"the most evil man I ever met"

FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas once described Lawrence Bittaker as the most disturbing individual for whom he has ever created a criminal profile. Bittaker and Roy Norris, also known as the Tool Box Killers, committed the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of five teenage girls in southern California over a five-month period in 1979.

Some of the bodies of the disappeared girls were never recovered. Norris and Bittaker became known as the "Tool Box Killers" because the majority of instruments used to torture and murder their victims were items normally stored inside a household toolbox, like pliers, ice picks, and sledgehammers.

Particularly contributing to the killers' infamy, especially Bittaker's, is an audio tape the pair had created of their abuse and torment of their final victim, Shirley.

Shirley Lynette Ledford was just 16 years old when she was abducted by the evil pair. The audiotape of her torture, considered to be one of the most disturbing ever, was the most damning evidence presented at Bittaker's trial. It had been found inside Bittaker's van.

Prosecutor Stephen Kay forewarned the jury: "For those of you who do not know what hell is like, you will find out."

...

More than 100 people were present in the courtroom as the tape was played, and many members of both the jury and the audience wept openly upon hearing the contents, with several members of the audience either burying their heads in their hands, dabbing tears from their eyes or rushing out of the courtroom before the tape had finished. Some had run out to vomit.

Stephen Kay was reduced to tears and  walked out of the courtroom. Weeping openly, Kay stated to the reporters gathered outside the courtroom: "Everybody who has heard that tape has had it affect their lives. I just picture those girls ... how alone they were when they died."

Bittaker laughed in court as the tape was being played. He considered the contents to be "real funny".

Detective Paul Bynum, the chief investigator involved in catching Bittaker and Norris, committed suicide years after the two were found guilty. In his suicide note, he outlined that one of his main reasons was his fear of the two ever being released from jail.

When Scott Glenn was preparing for the role of Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, he met with John E. Douglas who played for him that audio tape. Glenn wept as he listened to the recordings, and even changed his liberal stance on the death penalty, since then becoming a staunch defender of it.

This a transcript of the tape, very disturbing: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/watchingrobertpickton88015/transcript-of-shirley-lynette-ledford-audio-record-t3312.html

Roy Norris himself said:

"We've all heard women scream in horror films ... still, we know that no-one is really screaming. Why? Simply because an actress can't produce some sounds that convince us that something vile and heinous is happening. If you ever heard that tape, there is just no possible way that you'd not begin crying and trembling. I doubt you could listen to more than a full sixty seconds of it."

In the closing argument delivered by the prosecution, Kay apologized to the jury that he was only asking for the death penalty, adding that he wished the law permitted him to request that the same suffering be inflicted upon Bittaker that he had inflicted upon his victims.

Stephen Kay calls the Norris and Bittaker case the most brutal in his 37-year career." Kay said the tape was so raw, everyone who has listened to it has suffered some psychological problems at some point.

Both killers outlived more than half of the mothers of the victims, half of the jurors in Bittaker’s case, the lead detective and many others involved in the trial. Bittaker and Norris died of natural causes a few years ago. Bittaker used to sign autographs for the other inmates in prison. His signature was "Pliers" Bittaker.

The other victims were Lucinda Schaefer (pictured here), Andrea Joy Hall, Jackie Doris Gilliam and Jacqueline Leah Lamp.

May they R.I.P.