All language subtitles for Butchers of L.A. - S01E01 - Trash Bags

Orange County
investigators are

dealing with a possible mass
murderer and a list of victims

that continues to get longer.

People start finding
bodies along the highway.

These young men are
just disappearing.

What in the name of God
is going on out there?

The California of the 1960s
was the freewheeling summer

of love in San Francisco.

All these people all
over the United States

were drawn to Los
Angeles, Hollywood.

There are predatory
people who can take

advantage of people like that.

Investigators are still
going over the records

of eight murder cases.

The papers were just
flooded with these murders.

His killings were
so horrific that even

the seasoned detectives had
a hard time listening to it

and looking at the evidence.

He had sex with these men
sometimes before, oftentimes

after he killed them.

There were beheadings.

There were victims that had
tree branches that were rammed

up inside of the victims.

As soon as you
get one of those,

this isn't something random.

This guy is going to do more.

This is the 33rd
killing of the same

type in the last few months.

This is just
one of 41 murders

of teenage boys in five
Southern California counties

over the past eight years.

We're not just dealing
with one serial killer here.

Some other psychopath
is out there.

It's like a trilogy
of terror with these guys.

I couldn't
believe anybody that

could do something so evil.

He very much
enjoyed torturing

and killing these young boys.

He loved the sound and he
loved the terror in their face.

He spent a lot
of time cruising

around Hollywood
Boulevard for hitchhikers.

A lot of times, it was
the drive to their death.

In the '60s and '70s, Los
Angeles County was actually

agricultural and middle class.

You know, a lot of citrus
growing is still going on.

Industries coming in, aircraft
industries, for example,

and that's where a lot
of the workers would live.

I grew up in El Segundo,
California, so right here

in the LA area, just south
of the LAX big airport and

the beach cities.

Nice place.

Like, when I was growing up,
you'd go out in the morning,

and you didn't
have to come home

until the streetlights
went on, you know, and

your parents just-- you
know, you know you're out,

but just be home by dinner.

You know, it was kind of a very
safe place to grow up.

You know, kids
played on the block.

It was just a very,
very sweet town.

The California of the 1960s
was the freewheeling,

beads and music, the Summer of
Love in San Francisco in 1967.

The sense that we were
in the age of Aquarius,

that everything was
going to be beautiful and

wonderful and peaceful.

Well, the phrase
about peace and love

didn't necessarily
apply to gay people.

Most of the gay scene in LA
was centered around downtown.

The gay culture that
existed was not meant to be

noticed by straight society.

Gay bars were like speakeasies.

They did not
advertise themselves.

You usually needed
a special knock or

some kind of a password
to get into them.

They were owned by mafias
and criminal syndicates.

Any kind of gay
socializing had to be

done very carefully, because
there were laws against it.

That looks innocent
enough, doesn't it?

Lots of young people
hitchhike, but

sometimes there are
dangers involved

that never meet the eye.

Let's take the case
of Jimmy Barnes.

Jimmy played baseball
all afternoon,

and he didn't feel
like walking home,

so he decided to thumb a ride.

There's this
fascinating film that

came out called "Boys Beware".

It's kind of a classic old
movie from the '60s warning

kids not to get in cars
with older men, because they

might be homosexuals.

What Jimmy didn't know
was that Ralph was sick,

a sickness that was not
visible like smallpox,

but no less dangerous
and contagious,

A sickness of the mind.

You see, Ralph
was a homosexual.

The film completely
conflates being a pedophile

and being a homosexual
together as if they're

one and the same thing.

And we kind of watch
it now and think,

oh, God, the language
they're using is terrible

and it's very anti-gay.

But one of the most
remarkable things about it

is just this
hitchhiking culture,

of-- of just hitching a ride
home with whoever picks you up,

and the vulnerabilities
with that.

If you're going
from Kentucky, you

might be able to exist in a
small town as a queer person,

but you wouldn't have any
real sense of community there.

And so LA or New York,
but especially LA,

there's this big,
giant community

that is just coming
out of the shadows,

and things you only imagined
happening to yourself

are just a bus ticket away.

And that is very
alluring at that time.

If all you have is
your bus ticket and

a little change
in your pocket, then

you have to figure out how
to live and how to survive.

