[23] Kraft quickly became a Democratic Party organizer, campaigning tirelessly for the election of Robert F. Kennedy and receiving a personal letter from the senator thanking him for his efforts.

Many of his victims were members of the United States Marines Corps,[36] and most of their bodies were found to have high levels of both alcohol and tranquilizers, indicating they had been unconscious when they were abused and killed.

[4] On October 5, 1971, police found the nude body of a 30-year-old Long Beach resident named Wayne Joseph Dukette discarded close to the Ortega Highway.

[46] Six weeks after the murder of Moore, on February 6, 1973, the body of an unidentified male, estimated to be between 17 and 25 years old,[47] was found alongside the Terminal Island Freeway in Wilmington.

Two weeks after this murder, on January 17, the body of a 21-year-old named Craig Jonaitis was found discarded in the parking lot of the Golden Sails Hotel near the Pacific Coast Highway and Loynes Drive in Long Beach.

On January 24, homicide investigators from several jurisdictions in southern California convened in Orange County to discuss their progress in the hunt for the unknown killer.

[63] In the parking lot where Crotwell and May had last been seen, two friends of the youths observed a distinctive black-and-white Mustang pull in and stop before the driver leaned across, opened the passenger door, and pushed the unconscious (but otherwise unharmed) May out onto the pavement.

[65] Kraft admitted that on or about March 29, he had encountered two youths in the Long Beach parking lot in question and persuaded them to drink alcohol and consume Valium with him as he drove.

He claimed to have returned May to the parking lot and then to have driven with Crotwell to a side road close to the El Toro offramp, where his car subsequently became embedded upon an embankment.

However, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office declined, citing the coroner's conclusion from his autopsy of the remains thus far found (consisting only of Crotwell's skull) that the youth had died of accidental drowning.

[68][69] Perhaps because he had been questioned as a suspect in Crotwell's murder and because of additional turmoil in his personal life in the summer of 1975, Kraft is not known to have killed again until December 31, when he abducted 22-year-old Mark Hall in San Juan Capistrano.

Hughes was plied with Valium before Kraft slit open his scrotum and removed one of his testicles, then strangled him to death with a ligature before discarding his fully clothed body—missing only his shoelaces—beside a freeway on-ramp in Anaheim.

[80] The last known victim murdered by Kraft in 1978 was a 21-year-old Long Beach truck driver named Michael Joseph Inderbieten, whose castrated body was found along an on-ramp to the I-605 on November 18, 1978.

[81] In addition to having been castrated, Inderbieten had been violated with a foreign object and had suffered burns similar to those inflicted on victim Mark Hall two years previously.

The cause of death was listed as acute alcohol poisoning, although rope and burn marks indicated Crisel had been bound and tortured prior to his body being discarded.

[83] Two months later, on August 29,[84] the dismembered remains of a 21-year-old English tourist named Keith Anthony Jackson were found discarded in two trash bags and a cardboard box behind a Union 76 gas station in Long Beach.

[95] Four months after Cluck's murder, on August 20, 1981, the partially clothed body of 17-year-old male prostitute Christopher Allen Williams was found in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Following complaints from residents of Echo Park regarding a foul odor emanating from the direction of the Hollywood Freeway on July 29, 1982,[102] a Cal Trans employee found the decaying body of a 14-year-old[103] Pittsburg, California youth named Raymond Davis discarded alongside the Rampart Boulevard offramp.

Four weeks after Laine's murder, the semi-nude body of 26-year-old Brian Whitcher was dumped from a moving vehicle alongside the Interstate 5 freeway, close to the city of Wilsonville, Oregon.

Rope marks on Church's wrists indicated he had struggled against his restraints before he died of a combination of ligature strangulation and numerous blows to the side of his skull inflicted by a blunt instrument.

[115] At 1:10 a.m. on May 14, 1983, two California Highway Patrol officers observed a Toyota Celica driving erratically on Interstate 5 in the Orange County community of Mission Viejo.

Michael Howard approached the Celica and observed a young man slumped with his eyes closed in the vehicle's passenger seat, partially covered by a jacket.

[123] A search of Kraft's home revealed further incriminating evidence, including clothes and personal possessions of numerous young men who had been murdered over the previous decade.

[4] By September, investigators had interviewed over 700 witnesses and had gathered more than 250 physical exhibits which pointed towards Kraft's guilt in a further fifteen homicides committed between December 1972 and February 1983.

[143] The prosecution rebuffed this testimony by stating to the jury: "There is nothing wrong with Mr. Kraft's mind other than that he likes killing for sexual satisfaction", adding that the fact that his family and friends had found it difficult to believe he had committed any murders simply showed "what a good salesman he is."

During Kraft's trial, members of the prosecution admitted privately that they did not charge him with several murders that they were certain he had committed because of facts relating to the cases, which indicated more than one perpetrator.

Detectives interrogated Jackson and eventually persuaded him to enter a mental institution; no murder charges were filed against him due to an absence of direct incriminating evidence.

The suit contended that the book smeared his "good name", unjustly portrayed him as a "sick, twisted man", and destroyed his prospects for future employment by ruining his chances of overturning his conviction on appeal.

The entry upon Kraft's scorecard reading "Navy White" is believed by investigators to refer to a 17-year-old named James Sean Cox, an apprentice medic stationed at Mather Air Force Base who was last seen on September 29, 1974, hitchhiking near Interstate 5[156] and whose body was found several weeks later in Rancho Santa Fe.

[161] In 1980, William Bonin and four known accomplices were arrested for a series of killings known as the "Freeway Murders," which displayed a markedly similar disposal method to those committed by Kraft.