the city of Tigard to the home of a relative in Los Angeles on December 8. His body was discovered the following day, discarded alongside a rural road in Clackamas County, close to where the body of Whitcher had been found just two weeks earlier. As with Alt and Schoenborn, Taggs had consumed alcohol and Valium before his murder, although Taggs had died of suffocation caused by a sock thrust into his trachea. Connection of Oregon murders to manhunt Noting the passage of time between periods of activity when bodies of young males had been found discarded near mass transportation with alcohol and/or pharmaceuticals in their bloodstream in Oregon, investigators theorized that their killer resided in another state and struck in Oregon only when there on business. Following the murders of Silveira, Whitcher, and Taggs, Oregon investigators relayed details of the murders to police in other states, describing the modus operandi of the killer they were seeking and requesting feedback from any police force that had unsolved murders of young males on their files with similar characteristics. A response from southern California counties was swift: the pattern of killings was identical to victims linked to the unknown killer in California. The six Oregon murders committed by Kraft were thus linked to the murders he had committed in California. 1983 Kraft did not kill again until January 27, 1983, when he abducted a 21-year-old hitchhiker named Eric Church. The victim was last seen alive hitchhiking from Orange County to Sacramento the day before his murder. His body was found discarded alongside I-605. An autopsy concluded Church had consumed high levels of alcohol and Valium and that he had been sodomized. Rope marks on Church's wrists indicated he had struggled against his restraints before he died of a combination of ligature strangulation and numerous blows to the side of his skull inflicted by a blunt instrument. On February 12, Kraft killed two Buena Park men: 18-year-old Geoffrey Nelson and 20-year-old Rodger DeVaul. The two young men were last seen outside the house of a friend named Bryce Wilson shortly after midnight when they told Wilson they intended to purchase something to eat. Nelson's nude body was found alongside an offramp close to the Garden Grove Freeway several hours after he and DeVaul were last seen. He had been emasculated, strangled, and thrown from a moving vehicle. DeVaul's body was found the following