HENRY ZEBROWSKI You know what Randy Kraft makes me long for?
MARCUS PARKS What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Besides just a Mustang's feeling like man butt.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. Bunch of rags?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Serial killers that aren't as good as him. He makes me sort of nostalgic for an Ed Gein style, like
someone that's like, 'I just making them my angels.'
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I play with my dolls. These my dolls in my field in my dream world!
BEN KISSEL I would say Ed Gein was very good at being Ed Gein, dude. He made a full nipple belt and his
mom became a couch.
MARCUS PARKS However I do get Henry's point that Ed Gein only killed two before he was caught.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's more like a simpleton murderer that is not quite as skilled as Randy Kraft is.
MARCUS PARKS If I may give a little bit of a pushback on that, Gary Ridgway. Very much a simpleton. Very good
serial killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You don't know me! You don't know Gawy. Fuck you.
BEN KISSEL (B)There it is. Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with
Marcus and Henry. We are live from Jacksonville, Florida, the home of some of the greatest
serial killers of all time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL And of course the jumbo shrimp.
MARCUS PARKS 2-3-4. (singing) We are the jumbo shrimp, here to play a game! Ah!
BEN KISSEL There's a bunch of rags inside of me! Okay everyone, we are on to Part 2 of Randy Kraft and
it's only gonna get more disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He really puts the randy in Randy.
MARCUS PARKS So when we last left Randy Kraft, he was well into the 12 year long murder spree that would
eventually claim at least 67 lives. But like other serial killers we've covered, it seems like love
temporarily killed Randy's beast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Can we have a soundboard that does the old sitcom thing where people go 'Aw.'
BEN KISSEL Welcome to Delilah, this song goes out to Randy Kraft and his beautiful wife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (singing) Sucking on dick and I killed some dudes and I'm fucking them to the death!
BEN KISSEL Thanks for calling in.
MARCUS PARKS As we said last episode, it's thought that Randy Kraft almost certainly had an accomplice in
some of his many murders. And considering how fellow Freeway Killer William Bonin had no
less than four accomplices, it's not a long stretch to think that Kraft may have had a string of
accomplices as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I tried to do some outside kind of asymmetrical research on Randy Kraft because he's never
talked about - that's what I call it.
BEN KISSEL What does that mean?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It means I'm breaking into hospitals. I was trying to think because Randy Kraft never talked,
right.
MARCUS PARKS No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We don't know really anything else. I'm gonna comment a little bit later on one of the police
interviews that he did but it really just shows what a cool customer Randy Kraft was versus
anything else. But I listened to some interviews with William Bonin to kind of get a little bit
more headway into what the style of killers thinking and he said one thing that was interesting
where he was like, 'My main thing is that I didn't really know how death came to a man. When
you stab a man and stab a man and stab a man, you don't really know where you're putting it.
I don't know where the heart is. I don't know where the organs are. I'm just stabbing, stabbing,
just kind of see how much he leaks.
BEN KISSEL Is he Al Bundy from Wayne's World playing that character behind the donut stand?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Basically but Randy Kraft really built, it's like how a comedian builds his tool set.
MARCUS PARKS Is it just like that? Is it just fucking like that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Just like it.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because you accrue skills and abilities like me, impressions, my natural tits, my huge tits.
BEN KISSEL Perfect tits. Yeah, I just steal all of my humor from Ice-T because I read his tweet today and he
said, 'I just got robbed at the gas station, I'm all out of money.' And then he said, 'I called the
cops and then the cops said, you know who did it?' He said, 'Pump number nine.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Got 'em, Cube!
BEN KISSEL Ice-T! He's still got it.
MARCUS PARKS (Midwestern accent) It's pump number nine is who's doing all of this stealing.
BEN KISSEL Pump number nine.
MARCUS PARKS He's just a fucking Midwestern father now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He's become Bill Engvall.
BEN KISSEL Here's your sign.
MARCUS PARKS Now the accomplice theory has never been definitively proven when it comes to Randy Kraft
but it was strongly believed by the prosecution in Randy's eventual multiple murder trial that
Randy's first accomplice might have been his first live-in boyfriend, Jeff Graves. And if Randy
would have married Jeff and taken Jeff's last name, he would have been Randy Graves which is
like the best gay burlesque name ever.
BEN KISSEL It really is. I'd go see see him.
MARCUS PARKS Like an Addams Family themed gay burlesque dancer named Randy Graves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Whoa!
BEN KISSEL Oh yes, sign me up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Go for it, boys.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. You wait until I'm 55 and I let it all go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They call me the brown waterfall.
BEN KISSEL You better come and support me.
MARCUS PARKS Now Jeff was never charged with anything but in response to intense questioning from the
police after Randy's arrest, Graves said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI "I'm not really gonna pay for it, you know."
MARCUS PARKS Now whether he was talking about taking responsibility for Randy's crimes, his participation in
the crimes, or just simply his own sexuality, we'll never know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Honestly there's a little bit of a reading about the relationships that Randy Kraft had between
both of the Jeffs is that it seems to be they really let their partner be super independent.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Well that's good!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They get to just do whatever. But I think that might tend towards and helps harbor a serial
killer in a way.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because I would put it that they were so independent of each other that the one never really
knew what the other was doing. Yeah, you assume oh he's out sucking dick because that's
what you think he's doing.
MARCUS PARKS Well that's what you're doing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Exactly.
BEN KISSEL Well at some point you're so independent that you're no longer in a relationship, are you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, you're just two birds flying together.
BEN KISSEL Isn't that something?
MARCUS PARKS But perhaps the reason why investigators lean so heavily on the Jeff Graves theory is that
when Randy and Graves split up, Randy's urge to kill lessened, then disappeared for a
relatively long period of time.
BEN KISSEL Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS That doesn't mean however that he stopped immediately. Soon after the breakup, he
murdered a 19 year old named Paul Fuchs. And in a choice selection of lame serial killer
humor, he gave Fuchs the name Expletive Deleted in his scorecard.
BEN KISSEL Now why? I don't get the humor.
MARCUS PARKS Because it's spelled F-U-C-H-S.
BEN KISSEL It's a nerd joke.
MARCUS PARKS It looks like fucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It might actually be pronounced fucks.
MARCUS PARKS I don't know if people actually do pronounce Fuchs as fucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Polly Fucks.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, Polly Fucks, that can go either way. Wow. So now again, corniness seems to run high in
serial killers. Maybe we should check on Ice-T.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Start with Bill Engvall!
BEN KISSEL Oh no.
MARCUS PARKS Eventually though, Randy met and moved in with the aforementioned chubby apprentice
baker, the much younger Jeff Selig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI See Jeff Selig, the way the author, I liked how he described him. He said that Jeff Selig was the
Lucy to Randy's Desi.
BEN KISSEL Oh yeah?
MARCUS PARKS I thought you were gonna say that he was the Loosey to Randy's Goosey.
BEN KISSEL Oh, getting a little wild.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Terminally goosey.
BEN KISSEL Yes, I love that deleted scene from that new documovie about Lucy. Isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You know what I love about that movie too? It's about comedy, totally serious.
BEN KISSEL Oh I love that when they take all of the good things of comedy out of comedy. That's great.
MARCUS PARKS Well for the first 18 months of their relationship, Randy didn't commit a single murder.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Seemingly he was happy with the sort of boring domestic life that typifies most people as they
enter their 30s, gay or straight.
BEN KISSEL See this reminds me of expectations because when Marcus said he didn't commit a murder for
18 months, I literally was like good for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Good for him.
BEN KISSEL Wow, I can't believe that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Wow, wow.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Wow.
BEN KISSEL And I've never committed a murder and I'm 40. But I just haven't started doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well yeah, I do see that weird Kraft/Bonin 2024 shirt you're wearing and I'm kind of puzzled
where you even got it.
MARCUS PARKS Randy and Jeff joined their friends Phil and Bob for what they called Friday night poker club.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god, Phil and Bob is also what they were doing all night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Come on!
BEN KISSEL Oh my god, here's your sign, pump number nine.
MARCUS PARKS And once a week the foursome would play poker or bridge. Interestingly Kraft would later play
bridge on death row with one of the other Freeway Killers, William Bonin as well as Lawrence
Bittaker, the Toolbox Killer and Doug Clark, the Sunset Strip Killer.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What a fucking pain in the ass group.
BEN KISSEL Seriously bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That must have been because Randy Kraft very famously took his bridge seriously.
BEN KISSEL Wow. Not a shocker actually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, he took it very seriously and he would get very frustrated when he lost because he
viewed it... One of their friends within the poker, the game circuit said, "You know if you think
about it, murder is a lot like bridge because it's really just about Randy understood" this is
true, this is a quote. He's like, "Randy understood at some point that if you get a hand and
understand a hand in bridge, you win. So all he has to do is understand one murder and then
he could do bunches and bunches of them."
BEN KISSEL Alright, I love it. I wish I could see the poker tournament with the little cameras that they used
to show on ESPN. I think they were out of content entirely. I would love to hear what these
people talked about. They must have just been disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I guess or they probably just talked about salisbury steak.
BEN KISSEL You think so?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They probably watched, I'm going to say, is this bad to say? Maybe this is bad on Shark Tank
but I feel like this is a Shark Tank group. I feel like the four of them watching Shark Tank.
