Randy Kraft

Randy Kraft Full Name: Randy Steven Kraft Alias: The Scorecard Killer The Southern California Strangler The Freeway Killer Origin: Long Beach, California, United States Occupation: Political campaigner (former) Forklift driver (former) Hobby: Killing, raping, and torturing boys and men Goals: Get away with his crimes (failed) Crimes: Murder, rape, torture, mutilation, sodomy, kidnapping Type of Villain: Serial Killer

Randy Kraft (born March 19, 1945), also known as the Scorecard Killer, the Southern California Strangler, and the Freeway Killer (a nickname he shares with fellow serial killers William Bonin and Patrick Kearney) is an American serial killer who committed a number of murders and rapes in California between 1972 and 1983. He is responsible for the murder of a minimum of 16 young men, and is also believed to have also raped and murdered nearly 50 more men and young boys. He was a closeted homosexual in life which is most likely why his victims were almost exclusively male. Overall, he is believed to have killed 67 people in total.

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, tortured, 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.