World enews: Toolbox Killers: Film details murders by a pair of ex-cons so sadistic that jurors and lawyers wept

When a rapist and a violent offender met in San Luis Obispo Men’s Colony Prison, a deadly bond was forged.

Roy Norris was serving time for stabbing a store clerk who accused him of shoplifting in 1974. Lawrence Bittaker was imprisoned for rape. They discovered a shared interest in sadism and became friends, weaving stories of rape and torture and escalating fantasies.

Once they got out, they acted on those plans – and murdered at least five teenage girls in California with unspeakable brutality. They were nicknamed the Toolbox Killers because they employed a wide array of instruments to inflict pain and death.

If the pair hadn’t been caught, however, the horrific crimes could have escalated even further, according to a criminologist who formed a relationship with Bittaker in the hopes of gleaning the locations of missing victims’ bodies.

Laura Brand, who specializes in the study of serial killers, conducted interviews with Bittaker which inform a new documentary, The Toolbox Killer, currently streaming on various platforms.

“He was going to buy acid to burn out the eardrums and eye sockets of his next victims,” she told Fox News. “He was going to build an underground compound to hold girls and torture them. And he believed he had the brains to pull this off.”

Bittaker and Norris killed their victims over a five-month period, kidnapping the teens – some of whom were walking home or hitchhiking at the time – and drove them to local mountains, where they would torture, rape and kill them, according to authorities.

The girls who ranged from 13 to 18 years old and, in addition to their horrific torture techniques, the men filmed the crimes – which began in June 1979 with the death of Lucinda Lynn Schaefer, 16. She was followed by Andrea Joy Hall, 18; Jacqueline Doris Gilliam, 15; Jacqueline Leah Lamp, 13, and Shirley Lynette Ledford, 16.

They were only caught after Norris told another former inmate about their devious exploits. That inmate told police, which led to the pair’s arrests. Norris eventually testified against Bittaker after pleading guilty to all charges in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty against him.

A Los Angeles County jury convicted Bittaker of five counts of murder, five counts of kidnapping as well as other charges including criminal conspiracy, rape, oral copulation, sodomy and being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to death on 22 March1981 but, since California avoided executions for decades, instead died in prison in 2019.

Norris was sentenced to a term of 45 years to life and died two months later.

Despite extensive searches of the San Gabriel mountains, where the other victims were located, the bodies of Ms Hall and Ms Schaefer were never found.

That’s why criminologist Ms Brand reached out to imprisoned Bittaker. She hoped he could give her more specific details of where the teenagers had been left after their brutal attacks.

“These were very sweet, young girls – just like anybody’s daughter,” Ms Brand told Fox. “And I was persistent. I didn’t give up. I kept trying. And [Bittaker’s] psychopathy was very fascinating.”

She said: “It was almost as if he was at war with himself. He had this tortured childhood with an antisocial personality… My first in-person impression of him was that he was very awkward. He was timid. He wouldn’t even look at me in the eyes for about two and a half hours.

“I think [Bittaker] went through his life alone and full of rage, especially towards his mother,” Brand said. “He had a lot of anger towards women. I don’t think he ever had any sense of family – ever.

That rage was evident in the indescribable torture Bittaker proceeded to inflict on his victims with Norris.

In the documentary, she says: “Over five years, he once said to me: ‘Do you understand what it feels like to actually put an icepick thru someone’s ear and not feel anything?’”

When a tape of Shirley Lynette Ledford was played in court, both jurors and lawyers cried.

“Everybody who has ever heard that tape has had it affect their lives,” prosecutor Stephen Kay, weeping, told reporters during recess. “I just picture those girls, how alone they were when they died.”

Ms Brand felt similarly.

“I only heard a 32-second clip of the Ledford tapes and it felt like somebody was reaching inside of me and squeezing my insides,” she said. “It was gut-wrenching. I was sick just from those mere seconds. This was a severe case of torture even for serial killers.”

Her last interview with Bittaker took place three weeks before his death – and the criminologist said he expressed remorse.

“I think it all sunk in right before his death,” she said. “[But] I was really worried and scared because I still wanted to search for the missing girls. Now I didn’t have him on the phone and I couldn’t go back and visit him to fact-check something.”

She says in the documentary: “This is somebody I talked to every single day. We had a friendship.”

Ms Brand told Fox News she hopes the film will show audiences “a whole different aspect into psychopathy”.

“I’m really grateful that I was able to bring light to the stories of the victims,” she said. “With these [interviews] that I was able to provide, I really wanted to showcase that Cindy and Andrea are still missing. They’re still out there… And it’s heartbreaking. We just want closure for the families.”