The Toolbox Killers Used Household Items to Murder a Teenager on Halloween in 1979—and Recorded Their Attack

On October 31, 1979, 16-year-old Shirley Ledford was heading home from a Halloween party in Los Angeles when she was kidnapped by Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris. She became the final victim of the Toolbox Killers, a name that reflects Bittaker and Norris’s use of items like pliers, ice picks and hammers to torture teens, often hitchhikers, they abducted.

They also made an audio recording of Ledford’s suffering and left her battered body in public. Their macabre origin and the infamous recording their horrendous assault make the Toolbox Killers two of the most notorious murderers in California history.

Bittaker and Norris met in prison in California in 1977. Norris was serving a sentence for rape, while Bittaker had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. Behind bars, they bonded over plans to kidnap and rape teen girls.

By January 1979, both men had been released from prison. They purchased a van, which they called “Murder Mac,” and in June 1979, kidnapped 16-year-old Lucinda Schaefer. They abducted Andrea Hall, 18, the following month. Their next two victims, Jackie Gilliam, 15, and Jacqueline Lamp, 13, were taken together in September.

Bittaker and Norris drove these teens into nearby mountains, where they’d scoped out fire roads to have more privacy for their crimes. There, they not only raped and murdered; they used everyday items to torment their victims. Schaefer was strangled by a wire coat hanger tightened with pliers. Hall and Gilliam both had ice picks stabbed into their ears.

Laura Brand, a criminologist who interviewed both Bittaker and Norris in prison and wrote God’s Not Here, Only Devils: Revelations from the Toolbox Killers, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that many of the tools Bittaker and Norris used were items on hand from their respective jobs as an aircraft mechanic and electrician, but that the pair bought ice picks specifically to hurt victims, a plan dating from their time in prison.

Louis Schlesinger, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert on serial sexual murder, refers to that as "sexual sadism" to A&E Crime + Investigation. "They're getting sexual gratification from witnessing the agony of others," he says.

Dr. Rod Hoevet, a forensic and clinical psychologist, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that the abduction of the Toolbox Killers’ third and fourth victims "together was clearly an escalation.”

With Ledford, “I think she was the one victim targeted by them,” Brand says. “Bittaker was going into the McDonald’s she worked at. He would come in and gawk at her and ask her out, and she had rejected him.”

Bittaker and Norris reached a new level of brutality with Ledford. Among other injuries, they repeatedly struck her elbow with a sledgehammer, cut her arms and hands and used pliers to mutilate her breasts and face.

“A pair of pliers, you have to hold that instrument in your hand, you have to grip a part of somebody else's body. You have to pull, you have to twist. That's a torturous thing to do,” Hoevet says.

Schlesinger believes the duo got enjoyment out of their actions. “They're escalating their sadistic behavior to get more and more gratification,” he notes. “That escalation is not uncommon in the behavior of serial sexual murderers.”

Bittaker and Norris recorded Ledford's screams during their attack.

“Many of these offenders will audiotape the torture so they can play it back at a later date and relive the experience,” Schlesinger explains. “They're creating their own pornography.”

The Toolbox Killers had disposed of previous victims in isolated mountain areas, but they left Ledford, who’d been strangled with a wire hanger, in a Los Angeles neighborhood that night.

“They both said they thought it would be funny, at the time, to put her on the lawn and see the public's reaction in the papers,” Brand says.

Schlesinger suggests the killers would engage in "risky behavior in terms of getting apprehended, because it's so gratifying for them to see people terrified of them."

In the fall of 1979, Norris admitted some of their crimes to an ex-con who contacted police. Authorities subsequently linked Bittaker and Norris to a rape victim who’d survived her encounter with the pair.

Both men were arrested in November 1979, and the 17-minute recording of Ledford was found in Bittaker’s van.

Norris confessed to avoid capital punishment. He pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and received a sentence of 45 years to life.

With Norris's guidance, police searched for the first four victims. Schaefer and Hall’s bodies have never been found, but police discovered the skeletal remains of Lamp and Gilliam. An ice pick was embedded in Gilliam’s skull.

Bittaker’s trial started in January 1981. As part of his plea deal, Norris testified against him. When the recording of Ledford was played, some people couldn’t bear listening and left the courtroom.

In February 1981, a jury found Bittaker guilty of all charges he faced, which included five counts of murder and five counts of kidnapping, conspiracy and rape. He received a death sentence the following month.

Brand says Bittaker “felt very betrayed” by Norris: “But the two of them were able to write back and forth to each other from different prisons.”

Bittaker spent years on death row, but never faced execution. He died in 2019 of natural causes at the age of 79. Norris was 72 when he died in prison a few months later, also of natural causes.

“I didn't see regret from either one of them, except for Bittaker at the very, very end [when] he knew was dying from the cancer,” Brand says.

But the suffering the Toolbox Killers inflicted haunted others. One of the detectives who worked on the case died by suicide in 1987. A note he left mentioned his fear of the pair leaving prison and hurting his family.

Stephen Kay, who prosecuted Bittaker, said in 2019 of the tape made of Ledford, “Everybody who heard that recording has had psychological problems, including me.”

Brand says she's only heard 30 seconds of the video. “I can't imagine hearing the whole thing," she continues. "It’s gut-wrenching. The 30 seconds feels like somebody’s reaching inside of you and squeezing your insides.”