Bonin Family to Repay $79,424 in Benefits

The family of executed serial killer William G. Bonin agreed Monday to repay nearly $80,000 in Social Security disability benefits he received illegally while on death row, federal officials announced.

Citing privacy restrictions, officials did not disclose terms except to say that the settlement was for “full restitution” of benefits, paid for 14 years until Bonin was executed by lethal injection last month.

Criminals such as Bonin must be kept “from committing a second crime against the taxpayer,” said a terse statement issued by Shirley S. Chater, Social Security commissioner, and David C. Williams, the agency’s inspector general.

Social Security officials were not available for comment late Monday afternoon.

The Social Security Administration came under fire last week for a snafu that sent $79,424 in benefits into a Southern California bank account held by Bonin and a second person. Officials did not name the second account holder, but Bonin’s mother, Alice Benton, told a newspaper she used the money to make about $75,000 in payments on her Downey home.

The benefit payments, which Bonin began receiving for a mental disability in 1972, should have ended when he went to prison in 1982. But the money kept flowing even though prison officials notified the Social Security Administration that Bonin was behind bars. A later review of California, Nevada and Arizona prisons found that no other death row inmates received Social Security benefits.

Bonin’s brother, Robert Bonin, declined to comment on the settlement.

William Bonin, dubbed the “Freeway Killer,” was executed Feb. 23 for the murders of 14 boys and young men in Los Angeles and Orange counties in 1979 and 1980. He was the first prisoner in California killed by lethal injection. The payments came to light when a funeral director sent paperwork notifying the Social Security Administration of Bonin’s death.