Randy Steven Kraft grew up as an ordinary, intelligent, and organized child in a working-class household after his family relocated to California. He excelled academically, participated in student government and debate, and later studied economics at Claremont Men’s College while engaging in political activities and serving as a trainee in the Air Force Reserve.

Following his military service, Kraft worked various jobs in Southern California as a bartender, waiter, and computer programmer. Although acquaintances viewed him as articulate and well-dressed, people around him began noticing warning signs such as substance use, unpredictable anger, isolation, and erratic behavior.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, young men and teenagers began disappearing across multiple Southern California counties, with their bodies later discovered near isolated locations and highways. Investigators gradually connected these cases into a pattern of premeditated crimes involving sedatives, eventually convicting Kraft of sixteen murders between 1971 and 1983, though authorities suspected the actual number of victims was much higher.

Kraft’s arrest finally occurred in May 1983 during a routine traffic stop on the 405 Freeway when officers discovered the body of a young Marine, Terry Gambrel, alongside a suspicious notebook containing coded entries that media and investigators dubbed the “Scorecard Killer” list. Following a lengthy trial, he was convicted of sixteen murders in 1989, sentenced to death, and spent decades in custody maintaining his innocence before his sentence was upheld.