Norris and Bittaker: The Toolbox Killers
By: Delani R. Bartlette
Tags: Murder, History, True Crime, Serial Killers, Crime

Bittaker and Norris had met in 1977 at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo. Norris had a lengthy record of rapes and attempted rapes going back years. In fact, he had been discharged from the Navy after an attempted rape and was diagnosed with severe schizoid personality. He was later committed to Atascadero State Hospital as a mentally disordered sex offender, but was released after five years when the doctors there declared him no longer a threat to society.

Bittaker, despite having an IQ of 138, also had a long rap sheet, mostly involving theft and transporting stolen goods. But during one of this many stints behind bars, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist and diagnosed as a borderline psychopath. He finally landed in San Luis Obispo for stabbing a store clerk who attempted to stop him from stealing a steak.

The two bonded over their shared sadistic fantasies. Behind bars, they hatched their plan to abduct, rape, and torture girls between the ages of 13 and 19.

Bittaker was released on parole in November 1978, and Norris was paroled in January of the following year. Both appeared to be model parolees; Bittaker got a job as a machinist in the aircraft industry making six figures, and Norris landed a decent-paying job as an electrician.

But only a month after Norris got out of prison, the two began working to turn their fantasies into reality. Their first step was to buy the van, which they nicknamed “Murder Mack,” in homage to another sadistic duo, the Hillside Stranglers.

They began cruising the area between Redondo Beach and Santa Monica, picking up hitchhikers. At first, the two did nothing other than take pictures of the girls they picked up. They were perfecting their technique — much like Edmund Kemper, they wanted to practice, to see what made the girls trust them, and to ingratiate themselves amongst the many teens who would hang out in the area. They were also scouting out secluded locations where they could put their plan into practice.

Before long, they escalated to rape. Some of the girls, they lured in with the promise of a ride or the offer to smoke weed. Others, like Robeck, they grabbed and forced into the van before attacking them. Their sexual assaults always included binding their victims and beating them, sometimes with their hands, sometimes with tools they kept in the van for just that purpose.

Soon they found the perfect location to take their fantasies to the next level: an isolated fire road in the Angeles National Forest near Glendora. The area was extremely remote and rugged, with steep cliffs, and prone to flash floods. Bittaker broke the lock on the gate and replaced it with his own. Now everything was in place.

On June 24,1979, the two spotted Schaefer walking along the street and agreed she was a “cute little blond.” They launched into their usual MO, pulling up alongside her and offering her a ride. She refused. So they tried offering her some weed; again, she refused. So the two drove a little farther and pulled over. Norris stepped out, opened the side door, and leaned inside as though he was fixing something on the door. As Schaefer walked by, he grabbed her and dragged her into the van.

Bittaker drove to the hideout, turning the music up as high as it would go to drown out Schaefer’s screams. Meanwhile, Norris bound and gagged her with duct tape.

The two took turns raping her. Then, they argued over whether to kill her; Norris claimed he wanted to release her, but Bittaker insisted on killing her. Bittaker claimed the opposite. But in the end, they decided to kill her.

First, Norris attempted to strangle her, but became upset and vomited. So Bittaker finished the job, first using his hands, then the wire hanger, which he tightened with a pair of pliers. They wrapped her body in a shower curtain and threw her over a cliff, where Bittaker said the animals would dispose of all the evidence.

Two weeks later, they picked up Hall as she was hitchhiking. However, when Norris attempted to subdue her, she fought back. He was finally able to twist her arm behind her back and gag her with duct tape, then he bound her wrists and ankles.

They took her to the fire road, just past where they had taken Schaefer. There, the two raped and tortured her multiple times using a sledgehammer, icepick, and pliers. Bittaker forced her to pose while he took pictures. They drove farther down the rugged, isolated road before Bittaker took Hall up a nearby hill. Norris said he then left to go buy food. When he returned, Bittaker was alone, but had two Polaroids of Hall, her face in “sheer terror.” Norris said Bittaker told him that he had forced Hall to give him a list of reasons to spare her life. Hall did so, but Bittaker didn’t think her reasons were good enough. He stabbed her in both sides of her skull with an icepick, then strangled her and threw her body off a cliff.

