William Bonin

What the record shows

William George Bonin, known as the Freeway Killer, was convicted of murdering 14 boys and young men in Southern California between August 1979 and June 1980. A Los Angeles County jury convicted him of 10 murders in January 1982 and an Orange County jury of four more in August 1983; he was sentenced to death in both cases. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), he was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on February 23, 1996, the first California inmate put to death by that method. He had confessed to 21 killings to a television reporter, and investigators initially linked him to as many as 40 deaths.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals summarised the pattern in its 1995 opinion: Bonin picked up boys aged roughly 12 to 19, usually hitchhikers, sexually assaulted them inside his van, killed them, generally by strangulation, and left the bodies beside freeways. The victims of which he was convicted were Markus Grabs, Donald Hyden, David Murillo, Charles Miranda, James Macabe, Ronald Gatlin, Harry Turner, Steven Wood, Darin Kendrick and Steven Wells in Los Angeles County, and Dennis Frank Fox, Glenn Barker, Russell Rugh and Lawrence Sharp in Orange County. CDCR dates the first of these killings, of Grabs, to August 5, 1979, and the last, of Wells, to June 2, 1980.

Bonin did not always act alone. Vernon Butts, suspected in several of the killings, died by suicide in jail in January 1981 before trial. Gregory Miley and James Munro, both about 19 at the time, pleaded guilty to their roles in individual murders and testified against Bonin; the California Supreme Court's 1988 opinion recounts Miley's testimony about the killing of Charles Miranda and Munro's about the killing of Steven Wells. A fourth man, William Pugh, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and also testified.

According to the Wikipedia account, information Pugh gave to a counsellor pointed Los Angeles police to Bonin, a paroled sex offender. Officers placed him under surveillance and, on June 11, 1980, followed his van to a service station near the Hollywood Freeway, where they found him assaulting a teenage hitchhiker who survived. He was arrested at the scene. He later spoke with KNXT reporter David Lopez, who testified at both trials that Bonin admitted the killings; the California Supreme Court noted Lopez described admissions to 14 killings beyond the six at issue in Orange County.

The Los Angeles County trial began in November 1981. The Ninth Circuit noted that Bonin had been charged with 14 murders there; two counts were dismissed before trial and the jury acquitted him of two more. On January 6, 1982, the jury convicted him of 10 murders and 10 robberies, and Judge William Keene imposed death sentences on March 12, 1982. The Orange County trial opened in Santa Ana on June 14, 1983. United Press International reported that on August 2, 1983, after three days of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of the murders of Fox, Barker, Rugh and Sharp; CDCR records four further death sentences on August 26, 1983.

The California Supreme Court affirmed the Orange County judgment on August 29, 1988 (People v. Bonin, 46 Cal.3d 659), vacating three duplicate multiple-murder special-circumstance findings but leaving the death sentences intact, and affirmed the Los Angeles judgment on January 9, 1989. In federal court Bonin argued that his trial lawyer, William Charvet, had been compromised by a literary-rights deal and had failed to present evidence of childhood abuse and brain damage. On June 28, 1995, the Ninth Circuit rejected those claims (Bonin v. Calderon, 59 F.3d 815). Governor Pete Wilson denied clemency days before the execution. CDCR records that Bonin was pronounced dead at 12:13 a.m. on February 23, 1996.

Bonin was born on January 8, 1947, in Willimantic, Connecticut, and served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam before an honourable discharge in 1968. CDCR lists kidnapping and sex-offence charges from November 1968, which led to commitment to Atascadero State Hospital and then state prison, and a 1975 conviction for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy, for which he received one to 15 years. He was paroled in October 1978.