Hillside Strangler

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This article is about the murderers. For the highway, see Hillside Strangler (Illinois)

The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, cousins who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing girls and women ranging in age from twelve to twenty-eight years old during a four-month period from late 1977 to early 1978 in the hills above Los Angeles, USA.

[edit] Murders

On October 17, 1977, a prostitute named Yolanda Washington disappeared. Her naked body was discovered several days later near the Warner Brothers studio lot. She had been strangled.

On the morning of November 1, 1977, police were called to an Eagle Rock neighborhood, north of downtown Los Angeles. The body of a teenage girl, wrapped in tarp, had been found at a curb in a small residential area. There were insects feeding on her flesh. Bruises on her neck indicated strangulation. The body had been dumped, meaning she was killed somewhere else. The girl was about 16 years old, weighing 90 pounds (41 kg), and had medium length, reddish-brown hair. She went unidentified at first. After hours of unsatisfying tips, the girl was finally identified as Judy Miller, a 16-year-old destitute who disappeared several months earlier.

A week later on November 6, 1977, the nude body of another woman was found near the Glendale Country Club. Similar to Judy Miller, the killer strangled her with ligature and dumped her body. Within minutes, the woman was identified as 21-year-old Lissa Kastin, a local waitress. Lissa was last seen leaving work on the night she was killed.

On November 13, 1977, two school girls, Dolores Capeda, 12, and Sonja Johnson, 14, boarded their bus and headed home. They got off at their bus stop but were never seen again until found dead. On November 20, a young boy cleaning up trash found 2 bodies. Both girls had been strangled and raped. They were identified as Capeda and Johnson.

On November 20, 1977, hikers found the nude, dead, sexually assaulted body of 20-year-old Kristina Weckler on a hillside near Glendale, California. That same day, two more female bodies were found on the other side of the same hilly area.

Just before Thanksgiving there was a 7th murder. On November 23, the badly decomposed body of 28-year-old Jane King was found off an exit ramp near the Golden State freeway. The killers would soon be known as the Hillside Strangler. A 30-police-officer task force formed, but the killers took the weekend off for the holiday. On November 29, the killings continued. On a hillside outside of Mount Washington, police found the body of 18-year-old Lauren Wagner. She, too, was strangled with a ligature. There were also burn marks on her hands indicating she was also tortured. She was victim number 8. Over the next four months, police discovered ten more victims. The law enforcement task force—Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and Glendale Police Department—always assumed more than one person was responsible for the slayings, even though the media continued to use the singular, Hillside Strangler.

The killings stopped for 2 weeks. A 9th murder took place. On December 13, 1977, police found the body of 17-year-old Kimberly Martin. Her body was pointing toward city hall. There were no more victims in December or in January.

The final killing took place in Los Angeles. On February 16, 1978, a helicopter spotted an orange Datsun off a cliff in the Angeles Crest. In the trunk police found the body of 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth.

The Stranglers once stopped Catherine Lorre with the intent of abducting her, but after learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre, they let her go. It was only after the two men were arrested that Lorre realized whom she had met.

[edit] Trial

After intensive investigation, police charged cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr. with the brutal crimes. Bianchi had fled to Washington where he was soon arrested for raping and murdering two women he had lured to his home. Bianchi attempted to setup an insanity defense, claiming one of his multiple personalities committed the murders while he was in an altered, unconscious state. Court psychologists observed Bianchi and found that he was faking the illness, so Bianchi agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono in exchange for leniency.

At the conclusion of Buono's trial in 1983 the presiding judge Ronald M. George (now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California) said he would impose the death penalty without a second thought if the jury had allowed it. Bianchi is serving a life sentence in Washington. Buono died of a heart attack on September 21, 2002, in Calipatria State Prison where he was serving a life sentence.

The murder committed by The Hillside Strangler where the body was left near a 'No Dumping' sign was emulated by the killer in Copycat. The murders were also the basis of the 2004 film The Hillside Strangler and Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006).