The Toolbox Killers

Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris met in a California prison and, after their release, planned to abduct and kill teenage girls. The pair bought a 1977 GMC cargo van, which they called “Murder Mac,” and used it to pick up girls along the coast of Los Angeles County.

Between June and October 1979 they killed five girls: Lucinda “Cindy” Schaefer, 16; Andrea Joy Hall, 18; Jackie Gilliam, 15; Leah Lamp, 13; and Lynette Ledford, 16. Most were taken to a remote fire road in the San Gabriel Mountains. The case broke when Norris bragged about the crimes to a former prison acquaintance, who went to police with his lawyer. A young woman the pair had abducted and raped in September then picked both men out of photographs, and they were arrested on November 20, 1979.

Norris agreed to testify against Bittaker. In 1980 he pleaded guilty to five murders and was sentenced to forty-five years to life. Bittaker was convicted in 1981 and sentenced to death. Neither man ever left prison. Bittaker died on death row at San Quentin in December 2019, and Norris died in prison in February 2020, at seventy-two.