Hello all, I'm new to the forum and joined based upon some things I learned this week which I will detail below. I hope to perhaps add to the information you people have at your disposal and make a request for some help myself. To summarize what follows:
1) I recently have come to believe that I had a very close encounter with Steven Randy Kraft sometime in the summer of 1980, anywhere from May to August, but probably August. Some of the discussion on this thread notes that since Kraft isn't talking, nobody really knows a lot of what went on before he murdered a victim. If my experience is valid, this may provide a little insight.
2) During this encounter, I was photographed and I'm wondering if there is any way to see a full collection of the photos seized from Kraft, I'd like to see if I am one of them. My understanding is that not all of photos were of dead and mutilated victims, that some of them were of living subjects not necessarily in a state of distress even.
3) Some background on me - I'm 53 years old, married, prosperous in a tech career in internet startups, have an advanced degree in Engineering, solid, stable guy. However, my adulthood got off to a rocky start, I sort of rebelled against my intellect, was a rowdy teenager, and finally joined the USMC shortly after my 17th birthday. I served in the infantry, first at Camp Lejeune, then in Okinawa at Camp Schwab, then did my final nine months at Camp Pendleton where I was in the STA scout/sniper platoon in 1st Battalion, 9th Marines.
Ok, so here's the story. A couple of days ago, I was reading something on the net that made a tangential reference to a serial killer operating in SoCal in the late 70's/early 80's and liked to prey on Marines. I thought, jeez, I was a young Marine in SoCal back then, how come I've never heard of this? So I googled up something along the lines of "serial killer marines california 80's" or something.
A lot of google searches return, along with their other entries, a few sample images as the second entry or so. As soon as I looked at this, I thought, "Holy *****, that is that guy who tried to pick me up in San Clemente when I was stationed out there". I was immediately struck by a few facial characteristics - the kind of angular chin that is prominent but not particularly strong, the eyes somewhat far apart, kind of strong eyebrows. But really it was the chin that struck me first.
Why do I remember something like this from 33 years ago and what was I doing in San Clemente?
Camp Pendleton is huge and mostly empty space for maneuvers and training. The vast bulk of the Marines live in "mainside", the developed area at the south of the base and gravitate towards Oceanside, which ends up giving it its military town flavor.
I (and 1/9) was on a satellite area up towards the northern end of the base. While this meant that we were remote from some nicer base facilities, the upside was that we were far closer to the San Clemente base entrance. During my whole time out there (Dec 79-End of Aug 80), I don't ever recall going to Oceanside on liberty, just passed through heading for points South (usually Ensenada down in Mexico). For short off base liberty we would always go to San Clemente.
This particular day I was off base by myself, which was a little unusual which is why I would place it August - I actually separated from the USMC right at the end of August and during this period you actually end up being excused from some of the normal duties/operations of your unit - you have to wrap up various affairs, medical examinations, outprocessing in general.
So I was down at the beach in San Clemente on my motorcycle, just in the parking lot, looking at the water, really nothing to do on a nice late afternoon. A stranger struck up a conversation, very pleasant and intelligent guy, said he was a tourist from Canada. My impression was of a guy that was somewhat older than me, late twenties, but not so old that developing a buddy rapport was impossible. Turns out that Kraft would have been 32 then, but is described as looking somewhat younger than his years when he was in his 30's.
He was very neatly attired, shirt with collar unbuttoned, looked like a well to do, respectable character and a pleasant, intelligent, witty conversationalist. So we start developing buddy rapport (something Marines naturally do in general), and after a while decided to continue the conversation over a few beers somewhere.
Really, I don't remember what we talked about, just recall having a nice pleasant, intelligent, conversation with an interesting cat.
He had some pretext that he had to stop by his motel room first, which was just up the hill on Camino Real, the main drag through San Clemente.
So I followed him up there on my motorcycle, he in a rather darkish car as I remember.
When we got up there, I innocently follow the guy up to his room. FWIW, gay sex or anything was the furthest thing from my mind. For one, other than a dirty old man hitting on me on a bus one summer when I was 13, I had little or no awareness of gays at that point in my life. But even if I did, I would not have thought this guy was gay - he was well mannered and polished, but not fey or effeminate.
So when we get up to his room, it was on the second floor - I've gone back and located on google maps the building that I think it was - I remember it was L shaped and there is still a building there that fits my memories although it seems to have been converted to small shops/office while still having the construction of doors/windows of its original purpose as a motel.
So we enter the room, a little chit chat, and he offers and pops a beer. In my mind's eye, I remember him handing me a green long neck beer. Generally, looked like a Heineken, except I remember a gold tinted label that was a little more baroque. Anyhow, I remember that image because it was distinctly unusual from the cheap domestic beers us underpaid Marines consumed. After researching, I saw one report that when he was caught, he had Moosehead beers and googling up Moosehead, the label with gold trim and a splash of red matched my somewhat impressionistic memory.
