The Game of Killers

By Valentina Faye

The Game of Killers portrays the 5 fascinating serial killers, their ways and pattern of killing. The outstanding detective work that took to catch them and the trial of the case has been briefed in this book. If you are a fan of true crime mystery/thriller then don't miss it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304312693

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The Game of Killers

The Game of Killers

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Valentina Faye

Copyrights 2013 Author

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-304-31269-3

Lulu edition, License notes

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William Bonin: The Freeway Killer

On February 23, 1996, the people of the state of California finally followed through on their decision that the world would be a better place without William Bonin. After fighting for his life for 17 years, the notorious Freeway Killer became the first person to be executed by lethal injection in California. For the survivors of the 14 young men and boys whom Bonin was convicted of killing and of the nearly 30 others whom this classic sociopath is suspected of slaying, the Freeway Killer's execution probably lacked an element of justice.

Sure, Bonin, called the poster boy for capital punishment by Gov. Pete Wilson, paid for his crimes with his life, but his method of death was infinitely more pleasant than that of his victims. Anyone who has had surgery using a local anesthetic, or undergone a colonoscopy or an abortion can relate to how Bonin felt in the few moments before his execution.

If he had any knowledge of what was about to happen, he didn't show it. With the strong dose of tranquilizer in his system, he certainly didn't care.

Stoned on state-sanction Valium, Bonin was strapped to a hospital gurney in the refurbished California gas chamber and pumped full of three different chemicals. The first, sodium pentathol, a.k.a. truth serum, rendered him unconscious in about a second. The next dose, pancuronium bromide, paralyzed his muscles and made it impossible for him to breathe, much like curare in a South American Indian blow-gun. The final dose potassium chloride came a few seconds later and instantly stopped his heart. Three minutes after the first injection, Bonin was declared dead.

His body was removed by prison officials and when none of his relatives claimed it (they didn't bother coming to the execution in San Quentin), cremated and spread in the Pacific Ocean. In the end, the remains of one of California's most notorious murderers was treated with a great deal more respect than he had for his victims. Most of them were dumped, naked and ravaged along the labyrinthine Southern California highway system, giving rise to Bonin's nom de morte.

Outside the walls of San Quentin, William Bonin had nearly as many supporters as he had enemies. Capital punishment has become such a divisive issue in America that executions become excuses for pro- and anti-capital punishment rallies. Activists and celebrities like Mike Farrell, formerly B.J. Hunnicutt on MASH, and friends and relatives of the victims and the just plain curious squared off in the cold rain outside the prison until the word was sent down that Bonin was dead.

Bonin's last words, delivered to the warden about an hour before his execution, expressed no remorse for his crimes and merely pointed out that he thought the death penalty was unfair. Bonin added some words of advice for potential serial killers:

I would suggest that when a person has a thought of doing anything serious against the law, that before they did that they should go to a quiet place and think about it seriously.

Bonin, who spent more time on death row than a majority of his victims spent on Earth, was 49.

By seven years old, William Bonin was already on his way to being a lost cause. The child of an abusive, alcoholic father who once gambled away the family home, Bonin and his brother were often left by their mother in the care of her father. Alice Benton left them with their grandfather despite the fact that she had grown up being sexually abused by the man, a well-known pedophile. Bonin's mother spent all of her free time playing bingo, often forgetting to feed her children, and neighbors said the Bonin boys were always hungry, dirty and ill-clothed.

During his eighth year, Bonin served his first stint behind bars, being jailed in juvenile hall for stealing license plates.

In that hellhole of a reformatory, Bonin became the sexual plaything to older boys, setting the stage for his own twisted understanding of sex. The detention home was a veritable house of horrors where sexual sadism, Inquisition-like punishments such as submersion in ice water, and threats at the point of a knife were commonplace.

While in detention, according to Connecticut medical records, Bonin had been approached for sex by an older boy and although young William was afraid of the attacker, agreed to participate, provided that he be restrained:

An older boy approached Bonin for homosexual contact, and Bonin was frightened, but Bonin agreed to it if the older boy would tie his hands behind his backallowing Mr. Bonin to feel more secure and less frightened, the records showed.

To Dr. Jonathan H. Pincus, a Georgetown University Hospital neurologist who examined Bonin during his incarceration for the freeway killings, the incident suggests much about Bonin's earlier years. The fact that Bonin, at age 8, was sexually aware and asked for restraints led Pincus to believe he had been a prior victim of sexual assault.