BEN KISSEL They could be, they're a bunch of sharks.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, they might.
MARCUS PARKS I could see that.
BEN KISSEL Mr. Wonderful guys probably. I don't like him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI The villain.
MARCUS PARKS But eventually the urge to kill came back and Randy returned to murder at the end of 1976
with victim Scott Hughes. Discovered completely dressed except for the laces on his shoes,
Hughes had been alive when Kraft cut his genitals open from the base of his penis down to his
scrotum.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god. It's just like bridge!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Just like bridge.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS And removed the left testicle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is honestly, and you guys questioned it, but this is why I got the zipper put in.
BEN KISSEL Yeah like the kangaroo shoes where you could put up any. That's great, I'm so happy you got
zipper balls. Zipper Balls Zebrowski.
MARCUS PARKS Additionally, Kraft was getting an extra charge from throwing the bodies on busy freeway
ramps such as the on ramp at Euclid Avenue in Anaheim. That's where Hughes was found.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You know, I was thinking about this and I wonder if his urge abated when he first got into a
relationship or is he setting up the character of dude who dates you, Randy Kraft.
MARCUS PARKS I think the urge did dissipate because you see this a lot in serial killers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Sure.
MARCUS PARKS Where they get into something where they see oh this will fix all my problems.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah. Oh yeah, maybe I can get here because it starts, it's exciting. Because he was
significantly younger, he found that out accidentally.
BEN KISSEL Were they having fairly violent sex?
MARCUS PARKS Just regular sex, fairly regular sex.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And they all kind of played a little bit with some spank 'ems.
BEN KISSEL Spank 'ems?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI There's some leathers there. They all did that.
BEN KISSEL Okay, that might be able to fill the void for a while.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Well the dumping of the bodies on busy freeway ramps, that was done not because the
possibility of getting caught was more exciting but because this made the bodies more likely to
be found and it made them more likely to be found quickly. And of course if they're found
quickly, then the true extent of the mutilation could be appreciated in terms of terror.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He's a terrorist.
BEN KISSEL It just seems like in the 70s these were ways to tell people how to get to your house.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Just be like take a right on the body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh like on Mount Everest?
BEN KISSEL When you see the first corpse, you're gonna want to take a right there. It just seems like
everyone was dumping bodies on the highway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well this fucking four year time period, it's wild.
MARCUS PARKS To maximize the effect, Kraft was also mutilating the bodies more savagely,, burning them
more with car cigarette lighters mutilating the genitals further for example by cutting off the
tips of the penises, and playing Tic Tac Toe on the victim's torsos and legs with his Knife.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is shit I've written into sketches, you know what I mean? And I'm not saying like about
making a joke about it but it is interesting. It is wild.
BEN KISSEL It's so over the top.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's so over the top.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's very cartoony. And also the other thing that really struck me with my research this week
was how so many of these victims were right on top of each other, multiples in a month. Just
again, we'll get into it, he even expands this. But he worked fast and hard.
BEN KISSEL Did he play Tic Tac Toe with anybody else or just himself?
MARCUS PARKS I think it was just himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL I hope he won.
MARCUS PARKS Well actually, we will get into that later on.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
MARCUS PARKS But concerning the disposal method, it's hard to imagine how Randy Kraft managed to push
dead bodies out of his car while still driving 50 miles an hour, that is unless he constructed an
elaborate system of fucking ropes and pulleys or I thought maybe a spring-loaded ejector seat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well now we're getting into Inspector Gadget territory.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, you're not allowed to research and watch cartoons anymore, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS I don't know, maybe it is the over the top nature of it. But I did start, as I was writing this, did
start to think more and more this whole thing in Looney Tunes terms.
BEN KISSEL Does he have bucket seats?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He did.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Because maybe with the bucket seat he could kick them out.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, it's a Mustang. I mean at least he switches from a 1974 Mustang to a 1979 Toyota Celica.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Sometimes he had a van, sometimes he had an RV. I think one thing I was maybe rolling
around in my head was that he set it up in a way. He got so in control, it's like bridge. He got so
in control of the scenario that I feel like he could almost, I mean this is really graphic and
obviously belittling them as humans, but mushing the cadaver up against the door and then
you either have a string, you could have a string-
BEN KISSEL Yeah, maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because he really did prep. Or you do the thing where you get real good at driving because
he's already on fucking Valium, you know what I mean, he's already half lit most of the time.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI When he would go in, reach across, pop it, and then he just flings out. Because you do see
several moments where people have seen him do it right in front of them.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And they do see one dude but I have a theory about accomplices that we'll get into later.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL And I guess no one's expecting to get pushed out of a car so maybe the element of surprise.
MARCUS PARKS They're all dead.
BEN KISSEL They're all dead. Oh my gosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well the people watching get surprised. And that's why, it just happened so fast and then
you're watching it happen right in front of you and no one thinks, they see a very stern-looking
man with a mustache.
BEN KISSEL Right.
MARCUS PARKS Well in one case Kraft was driving fast enough where the victim's body left a 90-foot streak of
blood and skin on the pavement.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Strangely, this victim's cause of death was drowning in salt water while being strangled, which
again shows you that Randy didn't always kill in his car. Concerning the deaths of others, some
like Donald Crisel were ultimately killed by such bizarre methods as Tylenol overdoses. But
with Donald Crisel, Randy Kraft's 20th victim, the police brought in a psychic after getting
nothing but dead ends for years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yep. And you know who told them to hire her?
BEN KISSEL Who?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Her. She showed up and she says, 'I have a vision. You'll be hiring me soon to find bodies.'
BEN KISSEL Whoa. You nailed it.
MARCUS PARKS The psychic's name in this case was Joan Julian, aka Reverend Joan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes it's me, Reverend Joan. I don't need anybody to call me Reverend but myself.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god, you smell like smoke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS She told police that she had a vision of a quote "gay party animal" who lived in a trailer park in
Irvine. Working with this evil animal were other human sacrifice cultists including a 50 year old
man, a short Hispanic woman with big tits, and a balding former Marine combat pilot who
loved knives.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
MARCUS PARKS And that's in addition to other various bikers and satanists.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Is this the B team?
BEN KISSEL I love it. Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS So in the end, the only thing Reverend Joan got right was the word 'gay'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hey, that's halfway there.
BEN KISSEL That is halfway there, Reverend. You deserve it. Also can you come with me when I go to the
gas station because do you believe the price of gas in this country?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Pump number 9!
BEN KISSEL I would love not to waste my time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I'm getting a vision, no they don't.
BEN KISSEL Aw dang it.
MARCUS PARKS Meanwhile Randy and Jeff Selig were living a perfectly normal life together. Kraft took more
computer classes to become a better data processor and Jeff became a partner at a specialty
candy and pastry store called Grandma's Sugarplums.
BEN KISSEL Oh no. I think I googled that earlier today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I know, I clicked on one grandma's sugarplums on my Instagram and now my algorithm is all
huge titted GILFS. That is true though.
BEN KISSEL These gals can crush it still.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah they really can.
BEN KISSEL They still can.
MARCUS PARKS Life was going well enough where Randy and Jeff bought a house together in July of 1979, a
cute little stucco bungalow on Roswell Avenue in Long Beach. This bungalow was naturally a
short distance from the gay bar Club Ripples which still provided Randy with victims here and
there. Jeff Selig never once in their 8 years together suspected that his longtime partner was a
serial killer. Although considering how Randy's car was in essence a serial killer mobile when
he was caught, it seems likely that Jeff spent 8 years never once catching a ride with his live-in
partner.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Think about that. Cause there must have been either he was in on it in some way, shape, or
form, which I don't know if I completely believe.
MARCUS PARKS I don't believe he was at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because he really was the lighthearted, silly dude.
MARCUS PARKS He was a partner at Grandma's Sugarplums.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah. And not like Dean Corll was though because we do know and Jeff Dahmer both worked
in candy and both worked on being monsters.
BEN KISSEL And Butcher Baker, of course.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. But that's the thing is that Dean Corll made fucking pralines which are if he on candy,
they're not very good. I'm sorry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Now we're gonna get fucking emails.
BEN KISSEL So now you're just passing judgment on candy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We are literally in the praline belt right now.
MARCUS PARKS Praw-lines or pray-lines, I'll say whatever the fuck I want.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Jesus Christ. There goes my fucking mentions, never mind this week on fucking Side Stories
between the daffodils and the dandelions which apparently we mixed up.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god, everyone went flower viral.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I'm not gonna hear the end of it!
MARCUS PARKS I don't give a shit, I don't go on Twitter. Fuck you.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely, you're a hero and a saint. I swear to god if Dean Corll would have invented Irn-Bru,
we wouldn't have covered him. Because Marcus would be like, 'You know, he's a good dude at
the end of the day.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI People make mistakes, sometimes they make up to 70 mistakes.
MARCUS PARKS But it's a crazy thing to think that you could live with someone for 8 years and never ride in
their car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You never actually know your partner.
BEN KISSEL It's very true.
MARCUS PARKS You can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No. No. There's an inner core to every person that is totally unknown to the others.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You think you know me but you don't know what I do when I go take my ucking little shoes off.
MARCUS PARKS There's an inner core, yes. But I've ridden in your car and it's totally fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah cause I clean it. I clean all the blood out.
