Judge Calls Contents of Randy Kraft Car ‘a Pile of Garbage’

The judge in the Randy Steven Kraft murder trial lost patience with prosecutors for a short time Wednesday when they began to parade before jurors the first batch of contents taken from Kraft’s car after his 1983 arrest.

Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin called most of it “a pile of garbage” and warned that he would not tolerate such an inventory of minutiae once prosecutors began to present evidence gathered from three separate searches of Kraft’s Long Beach residence.

But the car’s contents did include numerous prescription drug vials and a plastic cooler with beer inside. These are key pieces of evidence in Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown’s claim that Kraft kept on hand a supply of drugs and alcohol, then used the combination to weaken his victims’ defenses and overpower them.

Kraft, now 43, is on trial for the murders of 16 young men in Orange County. If he is convicted, prosecutors may include up to 29 other murders in an attempt to win a death verdict against him at a separate penalty phase of the trial. The trial, in its third day Wednesday in Santa Ana, is expected to take up to a year to complete.

He was arrested on May 14, 1983, when California Highway Patrol officers found an El Toro Marine, 25-year-old Terry Lee Gambrel, dead in the front passenger seat of his car.

The car evidence viewed by jurors Wednesday, during the third day of testimony, also included Gambrel’s own brown leather belt with a brass buckle, found on the floor behind the driver’s seat, which prosecutors claim Kraft used to strangle him.

Kraft, sitting close to one of his attorneys, C. Thomas McDonald, appeared to study the belt intently as McDonald examined it a few inches from Kraft’s face.

Gambrel’s mother, Nellie Jean Lewis, who came from Crothersville, Ind., to attend the trial, sat in the audience with several other victims’ families and friends and watched as one paper bag after another of the car’s contents was opened.

Lewis told a reporter that she has been forced to cancel several previously planned trips to attend the trial when it was postponed numerous times because defense attorneys had asked for more time.

One of the most controversial items, a list handwritten by Kraft that was taken from his trunk, also was introduced as evidence Wednesday, but jurors did not know it. Jurors saw a folder of papers, but Deputy Dist. Atty. Brown did not have its contents, including the list, itemized.

Brown has chosen to wait until later in his case to tell jurors about the list, which he claims is Kraft’s own score card of the number of people he has killed. Kraft attorneys contend that the list, which has 61 entries, is meaningless.

It was the contents of the glove compartment of Kraft’s Toyota Celica that bothered the judge, who is famous in Orange County legal circles for speeding along his trials.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department criminalist Christine Chan itemized for the jury each item found, including a pen, matchbooks, buttons, credit card receipts, auto manuals, registration papers, and bank papers.

At one point, Judge McCartin said he had heard enough but let the inventory continue. When the jury was on a break, the judge warned that he would no longer tolerate such a parade of evidence by lawyers in the case unless they can show the relevance of each item.

“You know me well enough, gentlemen; if it doesn’t have relevancy it doesn’t go anywhere,” the judge said sternly.

He also said the glove compartment inventory “is putting everybody here to sleep this afternoon.”

But after the break, the judge was smiling and told prosecutor Brown he could proceed “as long as you don’t have any more glove compartments.”

The judge also stalled proceedings briefly to answer questions posed by at least one juror on a sheet of paper to the bailiff. The questions asked for definitions of some of the terms used in court and identification of the man sitting next to Kraft who was not saying anything. It was James G. Merwin, co-counsel on the Kraft defense, who has not yet been involved in any of the cross-examination of witnesses.

The judge went on to describe everyone in court, and got a laugh from the jurors when he used one of his favorite lines, that he wants to be reincarnated as a bailiff because they have such an easy job.

Wednesday’s testimony also included brief details from the chief investigator on the Kraft case, Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator James A. Sidebotham, who described going to the county morgue on the morning Gambrel’s body was brought in for an autopsy. Sidebotham is expected to make numerous appearances on the witness stand before prosecutor Brown rests his case.

Also testifying was forensic pathologist Robert B. Richards, whose former partner, the late Dr. Walter R. Fischer, had performed the autopsy on Gambrel. Fischer’s death in 1985, during an unrelated case, was ruled a suicide.

Richards confirmed Fischer’s written findings that Gambrel had died of strangulation, with marks on his neck the same width as the belt found in the back seat.