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Gay serial killer breaks his silence by Matthew S. Bajko
case before he dies. “This has been bottled up so long,” or nearly 30 years Randy Kraft has a graying Kraft, dressed in dark blue sat on California’s death row atpants and a light blue shirt, said during tempting to clear his name. A gay an interview in March over a lunch of man given the nicknames “the Scorecard a microwaved southern fried chicken Killer” and “the Freeway Killer,” Kraft has sandwich and a cheese and bean burrito. been described as one of the “deadliest “I am getting older. I am going to die and most depraved serial killers” in the here. And I am frustrated my attorneys state’s history. aren’t saying these things. If I don’t say In May 1989 a jury convicted him something it will never be said.” of killing 16 men over the course of 11 Over the course of 10 months, through years in southern California and, that written correspondence and three inNovember, recommended the death person meetings at San Quentin State penalty. Prosecutors had also tied him Prison, Kraft repeatedly maintained his to the deaths of eight additional men in innocence and alleged he had been the Oregon and Michigan. victim of a criminal and judicial system In the summer of 2000, with Kraft’s biased against him because of his sexual appeals of his verdict in state court exorientation. Courtesy San Quentin State Prison hausted, the California Supreme Court “To begin, I did not kill Terry Gamupheld his conviction and death sen- Randy Kraft brel,” Kraft wrote last November in one tence. Kraft then turned to the federal of his first letters, referring to the Marine courts to seek a new trial of his case. He found slumped over in the passenger his case other than through copious court filhas been mired in the federal appeals system ings over the years. seat of his car when two CHP officers pulled ever since, and on numerous occasions, he him over on Interstate 5 in Orange County During his jury trial, Kraft did not testify on has petitioned to have a new federal public his behalf. After the trial court judge refused for suspected drunk driving late one night 33 defender assigned to represent him. to grant his request to testify about only one years ago. “And neither did I kill or assault any To this day Kraft has never confessed to the of the murder charges he was facing, he opted, of the other persons as the authorities claim. murders he was found guilty of committing. based on the advice of his attorneys, not to Notwithstanding that, I have been imprisoned And other than an interview with a Los Angesince May 14, 1983, some 32 years, nearly half take the stand to defend himself. les Times reporter six months after his arrest of my life.” Kraft, 71, contacted the Bay Area Reporter in 1983, Kraft has not spoken publicly about See page 20 >> last fall about his desire to publicly discuss his
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B.A.R. election endorsements SAN FRANCISCO RACES GENERAL ELECTION State Senate Dist. 11: Scott Wiener
SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISORS Dist. 1: Sandra Lee Fewer Dist. 3: Aaron Peskin Dist. 5: London Breed Dist. 7 (ranked): 1: Norman Yee, 2: Joel Engardio Dist. 9 (ranked): 1:Joshua Arce, 2: Hillary Ronen Dist. 11 (ranked): 1: Ahsha Safai, 2: Kimberly Alvarenga CITY COLLEGE BOARD: Rafael Mandelman Alex Randolph Amy Bacharach Shanell Williams SF SCHOOL BOARD Mark Sanchez Matt Haney Rachel Norton Jill Wynns BART Board Dist. 9: Bevan Dufty Judge SF Superior Court Seat 7: Paul Henderson State Assembly Dist. 17: David Chiu Dist. 19: Phil Ting
President: Hillary Clinton U.S. Senate Kamala Harris Congress (Bay Area) Dist. 2: Jared Huffman Dist. 3: John Garamendi Dist. 5: Mike Thompson Dist. 11: Mark DeSaulnier Dist. 12: Nancy Pelosi Dist. 13: Barbara Lee Dist. 14: Jackie Speier Dist. 15: Eric Swalwell Dist. 17: Mike Honda Dist. 18: Anna Eshoo Dist. 19: Zoe Lofgren
State Assembly (Bay Area) Dist. 15: Tony Thurmond Dist. 18: Rob Bonta Dist. 28: Evan Low
EAST BAY
BART Board Dist. 3: Rebecca Saltzman Berkeley City Council Dist. 2: Darryl Moore
Concord City Council: Pablo Benavente East Bay Regional Parks Ward 4: Ellen Corbett Emeryville City Council: John Bauters Martinez City Council: John Stevens Oakland City Council Dist. 3: Lynette Gibson McElhaney At-large: Rebecca Kaplan Peralta College Board Area 6: Nick Resnick Richmond City Council: Cesar Zepeda State Senate (Bay Area) Dist. 9: Nancy Skinner
CALIFORNIA PROPS
Yes on 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 64, 67 No on 53, 60, 66, 65 No endorsement on 61
REGIONAL
Berkeley Mayor (ranked): 1: Jesse Arreguin, 2: Kriss Worthington
BART Bond, Measure RR: Yes
Berkeley School Board: Judy Appel
Yes on A, B, C, E, F, G, I, J, K, N, O, S, V, W No on D, H, L, M, P, Q, R, T, U, X
SAN FRANCISCO PROPS
Remember to vote Nov. 8!
Vol. 46 • No. 44 • November 3-9, 2016
SF mayor’s trans adviser: ‘Exciting time’ by Seth Hemmelgarn
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our months into her latest post, Theresa Sparks, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s senior adviser for transgender initiatives, said it’s “the most exciting time in the trans community I’ve certainly been involved in” in her 20 years Rick Gerharter of work in the field. Theresa Sparks Sparks, a transgender woman who was once president of the local Police Commission and served for years as executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, has had plenty to work on since Lee named her to the job in June. Even before she took her current job, likely making her the first person in the country with such a role, she’d been working with the sheriff’s department to give transgender inmates the ability to move from segregated housing into the general jail population. Sparks has also been helping to bring all gender bathrooms to the city, another issue in which San Francisco has taken a lead role. See page 21 >>
New research debunks Patient Zero myth by Liz Highleyman
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to bear on this and resolve questions of those early moments of HIV,” said Dr. Paul Volberding, director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, who once cared for Dugas at San Francisco General Hospital. “None of this is about blame. New York doesn’t blame Haiti, nor does San Francisco blame New York. And now we can add that we can’t blame Patient O.”
new genetic analysis shows that HIV likely spread from the Caribbean to New York City around 1971 and from there to San Francisco around 1976, laying to rest the misconception that a Canadian flight attendant, Gaétan Dugas (also commonly spelled Gaëtan), Courtesy Wikipedia was responsible for sparking the epiCanadian flight demic in the United States. Evolution of HIV attendant The persistent myth about a so- Gaétan Dugas Michael Worobey, an evolutioncalled Patient Zero was popularized ary biologist from the University by gay journalist Randy Shilts in his of Arizona in Tucson, led a genetic 1987 book about the early epidemic, analysis of stored blood samples And the Band Played On. (Shilts from gay men participating in hepadied of AIDS-related complications titis B research in the late 1970s. in 1994.) Looking at a repository of nearly Richard McKay, a historian from 9,000 stored samples from New York the University of Cambridge and and nearly 7,000 from San Francisco co-author of the paper published in City Clinic, Worobey’s team found the October 26 edition of Nature, that 6.6 percent of the New York Courtesy VA Dept. found that Dugas was designated as samples and 3.7 percent of those case “O” – meaning outside Califor- Dr. Paul Volberding from San Francisco contained HIV nia – in an early Centers for Disease in 1978-1979. Control and Prevention analysis of HIV sexual The researchers then attempted genetic transmission networks. During publication of sequencing of a subset of the stored viruses. the study in 1984, the letter “O” was misinterAlthough the blood samples have been availpreted as the number zero. See page 21 >> “It’s great that modern science can be brought
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