BEN KISSEL I think we know each other fairly well. But this is equivalent to John Wayne Gacy's room that
you don't go into, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI All of them!
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Because I was thinking, what is the spot where none of these people were allowed to go? And
I suppose it's the car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Must have been.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We know for a fact that the floorboards of his car, we'll find out later on, were soaked in
blood. This has been his roving mobile murder unit for the entire time. It's really weird but yes,
the idea of like you never go in your boyfriend's car.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, it's weird. Well partly Jeff Selig never suspected Randy because the hours they kept in
their respective careers allowed them to live separate lives. Since Jeff was a baker in his own
business, he kept baker's hours which for all intents and purposes is pretty much a night shift.
Randy meanwhile could always use his work with computers as an excuse to be gone for days
at a time. Because this being 1979, most people including the author of the book we used as a
source for this series, didn't have a clue how computers actually worked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They really didn't. He did sort of sound like he was transported from another time period, like
from the industrial age because he's being like, 'These so-called gay computers with their
mysterious inner workings.' And like I was like did he just say gay computer?
MARCUS PARKS And so Randy was free to kill again and again, all while he kept up the facade of a normal man
with a boring job and a seemingly loving relationship. On February 18, 1980 police found the
body of a 19 year old Marine named Mark Alan Marsh. Marsh had been decapitated and his
hands have been severed from his body, which interestingly seemed to be an MO that was
reserved for Marines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He was obsessed with just Marines. I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS I mean decapitating and cutting off their hands, the only time he ever did he did that, he did
that twice. He did it with Mark Alan Marsh and he did it with Mark Hall who were both
Marines.
BEN KISSEL Let me just pull out my new laptop here, it's totally not a gay computer. It's the new Apple Tit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Wow, that's a straight ass computer.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it's a pretty straight computer.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, bro.
BEN KISSEL Yep. Turns out he didn't like Marines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I believe he kept some body parts as trophies. I believe he did.
MARCUS PARKS Body part? I don't know about body parts. I know he kept a lot of clothes and chains, stuff like
that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, he wore their jackets.
MARCUS PARKS I don't think he kept any body parts though.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS Eventually though, Randy took a job that would allow him to increase his hunting grounds far
beyond Southern California. In the summer of 1980 he got hired at Lear Siegler Industries as a
data processing expert which often sent him to Portland to do data processing work for a
subsidiary called Peerless Trailers. Like I said, insanely boring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (snoring)
BEN KISSEL Spicy. Wow, what a great life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He like total control, we know that for a fact. He did this thing called EST training which is
another version of weird Scientology shit where you go on stage and people would yell what
they think your flaws are at you.
BEN KISSEL Oh great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And he went through all of this sort of yuppie early focus group business training shit also at
the time that he loved.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He absolutely loved it and apparently he did really well, he wanted to train people in it.
MARCUS PARKS Wow.
BEN KISSEL You probably met someone like that when you were filming Wolf.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I mean most of those guys, that's the one thing about financial crimes is that in a way it's
almost pure because it's just about money, you know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's just taking your money.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. Destroying people's lives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It does destroy your life.
BEN KISSEL What does it matter? If you take someone's money, they're fine.
MARCUS PARKS They're fine, yeah. They'll just get more.
BEN KISSEL Of course!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, the money's there.
BEN KISSEL Not unless they go to pump number 9.
MARCUS PARKS While on the road, Randy had his own expense account and access to whatever rental car he
wanted. And on one of his first trips out of town, Randy murdered a 17 year old named
Michael O'Fallon in Oregon. O'Fallon's body was dumped off the I-5 highway 10 miles south of
Salem and Randy codenamed him Portland Denver because O'Fallon had been hitchhiking
from Colorado. Now while Randy might have used the opportunity of regular out of town
travel to put permanent distance between himself and the murders, he didn't go to Organ
enough to satisfy his near constant urge to kill. So the slayings continued in Southern
California.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And he would do this again and again, that's the thing about him that is truly... We like to
make fun of these fucking assholes and obviously Randy Kraft is the same sort of fucking
dweeb and a piece of shit.
BEN KISSEL Of course.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But he's incredibly dangerous because he several times would turn 2-3 day trips into little
murder sprees that would be one serial killer's entire run he would do on a business trip.
BEN KISSEL Wow. That's insane.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Less than two months after Michael O'Fallon, Randy back in Southern California picked
up and butchered a 19 year old named Robert Loggins, then folded up the remains in a green
trash bag and dumped the package in the gutter where it was found 3 days later by a group of
children.
BEN KISSEL Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And I think that he did that because of Patrick Kearney.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because this is again, we're heading into BTK territory where because Patrick Kearney would
actually be known as the Trash Bag Killer and he was doing a tip of the cap to another person
all operating at the same time. And I was reading an interview with Patrick Kearney and him
talking about them knowing that they had competition out there.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god, that's so crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Like him talking about it as it was competition. He's like, 'Yeah, I heard there was a new boy on
the scene but when it really comes down to it, I'm a necrophiliac. I don't do disgusting things
like he did.' Patrick Kearney believed that Randy Kraft was below him because he just would
shoot you in the head and then he'd like to play with your body.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Oddly and perhaps tellingly, Loggins' death was ruled by police as accidental for a further three
years.
BEN KISSEL I actually sleep in a garbage bag every night and I usually find myself in a gutter.
MARCUS PARKS And he'd been dismembered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, yeah. I Mr. Potato myself every night before I go to sleep. I take off my face, I take off
my legs, just because it's just nice to just be a torso.
BEN KISSEL Yeah well I'm 40 now and I throw my back out when I'm sleeping. So I understand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You better go in the fucking dumpster and get it.
BEN KISSEL Wow these kids, you can just see the conversation. You touch it, you touch it, man. Just poke it
with a stick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah. Made their day.
BEN KISSEL Made it and ruined it. It's an interesting story.
MARCUS PARKS Now with Loggins we have a few more clues as to what Randy Kraft did with his victims prior
to killing them. When Kraft was finally captured, police found photographs and negatives of
Loggins sitting on the couch in Kraft's living room slumped on a sofa, either highly intoxicated
or already dead. In a series of pictures following, Loggins was nude and in obviously
pornographic positions. What was more, Loggins was by no means the only Kraft
photographed in his own home. Police found 47 pictures of young men, some nude, some
clothed, and some very obviously dead. And here we come across another possible accomplice
angle. Randy Kraft had no film development experience nor did he have access to a dark room.
That means that he had to get these pictures developed somewhere by someone who
wouldn't report him, either because that person themselves were highly shady and didn't give
a fuck what they were developing or the developer had just as much to lose as Randy should
anyone find out what they were doing.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I did analog developing back in the day.
BEN KISSEL Of course, I love your story about the grandma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah. But I'll tell you one thing about me and my compatriots in that field. We did not give
a fuck what were on those rolls unless we wanted to duplicate them and bring them to our
friends.
BEN KISSEL Right, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And so to be honest, I'll tell you the truth. I was making what, $5.75 at the Eckerd's at the
time? If I saw a bunch of dead bodies on that fucking roll, honestly I'd just let 'em go through.
Because what am I gonna do? I'm gonna call the police? I'm holding weed right now. I knew
that I had weed on me.
MARCUS PARKS You were drinking scotch before you go in, your breath aint smelling too fresh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, exactly! No, I drove here half lit, you know what I mean? I'm not gonna do well in prison.
Let him go because what am I gonna do? I'm gonna call the police. I'm holding weed right now.
Like I knew that I had weed on your drinking scotch before you go in. Your breath ain't
smelling too fresh. Exactly. No, I drove here half lit. You know what I mean? Like I'm not going
to do well in prison. And I had no one to flip on. I'd just flip on anybody.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Just be like John's doing cocaine! And I would just flip on random ass people just to not go to
jail. I'd do anything possible. But I also think that the accomplices in a way, Randy Kraft was
very clever and he was very specific and he really thought about his shit. I think that
accomplices came and went.
MARCUS PARKS Yep, like it did with William Bonin, he had four.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I think that he'd get one accomplice and he would work with one for a while and then be like
now you're a victim number 25 and then he'd get another one.
BEN KISSEL Oh you think he killed them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That is my idea is that he would have certain relationships that would go certain ways and
then he would just wipe 'em out because he just kept doing that, he would do that anyway. So
why not just burn 'em as you went?
MARCUS PARKS That's possible.
BEN KISSEL Right.
MARCUS PARKS Now for the next two years, Randy Kraft would commute between his home in Long beach and
Portland, Oregon, sometimes staying up north for weeks at a time. There he continued his
killing spree, creating some of his bloodiest crime scenes yet. In April of 1981, Randy left
Michael Cluck near a landfill off I-5, naked from the waist down. His skull had been shattered
by 30 blows from either a tire iron or a jack handle, his anus had been ripped, and his thighs
and groin recovered in his fingernail scratches.
BEN KISSEL Oh my goodness. I was six months into gestation at that moment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Fascinating.
BEN KISSEL Isn't that interesting? Cause I was born in July.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So were you almost named Randy Kraft? Is that why you love him so much? Is that one of
those things where your mom was like, 'I hope he grows up to really kill as many men as
possible.'
MARCUS PARKS We are in that time period. He took one of his victims two days before I was born.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Wow guys. This is great. This is really good.
