The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (52 page)

iff’s revolver, and FBI Agent Ron Angel shot him dead Kodaira took a six-month breather after that, claimin his tracks.

ing his next victim—15-year-old Abe Yoshiko—on June
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KOKORALEIS, Andrew and Thomas

30, 1946. Two more would follow before he was finally kidnapping and rape. He escaped from custody en caught by police.

route to trial and remained at large for another four With no more female employees to victimize, Kodaira years, graduating to murder in February 1997. Over had worked out a new approach for himself, loitering in the next five months, he killed at least nine women, public places, offering to help young women purchase impersonating a cab driver as he cruised Tehran’s food or other items on Tokyo’s thriving black market.

streets by night, in search of victims. The women who So it was that Kodaira met 17-year-old Midorikawa entered his “taxi” were raped and stabbed repeatedly, Ryuko on July 10, striking up a friendship that included then doused with gasoline and set on fire in an effort visits to her home, where he foolishly gave his real name to disguise Kordiyeh’s crimes. Some of the bodies were to the young woman’s parents. Ryuko disappeared on imperfectly consumed by flame, allowing investigators August 6, leaving home to meet Kodaira for an alleged to count up to 30 stab wounds on a single corpse.

job interview; her nude corpse was found at Tokyo’s Police dubbed their quarry the “Tehran Vampire”

Zojoji Temple a few days later. A second body, found after his night-prowling habits but were confounded in nearby, was identified as Shinokawa Tatsue, reported their search for the slayer until Kordiyeh got careless, missing by her parents in Shibuya.

allowing two victims to slip through his grasp. The Police went looking for Kodaira after they obtained women helped authorities prepare a suspect sketch, and his name from Ryuko’s parents, and he freely confessed they swiftly identified Kordiyeh following his June arrest his crimes with no plea for leniency and was sentenced for acting suspicious at a Tehran shopping mall. Con-to death on August 20, 1947. (In addition to the mur-fronted with the evidence—including human bloodstains ders, he confessed to 30 or more rapes where the vicin his car—Kordiyeh duly confessed to the murders. His tims survived.) Two years and two months later, on the trial was broadcast live on state-run television for a fasci-morning of October 5, 1949, Kodaira was hanged at nated audience, and the vampire was sentenced to hang.

Miyagi Prison.

Befitting the occasion, Kordiyeh’s execution on In the wake of his execution, Japanese author Edo-August 12, 1997, was a public spectacle. Twenty thou-gawa Rampo tried to make sense of the case. “The type sand spectators turned out for the event, chanting of crime he committed was not particularly unusual,”

“Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) while Kordiyeh Edogawa wrote, “but to have repeated it, using the received a flogging of 214 lashes from relatives of his same methods, was definitely unusual. This incident can victims. That ritual complete, the semiconscious stalker be attributed to the relaxation of morals that has was hanged from a bright yellow construction crane, occurred since the end of the war. This is because all of erected near the scene of his crimes. His last words, us—the criminal, his victims, and society at large—all before the crane hoisted him aloft, were: “I borrowed bear some guilt. Moreover, the atmosphere of social money from no one, and I owe none to anyone. I ask neglect brought on by Japan’s defeat has brought out God for forgiveness for what I did.”

the beast in such individuals, particularly men who Iranian authorities, meanwhile, were less than satis-have returned from battle.”

fied with the result of the public display, fearing that Edogawa did not not seem to think that “the beast”

Kordiyeh’s example might inspire lethal copycats.

had been deliberately evoked by Japanese wartime tac-Before year’s end, another Tehran cabbie was arrested tics reflected in such incidents as the Rape of Nanking, for attempting to molest a female passenger. According where at least 300,000 unarmed civilians were mur-to press reports, the would-be rapist boasted to police, dered in cold blood, girls and women raped by the tens

“I’m going to be the next Tehran Vampire.”

of thousands in an orgy of violence officially con-doned—and shared—by superior officers. It was, perhaps, more comforting to share the blame among
KRAFT, Randy Steven

Kodaira’s victims than to recognize the truth, namely, Shortly after 1:00 A.M. on May 14, 1983, highway that Imperial Japan had deliberately, consciously pro-patrol officers in Orange County, California, stopped a duced a generation of pitiless rapists and killers.

weaving motorist suspected of intoxication. The driver, Randy Kraft, immediately left his vehicle, all smiles as he approached the cruiser to conduct his business.

KOKORALEIS, Andrew and Thomas

See

Growing more suspicious by the moment, the officers

“CHICAGO RIPPERS”

walked Kraft back to his car, where they found Terry Gambrel, a 25-year-old marine, slumped dead in the
KORDIYEH, Gholomreza Khoshruy Kuran

passenger’s seat. He had been strangled with a belt, and An Iranian serial killer born in 1969, Gholomreza Kraft was booked on suspicion of murder and held in Kordiyeh logged his first arrest at age 24 on charges of lieu of $250,000 bail.

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December 1982. Investigators learned that Kraft had worked for a Santa Monica—based aerospace firm between June 1980 and January 1983, visiting company offices in Oregon and Michigan at the times of unsolved murders in both states.

