Without Redemption: Creation & Deeds of Freeway Killer Bill Bonin, His Five Accomplices & How One Who Escaped Justice
About this audiobook
Without Redemption: Creation & Deeds of Freeway Killer Bill Bonin, His Five Accomplices & How One Who Escaped Justice, written using documents from a variety of sources, including Bonin’s handwritten jailhouse diaries and confession murder stories, brings the reader into the back and forth with witnesses, lawyers, media, jailhouse snitches, friends, friends, family, inmates at Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail and Bonin’s co-murderers.
The book was written on a number of parallel tracks that constantly intersect:
First, it is the most detailed historical biography ever written about Bill Bonin, the notorious Freeway Killer responsible for murdering 22 teenage boys over ten-months in 1979-80.
Second, it is a psychological roadmap which charts the evolution of Bonin’s personality from abused child to sexual predator to serial killer. This is accomplished using documents from his childhood, war service, multiple California government mental health and penal institutions, witness testimony and the expertise of Clinical Psychologist Vonda Pelto, Ph.D., who had many sessions with Bonin and two of his accomplices while working in Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail.
Third, it is a narrative which, using long hidden documents, reveals the inner workings of Bonin’s mind, showing how he thought, felt, planned and viewed the world. The narrative displays Bonin, an abused high school dropout, cleverly manipulating lawyers, judges, doctors, social workers, friends, family, probation officers, government bureaucrats, detectives, journalists and, most tragically, the innocent victims of his rage.
Fourth, Without Redemption reveals the complex story of what happened after Bonin’s final arrest, when so much was in flux and so many moving parts were swirling about. Archived investigative documents, collected from a variety of sources, brings to light a number of surprising, shocking, sad and even funny events from those ten tumultuous months from June 1980 to March 1981.
Finally, it is a book which solves two 40-year-old murder mysteries and unlocks how one day of crossroads and coincidences, in the midst of the murder spree, profoundly impacted many lives and future events.
About the author
About the Authors: Vonda Pelto, Ph.D., author of Without Remorse and co-author of Without Redemption, was born and raised in the small town of Needles, California, in the barren desert. Brought up in a strict Southern Baptist household, her sheltered childhood and family life meant Vonda was in for a rude awakening when she was hired for a unique job. After the unexpected January 1981 jailhouse suicide of Freeway Killer Vernon Butts, the Los Angeles County Mental Health & Sheriff’s Departments needed a new strategy to prevent this from happening with any other high-profile inmates awaiting or standing trial.
Michael B. Butler, co-author of Without Redemption and author of A Round the World & Across Russia in 21 Days, 30 Years Later: 12 Planes & 22 Aviators Thru 11 Countries When the Soviet Union Fell & Russia Returned, is a professional photographer who has worked extensively in book, travel and corporate PR. His assignments documenting the 50th Anniversaries of Pearl Harbor and D-Day, flying around the world across Russia on the World Flight in July 1992, documenting a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with 700 Christians in 2013 and multiple PR junkets to Ireland and Tahiti added ample materials to his media library.
