Mugshots: Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Buono - The Hillside Stranglers | Forensic Files

[Music] Next on Mugsh shot, 10 women murdered in five months leaves Los Angeles reeling.
He always made sure he could restrain them. He made sure he could silence them. He made sure he could blindfold
them. He then made sure they were at a place where they knew they were going to die. A lint brush was picked up. Off
this lint brush came fibers from the house and hairs from one of the girls. The killer is caught, but would his
bizarre confession lead to his freedom? This broad I killed these two ants will kill. This captain is the broad you
killed. You say, I go too fast. He ain't bunch of them, Pat. I'm not that smart.
He did the crimes premeditatively. He knew it. He knew he was driven to do more. And he continued,
Kenneth Bianke, the hillside strangler. I fantasized then and I could do it today. I fantasized shooting him right
where he sat. [Music] Unicorn. [Music] [Music] The series of murders that would panic
Los Angeles began with little notice. On October 17th, 1977, a 19-year-old prostitute named Yolanda Washington was
picked up off the street in Hollywood. Her strangled body was found the next day near Warner Brothers
Studios. When she was picked up, this was where they went. She had sex in the back seat
and then he strangled her and they took her along here and then eventually dumped her over the side. Author Ted
Schwarz covered the case and became familiar with the killer's methods, including impersonating police. They
would approach somebody who looked young and they would pretend to be Metro Squad
and they would, in quotes, arrest the person, uh, very often handcuffing them and then take them for the murder.
Two weeks later, the second victim was grabbed on the Sunset Strip. The next morning was Halloween.
Detective Frank Solerno of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department responded to a report of a dead body in a
middle-ass neighborhood in the town of Lac Cresenta. One of the first things I noticed
obviously was the ligature marks that were quite predominant on her ankles, wrists, and and around her neck. She
appeared to be a teenager, totally nude. There appeared to be no trauma to her whatsoever. She looked like she had been
placed there, not just tossed randomly. My first impression was that possibly two people had placed her there.
Detective Solerno studied the scene for evidence. As I looked at her face, which
was turned in one direction, I noticed a small tuft of white fiber. It was the fiber was about as big around as the tip
of your finger. um and it was uh hooked or attached to her eyelid. The victim would be identified as 15-year-old Judy
Miller. The coroner said she too had been [Music] strangled. A week later, on November
6th, the body of a third strangulation victim was found near a country club in a Los Angeles suburb.
She was identified as 21-year-old Lisa Casten. Judy was still there at the corner's office because she hadn't been
identified. And we pulled her body out on a gurnie. We pul placed it next to Lisa Casten's. And that's when uh uh Joe
Choy, who was our deputy coroner at the time, made the comment that they looked like they came out of the same Xerox
machine. The ligature marks on the ankles, wrists, and and neck were exactly the same.
On November 20th, the fourth and fifth bodies were found near Dodger Stadium. 14-year-old Sonia Johnson and Dolores
Sapeda, 12, were the youngest victims. They'd been abducted outside the Eagle Rock Plaza shopping mall and
strangled. They were children. They went to a Catholic school. They didn't seem the part, but again, they looked 17.
That same night, a sixth body, 20-year-old Christina Wckler, was found in nearby Highland Park. Both the way
she was abducted and her injuries matched the previous killings. Christina was an art student who had just returned
home from classes, was in her driveway when she was, in quotes, arrested for curfew violation. And she went along
with it not fearing them, thinking they were legitimate police. That that puts a
little panic in the city because uh every day uh citizens are pulled over by policemen. Three days later, police
found victim number seven, Jane King. Her body was discovered alongside an exit ramp of the Golden State Freeway.
She was a wannabe actress. She was 28. She was the oldest victim. She looked 17. She looked much younger than her
years. With the situation spinning out of control, investigators from the LAPD, Los Angeles Sheriff's Office, and the
Glendale Police formed a special task force. November 29th, Lauren Wagner's body was found at 1200 Cliff Drive.
