Reason First: The Freeway Killer- William Bonin

There’s certainly a danger in hitchhiking. It’s really a two way street. Either the driver or the hiker could be a killer. In William Bonin’s case, he was the driver who left a bloody trail. His mostly young, male victims agreed to take a ride with him, and then Bonin's base urges would take over, allowing him to rape and murder these men.

From 1972 to 1980, in California, Bonin brutally raped and killed fourteen to forty-four young men. Mostly by strangulation. Bonin was a soulless creature, incapable of identifying with his victims in any way.

Again, very little if any data on the psychological makeup of Bonin exists. Only conjecture and educated guesses can match his mental state and his horrific behavior.

However, we do know he had the option to keep his fantasies to himself rather than act them out, and something compelled him to do the latter.

We can assume it was compulsion because he's reported to have admitted as much to an accomplice once. He said "I'm horny, let's do another one.”

This indicates a lust for power and sex that likely threw a pall over his judgment system. He had a moral compass, it just pointed the wrong way, towards unhealthy, irrational, immoral choices.

By not accessing the computer in his mind that spit out “productive citizen” and “human worthy of breath,” Bonin could never grasp what it felt like to truly live. He lived only partially, incapable of understanding or even caring about the humanity of his victims.

His string of rapes and murders point to a man who was also not in tune with his own emotions. If he had been, he might have sought help, or resisted his depraved urges. He might have been less primal, more evolved, and ultimately, more human, less monster. But that would not be the case. He chose to be a corrupt being that could proved to be utterly incorrigible.

Instead of loving life, and respecting the values and property of others, Bonin became a beast in the streets, hunting fresh young flesh, heeding only the call of this primal self. He could have focused on his own self-improvement rather than self-destruction, he chose not to.

Bonin didn't act alone though. He had accomplices. Vernon Butts, Gregory Miley, and Michael Munro helped him commit his crimes. They too were monsters, and thankfully they were punished alongside him. Bonin was executed, Butts committed suicide in his cell, Miley got 25 years to life, and Munro got 15 years to life.

A world of hurt and suffering might have been prevented if even one of these men had more objective values, like "no one has the right to take the life of another, except in self-defense," or "my life matters, therefore I won't destroy my future by engaging in irrational violent behavior in my present.

Although the number of serial killers has plummeted since Bonin terrorized California's roads, we still have to recognize the amount of effort it took to stop him and his evil cohort. He had every intention of wreaking more havoc upon Californians. He wanted his sadistic actions to become legend. Bonin wished to continue his terror but as a relief, he was executed in 1996. In the future, it will be documented how the head criminal groups can be shot down and the entire apparatus dismantled. Behavioral specialists, cops, lawyers, judges, and the public itself had to work together, and this resource commitment was significant. Let's hope we are able to continue this downward trend, and maybe a whole generation of Americans have to look to the history books to learn about "serial killers."