As names were added to the list of victims, prosecutors cracked the code in Kraft’s notebook. Thus, “2 in 1

Hitch” referred to the double murder of Nelson and De Vaul. “Marine Carson” was a reference to Richard Keith, a young marine last seen in Carson, California, whose strangled body was found in Laguna Hills in June 1978. “Jail Out” described the case of Ronald Young, found stabbed in Irvine hours after his release from the Orange County jail on June 11, 1978. “Parking Lot” recalled memories of an eight-year-old case in which Keith Crotwell had vanished on March 26, 1975. Fishermen found his severed head days later, off

“Scorecard Killer” Randy Kraft in court (right) (Wide World API) the coast of Long Beach, and his skeleton was finally recovered in October. Kraft was briefly questioned in that case, and while he admitted meeting Crotwell in a A background check on Kraft revealed a 1966 arrest parking lot the day he vanished, officers had not consid-for lewd conduct in Huntington Beach, with charges ered him a suspect in the crime. “Euclid” stood for dismissed. He graduated from college a year later with another young marine, Scott Hughes, discarded on the a degree in economics and spent a year in the air force Euclid Street freeway ramp in Anaheim.

before he was discharged on grounds related to HOMO-The list went on and on, with each notation matched SEXUALITY. In 1975, Kraft was arrested in Long Beach to yet another unsolved homicide. A prosecutor work-for lewd conduct with another man; on conviction he ing on the case gave Kraft his nickname, remarking to spent five days in jail and paid a $125 fine.

journalists that “What we have here is a true scorecard The search of Kraft’s impounded auto turned up 47

killer. ”

color photographs depicting several young men, some Eventually charged with 16 murders—and strongly of them naked, some apparently unconscious—or

suspected of 51 others—Kraft delayed his trial for five worse. A briefcase in the trunk contained a notebook years with various legal maneuvers. The trial itself set a filled with more than 60 cryptic messages in some sort new record for Orange County, dragging on for 13

of personal code. A tour of Kraft’s home uncovered fur-months, but Kraft was finally convicted on all counts in ther evidence, convincing the authorities they had a May 1989. The penalty phase of his trial took another most prolific killer on their hands. Kraft’s photographs four months, with the jury recommending death on depicted three young men whose deaths were still August 11, and Kraft was formally condemned on unsolved in southern California. Robert Loggins, a November 29. Confined on death row at San Quentin, teenage marine, had been found dead in September he whiles away the hours playing bridge with fellow 1980; now, police had snapshots of his naked body serial killers DOUGLAS CLARK, LAWRENCE BITFAKER, and stretched out on a couch in Kraft’s home. Roger De (until his 1996 execution) WILLIAM BONIN. Another Vaul, age 20, was last seen alive while hitchhiking with occasional pastime of Kraft’s is frivolous litigation: in a friend, Geoffrey Nelson, on February 12, 1983. Nel-1993 he filed a $60 million libel suit against the pub-son’s body was found in Garden Grove that afternoon; lisher and author of a book about his case, claiming the De Vaul’s had turned up the following day. Eric volume had unfairly portrayed him as a “sick, twisted Church, another chronic hitchhiker, was found dead in man,” thereby scuttling his “prospects for future Orange County on March 27, 1983.

employment”! The lawsuit was dismissed by Califor-And the body count kept rising. Fibers from a rug in nia’s Supreme Court in June 1994.

Kraft’s garage matched those recovered from the corpse of 18-year-old Scott Hughes, discarded along the Riverside Freeway in April 1978. Personal items recovered
KROLL, Joachim

from Kraft’s home included property stolen from three A nomadic German sex killer, Kroll lived in the vicinity of murder victims in Oregon, plus two items belonging to Duisburg, filling his bachelor apartment with electronic a man found dead near Grand Rapids, Michigan, in gadgets and inflatable sex dolls, frequently strangling the
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latter with one hand while he masturbated with the other.

year-old Monica Tafel vanished on her way to school.

Too nervous and shy for sex with conscious partners, he Searchers found her body in a nearby rye field, steaks turned to rape and murder at age 22, killing so often over carved from her buttocks and the back of her thighs.

the next two decades that he lost count of his victims. In Kroll sometimes seemed to change his pattern in an the 1960s Kroll tried CANNIBALISM on a whim, enjoying it effort to confuse police. No meat was taken when he so much that he kept up the practice, stalking “tender”

murdered 12-year-old Barbara Bruder in Burscheid dur-victims in an effort to reduce his grocery bills.

ing 1962. In August 1965 at Grossenbaum, he crept up Kroll’s first remembered victim was 19-year-old Irm-on a pair of young lovers, stabbing a tire on their car, gard Strehl, raped and murdered in a barn near the vil-then fatally knifing the driver, Hermann Schmitz, when lage of Walstede during February 1955. Twelve-year-old he stepped out to investigate the noise. In Marl, Kroll Erika Schuletter was the next to die, raped and strangled raped and murdered Ursula Rolling on September 13, at Kirchhellen in 1956. Three years later and miles 1966, rebounding three months later to kill five-year-away, he killed Klara Jesmer in the woods near Rhein-old Ilona Harke at Wuppertal, slicing steaks from her hausen on June 17, 1959. Sixteen-year-old Manuela buttocks and shoulders.

Knodt was raped and murdered near Bredeney, south of Kroll’s luck nearly ran out in 1967 when he settled Essen, with slices cut from her buttocks and thighs in the briefly in Grafenhausen, befriending local children who first slaying publicly attributed to the man police would began to call him “Uncle.” Luring a 10-year-old girl dub the “Ruhr Hunter.”