Between 1979 and 1980, William Bonin, along with his accomplices, traveled around Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. He sought out young men and boys, luring them to his vehicle, assaulting them horrifically, and murdering them. His actions during this time earned him the moniker of The Freeway Killer, one which he accepted with pride.
You can find Part 1 and Part 2 by clicking on the links.
After having committed the murder of Steven Jay Wells, along with his accomplice James Michael Munro, Bonin was placed under police surveillance. They’d received information from William Pugh, a previous accomplice of Bonin’s, that Bonin was very likely the Freeway Killer that they were searching for. William offered the police information, hoping to put an end to the nightmare plaguing the Los Angeles area.
On June 11th, 1980, after nine days of surveillance, Bonin was seen driving through Hollywood in what appeared to be a random manner. Police watched as he attempted to lure five separate teenage boys into his van, before succeeding in luring a sixth into the vehicle voluntarily. Police proceeded to follow Bonin, discreetly, as he drove and parked. When they heard muffled screams, they approached the van.
Inside, they found 17-year-old Harold Eugene Tate. Harold was handcuffed and bound, struggling against his bindings, terrified. Bonin had been in the middle of sexually assaulting Harold when he was rescued by police.
William Bonin was arrested, and subsequently charged with the rape of a minor, as well as being held on suspicion of the murder of Charles Miranda. Inside the van, investigators found multiple items that linked him directly to the murders committed by the Freeway Killer.
The glove compartment also held a scrapbook of newspaper clippings that Bonin had kept as momentos. The van, as well as several areas of his apartment, were extensively covered in bloodstains. The team gathered as much evidence as they could, including fibers from the van’s interior, samples of the blood stains found, and various items used for bindings.
News of Bonin’s arrest caused James Munro to panic, despite his previous arrogance about being friends with Bonin. The following day he fled California, and went back home to St. Clair, Michigan.
Upon his arrest, Bonin swore up and down that he was innocent. However, that didn’t stop him from being officially arraigned on July 25th, 1980.
Following his arraignment, he seemed to change his tune rather quickly. Homicide sergeant John St. John presented Bonin with a letter from the mother of Sean King, asking him to tell her where he son’s body was located, as he had yet to be found.
At the time, Bonin appeared moved. Over the course of a few days, with bribes of food and drinks, Bonin confessed to the abduction, assaults, and murders of up to 21 young men and boys. It was soon very apparently that Bonin hadn’t been moved by the letter from Sean’s mother at all. Instead, he expressed no remorse, only pride in what he’d done, and embarrassment over having been caught. Bonin was also very, very quick to give up Vernon Butts, Gregory Miley, and James Munro as his accomplices.
However, law enforcement couldn’t just take Bonin at his word. Through forensic analysis available at the time, they were physically able to link Bonin to many of the Freeway Killer murders through traces of blood, semen, and distinct green carpet fibers that were found on many of the victims’ bodies that matched the carpet from Bonin’s van. Forensic analysis also linked some hairs found on three of the boys to Bonin, further linking him to more murders.
On July 29th, 1980, William Bonin was charged with a further fifteen murders, bringing the total to sixteen. Through the forensic analysis and his confessions, prosecutors believed they had all they needed in order to obtain a conviction. Almost as an afterthought, Bonin was further charged with eleven counts of robbery, one count of sodomy, and one count of mayhem.
On the same day that Bonin was arraigned, law enforcement followed his lead, and investigated the home of Vernon Butts. There, they found evidence that linked him to his association with Bonin, as well as to some of the murders. On July 29th, Butts was brought in with Bonin, and was officially charged with six counts of murder, and three counts of robbery.
Butts confessed to being Bonin’s accomplice, but he claimed that he only assisted the other man out of fear for his own health and safety. He claimed: “It was either go, or become the next victim”. Butts further confessed that he participated in acts of torture and murder out of fear, though is main role had been as driver. When Bonin would lure someone into his van, Butts would take the wheel, and drive in an aimless manner, trying to ignore what was going on in the back, and hoping tha Bonin wouldn’t request his assistance.