BEN KISSEL When were you born, Henry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI 1984. I was past all this. This is when Kramer vs. Kramer came out. That's how we really need
to start positioning it.
BEN KISSEL I love Kramer vs. Kramer. Although that one Kramer loves the N word.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He really did. But I feel like with this murder, I feel like it's because the dude fought back.
MARCUS PARKS You think so? That's why he-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Killed him in a rage probably.
MARCUS PARKS He might have.
BEN KISSEL Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS I mean this one was actually nicknamed Portland Blood.
BEN KISSEL Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS Because it was the bloodiest crime scene yet.
BEN KISSEL Great name for a sporting team.
MARCUS PARKS The Portland Blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's cool.
BEN KISSEL It's a fricking great ice hockey name or something.
MARCUS PARKS That's a roller derby team name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Fascinating. This is great.
MARCUS PARKS A few months later back in California, Randy killed a sex worker named Christopher Williams
who hustled at the bus stops of Hollywood. Williams had choked to death on his own mucus
and since he was a known sex worker, police unofficially labeled his death as a quote unquote
"misdemeanor murder" and it went entirely uninvestigated. Now the thing about serial killers
is that while some like Dennis Rader can balance their public facing life with their true self
without issue, others like Randy Kraft eventually crack under the pressure. Perhaps there does
exist a human threshold for murder that even serial killers reach because by 1981 at the age of
just 35, Randy was falling apart.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's that 7 year itch.
BEN KISSEL I guess so. Do they age like athletes?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, like pro wrestlers.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI If you look at the number of victims, there actually might be something to that where you look
at the wear and tear on baseball players, right.
BEN KISSEL Any baseball player in particular?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Bobby Bonilla got out when the timing was right!
BEN KISSEL There we go!
MARCUS PARKS No, let's switch it. Come on, let's switch it to Darryl Strawberry. Can we switch it to Darryl
strawberry?
BEN KISSEL Darryl Strawberry?!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Honestly he's actually a better athlete because of how much he did while actively using
cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS That is true.
BEN KISSEL Really talented.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But like BTK only had like literally 1/5 of the victims of Randy Kraft.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So BTK, his was all about the build up and the stalking and all of his games and all that kind of
shit. Where Randy Kraft really was, I feel like in a way was burning the candle at both ends.
BEN KISSEL I'm Randy Kraft here for IcyHot. Your elbows ever hurt after you strangled another victim?
IcyHot.
MARCUS PARKS Even though Randy was getting preachy about taking care of one's health, he was obsessed
with vitamins, exercise, and fresh vegetables and god damn you if you weren't as well.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS Randy was shaky and jumpy. He sweated all the time. His stomach hurt, he had migraines, he
had anxiety, worry, and fear. He couldn't eat, sleep, or concentrate. And as a result, Randy got
a poor performance review at work.
BEN KISSEL You could have just very easily put your own name in there, Marcus. Although you get you get
high marks at work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another well done performance review from Marcus Parks.
MARCUS PARKS I don't sweat very much.
BEN KISSEL That's true, that is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What? Are you Prince Andrew? DO we have to test this?
BEN KISSEL Again, Prince Andrew on the show Hot Ones answering the tough questions, he'll sweat.
MARCUS PARKS Well he got a bad performance review at work and when Randy began to suffer in the
bedroom back at home, he moved out of the house temporarily. Conversely though, we could
look at his ailments another way. Randy's physical problems might have come from the fact
that Randy's killing had slowed down considerably, meaning his most effective avenue of
release was cut off. While Randy was quite busy during the summer of 1980, he took a break
from July until April of the following year and didn't kill again for 20 months. This from what I
can surmise matched up with the worst times of Randy's ill health.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He just wasn't into it. He was not feeling good, he was probably feeling the heat because the
press was starting to get involved in talking about this because for a while the cops were
actively investigating it but they never really talked about how many open cases they had.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And when they arrested Kearney and that came out and all the news about his massive fucking
body count and all this shit that he did. I feel like there's also some of that where people were
noticing what was happening.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Interesting. So he was following the other people in his profession getting arrested.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He must have. There is no way he didn't.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. But once the faucet was turned back on, Randy murdered 6 people in two states in the
span of a month and a half.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS With all the fury and anger he had before. And it's quite possible that his health problems
dissipated soon after.
BEN KISSEL This is like when you go to the doctor and you've been a chainsmoker for 3 years or for 30
years. They're like, 'If you quit smoking now, you're gonna die.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's what they told my father. Literally they're like, 'Smoking is the only thing he's got.'
BEN KISSEL So he goes to the doctor, they're like, 'Randy, you gotta start killing again.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Okay well if you're gonna beg me.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Well included in those five murders was an actual double murder. One of four that Randy
called his two-in-ones. In December of 1982, Randy attended a seminar through Lear Ziegler at
the Amway Grand Hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While Randy Seminar was being held there
was also a horticulture convention at the same hotel which was attended by two cousins
named Christopher Schoenborn and Dennis Ault. No one is sure how Randy pulled it off but
when the bodies were found, Schoenborn was naked while Ault was clothed. Both were frozen
and covered in an inch of snow and both were filled with alcohol and Valium to render them
comatose while Randy did what he liked. A ballpoint pen from Amway Grand had been shoved
up Schoenberg's penis up to his bladder.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS While Ault had somehow escaped this sort of indignity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He was the big one. Because one was a 6'1" dude and the other guy was a little guy and he
tortured the bigger guy more, Kissel.
BEN KISSEL Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So I don't know why you love this guy so much because he wants you, he wishes he could play
with your body like it's a Blunderland.
BEN KISSEL That's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I was watching this little special on this because there was the Grand Rapids local investigative
team did a story about this. And Randy Kraft was seen hanging out with these two dudes and it
seems like they were at the after party for the convention. And Randy Kraft did the thing like,
'You guys come here often?' He's hanging out and doing his weird thing, he seemed to be fine
with them. But he was doing old school I think feed them beers, they were lit.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And then the reporter showed just how easy it was to slip Valium into an open beer which also
showed me, I was like have you been practicing this? Because he really did show. He's like,
'And with a flick of the wrist, you can just drop the Valium right in there.' And it was just like
wow, that's very practiced.
MARCUS PARKS Wow.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Maybe he's a CIA operative.
BEN KISSEL Perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Fuck yeah, dude!
BEN KISSEL Anytime the word 'grand' is used, wherever you are, if it's a hotel or a city, it's not.
MARCUS PARKS Nah.
BEN KISSEL And so always remember that. The more like hyperboles used-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Except for the Grand Canyon, it's a big hole.
BEN KISSEL That is a big hole, yes.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. For some reason though, when Randy flew to Portland for more murder instead of going
back to LA, he left behind a green military jacket from one of his previous victims, Anthony
Silveira, whom Randy had killed in Oregon just a few days before. More damning was the fact
that Christopher Schoenborn's car keys were found in Randy's room. Now today this would
have been the end of Randy Kraft but Randy had registered with a false address. And even
though it seems like he registered under his own name, Henry you might be able to help out
with this, I don't know for sure. And that's the thing, it's 1982. Even if he had registered under
his own name, you couldn't just google Randy Kraft.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He had to have been there under his own name because he was there for work.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. And since Randy Kraft could be from anywhere, considering how there were two
conventions going on at the same time, investigators had little to go on. But that's the thing is
that even if he was there for work, I would imagine that the cops could cross-reference the
names with who attended what convention and then they could call somebody like, 'Hey,
where's this guy Randy from? Who does he work for?'
BEN KISSEL Actually we're a little bit busy, we're on the beat. Ice-T said he was robbed by pump number 9.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I feel like there might be a little bit of homophobic like this is icky. I think there's a little bit of
that coming from the cops. I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS No, not on this one. This is a double murder.
BEN KISSEL You don't think so?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, it was intense.
MARCUS PARKS And it's just two dudes dead in a field. They're gonna investigate that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And they were positioned too at right angles like in a snow field. It looks like a scene from
Se7en. It was very scary looking. But you know what, I just don't fucking know.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I was watching one of those EXPLORE WITH US true crime stories that was kind of talking
about this missing woman on YouTube and they solved the murder by seeing on a ring camera
that the dude had the woman's key chain in his hand. They saw just out of the corner of his
eye. But it's also really difficult for them to prove it in court still and they had the footage of it.
Because all the fucking defense attorney really has to do is like, 'You can't see, it's all smudges.
Did you have your jeweler's glass on?' You know what I mean, like that kind of shit where
maybe it's just not enough.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, maybe. But it would at the very least be enough for an investigation, at the very least be
enough to ask questions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Randy Kraft, he'd already been questioned several times in SoCal.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He was being brought in.
MARCUS PARKS No but I mean by the Grand Rapids police.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Maybe it's because once he's out of town he's out of town, he's out of fucking town. And
maybe it's really difficult to go and call, I don't know what the excuse is. I feel like you call, all
of the fucking records were ancient.
