September 24, 1939 - Patrick Kearney
His killings spanned fifteen years across southern California before investigators caught up with him, making Kearney one of the longer-operating serial killers of the twentieth century. The victims — young men and boys — were targeted, assaulted, and disposed of with a methodical consistency that earned him two separate nicknames tied to his methods. His 1978 guilty plea to twenty-one counts of murder resulted in consecutive life sentences, and he was later identified as the first of three distinct predators operating in the same region during overlapping decades.
From Wikipedia
Patrick Wayne Kearney (born September 24, 1939), also called the Trash Bag Killer and the Freeway Killer, is an American serial killer who sexually assaulted and murdered a minimum of twenty-eight young men and boys in southern California between 1962 and 1977. Kearney often engaged in necrophilia with his victims' bodies before disemboweling and dismembering them. He frequently wrapped his victims' severed limbs in trash bags and scattered them in various locations, mainly along state highways.
In 1978, Kearney pleaded guilty to twenty-one counts of murder and was sentenced to twenty-one consecutive life sentences. Kearney was the first of three known serial killers who preyed on young men in southern California in the 1970s and 1980s to be identified; the others were William Bonin and Randy Kraft.
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