Because of the public
attitude towards gay people,

a lot of young men that
came out to their families

would get thrown
out of the house,

and so they'd be
living on the streets.

They were young, they
were in their teens,

so they couldn't get a job.

They couldn't find
work, so a lot of them

would resort
to prostitution, hustling,

which made them vulnerable
to a lot of dangers.

By the early 1970s, we're
seeing a rash of what looked

like random murders,
opportunity murders,

young men picked up along
the highway or in bars

or just on the street,
murdered,

and then their bodies dumped.

It was really
a disturbing trend.

As the body count
started to increase,

these corpses found
along freeways,

in trash bags, industrial trash
bags, are these connected?

Is there one person
responsible for all

of these dead bodies around the
Southern California freeways?

Well, it began for me
when I was out in Riverside

in Banning, which was
an outlying area halfway

between LA and Palm Springs.

The sheriff's department
came in with some evidence

they wanted to look at.

They were suspicious that they
had some connected homicides--

all men, all nude, most,
if not all, shot in the head

with a .22 caliber bullet.

It is the desert.

And some of these bodies
were dismembered and found

in heavy duty,
thick plastic bags

with drawstrings, not the kind
you buy at the grocery store.

The media started dubbing
him the trash bag killer.

So often, you find
multiple murder victims who

do have something in common.

They may know one another.

They may live
in the same neighborhood.

That was not the case here.

These are young men who lived
all across Southern California.

And, gradually,
investigators began

to put together characteristics
that they did have in common.

Many of them were
teens, early 20s.

They were perceived
to be gay, if not gay.

Los Angeles has never
had a good metropolitan

transportation area.

You can't get
on a subway here and

be somewhere in 20
minutes like you

can in any other major city.

You know, the bus system, you
know, it's just not conducive.

So back in those days,
carefree, you thumbed a ride.

And people would hop in pickup
trucks, cars, whatever.

It didn't matter.

I am the youngest of seven.

I had older
brothers and sisters

that I could see as I looked
back as I got older, yeah,

they were part
of that hippie era.

John is number five
out of the seven.

He's eight years older than me.

He was into the party
scene, smoking pot and

doing your drinking and going
out with your buddies

to do that.

Again, that was, like,
the influence of the time.

John and my brothers
and sisters

all did the hitchhiking thing.

There are a lot of things
that can go wrong,

the worst of which
would be that you

thumbed a ride, got into a van
with a serial killer.

The bodies are found.

They're sometimes
along highways.

But there's nothing found
around them, just the body.

There's no evidence.

And then we realized,
they weren't killed there.

They were killed
at some other location,

and their body is
just dumped somewhere.

That causes a real problem
for the police department,

because who
investigates a homicide?

It's where the crime occurred,
where the killing occurred.

Where the bodies were found
is not where they were killed.

Some of the bodies
were up in Malibu.

They were in Ventura, some
places in San Bernardino.

We say Southern California
as if it's one place,

and it is in the sense
of expanse,

but it's not in terms of police
and how they regard this.

In the county of Los
Angeles alone,

back then, you would have had
at least five dozen cities

in different jurisdictions,
different police,

sheriffs' departments,
investigators, all of them

divided up according
to their political boundaries,

their city limits,
and not necessarily

talking to one
another or comparing

notes about these
bodies that were

turning up all over the place.

By the mid-1970s,
law enforcement

knew they had to get
together and compare

notes on these victims.

The detectives came
together in Orange County

and started discussing
the commonality

between these cases.

There were definite patterns.

They were all shot.

They were shot above the temple
in the back of the head.

He just used
a little .22 derringer

to shoot them on the left
side of their head

with a .22 derringer that
had a right hand twist.

The twist on the caliber is
just another piece of evidence

that they're all the same.

The left side of the head was
important, because it indicates

a right-handed person.

Derringers hold
two shots, and

it may sound like
it's small and,

oh, what damage can that do?

But they take these long range
...22 caliber rifle rounds,

really, and if you get
the hollow point version,

it causes a tremendous amount
of damage at close range.

This is why
derringers would be so

effective if you're trying to
surprise someone and kill them.

Detectives deal with
rotten people all the time,

but not of this magnitude.

I mean, how guys like
this exist, I don't know.

