Five Feared Among Freeway Killer’ Victims

by Tina May

Five young men whose bodies were found in San Bernardino County during the past eight years most often near freeways are included among 44 possible victims of the so-called “Freeway Killer,” authorities said Wednesday. The last county victim was Michael F. McDonald, 16, of Rialto, who was found clothed and strangled along Euclid Avenue south of Pine Street in Chino on January 3. He wasn’t identified until late March.

On Tuesday, William G. Bonin, 33, of Downey, was charged with the murders of 14 of the victims who were either killed in Los Angeles County or dumped there. Another Downey man, Vernon R. Butts, 22, was charged as Bonin’s accomplice in at least six of the killings of the male hitchhikers. In all, authorities believe Bonin is responsible for 21 of the oftentimes brutal murders, and additional murder counts against him are expected to be filed in San Bernardino County and other counties where bodies have been found.

But investigators don’t believe Bonin and Butts are linked to similar murders with homosexual overtones committed as far back as 1972. They said it’s pretty certain not all 44 young men were killed by the same people. Butts couldn’t have been involved in any murders that occurred between March 31, 1976, and Oct. 11, 1978, authorities said, because he was serving time then on a sex perversion conviction. Three of the victims were found in Riverside County and others have been discovered in the counties of Orange, Ventura, Imperial and Kern.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Larry Malmberg worked on two of the cases McDonald’s murder and that of Mark Shelton, 17, of Westminster. Shelton’s badly decomposed body was found last Aug. 11, about one-quarter mile south of Cleghorn Road near Interstate 15 in Cajon Pass. Malmberg said Shelton died from trauma. A foreign object had been inserted in his rectum. He was identified in April through dental charts and with help from the state Department of Justice.

Malmberg, along with about 20 other Southland investigators in whose jurisdictions the murders have occurred, is associated with a “freeway killer task force.” Because nearly all the men were strangled and found along freeways, they became known as victims of the “Freeway Strangler,” and later, the “Freeway Killer.” Many of the victims were found nude and investigators believe most were hitchhikers who had accepted rides from their attackers.

The strangulation-mutilation murder of a Long Beach man whose body was found in Waterman Canyon 6 years ago is now also being considered as the work of the freeway killer or killers. Vincente Cruz Mestas, 24, was found about 150 feet down a gully near Highway 18 in late December 1973 with his head shaved and his ‘hands cut off above the wrists. Plastic bags were wrapped over the wrists and severe rope burn scars were found on his neck.

Coroner’s officials determined the cause of death as strangulation. Even then, police said the murder was similar to six grisly killings with homosexual overtones committed in the counties of Orange and Los Angeles since 1972. Investigators believe another young man found dead in San Bernardino County, Richard Anthony Crosby, 20, may have been a victim of the freeway killer. The body of Crosby, of Wilmington, was found Sept. 30 in some weeds near Euclid Avenue, off Highway 71 in Chino.

Investigators said then they believed Crosby was killed before being dumped in the field. He was discovered by a hitchhiker who stopped a passing motorist who in turn notified authorities. However, there was no evidence of sexual molestation or mutilation on Crosby’s body, nor were there any marks or dismemberments as in the other freeway murders. The similarities were that Crosby was from a beach area and a habitual hitchhiker, investigators had said then.

A still-unidentified youth found nude and strangled on Laurel Avenue just south of Highland Avenue in Rialto last Dec. 13 is also being viewed as a freeway killer victim. However, Rialto Police Detective Jerry Prieto said Wednesday that “hopefully one of the suspects (Bonin or Butts) will identify the victim.” Despite the fact the body wasn’t found near a freeway, Prieto said, “we’ve got evidence connecting our homicide with other freeway-type slayings.”

Prieto said the youth, about 15 to 19 years old, had probably been dead about 24 hours, but the body had only been on Laurel Avenue about 12 hours before it was discovered. The youth was about 5-foot-9, weighed about 130 to 140 pounds, had blond hair, a thin, light moustache and green-blue eyes, Prieto said. He had three tattoos a profile of a skull wearing a hat on his right bicep; a blue dot in the webbing between his right thumb and index finger and an “F” surrounded by four dots on the webbing between his left thumb and index finger.

“It’s almost definite he’s not from around here,” Prieto said. “We’ve done a composite (drawing) and no one recognized him. He probably was a hitchhiker,” to say whether the young man was clothed. Noting some similarities between the man’s death and others they’d heard about in the Southland, Duncan said Riverside deputies notified Los Angeles authorities soon after the body was discovered. “Most of them (the victims) have been hitchhikers,” Duncan said. “Parents shouldn’t allow it.

People feel it won’t happen to them. They say they know which cars to get into and which ones not to get in.” The two other bodies found in Riverside County were James Sean Moore, 18, of Beaumont, in February this year, and Ralph Davis, 20, of Lake Elsinore on Nov. 2 last year.