Reason First: The Southern California Strangler- Randy Steven Kraft

Sunny Southern California is supposed to be a haven for people looking for sun and fun, a good life, where they can wear bikinis on the beach, and drink a beer after surfing the waves. But Randy Steven Kraft worked hard to destroy that image over a ten-year period during which he terrorized a stretch of highway already stalked by serial killers William Bonin and Patrick Kearny.

While we don't know much about Kraft's upbringing or early years, like whether he was bullied as a child, or had any unusual fetishes related to young men and boys, his father reportedly became enraged when he found out his son was gay, but he didn't beat the boy for it. To study the case would require getting inside his head to decipher the coded messages there. All we know for sure is Kraft grew up to be a profoundly malevolent adult.

Kraft's victims were mainly young military men. One wonders if he was exacting some kind of revenge because he was dismissed from the Air Force on a "medical discharge" after it was discovered he was gay. This was long before the branches of United States military welcomed LGBT personnel, and his discharge may have been the blow that inspired his decade-long rampage.

Regardless of how it began, Kraft's behavior with his victims was similar to those of other highway killers. He picked up hitchhikers, and rather than take them where they wanted to go, he would ply them with charm and free booze, and then violently strangle and rape them, some he even castrated.

Kraft worked alone, and left the corpses of his victims lying at the side of the road, like so many discarded fast-food wrappers. Though officially responsible for sixteen homicides, he outlined sixty-seven names on a piece of paper after he was finally apprehended.

While Kraft's horrific spree began with intention and care, it was sloppiness that stopped him. Police pulled him over because they suspected him of driving drunk. Ironically, he was sober, but his passenger, a young Marine, was dead. This gave the police probable cause to search his Long Beach property where they discovered a list of the names of his other victims, likely kept as a 'trophy.’

Surprisingly, Kraft maintained what otherwise appeared to be the life of a model citizen, sharing a middle-class lifestyle with his male partner. The contrast between his mostly mainstream daily life, and his extraordinarily violent life as a serial killer, raises so many questions. Since he is still on death row, awaiting execution, maybe behavioral scientists can interview him to find out more about why he did what he did? Without a better understanding of why this seemingly 'normal' man craved the power of life and death over other men, to the point where he would mutilate their corpses, the field of criminology is left with only a shallow understanding: he had murderous compulsions of unknown origin is about the most we can know.

Kraft's lawyer described him as a "passive" man, "non-violent and hardworking." If he was hardworking, that is indeed an admirable trait, and probably helped him conceal his darker side, but "passive?" "Non-violent?" What about the many young men he butchered? Is lethal injection sufficient "justice" for their families?

As he waits to die for his crimes, Kraft should remember the terror on the faces of all the young men whose lives he stole. Hopefully his consciousness is haunted by thoughts of the decent life he could have had with his partner, and by the realization that his only legacy will be the disgust and revulsion people will feel when they read stories like this one about his life.