BEN KISSEL Right.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, that's true. But speaking of the investigation, authorities in Oregon were at least coming
somewhat close to narrowing down who might be leaving these horribly mutilated bodies off
I-5. They theorized that since there were long periods between murder clusters, the killer
probably lived in another state and only visited Oregon for business.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
MARCUS PARKS So they contacted other police departments across the country to see if they had murders with
similar MOs and victim types. Sure enough, Oregon got a hit from Southern California and the
6 Oregon murders were connected to all the rest Randy had killed back home.
BEN KISSEL Some detective work going here.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS They're trying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Of course. Because they were really stuck and it was just the numbers were piling up. This guy
was out of control. And the way they said is that they had boiled it down to 11 things, 11
actions within Randy Kraft's murders that were a part of his MO. And these had 10 of them.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And so they called and they just ticked off the list. But maybe that's what it is, is because
Randy Kraft gave a false address. Maybe he gave an address to some other hub within his
business so then you're not looking at the SoCal Randy Kraft.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Shell corporations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Now Randy's time at Lear Ziegler was coming to an end because Randy had finished the work
he'd been brought on to do and he wasn't gonna get hired for another job there because he
had violated company policy by renting the nicest cars and running up the mileage while he'd
been in Oregon.
BEN KISSEL He does not understand working yourself out of a job. Take it easy. Take long lunches, relax.
MARCUS PARKS To give you an idea of just how much Randy Kraft prowled Oregon, he racked up 993 miles in
just a single weekend.
BEN KISSEL Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS Even though the distance between the Portland airport and his company was just 25 miles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I just like to drive. He did say that in one of his police interrogations, he's just like, 'I just get
this driving fever, man. If it comes on me and I just get out there and I zip on down to Mexico, I
zip all the way up to Portland.' And they're all like, 'Why though?'
BEN KISSEL That's not a problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Why would you do that?
BEN KISSEL A lot of people like to drive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They do.
BEN KISSEL It's mostly the murderers, that's the problem.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. And so the road murders stopped save one and Randy would therefore commit 6 of his
last 7 known murders in Southern California. It's also during this time period that investigators
would obtain the strongest evidence yet for an accomplice. After a worker for the California
Department of Transportation found the body of 21 year old Eric Church off the shoulder of
the 605 on-ramp near Seal Beach, it was found that the semen sample taken from the body
did not match Randy's blood type. Definitely another guy there. Furthermore, Randy's next
and last so-called two-in-one seemed to have been nearly impossible to pull off alone. In
February of 1983, cops found the still warm and mutilated body of Geoff Nelson covered in
skid marks after it had been pushed from a fairly fast moving vehicle. The next day, cops found
a friend of Jeff Nelson's named Roger DeVaul down a ravine next to the highway. The link
between the two men came when both were found with potato skins and grapes in their
stomach and a photo of DeVaul's corpse was later found in Randy's possession.
BEN KISSEL Oh man, I don't want that to be my last meal. Potato skins and grapes. That sucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Unless you're at a mixer.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, maybe.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, that's good for a mixer meal but not for your last meal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No.
BEN KISSEL No, it's bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI My last meal, I want it to be a bullet. But Roger DeVaul, he might have been the accomplice. I
think that's the accomplice.
BEN KISSEL Oh and then he killed him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He gets X'ed out when he's done with him.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Well let's get into a little bit. See with the Grand Rapids two-for-one, you had a situation
in which Randy most likely met the cousins, drove away with them, drugged them with Valium
and beer, then killed them together in a secluded location when neither one could fight back.
That's his whole thing, killing people when they can't fight back. Additionally it seems that he
did it alone because he committed it far away from home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And I believe the way that would work is straight up predator style. You look at the big guy,
you get him super fucking loaded. Him and the little dude were family members, right, they
were cousins, they went together everywhere. So you get the big guy hammered and you're
like, 'We're gonna go out to this party,' because that's what Randy Kraft used to do was say
we're gonna go out to some party, there's gonna be a lot of girls, you're gonna love all the
girls.
BEN KISSEL Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And then you'd get in the car and by then you're now succumbing, maybe you have one more
road soda with another fucking Valium to the little guy, little guy is now drifting off.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI The other guy's already out and then he just dispatches one and then dispatches the other.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because I think like that was part of his fucking game was he liked it when the cards were
pressed against him, that it was difficult to do.
MARCUS PARKS He did it 4 times.
BEN KISSEL He didn't take the easy way out. I mean other than being a murderer as opposed to anyone
successful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL But he definitely pushed himself to the limit, he didn't find easy to kill victims, it doesn't sound.
MARCUS PARKS No. But with Nelson and DeVaul, any number of things could have happened, some requiring
an accomplice, some not. And some of course making devolve the accomplice, as you said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Sure.
MARCUS PARKS From the solo angle, Randy was never found with a gun but it's possible that he could have
coerced DeVaul into helping him throw the body from the car with a gun pointed at him, then
killed DeVaul afterward. DeVaul also might have been the first killed and it was just a case of
Nelson being found before DeVaul. Or Randy might never have had to threaten anyone and
just killed one victim in his two-in-ones while the other was passed out.
BEN KISSEL Also when you say two-in-ones, I just think of Ponderosa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL And I think of families eat free.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I was thinking Arby's. But that was five-for-one.
BEN KISSEL But this is about murder.
MARCUS PARKS But that's more of his lame ass serial killer humor.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's taking a fast food special and trivializing a murder of two human beings.
BEN KISSEL Right. I'm giving up your life for Lent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But it also shows that he had his own little lexicon in his own mind and how he viewed his own
work.
BEN KISSEL So he wrote it, he would write that.
MARCUS PARKS He would write 2 in 1. For the Grand Rapids he wrote 2 in 1 GR.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, GR 2.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. But it's also possible that Randy had an accomplice to help him handle both victims at
the same time, especially considering how closely this murder came after Eric Church was
found with another man's semen present.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Okay, let's go out on a limb here.
MARCUS PARKS You going out on a limb?
BEN KISSEL Uh oh. Going out on a limb.
MARCUS PARKS We swimming in deep water?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah, deep sea, many waters. What if it's just some other guy's semen?
BEN KISSEL I mean it's very possible.
MARCUS PARKS It really is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Cause that's the thing, what if it's a guy he didn't kill? Because he also would still cruise. He
would still straight up normally cruise.
MARCUS PARKS No, no, the semen was found on Eric Church's body which means what I was more thinking is
that Eric Church might have had sex with another man immediately before meeting Randy
Kraft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL That's very possible.
MARCUS PARKS That's also something the police investigators look at all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They love watching that.
MARCUS PARKS Well the fact that Nelson was still warm when he was found tells us that Randy probably killed
him in the car while he was driving. And it's hard to imagine Randy strangling someone to
death while driving down the freeway. Although you could see, because a lot of these victims
were killed with their own shoelaces, so it's possible that Randy was driving, had already
wrapped and tied the shoelace around this dude's neck, and was just pulling on it while he was
driving, just using one hand.
BEN KISSEL Oh jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Or is he just choking to death on his own vomit?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. This one was strangled.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS What else is interesting concerning Eric Church is that even though Randy was found to be in
possession of Church's belongings, that's how they connected Randy Kraft to Eric Church's
murder-
BEN KISSEL Yeah?
MARCUS PARKS Church did not appear on Randy's scorecard, meaning that the trophy from Eric's murder may
have been presented to Randy as a gift from a willing accomplice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Sure.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god. This is crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Sure because then he kills him. Maybe that's a thing, maybe none of the accomplices are on
the list.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS It's quite possible.
BEN KISSEL This is a super supervillain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He is one of the worst of the worst.
BEN KISSEL He really is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Besides the child murderers of South America which we'll get into and the other Freeway
Killers. He is just...yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. No, there's a world that when that existed around Randy Kraft that we will never know
because he still to this day does not admit any guilt whatsoever.
BEN KISSEL It's crazy to think, it's amazing he's still alive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He maintains his innocence. You know what he looks like now too? Remember the fat guy
from fucking Ernest Goes To Camp?
BEN KISSEL Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Remember his partner?
BEN KISSEL Oh yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Looking like him. He went from Will Forte to that guy.
BEN KISSEL He was a great sous chef for eggs erroneous.
MARCUS PARKS However as it sadly went with most serial killer investigations in the past, it's not until after the
killer is caught that the pieces are all put together and even then sometimes many of the
pieces are still missing. As such, the killer often had to get caught red-handed and there are a
few serial killers who have been caught as red-handed as Randy Kraft was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I would go as far as to say it was maroon-handed. This is as red as hands can be. They had
blood on them when he was arrested.
BEN KISSEL I'm sure they were covered in it, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Now on May 13, 1983, the day before Kraft was captured, his partner Jeff Selig was invited to
participate in the first Los Angeles candy convention.
BEN KISSEL Whoa! Oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Welcome to the candy convention. Okay listen, okay. Everybody's gotta stop with the group
rapes, okay. This is a candy cane area.
BEN KISSEL I'm here for team Laffy Taffy. I'm with team Laffy Taffy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, okay. Just so you know, just for everyone's awareness, the group rapes will continue in
the taffy room but not here. This is the candy cane area, all right.
BEN KISSEL This the candy cane area?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes.
BEN KISSEL I'm with team Laffy Taffy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, I can tell.
MARCUS PARKS Well Randy helped Jeff set up the booth at the candy convention, then he left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Fuck this! Fucking this fucking candy.
