CRIMINAL MIND > FORENSICS & INVESTIGATION

Beverly Hills Cop

"I Think I'm Going to Kill All of You"

The man holding a gun to Bob Dewar's head on that night in July 1957 told Bob to get in the backseat of the car.

Then he told the female passenger, Bob's date, to stay in the front seat.

Once the kids did as they were told, the guy got behind the wheel and drove the car to a more secluded area near the Hawthorne oil fields just down the road.

After parking the car out of sight, the man removed a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket, cut it into short strips with a knife, and placed the strips across the eyes and mouths of Bob Dewar and the remaining three teenagers. He then proceeded to remove Bob's shirt and the other male's shirt and tear them into strips so he could bind their hands behind their backs. Once he was sure they were securely tied up, he proceeded to rob everyone of their personal property. After removing a wrist watch from one of the females, the man used a flashlight to look through her purse and took a billfold and other miscellaneous identification items. He then removed a wrist watch from Bob Dewar and took his billfold, which contained $15 to $20.

By this point the man could have left the teenagers alone and taken off with the items he had come to rob.

But he didn't.

After forcing Bob and the other male to lie on the rear floorboard of the vehicle, telling one of the females to lie on the rear seat, the man entered the driver's side of the vehicle and sat alongside the female sitting in the front seat. Then he started the vehicle and once again drove a short distance to an even more remote location, feeling that maybe someone would come upon them.

The man then exited the vehicle and ordered the girl in the rear seat to lie back and face down, after which time he walked back around to the front passenger's side of the car, opened the door, approached the female seated in the front seat, and began undressing her. After removing her brassiere, he began fondling her breasts. He then tied her hands behind her back with her brassiere, removed all of her clothing, and forcibly raped her on the front seat of the car while the others listened in horror.

Because he had heard her praying aloud, he decided not to rape the girl in the back seat.

At the conclusion of the rape, he forced all four of his victims from the car and removed the bindings from their wrists. It was approximately 12:50 a.m. The children thought their nightmare was over. If nothing else, they had escaped with their lives.

But the man was, at that moment, contemplating murdering the four teenagers so as not to risk them identifying him later on.

After collecting the adhesive tape and any other evidence the guy felt he might haphazardly leave behind, he told the teenagers to, "Walk toward the field. I think I'm going to kill all of you."

To their surprise, however, the man re-entered the vehicle and drove away from the scene with the car Bob Dewar's father had allowed him to use.

The crimes had occurred in the jurisdiction of the Hawthorne Police Department. As a result, there was a time lag between the reporting of the crime and the notification of other regional law enforcement agencies by teletype or landline. Different agencies operated on different radio frequencies. Consequently, there was a void in inter-agency communication—a void, in fact, that would soon prove deadly.