The Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono & Kenneth Bianchi: Move on to Murder

Their crime spree lasted only four months but their trial was destined to be the one of the longest America has ever seen. On October 18^th 1977, the body of 19 year old Yolanda Washington was found in Los Angeles near Forest Lawn Cemetery. She had been strangled to death, and also raped, but otherwise her body was unmarked with only faint abrasions showing on her wrists, ankles and neck. On November 1^st, the next body was found in nearby Eagle Rock. 15 year old Judith Miller had also been strangled and her body had been wrapped in a tarp and left on the curb. On November 6^th, Lissa Kastin's body was found near the Glendale Country Club. She had been strangled with a ligature. November 13^th saw the discovery of the bodies of 12 year old Dolores Cepeda and 14 year old Sonja Johnson near Dodger Stadium...

Anyone who knows Los Angeles will realize that these bodies were dumped only a few miles away from each other. Slowly feared rumor became terrifying reality: Los Angeles was being haunted by a serial killer who specialized in strangling young girls. But what the city did not know was that the threat was two fold. There were actually two serial killers operating together.

Brooding, saturnine Angelo Buono was several years older than his attractive young cousin, Kenneth Bianchi. Angelo was cruel and sadistic, Kenneth was charming but psychopathic and together they concocted a scheme to pimp the girls they slept with. But pimping soon became far too tame a pastime for them and so they decided to move on to murder. Dressed as cops and driving an unmarked police car, they cruised cosmopolitan Los Angeles looking for girls. And they found them. From schoolgirls to actresses...by themselves or with a friend...no one was safe and the city was soon in a stranglehold of terror.

The deaths continued. The corpse of 20 year old Christina Weckler was found on a hillside in Glendale on November 20^th. She had been strangled but her killers had also been creative and there were suppurating needle marks all over her body. The oldest victim came next: 28 year old Jane King - an actress - body found on one of the Golden Gate Freeway off-ramps on November 23^rd. By now a police task force had been commissioned to apprehend the killer that everyone was calling The Hillside Strangler. No one yet knew that there were actually two killers.

On November 29^th, the body of 18 year old Lauren Wagner was found. She had been tortured and then strangled. On December 13^th, 17 year old Kimberly Martin's body was found. She had also been tortured and then strangled. Two months passed with no further bodies turning up. The city held its breath; perhaps the killings had stopped. But they hadn't. Not quite. As a bizarre footnote to this chapter of murder, the body of 20 year old Cindy Hudspeth surfaced on February 16^th 1978. She had been strangled and her body had been stuffed in the trunk of an orange Datsun motor vehicle that had then been abandoned in the Los Angeles Crest area.

To say that Bianchi was strange may be underestimating his true capacity for odd behavior. Even while he and his cousin were abducting and murdering women, Bianchi was applying to the Los Angeles Police Department for a job. His initiation into the force had gone so far as his being allowed to ride along with officers while they were conducting searches for the Strangler... When Buono discovered what had been going on, he was, to say the least, a little upset. This episode resulted in Bianchi and Buono's parting ways, with Bianchi relocating to Washington. This was not a good day for the women of Washington as, in May 1979, Bianchi committed a double murder and strangled two women. Bianchi was not as good as his cousin when it came to cleaning up after himself, however, and he was soon arrested for the murders. He was also not as good as his cousin when it came to getting rid of evidence and, as he had held on to certain pieces of physical evidence from the Los Angeles slayings, the police soon linked him to the Hillside Strangler murders. It was only a matter of time before Bianchi sang like a canary and offered up his cousin in exchange for legal leniency.

Buono and Bianchi's trial, which lasted more than two years, had a storyline that would do any daytime soap proud. From faked multiple personality disorders to women falling in love with the murderers and committing copycat crimes, this trial had it all. In the end, Kenneth Bianchi was found guilty of five of the murders and Angelo Buono of nine. Bianchi and Buono were both sentenced to life in prison but, for Buono, "life" had a different meaning than for Bianchi: he died in his cell of heart failure in September 2002. Bianchi is still serving time.

Violence is still a way of life for the Buono / Bianchi family. In 2007, Buono's grandson Christopher committed suicide after shooting his grandmother in the head...

Sources:
Marilyn Barsley The Hillside Stranglers TruTV Crime Library
The Daily Times
Kenneth Bianchi Wikipedia
Angelo Buono Jr Wikipedia
Hillside Strangler Wikipedia