Monday, May 11, 1967

The Orange County Register

A7

Deadly toll
Randy Kraft is accused of Killing 16 men whose bodies were found in or near Orange County. Here are the names and ages of the 16, plus the date and location where their bodies were found:
1 Edward Daniel Moore, 20, of Louisville, Ky. Found Dec. 26, 1972, on the 7th Street off-ramp to the S a n Gabriel River (I605) Freeway in Seal Beach. 2 John Doe, approximately 16 to 20 years old. Found April 14,1973, near Ellis Avenue west of Gothard Street in Huntington Beach. 3 Ronnie Gene Wiebe. 20, of Fullerton. Found July 30, 1973, on the 7th Street onramp to the San Diego Freeway in Seal Beach. 4 Keith Daven Crotwell, 19, of Long Beach. Partial remains found May 8, 1975, in the Long Beach Marina, and Oct. 19, 1975, a mile from the intersection of El Toro Road and the San Diego (I-5) Freeway in south Orange County. 5 Mark Howard Hail. 22, of Pocatello, Idaho. Found Jan. 3, 1976, on Bedford Peak in the Saddleback Mountains. 6 Scott Michael Hughes, 18, of Monroe, Wash. Found April 16, 1978, on the Euclid Street on-ramp to Riverside Freeway in Anaheim. 7 Roland Gerald Young, 23, of Maywood. Found June 11,1978, on Irvine Center Drive in Irvine. 8 Richard Allen Keith. 20, of New Castle, Ind. Found June 19, 1978, near Moulton Parkway a half-mile north of La Paz in unincorporated Orange County. 9 Keith Arthur Klingbeil. 23, of Chula Vista. Found July 6,1978, three miles south of the La Paz off-ramp on the northbound San Diego (I-5) Freeway in unincorporated Orange County. 10 Michael Joseph Inderbieten, 21, of Long Beach. Found Nov. 18, 1978, on an on-ramp to the San Diego and San Gabriel River freeways in Seal Beach. 11 Donnie Harold Crisel, 20, of Des Arc, Ark. Found June 16, 1979, on the Irvine Center Drive on-ramp for the northbound San Diego (1-5) Freeway in Irvine. 12 Robert Wyatt Loggins Jr., 19, of Montclair. Found Sept. 3, 1980, along Paseo Sombra in El Toro. 13 Eric Herbert Church, 21, of Coventry, Conn. Found Jan. 27, 1983, on the 7th Street on-ramp to the northbound S a n Gabriel River (I-605) Freeway in Seal Beach. 14 Geoffrey Alan Nelson. 18, of Buena Park. Found Feb. 12, 1983, on the Euclid Street on-ramp to the Garden Grove (22) Freeway in Garden Grove. 15 Rodger James DeVaul Jr., 20, of Buena Park. Found Feb. 13, 1983. near Glendora Ridge Road in the Angeles National Forest. 16 Terry Lee Gambrel, 25, of Crothersville, Ind. Found May 14, 1983, on the San Diego (I-5) Freeway near the Oso Parkway in south Orange County.

y^ id ] fi A 7

Craig PursleyThe Register

Kraft has been linked to an additional 21 murders in three states:

Orange County:
E E Wayne J. Dukette, 30, of Long Beach. Found Oct. 5, 1971, in Viejo Canyon off Ortega Highway, approximately 15 miles east of the San Diego Freeway. E E ] G a r y Cordova, 23, of Pasadena. Found Aug. 17, 1974, on Cabot Road near the O s o Parkway in south Orange County. EE)James Dale Reeves, 19, of Cypress. Found Nov. 29,1974, along Barranca Road just east of Jeffrey Road in Irvine. KOJJohn Leras, 17, of Long Beach. Found Jan. 4,1975, in the water off Sunset Beach. Jeffrey Sayre, 15, of Santa Ana. Disappeared Nov. 24, 1979. Body never found.

3 ] Roger Dickerson. 18, of Albany, Ore. Found June 22, 1974, on Ceanothus Drive in the unincorporated South Laguna area of Orange County.

86.

June 2, 1974, near a bridge along Highway

Los Angeles County

Paul Fuchs. 19, of Long Beach. Disappeared Dec. 18, 1976. Body never found.

