This week’s flavor of psychopath is actually a partnership; one of the most disturbing there has ever been. Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris formed together what is now prolifically known as “The Toolbox Killer”. They were ephebophiles who prayed on women to fulfill their fantasies of raping, torturing, recording, and murdering innocent lives just to hear their screams.
Photo by Keller on the Loose
Lawrence Bittaker met Roy Norris in San Luis Obispo Correctional Facility where they were serving time for attempted robbery and assault, respectively. They instantly bonded over their sadistic fantasies and soon formed a close friendship. Whilst still in prison, they began planning how they would later go on to rape, torture, and murder girls when they got out. Soon after, they were both paroled and in 1979 their reign of terror began. It was then that Bittaker bought a 1977 GMC van where their heinous acts would be committed. The pair killed by picking up hitch hikers, drugging them or forcibly tying them up, and then torturing them for hours on end until they finally killed her.
Photo of “Murder Mac” Van
Their first victim was Lucinda Lynn Schaeffer, a sixteen-year-old girl better known as Cindy, that they kidnapped on the way to her grandmother’s house and gagged and bound her in the back of their van. They took her into the mountains where they raped and beat her until finally strangling her to death with metal wires. Their second victim was eighteen-year-old Andrea Hall who was hitchhiking. She was raped, beaten, and photographed by Bittaker in the back of the van and after not liking the answer she gave of whether she should be allowed to live, was stabbed in the ear with an ice pick and strangled to death. Their third and fourth victims were fifteen-year-old Jackie Gilliam and thirteen-year-old Jacqueline Lamp who were taken from a bus stop. They were the duo’s youngest victims and were taken to a location in the mountains where they were repeatedly raped and tortured for two days. They finally met the same end as Hall did with an ice pick to the ear and strangulation with metal wires tightened with pliers. Their fifth and final victim was sixteen-year-old Lynette Ledford who may have received the worst of it all. Her body was mutilated with stab wounds and pliers that had ripped her skin practically to shreds. During her entire ordeal, the pair recorded her torture including as they beat her elbow with a sledgehammer telling and forcing her to scream more for them. She was also killed by strangulation with metal wires and her body was left on a random person’s lawn so they could get the media’s reaction.
The pair were finally captured due to them sharing details with a friend from prison and thanks to one of their victims Shirley Sanders, who got away, and was able to identify the killers. Bittaker was given the death sentence however, Norris complied with the police and showed them where they disposed of the bodies so he was only given a forty-five year sentence.