Twenty-Eight, and Counting ...

One after another, the bodies of ten men were found lying near southern California highways. All were males, all were nude, all had been shot in the head --probably with the same gun. Some had been dismembered and stuffed into heavy-duty trash bags. Most of the victims of what police dubbed The Trash Bag Murders also had something else in common: they were known members of the homosexual community in and around Los Angeles.

Police discovered that one victim --John LaMay, 17--had been seen in the company of two homosexuals: Patrick Kearney, 37, an electronics engineer for the Hughes Aircraft Co., and his roommate, David Hill, 34, unemployed. In May, as the investigation went on, Kearney quit his job and took off with Hill for El Paso, Texas, where they went into hiding. But last week the two men were arraigned for murder. They had calmly walked into a sheriffs office in Riverside, Calif., and pointed to their photographs on a nearby wanted poster. Said Hill: "We're them."

Beyond Recovery. Kearney later took police to six sites near the California-Mexico border where, authorities said, "he may have disposed of bodies." At week's end, police had recovered twelve, and said that Kearney and Hill might be responsible in all for 28 or more killings, which would make the case the largest mass murder in American history. Says Lieut. Edward Douglas of the Los Angeles sheriffs department: "I don't know if we'll ever know the total, because some bodies may be beyond recovery."

An affidavit filed in the case states that a bloody hack saw was found at the Kearney-Hill apartment in Redondo Beach. The apartment also yielded hair samples and bloodstains that match those of the victim LaMay, whose body --according to the affidavit--was discovered in a plastic bag taken from the Hughes Aircraft Co.

Police say that the two men preyed on boys and young men, some of them apparently male prostitutes, who frequented homosexual cruising areas like Selma Avenue in Hollywood and MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Says Lieut. Douglas, "We have no indication of what the motive was." Other than the fact that some of the victims, at least, were homosexuals, they appeared to have little in common.

For the nation's homosexuals, still smarting from the successful anti-gay rights drive of Anita Bryant in Miami, the news of the California murders came at a bad time. The Bryant group had argued that many male homosexuals prey on the young--and indeed some of the California victims were teenagers. What was more, the press began rehashing the sex-thrill murders of 27 youths by three Texas homosexuals in 1973 --still the largest proved mass murder in America.

Robert Gould, professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College, estimates that the number of murders committed by homosexuals is probably no greater, proportionately, than those committed by heterosexuals. But he adds: "When it's a homosexual who kills ten people or twelve, or whatever, the headline is HOMOSEXUAL KILLS. It sticks in your mind. You never get the headline HETEROSEXUAL KILLS."

The questions raised by the case about the problems of homosexual relationships sharply divide psychiatrists, as well as psychologists. Are homosexuals any more given to aggression than the rest of the population? Most analysts think not. Says Judd Marmor, past president of the American Psychiatric Association: "I don't think there is anything inherent in homosexuality that makes them disturbed people."

But some experts think that homosexuals may be more prone to pathology. Says Psychiatrist Gould: "I think you will find more disturbed homosexuals. The extra fillip of pathology in the homosexual is due to cultural opposition and discrimination." Others believe that a male homosexual sex relationship has more potential for aggression, simply because both partners are male; the blend of sex and male-to-male rivalry can be explosive.

On one point most observers are agreed: homosexuals are more vulnerable to physical attack because accepting sexual invitations from total strangers is an established part of the gay scene. Says Berkeley Psychologist Michael Evans: "Homosexuals are an easy population to get access to in some anonymous way." Chicago Police Sgt. Richard Sandberg puts it more tersely: "The gays are easy prey."

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