During the spring of 1979, a series of murders emerged in Southern California, which struck fear in many communities, primarily in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas. Many teenage male bodies were discovered on the side of various freeways throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. In August 1979, the first victim that was discovered near a freeway in Los Angeles was a 17-year-old teenager who was brutally beaten, stabbed multiple times, and sodomized (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 2024). Over the next 14 months, victims were discovered in areas that were located near freeways, which earned the perpetrator the famous nickname “The Freeway Killer,” also known as William Bonin. Bonin would pick up teenage boys and young men between the ages of 14 and 19 years old who were either hitch-hiking or prostituting and once …show more content…
Officers then arrested Bonin, and he was tried for all 14 known murders in both L.A. County and Orange County. The criminal statutes that William Bonin violated were first-degree murder (Penal Code (PC) 189), special circumstances: murder with torture (PC 190.2 (a)(18)), aggravated kidnapping (PC 209 (b)), and lewd or lascivious acts (PC 266j) (Bender, 2023). Bonin violated all of these criminal statutes because he had the intent to murder his victims because he did not want to get caught again, which proves that not only did he have the intent, but he also performed these acts maliciously. William Bonin committed such acts willfully and acknowledged the crimes that he was committing, but he did not stop because he did not want to go back to jail and swore to never leave a victim alive