Lawrence Bittaker — one of two California men convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing five teenage girls in 1979 — has died at 79 from natural causes on San Quentin’s death row, officials announced Monday.
Bittaker and Roy Norris, 71, of Redondo Beach were partners in the horrific string of murders over a span of five months, from June to October 1979. The victims, some of them hitchhikers, ranged from 13 to 18 years old and were from Los Angeles County’s South Bay, Long Beach and San Fernando Valley.
The notorious pair were dubbed the Tool Box Killers.
Bittaker, who in the words of one state Supreme Court justice displayed “astonishing cruelty,” was convicted of the grisly murders and condemned to death in March 1981.
He died around 4 p.m. Friday at San Quentin State Prison, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials said Monday.
Most of Bittaker’s victims were strangled, with two stabbed in the head with ice picks. Evidence showed they also used vise grips, wire hangers and a sledgehammer to torture the girls.
He used a tape recorder to document one of his victim’s dying screams, evidence that was played at his 1981 trial and elicited tears from jurors and others in Torrance Superior Court.
Among them was veteran prosecutor Stephen Kay. Kay, who also helped in the prosecution of Charles Manson, described Bittaker as more savage than Manson.
“I’m upset that he beat the system,” Kay said in an interview Monday. “He died a natural death, something that his victims didn’t have a chance for. They had their whole lives ahead of them; they never got to get married, have children or grandchildren.
“The last thing they saw on earth were these two monsters.”
Bittaker’s victims were Lucinda Schaefer, 16, of Torrance; Jacqueline Lamp, 13, of Redondo Beach; Jackie Gilliam, 15, of Long Beach; Andrea Hall, 18, of Tujunga; and Shirley Ledford, 16, of Sun Valley. Most of them were plucked off streets in the South Bay.
The two men, who met in prison, drove a van scouring the coastal areas in search of their victims. The pair took the girls to isolated areas, including the San Gabriel Mountains, where they were tormented and then killed.
Two of the bodies were never found.
Norris pleaded guilty to all counts against him and agreed to testify against Bittaker in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials said. He cooperated with prosecutors and was sentenced to serve 45 years to life in prison, with the possibility that he would someday be paroled.
Bittaker was found guilty by a jury on 26 counts against him, including five counts each of murder and kidnapping, in addition to criminal conspiracy, rape, oral copulation, sodomy and being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm.
Jurors took only 15 minutes to decide Bittaker should be executed.
Since he was sent to death row, he was scheduled for execution four times — but each date was stayed, and Kay suspected Bittaker would die of old age before he was ever strapped into a gurney for execution.
In the end, he outlived half the jurors in his case, the judge, the lead detective, an assistant prosecutor, and many others who were part of his trial. He developed a love of bridge behind prison walls — playing with at least one other serial killer — and was content to run out the clock with myriad lawsuits in state and federal court challenging his conviction.
He also sued the prison system over his treatment, in one case objecting to being served a broken cookie, calling it “cruel and unusual punishment.”
In a 2016 interview with the Sacramento Bee, Bittaker — known to have a high IQ — talked about the life he wasted and expressed some remorse.
After graduating high school, he told the Bee, he was “just drifting through life” with no one to help him navigate a proper path to take.
“It’s kind of a confluence of unusual events,” he said of what led to the killings. “A screwed up upbringing, crazy years sitting in a cell …, no help (to) make me change my behavior. Meeting up with a serial rapist and deciding I would try and see if a little fantasy, entertainment would work.”
At the time, he said he was beginning to fear death, likely because of his age. But he said he was too ashamed to ask the victims’ families for forgiveness. If he could go back and change things, he said he would.
“I wish I could go back and not do it,” Bittaker said. “Wasted life, totally wasted. (I) hurt so many people.”
None of that is any consolation to those who encountered Bittaker in life.
Kay, for one, feels betrayed by the criminal justice system. “He didn’t get the death penalty that he deserved,” he said.
He recalls talking to the mother of 13-year-old Lamp in his office in Torrance. She looked tired.
When Kay asked if she was sleeping enough, she acknowledged that she was working two jobs, about 16 hours per day, to keep herself awake. If she slept, she said, “I have nightmares about how my daughter was tortured to death.”
Kay also had nightmares. That recording played in the courtroom, of Ledford’s painful cries begging for her life, continues to haunt him.
“Everybody who heard that recording has had psychological problems, including me,” Kay said. “You couldn’t get a Hollywood actress to imitate what’s in that tape. It’s just so raw — it pulls out your insides.”
Jurors shuddered when Bittaker described the tape as “pillow talk,” Kay said.
One of the lead investigators, Paul Bynum of the Hermosa Beach Police Department, fatally shot himself in 1987.
In his suicide note, Bynum wrote he believed Bittaker and Norris would get out of prison someday and come after him. He believed that his death would spare his wife and daughter, Kay said in an earlier story.
It’s been more than 13 years since anyone has been executed in California. The last person to die, by lethal injection, was Clarence Ray Allen in 2006. And Gov. Gavin Newsom has vowed that no one will be executed as long as he is in office.
Since capital punishment in California was reinstated in 1978, 13 condemned inmates have been executed in California, along with two others in different states. There have been 82 deaths from natural causes, 27 have committed suicide, and 14 died from other causes.
Currently, 729 offenders reside on the state’s death row.
Four deceased inmates, including Bittaker, have not been assigned a cause of death. Although the Department of Corrections believes his death was natural, the Marin County Coroner will determine the official cause of death.