Twice Released ‘Killer’ Suspect Arrested Before

by Los Angeles (UPI)

“Freeway Killer” suspect William Bonin was arrested twice after slayings in the case, but investigators failed to link him to the series of murders and released him each time, a newspaper reported today. The Valley News said it had learned from authoritative sources that other murders were discovered soon after each time Bonin was released, and no slayings attributed to the “Freeway Killer” were committed during the time he was jailed.

Bonin, 33, a truck driver and registered sex offender who served time in a state prison, pleaded innocent Friday to 14 counts of murder and a variety of robbery and sodomy counts. Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators have linked him to the murders of 21 of the 41 whose bodies were found along Southern California freeways during the past eight years. All the victims were males, most blonde and slender males and in their 20s or teens.

The Valley News said records showed that Bonin, once released as untreatable from a mental hospital where he had been admitted for offenses involving young males was freed from the Orange County Jail last August then again, this March. Bonin is now charged with the killings shortly before and after his time in jail. At his arraignment Friday, Bonin was charged with 11 counts of robbery, one count of sodomy and one of mayhem with special circumstances, which could bring the death penalty.

Municipal Judge Barbara Johnson set October 20 for the beginning of a preliminary hearing the prosecution said would take five days. Earlier this week, James Michael Munro, a 19-year-old drifter who roomed with Bonin for three weeks, was arraigned on a single charge of murder. A third suspect, Vernon Butts, 22, a factory worker and amateur magician, has been charged in six of the deaths. Bonin’s first arrest last August came two days after the body of 17-year-old Marcus Grabs of West Germany was found in Malibu Canyon.

Grabs earlier had been seen hitchhiking in Newport Beach. The newspaper said court records showed Bonin was arrested August 9, 1979, as suspect in a sex act with a 17-year-old boy in the Dana Point area and was released five days later on bail. Bonin was returned to Orange County Jail on February 4 to spend 30 days for violation of his parole as a convicted sex offender, court records show.