Randy Woodfield was a very handsome young man from a middle class family, who had many opportunities to make a success of his life. He was once a college football star and was a member of the Green Bay Packers in the early 1970's until he was released from the team because rumours were circulating that he was going around his local area exposing himself to people.

Within a decade of finishing college with such promise of a successful football career, he would be arrested for a string of rapes, robberies, and murders that were committed near the I-5 freeway from Washington through to northern California.

In addition to a suspected sixty or more sexual assaults, it is estimated that Woodfield committed as many as eighteen murders of women along Interstate 5 in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Police investigating a Beaverton, Oregon, shooting death came across Woodfield, who was a casual acquaintance of the victim. Woodfield had a history of sexual assault and when police searched his home they found evidence linking the ex-footballer with the murder and attempted murder of two young women whom Woodfield had shot in the head. The surviving victim, Beth Wilmot, testified that Woodfield was her attacker at the subsequent trial. The I-5 killer was found guilty on both charges and sentenced to life in prison.

Woodfield was also tried and convicted in the Beaverton killing and a double murder of a wife and daughter in Redding, California. Though police have no doubt he was the perpetrator in many more killings, no further charges were ever filed.

What distinguishes Woodfield from most serial killers is that fact that he had such an ostensibly normal upbringing. His parents were not divorced, he was not adopted, he had not been abandoned, he was not brought up in poverty, there was no evidence that he had been abused, neglected, or rejected in any way, which are the hallmark life experiences that propel a person into a life of crime.

What is known is that he deeply resented his older sisters because they liked to order him around when he was young. It is possible that this resentment festered and led to his desire to harm women. In addition, when IQ tests were performed on him, he scored 90, which was less than average, thus indicating that his reasoning ability was impaired. This likely reduced his ability to reason through the potential consequences of murder and magnified his inner turmoil. Having a lower than average IQ also meant that he didn't have the mental capacity to be a very good criminal, which is one of the reasons why he kept getting caught. Sadly, he wasn't caught soon enough.