S a n Bernardino County
Vincent Cruz Mestas, 24, of Long Beach. Found Dec. 12,1973, on Highway 18 north of Old Waterman Canyon Road. Richard Anthony Crosby, 20, of Wilmington. Found Sept. 30, 1978, near the Pomona Freeway in Chino. Gregory Wallace Jolley, 19 of Jacksonville, Fla. Found Sept. 14,1979, along Highway 330 in San Bernardino. Christopher Allen Williams, 17, of Ohio. Found Aug. 20, 1981, in Blue Jay.

San Diego County

Mikeai Laine, 21, of Modesto, Stanislaus County. Skull found Jan. 9, 1984, on Highway 67 in Ramona.

Michael Duane Cluck. 17, of Kent, Wash. Found April 10, 1981, in front of the entrance to a landfill near Eugene. Brian H. Whitcher, 26, of Portland, Ore. Found Nov. 24, 1982, on a rural road near Wilsonville, Clackamas County. John Doe, believed to be approximately 35. Found July 18, 1980, near Salem. Anthony Jose Silveira, 29, of Eagle, Ore. Found Dec. 18, 1982, on a rural road near Hubbard.

Oregon
Lance Trenton Taggs, 19, of Aiea, Hawaii. Found Dec. 9, 1982, in Charbonneau, Clackamas County. Michael Sean O'Fallon, 17, of Golden, Colo. Found July 17, 1980, on an on-ramp to Interstate 5 south of Salem.

Michigan
Christopher Allen Shoenborn, 20, of Conklin, Mich. Found Dec. 9, 1982, in a field north of Grand Rapids. Dennis Patrick Alt, 24, of Alpine Township, Mich. Found Dec. 9, 1982, in a field north of Grand Rapids.

Imperial County
Malcolm Little, 20, of Selma, Ala. Found

CHAPTER 7
F R O M A6 ing to his sister. Eddie, who hadn't had anything to eat in a couple of days, listened as the court decided to take custody away from his parents and give him to his married sister. His mother pleaded with the judge not to take her baby away, but it did no good. A s M r s . Moore was led from the courtroom, she stumbled. The family later learned she had had a stroke. She died soon afterward. Eddie took on the role of a big brother to his sister's four daughters. He was physically slight, a gentle boy with sandy blond hair who read M a r k Twain, liked checkers and archery, and hopd to learn to play golf. Like other adolescent boys, he was interested in cars, and he spent a lot of time drawing pictures of them. Sharon Lawnisazac, Moore's niece, remembers that he seemed vulnerable and a little naive. " H e believed a lot what people told him," she said recently. " N o t everybody's a nice guy." He was not a tough person, and sometimes people gave him a hard time, she said. Years later, investigators would ask her and her mother a lot of questions about Eddie's sexual orientation. Lawnisazac thinks she once heard a rumor going around "that maybe he had homosexual tendencies," but she said she never knew for sure. In the summer of 1970, after Eddie had moved out of his sister's house, he showed Sharon a ring. He said he was going to ask a girl to get married. " H e was extremely happy that day," Sharon said. That was the last time she ever saw him. " H e seemed happiest when he

Edward Moore was with us," Sharon recalled. But Eddie Moore and his brother-in-law didn't see eye to eye, his sister said, so he moved on. He went to live with another sister in Chicago, and then to a boys' home in Frankfort, Ky. In January 1972 he joined the Marines. He trained at Parris Island in South Carolina and then went to C a m p Pendleton in San Diego County as a member of Company A, 1st Engineers Battalion of the 1st Marine Division. He never had been that far from Louisville before, and his sister said he called and wrote often. He enjoyed being in the Marines, Patricia said, and talked about becoming a lifer. He seemed proud of himself, confident. Patricia said she could see it in his face. After his death, however, investigators determined that life in California had not been easy for Eddie Moore. A 1975 memo about a series of unsolved homicides written by Orange County district attorney's Investigator George Troup paints a picture of Moore as a young man with few friends, a loner who frequented bars in Oceanside and San Clemente and sometimes traveled to Long Beach. When he could not get rides with other Marines,

Terry Gambrel Troup's memo says, he took buses and hitchhiked. Patricia talked to her brother for the last time shortly before Christmas 1972. He seemed to want to come home for the holidays, she said, and she thinks he may have been attempting to hitchhike back East when he was killed. Investigators last place him in Oceanside at 11:30 on the night of Dec. 22. On Dec. 26, his body was found near the 7th Street offramp of the southbound San Gabriel River (1-605) Freeway in Seal Beach. A n autopsy determined that he had been strangled, probably three days before his body was found. He was still wearing his blue nylon jacket with its Stars and Stripes, Marine Corps and Confederate flag patches. A rabbit's-foot charm was attached to his belt loop. The Marines sent Moore's body home in a sealed casket. It arrived in Louisville on his sister's birthday.

