World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 9 - The Hillside Stranglers - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: November the 13th, 1977. Los Angeles, California. School girls Dolores and Sonja were on their way home
from a day shopping, when two police officers stopped them for questioning. But the so-called policemen were in fact killers.
- GEOFFREY: They fell victim to two men who knew no compassion, no remorse, no empathy.
It is beyond depraved. - NARRATOR: 14-year-old Sonja and 12-year-old Dolores were abducted, held captive for five days,
repeatedly raped, then strangled. Their killers were two cousins-- Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi.
- You got the smooth-talking, sharp, glib Bianchi, and then you got the street con, wise, smart predator in Buono.
That's a pretty dangerous combination. - NARRATOR: The partners in crime went on a killing spree,
murdering ten young women in just four months. Many were dumped on hillsides across LA,
lending the killers' infamous name: the Hillside Stranglers. - DR. YARDLEY: These two were not gonna stop
until they were caught. This had a really devastating effect on the lives of women in Los Angeles.
- NARRATOR: The deadly duo terrorized the streets of LA whilst masquerading as police officers.
They raped and tortured victims as young as 12 during their sickening rampage, making Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi,
two of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - NARRATOR: December 14th, 1977. Los Angeles, California.
On a deserted hillside overlooking the city, 17-year-old Kimberly Martin was found dead
by two paper boys doing their morning rounds. Her killers had posed her body in a provocative manner.
- They dropped her naked body on the hills in Alessandro Drive, pointing at the City Hall.
I think that was a deliberate placement to kinda piss everybody off, you know? Now, the media kind of went crazy about this,
that's where the name Hillside Strangler came from. - NARRATOR: Kimberly was the ninth victim of the killers
in barely two months. It became one of the biggest news stories of the year, spreading panic throughout the city.
- JUDGE NASH: It created a whole lot of fear, particularly amongst women, who were actually afraid to go out at night,
and there was some indication from some of the investigation that whoever was perpetrating these crimes
may have been impersonating a police officer. Women were concerned that if they were approached
by police officers, should they stop or should they just keep moving? It was really a terrorizing period of time.
- NARRATOR: In response, firearms sales went through the roof, and the women of LA
made preparations to defend themselves. - Women were taking physical defense lessons, buying guns,
getting stuff to prevent themselves on the street, keep from being assaulted. They're reading about it every day,
it's on television every day. That's a lot of panic out there in the street, and you could sense it in the street, you really could.
- GEOFFREY: I think that gave Bianchi and Buono pleasure. I think they took an absolute delight
in the fact that they had taken a whole community by the throat, literally... and strangled the life out of it.
- NARRATOR: The story of these two killers begins in Rochester, New York. Angelo Buono was the eldest of the adoptive cousins,
and was born on October 5th, 1934. He and his sister were born into an Italian-American family.
At the age of 5, his parents divorced, and in 1939, his mother took her 2 children west,
to Glendale, in Los Angeles. - GEOFFREY: You could say that Buono was a troubled child.
He had a very strange relationship with his mother, whom he, uh, constantly accused of being a whore.
- DR. YARDLEY: Now, he doesn't speak very highly of his mother at all. His mother would go and visit men
and he would have to wait outside. So, here's an individual who's got very fixed ideas
about who women are and how they should behave and what's acceptable for women and what isn't.
And I think that feeds into the rationale behind the future offending. - NARRATOR: At the age of 16,
Buono dropped out of high school and turned to crime. - DR. YARDLEY: As a teenager, Buono was somebody
who regularly broke the rules, he would steal things, he would joyride in cars, he would hang around with gangs.
This is somebody who just did not think the rules applied to him, and when you look at
who his role models are, they were criminals. So he's starting off on a very dangerous path.
- NARRATOR: Whilst Buono was serving time in youth custody for stealing cars in 1951,
his adoptive cousin, Kenneth Alessio Bianchi, was born on the 22nd of May. He, too, had a troubled start in life.
- GEOFFREY: Kenneth Bianchi, born--funnily enough--- also in Rochester, New York, just like Buono.
But Bianchi's mother was a sex worker, and he was very swiftly put out for adoption,
as a three-month-old infant. And he was adopted by Buono's mother's sister. - DR. YARDLEY: He's adopted by Frances and Nicholas.
Now, Frances absolutely doted on him, but she took this to an absolute extreme, and she had this paranoia that there was something wrong
with Kenneth, and she took him to see the doctor on multiple occasions where it turned out to be
absolutely nothing wrong with him. And I think this kind of smothering can be just as damaging as neglect.
