The Freeway Killer William George Bonin was a pedophile serial killer who targeted mainly young teenage boys, especially hitchhikers. He kidnapped, raped, tortured, and confessed to murdering up to twenty-one victims across southern California between 1979 and 1980. He was most known as the “Freeway killer” for the way he would dump the body of his victims, naked along roadways and behind buildings between LA County and Orange county. He terrorized many children while spreading more fear among the community and as a result was later known as the “Freeway killer” over time. Bonin was born on January 8, 1947, in Willimantic Connecticut, he was the second child out of three sons and each of them were only three …show more content…
His parents and the government system failed him in getting the help he needed as a child. During his stay in the orphanage, no parents visited him and as a result, he worried they were dead. They chose not to visit him which proves the amount of neglect he endured throughout his early life. At age fourteen he moved to Downey, California where his father later died that year from cirrhosis, a disease that attacks the liver. As a teen, he began molesting children and it continued until he graduated from high …show more content…
He vowed he would never get caught again, meaning he would never let a victim live to tell the story. Bonin’s first victim during his killing spree was a 17-year-old German boy named Marcus Grabs. He targeted young men who would hitchhike and who were easily convinced to get in the van with him. He repeatedly picked a kid every week and when he was done with the victim he would dump the body beside a freeway or an alley. He would strangle his victims while raping them, sodomizing them, beating them, and stabbing them. Bonin had 4 accomplices that would help him capture and kill his victims: Vernon Butts,Gregory M. Miley, William Ray Pugh, and James Michael Munro.They were all between the ages of 17-21 years old and William Ray Pugh would later turn on Bonin. William Ray Pugh was accused of auto theft and in order to drop the charges he made a deal with the detectives telling them who was the “Freeway