by: Maddie Rowley
**Warning: This post and the audio interview associated with it includes graphic material.**
Photos courtesy of Laura Brand
Imagine you’re out and about, running errands, maybe strolling through the aisles at Target getting lost in all the new cute “Magnolia Home” items by Joanna Gaines when your phone’s shrill ringtone brings you back to reality.
You look at the number and it’s the same telltale smattering of digits scrolling across the screen.
“Ah, the serial killer again…for the third time today,” you think, as you take a deep breath and answer it because you can’t afford not to. He could offer up more information about the location of the two missing bodies...
Sounds like the introduction to some sort of police procedural/ true crime show or book, right? Well, that’s just a day in the life for licensed private investigator, Laura Brand.
“Serial killers call non-stop, several times a day,” said Brand in a recent phone interview.
Brand, who studied forensic psychology in college, has interviewed over 50 serial killers in her 31 years, and she’s currently working on a book called ‘What Hell is Like, the Untold Story of the Toolbox Killers.’
For the past six years, she’s traveled to San Quentin State Prison’s death row to interview Lawrence Bittaker, who makes up half of the serial killer duo known as the Toolbox Killers.
Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris met in prison where they hatched plans to sexually assault and kill teenage girls upon their release. In February of 1979, Bittaker purchased a van, which he darkly named “Murder Mack” and met up with Norris in Redondo Beach. There, they kidnapped their first victim, 16-year-old Lucinda “Cindy” Lynn Schaefer as she was walking home from church. They pulled Cindy into the van, covered her mouth with duct tape, and bound her arms and legs before driving to a remote road in the San Gabriel Mountains. They took turns raping her inside the truck and then both Bittaker and Norris strangled her until she died, wrapped her in a clear plastic shower curtain, and threw her body over a canyon ledge.
The killers went on to kidnap, rape, and murder four more girls after Cindy, torturing them using tools they kept in the van to include sledgehammers, ice picks, wire hangers, pliers, and more. The bodies of Cindy Schaefer and their second victim, 18-year-old Andrea Hall were never found.
After Norris confided in a friend about the murders, the friend went to the police and Norris and Bittaker were arrested. They were tried, and because Norris testified against Bittaker, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, while Bittaker was sentenced to death. Bittaker has now been on death row for almost 39 years.
“Two years ago, I went to go visit San Quentin to interview Bittaker in person and while I was out there, he gave me the locations of the two missing victims that have never been recovered,” said Brand. “I went down the rabbit-hole of investigating the entire case and it just merged into a book on its own.”
Lawrence Bittaker and Laura Brand in the San Quentin State Prison.
When Brand arrived at San Quentin for the day-long interview, she was shocked that Bittaker revealed the locations of the two bodies in the first five minutes of their conversation.
“He grabbed the pen and paper out of my hand and started drawing a map. I was like ‘is this really happening right now?’”
Brand said he then started drawing a separate map of where he buried evidence that has never been recovered.
So far, the maps haven’t been accurate and the bodies still haven’t been found, but Brand has been working with the District Attorney’s office as well as Bittaker to pinpoint the exact locations.
“We’ve been mailing each other maps of San Gabriel back and forth for about 15 months trying to get the exact location,” said Brand. “It’s extensive work. I’m hoping to galvanize people to do a second search.”
According to Brand, the areas that Bittaker has been pinpointing on the maps were never searched during the initial investigation, so Brand is hopeful that with today’s technology, it’s possible traces of the girls will still be found.
During the time period that the serial killers were active, there were several women who managed to escape from the murderers, and Brand talked to a couple of these survivors for her book.
“One woman was able to jump out of the van by climbing through the window as he was strangling her. Roy saw someone walk past the car and that’s when she jumped out,” said Brand.
Bittaker and Norris are both categorized as psychopathic with sadistic personalities.
“There’s no emotion when they’re talking about the crimes and there’s total dissonance with everything,” said Brand, who, after interviewing Bittaker for countless hours over the years, says that it’s taken a toll on her mental health, and has mostly affected her sleep.
“Lawrence Bittaker was one of my first interviews and he was really degrading even before I got there,” said Brand. “I tried to build trust and rapport with him and it took years to get him comfortable to start divulging things about the case, his childhood, and his sexual fantasies.”
Because of these interviews, Brand is now ironically (and strangely) having similar dreams that the District Attorney had back in the day when he was prosecuting and investigating this case.
“He would have these nightmares of running to the van, hearing the girls scream, and getting there and they were dead and I’m having the exact same nightmares,” said Brand.
Apart from her book, Brand is still working on a collective study using data from her interviews with serial killers throughout the years. She labels Bittaker as one of the more intense interviews she’s had, along with Phillip Jablonski, who is also in San Quentin, and William Sapp in Ohio.
“They brag about their crimes and it’s just really intense to listen to,” said Brand. “Another good interview I’ve had out of San Quentin was Wayne Adam Ford. He took a woman’s breast and turned himself in to the police department.”
Brand will be pitching a documentary series about the Toolbox Killers to TV networks in January of 2020 and hopes to announce a release date for her book soon. You can follow her on Instagram at @nancydrew187.