From Innocent Smile to Infamy: The Boy Who Became One of History’s Most Evil Men

It is unsettling to remember that even the world’s most infamous killers—dictators, mass murderers, and serial predators—were once children who seemed ordinary.

The boy at the center of this story would later become one of California’s most feared criminals, believed to be responsible for the deaths of 51 young boys.

From 1971 to 1983, he cast a long shadow over the state. And even decades later, the memory of what happened remains deeply embedded in the minds of those who lived through that era—and those forever connected to the victims.

Born on March 19, 1945, in Long Beach, California, he was the only son in a modest, working-class family that had moved west from Wyoming, hoping for stability and a better life in postwar Southern California.

From the outside, it appeared to be an ordinary family pursuing the American dream in a growing suburban landscape.

But inside the small pale-blue house, there was always a quietness that felt different.

As a child, he was intelligent and observant—polite, reserved, and unusually meticulous. He loved puzzles, math, and structure. Teachers described him as bright and compliant. His mother, Opal, doted on him, while his father, Harold, worked long factory hours and demanded discipline.

Neighbors would later mention how spotless his room always was, how carefully everything was arranged.

Even then, he seemed drawn to control—a trait that would take a darker shape as the years passed.

A model student

When the family relocated to the growing suburb of Westminster in Orange County, he blended easily into the conservative climate of the 1950s. High school classmates remembered him as “smart, clean-cut, and quiet.”

He performed well academically and was described as politically intense—“somewhere right of Attila the Hun”—a strong believer in traditional values, the military, and order.

He joined student government and the debate team, appearing headed for a respectable future. After graduating in 1963, he enrolled at Claremont Men’s College and majored in economics. He immersed himself in campus politics, campaigned for Barry Goldwater, and supported the Vietnam War.

But by his junior year, something began to change.

He grew a beard. His politics softened. He started attending anti-war rallies and, quietly, began confronting a part of himself he had suppressed for years.

By 1969, he had come out as gay—news that shocked his family and cost him his position in the Air Force Reserve, where he had been training. Officially, he was discharged for “medical reasons.”

Unofficially, it was for being homosexual.

The drift begins

After leaving the service, he remained in Southern California and worked a string of jobs—bartender, computer programmer, waiter.

He was articulate, neatly dressed, and consistently polite. To acquaintances, he came across as mild and sophisticated, with an IQ of 129 and a talent for conversation.

But beneath the composed exterior, something was shifting.

He began using drugs, particularly amphetamines and barbiturates, and developed a heavier relationship with alcohol. Friends noticed changes: periods of isolation, sudden irritability, and unexplained disappearances.

Long Beach and Sunset Beach nightlife was thriving, and he was drawn to it—especially the gay bars that offered refuge to people still forced to live discreetly. He worked at a bar called The Stables, serving drinks and easily chatting with regulars.

But he was also watching. Testing boundaries. Moving in ways that felt increasingly predatory.

The first victim

In March 1970, a frightened, disoriented 13-year-old runaway named Joseph Fancher stumbled barefoot into a Long Beach bar, shaken and unable to fully explain what had happened. Police soon learned he had been drugged and assaulted by an older man who had offered him a place to stay.

Police eventually identified a suspect, and when officers searched his apartment, they found the boy’s shoes and a supply of sedatives and prescription pills. But because the search was conducted without a warrant, the evidence was thrown out, and the man avoided serious consequences.

At the time, few understood what that incident would come to represent. In hindsight, many believe it marked the beginning of a long, horrific pattern that would last more than a decade.

Bodies by the highway

Over the next several years, a grim pattern began emerging across Southern California. Young men—often teenagers or men in their early twenties, including Marines and hitchhikers—began disappearing.

Later, their bodies would be discovered along highways, in ravines, and in remote areas.

The cases shared disturbing similarities. Victims appeared to have been incapacitated and restrained before being killed. Investigators in Orange County, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino gradually realized they were likely dealing with a single predator—someone moving through the freeway system like a ghost.

By 1975, police had linked multiple cases, yet still had no clear suspect.

They did not yet know the person responsible was living an outwardly stable life in Long Beach, working as a computer programmer and using weekends to hunt.

For years, he stayed ahead of law enforcement even as more victims were found. Between 1971 and 1983, he kidnapped and murdered at least sixteen men and boys.

A twist of fate

Then, on a warm spring night in May 1983, everything changed.

Around 1:00 a.m., two California Highway Patrol officers pulled over a Toyota Celica on the 405 Freeway near Mission Viejo. The driver appeared intoxicated, and a half-empty beer bottle was visible inside the car.

