LOS ANGELES -- Freeway Killer William Bonin, convicted of luring 10 youths into his 'death van' for sessions of sex, torture and murder, predicts he will be condemned to die in the gas chamber.
In an interview, Bonin said he 'almost' expected the guilty verdicts Wednesday. He believes the same jury will sentence him to die.
'I'd be stupid not to think it,' the twice-paroled sex offender told The Register of Santa Ana. 'Then, if it comes down that way, it makes it easier to handle.'
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The penalty phase of the trial, scheduled to begin today, was unexpectedly postponed until Monday because the defense attorney was ill. Following testimony from both defense and prosecution witnesses next week, the seven-man, five-woman panel must decide whether Bonin should be executed or sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
It took the court clerk 57 minutes to read the verdicts on the 25 counts, that included 12 counts of first-degree murder and the remainder for robbery, sodomy and mayhem.
The jury acquitted Bonin on two murder counts, both 14-year-old boys, as well as innocent of one count each of robbery, sodomy and mayhem.
Bonin, a twice paroled sex offender who turns 35 on Friday, sat quietly only a few feet from several relatives of some of the young men and boys whom he enticed into his 'death van,' had sex with and then strangled or stabbed to death. The victims ranged in age from 12 to 19.
Prosecutors described Bonin, a short, pudgy man with a mustache, as having an 'insatiable appetite' for homosexual killing.
Authorities have loosely linked 44 slayings over an eight-year period as the Freeway Killings, named because the bodies of victims were dumped near freeways. Bonin faces four other counts of murder in Orange County and may face trial in some of the Freeway Killings in neighboring San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Lavada Gifford, who left the courtroom in tears after the jury acquitted Bonin of killing her 14-year-old son, Sean King, later called the verdicts 'a victory.'
'Even though there was a not guilty verdict on Sean, we know William Bonin killed Sean,' the woman said. 'There are 10 first-degree murder convictions and that's a victory.'
Other parents, friends and relatives of victims sobbed and hugged each other quietly as the verdicts were read and later evaded reporters outside the courtroom.
Both prosecution and defense conceded after the trial that the testimony of television newsman Dave Lopezwas significant.
Lopez told the jury that Bonin had confessed to 21 killings during jailhouse interviews and had said he would have kept on killing if he hadn't been arrested.
But Bonin denied killing Thomas Lundgren, the only youth whose body was sexually mutilated. The jury acquitted Bonin of killing Lundgren.
Bonin was committed to a mental institution in 1969 and 1975 for molesting young boys but was released as untreatable because he continued to have sexual involvements with other male inmates. He told authorities he had sex with both males and females while serving in Vietnam during the Tet offensive.
Acting on a tip from an informant, police put Bonin under surveillance in June 1980 and a few days later Bonin was arrested while sodomizing a 17-year-old youth in his van in a Hollywood parking lot.
The informant, William Ray Pugh, 20, is awaiting trial next month on charges he helped kill a 15-year-old runaway boy.
Two other accomplices in some of the slayings, Gregory Miley, 20, and James Munro, 20, pleaded guilty to murder charges in exchange for being spared the death penalty and told jurors how they helped Bonin kill.
A fifth accomplice, Vernon Butts, hanged himself in his jail cell last January after being charged in seven of the killings.