The 18-year-old business student was the eighth confirmed victim. She had bizarre
burns in the palms of her hands, indicating a new kind of torture. They tended to handcuff them as an
arrest situation, used rope when they were going to rape them. There often were indications of fibers in the mouth,
things that would indicate that they were silenced. Uh they've been blindfolded. In this case, I believe
there were about 10,000 clues that were called in suspects. Loose, that's a loose fitting term. There were hundreds
of them. By this time, the media had dubbed the serial killer the hillside strangler, and the entire city was
gripped by fear. On December 11th, victim number nine, the body of Kimberly Diane Martin, a
17-year-old call girl on a hillside in Echo Park. Rumor had it that the body was
deliberately laid out to face Los Angeles City Hall. She was up off of Alvarado on a hill,
for lack of a better term, the classic hillside dump. And it was a classic shot that was in all the newspapers from a
helicopter showing this nude body on the side of a hill spread eagle uh looking down towards city hall.
Meanwhile, the task force was piecing together even more evidence that indicated there were two killers. When
the Kimberly Martin case uh came about, uh I felt and this is in looking back that this was the case we were going to
break it on because there were so many more things we had. Uh we had a location where she was last seen uh which was the
Tamarind Apartments. There was the last phone call that was made to the outall service from the library. Uh there were
witnesses to the two suspects that were seen there. Uh, as it turned out, there were fingerprints, a number of them, uh,
that were never matched up till, uh, a year later or so. Everything that had occurred, uh, we had, um, many
more solid leads on that case than than we'd had on all of the cases put together before that. Uh, and they all
seemed to fizzle. They just, uh, went away. What they really were looking for is a magic phone call. So, they were
just hoping somebody had seen something, overheard something. There were no more
bodies through Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day. Not until February 17th, 1978. That day, north of the city,
police found an orange Dodson in a ravine off the Angelus Crest Highway. In the trunk was the body of
20-year-old Cindy Hudsbath, naked, strangled, with liature marks in all the same places. Victim number
10. Uh we had a an individual that uh came forward that identified uh a suspect driving what we thought was
Cindy's car up Anggeles Highway after she had been abducted. Uh we felt we were close to solving this thing. Um and
and again the leads just petered out. They just we worked through them and and and nothing nothing developed.
Now, what the police don't know is that their killer has left town. When Mugsh shots continues, two murders in a town
1,200 m away finally unmask the hillside strangler. [Music] By the spring of 1978, the hillside
strangler had killed 10 women in 5 months, terrifying the people of Los Angeles from the beginning been
baffling. Uh the evidence has been meager. Uh we have used uh the resources that we have available
to us and we simply have not been successful. 11 months after the last victim of the
hillside strangler was found, two young college roommates, Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder, were reported missing in
Bellingham, Washington, 1200 m north of Los Angeles. About January 12th, 1979, the Bellingham
Police Department got a report from a young security officer that his girlfriend was missing and a friend of
hers was also missing. One girl worked at Fred Meyers and she had told her boyfriend that she was going to do a
special security job for one of the local uh security agencies and that uh a man by the name of Ken Bianke was the
person she was going to work with. He had a job where he needed a house sitter that there was u there'd be a 2-hour
period when the alarm system was being changed. Somebody had to be in there. the they were paying $100 for two hours
for each person. Kenneth Bianke was a trim, muscular man with dark hair and a mustache. He lived on North Street with
his longtime girlfriend, Kelly Boyd, and their infant son. Two sergeants made contact with Mr.
