Toolbox Killers' sick torture and rape of teenage girls before brutal murders
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris became friends in prison and decided to join forces as they hunted female victims in a sinister van they nicknamed the 'Murder Mac'
Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris are easily one of the most infamous serial killer duos in history. The pair, who struck up a friendship whilst serving time in prison, embarked on a chilling spree of hunting down female victims in their ominously named van, the ' Murder Mac'.
The duo would target young women, abducting, raping, and subjecting them to "astonishing cruelty" before ultimately taking their lives. Their paths first crossed while they were both serving sentences at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo for unrelated crimes. Bittaker was behind bars for stabbing a shop assistant who had confronted him over shoplifting in 1974, whilst Norris was doing time for rape. After discovering their shared sadistic fantasies, the pair concocted a plan to start abducting and torturing girls together, culminating in murder to avoid detection.
Bittaker was released on parole first and found employment in Los Angeles as a machinist. Two months later, Norris also received parole and moved in with his mother in LA, where he started working as an electrician. The duo reconnected in February 1979, setting their horrifying plan into action. From February to June that year, the twisted pair picked up more than 20 female hitchhikers - what investigators believed to be "dry runs" for their impending killing spree.
Bittaker and Norris, a pair of monstrous individuals, kidnapped at least five teenage girls aged between 13 to 18, subjecting them to unimaginable torture before brutally ending their lives. The duo used tools such as screwdrivers, icepicks, and pliers to torment and kill their victims, earning them the terrifying nickname 'The Toolbox Killers'.
These murderers etched their names into the annals of crime history with their reign of terror in southern California's San Gabriel mountains from June to October in 1979. Their victims were identified as: Lucinda Lynn "Cindy" Schaefer, 16; Andrea Joy Hall, 18; Jackie Doris Gilliam, 15; Jacqueline Leah Lamp, 13; and Shirley Lynette Ledford, 16.
Heartbreakingly, the bodies of Schaefer and Hall were never found. Their first victim was 16-year-old Lucinda Lynn Schaefer, who they murdered on June 24. Bittaker and Norris took turns raping the teenager before Bittaker strangled her to death. Andrea Joy Hall became their next prey. After picking her up while she was hitchhiking, they transported her to the same remote location where they had previously killed Lucinda Schaefer.
Once again, they sexually assaulted their victim, forcing her to walk naked along the road before compelling her to perform oral sex on Bittaker. They took photographs of Andrea, which captured an expression of "sheer terror". A month later, the fiends committed a double murder on the same day. Jacqueline Leah Lamp and Jackie Doris Gilliam were hitchhiking together along California's Pacific Coast Highway when Bittaker and Norris offered them a ride.
The girls, aged just 13 and 15, were attacked, held captive for two days and subjected to horrifying torture. Among their victims, 16-year-old Shirley Lennette Ledford was the fifth and final young woman to meet her end at their hands. Ledford was leaving a Halloween party on October 31, 1979, and while hitchhiking, was picked up in the notorious Murder Mac by Bittaker and Norris.
Ledford was held hostage by the Toolbox Killers for nearly two hours as she endured brutal and unspeakable torture, severe physical beatings, verbal abuse, and sexual assault. The teenager's cause of death was strangulation by a wire coat hanger and her lifeless body was left on someone's front lawn, discovered by a jogger the following morning.
The killers were finally apprehended after Norris boasted about their heinous acts to a friend of the two men, who immediately alerted the authorities. In a desperate bid to avoid the death penalty, Norris cooperated with the investigation and chose to plead guilty as he turned against Bittaker. He was handed a sentence of 45 years to life behind bars in April 1981, reports the Mirror US.
Bittaker was sentenced to death on March 22, 1981. However, he died of natural causes while on death row in 2019, having suffered multiple heart attacks that left him feeling "vulnerable". "It's kind of a taste of maybe what my victims were going through," Bittaker admitted to criminologist Laura Brand during an interview for her documentary.
Norris also died of natural causes two months later at the age of 72. "So many people call them soulmates, and you've got to wonder," Brand said. "They died like an old married couple, like they couldn't live without each other." The Toolbox Killers have been labelled as "beyond barbaric", with FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas describing Bittaker as "the most disturbing individual" he had ever profiled.