Today’s Vicious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
William Bonin committed his first criminal offenses at age ten. He was in and out of detention homes throughout his formative years. His father was a drunken gambler with a vicious temper and his mother dominated him. It was later conjectured that these homelife factors contributed to Bonin’s development, particularly his many acts of perversions and murders.
Jailed for several sex offenses, Bonin later became a truck driver, and with accomplices like Vernon Butts, he molested and killed by his own estimate at least 21 teenage boys in the Los Angeles area between 1978 and 1980. Butts later testified against the brutal Bonin, saying that the killer had a hypnotic hold on him and that “after the first one [murder] I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Vernon Butts
Bonin used his truck to cruise the freeways in Los Angeles and Orange counties, picking up young boys, sexually molesting them, torturing them, then strangling them to death before dumping their bodies on the on-off ramps of Los Angeles freeways. He was thus dubbed “The Freeway Strangler.”
William Bonin
When Butts dropped out of sight, Bonin enlisted other accomplices and one of these, a seventeen-year-old drifter Bonin had picked up in Hollywood, informed police. Bonin was arrested and tried, being convicted of fourteen counts of murder. Butts testified against him, saying that he participated in five of the sadistic killings. Butts hanged himself in his cell. Bonin was sentenced to death on March 12, 1982.
Some of the victims of Bonin
Culled from: Bloodletters and Badmen by Jay Robert Nash
This article does not do justice to the depravity of Bonin’s murders, so here are a couple examples from Wikipedia:
On August 4, 1979, Bonin drove from Silverado Canyon to Westminster with Butts. He soon suggested that they rape and murder a teenage hitchhiker. Butts was amenable to this suggestion, and they soon encountered 17-year-old boy Mark Shelton near Beach Boulevard. Bonin allegedly had sex with him, and Butts sexually assaulted him. Bonin drove into Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County, where Bonin parked the vehicle and raped him. Bonin and Butts physically assaulted him until he lost consciousness. He was violated with objects such as a stick, causing him to enter a fatal state of shock. His body was discarded beside a gravel road in Cajon Pass.
On August 27, 1979, Bonin and Butts abducted 15-year-old Hollywood resident Donald Hyden on Santa Monica Boulevard. Butts was driving the van. Bonin offered him sex. When Butts made an accidental wrong turn, Hyden became frantic, causing Bonin to beat, bind, torture, and sodomize him. Bonin then strangled him to death. Butts performed oral sex on his corpse before the pair dumped his body at a construction site near the Ventura Freeway. It was discovered hours later. A coroner theorized that he had been impaled by a large object, evidenced by rectal damage.
And here’s an account of his execution:
On February 23, 1996, near midnight before the following day, Bonin (age 49) was executed by lethal injection inside the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison. He had been on death row for fourteen years, and was the first person ever executed by lethal injection in California. Governor Pete Wilson, who had rejected a submitted plea for clemency from Bonin’s attorneys three days before the execution, called Bonin the “poster boy for capital punishment”.
In his final interview, with a local radio station less than 24 hours before the execution, Bonin said that he had “made peace” with his impending death, and that his only major regret in life was not pursuing his teenage passion of bowling long enough to turn professional. He also said that he thought the death penalty is wrong. He denied responsibility for his actions, saying that he had no control over them.
Crime Scene Photo Du Jour!
PHYSICIAN KILLED IN HIS OFFICE (circa 1934)
A physician lies dead in his office, a victim of a robbery. A policeman’s hat lies near the body. One of the dangers of running a medical practice is the threat of robbery and murder by drug addicts. Prior to the passage of rigorous federal laws regulating narcotics, most physicians’ offices contained large amounts of narcotic medications. The drugs were also sent as samples, a practice that is now prohibited by federal laws. Until recently, stealing prescription blanks was a common way to obtain drugs. Since 2006, New York State began issuing bar coded, numbered prescription blanks to physicians, so even time of issuance can be estimated fore each prescription.
Culled from: Deadly Intent: Crime and Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive
Garretdom: A Fiendish Old Woman!
Here’s another Fiendish Woman, this time an OLD one!
A FIENDISH OLD WOMAN.—The Edgefield Advertiser says that on the 15th instant, Rachel Stallsworth, an aged negro woman living on the plantation of Major Lemuel Corley, murdered her great grand child, only four days old, by taking it from the bed of the mother, and deliberately breaking its neck. An inquest was held upon the body of the child, and a verdict rendered accordingly. The old murderess has been arrested and lodged in jail. The vile and unnatural atrocity of this murder is enough to make the blood run cold.
Culled from the Friday, November 24, 1871 issue of The Daily Phoenix, Columbia, South Carolina
Follow-up from The Charleston Daily News, May 6, 1872:
Rachel Stallsworth, who was convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hung in July next, which sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life in the Penitentiary, has had the sentence still further commuted to imprisonment for life in the county jail of Edgefield County, on account of her advanced age and feeble health, which will not allow her removal.
And another follow-up from the July 25, 1872 Charleston Daily Courier:
The Governor has pardoned Rachel Stallsworth, an old woman who is now on the verge of the grave. She was convicted of murder, and sentenced by Judge Melton to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life in the county jail, May 2, 1872.
Apparently, it pays to be old and infirm when you commit murders!
Fiendishness Count:
Sulfuric Acid – 1
Molten Lead – 1
Razor – 1
Broken Neck – 1