Bianke, and at that point, he denied any knowledge of knowing the girls or having
contact with them or any connection at all to the girls. Ken became u a suspect almost
immediately. Police visited the girl's home. They found a hungry cat and the exact address of the home on Bayside
Road where the two of them were to housesit. The chief of police, Terry Mangan, decided to put a public
broadcast uh use the radio stations to put out the information that these two girls were missing, a description of
their car, and uh asked that anybody that happened to see the car called the Bellingham Police
Department. A lady had called in and told us that there was a Bobcat matching that description parked in this
particular culde-sac that we're standing in right now. When we came in, the vehicle was parked uh right just about
where that basketball hoop is now, but one one vehicle width out. And when you looked into the car, all you could see
uh laying in in the car was actually one body and a portion of another body. I had the locksmith drill the lock out of
the trunk and myself and one of my crew started to remove the bodies uh one at a
time uh onto Gurnie where they were uh taken away to be autopsied. Prosecutor Dave Mckran joined Bellingham
detectives at the culdesac. I remember thinking when we had gotten there and I spoke to Bob Kudson and uh he mentioned
that he felt this individual had done this before and we both agreed that that was the case. When we took the uh first
body out, it appeared to be uh almost traum. Uh very little that we could see immediately. uh was a liature mark
around the neck, but that was all. Even before the bodies were sent to the morg,
police ordered that Kenneth Bianke be picked up for questioning. Police went to Biankey's
home on North Street that night. His girlfriend, Kelly Boyd, could not believe what police had to say. The
relationship between him and his live-in and child was apparently good. She wouldn't believe that he was a killer.
She couldn't believe that uh the person we were describing and and dealing with was according to her was completely
different. Yet Robert Kenudson and his team had gathered three key pieces of evidence that would link Bianke to the
crimes. At the culde-sac when we took in the bodies, there were carpet fibers off
the bodies. Uh these carpet fibers were matched to the carpet fibers in the house. Even more telling was evidence
from his home at his residence. The search that was done there, a lint brush was picked up. Off this lint brush came
fibers from the house and hairs from one of the girls. But most damaging of all was evidence found on one of the bodies.
We removed the bodies from the car. They were placed in clean sheets before they
were taken to the autopsies. Uh the one sheet from Diane Wilder, when that was submitted to the
lab and examined, there was a pubic hair found in that sheet. It was matched to the pubic hairs of Ken Bianke. There was
also another connection. We ended up connecting Ken Bianke to LA uh rather rapidly. Uh but it comes about by just
good police work. One of the detectives took his driver's license, which was a California license, and ran it to
California. Ultimately, through the calls, we got connected with the Hillside Stangler Task Force, and uh
Detective Solar was one of those people. It was the first time we'd had anybody that uh had so many connections and the
first check they did was through DMV and that connected him to the Garfield locations. So we had Bianke connected to
two victims. He'd been an LAPD reserve applicant. Uh he lived on Tamron and we just started connecting him by going
through the files. So we called Bellingham back. We told him we were going to fly up there.
Solerno went to Bellingham and talked with Kenneth Bianke's girlfriend, Kelly Boyd. We found out that his best friend,
quote, almost soul male companion was Angelo Bono, was a cousin. Serno had his partner check in with Angelo Bono, who
they suspected of being involved in the crimes. Bono was a 46-year-old car upholsterer with a shop not far from
many of the hillside crime scenes. I believe he acknowledged the fact who Kenneth Bianke was, but the original
interview with him was very with him was very short. Uh, and uh, he was uncooperative.
Meanwhile, more details about Kenneth Bianke began to emerge. He lived in Los Angeles with Kelly Boyd and followed her
north when she decided to return home to Bellingham with his newborn child. When
he got here, uh, he worked at Fred Meyers as a security officer there and ultimately got hired by, uh, the local
security agency as a captain in charge of of a lot of the security. Police were certain they had a strong case against
Bianke. But as he waited in the Watcom County Jail in Bellingham, Bianke maintained his innocence. In March 1979,
Biankey's attorney decided to have a psychiatrist examine him. Without informing prosecutors or police, the
attorney brought in Dr. John Watkins, an expert in hypnosis and multiple personalities. If Bianke was found to be
incompetent to stand trial, he could at the very least escape the death penalty.
My original idea was to see if I could break through what appeared to be an amnesia. simply he didn't recall what
happened back there. In these extraordinary videootapes, Dr. Watkins had hypnotized Bianke and got him to
talk about the crimes. Killing a broad doesn't make any difference to me. Killing anybody doesn't make any
difference. Maybe it didn't kill any of those. I don't know. Oh, hey, no wrong, man. Hey, I killed a couple of these.
