William Bonin is a Vietnam veteran who works as a delivery driver in Southern California. By day he tends to his ailing Mother and to family responsibilities, but by night he engages in a brutal pattern of torture and murder carried out with the aid of an occultist named Vernon Butts. The two men wage a long-running campaign of violence, first in Orange County and later moving their deadly acts into the sprawling cityscape of Los Angeles.
As the body count climbs, the alliance between Bonin and Butts appears tightly knit, with a chilling rhythm that blends methodical planning, coercion, and a shared philosophy of control. The duo’s crimes become a dark routine, their fearlessness drawing them deeper into a pattern that places young men in harm’s way far from the safety of home. The toll of their crimes weighs heavily on the local community, and law enforcement begins to connect the disappearances to a string of similarly brutal acts.
By 1980, the relationship between William Bonin and Vernon Butts has grown estranged, and Bonin searches for a new ally to help carry out his brutal agenda. He begins grooming a shy, insecure youth named Kyle Peterson, introducing him to the lurid details of past murders and showing him photographs of the victims. Bonin coerces Kyle into participating in the murder of a hitchhiker bound for Disneyland, preying on Kyle’s eagerness to belong and his distorted sense of power.
Kyle’s involvement grows as he buys into Bonin’s survival-of-the-fittest creed and hears stories from Vietnam that frame violence as a test he must pass. This influence begins to pay off in Kyle’s real life: he becomes more confident at his job, earning a promotion to manager, and he rekindles a relationship with his girlfriend, Lisa. The relationship dynamics create a tense triangle among the trio: Bonin’s fixation on Kyle, Butts’s jealousy of the growing bond between Bonin and the younger man, and the fear they collectively generate in those around them. In a bitter argument, Butts accuses Bonin of never having served in combat, asserting that he spent his time overseas “sticking his pistol to a couple of buck privates, making them suck his dick.” The line sharpens the rift between them and hints at the petty cruelty that underpins their crimes.
The tension erupts when Kyle convinces Bonin to kill Butts, but Bonin cannot go through with it. He tends to Butts’s self-inflicted wound after Butts slits his own wrist in front of them, a moment that exposes the fragility of their alliance even as the murder spree continues. Feeling alienated from both Kyle and Butts, Bonin forces another young man, Billy Pugh, to help him murder a boy named Alex. The act unsettles Billy, who runs away, and the pressure on Kyle intensifies as Bonin tries to coax him into a copycat “Freeway Killer” crime to mislead investigators. Kyle ultimately resists, telling Bonin, “It’s over.”
With authorities closing in, Bonin makes one last, desperate attempt at murder and is caught in the act by a police task force led by Det. St. John. After the arrest, Butts hangs himself in prison, while Kyle and Billy are turned in by Bonin and provide crucial testimony. Bonin is sentenced to death, refusing to allow his lawyers to present mitigating evidence—such as psychiatric reports or a fuller account of his turbulent upbringing—so as not to place his mother in the public spotlight or feed sensational headlines.
On death row, Bonin begins to confess to additional murders in exchange for privileges, and he forms a troubling, manipulative acquaintance with Ruth Slobod, a grieving mother who believes her son was among his victims. Bonin exploits her grief, stringing her along in an effort to win a commutation from the Governor, even as she vows to witness his execution. He taunts her with the chilling line to “watch the eyes,” a taunt meant to reveal what he believes is the true lesson of violence.
The story culminates with Bonin’s execution by lethal injection in 1996. An intertitle notes that his unclaimed remains were cremated and scattered over the Pacific Ocean, offering a stark coda to a life defined by calculated cruelty. Throughout the years, the case remains a stark reminder of how a quiet-seeming individual can spiral into a pattern of abuse, control, and murder, drawing in others and leaving a path of trauma for families and communities to endure.