He had sex with these men,
sometimes before, oftentimes

after he killed them.

He would cut orifices in their
body and have sex with them.

He would remove their pubic
hair on occasion,

experiment with them.

There was no evidence
of physical torture.

They were all
postmortem wounds.

He would hit these bodies
after they were dead--

wouldn't hit them beforehand.

He somehow was
able to dismember,

and as the autopsy surgeon
said, disarticulate, because it

was-- it was expertly done.

Most people would not be
able to do that very neatly.

He did it like a surgeon,
like a butcher.

He knew exactly where
the joints were, how to cut

and take apart these bodies.

The pattern
started to emerge,

and detectives started
thinking, uh-oh,

we have a serial killer.

Investigators
in Riverside County

are still going over the
records of eight murder cases,

which may be the start
of a bloody trail of 40

or more homosexual killings.

Mutilated remains
of five young men

have been found in three
other counties since 1975.

John was, I would
say, a bit different.

He was artsy, very
internal, introspective.

I have a brother that's
six years older than me,

and then John's two
years older than him.

I did share a room with John
and Joe, which, trust me,

that wasn't great at times.

Trying to scare me
at night, you know.

I remember the flashlight
on the ceiling and the, ah,

you know.

He had the most problems.

I think my parents,
I would say,

seemed like they had
the most trouble with him,

because he was always
threatening to run away.

There was a lot
of tension, I remember

that, between my mom and dad
and John as a teenager.

You know, because I
was sharing a room,

I remember him
being in the room

and just threatening to leave.

I do remember the last
time I saw him.

My parents were gone.

He was kind of in charge of me,
along with my other brother.

John fed me a hot dog.

I knew that he was
supposed to get me dinner

before he goes anywhere.

And then Joe was
there, remembers

my brother getting
picked up, and

I-- that's a memory I
have pretty distinctly.

I remember being at home,
sitting in the living room,

and I could see
Mom and Dad were

upset because John did not
come home the night before,

because that's unusual.

Even with his partying, he'd
always come home at night.

And so they woke up
to him not being there.

And, of course, I'm seeing
this, and they're panicked.

The next thing I know,
my dad's on the phone

with the police department
and reporting him missing.

You know, we have
a missing 17-year-old son.

I remember that scared me.

I remember, this is not right,
even though I knew there was

tension in the relationship.

Part of my thought maybe back
then was maybe he finally,

actually did run away,
because I remember

him always threatening that.

For the detectives,
the list was just

getting longer and longer,
and by this time,

the body count was alarming.

Somebody's doing this.

He's loose.

He's doing a lot of them.

It's dangerous.

This became such a matter of
concern that a local newspaper

offered a reward of $2,000,
which doesn't sound like much

now, but a considerable
amount then,

$2,000 for the arrest
and conviction of whoever

had picked up,
murdered, mutilated,

dismembered these young men.

There was Ronald Dean Smith
Jr. He was just five years old.

They found his body
in October 1974.

The medical examiner ruled
that he had been suffocated.

Larry Gene Walters, 20,
killed October 31st, 1975.

Found less than
two weeks later.

Again, shot, dismembered
in a trash bag.

Michael Craig McGhee,
just 13, in June 1976,

shot in the back of the head,
sodomized, dismembered.

Wilfred Lawrence
Faherty, 20 years old,

killed in August of '76,
shot in the back of the head.

Detectives were tearing
their hair out at this point,

and then, all
of a sudden, a break.

18th of March, 1977,
another body is found,

this near Corona, California.

That is in Riverside County.

It's missing its head.

It's missing its hands.

It's been sodomized
post mortem.

His body was found in a large
trash bag in a barrel,

and it was at a rest stop.

And they started asking around.

The next day, it
was pretty quick.

It wasn't a long
time in between.

And I remember
my dad got a call

back from probably the police
department at that point.

I'm only hearing-- I'm only
seeing my dad on the phone

and hearing him, and I just
hear him repeat back what they

said, that he might be dead.

That's kind of what
I remember hearing.

Like, what do you mean dead?

Like just something like that,
just the way he responded.

By then, maybe looking
back, they actually

maybe found somebody and--

but they didn't want to say
for sure this was him

until they did some
investigative work,

you know, which was having
my parents, you know,

basically go down to the police
department in Corona,

give blood tests,
and identify a birthmark

that my brother
did have, which was

found when they found a body.

