, very lightly.
Then the third meeting.
Walked in, said, "Hi."
And he says, "Are you ready?"
I go, "For what?"
He says, "I'm gonna tell you something."
And he proceeded to tell me, hook, line and sinker, the murders.
He told me that he had killed 21.
I'm in shock, listening to this guy describe how they picked up one kid,
and they put an ice pick on the side of his head.
One of his accomplices, Butts, went crazy and stabbed another guy 70 times.
He told me about some other kid who squealed and cried and was easy to kill.
And he tells me that, you know, he enjoyed it.
Once he started, he couldn't stop.
I didn't take any notes, because I knew if I had, he would've stopped talking.
And then he proceeded to tell me
that he wanted to avoid the death penalty at all costs.
And that he wanted me to see if that could be done.
And I said, "I don't have any power to do that."
So, [chuckles] I walked out of there stunned.
I didn't know what the hell to do.
And now, I'm stuck.
What in the world am I gonna do with this?
I got this blockbuster story.
I knew that once I put this on air, if I ever put it on the air,
that police would swarm on me like I was one of the suspects.
And on June 29th of 1981, I went on CBS 2,
and I had told the story of how I got the confession and what he had said.
[man on TV] This is a Channel 2 special presentation.
I am at the men's jail
and this is the scene that Mr. Bonin has seen at least three times.
This is the booking area of the jail.
[Dave] It was like a bomb had gone off.
I knew that the police wanted all the explicit details
of the conversations that Bonin and I had.
And then, the trial begins.
I was under a lot of pressure to testify.
Prosecution, detectives, certain police chiefs,
investigators, private investigators,
families of the victims.
I was a reporter, I had a credibility,
and I certainly was a whole lot better witness
than the knuckleheads that were with Bonin.
We will indeed prove in this courtroom that he is The Freeway Killer,
as he has bragged to number of witnesses.
But, as a journalist, you need sources,
and you've gotta be able to have someone who can give you vital information
know that you are going to protect them.
You have heard about the principle among the journalists
that a reporter must protect a confidential source.
[Dave] And so, what the California shield law does,
is it prevents anyone from law enforcement to go in and force you
to reveal or say what you have not reported yet.
They are not allowed to go into your private notes,
or your personal files or anything like that.
So, in other words, there are things that they may want to know
that weren't publicized.
If I had given that up, I will have been run out of the business.
It is our gospel. You don't break it.
You know, there have been reporters that have gone to jail,
rather than give up their source.
Uh, even if they're court ordered.
I would've encouraged him to do it,
but it was a big no-no for him, amongst his peers.
[man on TV] Prosecution has called parents and friends to testify.
[man] You talked to him on that day. Did you ever see or hear from your son again?
No.
[Dave] The trial goes on. Bonin had pleaded not guilty.
And the one thing that really haunted me was the grieving mothers.
Do you recognize that as being the body of your son?
Yes, sir.
[Dave] I just had a lot of soul searching.
My dad made a very famous quote to me.
He said, "That's what you get for trying to make a deal with the devil.
You shouldn't have ever got yourself put in this predicament."
I did, so what was I gonna do?
[Dave] I went to a couple of very prominent people
that I worked with in the business,
and there was one man named Bill Stall, and he said to me,
"I know your predicament,
but you gotta remember something,
we are citizens first and journalists second.
[female reporter] Nine weeks into the trial of William Bonin,
the man accused in the so-called
Freeway Murders of 21 young men,
a surprise witness came forward,
claiming he could no longer live with his conscience.
Television reporter Dave Lopez revealed Bonin confessed to him nearly a year ago.
He says, "I killed them all except one."
[man] Are those words Mr. Bonin said?
Those are his exact words. "I killed them all except one."
I asked him point blank. I said, "Bill,
if you were still out on the street, what would you be doing right now?"
He says he'll still be killing.
"Couldn't stop killing," he said.
"It got easier with each victim we did."
[Dave] I answered every question and went into detail of what he told me.
I testified as a citizen, because I firmly believe
that when the question comes up, are we journalists or citizens first,
we are citizens first.
The public has a right to know. The jury has a right to know.
Every mother and father whoever loved a child have the right to know.
[Dave] I got some criticism.
A lot of people thought I did the wrong thing, that were in my business.
In no way, gentlemen, do I feel that I have, in any way,
embarrassed the profession or embarrassed myself.
He took an awful lot of heat from a lot of his peers.
But I supported him 100 percent.
Most of the citizens out there appreciated he was very involved
in getting this maniac off the streets.
He was law enforcement's hero, I'll guarantee you.
Pursuant to penal code section 190.3 of the state of California,
do determine the penalty shall be death.
Well, he was convicted of ten first degree murders out of Los Angeles County.
William George Bonin has demonstrated a total disregard
for the sanctity of human right
and the dignity of a civilized society.
William George Bonin shall be put to death.
He'll be administered lethal gas
within the walls of the state prison of San Quentin, California.
[Dave] The families, I know they were very happy.
There were tears of joy from a lot of them.
I'm thankful that it's over with and we had a super jury
and the verdict was... He earned it. He earned it.
In Los Angeles, William Bonin has been convicted of ten murders.
He was convicted for the homosexual torture murders
of ten young men and boys.
Today, the so-called Freeway Killer was sentenced to death in the gas chamber.
[Ronald] Greg Miley, he got 25 years to life.
He was killed in custody in 2016.
James Munro, he got 15 to life. He is still in custody.
And Billy Pugh, he got six years and is now out.
Two years later, they were able to convict William Bonin
of four murders in Orange County.
The Orange County jury also agreed on the death penalty.
He was permanently sent up to San Quentin, placed on death row,
where he remained for 14 years.
[Ronald] Bonin's guilt is beyond dispute.
His case has been argued and examined from every angle.
The whole process has consumed more years
than Bonin has allowed some of his victims to live.
[Dave] I still see those faces.
It's still haunting at times.
But, um, I'm glad I was able to do my part as a citizen,
and I, uh, I hold my head high.
For certain crimes, justice demands the ultimate punishment.
William Bonin will never kill again.
Clemency is denied.
[Dr. David] It makes me feel compassion for him,
and sadness and outrage
that over and over and over,
there were opportunities to intervene in this child's life.
And then we have the tragic loss of all he killed.
I think as a society, we need to understand what made Bonin who he is,
so that we can take both policy actions and individual actions
to help prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening again.
[man] Okay, roll of the tape ends here at 2040 hours.