This week we’re looking at the case of murdering cousin duo Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, better known as the Hillside Stranglers.
Kenneth Bianchi was born in Rochester, New York in May 1951, his mother was a sex worker with addiction problems and he was quickly given up for adoption. He was adopted by Nicholas Bianchi and Frances Scioliono-Bianchi in August 1951, and was their only child.
Frances described him as being a compulsive liar as soon as he learned to speak, he also suffered seizures as a child.
Bianchi was also prone to fits of rage from a young age and at the age of 10 he was diagnosed with a passive-aggressive personality disorder. He was described as having above average intelligence but also as being an underachiever, he moved schools twice due to behavioural problems and was described as being lazy by his mother and teachers.
Upon graduating from high school Bianchi married his childhood sweetheart but the union only lasted eight months before his wife left him. Bianchi attended college to study psychology but dropped out after just one semester.
Bianchi then found work as a security guard, but spent more time robbing the properties he was hired to protect than actually protecting them, which led to him frequently being on the move, until 1975 when 24 year old Bianchi made the move to Los Angeles, and teamed up with his cousin Angelo, who at the time was 41.
Angelo Anthony Buono Jnr was born in Rochester in October 1934, the son of Italian migrants. His parents divorced when he was young and he moved to California with his mother Jenny. Buono was troubled from the start. From a young age he had an interest in sex and frequently boasted to his classmates about raping their female classmates.
We don’t know as much about him as we do about Bianchi, but by the time the cousins were united in LA Buono had long rap sheet including rape, assault, failure to pay child support, and grand theft auto.
Once Bianchi moved to LA the cousins wasted no time in furthering their criminal exploits. Now, most of the sources we read about this case say that the cousins got some girls to pimp out, they go on to describe these girls as teenage prostitutes.
Let us be clear, they did not find some girls to pimp out, they kidnapped two vulnerable teenage runaways, held them captive and forced them into sex work.
There isn’t too much more information about the two victims Sabra Hannan and Becky Spears, what we do know is that the two were forced into sex work, but Becky Spears eventually managed to escape and met a lawyer named David Wood, who was suitably appalled by her situation and helped her to escape. Sabra Hannan managed to escape soon after.
The cousins weren’t very happy with losing the two girls and the income they made from them, so they impersonated police officers and quickly kidnapped another girl to take her place, but again we don’t really know much about this girl or what became of her.
In autumn 1977, they also met a sex worker named Deborah Noble, and she sold them a ‘trick list’ which was a list of men they knew who met with them and other sex workers. The list was delivered by Deborah’s friend Yolanda Washington.
Now, we’re not entirely sure how but Bianchi and Buono discovered that this trick list was false, it was just something Deborah had made up to sell to the cousins. They were furious that they had paid for it and weren’t going to make any money off of it, but rather than get over it and find jobs that didn’t involve exploiting vulnerable women, they decided to take their frustrations out on Yolanda.
On October 17 1977, 19 year old Yolanda’s body was found on the hillside of the Forest Lawn Cemetery near the Ventura Highway. Detectives determined that her body had been cleaned before she was dumped at the site. There were faint marks around her neck, wrists and ankles where she had been tied with rope, her cause of death was strangulation. She had also been sexually assaulted.
The last person to see Yolanda alive, other than Bianchi and Buono, was a music store owner named Ronald LeMieux. He later testified that he’d seen two men flash police badges before handcuffing Yolanda and forcing her into the back of an unmarked car.
Other than Ronald’s sighting of two plain clothes officers flashing badges, the police didn’t really have a lot of information to go on, there was no forensic information at the site because her body had been cleaned and then dumped.
When dealing with a serial killer, police are essentially playing cat and mouse. They need to find the killer before they strike again but they also need more information and evidence, be that circumstantial or forensic, and to get that they have to wait until the killer strikes again.
But the LAPD wouldn’t be waiting for very long, because just 13 days after Yolanda was brutally murdered, Bianchi and Buono would strike again.
Their second victim, well, second victim whom they murdered, was 15 year old Judy Miller.