My family overnight changed.

There was safety, there
was freedom, there was fun.

We're loving.

We're hanging out.

And then John's murderer
made victims of us all.

And I can imagine,
as I got older,

and what guilt they
might have felt

in not having better tabs
on their son at-- you know,

he's 17, it was
a different time.

But again, you're in El
Segundo and everything.

Everything should
be free and fine.

But, you know, I thought
about that later and

the guilt that was probably
going on as well, that they

didn't watch out for him.

As a kid, I'm not
being told anything,

which I think was a bad thing,
because I never got sat down.

This is what's going on.

And I get it.

My parents were in a frenzy.

I know, okay, John was
murdered, and John knew him.

I knew that pretty
early on, that it

wasn't just some stranger
that picked up John.

This person actually
built a kind

of a relationship with John
before this even happened.

Once they have
a name, police can

start working backwards
to his friends,

to Lamay's friends,
his family, who he met,

when he may have met them.

They said he told them he was
going to Redondo Beach, which

is just to the west
of Corona, to meet

two people named Pat and Dave.

This is when they
started looking

closer at Patrick Kearney.

They go to interview Patrick
Kearney and his roommate

and lover, Dave Hill.

Well, we're now
in northern Redondo Beach,

one of the nicest areas
of the Los Angeles area.

And this is Robinson Street.

Patrick Kearney lived here.

He bought the house in 1969.

He never did much.

He was very quiet.

And we had people
who worked here.

There was a little store here.

He would come across
here and he would

ask the man about knives.

He wanted to buy
knives and he wanted

to know what was good steel.

And he would come
to the market,

but he never bought the knives.

But the owner of the store
always wondered, why

was he interested in knives?

Well, now we know that he
had to cut up a lot of bodies

and chop a lot
of bones, and he needed

a strong knife that would
be able to dissect people.

We went to his house.

It wasn't a gaily lit,
bright, open, sunny house.

It was dark, a little
bit showing its age

in terms of cleanliness.

And maybe this is
just my imagination,

but when I went in there,
it felt oppressive.

The police interviewed him.

Do you know John Lamay?
Where has he been?

Who else has he been seen with?

Have you seen him lately?

Kearney denies knowing Lamay.

Doesn't admit to any
connection with the teenager.

Police officers notice
that the carpet is green,

and they know
there's green fibers

found on some of these bags.

One of the officers scuffs
his feet on the carpet.

Another officer pets
a dog and take some hair.

Those things match.

So now they're focused
on Patrick Kearney.

On that team is Faye Springer,
a criminalist, myself,

two police officers,
and some uniformed officers,

and they gather up lots
of different evidence.

Faye Springer goes
to the vacuum cleaner,

immediately empties
its contents.

She finds a hacksaw.

She sprays luminol
in the bathroom,

sees evidence of blood.

There's a deteriorating
faucet with chrome plating

being flaked off.

She recalls that one
of the bags containing

a body, not John Lamay, had
similar shiny little pieces

of metal.

She's thinking maybe
there's a connection.

They find a stash
of micro plastic bags

with drawstrings at the house.

These aren't useful
for anything other

than heavy
industrial type work.

And we did a search warrant
for Kearney's house.

So we go to the house
to execute the search warrant,

and Patrick Kearney is gone.

He's disappeared.

And that's when the warrants
were issued for the arrest

of both of them.

Pat Kearney was born
in East Los Angeles in 1939,

just as the war
in Europe was beginning.

He wasn't the most robust kid.

When he grew up, kids
picked on him, bullied him.

A few called him queer,
and supposedly he had fantasies

about skinning people--

sick, distorted fantasies.

His dad, he claimed,
was kind of an absent dad.

Wasn't really participating
much in his life.

Mom was good, but Mom was
more paying attention to dad.

But he had two siblings
that were normal

and had good careers.

One was an Army officer.

Allegedly, his father
taught him how to shoot.

He was very, very
proficient at killing.

Because as a child, he
had learned the best way

to kill a pig instantly is to
shoot them right in the head,

near the ear.

And he had learned,
if you do that, the person

would-- there would not be any
resistance from that point on.