Following a series of confessions, Butts was further charged with three additional murders on November 14th, 1980, with his trial to be scheduled for July 27th, 1981.
On July 31st, 1980, James Munro was arrested in Michigan, and extradited to California. In California, he was then charged with the murder of Steven Jay Wells. On August 14th, 1980, Munro pleaded innocent.
On August 22nd, 1980, Gregory Miley was arrested in Texas, and extradited to California. There, he was charged with the murders of Charles Miranda, and James Macabe. On December 18th, he pleaded innocent.
On January 2nd, 1981, William Bonin pleaded innocent to fourteen charges of first-degree murder, two down from the original sixteen, as well as the other charges against him. Of the fourteen charges, eleven also held special circumstances for felony-murder-robbery.
On January 7th, Vernon Butts admitted a formal plea before Judge Leetham. Four days later, he was found dead in his cell. Vernon Butts had hanged himself.
Gregory Miley and James Munro both agreed to testify against William Bonin in any capacity necessary in exchange for being spared the death penalty. Deputy District Attorney Stirling Norris also agreed to seek a dismissal of additional charges against Munro, so long as Munro followed through with his agreement to testify against Bonin.
Norris further agreed to accept two guilty pleas of first-degree murder from Miley in exchange for his being sentenced to two concurrent life sentences, with the possibility of parole after 25 years. This was conditional on Miley’s agreement to testify against Bonin. Miley agreed.
William Pugh, his involvement and participation with Bonin having been discovered, also agreed to plead guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter. William was sentenced to six years in prison.
On November 5th, 1981, the trial of William Bonin in Los Angeles County began. He was officially charged in Los Angeles County with 12 murders. The prosecution was seeking the death penalty on each of the counts.
The prosecution outlined Bonin’s routine – how he would lure his victims to his van, assault them, torture them, and then kill them, usually by strangling them with their own T-shirts. Prosecutors also stated that William Bonin considered murder as “a group sport”, as shown in his grooming and coercion of Vernon Butts, Gregory Miley, William Pugh, and James Munro.
Miley and Munro, as agreed, testified against Bonin during the trial. They explained their actions in vivid, and graphic detail.
The defence attempted to challenge the credibility of many witnesses, in an attempt to mitigate the accusations that were aimed against their client. They also alluded to the extensive, and extreme, abuse that Bonin suffered as a child in order to potentially explain the root cause of his behaviour as an adult.
The defense called on Dr. David Foster, an expert in the field of child development, and the effects of abuse on children. Dr. Foster posited that Bonin conflated the concepts of love and violence in his mind as a result of what he’d endured as a child. As such, Bonin expressed himself through violence, as a result of the violence that had been inflicted upon him.
The prosecution rebutted this notion, and called on their own expert, a forensic psychiatrist named Park Dietz. Dietz testified that Bonin’s actions were deliberately planned, and he had not, in fact, conflated love and violence in his own mind. Dietz was of the opinion that Bonin was a sexual sadist, and targeted young boys and young men as he felt confident he could overpower them.
On December 14th and 15th, 1981, Fresno-based reporter David López testified on behalf of the prosecution. López had interviewed Bonin extensively, on Bonin’s condition that López not broadcast the particular details of the interview. In that interview, Bonin confessed to López that he was the Freeway Killer, and that he had killed 21 victims.
Bonin’s defence tried to shred his credibility, stating that López’s testimony was only coming from memory, rather than any form of documentation. They posited that López’s memory could be flawed. López was adamant that he was recalling correctly.
On January 6th, 1982, William Bonin was convicted on ten counts of first-degree murders. He was found not guilty of the murders of Thomas Lundgren, and Sean King. He was also found not guilty of committing sodomy on Markus Grabs, or of committing mayhem on Thomas Lundgren. The jury further recommended that he receive the death penalty.
