The so-called Freeway Killer may have picked up where the Trash Bag Murderer left off. Southern California detectives are investigating the possibility that 38 young men and boys slain since 1972 may all have been victims of the “new” killer. The “old” killer is serving 21 life terms in San Quentin state prison. “Trash Bag Murderer” Patrick Wayne Kearney, 40, was convicted of three slayings in Riverside County in 1977 and pleaded guilty to 18 more in Los Angeles County in 1978. But police had once put the death toll in the homosexual “Trash Bag” Murders as high as 34. The sexual overtones of 11 murders committed between December 1972 and January 1976 at first led police to confuse at least one of them with the Trash Bag Murders.

The 11 victims included known homosexuals or bisexuals, and authorities said some had been brutally tortured, castrated or found with stakes or branches pounded into their rectums. But these murders were never attributed to Kearney, whose victims were mutilated and disposed of in green plastic trash bags. Some authorities now believe the 11 slayings may have been the first work of the so-called “Freeway Killer.” Most of the 38 deaths now being attributed to the “Freeway Killer” were hitchhikers who were strangled or smothered, although others died of bludgeoning, stabbing or drug overdose. Five of the victims were young Marines. Others were schoolboys waiting for a bus. They ranged in age from 12 to 25, and their nude bodies have been dumped near major thoroughfares in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties. Only one of the slayings since 1976 has involved sexual abuse which is why the 11 who died between 1972 and 1976 were not included in the early stages of the investigation.

Dr. Albert Rosenstein, an Orange County forensic psychologist who has studied accounts of many of the murders attributed to the “Freeway Killer,” says the likelihood is “very high” that the 38 slayings are related. “There are gross similarities in the ages of the victims, their physical appearance, the fact they are hitchhikers, the manner in which the bodies are dumped, the sexual pathology, the drugs found in their systems, the fact that specific freeways are so often involved, the fact that most of them are strangled or smothered,” Rosenstein said. He theorized that the killer, like all of his victims, is white. However, law enforcement authorities remain cautious.

“The investigation murders (in Orange County) since 1978 has intensified, and we’re sharing information with 13 enforcement agencies from other counties,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Wyatt Hart. “We have six investigators working 12 to 16 hours a day and we’ve received numerous calls and leads from the public. But we still cannot say these (30-odd murders) are connected, much less the five we have here on the front burner, or three more we’re also looking at that date back to 1976.” Hart noted that there is no evidence of a homosexual link to any of the eight unsolved Orange County murders. But only last August 1979, in neighboring San Bernardino County, 17-year-old Mark Shelton of Westminster was killed, the cause of death listed as shock from the pounding of a stick into l his body through his rectum.

Other law enforcement officials are also skeptical about connecting the cases. “We’re monitoring five cases here since May 1979 for any link among the five as well as 18 we’ve heard about in the multi-jurisdictional (Southern California)” area,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Capt. Walt Ownbey. “But I must emphasize we don’t have any evidence linking them. In this county alone, we have 35 to 40 dumps (murder victim alongside roadsides) every year. “It’s not difficult to find similarities in five dumps a year – young boys, old men or young women. And you have to remember that 90 percent of murders are done in only four ways: you shoot them, stab them, strangle them or use blunt force on them. Ownbey noted that the only common thread in the Los Angeles County cases was that the bodies dumped near highways were nude. “People are more inclined – due to the recent history of multiple murderers like Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler and the Trash Bag Murders, to read things into them (the so-called Freeway Killer murders),” he said.

“Maybe it’s a sign of the times.” The most recent murders typify the variety of victims chosen by the Freeway Killer. April 11, Nude body of Steven John Wood is found in a Long Beach alley near a freeway ramp. ‘The 16- year-old Bellflower boy, reported missing by his parents, was strangle. March 23, two strangled teenage boys are found in Cleveland National Forest near Ortega Highway in Orange County. Glenn Norman Barker, 14, of Westminster was last seen waiting for a bus the day before his body was found along with that of 15-year-old Russell Duane Rugh II of Garden Grove, who was last seen hitchhiking.