He ended up moving
to Texas for a while,

and came back and started
work at Hughes Aircraft.

By then, Los Angeles was
an immense powerhouse

of the defense industry
and the aircraft industry,

and so he found
a job pretty quickly.

Which to me means that
he had some intelligence

and some work ethic about him.

Hughes Aircraft was
an early manufacturer.

It had lots
of different divisions,

so I think he had to have
somewhat himself on the ball

to get a job and hold
a job like that.

In the process, he
would meet various people,

and he had a gay
partner, David Hill,

he met when he was in Texas.

And they both came back
to Redondo Beach area,

lived in the beach
area as a couple.

And as time went by,
they had, you know,

differences, and sometimes
David Hill would leave,

and then Kearney
would be on his own.

At that time, he would start
trolling, driving around.

He had a VW.

Having grown up in East Los
Angeles, he also spoke Spanish,

and this and his knowledge
of Latino culture

he supposedly used
to his advantage

when he was cruising around in
gay neighborhoods from Tijuana

up to Southern California.

He would pick up hitchhikers,
anybody he could find,

young male, and entice them
into his car, his little VW,

drive them around.

And then he would
reach into the back

and pull out a .22
caliber derringer,

and when the person had
turned his head to the right,

he would shoot him right
in the side of the head

at the temple, which
made it kind of strange.

You shoot a person in your car.

Now what are you
going to do with them?

He would drive
to an isolated area,

pull over, and then
have sexual relations,

necrophilia, which
is kind of strange.

Why would a person do that?

What is the satisfaction
they're gaining out of that?

Is it because he has killed
the person who he thinks

could have been a bully to him?

Is there a sexual reason why
he does commit these crimes?

That was his MO, and he would
do it time and time again,

pick up either a hitchhiker or
somebody near a gay community,

have them sit in the car.

And then, when they
weren't looking,

he would shoot him in the head.

Patrick Kearney opened his
house to these young men,

so it was known in the gay
community that Patrick was--

and David Hill, his roommate--
were gay and would welcome

people over, and so it was
not unusual for him to be

entertaining young men
in his house, not all

of which he killed, of course.

He was not strong enough to
overpower some of his victims,

which is why he shot them.

But afterwards, he
would beat their bodies,

mutilate their bodies,
violate their bodies

in a necrophilic fashion
as a kind of punishment

after death for the things that
he had suffered growing up.

Pat Kearney was
a pre-war generation

and was very closeted, and also
lived in a time when to be gay

was in itself regarded
as a sick-- a criminal offense.

A lot of gay people
grow up with a lot

of internalized self-loathing.

And even if you come
to accept yourself,

you have this internal struggle
that you've been picked on,

you've been bullied, you've
been afraid of yourself

because of your own feelings.

I mean, up until
1973, being gay was

considered a mental illness.

So if you're growing
up before that time

and look it up in a book,
you think, God,

this means I'm sick.

This means I should
go to a doctor.

And you internalize this.

And he might have this sense
that by killing other men, and

other gay men in particular,
he might be killing

the gayness in himself.

The thing that strikes me
about Patrick Wayne Kearney

is how careful, at least
in the early years of killing,

that he was.

He would remove the bullet
from his victim in order

not to allow it to be
traced to his gun,

and he would take
other measures.

You know, clean things
off so that fingerprints

would not be apparent and it
wouldn't be tracked to him.

So he seemed to be
smarter than maybe

the average serial
killer, at least at first.

But as his pace
increased in killing,

things happen
and you get sloppy

and you leave more clues.

He was an electrical
engineer, and

he paid attention
to details and

tried not to leave
clues that would

make it easy
for detectives to find him.

That's a cold-hearted,
dispassionate, dangerous,

obviously, personality.

There's no way to tell.

He's not an enraged person.

He's not attacking
and violently doing--

he's sneaky.

He sneaks up
behind his victims.

They don't know what's coming.

He doesn't torture them.

He doesn't beat them
until they're dead.

And that kind of fit
with his personality,

kind of quiet and unassuming.

Nobody at Hughes
Aircraft had any idea

that he was this monster.

It was the next day
that Patrick Kearney

went over to Hughes
Aircraft and he resigned.

He-- he left.

And he got his paycheck,
his last paycheck.