In December of 1980, Bonin had led investigators to the body of Sean King, in exchange for not having Sean’s murder used against him as part of the prosecution’s case. Though still charged for his murder, no evidence in regards to the murder could be put forward. As such, the jury were able to find him not guilty of Sean’s murder. As for Thomas Lundgren, according to López, Bonin had steadfastly denied any involvement in Thomas’s death.
On March 21st, 1983, William Bonin went on trial in Orange County. He faced four charges of murder, and three charges of robbery.
The prosecution contended that the four murders were so similar to those committed in Los Angeles County, of which Bonin had been convicted, that no one else could have possibly committed the murders. The prosecution also focused on the fiber evidence as proof positive – the fibers found on the four bodies in Orange County matched fibers that had come from Bonin’s van.
James Munro testified against Bonin at this trial, as well. He stated that Bonin had attempted to make contact with him prior to the Orange County trial. In this attempt at communication, Bonin asked Munro to lie on the stand for him. Munro refused, and testified as he had during the Los Angeles County trial.
The defence refuted these arguments, stating that any similarities between the murders in the two counties were circumstantial at best. Furthermore, the defense attacked James Munro’s credibility, asserting that if anyone was guilty of the murders, it was Munro, and Bonin was simply a scapegoat being pinned for four unsolved murders.
On August 2nd, 1983, an Orange County jury found William Bonin guilty on four charges of murder, and three charges of robbery. On August 26th, Bonin received four death sentences.
Following both trials, Bonin filed multiple appeals. He fired his defence attorney, and hired a new defence team to handle his appeals, citing inadequate defence at his trials by his previous defence counsel. Each of these appeals were struck down. In August of 1988, and then in January of 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his death sentences.
In October of 1994, Bonin filed a final appeal, citing multiple issues that had occurred in both of his trials. On June 28th, 1995, this appeal was rejected. A plea for clemency was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on February 20th, 1996, truly sealing Bonin’s fate.
Three days later, on February 23rd, 1996, William Bonin was executed by lethal injection. He was 49 years old. His execution was heavily protested by opponents of the death penalty. Actor Mike Farrell was in attendance of this protest.
On April 6th, 1981, James Munro was sentenced to fifteen years to life for the second-degree murder of Steven Wells. He repeatedly tried to appeal his sentence, stating that he had been unaware of Bonin being the Freeway Killer, and that the prosecution had tricked him into his plea bargain. However, many of his colleagues made statements that Munro had gloated to them that he was certain that the Freeway Killer would never be caught.
Munro has also written to governors repeatedly requesting execution, rather than a life sentence. He has repeatedly been denied parole. He will next be available for parole in 2029.
On February 5th, 1982, Gregory Miley was sentenced to twenty-five years to life for the first-degree murder of Charles Miranda. Later, in Orange County, he was sentenced to a concurrent term of twenty-five to life for the murder of James Macabe. On May 23rd, 2016, Miley was attacked by another inmate in the exercise yard. Two days later, on May 25th, 2016, Gregory Miley died of his injuries.
On May 17th, 1982, William Pugh was sentenced to six years in prison on a charge of voluntary manslaughter against Harry Turner. William served less than four years. He was released from prison in 1985.
The Freeway Killer left nothing but sorrow and destruction in his wake. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if all of this could have been avoided had he been cared for, and treated with nurturing as a child, in a safe environment. And just like Carl Panzram or Peter Kürten, we will never know.
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Sources:
William Bonin Prowled Over California’s Freeway and Left a Wake Dead Hitchhikers – All That’s Interesting
From the Archives: “Freeway Killer” William Bonin is executed: Sadistic slayer confessed to 21 murders – Ken Ellingwood, J.R. Moerhringer and Rebecca Trounson – Los Angeles Times
Profile of Serial Killer William Bonin, The Freeway Killer – Charles Montaldo – Thought Co.
I Survived a Serial Killer – S01E10 – The Freeway Killer – A&E docuseries
Morbid Podcast – William Bonin “The Freeway Killer” – Episodes 278 (Part 1) and 279 (Part 2)
William Bonin Wikipedia page
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