CA - Unidentified & possible missing victims of Randy Kraft, 1971-1983

[Milyandel]

Hello all & thank you very much for keeping this thread alive! I've been feeling a bit bad because of my long absence, but there has been some major things going on in my life, so other activities had to give way to them.

carbuff: thanks so much for making that list about the "unexplained" entries, it's really helpful to us all!

CarlK: when checking my notes, Larry Williams is among the possibilities I have written down. Thanks for bringing him up, and Paul Fuchs too. Paul, it seems, is actually listed on the scorecard article as notation 34. EXPLETIVE DELETED (And btw, I remember wondering if the notation really was "expletive deleted" or was it for example that four-letter-word starting with f, which bears unfortunate resemblance to Paul's last name, and the article just censored it away...)

Ambercat: thanks for bringing those cases to our attention too. I haven't got as far as 1981 in my listing of UID's, but I'll keep HC 1283 in mind when getting there.

Now that I'm looking at these cases & reading the thread again, I'd like to refer back to Roger C. Levell. As tatertot suggested, it maybe should be checked, but I don't know how to go about submitting him. Any tips/ideas ?

 

[carbuff]

Hello all & thank you very much for keeping this thread alive! I've been feeling a bit bad because of my long absence, but there has been some major things going on in my life, so other activities had to give way to them.

carbuff: thanks so much for making that list about the "unexplained" entries, it's really helpful to us all!

CarlK: when checking my notes, Larry Williams is among the possibilities I have written down. Thanks for bringing him up, and Paul Fuchs too. Paul, it seems, is actually listed on the scorecard article as notation 34. EXPLETIVE DELETED (And btw, I remember wondering if the notation really was "expletive deleted" or was it for example that four-letter-word starting with f, which bears unfortunate resemblance to Paul's last name, and the article just censored it away...)

Ambercat: thanks for bringing those cases to our attention too. I haven't got as far as 1981 in my listing of UID's, but I'll keep HC 1283 in mind when getting there.

Now that I'm looking at these cases & reading the thread again, I'd like to refer back to Roger C. Levell. As tatertot suggested, it maybe should be checked, but I don't know how to go about submitting him. Any tips/ideas ?

BBM -- I could almost laugh if it wasn't so grim. I had not noticed that about the name, partly because I thought Paul's last name would be pronounced "Foosh." But you're right of course -- I expect the pun is Kraft's. It sounds like the kind of thing he would do.

 

[CarlK90245]

BBM -- I could almost laugh if it wasn't so grim. I had not noticed that about the name, partly because I thought Paul's last name would be pronounced "Foosh." But you're right of course -- I expect the pun is Kraft's. It sounds like the kind of thing he would do.

Yes, Paul Fuchs' name is pronounced like "Folks", and the notation was the actual expletive, rather than "expletive deleted".

 

[CarlK90245]

CarlK: when checking my notes, Larry Williams is among the possibilities I have written down. Thanks for bringing him up, ...

I recently submitted Larry Williams as a possible match to the John Doe whom I refer to as "Bell Boy".

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - CA CA - Bell - WhtMale Teen in LA Riverbed Wearing Hawaiian Shirt - Sep'79


This one is a little doubtful (1) because of the 4-year time lag, and (2) because the coroner's report makes no mention of a chipped tooth. But the resemblance is very strong considering the four-year lag, and considering that Larry's photo appears to show him much younger than 15 (when he disappeared).

But aside from that - If Bell Boy is not Larry Williams, the circumstances, location, and timeframe suggest that Bell Boy might be a possible Randy Kraft victim.

 

[carbuff]

Also, regarding the cryptic notations on the scorecard:

"2 IN 1 MV TO PL"

I'm thinking that MV stands for Mission Viejo, (i.e., a coastal Orange County city right in Kraft's area of operation).

There are no two-word California cities with the initials PL, but it could be something like Placentia, which is a city in Northern Orange County.

Okay, this is weird. If you Google "MV to PL," (I was looking for other articles speculating about the meaning) you come up with several entries in the Prescott (Arizona) Unified School District field trip calendar. MV appears to be Miller Valley elementary school in Prescott; I'm not positive what PL is, but I think it's Pinetop-Lakeside, a town about four hours away from Prescott. There are several trips during the year but it doesn't say what the purpose of the trip is.

Did Kraft operate in Arizona? Maybe the victim was a teacher from Arizona? Maybe it's just a weird coincidence.

 

[carbuff]

Yes, Paul Fochs' name is pronounced like "Folks", and the notation was the actual expletive, rather than "expletive deleted".

So we can assume that crude, lewd, or really sick puns are possible interpretations.

 

[carbuff]

From the LA Times list:

31. 2 IN 1 HITCH--Name unconnected to any unsolved murder(s).


A two-in-one hitch is a kind of trailer hitch that functions as both a ball hitch and a pin hitch. It's usually found on tractors or farm trucks that need to pull a variety of different pieces of equipment, but anybody who hauls more than one trailer -- a boat trailer or a horse trailer, for instance -- might have one.