Which one? You think you did, right? I killed her. Angelo killed her. They mean the Wagner when Angelo killed This
broad I've never seen before. Martin. This broad I never seen before. Hudpath. You never saw them at all. Nope.
This broad I've never seen before. Robinson. This broad I kill. These two Angelo
kill. Johnson. This one I've never seen before. Angelo killed. Huh? This one I've never seen before. This broad I
kill. Barome never seen before. This captain is the bride. You killed, you say? Am I going too fast? Yeah, a bunch
of them pass. I'm I'm not that smart. So, Bianke had admitted to the murders in Bellingham and Los Angeles and
implicated his cousin Angelo Bono. But the whole time, Bianke was confessing in the character of a person
named Steve Walker. This led Dr. Watkins to determine that Bianke was not acting
as himself and therefore was not competent to stand trial. To this day, Watkins stands by his multiple
personality diagnosis. You're going to watch the difference between the personalities of uh Ken and
of Steve. And you're going to see the two personalities. Uh you're going to see Ken go into Steve. And then you're
going to see uh Ken emerge back again out of Steve. Would you excuse me a second? I've got to go to
the head. Okay. Excuse me. Are you Ken? Do I look like Ken? I'd like to talk to Ken now. What's my
rosary doing on the table? Didn't you put it on the table? No. No. I hit it, my father.
I thought you put it on the table. No. No. Oh, okay. What do you think happened?
Steve again I gave him two diagnosis. Kent was normal or normal neurotic and Steve was uh a uh
dissociative reaction sociopathic. Investigators on the case were outraged. They believed Bianke was faking.
Absolute phony. Absolutely defense. This is [ __ ] In order to prove Kenneth Bianke was competent to stand trial,
detectives would have to find evidence that he was faking. For that, they turned to his
childhood. Next on Mugsh shot, the making of a [Music] murderer. As Kenneth Bianke awaited a
court ruling on his competence to stand trial, investigators searched deeper into his background.
Kenneth Allesio Bianke, the man who would strangle a dozen women, was born on May 22nd, 1951 in Rochester, New
York. His mother was a hard-rinking prostitute who gave him up at birth. The baby was adopted by Francis Bianke and
her husband Nicholas, a manual laborer. They were so delighted to have a child, they were terrified they'd lose him. So
Mrs. Bianke saw a lot of medical problems that didn't exist. She focused on urinary tract infections which he did
not have. The testing they had to do was very much uh like a rape. If if someone's ever had
catheterization, there's a very humiliating factor to this. And for a small child, it had to be very
difficult. His mother is reported as having constantly yelled and shouted at him and hit him. and that it was also
reported and I can't verify it that she used to punish him by taking his hand and putting it on the hot electric stove
and burning it. That that was her ways of punishing him. As Kenneth Bianke grew up, his
family was constantly on the move. They lived in more than a dozen homes in Rochester and while Kenneth was in first
grade, a brief spell in Los Angeles. At Holy Apostles Grammar School, Kenneth had some success at creative writing and
artistic and verbal skills. And while he had an IQ of 116, he remained a constant
underachiever. His mother accused him of being a chronic liar and he was easily angered and prone to
tantrums. Kenneth Bianke was 13 years old when his father died in 1964. His mother went off to work and
Kenneth entered Gates Chilai High School. He didn't apply himself at all, although he was a bright young man. He
certainly brighter than the average uh student and yet he finished very close to the bottom. His rank was over 400,
400 and change out of uh maybe 420 students. When Ken reaches 18, he's troubled by what he's seeing. goes to a
psychiatrist, goes three sessions, doesn't like what he's finding, and never goes back.
