William George Bonin January 8, — February 23, , also called the Freeway Killer [ 2 ] and the Freeway Strangler , [ 3 ] was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered young men and boys between November and June in southern California. He was convicted of 14 murders, but he confessed to 21 and is suspected of even more. Bonin's first known murder victim was killed in May He generally operated by luring his victims into his van under the pretense of having consensual sex.
He became known as the " Freeway Killer " because most of his victims' bodies were discovered beside freeways. On many occasions, he was helped by one of his four known accomplices. One of them, Vernon Butts, was listed in court as an accomplice for 12 murders; he died via suicide before his trial in Described by the prosecutor at his first trial as "the most arch-evil person who ever existed", [ 5 ] he spent 14 years on death row before his execution by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison in He was the first prisoner in California to die by this method.
Both parents were alcoholics , and his father an ill-tempered World War II veteran who physically abused his wife and children. Mary's Catholic School, where staff repeatedly made complaints of Bonin's aggression toward other students, truancy , and other misbehavior.
After riding his bike into a group of young girls, he was briefly placed in juvenile hall. In September , Bonin and his older brother, Robert Jr. According to witnesses, Bonin was bullied, [ 21 ] and was once sexually assaulted by an older boy in According to Bonin, the older boy approached Bonin for sex, and Bonin asked the boy to tie his hands behind his back, which he said would allow him to feel "secure and less frightened.
During this time at the convent, neither parent visited Bonin or his brother, and Bonin became worried his parents had died. Bonin recalled feeling shame at his sexual attraction to younger children and male teachers. Until Bonin's first incarceration, the children were left with their maternal grandfather by Bonin's mother, a known child molester who had sexually abused her.