It is inconceivable that he was not sexually abused and forcibly restrained by adult abusers before the incident, Pincus wrote in a report to Bonin's lawyers.

William eventually returned to his home, where he began fondling his brother and other children in the area.

William joined the U.S. Air Force and logged 700 hours in combat or patrol while serving as an aerial gunner in Vietnam, where his service record indicates he was a good soldier, winning a good conduct medal. It wasn't until after he received his honorable discharge that the military learned Bonin had sexually assaulted two men in his outfit at gunpoint.

He moved from his native Connecticut to Southern California, where he began the dark descent into savagery that would end in San Quentin twenty-one years later.

It didn't take long for Bonin to succumb to his demons. His first known interaction with the law came in 1969 when he was accused of sexually abusing five boys in Los Angeles County. In each case, Bonin picked up the boys while driving around then handcuffed and sodomized them. Convicted of the assaults, Bonin was deemed a mentally disordered sex offender and rather than being sent to prison, was remanded to the Atascadaro State Hospital. He was examined by several neurologists, psychiatrists and psychologists, but what treatment he received for his damaged psyche is unknown.

Bonin had no memory of being physically abused. Doctors suspect he repressed the memory. There is much data to indicate that Bonin was severely and recurrently sexually abused as a child, wrote one psychiatrist who examined William.

Doctors found a variety of other physical and psychological anomalies: brain damage in the area that is thought to restrain violent impulses; manic-depressive illness, and several unexplained scars on his head and backside.

Bonin, the doctors said, could not explain the scars.

Five years later, Bonin was released from the state hospital and placed on probation for five years. Clearly, by this point, William was unable to control his sick urges. He was a practicing pedophile, but hadn't yet become a killer.

On the last day of summer vacation in 1975 David McVicker was thumbing for a ride to Huntington Beach. He was 14. Bonin offered McVicker a ride.

He was totally coolthere was nothing in the least bit strange about him, McVicker told the Los Angeles Times shortly before Bonin's execution.

Bonin asked the young man for sex and McVicker asked him to stop the car. William pulled out a gun, drove to a remote area and raped the boy.

Bonin began to choke McVicker with his own T-shirtthe same method Bonin would later use to kill several of his victims. McVicker, gagging, thought he was going to die.

When McVicker cried out, Bonin released him and to McVicker's astonishment, he apologized for choking me.

The attack on McVicker was especially notable for a couple of events: first, McVicker was the last successful attack for Bonin in which he did not kill, and it was the last time he would ever be known to admit regret for his actions.

Like other victims of sexual assault, McVicker's suffering didn't end when Bonin freed him. To this day, he told the Times, he suffers for Bonin's crime.

Feeling dirty and ashamed, he told only his best friend what happened. His mother never wanted to hear the details, McVicker said. School no longer mattered and he quit school that same year. He attended continuation high schools, but never received a diploma.

As Bonin's execution neared, McVicker said nightmares replaying the rape plagued him.

Sometimes I wake myself up yelling, McVicker said. Imagine going to sleep and getting raped 10 to 12 times a night.

McVicker did go to the police and based on his testimony, Bonin was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct and sent back to prison. He served about three years behind bars.

Despite having been convicted of kidnapping and two counts of sodomy with a child in 1968, being diagnosed as a sexual predator and demonstrating criminal sexual conduct seven years later, Bonin was released by the California prison system in 1978.

Less than a year after being released from prison for the McVicker attack, Bonin found himself behind bars once again. He was picked up by Orange County officers while he assaulted a 17-year-old hitchhiker.

Incredibly, a records mix-up allowed Bonin to walk out of jail before his trial. Not surprisingly, he never showed for his day in court. That simple clerical error would eventually result in the deaths of more than three dozen young men.

Freed by a stroke of fate, Bonin had no intention of ever leaving witnesses to his crimes. A friend who would eventually collect a $20,000 reward for a tip that lead to Bonin's capture remembers talking with William shortly before he disappeared into the seamy underworld of Los Angeles.

I can remember he said, 'No one's going to testify again. This is never going to happen to me again,' his friend recalled in an interview 10 years after Bonin's arrest.

Shortly after Bonin's release, the slayings by the fiend the media dubbed