After graduation in 1971, Bianke had a brief marriage to a girl his own age. But his true love was police work. Ken
enrolled in the Monroe Community College in in liberal arts and then switched over to police science. Ken had always
tried to get on police departments. He wanted to get into law enforcement. In 1972, Kenneth Bianke applied to the
Monroe County Sheriff's Department in Rochester. Psychiatrist David Barry interviewed him as part of the screening
process and saw the warning signs almost immediately. He denied on the testing all of the usual human failings, the
things that we all uh are less than perfect in. You see that in in patients who've been made to feel guilty for any
transgressions. Dr. Barry also noticed a great deal of hidden anger in Bianke. He was certainly repressing a lot of it
toward his mother and uh and she very definitely exercised a great deal of uh influence and and a lot of it turned out
to have considerable negative impact. It certainly did leave a a bad taste in his
mouth for uh for women and it could very well have have generalized uh from there. Based on Dr. Barry's
recommendation, Bianke was rejected. 3 years later, his problems with women led to his first brush with the law. In
February 1975, he was arrested in a Rochester suburb for sneaking into the home of a woman he had been trying to
date. His apology was apparently so charming that the woman dropped the charges. Everything's going wrong. His
marriage has fallen apart. But it was just time to move on. And with a cousin in Los Angeles and the excitement down
there, it seemed the perfect place to go. He expected to find his wife. He expected to find his future. He just
went down there very optimistically. Now, Los Angeles is a fantasy town. In late 1975, Kenneth
Bianke packed up for a new life in Los Angeles. He moved in with a cousin, Angelo Bono, 16 years his senior. Ken
attempted and failed to get a job as a police officer. Eventually, he got a job working for a title
company. He used his first paycheck to get his own apartment at 809 East Garfield Avenue in Glendale and a 1972
Cadillac sedan. At a party, he met Kelly Boyd, a hospital worker who had come to Los
Angeles from Bellingham, Washington. Each of them has had their own troubled pasts. Each of them has had uh problems
within their families with loss. Each of them came down to uh Los Angeles to find
their way and they begin living together. But while he lived with Kelly, Kenneth Bianke led another secret
life. Armed with a bogus PhD, he set up a phony psychological counseling business and actually gave therapy to a
number of patients. Investigators believe that it was then that he developed many of the techniques he
would later use to fool psychiatrists. And he continued to hang around with his cousin Angelo Bono. Ken
Bianke is interesting because he was the instigator. Angelo, if he is a sociopath, got into something
that gave him pleasure. Bono had a reputation as a ladies man and seemed willing to involve his cousin in his
sorted world. At some point in Bianke and Bono's relationship, they recruited two young females that were underage.
They were running sort of a mini outall service with these two uh young females.
They provided them to some local politicians. Both girls, Sabra Hannon and Becky Spears, eventually ran away.
One theory has it that Bianke and Bono chose their first victim, prostitute Yolanda Washington, as an act of revenge
against these girls. In any case, the killings began on October 17th, 1977. After his arrest in Bellingham,
Washington, Bianke detailed the killings in sessions with Dr. John Watkins. hands are tied and then they're taken
into the spare room next to the bathroom. That's when um there was sex with with the girls. Everything was made
ready getting the rope uh to kill them with. Bianke claimed the killings were not the work of himself, but a
personality named Steve Walker. Five more experts would be brought in to assess Biankey's condition. Robert
Kenudson of the Bellingham Police worked the video camera. What's it been? 23 years and I can still feel
[Music] it. A reaction of of just wanting to uh I fantasized then and I could do it today. I fantasized
shooting him right where he sat. One of the experts prosecutors brought in was psychiatrist Martin Or who demonstrated
that Bianke was faking his hypnotic state. When Dr. Or expressed surprise that Bianke exhibited only two
personalities, a third promptly surfaced. What is your name? Billy. All right, Billy. Finally, Bianke overplayed
a hypnotic suggestion, pretending not only to see, but to touch someone who wasn't there. Hey, Dean. How you doing?