There was something quite toxic going on here. - NARRATOR: Soon, the young Bianchi started
showing worrying signs of behavior. - He was described by his adoptive mother as a compulsive liar from a very, very early age.
He was difficult to control. And then his father dies when he's a teenager. So the male role model is removed,
and he is...to some extent, left...swinging in the breeze. - NARRATOR: Despite being just 14,
Bianchi's mother had big plans for the son she'd sheltered. At the funeral, she made Bianchi wear his father's shoes.
They were far too big and he walked clumsily, but they were a symbol of who he had become:
the man of the house. - DR. YARDLEY: They were an Italian Catholic family with some very rigid ideas about family,
and about the role of men and the role of women. So, we're seeing some quite strong values coming through
in his childhood, and they're values that he draws on in an incredibly dysfunctional way.
- His mother recognized that he had a lot of psychiatric issues and problems, and she wouldn't let him date girls.
She watched over him very, very closely. - NARRATOR: Bianchi graduated high school and, aged 18,
married his sweetheart, Brenda. But his insecurities about her forging her own career
as a nurse caused tension in the marriage. - GEOFFREY: Bianchi saw women as something to be possessed,
they could be his and his alone. The marriage to Brenda fell apart very quickly,
he was only 18. He accused her of being unfaithful, it played to his sense that any woman,
he had to possess, he had to control completely. - NARRATOR: After just a few months, the couple divorced.
Bianchi then planned a respectable career in the police. In 1970, he enrolled in college
to study police science and psychology. - He was absolutely obsessed with becoming a police officer.
He applied to join the police several times and failed at doing that. This was a fixation for him throughout his life.
I think failing was one of the factors in the background of who he became. He wants that legitimate control,
he wants that legitimate power. And if he can't get it legitimately, he's gonna get it by some other means.
- NARRATOR: After failing to get his dream job as a police officer, Bianchi found work as a security guard.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, his cousin, Buono, was a career car thief. By this point in 1970,
the 36-year-old had been married and divorced twice, and fathered 8 children by 3 different women.
- BOB: A lot of women said that he had a very sexual, strong feeling about him, but it was a scary, frightening kind of thing,
it was kind of a predator kind of a thing. And he had been through a whole lot of women.
He was very sexually active, and he was proud of that reputation. - GEOFFREY: Buono's attitude to women
and to the women he married... was abusive, there could be no doubt about that. And each of them described his abusiveness,
his drama, threatened with a gun, persistently kicked, brutalized. - BOB: He was very aggressive sexually,
even with young, young girls. - GEOFFREY: There was something in Buono which saw women
as objects, a man who saw women as... something of his right. - NARRATOR: Before long, the two maternal cousins
who barely knew each other would discover they shared the same intense loathing of women.
Buono and Bianchi would move in together and become partners in crime. Soon, this dangerous team would be heading on a path
towards murder. By 1975, 41-year-old Angelo Buono had served 3 short prison terms for stealing cars.
He also had a long, dark history of domestic abuse-- raping and beating former wives and girlfriends.
But now, it seemed, Buono wanted to settle on the straight and narrow. - GEOFFREY: Although he wasn't particularly well-educated,
he was quite smart, he was capable of running a business-- indeed, he started his own business in auto upholstery.
- BOB: He was very successful. Matter of fact, the rumor is that he did one of Frank Sinatra's cars.
He also considered himself a mafia kind of guy. - NARRATOR: At home and at work,
Buono was meticulous to the extreme. - DR. YARDLEY: Buono was obsessed with cleanliness,
he would bleach his house several times a week, he was able to change the brakes on a car
without getting dirty. Um, when you see people who are obsessed with cleanliness,
it's about feeling that everything is within your control. - NARRATOR: Meanwhile, over 2500 miles away,
in Rochester, New York, Buono's cousin, Ken Bianchi, had been fired from his job as a security guard
for stealing jewelry at the department store where he was working. In January 1976,
Bianchi's family came up with a plan to temper the wayward 24-year-old. - DR. YARDLEY: Their mothers are sisters,
and they think it's a good idea for these two to live together. And I think it is part of those--those kind of
Italian, Mediterranean family values, you know, that if you're part of a family, then you're always welcome,
you should always look out for one another. - BOB: Buono was doing the family a favor taking him in.