Shortly after this, it became immediately obvious to me that this guy (I can't remember what he told me his name was), was out for gay sex. I don't know if I just suddenly realized this and prompted a discussion or whether he said something first.
But we ended up continuing the discussion for a bit in the same vein as I prepared to leave. As I said, this guy was completely calm/pleasant, I had struck up a liking for the guy. Once I realized what this was all about, I was like no way Jose, but lets wind this down amicably and get out of here was my mental attitude.
He asked me if I had ever had sex w/a guy, I told him no, that sort of thing was really not my bag.
There was a brief exchange about Marines. He said something about lots of Marines like to do this, that he comes here specifically to look for Marines. He sort of indicated that other people like to do this (civilians pursuing Marines for gay sex).
Now this above is why I always remembered this - first, I had no history of being approached by people and I was at the end of my tour and I never heard of such things from my buddies. And beyond that, it seemed like pretty risky business, going out and propositioning Marines for gay sex.
I guess I expressed something along those lines, because he said, and I quote, "No, you just have to get them away from their friends". I remember that line for two reasons - first, realizing that he had gotten me (or gotten to me, I was alone at the beach) away from my friends and how smoothly he had done it - while I wasn't about to be going along with this, you had to give the guy some credit for how smoothly he had gotten me up to his motel room. And second, how calm, confident, and analytically he expressed this thought.
Anyhow, I said, well, that's interesting, sorry for the misunderstanding, good luck, and I'll just have to be on my way. During this whole time, the discussion proceeded just as it had from inception, pleasant, etc. Like I said, he was a nice, likable guy and to some extent, I was a bit apologetic if I had given him the wrong impression or mistakenly sent some signal.
Right as I turned to leave, he asked me if he could at least take my picture. This was the only time his mien changed at all, not dramatically, but there was a hint of pleading/neediness to the request. It felt kind of odd, but I said, ok and just before he snapped the picture, he quickly asked if I could take my shirt off. This caught me a little off guard, but I did it, it was some loose garb and we were always running around with shirts off in SoCal in 1980. So he took his picture and then asked me to maybe undo my belt. The shirt thing sort of caught me off guard, but I could see he was trying to rally w/me as his mark, so I said, no, I'm sorry dude and I left.
Anyhow, I always remembered this encounter for a couple of reasons - one, how smoothly and on pretext I ended up in this guys motel room. I'm pretty much a live/let live on the gay stuff, but I have zero inclinations for that myself. That's probably the second reason I've always remembered that incident, that it is the closest I've ever gotten to gay sex - if I had any tendency towards it, I would have closed the deal there. And third, and most prominently, that this guy (and who claims that there are others like him) regularly go out for gay sex with Marines and that you just have to get them away from their friends. I'm not saying there isn't/wasn't an active hookup culture between civilian gays and Marines, just that I had never even heard a hint of such thing. But he had said this so calmly/matter of factly/and in a way that was sort of like a predator/prey paradigm.
Another reason I remember it was that I felt kinda dirty/guilty for letting this guy take a picture of me. And finally, it was a stark lesson for a young man that things are not always what they may seem to be w/a friendly stranger - not that they might be a killer, just that they may be making sexual rather than platonic advances.
I never felt any threat or malevolence from the guy, just the nicest guy you could imagine.
As for this whole story itself, since I found out about Steven Randy Kraft, I've read up on it and I don't see any real inconsistencies with what has been written about him. He apparently liked Marines about his height/weight, which I am, and so forth. I don't remember his moustache as so bushy in some of the pictures. I only took a few sips of the beer, as I quickly grokked what was going on. But who even knows if he attempted to drug guys on their first beer or thereafter when their tastes/senses were dulled a bit.
And again, I can't be sure this was the same guy, what would confirm it for me is if my picture were amongst his portfolio. I would be standing in the motel room with a mirror behind me. That's why I was wondering about seeing some of the pictures seized from Kraft - seems like only the gory sensational ones are online, but apparently some of the others were more innocuous. It would be still three years later if this were the guy, but he really wanted that picture.
Thanks to anyone who reads (and perhaps responds). Maybe, and perhaps even probably, this is all a big red herring, but I thought I would put it out here. It certainly is an incident that has stayed with me through the years - not because I felt threatened or traumatized, I wasn't by any means, just that it was so odd/curious (his smoothness in getting me to a room, the targeting of Marines for sex partners, etc). And when I googled up on "serial killer marines 80's", this incident was the furthest thing from my mind until I saw that picture.