Meanwhile, detectives in Los Angeles would find college transcripts Bianke had forged for his phony psychotherapy
practice. Transcripts that were stolen from the real Steve Walker. We had connected Biankey's name to Steve and
Steve was his multiple years before and how he had obtained it and Kenny changed
his plea at that time and dropped his multiple personality. So, we broke his multiple personality defense. Next on
Mugsh shot, the case takes strange new twists as prosecutors move to dismiss the charges against Angelo Bono and
Bianke plots a new murder from jail. [Music] [Music] In the fall of 1979, Kenneth Bianke made
a deal with prosecutors in order to avoid the death penalty. He would first plead guilty to the murders of Karen
Mandic and Diane Wilder. He would then plead guilty to five of the Los Angeles murders. Finally, he agreed to testify
against his alleged partner in the crimes, Angelo Bono. I can't find the words to express the sorrow I feel for
what I've done. Kenneth Bianke appeared remorseful. In no way can I take away the pain that I've given to
others, and in no way can I expect forgiveness from anybody. He appeared to be intent on bringing his partner in
crime to justice. to even begin to try and live with myself. I have to take responsibility
for what I've done and I have to do everything I can to get Angela Bono. It is a judgment of
the court that Mr. Kenneth A. Bianke will be sentenced to uh prison in the state of Washington for
the rest of his natural life. Bianke's behavior caused many to doubt his sincerity. The thing that bothered me
about him, he was such a phony. Um, in the courtroom, he uh he cried uh at the guilty plea and um we all felt that was
just rehearsed and something that he he could do or not do whenever he wished to
do it. When he got out of the courtroom, he was laughing with the jailers and uh
he just was uh he was a kind man. Myself and Detective Noly, we were assigned to
take Ken out of the courtroom. As soon as we got out of the courtroom, it was a different person. It was, "Ah, the heck
with it. Let's go have a smoke. I'm ready to eat." You know, this kind of a thing. And
uh there was no remorse. There was no real remorse. The investigators in Los Angeles were
counting on Biankey's testimony and were waiting to move in on Angelo Bono. And Ken told the story, explained what
happened, named Angelo. The minute he did, there was a telephone call to Los Angeles. Uh they were all in position to
get Angelo and he was immediately arrested. We found uh some upholstery material in the shop that uh was similar
and matched the Judy Miller case. With Angelo Bono in custody, Kenneth Bianke was immediately flown to the Los Angeles
County Jail. But as soon as prosecutors began to interview him about Bono's role
in the murders, Bianke began to change his story, claiming memory lapses and innocence, a clear breach of his plea
agreement. Bianke was entertaining himself. Uh, and they would go over there and and talk to him two, three
times a week, and every time they go over and talk to him, he would tell him a different story.
Then came a bizarre twist in the case. Early in June 1980, a 23-year-old playwright and aspiring actress,
Veronica Lynn Compton, contacted Bianke in jail. She told the Hillside Strangler
that she identified with him. Bianke and her set up this plot that would show that the real hillside strangler was
still out there. She was going to go about the country and kill people. supposedly smuggled out some body fluids
to where uh after one of the murders, she was going to make it look like a rape.
Veronica Compton traveled to Bellingham, Washington. She lured a woman to the Shangla Motel and attempted to strangle
her to death. She tried to overpower the woman, tie her up, and then she was going to set a scene and kill her. this
short, seemingly weak uh woman who worked at a bar, had a primary job as a tree surgeon working for the parks and
recreation. Powerful as anything, got away, Veronica was arrested. Bianke's scheme to create a perfect alibi
backfired as Veronica Compton was tried for attempted murder. She also testified and had claimed
earlier that she'd been an actress and uh her testimony didn't portray any ability she had. Uh and she was
convicted, but it was a very unusual case indeed. The next shocking development in the case occurred in July
1981. The district attorney's office was relying on Kenneth Biankey's testimony against his cousin. But Bianke's wildly
conflicting statements so worried the prosecutors that they made a motion to dismiss all charges against Bono.
