Raymond Davis, a 14-year-old boy, was murdered in Los Angeles during the summer of 1982. He disappeared on June 17 while searching for a missing dog in Echo Park. His family reported him missing, and for weeks there were no leads. On July 29, 1982, his body was discovered along a hillside by the Hollywood Freeway near Rampart Boulevard. He had been strangled with his own shoelace, and his wrists were bound behind his back. Nearby, investigators also discovered the remains of another teenage boy, 16-year-old Robert Avila Jr., who had been strangled with speaker wire. The condition of both victims suggested that they had been killed elsewhere and then left near the freeway, consistent with a disturbing pattern of unsolved murders of young men in Southern California at the time.
Detectives quickly realized that the murders of the 14-year-old boy and Robert Avila bore striking similarities to other cases in the region. The method of binding, the type of ligatures used, and the locations where the bodies were found matched details from a string of killings later attributed to the so-called 'Freeway Killer.' For months, the cases remained unsolved, but investigators quietly began to link the Echo Park killings with a wider series of murders across Orange and Los Angeles counties.
The case took a major turn in May 1983, when California Highway Patrol officers arrested Randy Steven Kraft after pulling him over in Orange County. In his car, officers discovered the body of a Marine who had been strangled, as well as a cryptic list—later called the 'scorecard'—that appeared to reference dozens of victims. Among the coded entries was one marked “Dog,” which prosecutors later connected to the 14-year-old boy, who had vanished while searching for his pet. Investigators concluded that Kraft had been responsible for his death, fitting the timeline, method, and circumstances.
Although Randy Kraft was ultimately convicted in 1989 on 16 counts of murder and sentenced to death, authorities have long attributed many more killings to him, including the death of the 14-year-old boy in Echo Park. His body of evidence, the distinctive methods of killing, and the details of the scorecard reinforced the conclusion that the teenager had been among Kraft's victims. While Kraft never stood trial specifically for that murder, law enforcement considers the case solved and his death part of Kraft's decades-long series of crimes against young men in California.