Judy had been subject to the same horrific treatment as Yolanda. She had been bound and had ligature marks on her neck, wrists and ankles, she had also been beaten and raped before being strangled to death.
Judy’s body was found on the driveway of a house in La Crescenta, which is a neighborhood about 12 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, and reportedly quite a middle class neighbourhood. After discovering her body on the morning of November 1 1997, the homeowner covered her body, in an attempt to give her some dignity and to ensure that the neighbour kids didn’t see the dead body, and then called the police.
Just like Yolanda, Judy’s body had been cleaned before she was dumped in the driveway, the residents as far as we could find were completely unrelated to Judy and her murder.
However, unlike in Yolanda’s case, this time police were able to find a tiny piece of forensic evidence, they found a piece of fluff on her eyelid, although this didn’t really help a lot.
When she was eventually identified as Judy Miller, police found that she was a high school dropout and runaway who had turned to sex work to survive.
Judy was last seen on October 31 on Sunset Boulevard, bystanders say that she was approached by two men dressed in plain clothes who flashed police badges, handcuffed her and forced her into the back of their car and then drove off.
With most serial killers there is a cooling off period between the murders and that gap eventually begins to get smaller and smaller. There may be a period of months, even years, after the first kill before they strike again. But the high that they get from the kill lasts less and less with each time they kill, hence why the cooling off period gets smaller and smaller over time.
But with Bianchi and Buono there’s no real cooling off period at all, there was only two weeks between Yolanda and Judy’s murders, and then just five days after they brutally murdered 15 year old Judy the pair struck again.
On November 6 the body of Elissa “Lissa” Kastin was found near the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale. Lissa had last been seen the night before leaving the restaurant where she worked. Just like Judy and Yolanda, she had been approached by two men impersonating police officers, who had then handcuffed her and bundled her into the back of their car.
As well as being a waitress, Lissa was also a professional dancer and a member of the LA Knockers all-female dance troupe. She had no history of drug or addiction problems, and she wasn’t a runaway or sex worker either.
It’s worth noting that at this point the police and press believed that there was only one murderer, they didn’t realise they were dealing with a murdering duo.
At some point in early November 1977 Bianchi and Buono had attempted to abduct a 24 year old woman named Catherin Lorre Baker. They had approached her, flashed police badges and some reports say they handcuffed her, others say that they just searched her. Whether they handcuffed her or not, when they were searching her belongings they found a photo in her purse of her and her father, none other than character actor Peter Lorre – known for his roles in films such as Fritz Lang’s M in 1931 in which he played a serial killer, as well as roles alongside Humphrey Bogart in The Maltease Falcon and Casablanca in the 1940s.
Upon realising that she was the daughter of a Hollywood actor, the duo released Catherine unharmed, but it is widely believed that they planned to torture and murder her as they had done to Yolanda, Judy and Lissa.
When they were finally arrested, Catherine would identify them as the men who stopped her and flashed police badges at her.
On November 20 some young boys were searching a trash heap in the hills near Dodgers Stadium, looking for anything valuable or useful, when they found the decomposing bodies of two girls. The girls were eventually identified as 12-year-old Dolores Ann “Dolly” Cepeda and 14-year-old Sonja Marie Johnson, they had last been seen boarding a bus on Colorado Avenue on their way home on November 13.
Due to the level of decomposition it was determined that they had been abducted and murdered shortly after they were last seen. Despite the state of their bodies, pathologists confirmed that they had both been bound at the wrists, ankles and neck, and they had been sexually assaulted.
The same day that Dolly and Sonja were discovered, a third body was discovered in the hills between Eagle Rock and Glendale. 20 year old Katherine Weckler was an honours student at the Art Center College of Design. Like the previous victims Katherine had been bound at the wrists, neck and ankles, she had been violently beaten and raped, her body was covered in bruises. But unlike the previous victims, the cousins had also experimented on Katherine. She had two puncture marks on her arm, but she had no history of drug use, nor were there any drugs in her system. Tests eventually showed that Katherine had been injected with household cleaners.