Changes in in his story do have a uh a disruptive influence on the people's case, a majorly disruptive influence on
the people's case. Most of the time when the prosecutor makes a motion to dismiss, um the judge pretty much
automatically dismisses. And in this case, uh Judge George didn't. And he started uh reading what his decision was
going to be and the reason for it. And subsequently, he said, "I'm going to submit it or refer it to the attorney,
state attorney general's office for prosecution." When Mugshots returns, the long- aaited trial begins and Kenneth
Bianke is called to the [Music] stand. In the spring of 1982, the California Attorney General's office put
Angelo Bono on trial and called Kenneth Bianke as a witness. When Bianke gave testimony that
conflicted with prior confessions, Judge George pointed out that he was reneggging on his plea bargain
agreement. Bianke briefly changed his tune. But on defense cross-examination, he continued to give contradictory
testimony. because of Bianke going all over the place, the early interviews of him where he cooperated insignificant
details of what he had done and when he had done it. And u that's what came into
play is that we showed that when we originally interviewed him, he hadn't lied to us, that he's lying now.
Among the long string of witnesses were Becky Spears and Sabra Hannon, the two girls that Bono and Bianke had run as
prostitutes and had brutalized. They testified about Bono's sadism. Then an eyewitness came forward. And Marcus
Camden, uh, as it turns out, actually witnessed the abduction of Judy Miller. Uh, he was with her the last night she
was alive. Uh he walked her down to uh Carney's hot dog stand there on Sunset Boulevard. Uh he had seen a Cadillac
with an individual who he identified eventually as Angela Bono uh pick her up and drive to a location to uh where
Kenneth Bianke said uh that he got in the car and handcuffed her and they they took her to Bono shop. Another piece of
crucial forensic evidence was a clump of fibers matching those found on the body
of Lauren Wagner. Fibers from the same chair in Bono's house where Bianke claimed she'd been attacked. There was a
lot of evidence because it was done in his workshop. They found fibers that were consistent with materials in that
shop and not consistent with fibers anywhere else the girls were known to have been. Then they introduced a
powerful piece of forensic evidence that Sheriff's Detective Frank Serno had discovered.
We found the same type of material uh in Angelo Bono's upholstery shop that we matched up as being similar uh to the
tough that was on Judy Miller's eyelid. As a matter of fact, uh, in interviewing
Bianke up in Bellingham, um, he told us that they had used some upholstery material from Bono's shop to
blindfold the victims. A woman testified she was terrorized by Bono in the Hollywood Library the night Kimberly
Martin was murdered. This testimony connected Bono to the pay phone used to summon Kimberly to her death. Then it
was the defense's turn. I was brought in by the defense council for Bono. Uh even
though the prosecution knew I was convinced of his guilt and once they asked me my opinion, I could bring up
things that Ken Biyaki had told me that would have been questionable if it hadn't been my opinion.
Inexplicably, defense attorney Katherine Mater then decided to put Biankey's girlfriend, Veronica Compton, on the
stand. She testified that she and Bianke conspired to frame Angelo Bono. I think
it'd be unfair to call it a circus in the fact that uh um just what was accomplished in it, but it was a very
long trial. After more than 250 witnesses, a thousand exhibits, and more than 2 years, the case went to the jury.
The first of the guilty verdicts came back on Halloween 1983, 6 years after Detective Frank Serno found Judy
Miller's body. My recollection is the first one that came in was the Wagner case and the second one that came in was
the Hudsmith case, which were our two strongest cases uh with or without Bianke. Obviously, we were quite elated
with that. And then uh the rest of them came in with the exception of Yolanda Washington which was the very first case
involved in the string of murders. And that wasn't a total surprise. That wasn't something that was shocking. U
but but the nine out of the 10 um was something I expected. Bono was sentenced for nine murders.
Bianke was also sentenced for the five Los Angeles murders he plead guilty to. They gave him multiple life sentences.