He and David Hill
headed to Texas,

and they ended up
in El Paso, Texas.

The reason they
left was because they

knew at the interview
the police were getting close.

There's nationwide bulletins,
the FBI's most wanted list.

Every law enforcement
agency in the country

has got the paperwork on them.

And then they were contacted
by their relatives and said,

hey, you can work this out.

It can be worked out.

It just-- come back, talk
to the police, you know,

explain what happened.

And they did.

They came back.

And what was
interesting about that,

they came back
to the Riverside headquarters

of the sheriff's department.

They went in there
to the reception area.

They said to the desk officer,
we're here to turn ourselves

in to talk to the police.

And they pointed to a poster on
the wall and said, that's us.

To be honest with you,
I was quite surprised.

It's a hot afternoon.

I get a call, hey, we've got
Patrick Kearney and David Hill.

Okay, well,
how did that happen?

I mean, if you were on to them
you were chasing them down,

how come I wasn't informed?

What the-- what's
going on here?

And, obviously, no one
knew what was happening.

They just walked
in and turned themselves in.

The interview takes place
within 15 or 20 minutes.

We start-- we record it.

He's advised of his rights.

I was able to interview
him for hours.

Two men, Patrick
Kearney and David Hill,

wanted for questioning
in two murders,

surrendered here last Friday.

Officers also wanted
to talk to them about five

other similar killings.

Mutilated remains
of five young men

have been found in three
other counties since 1975.

But Sheriff Ben Clark says
the two led his investigators

to believe the suspects
may be responsible for 30

to 40 killings.

The sheriff isn't sure the
final toll will be that high.

I didn't know what to expect.

He presents himself
as mild mannered.

He's just quiet,
reserved, polite,

and it's a little
bit frightening.

He has nothing about
his facade that

would give you any
inkling at all that

he invites young men
over to his house,

puts a derringer
to their head, kills

them, unbeknownst to them,
catching them by surprise.

According to him,
almost a monthly basis

during the last
couple of years.

The agreement was,
and these are tough decisions,

Kearney said, okay, you take
the death penalty off the table

and I'll tell you where
all the bodies are.

So the prosecutor
had a tough decision

for the families
of all those victims,

and we're talking
a lot, 20, 30, 40.

Is it beneficial to get the
remains of all of those victims

so they can be
buried properly, how

the family would
like it to be done,

or should you go
for the death penalty?

The decision was made
by the district attorney

of San Bernardino
and the other locations, okay,

it would be fine to take the
death penalty off the table,

allow him to plead guilty.

Patrick Kearney
started to sing.

He sang about the whole
thing from the beginning.

The purpose of my being
at the interview

was mostly an expected but not
forthcoming insanity defense.

So I wanted to find out
if that was-- that was really

a viable issue with him.

My doubt was erased immediately
during the interview

when I asked him about
the first one he did.

When he described the first
body that he had disposed of,

the first one he
killed, he said,

the guy's name was George,
and I dumped him off

in Van Nuys Avenue
and buried him

under a garage 15 years ago.

He drew us a map of where
the body supposedly was.

Well, obviously, the interview
is being recorded.

The LAPD is on their way to dig
this thing up within minutes,

unbeknownst to him.

And they went to this garage,
they looked, they had the map,

and they found a box
of bones with a skull that

had hacksaw blade marks in it.

Kearney described
the fact that he'd

taken the bullet out of the
man's skull with a hacksaw.

That gave him some credibility
in terms of him claiming

to have killed so many people.

And when you ask him, well,
Patrick, why would you have

sex with the body afterwards?

He says, well, there's
no reasonable explanation

for that.

You know, I understand
it's kind of bizarre.

And he gives a perfectly
rational answer.

The fact that he's so
nonchalant about it is scary.

We had the M'Naghten test
back then for insanity,

and it basically is
knowing right from wrong.

He absolutely knew
right from wrong.

He-- he was embarrassed by it.

He was a little bit
reluctant to talk

about the details of his sexual
behavior because of that.

And he says, sometimes
I did it, didn't do it.

Sometimes I got mad and did it,
and sometimes I didn't do it.

So he could control
his actions.

Legally defining
somebody insane

is different than
what you and I say.

There's something
wrong with that guy.

