Patrick Wayne Kearney (Daily Breeze file photo)
Patrick Wayne Kearney told investigators that he committed his first murder while living in Culver City in 1962.
The Redondo Beach man ultimately would be convicted of 21 killings, all males, all between the ages of 5 and 28, but he may have killed dozens more. He claimed to have killed one victim a month starting in 1974.
Kearney was born in East Los Angeles on Sept. 24, 1939.
The bespectacled serial killer stood 5 foot 5 inches, and reportedly had an IQ of 180.
He worked at Hughes Aircraft and lived with his gay partner, Dave Hill, 34, at a house on Robinson Avenue near Aviation Boulevard in north Redondo Beach.
Kearney became known as the “trash bag murderer” for his method of putting body parts and corpses into large plastic trash bags and leaving them on the side of the road. The crimes took place in five Southern California counties.
The case began in Los Angeles County on Jan. 24, 1977, when a highway worker tripped over a tightly wrapped object in the Lennox Boulevard tunnel under the San Diego Freeway near LAX.
The body of Nicolas Hernandez-Jimenez was found in a trash bag in the Lennox Avenue tunnel under the 405 Freeway near LAX. (Google Maps)
It turned out to be the corpse of 28-year-old Nicolas Hernandez-Jimenez of Los Angeles.
Patrick Wayne Kearney leaves court on Feb. 28, 1977, after pleading not guilty to 3 counts of murder. He would later plead guilty to a total of 21 murders. (Daily Breeze file photo)When sheriff’s detective Al Sett contacted other police agencies to check for similar cases, he heard immediately from Orange County and Riverside. By June, 8 more bodies had been found disposed of in a like manner not only in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside, but also Imperial and San Diego counties.
Kearney, a necrophile, used to pick up his victims in Los Angeles and Hollywood. He would befriend hitchhikers, troubled teenagers and younger children, perhaps offering to take them camping or to Lake Elsinore, a favorite haunt of his, before killing them, having sex with their corpses and discarding their remains in the plastic bags.
When Sett and his partner Roger Wilson questioned friends of John LaMay, 17, of El Segundo, after his corpse was found stuffed inside a trash bag in a 55-gallon drum in Riverside on March 18, 1977, they were told that LaMay liked to hang out with “Pat and Dave” – Pat Kearney and Dave Hill.
The detectives met with the pair at their house. Samples of hair from the suspects and their poodle and threads from a blue rug matched those found by police investigators on LaMay’s body.
A search warrant was issued. When Sett and Wilson called to notify Kearney and Hill, the two men fled to Hill’s family home in Texas. The family urged them to give up, and the pair returned to California, turning themselves in at the Riverside County Sheriff’s station on July 1, 1977.
Kearney decided to talk following his arrest. First, he cleared Hill of any wrongdoing. He had kept the murders from him, and committed them while Hill was away from their home.
He talked about his first victim in Culver City. He told investigators the address and where the body was buried. Detectives went there and recovered the skeleton, and found that the details of the crime matched Kearney’s description.
Over the next few months, Kearney gradually confessed to 21 murders that detectives could confirm, ranking him among the ten most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. Police said he might have committed as many as 43 killings.
Patrick Wayne Kearney, the confessed “trash bag killer,” arrives at the Criminal Courts Building on Feb. 21, 1978, under the watchful eye of a Sheriff’s deputy. (Daily Breeze file photo)
Because the crimes were committed before California reinstated the death penalty law in 1978, the maximum sentence Superior Court Paul Breckenridge Jr. could give him when he pleaded guilty on Feb. 21, 1978 to the 21 murders was concurrent life sentences for all the crimes.
“I would only hope that the Community Release Board will never see fit to parole Mr. Kearney because he appears to be an insult to humanity,” Breckenridge said during the sentencing.
The judge got his wish. Kearney, now 75, continues to serve his life sentence at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif., located southeast of Sacramento.
South Bay victims of Patrick Wayne Kearney:
- Kenneth Eugene Buchanan, 17, of Lawndale
- Merle Chance, 8, of Venice
- John Demchik, 13, of Inglewood
- Wilfred L. Feherty, 20, of Redondo Beach
- John LaMay, 17, of El Segundo
- Michael McGhee, 13, of Redondo Beach
- Ronald Dean Smith, 5, of Lennox
Sources: Daily Breeze files.
