A Polaroid photograph of victim Robert Wyatt Loggins, sitting on Kraft's couch. Kraft took this image at his Long Beach residence in August 1980
A Polaroid photograph of victim Robert Wyatt Loggins, sitting on Kraft's couch. Kraft took this image at his Long Beach residence in August 1980.
Randy Steven Kraft (born March 19, 1945) is an American serial killer and rapist known as the Scorecard Killer, the Southern California Strangler, and the Freeway Killer, who committed the rape, torture, and murder of a minimum of sixteen young men between 1972 and 1983, the majority of whom he killed in California. Kraft is also believed to have committed the rape and murder of up to fifty-one other young men and boys. He was convicted in May 1989 and is currently incarcerated on death row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California
On September 3, 1980, one month after Kraft's return to California from Oregon, the bound body of a 19-year-old Marine named Robert Loggins was found discarded in a trash bag close to the El Toro Marine air base. Loggins had last been seen alive by two fellow Marines close to the Pacific Coast Highway on August 23. Photographs—and the negatives—subsequently found in Kraft's possession show Loggins in Kraft's living room slumped fully clothed on his sofa, apparently intoxicated, and in various nude, pornographic postures. All these pictures depict Loggins with his eyes closed; it is unknown whether the victim was alive or dead when they were taken.
On April 10, 1981, the body of a 17-year-old youth named Michael Cluck was found beside the Interstate 5 freeway close to Goshen, Oregon.[40] Cluck had been abducted while hitchhiking from Kent, Washington, to Bakersfield, California,[100] the day prior to his body being discovered. Thirty-one blunt-force blows to the head had destroyed the back of his skull, killing the youth. Cluck had also been sodomized and savagely beaten, kicked, and scoured. Cluck is believed to have been recorded on Kraft's scorecard as "Portland Blood" due to the extensive blood and debris found at the murder scene. At the time of the murder, Kraft had once again been sent on assignment to Oregon by his employers. In addition, on the day Cluck's body was discovered, Kraft visited a Lane County hospital to receive treatment for a bruised foot.
Four months after Cluck's murder, on August 20, 1981, the partially clothed body of 17-year-old male prostitute Christopher Allen Williams was found in the San Bernardino Mountains. Williams had ingested both phenobarbital and benzodiazepine, and was found with tissue paper lodged deep in his nostrils, causing him to choke to death on his own mucus.
Kraft became known as the
"Scorecard Killer" because upon his arrest, investigators discovered a coded list with 61 entries on a scorecard containing cryptic references to his victims; he is also sometimes referred to as the "Freeway Killer" because many of his victims' bodies were discovered beside or near freeways. Kraft shares the latter epithet with two separate and unrelated serial killers, William Bonin and Patrick Kearney.
Randy Kraft. He would pick up male hitchhikers in the 70’s and drug them and torture and then kill them and dump their bodies in remote areas
Between 1971 and 1983, Kraft is believed to have killed 67 victims. All of his suspected victims were males between the ages of 13 and 35, the majority of whom were in their late teens to mid-twenties. Kraft was charged with—and convicted of—sixteen of these homicides, all of which had occurred between 1972 and 1983. Many of his victims were members of the United States Marines Corps, and most of their bodies were found to have high levels of both alcohol and tranquilizers, indicating they had been unconscious when they were abused and killed.
Kraft's victims were typically lured into his vehicle with an offer of a lift or alcohol. Once in Kraft's vehicle, the victims would be plied with alcohol and/or other drugs. They were then bound, tortured, and sexually abused before they were killed, usually by either strangulation, asphyxiation, or bludgeoning. However, some victims had also ingested lethal doses of pharmaceuticals. At least one victim was stabbed to death. The victims would then be discarded, usually—though not exclusively—alongside or close to various freeways in southern California. Photographic evidence found at Kraft's home indicates several of his victims were driven to his house before their murder.
Many of the victims were burned with a car cigarette lighter, usually around the genitals, chest, and face, and several were found with extensive blunt force trauma to the face and head. In several instances, foreign objects were found inserted into the victims' rectums, while other victims had suffered emasculation, or mutilation and dismemberment.
The majority of Kraft's murders were committed in California, although some victims had been killed in Oregon, with two further known victims murdered in Michigan in December 1982
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