Body identified after 45 years linked to serial killer

Police said Randy Kraft, dubbed the Scorecard Killer, is the sole person of interest following the identification of the 1980 discovery.

Randy Kraft listens inside a courtroom in Santa Ana, California, in 1989 as a jury recommends he should die in the gas chamber (AP)

Police say a California serial killer is the sole person of interest after a man found dead in Oregon was identified after nearly 45 years.

The 30-year-old, whose body was found alongside an interstate, was identified on Friday as Larry Eugene Parks.

Oregon State Police spokesman Kyle Kennedy said Randy Kraft, who has been dubbed the Scorecard Killer, is the only person under investigation for the 1980 killing.

“There’s some evidence that we’re processing to determine that link,” Mr Kennedy said. “We are very confident that we have the correct person of interest.”

Undated booking photo provided by the California Department of Corrections showing San Quentin inmate Randy Kraft — Booking photo provided by the California Department of Corrections showing San Quentin inmate Randy Kraft (California Department of Corrections/AP)

Kraft, now 80, was convicted in 1989 of brutalising and killing 16 men over a decade in California and sentenced to death. He remains in San Quentin State Prison and has denied killing anyone.

On July 18 1980, police responded to a report of the body identified as Mr Parks along I-5, south of Portland. A homicide investigation unsuccessfully tried to identify the victim.

A Vietnam veteran whose family had lost contact with him in 1979, Mr Parks had last been seen in Pensacola, Florida, police said.

Kraft was pulled over in his vehicle on a California freeway in 1983 after being spotted driving erratically. In the passenger seat of the vehicle was a strangled US 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 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.