BEN KISSEL Imagine Randy Kraft being surrounded by so much joy as a candy convention.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is when Randy Kraft said he was highly agitated, that's the truth. Because he used to really
be a very cool customer. If you read, there's one interrogation within 'Angel of Darkness' that
is very interesting because his story of why he was innocent for this thing is so detailed, he put
so much detail into his alibis and what he knows about the areas, he does a lot of research
about his dumping areas and all this kind of shit.
BEN KISSEL It's just like bridge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Just like bridge. I keep saying that to myself. And then Randy, by the time he's at this candy
convention he's like, 'Fucking all right, here's your fucking bonbons, all right. We done here?'
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh you want me separating my fucking nut? How am I supposed to know the difference
between a cashew with a hazelnut, Lucy? You got some explaining to do, Lucy.
BEN KISSEL This is where I understand that would be confusing. To be fair.
MARCUS PARKS No, it really is. I don't know the difference between a cashew and a hazelnut.
BEN KISSEL I'm a serial murderer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Do you have any idea how much blood is on my hands? Now you're making me dig through all
these fucking macadamia nuts?
BEN KISSEL Randy, you're stressed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Don't tell me what I am.
BEN KISSEL Why don't you spend some time in the Laffy Taffy room?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Okay, you're right. There is some group activity in there, it's really interesting.
MARCUS PARKS The next time Jeff and Randy spoke to each other was the following day. Randy had called Jeff
and told him that he had made a monstrous mistake and needed help finding a good lawyer as
soon as possible.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I think you need to go as far as an excellent lawyer.
BEN KISSEL I need Kuby, man. I want Kuby.
MARCUS PARKS Bill Kunstler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Paul Rudy Giuliani.
MARCUS PARKS See at around 1am the night before, two California highway patrol officers had seen Randy
Kraft's 1979 Toyota Celica driving far into the right lane, weaving on and off the shoulder for
several minutes. After Randy made an illegal lane change, the cops turned on the sirens and
pulled Randy over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Let's go congratulate this guy and how great a drunk driver he is.
MARCUS PARKS Randy slowed down to 30 miles an hour but didn't stop and when cops pulled up next to him
and shone a spotlight into his car, they saw him grab a jacket from the back seat so he could
use it to cover something next to him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Man, I live in LA, I know what it's like to do everything within the confines of the driver's seat
of your car.
BEN KISSEL Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I've changed full outfits while driving and shit.
BEN KISSEL You're an actor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's gotta be very difficult to cover up a world of murders.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Finally Randy pulled over and immediately got out of the car, quickly and nervously
walking towards the cops.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hey, how you guys doing? You guys having a good night?
BEN KISSEL Is that that guy from the Laffy Taffy room?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, hey. What's going on Merle? Whoa man, salted caramel. Hands up!
MARCUS PARKS Now in the experience of the highway patrol this usually meant the driver was hiding
something, most likely an open beer. And Randy did indeed have a half empty Moosehead in
his cup holder. Moosehead, that was his beer.
BEN KISSEL Moosehead, I've had it many times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah. The best part of a Moosehead, you can drink a dozen of them. You're only as drunk as
you feel.
BEN KISSEL That's right, only as drunk as a moose.
MARCUS PARKS But the cops almost immediately noticed that Randy's fly was open and they also noticed that
there was an unresponsive dude slumped over in the front seat.
BEN KISSEL That's the thing, that's the thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah because I thought at first I was like did they get him because he didn't have a license
to sell hot dogs?
BEN KISSEL Whoa! You're on fire. You got him.
MARCUS PARKS The guy in the front seat was Terry Lee Gambrel, a 25 year old Marine whom Randy said was
simply a hitchhiker who had too much to drink. You don't need to go talk to him, he's just had
too much to drink. You need to stay far away from that guy. He's had too much to drink.
BEN KISSEL I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I don't want to wake him up!
BEN KISSEL Yeah, okay.
MARCUS PARKS Not taking his word for it, Sergeant Michael Howard approached the car and saw Gambrel
amidst several empty bottles of Moosehead beer and an open prescription bottle of
Lorazepam.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Where'd those come from?
BEN KISSEL What?
MARCUS PARKS When Gambrel didn't wake from verbal command, Howard tried shaking his arm and that's
when he discovered that Randy's passenger was cold as ice.
BEN KISSEL Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI If you're a police officer, sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. Is this the type of thing where you are
dismayed at what your night is going to be or is there a little bit of you that's like, yes, this is
going to be a good story?
BEN KISSEL Well hopefully you can get a promotion so you can get off the beat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's what my dad did.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS No, your had to go off the beat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No, no. That's when he got commended for stopping a guy that was wanted for two murders
on a traffic stop and then he chased him down and arrested him and then he got to not have
to be a dangerous cop anymore.
BEN KISSEL And then he also detained the fat boys for a moment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He had to.
MARCUS PARKS When Howard reached to check Gambrel's pulse, he found that Gambrel had a ligature mark
around his neck from being choked to death by his own belt. And when the patrolman
removed the jacket, he saw that Gambrel's genitals were exposed, his lap was wet with urine,
and his wrists had fresh welt marks from being bound with his own shoelaces.
BEN KISSEL Well let's just book him on public indecency for the zipper being down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Arrest the corpse.
MARCUS PARKS This is kind of a gay thing going on here. Let's smooth this one over.
BEN KISSEL You know the way they are. Anyway, what time does the Laffy Taffy room close?
MARCUS PARKS And as Randy waited for the paramedics to come and officially declare Gambrel dead, all Kraft
would say was, "How's my friend?"
HENRY ZEBROWSKI How's my friend?
BEN KISSEL Doesn't seem like he treated him very friendly, did you?
MARCUS PARKS Considering how erratically Randy was driving during an obvious dump attempt, it's hard to
see how his method had never been noticed before. Mayhaps Randy was trying to accomplish
alone what was usually a two man job. But even so, considering the mountain of evidence
present in just Randy's car alone, all it would have taken to catch one of the most prolific serial
killers in American History was a simple search.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You know it could just be the fucking wheel started falling off too.
MARCUS PARKS Could be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It could just be he's lost the fucking grip on it.
MARCUS PARKS He's getting older. He's not able to dump a body as well as 36 as he was at 26.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's how it is.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it makes sense. It's very physical to kill somebody.
MARCUS PARKS That sounds facetious but it is true.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS I'm not as spry as I was at 29.
BEN KISSEL You haven't killed anyone, you haven't been able to kill in five years!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, that's why he has to let all his body slowly dissolve in his bathtub covered in lime. The
old way.
BEN KISSEL Classic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Amish.
MARCUS PARKS Besides a bottle of concoction called STYX which author Dennis McDougal identified as a quote
"aphrodisiac for gay lovers".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Okay. Like he'd know.
BEN KISSEL This author is so scared of how gay he is. That is the problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He's jealous of Randy Kraft's freedom.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. I don't know if he's scared, it's just there's this yearning and he knows a lot about it. He's
like, 'Oh yeah, STYX. Only gay men use STYX.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI How do you know?
BEN KISSEL It's like Jeff Sessions talking about the lifestyle of gay people and it's like that's just you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's your life.
MARCUS PARKS In addition to STYX, cops found 9 different prescription drugs, a well-thumbed paperback
called 'The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs' and an envelope containing 47 photographs
of young men in various stages of unconsciousness and death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And a one page pitch sheet that says 'If I Did It'.
MARCUS PARKS Furthermore it was obvious that Gambrel was not the only person killed in Randy's Toyota
Celica because while Gambrel had no open wounds, the passenger seat of Randy's car was
soaked with blood.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god. What could that even smell like? It must have been a slaughterhouse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I guess. Or you just scrubbed the outward blood off. I mean sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. If
your car is soaked in blood, what does it smell like?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. And it doesn't have to be human blood, say you're a hunter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS The bed of your truck was filled with something, you had to put the deer in the back seat. It
happens.
BEN KISSEL Perhaps on Open Lines, our Sirius radio show. And thanks so much for calling in, maybe we'll
talk about police investigations or something at some point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Ooh yeah.
BEN KISSEL Hear some of the juicy stories from the lives of cops. Crazy.
MARCUS PARKS Furthermore, cops found a briefcase containing a wood grain binder with 61 neatly printed
notations, 30 names or phrases on the left and 31 on the right. This was Randy's scorecard.
And while Randy at first said that it was a list of nicknames for his friends in the gay
community, it was obvious to investigators that this was a victim list. However to this day only
42 out of the 61 entries have been positively identified as 44 victims, including the two-inones,
meaning there were 17 John Does, including two unidentified double murders.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS These victims were listed as Angel, Hari Kari, Marine Down, Van Driveway, 2 in 1MV to PL, LB
Marina, Diabetic, Portland, Navy White, User, Iowa, 2 in 1 Hitch, Front of Ripples, Carpenter,
MC Dump HB Short, Portland Eck, Oil, and finally What You Got.
BEN KISSEL All I know is if you kill me, don't name my illness. I don't need to be known as diabetic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Gout.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, the gout guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Stinky gout fucker. That would really be upsetting. Super funny castable man.
BEN KISSEL What is this? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS What this shows, considering the locational nature of some of the names, is the transient
nature of many of his victims and it shows you just how many extremely violent deaths in this
period of time were lost in the shuffle as so-called misdemeanor murders. Alternatively, it
might instead or also show that Southern California is still covered in dead bodies that have
never been found.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI For certain.
