‘Trash bag’ killer charged again

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 5

‘Trash bag’ killer charged again

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles

The convicted homosexual “trash bag” murderer, Patrick Kearney, already sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing of three young men in Riverside County, California, has been charged with 17 additional counts of murder by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. Kearney, a 38-year-old former aerospace worker, earlier confessed to killing 32 young men and dumping their bodies in several southern California counties, leaving, the remains of many of his victims in plastic rubbish bags placed by roadsides.

He has now been charged

with a total of 20 killings. Complaints issued yesterday accused Kearney of slaying 17 men and boys ranging in age from 5 to 28. Their bodies were found in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and Imperial counties.

Authorities said the killings had occurred between September, 1968, and April, 1977. The bodies were discovered between February, 1973, and last July 7. Kearney pleaded guilty to three other murders in Riverside County on December 21, and was sentenced to life in prison. He is now being held at the Chino Prison.

Los Angeles authorities said they planned to arraign Kearney on the 17 new counts early next week.

Kearney told a Riverside judge that he had been inspired in part to carry out the killings by the present recognised record of 27 murders by a homosexual group in Houston, Texas, in 1973, and he had kept a scrapbook of news clippings of those killings. The “trash bag” victims were all boys and young men, mostly teen-age homosexual drifters. Many were shot in the head, and portions of their dismembered bodies were found in plastic bags scattered alongside highways throughout southern California.

Kearney also faces possible prosecution by other counties in which the victims were found.

“It is nothing to be proud

of,” Kearney told the Riverside judge when he admitted the three killings there. “I can’t allow myself to think about it much. It’s too painful. I am willing to take responsibility for my actions.”

Under the terms of his sentence, Kearney will be eligible for parole in seven years, but Superior Court Judge John Hews told him: “In all likelihood you will spend the rest of your natural life in state prison/’ Kearney and his homosexual lover, David Douglas Hill, aged 35, surrendered to Riverside County sheriffs deputies last year when they learned they were suspects. A county grand jury refused to indict Hill for lack of evidence.