BUTCHERS OF LA

Similar targets; Three Killers; Three different M.O.’s. From the early 1970s, gay men were being savagely murdered and their bodies carelessly discarded along freeways across Los Angeles. Police feared a hate crime targeted at the homosexual community.  In time it turns out that three killers were operating, independently of each other, but in the full knowledge that victims other than their own were being murdered. It’s an extraordinary story with intertwined storylines and dramatic twists and turns throughout.
Patrick Kearney was the first killer discovered. When he handed himself in to the police in 1977, he struck a deal: a full confession of all his victims and in exchange he would avoid a death sentence. Kearney’s confession directed investigators to victims who were previously undiscovered. His modus operandi, however, was a specific one involving a fatal shot to the temple, dismemberment and disposal of his victims in trash bags. Kearney could not be responsible for all the unsolved murders police had on their hands. 

In 1980, William Bonin and four known accomplices were arrested for a series of killings which marked Bonin as the definitive Freeway Killer because of the method of disposal of the victims. Bonin had tortured his victims and strangled them to death with their own T-shirts. Yet, there were still open cases of young men killed in the southern California region which demonstrated a slightly different M.O. Neither Kearney nor Bonin had plied their victims with alcohol or drugs. This was the work of Randy Kraft.  His method was to subdue victims in order to torture and mutilate them, like Kearney, except while they were still alive. Bonin's victims were usually younger than those of Kraft, with the age range of his victims being 12 to 19 years. 

This is an extraordinary story of savage, targeted hatred and an investigation which found itself constantly confused and reeling from the discovery of new murders with different approaches to their deviance. It is a series which has the capability of gripping the viewer from beginning to end and which, at the remove of several decades will finally explain the truth behind these extraordinary events.