Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
A horrific series of murders of girls and young women aged between 12 and 28, which took place between October 1977 and February 1978, plunged the American metropolis of Los Angeles into fear and terror. This spate of brutal murders came to be known as the ‘Hillside Strangler’ case due to the location of the bodies in the Hollywood Hills. Initially, it was assumed that a single serial killer was responsible, but it transpired that two perpetrators were behind the crimes: the cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr., which is why the name was changed to the ‘Hillside Stranglers’. But who were this murderous duo who abducted, raped and killed 12 women? Kenneth Alessio Bianchi was born on 22 May 1957 in Rochester, the son of an alcoholic prostitute. Just two weeks after his birth, she gave her son up for adoption. Shortly afterwards, Bianchi was adopted by Nicholas and Frances Sciolioni-Bianchi in Rochester. Bianchi was considered to be exceptionally intelligent, but also extremely quick-tempered; he changed schools twice because of his outbursts of anger. From an early age, he had a tendency to make up stories, which is why his mother described him as a compulsive liar. As Bianchi had difficulty urinating, he was sent to various doctors, who often pressed on his genitals, which Bianchi found humiliating. Furthermore, Bianchi frequently experienced trance-like daydreams that rendered him unresponsive. At the age of 5, he was diagnosed with petit mal epilepsy, and at the age of 10 with a passive-aggressive personality disorder. In 1964, Bianchi’s father Nicholas died of pneumonia, leaving his mother to provide for the family. As a result, Bianchi was often left to his own devices, but he successfully graduated from Gates-Chili High School in 1971. Shortly afterwards, he married his childhood sweetheart, who, however, left him after eight months. Bianchi’s great dream was to become a police officer, which is why he studied police science at Monroe Community College in New York. However, he dropped out after just one month. He then tried in vain to secure a job as a police officer in New York. Eventually, he found work as a security guard in a jewellery shop, where, however, he repeatedly stole jewellery, which he gave to his girlfriends and prostitutes. Finally, in 1977, Bianchi moved to Los Angeles to live with his older cousin, Angelo Buono Jr. Buono, who was considerably older, had a strong influence on the passive Bianchi, who, with his smart clothes, dark hair and moustache, was a real heart-throb in the style of Tom Selleck from the TV series Magnum. Buono eventually came up with the idea of forcing girls into prostitution to make money. Two teenage runaways, Sabra Hannan and Becky Spears, fell into their clutches and were forced to work as prostitutes for them. After Spears managed to escape with the help of a lawyer, Hannan also fled. With their income cut off, the murderous duo began to target other young women. Both men always followed the same modus operandi. Bianchi and Buono drove through the streets of Los Angeles at night, searching for women. Once they had found their targets, they presented the women with their fake police badge to force them into their unmarked police car. They then drove their victims to Buono’s upholstery workshop in Glendale, California. There, the victims were raped, beaten and often tortured before being strangled with a ligature. The bodies were cleaned and dumped naked in the wooded areas around the city. Their first known victim was Yolanda Washington, a 19-year-old prostitute whose naked body was found on 18 October 1977 near the Ventura Freeway. She had been raped and strangled. Her death marked the beginning of a series of murders that plunged the City of Angels into fear and terror. On 1 November 1977, the body of 15-year-old Judith Lynn Miller was found in La Crescenta. She had last been seen alive on Halloween, when she was taken away by two fake police officers. Her body showed similar signs of restraint to those of the previous victim. Five days later, on 6 November 1977, the body of 21-year-old waitress Lissa Kastin was discovered near the Chevy Chase Country Club. She, too, had been raped and strangled. However, Kastin was not a prostitute, which indicated to the investigators that the perpetrators were acting indiscriminately. A planned murder of Catharine Lorre Baker, the daughter of the actor Peter Lorre, was called off after she showed the perpetrators a photograph of herself with her famous father. She thus narrowly escaped death. On 13 November 1977, 12-year-old Dolores Ann Cepeda and 14-year-old Sonja Marie Johnson boarded a bus outside Eagle Rock Plaza and were last seen getting into a two-tone car. A week later, their bodies were found near Dodger Stadium. Both girls had been raped and strangled. On the same day, 20 November 1977, walkers found the body of 20-year-old Kristina Weckler. She was a hard-working student whose future came to a tragically abrupt end. Her body showed puncture marks, which were later identified as injections of Windex. On 23 November 1977, the badly decomposed body of 28-year-old Evelyn Jane King was discovered. The state of decomposition prevented investigators from determining whether she had been raped or tortured, but she too had been strangled. On 29 November 1977, 18-year-old Lauren Rae Wagner was found in the hills around Mount Washington, bearing ligature marks and burn marks. Witnesses stated that they had seen her being abducted. On 14 December 1977, 17-year-old prostitute Kimberly Diane Martin was found dead on a derelict plot of land near Los Angeles City Hall. On 17 February 1978, the last known victim, 20-year-old Cindy Lee Hudspeth, was discovered in her car, which had been pushed off a cliff and found in Los Angeles. She, too, had been raped and strangled. The murders came to an abrupt end in February 1978, with investigators having no leads on the perpetrators. It was not until January 1979 that the arrest of Kenneth Bianchi in Washington, D.C., in connection with two further murders, led to the case being solved. To avoid the death penalty, Bianchi implicated his cousin Angelo Buono and agreed to testify against him. This led to Buono’s arrest in October 1979. Angelo Buono was born on 5 October 1934 in Rochester, like Bianchi, the child of Italian immigrants. Following his parents’ divorce, Buono moved with his mother to Glendale, where he developed an extreme hatred of women from a young age. From 1975 onwards, he ran a car upholstery workshop; he had been married several times and had numerous children. After Bianchi moved in with Buono, the two quickly discovered that they both harboured violent fantasies about women. They fantasised about raping and killing women – something they soon put into practice. Following his arrest in Washington, Bianchi attempted to mount a defence of insanity, claiming he suffered from dissociative identity disorder. According to this, his alter ego, whom he called ‘Steve Walker’, had committed the murders. However, court psychologists saw through his deception, and Bianchi eventually confessed and testified against Buono. During his trial, he began a relationship with Veronica Compton, who lied on the witness stand to exonerate Bianchi. Veronica Compton even went so far as to attempt to strangle a woman in a motel room to give the impression that the Hillside Stranglers were still at large. To this end, she had even obtained semen from Bianchi to use on the victim. However, the woman survived the attempted murder and Veronica Compton was subsequently arrested herself. Compton was later convicted of attempted murder. Buono was sentenced in 1983 to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Bianchi is serving his sentence at Washington State Penitentiary. Buono died in prison in 2002 of a heart attack. The gruesome crimes of Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. have changed Los Angeles forever. The spate of murders attracted widespread media attention and created a climate of fear in the city. Frequent warnings to young women not to go out alone at night became the norm. Furthermore, the case laid the foundations for improvements in the investigation of serial murders and for cooperation between different police authorities. These grim events remind us not only of the importance of being vigilant and cautious, but also of how crucial effective law enforcement measures are in protecting society from such unimaginable crimes. There is no doubt that the case of the Hillside Stranglers remains one of the most horrific criminal cases in US history, one that continues to shock people to this day.