When one officer looked toward the passenger seat, he stopped cold.

Slumped against the window was the body of a young Marine named Terry Gambrel.

The driver’s identification revealed a name that would soon become notorious: Randy Kraft. The press would later label him “The Scorecard Killer.”

Inside the vehicle, officers found a briefcase containing drugs, alcohol, and a notebook.

When investigators searched his home, they uncovered an alarming collection—photographs, personal items believed to belong to victims, and evidence connecting him to a chain of murders reaching beyond California. But the most chilling discovery was a carefully written list: more than sixty short, cryptic entries.

Every line represented a victim

At first, the coded phrases—“Stable,” “Marine Drum,” “Iowa,” “Parking Lot”—seemed meaningless. Then detectives began matching entries to locations, circumstances, and known victims. What they believed they were seeing was a “scorecard” of death, with each line representing a person.

One entry, “Stable,” appeared to point to the bar where Kraft once worked. Another, “Airplane Hill,” aligned with a location near an airfield where a body had been found. The list spanned more than a decade—an organized record of horror.

He documented it all as if each life taken was merely an entry, another act of control.

All of the victims were young white men, most in their late teens or early twenties, and many cases involved drugs or alcohol being used to incapacitate them.

Kraft’s approach was described as chillingly consistent: he would pick up victims, offer drinks that had been drugged, and once they were helpless, carry out the crimes. Many victims were found unclothed, and investigators reported signs of deliberate cruelty.

Then there were the photographs—Polaroids discovered in his possession that became some of the most haunting evidence in the case.

News of Randy Steven Kraft stunned friends and co-workers. People who knew him described him as ordinary and mild. To the outside world, he seemed like a loyal friend, a devoted family member, and a skilled computer professional.

“Everybody liked Randy,” Kay Frazell, a former classmate who said she once had a crush on him, told the LA Times.

Trial and reactions

In 1989, after one of the longest and most expensive trials in Orange County history, Randy Steven Kraft was convicted of sixteen murders, along with multiple counts related to sexual assault and torture.

In his defense, Kraft offered only one statement:

“I have not murdered anyone. I believe any reasonable review of the record will show that,” he said, before calmly sitting down and pouring himself a glass of water.

When the judge handed down the death sentence, Kraft remained expressionless.

He was sent to San Quentin’s death row.

Relatives of the victims reacted with visible emotion. Some cried. Some exhaled in relief. One grieving father shouted, “Burn in hell, Kraft. Burn in hell,” as the convicted killer was led from the courtroom.

“Even after he’s executed, the anger is still going to be there,” said Rodger DeVaul Sr., the father of victim Rodger James DeVaul, 20, at the time.

The media frenzy surrounding Kraft’s arrest drove his family into hiding. They were private, ordinary people suddenly overwhelmed by headlines and relentless attention.

“It has been devastating for them,” Kraft’s attorney, C. Thomas McDonald, said in 1989.

“But they love Randy, and they have been very devoted to him since his arrest.”

“Looked like everyone else”

In more than four decades behind bars, Kraft has never admitted to a single killing.

Investigators still believe there may be dozens of additional victims who will never be identified.

In 2012, retired homicide detective Dan Salcedo met Kraft inside San Quentin.

“It’s weird—when you look at him, there’s nothing memorable,” Salcedo told Police1. “He’s not the prototypical media version of what a killer looks like. If you put him in a room filled with people, he’s the last one you’d pick.”

Salcedo had hoped for a confession, or at least a clue that might help resolve other cases. But Kraft offered nothing.

“When I looked into his eyes,” Salcedo recalled, “I felt nothing. No aura of evil. Just a bitter old man.”

When the interview ended, Kraft quietly called for the guard and was led away.

Death sentence upheld

To Salcedo, Kraft embodied a terrifying kind of “quiet evil.”

“The banality of evil,” he called it. “He looked like a neighbor, a coworker. Nothing about him screamed danger. And maybe that’s the most terrifying part.”

Even today, investigators continue revisiting cold cases, searching for links to the cryptic entries on Kraft’s list. Some families have received answers through DNA testing; others are still waiting for closure that may never come.

Kraft now spends his days confined to a small cell—aging, silent, and unrepentant. A man who once prized order in everything, except the part of himself that mattered most.

His conviction and death sentence were upheld by the California Supreme Court on August 9, 2000. As of 2025, he remains on death row at the California Institution for Men in San Bernardino County, still denying any involvement in the murders he was convicted of—or the many others he is suspected of committing.