Bonin much better than he had initially divulged. Police later learned Pugh – a juvenile delinquent with a lengthy criminal record – had willingly accompanied Bonin in the murder of Harry Todd Turner. As a direct result of this knowledge, first-degree murder charges against 20-year-old acquaintance of Bonin's Eric Marten Wijnaendts – brought in December 1980 – were dropped in January 1981, with the county prosecutor citing insufficient evidence as the cause. Bonin was not brought to trial for the murders of Mark Shelton, Robert Wirostek, John Kilpatrick, Michael McDonald, or the John Doe whose body was found in November 1979 because police did not find sufficient evidence upon any of the victims' bodies which could conclusively link Bonin alone to the crimes. Police did charge Bonin and Butts with the murder of the John Doe, and those of Mark Shelton and Robert Wirostek (alongside that of Darin Kendrick) in October and November 1980. Bonin was formally charged with these murders at a pretrial hearing held on January 2, 1981. Shelton had been linked to the manhunt for the Freeway Killer upon the discovery of his body in August 1979, as had Darin Kendrick and the unidentified victim whose location was reported to police by Butts. Wirostek, who vanished en route to his job on September 17, 1979, was not confirmed as a Freeway Killer victim until his body was formally identified in July 1980. Two months after all charges had been filed against each defendant, Butts committed suicide, rendering his recorded testimony in these three cases inadmissible as evidence. The charges against Bonin in relation to Shelton, Wirostek and the John Doe were therefore dropped in accordance with Penal Code section 995 in early 1981. Nonetheless, sufficient physical evidence was still present in the case of Darin Kendrick – a murder for which Bonin was subsequently convicted. Neither Bonin nor any of his accomplices were ever charged with the murders of John Kilpatrick or Michael McDonald, although Bonin confessed to their killings to David López. Bonin was charged with, but subsequently cleared of, the murders of Sean King and Thomas Lundgren at his Los Angeles County trial. He is known to have confessed to the murder of King, and led police to his body; he emphatically denied Lundgren's murder in the series of interviews granted to David López between December 1980 and January 1981, although Bonin stated in these