Hillside Strangler

Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono
Bianchi (left) and Buono (right) in court
Born	Kenneth Alessio Bianchi Angelo Anthony Buono, Jr. Bianchi: May 22, 1951 Buono: October 5, 1934
Died	Buono: September 21, 2002 (aged 67)
Cause of death	Heart attack
Other names	The Hillside Stranglers
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment
Conviction(s)	Murder
Killings
Victims	10
Span of killings	October 16, 1977– February 16, 1978
Country	America
Date apprehended	Bianchi: January 12, 1979 Buono: October 22, 1979

The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing ten females ranging in age from 12 to 28 years old during a four-month period from late 1977 to early 1978. They committed their crimes in the hills above Los Angeles, California.

Murders

The first victim of the Hillside Strangler was Yolanda Washington, whose body was found near the Forest Lawn Cemetery on October 18, 1977. The corpse was cleaned and faint marks were visible around the neck, wrists, and ankles where a rope had been used. It was discovered that the victim had been raped.

On November 1, 1977, police were called to a La Crescenta neighborhood, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, where the body of a teenage girl was found naked, face up on a parkway in a residential area. The homeowner had covered her with a tarp to prevent the neighborhood children from viewing her on their way to school. Bruises on her neck indicated strangulation. The body had been dumped, indicating she was killed elsewhere. The girl was eventually identified as Judith Lynn Miller, a runaway prostitute who was 15 years old. The coroner's report further detailed her being bound much like the first victim, Yolanda Washington.

Five days later, on November 6, 1977, the nude body of another woman was discovered near the Chevy Chase Country Club. Like Judith Lynn Miller, she had been strangled with a ligature. The woman was identified as 21-year-old Lissa Teresa Kastin, a waitress, and was last seen leaving work the night before she was discovered.

Two girls, Dolores Cepeda, 12, and Sonja Johnson, 14, boarded a school bus and headed home on November 13, 1977. The last time they were seen was getting off this bus and approaching a car. Inside the car were reportedly two men. A young boy, cleaning up a trash-strewn hillside near Dodger Stadium, found their bodies, November 20. Both girls had been strangled and raped.

Later that same day, November 20, 1977, hikers found the nude, sexually assaulted body of Kristina Weckler, 20, on a hillside near Glendale. Unlike previous victims, there were signs of torture, indicated by oozing injection marks. It was later revealed that Weckler had been injected with Windex.

On November 23, 1977, the badly decomposed body of Jane King, 28, an actress, was found near an off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway. She had gone missing around November 9. With the continued discovery of bodies in hilly areas, a task force was formed to catch the predator, dubbed the "Hillside Strangler".

On November 29, 1977, police found the body of Lauren Wagner, 18. She also had been strangled with a ligature; and there were burn marks on her hands indicating she was tortured. The law enforcement task force—Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and Glendale Police Department—began to believe that more than one person was responsible for the murders, even though the media continued to use the singular Hillside Strangler.

On December 13, 1977, police found the body of 17-year-old prostitute Kimberly Martin on a hillside.

The final victim was discovered in Los Angeles on February 16, 1978, when a helicopter pilot spotted an orange Datsun abandoned off a cliff on the Angeles Crest Highway. Police responded to the scene and found the body of the car's owner, 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth, in the trunk.

Sometime in 1977, the two men gave a ride to Catharine Lorre with the intent of killing her as well. However, when they discovered that Catharine was the daughter of actor Peter Lorre, famous for his role as a murderer of children in Fritz Lang's acclaimed film M, they let her go without incident. She did not realize who the men were until they were arrested.

Trial

After intensive investigation, police charged cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr., with the crimes. Bianchi had fled to Bellingham, Washington, where he was soon arrested for raping and murdering two women he had lured to a home for a house-sitting job. Bianchi attempted to set up an insanity defense, claiming that he had dissociative identity disorder and that a personality separate from himself committed the murders. Court psychologists, notably Dr. Martin Orne, observed Bianchi and found that he was faking, so Bianchi agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono in exchange for leniency.

At the conclusion of Buono's trial in 1983, Presiding Judge Ronald M. George, who would later become Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, stated during sentencing, "I would not have the slightest reluctance to impose the death penalty in this case were it within my power to do so. Ironically, although these two defendants utilized almost every form of legalized execution against their victims, the defendants have escaped any form of capital punishment."^[1] Bianchi is serving a life sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary of the Washington State Department of Corrections in Walla Walla, Washington. Buono died of a heart attack on September 21, 2002, at Calipatria State Prison of the California Department of Corrections in Calipatria, California, where he was serving a life sentence.^[2]

Veronica Compton

In 1980, Bianchi began a relationship with Veronica Compton. During his trial, she testified for the defense. She was later convicted and imprisoned for attempting to strangle a woman she had lured to a motel in an attempt to have authorities believe that the Hillside Strangler was still on the loose and the wrong man was imprisoned. Bianchi had given her some smuggled semen to use to make it look like a rape/murder committed by the Hillside Strangler. She was released in 2003.

Film adaptations

Year	Title	Cast			Notes
		as Angelo Buono	as Kenneth Bianchi	also starring
1989	The Case of the Hillside Stranglers	Dennis Farina	Billy Zane	Richard Crenna as a police sergeant	Made for television; based on Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers by Darcy O'Brien
2004	The Hillside Strangler	Nicholas Turturro	C. Thomas Howell
2006	Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders	Tomas Arana	Clifton Collins, Jr.	Brittany Daniel as a psychiatrist	Direct-to-video

See also

• Alphabet murders

References

1. Bachmann, Patrick (Writer/Producer) (1997). The Hillside Stranglers (television production). A&E Television. External link in |title= (help);
2. King, Gary C. "The Hillside Strangler: Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi." Investigation Discovery. 2. Retrieved on January 10, 2010.

External links

• "'Hillside Strangler' dies in prison", CNN, September 22, 2002
• Crime Library's story on the Hillside Stranglers