MARCUS PARKS Yes. For example, included on Randy's scorecard was Paul Fuchs. His body is missing to this
day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And we know that he killed him.
MARCUS PARKS Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So yes, there has to be many bodies left.
MARCUS PARKS Investigators cleverly made the connection to Randy's lame serial killer joke, Expletive Deleted,
and they put two and two together because Fuchs was a regular at Club Ripples were Randy
found multiple victims. And speaking of lame jokes, Hari Kari might refer to a 30 year old man
named David Sant who was found with multiple stab wounds to the stomach. His body was
found in a kneeling position with his arms extended outward which could be seen as a
reference to the Japanese ritual suicide practice of Hari Kari.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah. Unless it was a guy who sounded like Harry Carey.
MARCUS PARKS Interestingly though the scorecard entries were very similar to how date files in an IBM
computer worked, meaning that Randy Kraft had applied his nerdy computer knowledge to his
murder catalog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It feels like not only just his, I don't know if it's just his computer shit, it's just also kind of how
his brain worked because he was one of those like hyper hyper specific dudes that just like
lived by his own weird kind of code.
MARCUS PARKS I feel like all serial killers or most serial killers live like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Talking about organized killers.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He is by far one of the most organized killers that there has ever been.
BEN KISSEL Right.
MARCUS PARKS Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because he really did keep a running tally and this was obviously kind of like his way to jerk off
looking at his list.
MARCUS PARKS Yep. So after finding enough evidence to convict Randy just in his car, cops set in on Randy's
apartment where furniture in the house was matched up to Randy's photos. As far as hard
evidence went, a shaving kit inscribed with the name Michael Cluck was found in Randy's
bathroom where Randy had obviously used it on the regular. In addition they found Michael
O'Fallon's camera, a Norelco shaver carrying case belonging to Eric Church, and a pair of
nunchucks that belonged to a victim named Lance Taggs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Man, you had to take nunchucks from your victim? How dangerous are you, man? He had
nunchucks!
BEN KISSEL Yeah, that's one of the most dangerous weapons that there is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah because it's one of the only weapons that can really kill you accidentally.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I used to have a pair when I was a kid. I bought them at a thrift store and they were real cool. I
hit myself in the head a lot.
BEN KISSEL Of course.
MARCUS PARKS There was also a box containing chains, shoelaces, shirts, jackets, and belts, all from murder
victims. And they found an old yellow rug that matched fibers found on the body of victim
Scott Hughes. All this evidence and more pointed towards the fact that Randy had been killing
men in his own home right under the nose of his partner for years.
BEN KISSEL And we're going to give you an extra year again for being an illegal hot dog salesman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But again, check on your lover and see what they're doing.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Ask hey, how was your day? No really, how's your fucking day? And really get into it.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS You can dig in if you like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah man, get in there, man. Accuse your lover tonight.
MARCUS PARKS But despite evidence that rivals that found in John Wayne Gacy's crawlspace, Randy
maintained his innocence. In addition, his partner Jeff Selig defended him and all his friends,
family, and coworkers went along with the frame-up story.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's because his character that was normal guy Randy Kraft was very well put together.
MARCUS PARKS Very well liked too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It looked solid.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It looked like there's no way he's got this dark side, he's a nerd, he lives his quiet kind of
suburban gay lifestyle and he has a professional job and all of this shit. And you never know
what anybody does.
BEN KISSEL No.
MARCUS PARKS And of course all those people dropped away faster than OJ Simpson hangers-on once the
evidence started coming out.
BEN KISSEL Right, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS No one stood by him for long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because Randy Kraft was really living that American dream, the true American dream is that if
you lie long enough it becomes real.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That if you just never admit, if you never submit to what anybody says to anything ever, then
maybe one day they'll just forget about it. They'll just leave you alone.
BEN KISSEL And sadly often they do.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Now about a month after Kraft was arrested, police received a compelling if probably
fake letter from a man named Les who claimed that he was the new Zodiac Killer and some of
the victims attached to Kraft actually belonged to him.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god. Oh buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It wasn't him, it was me, Lester! Yeah, I'm the Zodiac Killer.
BEN KISSEL Oh lord, the sequel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Are you trying to be Jeff Dunham? No. Let him go!
MARCUS PARKS Les claimed to have come to quote "liquidate the evil boys and men of this area who were all
members in the army of Satan."
BEN KISSEL Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Satan! Satan!
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS This letter quite reasonably was ignored and Randy was charged with 16 murders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, who's that guy though?
BEN KISSEL You guys get that letter from Les by any chance?
MARCUS PARKS Now the cops did have enough evidence to charge Randy with many more than 16 murders
but they figured perhaps rightly that 16 was enough because Randy was going down no matter
what.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS And this was already going to be one of the longest and most expensive trials in Orange
County history.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it would have been nice if the victim's families could have screamed at him to his face.
But yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I mean they did eventually get together and all yell at him but it's not the same. Because the
thing too is that what's funny about the court system and all that kind of shit, if something
goes wrong, like you really have to play it correctly. Even when you have a guy dead to rights
and you're like oh he's gonna go away forever.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI If the lawyers fuck up, you could bust it all open. So you might as well like keep it tight. Let's
get him what we can get him for.
BEN KISSEL I mean that is bigger than 99% of weddings. If all of the victims families get together? That's
hundreds of people.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. It really is.
BEN KISSEL Oh my gosh.
MARCUS PARKS But the opinion that Randy was going down was not Randy's opinion.
BEN KISSEL Take this into account, okay?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Listen, listen. Let's ask Randy what he thinks. I didn't do it! He didn't do it!
BEN KISSEL I mean it is true, if the jury comes back and they say guilty and if within two seconds you say
the word 'not'. It works.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI From the year 1992-1997, yes.
BEN KISSEL That did work.
MARCUS PARKS While Randy waited for trial he wrote letters to his sister saying that he discovered meditation
and the philosopher Alan Watts. And he spoke to everyone who came by as if nothing had
even happened.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because he just figured, he's doing old fashioned John List hold the line.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS In a predictable move, Randy also started studying law so he could act as his own defense
attorney.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Of course because he thinks he's a fucking genius.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS But he was wisely persuaded to trust a licensed lawyer by the time the pretrial hearing began.
However there wasn't much even an experienced lawyer could do. Echoing John Wayne Gacy's
unlicensed graveyard defense, the lawyer was forced to claim that just because a murder
victim is discovered in the front seat of the car you're driving, it doesn't necessarily mean that
you're the one who killed him.
BEN KISSEL Just because I woke up next to 1000 Taco Bell wrappers doesn't mean that I'm the one who
ate all the Taco Bell. Yes, I was alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Man, he just must be such a funny ass lawyer that owes so much money to so many different
people. He's just like, 'How could this be a crime?' Like we talked about on Side Stories this
week.
BEN KISSEL Yes.
MARCUS PARKS Well that's what he did. He called being pulled over with a body in your car, he called that
circumstantial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Circumstantial.
BEN KISSEL He's got it, you know, credit to him. Everyone deserves a defense I guess.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Credit to his profession. Meanwhile Randy was convinced that somehow if he just kept
denying the truth, he'd walk away from 16 murder charges. In a Christmas letter written to his
family, Kraft optimistically drew upon a popular pop culture reference of the day, writing
quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI "I think Master Luke, there is a joyous swelling in the force."
BEN KISSEL Oh my god. Do any gas pumps work in this country? Pump number 9, oh my god I'm gonna die.
MARCUS PARKS Now since there were so many murders to contend with, jury selection didn't begin on Randy's
trial for 5 years.
BEN KISSEL Oh my gosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But he was in jail at least during that time period.
BEN KISSEL They didn't give him bail?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS No, he wasn't out on bail helping Jeff set up the second annual Los Angeles candy convention.
He's in fucking jail. And because of the volume of the charges, the trial was expected to last
another two years.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS You're asking a lot of these jurors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes.
BEN KISSEL Yes. Oh my god, two years of your life as a juror on this case?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is why you only find people who have a plate in your head or somebody who's been like,
'My grandfather is an alien!' That's the problem.
BEN KISSEL But what happened? If you get elected to jury duty, we would just have to stop the show.
MARCUS PARKS I mean yeah, really would.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We'd have to record at court.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL I mean that might actually help us.
MARCUS PARKS By the end of it, 157 witnesses took the stand and over 1000 pieces of evidence were
introduced by the prosecution. You know, I almost got put on a murder jury trial a week before
me and Carolina got married.
BEN KISSEL Yes, I remember.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Ooh, wow.
BEN KISSEL That was horrible. And then you were like, 'I'm a true crime podcaster.' They were like, 'Shut
up! Shut up!'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Did you not do the thing where like maybe murder isn't so bad at crime.
MARCUS PARKS No I definitely went into the true crime pedigrees, like yeah, I'm a true crime podcaster and in
the past I've worked on many true crime podcasts. And the prosecutor openly told me I was
trying to get out of jury duty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And then just being like, 'You're trying to get out of being a fucking moron asshole! That's what
I would say.' Got your ass!
BEN KISSEL Also check out this trick. I'm an unlawful hot dog salesman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I would like to just remind the court opening up your pants and revealing your penis is actually
a crime. You can be arrested for while you're in court.
BEN KISSEL That's all right.