Could be a person who was driving a vehicle with this kind of hitch. But it seems more likely to be something more metaphoric or descriptive, like two people killed the same way or one man killed with two different methods, or something like that.

I thought it was the name of a kind of knot as well, but couldn't find that one on a quick cruise through google.

 

[Ambercat]

Okay, this is weird. If you Google "MV to PL," (I was looking for other articles speculating about the meaning) you come up with several entries in the Prescott (Arizona) Unified School District field trip calendar. MV appears to be Miller Valley elementary school in Prescott; I'm not positive what PL is, but I think it's Pinetop-Lakeside, a town about four hours away from Prescott. There are several trips during the year but it doesn't say what the purpose of the trip is.

Did Kraft operate in Arizona? Maybe the victim was a teacher from Arizona? Maybe it's just a weird coincidence.

So far I haven’t read anything about Randy Kraft operating in Arizona – I know that he did travel for his work at Lear Siegler and he and Jeff Seelig did go on trips together (both out of state and international.

I thought the PL might refer to a lake (like Pyramid Lake in Los Angeles County near Castaic).

In Long Beach, where Randy Kraft was living throughout most of the time he was a serial killer, there are many streets called “Place” or PL along the beach. I know that there was a male skeleton found buried on the beach in Long Beach on April 18, 1984 and it was estimated that he could have died in 1983 (https://identifyus.org/cases/4240).

There is also a street on Palos Verdes Peninsula (Palos Verdes Estates) called Paseo Lunado, but I am not sure if the street was there when he was active. Before he arrested, Kraft did some freelance computer work for St. Ives Laboratories in Palos Verdes.

 

[Ambercat]

Yes, Paul Fochs' name is pronounced like "Folks", and the notation was the actual expletive, rather than "expletive deleted".

I think its German for "Fox." His family is German from Hungary, they used to live in Long Beach on Redondo in the 1970s.

 

[carbuff]

So far I haven’t read anything about Randy Kraft operating in Arizona – I know that he did travel for his work at Lear Siegler and he and Jeff Seelig did go on trips together (both out of state and international.

I thought the PL might refer to a lake (like Pyramid Lake in Los Angeles County near Castaic).

In Long Beach, where Randy Kraft was living throughout most of the time he was a serial killer, there are many streets called “Place” or PL along the beach. I know that there was a male skeleton found buried on the beach in Long Beach on April 18, 1984 and it was estimated that he could have died in 1983 (https://identifyus.org/cases/4240).

There is also a street on Palos Verdes Peninsula (Palos Verdes Estates) called Paseo Lunado, but I am not sure if the street was there when he was active. Before he arrested, Kraft did some freelance computer work for St. Ives Laboratories in Palos Verdes.

I agree, those are much more likely interpretations. It was just really odd seeing that exact phrase pop up in that context that I thought it would be a good idea to bring it forward, even though it's not likely.

 

[Ambercat]

I was wondering if anyone thought that Sean Kenneth Phelan could be victim of Randy Kraft. He was in the Navy at one point (Navy White?) and was known to hitchhike. He was last seen in Tustin (located in Orange County, CA).

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/p/phelan_sean.html

 

[Milyandel]

Could #4 "Hari Kari" be Kraft's misspelling of harakiri, a form of suicide (or in Kraft's interpretation, murder) by disembowelment?

I've also interpreted that entry as "harakiri", but it's hard to know what it exactly refers to. It could be directly related to the way the victim was killed, but somehow one feels such a murder would have made headlines and been talked about a lot at the time. (Unless the victim was hidden somewhere so well that the remains have not been found yet OR were already skeletonized when found - but then again, it seems very unpractical to drive around a body that's been cut open like that. Sorry to be graphic, but just the amount of blood and other bits and pieces coming out...sounds impossible to me !) So it's probably more complex. The victim could have been of Asian descent like CarlK suggested. Or, as I was thinking, Kraft may have kept the victim talking and found out that he was interested in Japanese customs or some such things, so they may have talked about harakiri too.

When checking my notes again I found I've got a small note about Ronald David Kruska, whose thread is here: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116046&highlight=Kruska. He had a tattoo of Japanese lettering below a dragon, so he MIGHT have been interested in Japan and been talking about it. It's a very slight connection though; he also had a viking warrior tattoo, so the significance of the tattoos when speculating about his interests doesn't seem very strong.

 

[tatertot]

In response to carbuff's post, yes, he seemed fond of making sick puns. He nicknamed one victim "Twiggy," the name of a popular model, and he had assaulted the victim with a twig.

I wonder whether he heard Paul Fuchs say his full name or went through his wallet afterward and read it off his drivers license. It seems a little more likely that he made the connection between the surname and the expletive if he saw it in print, though both scenarios are possible. If he read it off his license, did he have some personal desire to find out his victims' names?

 

[carbuff]

quote from earlier: Could #4 "Hari Kari" be Kraft's misspelling of harakiri, a form of suicide (or in Kraft's interpretation, murder) by disembowelment?

