Sole Survivor Of Notorious 'Freeway Killer' Speaks Out
ALISO VIEJO (CBS) — David McVicker will never forget the day the infamous "Freeway Killer" William Bonin kidnapped and raped him at gunpoint, then let him live.
"It was the last day of summer. I was actually hitchhiking home from Garden Grove to Huntington Beach and he got me," he recounts.
He would be the first and only one to survive Bonin's killing spree in the 1980s.
"It really did hurt me for a long time," he said.
After McVicker, Bonin may have raped and killed as many as 21 other boys.
McVicker, who was the only one who lived to testified, made it his mission to speak out for the boys who couldn't after one mother grabbed him for help.
"She grabbed me and she said, 'You've got to speak for my kid. You've got to speak for my kid,' and it hit me, and I just knew that I had to always do anything I could to let everyone know why that man is in jail… why they're going to execute that guy," McVicker said.
Now, decades later, it is McVicker who needs help.
"It wasn't just the ordeal that night which I still have nightmares about sometimes but it was all the things that happened after that," he said.
He was so distraught over the attack he dropped out of high school decades ago and has worked odd jobs but recently injured his back on a job site.
Six surgeries later, he says he can barely walk… much less work.
After years of facing his fears, McVicker never dreamed he and his family would be packing up and moving into a trailer headed for the desert.
This Christmas, his family has a tree but little else.
"That's it and if you look, there's nothing under [the tree]," McVicker said. "It's not Christmas for us. It's hard to be in the spirit."
A psychologist, who has spoken with McVicker several times, says that because he was so violently attacked at such a young age, he is forever scarred. She says, because he wasn't offered therapy, it's as if he was victimized again.
