Sick man raped, tortured and killed at least 21 young boys - then dumped their bodies by the freeway

He was described by a prosecutor as “the most arch-evil person who ever existed”.

It’s not often someone is described as “the most arch-evil person who ever existed”, but when the crimes are that of luring young boys into a van, overpowering and tying them up with wires, cords, and handcuffs, then beating, raping, sodomising and torturing them with pliers, knives, wire coat hangers, and ligatures, and finally strangling or bludgeoning the victims to death and leaving their bodies near freeways — it’s not hard to see why.

The sick man in question possessed an IQ of 121 and was a decorated war veteran, having been awarded the Good Conduct Medal for his active five-month service in the Vietnam War.

He was also someone who had a long history of sexually assaulting and raping young boys, long before he was ever formally convicted of a crime.

Serial killer William Bonin was first sentenced in June 1969 to the Atascadero State Hospital as a sex offender with a mental disorder who was thought to be amenable to treatment.

During his time at the state hospital, he displayed traits of antisocial personality disorder, sexual sadism disorder, and manic depression, and was classified as an extreme sociopath who was most likely to offend again under periods of psychotic breakdown.

Come 1971, Bonin was transferred to the California Medical Facility after being declared ‘unsuitable for further treatment’ owing to repeated sexual engagement with other inmates (two of whom were mentally challenged). Shockingly, he was released from prison in June 1974, after doctors declared he was “no longer a danger to the health and safety of others”.

In December 1975, he was once again sentenced to serve one to fifteen years at the California Men's Facility in San Luis Obispo, after pleading guilty to the charges of rape and forcible oral copulation of a minor and attempted abduction.

In 1978, he was released once again with eighteen months' supervised probation, after displaying significant progress in individual therapy sessions, completing maths courses, and training as a machinist.

Bonin’s murderous reign of terror began in 1979 in Southern California and continued for a year while he remained unidentified, till 1980, when he was apprehended.

In this time, he killed at least 21 young boys by his own admission, although the number was probably closer to 36. He was formally convicted of 14 murders.

The sick killer’s victims were mostly young male schoolboys, hitchhikers or prostitutes aged between 12 to 19, predominantly Latino or Caucasian with a slender build, long hair and pale skin.

In an attempt to mislead the authorities, Bonin and his accomplices — he had at least four known ones, most likely aged between 17 and 21 — ditched their victims’ bodies in far off counties from where they initially picked them up, usually by the side of a freeway, thus earning himself the horrifying ‘Freeway Killer’ moniker.

The serial rapist and murderer would typically cruise freeways on Fridays and Saturdays in a bid to pick up young boys, and in at least 12 of the murders, he was assisted by one or more of his accomplices.

Some of Bonin’s most gruesome crimes included the murder of 17-year-old Marcus Grabs, a German student backpacking across the US, who was sodomised, beaten and stabbed 77 times by Bonin and his accomplice Vernon Robert Butts the-mirror-icon_news_us-news_crime.

His naked body was dumped by a road in Malibu, where it was found the next day with an ignition wire wrapped around one of his ankles and an orange nylon cord wrapped around his head.

Another victim, 15-year-old Donald Hyden, had been stabbed, sexually assaulted and strangled, with signs pointing to attempts at slashing his throat and cutting off his testicles.

15-year-old Charles Miranda was another victim brutalised by Bonin and his other accomplice Gregory Matthew Miley.

Charles was strangled to death by his own shirt, with the pair using a jack handle to twist the cloth like a corkscrew until the young boy was dead, his body eventually dumped in an alley in downtown LA. His autopsy revealed a blunt objected had been inserted into his rear.

Another young man who suffered a horrifically painful death at Bonin and Butts’ hands was 19-year-old Darin Lee Kendrick.

Lured into his Ford van under the pretense of selling drugs, Darin had been sodomised and strangled by a ligature, but that wasn’t all. He was seemingly also forced to ingest chloral hydrate which left him with caustic chemical burns on his chin, chest, stomach, and mouth. He was also struck by an ice pick through his right ear, which caused a fatal wound to his upper cervical spinal cord.

Bonin was executed by lethal injection on February 23, 1996, in California’s San Quentin State Prison, making him the first person in the state to be executed by that method.

On his last day alive, the twisted serial killer spent his day visiting with friends, watching Jeopardy, and chatting to a Catholic chaplain and at some point he transferred to the ‘death watch cell’, where he enjoyed his final meal on Earth — three servings of coffee-flavoured ice cream, two large pepperoni and sausage pizzas, and three six-packs of Coca Cola.

His final words were to Warden Arthur Calderon: "I feel the death penalty is not an answer to the problem at hand. I feel it sends the wrong message to the youth of the country.

"Young people act as they see other people acting instead of as people tell them to act. And 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.”

His execution began at 12:09am and by 12:13am Bonin was declared dead.

Ensure our latest headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as your Preferred Source in your Google search settings.