Kevin Clark Bailey (March 28, 1956 - April 14, 1973) was a teenager discovered in Huntington Beach, California, on April 14, 1973. He was found lying in the roadway, dressed but without shoes. He is a confirmed victim of Randy Steven Kraft. Kraft was tried and convicted of murdering 16 young men, including Bailey, who was still unidentified when Kraft was convicted in 1989. He is referred to as "AIRPLANE HILL" on Kraft's scorecard.
Early Life[]
Kevin Clark Bailey was born in Middletown, New York, on March 28, 1956. HIs mother, Barbara Parry, gave birth to him when she was only 17, and Clark R. Bailey, his father, divorced her when Kevin was 4, leaving the family and never seeing his son again. Before the third grade, he was diagnosed as hyperactive and institutionalized, often taking Ritalin to help combat his hyperactivity.
He'd often break out of mental hospitals and was known to hitchhike. His mother remarried in September 1972 and moved to Lake Elsinore, California. Kevin disappeared soon after, calling her from Corvallis, Oregon.
Case[]
On April 14, 1973, around 1:30 AM, a passing motorist reported seeing the clothed body of a young white male lying in the roadway on Ellis between Gothard and Goldenwest in Huntington Beach. He was dressed with socks on but missing his shoes and had abrasions on his body consistent with having his wrists bound before he was eventually dumped from a moving vehicle. Police also discovered that he had been suffocated, probably with a ligature, and that he had been emasculated just prior to death.
He had no identification save for his clothes and various tattoos, none of which indicated a name of a person. Flyers went out to members of the gay community in Long Beach; a few people thought they had seen the young man in the Long Beach amusement park known as "the Pike", which, by the 1970s, had been run down and was a known hangout for hustlers, carnies and petty thieves. After leads turned up nothing, he was simply given the name "John Doe Huntington Beach".
On May 14, 1983, Randy Kraft was arrested in Mission Viejo with a half dead marine, Terry Lee Gambrel, in his car. One of the items recovered from the trunk of his Toyota Celica was a list of 61 coded entries that became known as his "scorecard". The fifth entry was titled "AIRPLANE HILL", which was later matched up to Bailey, as he had been found near an area that local students referred to as Airplane Hill, due to a sudden dip in the roadway that would allow cars to 'fly' across the pavement if they were driven fast enough.
Kraft was put on trial for this victim's murder, the only unidentified victim of Kraft's to be included in the 16 counts of murder for which he was sentenced to death. Kraft is currently incarcerated on death row in San Quentin State Prison. He continues to maintain his innocence of any murders, including Bailey's.
Identification[]
In 1995, Deputy Coroner Kurt Murine was using a new way to identify missing persons, matching fingerprints in the Western United States with his own computerized system. John Doe Huntington Beach was Murine's test case. In less than 48 hours, he was able to match this John Doe's fingerprints with Kevin Bailey's. Kevin had been arrested on April 9, 1973, in Corvallis, Oregon, for loitering near a school ground, 5 days before he was murdered in California.
Other confirmed and speculated victims of Kraft include Wilmington John Doe (February 1973), Wilmington John Doe (April 1973), Larry Parks, Paul Fuchs, Jeff Sayre, Oral Stuart Jr. and Keith Jackson.
Gallery[]
Sources[]
- LA Times
- SCRIBD
- Randy Kraft on Wikipedia