Just three days later a seventh body would be found, this time near the Los Feliz off-ramp of the Golden State Highway. She would eventually be identified as 28 year old aspiring actress Jane King, who was last seen on November 9. Because of the level of decomposition, medical examiners couldn’t determine whether or not she had been tortured or sexually assaulted, but they did determine that she had died from strangulation.
In response to Jane’s murder, the a task force was created initially composing of 30 officers from the LAPD, the Sheriff’s Department and the Glendale Police Department — to catch the predator who was now being called the “Hillside Strangler.”
The task force made little progress though and on November 29 another victim was found.
Lauren’s body was found by hikers in the hills near Mount Washington, LA, she had the same marks to her wrists, ankles and neck as the other victims, her cause of death was strangulation, but she also had burn marks on her hands indicating that she had been tortured too.
Lauren Wagner was an 18 year old student living at home with her parents in the San Fernando Valley. She had gone out on the night of the 28 and her parents expected her back by midnight. The next morning her parents found her car parked across the street from their house, with the door ajar. Her father began to knock on neighbour’s doors and found that the woman across the street had witnessed her abduction and heard Lauren shout, “You won’t get away with this!”
On December 14 the body of 17 year old Kimberly Martin was found in a deserted lot near the Los Angeles City Hall. Kimberly was a sex worker, and like most women in LA during this time, she feared for her safety, and so she signed up with an escort agency, thinking that it would be safer than working on the streets alone. But unfortunately Bianchi and Buono placed a call to the agency on December 9 from a public pay phone and Kimberly was the girl who was sent. Kimberly had been tortured, she had electrical burns on her hands and had been strangled.
When police investigated the apartment to which Kimberly had been sent, they found it vacant and broken into.
After Kimberly’s murder, Bianchi and Buono took a couple of months off from torturing and murdering women in LA, because even serial killers don’t like to work over Christmas.
But on February 17 1978, a helicopter pilot spotted an orange Datsun which had been pushed over the cliffs in the hills near the Angeles Crest Highway. Police attended the scene and in the boot of the car they found the body of 20 year old student and waitress Cindy Hudspeth. She had the same ligature marks on her wrists, ankles and neck as the other victims, Cindy had also been raped and tortured. Her body was placed in the boot of the car before it was pushed off the cliffs.
After Cindy’s murder, the murders stopped, not because police had managed to find the killers, they were still none the wiser.
During this period, Kenneth Binachi was actually trying to join the LAPD! He had even gone on a ride along with LAPD officers whilst they were looking for the Hillside Strangler.
When Angelo Buono found out that his little cousin had been associating with the LAPD during their murdering spree, he went ballistic! The pair had attempted to abduct and kill an eleventh victim, but this went wrong and the victim got away. It was following this botched attempt that Bianchi admitted to his cousin that he had tried to join the LAPD and been on a ride along.
Buono threatened to kill his cousin unless he left LA, and in May 1978 Bianchi did just that and he relocated with his girlfriend Kelli Boyd to Bellingham, Washington State, which is just 20 miles south of the Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver.
By all accounts the cousins kept a relatively low profile for a few months.
That was until January 1979, when Bianchi, now working as a security guard at a house in Bellingham, lured two women to the property under the pretense of a house sitting job. 22-year-old Karen Mandic and 27-year-old Diane Wilder were both students at Western Washington University, once at the house Bianchi pushed them down the stairs and strangled both of them.
But it soon became clear that without Buono, Bianchi didn’t really know what he was doing when it came to clean up and actually getting away with the murder.
The day after the murders on January 12 1979, police in Bellingham arrested Bianchi for the murders of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder. Bianchi had dropped his California driver’s licence at the scene and a background check revealed that he had been seen near the location of two of the Hillside Strangler’s victims’ homes. Not only this, he had murdered the two women in Washington in the same way as he and Buono had killed their California victims.
Bianchi admitted that he and Buono had attempted to kidnap and murder Catherine Lorre Baker, but had abandoned the attempt when they learned that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre and therefore it was likely that she would be immediately missed.
This was when police finally discovered that it was the Hillside Stranglers, plural, not just a singular serial killer.
