Last Remaining 'Tool Box Killer' Roy Norris Dies At 72

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – One of two men known as the "Tool Box Killers" -- responsible for the 1979 murders of five teen girls in Southern California -- has died.

Roy Lewis Norris passed away from natural causes Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He was 72.

His death came a little more than two months after his partner in the crimes, Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker, died on death row at San Quentin State Prison at the age of 79.

The men were known as the Tool Box Killers because the items they used to torture and murder the girls – such as pliers and ice picks – could be found in a toolbox, according to CBS San Francisco.

Between June and November of 1979, Norris and Whittaker kidnapped, raped and murdered five teen girls: 16-year-old Lucinda Lynn Schaefer, 18-year-old Andrea Joy Hall, 15-year-old Jacqueline Doris Gilliam, 13-year-old Jacqueline Leah Lamp and 16-year-old Shirley Lynette Ledford.

The bodies of Schaefer and Hall were never found, CDCR reports.

As part of a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to avoid the death penalty, Norris plead guilty to five counts of murder, two counts of forcible rape and robbery, the CDCR reports.

Norris testified against Bittaker, who in 1981 was found guilty by a Los Angeles County jury of 26 counts of murder, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, rape, oral copulation, sodomy and being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to death.