Sean King was 14 when he was abducted from a bus stop in Downey on May 19, 1980. Bonin reportedly went to an accomplice’s apartment afterward to boast about the killing. Bonin’s series of attacks across Southern California from 1979 to 1980 involved multiple victims and several accomplices.

Bonin was arrested in June 1980 after police acting on an informant’s tip placed him under surveillance and caught him in the act of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old in his van. He was tried on multiple murder charges that included Sean King’s death, but the jury acquitted Bonin of Sean King’s murder in January 1982, a verdict that deeply distressed Sean’s family. Bonin was later convicted of other murders and executed by lethal injection in 1996.