The pair were tried separately with Bianchi’s trial beginning first, he pled not guilty by reason of insanity and claimed that he had multiple personality disorder – now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Bianchi claimed his other personality Steve Walker had committed the murders. However, police found that Steve Walker was the name of a man who’s identity Bianchi had tried to steal whilst living in LA.
The police were suspicious of Bianchi’s claims that his alter ego committed the murders and so a court psychologist observed him. When the psychologist told Bianchi that in genuine cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder there tends to be at least three alters, Bianchi immediately created another named Billy.
Bianchi had previously tried to set up his own psychiatrist office using a false degree, and when police searched his home following his arrest they found numerous books on personality disorders and some on how to fake multiple personalities.
The police and prosecutor all concluded that it was a sham to try and get away with murder and Bianchi eventually agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono in exchange for leniency.
Although he agreed to testify against his cousin, Bianchi was as uncooperative as possible during the trial and contradictory at every turn in an attempt to sabotage his cousin’s trial as Buono’s case was largely built on Bianchi’s testimony.
In 1980 during his trial, Bianchi began a relationship with a woman named Veronica Compton, who has been described in various sources as a ‘serial killer groupie’. Bianchi convinced Compton to commit a murder in LA and make it look like the Hillside Strangler so that with he and Buono in custody it would look like police had the wrong men and the Strangler was still on the loose.
Compton lured a woman into a motel room and attempted to strangle her but the woman escaped and Compton was sentenced and imprisoned, serving 23 years in prison. We don’t really know much else about her, we can only presume her crimes were perverting the course of justice and attempted murder. Before she attempted to kill the woman in the motel room, Compton testified in Bianchi’s defense at his trial, telling the jury a vague false tale about the crimes in order to exonerate Bianchi.
Bianchi ultimately pled guilty to the murders of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder in Washington and five of murders in LA, he received six life sentences and was imprisoned at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, South Eastern Washington.
Then Buono’s trial began.
The case against Buono was based largely upon Bianchi’s testimony. Deciding that Bianchi was an unreliable and uncooperative witness, the case’s original prosecutors moved to dismiss all charges against Buono and set him free.
But, the presiding judge, Ronald M. George, refused to release Buono and reassigned the case to the California Attorney General’s office. In the end more than 400 witnesses would testify against him. Buono’s trial would become the longest in American legal history, lasting two years from November 1981 until November 1983. The jury convicted Buono on nine counts of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment, with Judge George commenting that he felt a death sentence would have been the appropriate punishment.
“Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi slowly squeezed out of their victims their last breath of air and their promise for a future life. And all for what? The momentary sadistic thrill of enjoying a brief perverted sexual satisfaction and the venting of their hatred for women…If ever there was a case where the death penalty is appropriate, this is the case.”
Whilst in prison Angelo Anthony Buono Jnr married Christine Kizuka, a supervisor at the California State Employment Development Department. He died of a heart attack at the age of 67 at the Calipatria State Prison in California on September 21, 2002.
Five years later in 2007 20 year old Christopher Buono, Angelo Buono’s grandson shot his grandmother Mary Castillo in the head. Mary was Buono’s ex-wife and mother of Christopher’s father. According to reports, Christopher had no idea as to the true identity of his grandfather until 2005. After murdering his grandmother, Christopher took his own life.
69 year old Kenneth Bianchi continues to serve his sentence in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. In 2018 he applied for parole but was rejected by the Sacramento parole board in August 2018, his next chance to apply will be in 2025.
As well as being one of the Hillside Stranglers, Bianchi is a suspect in the Alphabet Murders, three brutal child murders which took place between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester New York. They were named the Alphabet Murders because the victims first and last names had the same initial and they were found in an area which also started with the same initial. First victim Carmen Colon was found in the village of Churchville, the second victim Wanda Walkowicz was found in the town of Webster, and Michelle Maenza was found in Macedon.
FURTHER READING:
The Hillside Stranglers by Darcy O’Brien
10 Twisted Facts About The Hillside Strangler
The Hillside Strangler case, the longest criminal trial in…
The Hillside Stranglers: Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono
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