Is the fact that he wrote it as two words with initial capitals significant? Somebody with the initials HK?

 

[carbuff]

So far I haven’t read anything about Randy Kraft operating in Arizona – I know that he did travel for his work at Lear Siegler and he and Jeff Seelig did go on trips together (both out of state and international.

I thought the PL might refer to a lake (like Pyramid Lake in Los Angeles County near Castaic).

In Long Beach, where Randy Kraft was living throughout most of the time he was a serial killer, there are many streets called “Place” or PL along the beach. I know that there was a male skeleton found buried on the beach in Long Beach on April 18, 1984 and it was estimated that he could have died in 1983 (https://identifyus.org/cases/4240).

There is also a street on Palos Verdes Peninsula (Palos Verdes Estates) called Paseo Lunado, but I am not sure if the street was there when he was active. Before he arrested, Kraft did some freelance computer work for St. Ives Laboratories in Palos Verdes.

Point Lobos? Point Loma?

 

[CarlK90245]

Point Lobos? Point Loma?

Point Lobos (near Monterey) is a bit of a stretch from Mission Viejo (if that is what MV stands for).

Point Loma (in Laguna Niguel) sounds plausible though. It is about a 7 mile drive from Mission Viejo.

There is also a Point Loma in San Diego (about 75 miles away from Mission Viejo)

 

[Milyandel]

I wonder whether he heard Paul Fuchs say his full name or went through his wallet afterward and read it off his drivers license. It seems a little more likely that he made the connection between the surname and the expletive if he saw it in print, though both scenarios are possible. If he read it off his license, did he have some personal desire to find out his victims' names?

It seems he did have a strong desire to "connect" to his victims and to remember them individually. He seems to have created that connection through their name and/or identity, collecting driver's licenses, clothes, shoelaces and other personal effects. Keeping the scorecard also seems to me like a way to strengthen the bond and separate the individuals from each other. The entries are a medley of differentiating signifiers: names, prominent tattoos, where he met them, where he left them or what they told him about themselves (he must have kept them talking in several occasions - he couldn't otherwise have known someone had had a date, or lost his dog etc.).

Writing that, it just came to my mind to check the scorecard again. Looks like it starts in chronological order, but the chronology breaks down in #20, jumping from the 70's to the 80's and back again. I wonder if he wrote the entries down several times, to keep the list looking more organized perhaps (plain pieces of paper tend to get crumpled and torn) and/or "testing" himself or something at the same time, to see if he still could remember them all, and that's why the chronology doesn't hold?

Oh well. It's starts to feel like I'm spending far too much time in his head. It's almost scary...but it seems I "recognize" some things, that listing practice for example. I used to do similar memory tests myself, but on MUCH more innocent subjects, like trying to write down all the US states in alphabetical order. It went pretty well, but there were always some that I forgot and had to add to the end of the list. (Nowadays I've started to exercise my brain with sudokus and such, so I've dropped the listings - which is good, they took time which I don't have so much to spare!)

 

[Milyandel]

Sorry double posting, the time limit for editing had expired. Just wanted to add that the order of the entries may also reflect the significance of the murders to Kraft, either consciously or subconsciously: the more significant, the higher on the list. One tends to remember better the more significant before the less significant (=the "subconscius" way), but Kraft may well have meant to list the victims according to whatever twisted importance he attached to separate murders. It would make sense too, if the first murders were among the "most memorable ones", and that's why the list starts in chronological order.

There are some weird things in the scorecard; firstly, why does the column on the right start so much higher up than the left one? And secondly, the two last ones on the left column seem to be written in a haste or in more agitated frame of mind. The writing is much smaller in the other entries, but in those two the letters are bigger and clearly visible: they're "hawth off head" (#29) and "76 (#30).

And now I'm going to take a break and go for a little walk, it seems the weather is the most perfect, sunny, start-of-the-spring weather that makes the snow melt in front of your very eyes :skip: !

 

[CarlK90245]

Re: the "Hawth Off Head" notation, I am thinking that "Hawth" is either the city of Hawthorne, or Hawthorne Blvd, which stretches from Inglewood to the cliffs at the end of the Palos Verdes Peninsula overlooking the ocean. Hawthorne Blvd is a major thoroughfare through that portion of Los Angeles County.

It looks to me like perhaps he picked up someone either in Hawthorne, or on Hawthorne Blvd, and decapitated him.

 

[CarlK90245]

In Long Beach, where Randy Kraft was living throughout most of the time he was a serial killer, there are many streets called “Place” or PL along the beach. I know that there was a male skeleton found buried on the beach in Long Beach on April 18, 1984 and it was estimated that he could have died in 1983 (https://identifyus.org/cases/4240).

It says that this UID was buried on Ocean Blvd.

Depending on the location on Ocean Blvd, this could correspond to the "LB MARINA" notation.

There is more than one Marina in Long Beach, but the Long Beach Shoreline Marina is adjacent to the intersection of Shoreline Drive and Ocean Blvd.

Ocean Blvd Long Beach CA map - Google Maps