UPDATE, NOV. 30, 2:07 P.M.: Realizing that parole would be denied, “Freeway Killer” accomplice Gregory Matthew Miley agreed to a three-year continuance of his request until 2014.
The 50-year-old is serving a 25 years to life prison sentence in Corcoran for the kidnappings, sexual assaults and murders of two boys in
Orange and Los Angeles counties in 1980. The boys were two of the 14 murder victims pinned to William Bonin, the first inmate to die by lethal injection in California.
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ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 30, 8:21 A.M.: Gregory Matthew Miley could have received the death penalty for
his role in the kidnappings, sexual assaults and murders of two boys in
Orange and Los Angeles counties the morning of Feb. 3, 1980. But because
Miley helped put away “Freeway Killer” William Bonin–the first inmate to die by lethal injection in California–the then-18-year-old was sentenced to 25 years to life in state
prison. Now Miley wants to be paroled.
Not so fast, cautions Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas.
Rackauckas is opposing now 50-year-old Miley's parole on grounds that he remains a “significant
threat to public safety” as proven by the circumstances of
the murders and multiple prison rules violations.
A sadistic Vietnam War veteran out of Downey, Bonin spent most of the seventies behind bars for sex attacks on young men. He was paroled in 1978 and got a truck driving job in Montebello.
For the next two years, Bonin would pick up young male hitchhikers, sexually assault them, strangle them to death and leave their bodies along Southern California freeways. Bonin often used sadistic young helpers, one of whom was Miley.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 3, 1980, Bonin was driving his van with Miley aboard when they picked up 14-year-old Charles Miranda near the Starwood Ballroom in West Hollywood. They drove several blocks, parked, and then
Bonin sodomized Miranda. Miley tried to do the same, but he was
unable to sustain an erection. Bonin and Miley then tied Miranda's hands and
feet together, Bonin grabbed Miranda's shirt, put it around the boy's
neck, and began twisting the shirt to suffocate him. Miley then held the shirt while Bonin picked up an iron bar, wrapped it in the shirt
and twisted it until the victim suffocated to death. Miranda's body was dumped in a downtown Los Angeles alley before the killers drove on to Huntington Beach.
Later that same morning, they lured into the death van 12-year-old James McCabe,
who was walking to
Disneyland. As Miley drove, Bonin sexually assaulted McCabe. Once the van was parked,
Bonin and Miley murdered McCabe by holding him down and twisting a
shirt around the victim's neck until he suffocated to death. McCabe's body was placed in a dumpster in the city of Walnut.
Miley was living in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 22, 1980, when, during a recorded phone conversation with a friend, he admitted to participating in the sexual
assaults and murders of the two victims. Miley waived extradition on charges of murdering Miranda and McCabe,
plus two counts of robbery and one count of sodomy.
During the latter months of his killing spree, Bonin was under police surveillance as some of his other accomplices had ratted him out to save their own skins. One, Vernon Butts, chose to hang himself in jail. Bonin was sentenced to death in 1982 for 10 LA County murders, and he
received the ultimate penalty again the next year for four other Orange
County killings. Bonin later told a television reporter his actual body count was 21.
On the 20th anniversary of JFK's assassination–Nov. 22, 1983–Miley was sentenced to 25 years to life in state
prison for the Orange County murder. However, he was allowed to serve the time concurrently with his previous LA County conviction, also first-degree murder.
While awaiting death at
San Quentin, Bonin enjoyed playing bridge with another OC serial killer, Randy Kraft. Bonin got plenty of hands in as he was not executed by lethal injection until Feb. 23, 1996.
Orange County Deputy District Attorney Matt Lockhart is scheduled to appear at Miley's parole hearing this morning at the institution currently holding him, the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility
in Corcoran.
According to an OCDA statement, Miley has wracked up 26 prison rules violations,
including nine serious violations for threats against an inmate, sexual
behavior for attempting to engage in non-consensual sodomy, refusal to
report and remain in school, possession of unauthorized medication,
renting out property to another inmate, failure to report, failure to
comply with grooming standards, and responsibility for counts.
Because Miley cannot follow rules in a controlled environment, the OCDA reasons he won't be able to once outside, making him a threat to the community. His drug use and the ugly nature of his crimes don't hold out much hope either.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
My brother in law Charles Miranda was actually 16 years old at the time. He was 50% Mexican and 50% Norwegian. Sadly he was my husbands caretaker. My husband Richard was only 5 years old at the time. The family never quite recuperated one of the sisters became insane. She still pretends to talk to her dead brothers spirit till’ this day. It creeps me out.
It’s rather sad that when I looked for Charle’s information. It’s still tied to this sadistic serial killers.
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