They took a break for a couple months, until Labor Day weekend. That’s when they picked up Gilliam and Lamp. At first, the four smoked weed together, but once the girls realized Bittaker was driving away from the beach, they panicked. Lamp tried to open the side door, and was almost successful, until Norris knocked her out with his homemade sap. Norris then began binding Gilliam. Because of the struggle, Bittaker pulled the van over near some tennis courts, where Lamp came to. She was able to get the side door open and almost escape. Norris twisted her arm and dragged her back into the van; Bittaker punched Gilliam in the face and helped Norris bind the two. However, there were people nearby who witnessed the struggle. Norris told them the girls were just having a bad trip.

With the two now under their control, they drove to the murder site. Over the next two days, they repeatedly raped and tortured Gilliam (they had no interest in Lamp because she was “too fat”). Bittaker recorded himself raping her and had Norris take several pictures of him with Gilliam. He also forced Lamp to strip and pose while he took pornographic pictures of her.

Bittaker and Norris would take turns sleeping in the van alongside their hostages while the other acted as lookout. After two days, they decided to kill the girls. They killed Gilliam by stabbing her in the ear with an icepick. They forced Lamp out of the van, where Norris hit her in the head with a sledgehammer. Bittaker then strangled her.

But Lamp was still a fighter. When she opened her eyes, Norris struck her with the sledgehammer, again and again, while Bittaker strangled her. Once she was finally dead, her body, along with Gilliam’s, was thrown over an embankment.

Ledford was their final victim. When they picked her up, Norris said, she was already “loaded” from the party. He also said she recognized Bittaker, since he was a regular customer at a restaurant where she waited tables.

Norris said Bittaker told him to take the wheel. Norris said he drove around aimlessly with the radio blaring to cover the screams as Bittaker repeatedly raped and tortured Ledford. Then the two switched places; while Norris brutalized her, Bittaker drove. They recorded these attacks as they had the others, until Norris strangled her with a wire hanger.

Norris said it was Bittaker’s idea to dump her in a public location to see how the press would react.

As part of his plea deal, Norris agreed to take investigators to where they had dumped the bodies of their first four victims. He led them to the spot where Gilliam and Lamp had been dumped. Their skeletonized remains were found scattered along a dry creekbed. Lamp’s skull bore multiple blunt-force trauma fractures and Gilliam’s was found with an ice pick still in it, corroborating Norris’ testimony.

Despite multiple searches, the remains of Hall and Shaefer were never found.

Bittaker refused to admit to anything.

In March 1980, Norris pled guilty to four counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder (for the murder of Hall), two counts of rape, and one count of robbery. He was sentenced to 45 years to life, with eligibility for parole.

Bittaker was charged with a total of 29 counts of kidnapping, rape, sodomy, murder, possession of firearms, and multiple charges of criminal conspiracy. The Robeck rape charges had been dropped for lack of evidence.

He pled not guilty; his trial began in January 1981. Besides witness testimony (especially Norris’), the most damning evidence of his guilt was the graphic 17-minute tape of the rape and torture that had been found in the van. The voices on the tape were clearly Ledford — crying, screaming, begging for mercy — and Bittaker and Norris, mocking her and ordering her to scream for them.

When it was played, several spectators, prosecutors, and jurors were forced to leave the courtroom in tears; some threw up. After the trial, several jurors needed trauma counseling; the prosecuting attorney later stated that he had recurring nightmares for years after hearing that tape. Six years after the trial, one of the chief investigators committed suicide, and in his note, wrote how the Bittaker and Norris crimes continued to haunt him.

Bittaker, who smiled calmly while it was being played, claimed the tape was of a consensual threesome. His defense was that Norris had killed all the victims without his knowledge.

After deliberating for three days, the jury found Bittaker guilty of five counts of first-degree murder, one charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, five charges of kidnapping, nine charges of rape, two charges of forcible oral copulation, one charge of sodomy, and three charges of unlawful possession of a firearm. Five days later, they sentenced him to death.