A small-town story
Terry Gambrel grew up in an area between Crothersville, Ind., population 1,747, and nearby Brownstown, a farm town where he and his twin brother, Jerry, attended school. >

" W e ' r e out in the sticks, more or less between the two," Jerry Gambrel said. Jerry still lives in the small frame house on an acre of land that used to belong to their grandmother. She raised the twins and their sister after their parents divorced when Jerry and Terry were a few months old. Their grandmother didn't have a car, so the boys didn't go into town much. Their world was their front yard. They played football, whiffle ball, chess and checkers there. They loved to compete, particularly Terry. Later, at Brownstown Central High, he was the school's best chess player and played on a team that won the intramural basketball championship. He and his brother started a softball team, the Huskies, that won a lot of trophies. Terry, a strong lefthander, played first base. His brother said he was an average fielder but a great hitter. After high school, Jerry went to work in a shoe factory. But Terry was starting to feel stifled by small-town life. " H e wanted to go out and see the world," Jerry said. " H e realized there wasn't enough here in Indiana." So in 1976 he joined the Marines. Terry served in California at Camp Pendelton on his first hitch. " H e really liked it, after basic training," Jerry said. But the allure wore off. He missed his friends and playing on the Huskies. When his enlistment was up in 1979, he moved back to Indiana. His sister, who also worked at the shoe factory, helped him get a job there, and he settled into a life of work, softball and good times. Jerry, meanwhile, had a new job in nearby Seymour at the Lear Siegler factory. By coincidence, Randy Kraft, who has

been charged with murdering Jerry's brother, within a year would begin working for the same company a couple of thousand miles away. Through co-workers, Jerry became active in a church in Austin and joined the church's softball team. Meanwhile, Terry was becoming bored with his job. In 1981, he and Tim Kenton, a former Marine buddy, went backpacking in Europe. When he returned, he re-enlisted in the Marines. Terry was assigned to the Marine base in E l Toro, where he worked in the administrative offices handling personnel records. " H e was a good worker," recalled Capt. James Pettengill, his boss. But he had a hard time fitting in. He had lost a rank by interrupting his service, and he didn't seem interested in the rock concerts and stereos his younger co-workers enjoyed. Instead, Terry played softball and basketball and hung out with a few friends. When he returned home to Indiana on leave, Terry would accompany his brother to church. He became interested in religion for a while, Jerry recalls, but it never lasted. " H e always liked the wild life," Jerry said, until he became interested in a woman whose father was a minister in Austin. She had a friend who went to Jerry's church, and she attended social gatherings there. In December 1982, she and Terry started going together. Everything was starting to come together for Terry when he went back to Indiana for a visit in M a y 1983. Jerry said Terry and his girlfriend were planning to get married.

A couple of weeks before he left for Indiana, Terry left his brown and white 1978 Mercury Bobcat in an Irvine shopping center. He told his brother the Bobcat had a bad exhaust system and he was afraid to drive it. When he returned to the base M a y 8, the Bobcat had been towed away. On M a y 12, Ronald Phillips, Terry's former roommate, saw him at lunch and invited him to a party at his new apartment in Santa Ana. After playing in a softball game, Terry stopped briefly at his room. He showered, read a letter, then pulled an already packed overnight bag from his locker. Information gathered by investigators indicates that he headed out to the highway to hitchhike to the party. He never made it. At about 1 the next morning on the San Diego (1-5) Freeway near Mission Viejo, two California Highway Patrol officers pulled over a weaving Toyota Celica. After the driver, Randy Kraft, failed a sobriety test, he was arrested. Then, according to testimony, they discovered a dead man in the front passenger seat. The man was Terry Gambrel. At T e r r y ' s funeral, his brother asked the minister for a favor: "Just plant the seeds to help somebody else maybe get saved," Jerry Gambrel asked. The minister obliged, preaching to the mourners about embracing salvation while they still had time. If Terry Gambrel's death could plant seeds in the furrows of others' souls, Jerry could look upon the twist of fate that had taken his brother and at least see some good in it, he said. Tuesday: The victims' families wait for the trial to begin.