During the 1970s and 1980s, the victims of Kraft were among the many dead bodies found near highways in California. While the investigators believed the murders to be the work of a single serial killer, who was dubbed "The Highway Killer", there were two other perpetrators, William Bonin and Patrick Kearney, besides Kraft, who was the last of the three to be caught. In all cases, the victims were males who suffered some kind of sexual abuse and torture before being killed. Kraft's killings are believed to have started in 1971, the victim being Wayne Joseph Dukette, though Kraft was never convicted of his murder. He was first arrested on suspicion of murder when the severed head of one of his victims, Keith Crotwell, was found near the Long Beach Marina. Since he had been seen getting into a car revealed to be Kraft's, he was questioned as a suspect, but he claimed he let him ride along with him and then let him off at an all-night café. Kraft was released due to a lack of evidence. He was caught for the last time, just after 1:00 a.m. on May 14, 1983, when the California Highway Patrol pulled him over for driving under the influence. When the officers looked into his car, they saw a man who appeared to be sleeping in the back seat. When they opened it, they found him to be dead, with obvious signs of foul play. The man was Terry Gambrel, a 25-year-old U.S. Marine officer and Kraft's final victim, and had been strangled with his own belt.
When a search warrant for the car was obtained and carried out, the police found tranquilizers and prescription drugs inside as well as an envelope containing 47 photographs of young men, most of them either dead or seemingly asleep, in pornographic poses. There was also a lot of blood on the passenger seat, even though Gambrel didn't have any lacerations on his body.
Kraft's "score-card". When his home was searched as well, more evidence was found, including possessions of murder victims and Kraft's "score-card", on which he listed his victims by strange nicknames related to their locations or personal habits, such as "Deoderant", "New Year's Eve", and "Iowa". Kraft claimed the terms on the list referred to sexual encounters he'd had and other mundane things. In the end, Kraft was charged with 16 murders, among them a John Doe who was nicknamed as "Airplane Hill" on the "score-card" who wasn't identified until 1995, his real name being Kevin Clark Bailey. He was found guilty on all counts as well as some other related charges of sodomy and torture. At first, he was sentenced to death (for which he became briefly acquainted with William Bonin, another "Freeway Killer" on death row), but the sentence was upheld in 2000. He once pursued a lawsuit against a true crime writer who had written a book about his case, titled Angel of Darkness, as well as his publisher for $62 million in damages, claiming that the way he was portrayed in the book had smeared his "good name" and hurt his "prospects for future employment". Needless to say, the lawsuit was dismissed as frivolous. Kraft continues to serve his sentence at the San Quentin death row to this day.
