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The Freeway Killer was a collective epithet given by the media and the police to what the media believed was a single serial killer claiming young male victims, predominantly in California during the 1970s and early 1980s, and who often discarded the victims' bodies alongside or upon freeways. However, there turned out to be three Freeway Killers who operated independently of each other, but just happened to select similar victims from similar locations.
The three killers were:
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is an executive department of the U.S. state of California. The department is part of the cabinet-level California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA). Caltrans is headquartered in Sacramento.
The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for an American serial killer—later discovered to be a duo, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono—who terrorized the women of Los Angeles between October 1977 and February 1978, during a time when Southern California was plagued by several active serial killers. The nickname originates from the pattern of many of the victims' bodies being discovered in the hills surrounding the city, typically victims of strangulation.
Sylmar is a suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley and the northernmost neighborhood within the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. Historically known for its profusion of sylvan olive orchards, Sylmar can trace its past to the 18th century and the founding of the San Fernando Mission. In 1890, olive production was begun systematically. The Sylmar climate was also considered healthy, and so a sanitarium was established, the first in a series of hospitals in the neighborhood. There are fourteen public and eight private schools within Sylmar.
Randy Steven Kraft is an American serial killer and rapist known as the Scorecard Killer, the Southern California Strangler, and the Freeway Killer, who committed the rape, torture, and murder of a minimum of sixteen young men between 1972 and 1983, the majority of whom he killed in California. Kraft is also believed to have committed the rape and murder of up to fifty-one other young men and boys. He was convicted in May 1989 and is currently incarcerated on death row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California.
Westlake, also known as the Westlake District, is a residential and commercial neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, California, United States. It was developed in the 1920s. Many of its elegant mansions have been turned into apartments and many new multiple-occupancy buildings have been constructed.
William George Bonin, also called the Freeway Killer and the Freeway Strangler, was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered young men and boys between November 1968 and June 1980 in southern California. He was convicted of 14 murders, but he confessed to 21 and is suspected of even more.
Patrick Wayne Kearney, also known as The Trash Bag Killer and The Freeway Killer, is an American serial killer and necrophile who murdered a minimum of twenty-one young men and boys throughout southern California between 1962 and 1977.
Chester Dewayne Turner is an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and murdering fourteen women and an unborn baby in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998.
Heriberto "Eddie" Seda, often referred to as The New York Zodiac or The Brooklyn Sniper, is an American serial killer who was active in New York City from 1990 through 1993. He fatally shot three people and wounded six others before being caught on June 18, 1996.
The murder of Sophie Hook was a widely reported child murder which took place in Llandudno, North Wales, in July 1995.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the Happy Face Killer because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of Jesperson's victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was his preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
Altemio C. Sanchez, also known as the Bike Path Rapist, was a serial killer, of Puerto Rican descent, who is known to have raped and murdered at least three women, and raped at least 9 to 15 girls and women in and around Buffalo, New York, during a 31-year span from 1975, though perhaps earlier, to 2006. He was apprehended in 2007 through DNA evidence and sentenced to 75 years-to-life, serving 16 years before dying from apparent suicide in 2023.
John Patrick St. John, better known as "Jigsaw John", was an American police officer and Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective, renowned for his investigations of many of Los Angeles's highest-profile murder cases. Upon his retirement in 1993, St. John held the highest seniority on the LAPD with fifty-one years of service, a distinction that earned him the privilege of carrying LAPD Detective badge No. 1.
Michael Hubert Hughes is a convicted American serial killer on death row in San Quentin. Hughes was initially sentenced to life without parole for the murders of four women and girls in California. Later, he was convicted of committing three further murders of women, linked to the crimes via DNA profiling. At the second trial, he was sentenced to the death penalty.
Lonnie David Franklin Jr., better known by the nickname Grim Sleeper, was an American serial killer who was responsible for at least ten murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles, California from 1984 to 2007. He was also convicted for rape and sexual violence. Franklin earned his nickname when he appeared to have taken a 14-year break from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.
The Southside Slayer was a collective epithet used by the media and police to what was initially believed to be a single serial killer who killed upwards of a hundred predominantly black prostitutes in the Los Angeles area from the 1980s to the 1990s. It later turned out that the killings were committed by several different, unrelated murderers who coincidentally operated in the same area and timeframe.
Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, better known as Richard Ramirez, and nicknamed the Night Stalker, was an American serial killer and sex offender whose killing spree occurred in Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in the state of California. From April 1984 to August 1985, Ramirez murdered at least fourteen people during various break-ins, with his crimes usually taking place in the afternoon, leading to him being dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer, and the Valley Intruder. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 and died while awaiting execution in 2013.
Ennis William Cosby, the only son of American comedian Bill Cosby, was murdered on January 16, 1997, near Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, California. He was shot in the head by 18-year-old Mikhail Markhasev in a failed robbery attempt. Cosby was 27 years old.
Ivan Jerome Hill, known as The 60 Freeway Killer, is an American serial killer who raped and murdered at least eight women in Los Angeles between 1986 and 1994. Hill dumped his victims' corpses along California State Route 60, known as the "East-West Highway", contributing to his nickname. Hill was captured based on DNA profiling nearly a decade after his last murder and was sentenced to death in 2007.
Freeway Killer is a 2010 crime horror thriller film directed by John Murlowski, and written by David Birke. A direct-to-video release, it is based on the crimes of William Bonin, an American serial killer who raped, tortured, and murdered at least twenty-one men and boys in Southern California in 1979 and 1980. It stars Scott Anthony Leet as Bonin, and co-stars Cole Williams, Dusty Sorg, Debbon Ayer, Eileen Dietz, and Michael Rooker.