Ken was given five life sentences for the Los Angeles cases. He was given the two for Bellingham, Washington. So, he
has seven life sentences. But Judge Ronald George wasn't finished. He had a surprise for Bianke, whose behavior
added months to the trial and little to the cause of justice. what occurred because of Bianke uh going
back on his word to be truthful, the judge told him that he had not upheld his part of uh the agreement and uh he
was sentenced to his time in Walaw Wallala, Washington where he's currently serving and uh when and if he's ever
parrolled up there, he will be shipped back to California and uh do his time here. When Mugshots returns, inmate
Kenneth Bianke 20 years [Music] later. After a 2-year trial, Kenneth Bianke was sentenced to five life terms
in a Los Angeles courtroom. The case of the hillside strangler was over, but Bianke's motives remain a
mystery. I wish we had an idea of what sparked it. Uh, that's a question we always try to
get into the mind of the individual, the mind of the murderer, as they say. Uh, if they'll talk to you. Bianke could
never, he'd never tell us. Couldn't, wouldn't, or whatever. Bono never talked to us, so we never got that opportunity.
Um, some people uh guess or that that they had been uh wronged by some prostitutes
uh and that's what started it, but I don't think anybody really knows. 20 years after he pleaded guilty to the
hillside stranglings and the murders of two women in Bellingham, Washington, serial killer Kenneth Bianke is inmate
number 266961 at Walaw Wala Penitentiary. He wrote almost a book trying to prove that
he's innocent. And in the book, his stress is that that the everything was uh stacked
against him. And also, as I understand it, he got a law degree uh by uh one of these bail order law degrees because he
wants to argue his case. But what he wants to argue is that he's innocent, not that he's a psychiatricist. Dr. John
Watkins, who proclaimed Bianke a victim of multiple personality disorder, has kept in touch with the killer. I'm not
sure whether he is still a multiple personality. One of the guards uh reported that the men in the ward were
complaining because they couldn't sleep at night because they heard two voices arguing with each other in his cell. I'm
smiling because I'm glad he's in prison. Prosecutor Dave Mckran of Bellingham, Washington hears from Bianke every few
months. He sued us a number of times and uh sued some of the officers. So, we have had a continual ongoing situation
over this time period. Retired Bellingham police investigator Robert Kudson is often named in Biankey's
unsuccessful lawsuits. It usually is based on the fact that he feels that I as me as an individual
uh falsified the evidence. Uh I planted the evidence. Uh that it's totally my fault that uh he's incarcerated, that
he's in jail. Former Los Angeles Sheriff's Detective Frank Serno has not heard from Kenneth Bianke since he was
put away. And that's fine by him. Bianke was the front man. By that I mean he was the one that went out uh
contacted the girls, did the talking cuz he was very glib, had a real line of BS.
Uh and uh even some women described him as being handsome or good-looking. So he
was the front man. [Music] Author Ted Schwarz, who got to know Bianke while he was held in Bellingham,
kept in touch with the killer until a few years ago. He says Bianke still has hopes of getting out of prison one day
and cashing in with a book deal. It's hard to say that Ken Bianke is not a monster. He killed 12 women
premeditatively. He did it in a horrible way. He's a cold-blooded killer. It's as
simple as that. Kenneth Miani is nothing more than a cold-blooded killer and uh if he was released uh there's no doubt
in my mind he would kill again. Bianke declined an interview for this program. Far from providing insight into
his motives today proclaims his complete innocence. I think he's an extremely dangerous
person, an evil person, and I'm very happy he's where he is. He belongs to be [Music]
there. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm

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Body after body is discovered in Los Angeles – a serial killer is dumping naked women’s bodies along hillsides.

Brief Summary

Kenneth Bianke, the Hillside Strangler, murdered ten women in Los Angeles, leading to a complex investigation and trial.

Key points

The Hillside Strangler's Reign of Terror. In just five months, ten women were murdered, leaving Los Angeles in panic.
Detective Solerno's Investigation. Detective Frank Solerno discovers the chilling patterns in the strangulations.
The Discovery of Victims. The bodies of young women are discovered, revealing a horrifying pattern.
Bianke's Arrest. Kenneth Bianke is linked to the murders through crucial evidence.
The Hypnosis Confession. Bianke's attorney brings in a psychiatrist to examine him under hypnosis.
Kenneth Bianke's Guilty Plea. Bianke pleads guilty to multiple murders, expressing sorrow but raising doubts about his sincerity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Killing a broad doesn't make any difference to me.

16:50WatchJul 29, 2014

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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