A man’s body discovered along the 5 Freeway in Oregon nearly 45 years ago has now been identified by the authorities. They have named a well-known California serial killer as the primary suspect in the case.
The deceased, 30-year-old Larry Eugene Parks, was officially identified on Friday. According to Oregon State Police spokesperson Kyle Kennedy, Randy Kraft, infamously known as the “Scorecard Killer,” is considered the only person of interest in the 1980 murder.
“We are currently processing certain evidence to confirm this connection,” Kennedy explained. “We are very confident that we have identified the correct suspect.”
Serial killer Randy Kraft listens inside a courtroom in Santa Ana, Aug. 11, 1989, as a jury recommends he should die in the gas chamber.
AP Photo/Alan Greth, File
Kraft, now 80, was convicted in 1989 of brutalizing and killing 16 men over a decade in California and sentenced to death. He remains incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and has denied killing anyone.
On July 18, 1980, police responded to a report of a body now identified as Parks along the 5 Freeway south of Portland near Woodburn. Police opened a homicide investigation at the time and unsuccessfully tried to identify the victim.
Parks, a Vietnam veteran whose family had lost contact with him in 1979, had last been seen in Pensacola, Florida, police said.
Kraft was pulled over in his vehicle on a California freeway in 1983 after a trooper spotted him driving erratically. In the passenger seat of the vehicle was a strangled U.S. Marine. In the trunk of Kraft’s vehicle was a coded list believed to tally 67 victims in California, Oregon and Michigan, according to police.
Prosecutors described Kraft, a former computer programmer, as a fetishist who kept some of the dismembered parts of his victims in his freezer.
In 2024, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator reached out to the Oregon State Police Cold Case Unit and offered to help identify the remains using forensic investigative genetic genealogy. A genetic profile was developed from a blood sample and Parks’ identity was confirmed after possible family members submitted DNA profiles for comparison, according to police.
Until his identification last month, the circumstances of his disappearance were unknown to the his family, police said.
In 2023, the remains of a teenager believed to have been killed by Kraft in California were also identified using investigative genetic genealogy.
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