Everybody would agree there's
something wrong with that.

It's so out of touch with
normal human behavior.

But to meet
the legal definition

of insanity, pretty tough.

He kept his word.

He showed where all
the bodies were.

Now, not all the bodies were
found, because some of them

were not necessarily
put in trash bags.

Some were buried.

John Lamay was found without
a head, hands, or feet,

and those were never found.

Patrick Kearney later told us
that we would never find those,

because he put them
in commercial trash bins

at McDonald's and Wendy's.

And once they're gone
off to the trash,

as Patrick Kearney said, they
spend millions of dollars

getting rid of that.

You'll never find them.

I knew that he was dumped
on the side of a highway.

I knew John was murdered.

I didn't realize who he
was really murdered by,

and the scope of this
man was 15 years of doing

this and getting away with it.

And do it so methodically,
to cut the hands off

and the head off so that they
couldn't actually identify him

with fingerprints, I
couldn't believe anybody that

could do something so evil.

At the same time that these
trash bag murders were being

committed, Kearney was
in a long-term relationship,

not necessarily monogamous,
but a long term relationship,

cohabiting, and this was for
a period of almost 10 years.

And Hill evidently had no part
and no knowledge of anything

that was going on that
Kearney was doing

as this violent serial killer.

We know that he shot
Mr. Lamay in his own house,

but what happened after
that, how he concealed

this life from his lover, the
man he was living with for so

many years, is a mystery.

Patrick confessed
to everything

and had a credible
confession, pointing

out somebody that he had
killed 15 years ago and buried.

No one knew anything about it.

And Hill denied
anything, and Kearney

said that Hill had
nothing to do with it

and didn't know, was gone
sometimes for weeks at a time.

Maybe he suspected,
but he didn't know.

Sounds pretty incredible
to me that you wouldn't know,

but having knowledge of it
and participating in it

and having to prove it
are two different things.

I mean, the grand jury
didn't indict him.

There wasn't sufficient
evidence connecting him.

Patrick Kearney's
charged with first degree

murder in Riverside.

He and his attorney have an
argument over how to proceed,

and he had him examined.

Wants to put forth
a mental defense.

But Patrick wouldn't do it,
and he did not want to--

to claim that he was insane or
that he had diminished capacity

or he couldn't
control his actions.

I don't think he would
have won on that anyway.

We brought him back to court.

He pled guilty and then
went to each county

and pled guilty to all
the ones that law

enforcement could document and
make sure that he was the one.

It wasn't just random, willy
nilly, there's 50 bodies

and let's just tag
him with everything.

You've got to be
careful about it.

It was a difficult thing to do.

A lot of them were
not absolutely

identified by forensic means.

Some of them, I mean,
they were so old,

there's nothing but bones.

We have missing
persons reports.

We know Patrick Kearney said,
these are the people I killed,

and he confessed.

That's why we ended up--

he says, quite credibly,
30 to 40 men he

killed, and pled guilty to 21.

He's sentenced
to consecutive sentences.

He went to San Quentin.

There he sat quietly.

He never appealed anything.

He just served his time.

I received one letter from him.

He hinted at wanting
to play chess.

I remember my mom saying that
the one thing she's thankful

for in all of this
that came out

was that John's death
caught this monster.

You can imagine
the task force

opened the champagne, said,
thank goodness that's over.

We have taken care
of this monster who

has been dumping bodies
along the freeways

after murdering them.

There was such a relief.

It was over.

The community is safe.

However, more bodies
are showing up.

And then more bodies turn
up, and yet more bodies.

And you can imagine
what they were thinking.

Could we have two people
like this out there?

This is the 33rd
killing of the same

type in the last few months.

If they thought
that it was over,

well, they were wrong, because
the madness was just beginning.

The bodies just kept piling up
at a very disturbing frequency.

This killer was relentless.

Young hitchhiking kids
are being picked up, raped,

strangled, and dumped naked.

There's no evidence
left behind.

Today, the nude
body of a teenage boy

was found propped up
against a back alley door.

He had been choked to death.

A witness said
she saw a hitchhiker

gassed and pulled into a van.

They showed us a board,
and there were probably

45 names at least
on this chart,

and it was titled Southern
California homosexual murders.

They hadn't solved
solve the freeway murders.