MARCUS PARKS By the end of it, 157 witnesses took the stand in Randy Kraft's trial and over 1000 pieces of
evidence were introduced by the prosecution. Kraft's defense meanwhile relied on alibis and
alternative suspects, including the aforementioned magician Vernon Butts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Whoa.
BEN KISSEL Also we're gonna bring Kellyanne Conway down and she's gonna give some alternative facts
here.
MARCUS PARKS Well I mean this wasn't, putting Vernon Butts in the hot seat, not the worst idea because
Vernon butts had participated in 6 murders with fellow Freeway Killer William Bonin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I wonder if he had the same opinion where he's like Randy's gross though.
MARCUS PARKS Actually we're going to get to that right now. William Bonin himself was not presented as an
alternative suspect although the third Freeway Killer, Patrick Kearney, was. And later when
Bonin was asked about his possible involvement in Kraft's crime, he was offended, saying
quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI "I don't cut the dicks off little boys."
BEN KISSEL Oh god, okay. You know what? Congratulations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Is this the bar?
BEN KISSEL Again, you really did it. You didn't, so you did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah, Patrick Kearney went on to say he openly admitted to jerking off his own dog and
training it to suck his dick throughout his childhood but he'd still say, 'I'm not disgusting like
Randy Kraft.'
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS Well concerning a possible accomplice, police never quite settled on a firm suspect. But one
possible suspect was John McMillan who had been under surveillance on and off for years.
BEN KISSEL When did they turn it off? Once you're on surveillance, at what point are they like, 'Yeah,
we've surveilled enough, we'll circle back.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS I think when they just finally figured out, they get the gut feeling that there's nothing here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We've seen this guy's open asshole too many times. I really wish, can we stop the surveillance?
MARCUS PARKS It's thought that McMillan was probably just a hedonistic counterculture figure who liked kinky
sex. But it is interesting to note that McMillan killed himself right after Randy Kraft was
arrested. Another suspect was a small time criminal named Bob Jackson who gave an
interview in which he claimed that he'd murdered two hitchhikers with Kraft in Wyoming and
Colorado during the mid to late 70s. Authorities however were unable to corroborate these
claims because there were no bodies to attach them to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Now we know a lot of times people confess to these crimes that they might not have anything
to do with because if you're already in jail it gives you some cred, it gives you people that look
at you like you're higher up on the food chain. And I don't know, you enter into his lore in a
way, you become a part of Randy Kraft's story.
MARCUS PARKS It also gives you something to trade. You also get out of jail for a little bit. Remember that was
the whole thing with Henry Lee Lucas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Got his milkshakes, got to talk to that fucking nun.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Now concerning the defense, they were somewhat clever when they had the chance to
be. They refused to submit Randy to psychological testing which is routine in most multiple
murder cases, making the argument that testing the defendant didn't make sense because
he's innocent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Why would we have to test an innocent man?
MARCUS PARKS They did however agree to have Randy's brain scanned and the scan showed lethargic
electrical activity in the part of the brain that dictates judgment and abnormally high activity in
the parts that governed emotion, impulse, and sex drive.
BEN KISSEL It's interesting that he would go into computers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Seriously. But also I don't think we need to scan his brain. I think we look at his everyday
activity and see all of this.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL That is interesting though that they went that route.
MARCUS PARKS That they scanned his brain?
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS We very much need to know like how does the serial killer's brain work.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS And they've seen from the serial killer brains that they've scanned, they see that same shit
over and over and over again.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS But in the end Randy's trial was the biggest waste of time and money in Orange County judicial
history. 13 months and $10 million and he was sentenced to death for all 16 murders in 1990.
By 1993 Dennis McDougal had published his book 'Angel of Darkness' about Randy Kraft. And
in turn Randy sued McDougal and his publisher for $62 million in damages.
BEN KISSEL We're gonna get right on that, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, we're gonna get right to that. But also again, staying in character.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I am not going to be vilified by your so-called rag.
MARCUS PARKS From Randy's point of view the book had smeared his quote unquote "good name" and it had
destroyed any and all prospects for future employment should his conviction be overturned.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hey, Randy Kraft. If this podcast happens to get to you while you're sitting at 77 years old on
death row, fuck you, you piece of shit. You fucked up, you're bad at it.
BEN KISSEL He's bad at it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And you're ugly.
BEN KISSEL Wow, he went there. Absolutely. What a douchebag.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. He's still technically on death row in San Quentin at the age of 77.
BEN KISSEL Isn't everyone who's 77 on death row? No, I'm just joking. You can live a long life. They say the
person who's going to be 1000 years old might be alive today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, our President is 78. (frightened laughter)
BEN KISSEL He's just so good at it.
MARCUS PARKS And probably the reason why he's still on death row is because he's been able to appeal each
of the 16 murder convictions separately again and again over the years, spending untold
amounts of tax dollars because the death penalty is for countless reasons dumb.
BEN KISSEL I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes.
BEN KISSEL It's just too expensive, he's going to die.
MARCUS PARKS And you're gonna kill innocent people. There's so many reasons why we should get rid of the
death penalty.
BEN KISSEL So many.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Again and these motherfucker's should sit and rot and they should be pestered by
psychologists and scientists and we should be looking at the flesh of their stupid fucking brains
and see what they do.
MARCUS PARKS (German accent) Hello Randy, I'm here again for another one of our visits.
BEN KISSEL No, that's sexy, Marcus. That would be nice. Randy would love that.
MARCUS PARKS I was trying to go German scientist but I guess it ended up being a little...
BEN KISSEL That's what he wants!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He wants a German scientist. It needs to be a big busty woman. Okay Randy, now it's time to
talk about the murders.
BEN KISSEL (gagging)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Come on, Randy. Come on, talk into my breasts.
BEN KISSEL Randy's just gonna be like, 'The prison keeps on sending sex workers over, this is great.'
MARCUS PARKS Most likely Randy Kraft will be able to put off his execution indefinitely in pursuit of a natural
death. Just like Lawrence Bittaker, who lessened Randy's death row bridge club by one when
he died in 2019.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I guess god got himself another angel. And now Kissel I hope after learning all about this, you
can correct that tattoo to maybe something like Brandy Kraft, like some sort of independent
new brandy line you can run. Something else just so you can just learn to turn some of the
fandom down a degree.
MARCUS PARKS You can get in the brandy business yourself and change it to Brandy Krafter. See?
BEN KISSEL Oh, that's very good. Well I'm never helping out with research or ideas again. I've been
demeaned for the smallest amount of work I tried to do. Thank you all so much for listening to
this series. This guy is one of the worst human beings we have ever covered. Holy crap.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, probably. He's close to it. I would say him, like maybe if we rank them, I would put him in
there, Albert Fish, like the old school baddies that we covered, like the original OG villains.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL It's true, he's got some Fish-like tendencies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But he's in there, Roch Thériault, I would put him close to that.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Jim Jones, just because of the body count that he had.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Because he took over almost 1000 people with him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah. Harold Shipman is still just a boring as bitch.
MARCUS PARKS Fuck him, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I mean what are we gonna do with this guy?
BEN KISSEL What are we gonna do? Well thank you all so much for listening to the show and all the shows.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Next week, just so you know, we're heading into some modern cult territory. Very, very
excited for this next topic.
MARCUS PARKS Small cult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Small. Boutique.
MARCUS PARKS Boutique, exactly.
BEN KISSEL Boutique cult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes but I'm very very excited to get back up into the cult saddle.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely. And Jacksonville was fantastic. Memphis and Atlanta, y'all are beautiful people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We're all beautiful people. Check out our comic book, Last Comic Book on the Left. Z2, it is out
there. Preorder it. I don't know when that's coming out.
MARCUS PARKS Not sure either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But go and preorder that because eventually it will come out.
MARCUS PARKS Soon, very soon. Spring of 2022 is what I was always told.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Spring-Heel'd Jack coffee, go get our Mothman blend, it's out there. We don't hear the
commercial up top anymore but just so you know we're still thinking about it and we're
begging you to buy that fucking coffee because if not everything is going to burn down.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I think everything's gonna fucking fall apart. Randy Kraft style, weaving in and out of the
fucking lanes. You gotta be there getting that coffee.
BEN KISSEL All right.
MARCUS PARKS And this week No Dogs In Space new series is released!
BEN KISSEL The replacements.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, The Replacements. Oh yeah. We're getting to know the Midwest quite well on this one. I
feel like I understand you a lot better now.
BEN KISSEL Is it passive aggressiveness that drives you insane? Because that's what drives me insane.
MARCUS PARKS The passive aggressiveness of the Midwest?
BEN KISSEL The Midwest. I love the people but the passive aggressiveness makes me freaking nuts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It makes them half Canadian.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, that's the problem.
MARCUS PARKS The passive aggressiveness is definitely a part of it. But just overall in studying them I feel like
I've been studying you.
BEN KISSEL All right. Well that's disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And Some Place Under Neith also comes back, Season 2, this Wednesday. So we're back up in
the saddle.
BEN KISSEL And of course check out Top Hat for all the true horrors that's going on all around the world.
It's just great to be alive. Okay everyone, thank you so much for listening. I hope you're doing
well out there. Hail yourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hail me.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Come on, Randy. Come on Randy, come tell all your secrets.
BEN KISSEL There's an illegal hot dog salesman!