Editing Randy Kraft (section)

==Biography==
Randy Steven Kraft was born in Long Beach, California on March 19, 1945, the fourth child and only son of Opal Lee (née Beal) and Harold Herbert Kraft. Kraft's parents had moved to California from Wyoming at the outbreak of [[World War II]]; his father was a production worker, and his mother worked as a sewing machine operator.

Kraft began committing murders in 1971. All of his suspected victims were males between the ages of 13 and 35, the majority of whom were in their late teens to mid-twenties. Kraft was charged with—and convicted of—sixteen of these homicides, all of which had occurred between 1972 and 1983. Many of his victims had been enlisted in the United States Marines Corps, and most of his victims' bodies bore evidence of high levels of both alcohol and tranquilizers in their blood systems, indicating they had been rendered insensate before they had been abused and killed.

Kraft's victims were typically lured into his vehicle with an offer of a lift or alcohol. Inside Kraft's vehicle, the victims would be plied with alcohol and/or other drugs. They were then bound, [[torture]]d, and sexually abused before they were usually killed by either strangulation, asphyxiation, or bludgeoning, although some victims had also ingested fatal doses of pharmaceuticals and at least one victim was stabbed to death. The victims would then be discarded, usually—though not exclusively—alongside or close to various freeways in southern California. Photographic evidence found at Kraft's home indicates several of his victims were driven to his house before their [[murder]].

Many of the victims were burned with a car cigarette lighter, usually around the genitals, chest, and face, and several were found with extensive blunt force trauma to the face and head. In several instances, foreign objects were found inserted into the victims' rectums while other victims had suffered emasculation, or mutilation and [[dismemberment]].

The majority of Kraft's murders were committed in California, although some victims had been killed in Oregon, with two further known victims murdered in Michigan in December 1982.

He was convicted in 1989 and is currently sitting on death row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California.