This is something he didn't really wanna do. This is a guy who lives alone, and to take in a boarder was something that, you know,
he wasn't happy with. - JUDGE NASH: Bianchi apparently looked up to Angelo Buono,
his older cousin, kind of admired the-- the tough guy image that he projected. - NARRATOR: Once again, Bianchi tried for a career
in the police, this time with the LAPD. But once again, he failed his exams. In the end, Bianchi resorted to lies to get a respectable job.
- BOB: He had phony certificates made up, showing that he was a graduate of Columbia University
and had a degree in psychiatry and he was actually a psychologist. A psychologist in Los Angeles actually hired this guy,
and he was seeing his patients. He had a gift of really selling himself, and he did.
He was a sociopath, and he was a pathological liar. - NARRATOR: In June 1976, Bianchi finally made it
into the LAPD Reserves as an unpaid volunteer. He also found himself a desk job to pay the bills,
and at work he met a new girlfriend, who he moved in with. By now, the cousins had a real rapport.
Bianchi looked up to the older Buono, and was only too quick to get involved when he suggested they establish themselves as pimps.
- GEOFFREY: He and Buono set up what only could be described as an agency for prostitutes.
They target two young women, whom they set up to work for them to make them money as sex workers.
- BOB: It was a marriage made in hell. I mean, here you got a sexual predator and a sociopath.
Bianchi wants to be like his cousin, Angelo. He looks up to him, he's older, he was excited.
That is a recipe for madness. - NARRATOR: But pimping prostitutes wasn't enough for them.
To satisfy their own sexual cravings, they prowled the streets using a tactic inspired
by an infamous criminal from the 1940s. - DR. YARDLEY: When Buono was an adolescent,
he very much looked up to career criminals, and one particular criminal, a serial rapist called Chessman--
who he became very interested in-- had actually used a police ruse in order to target his victims.
I think Buono saw something there that lodged in his mind, and that would later come out in his offending.
- BOB: Angelo Buono had a security badge that belonged to his stepfather, and they used that to portray themselves
as undercover police officers. They started using the badge to get free sex from prostitutes.
They liked the fact that they could get girls back to their house and have them have sex with them,
then play a badge on 'em and tell 'em that, "Hey, don't tell anybody we did this,
or you'll be in trouble." - NARRATOR: But the excitement in duping women for free casual sex soon wore off.
Buono and Bianchi wanted to up the stakes, to indulge a depraved desire. - BOB: They both agreed, "Why don't we try choking
"somebody to death while we're having an orgasm? That would be something I'd like to do."
That was Buono's thing. And of course, whatever Buono said, Bianchi went along with.
- GEOFFREY: It's what the psychologists call foliata, one adds depth to the other.
One eggs the other one on. One is the sorcerer and the other one is the apprentice,
and then, suddenly, they become partners in crime. - NARRATOR: At 11 p.m. on the 17th of October, 1977,
Buono and Bianchi were cruising down one of Hollywood's most famous streets, Sunset Boulevard.
They had their fake police badges at the ready. - BOB: Bianchi had a four-door sedan that could resemble
a police car at night. It had no siren or lights, but it had the same color-- dark blue and a white top.
They used that car in all the stops and pullovers that they made. - NARRATOR: Here, they spotted 19-year-old Yolanda Washington.
- DR. YARDLEY: She was a mom, she was struggling to make ends meet, she became involved in sex work,
and they picked her up claiming to be police officers. - BOB: Got her in the car
under the pretense of who they were, and Bianchi strangled her in the back seat.
And that's where it started. - NARRATOR: They dumped Yolanda's body on Forest Lawn Drive, not far from Glendale.
She was discovered early the next morning. - She had a three-year-old child, and she's treated as a piece of garbage.
- BOB: From there, it just kinda accelerated. They started discussing what they were going to do.
"Let's take 'em back to the house, "if we take 'em back to the house, then we can play games with them."
And that's exactly what they did. - NARRATOR: Barely 2 weeks later, on the night of the 30th of October,
Buono and police reservist Bianchi were roaming the streets once again. As they stalked Sunset Boulevard,
a young girl caught their eye. - Judy Miller was picked up on Sunset Boulevard, near a hot dog stand.
- DR. YARDLEY: Judy was 15 years old, so, a few years younger than Yolanda Washington,
and she's been described as a runaway, but she's a child, she's incredibly vulnerable,
and I think they recognize that and they prey upon that vulnerability again. - NARRATOR: The killers lured Judy into their car
under the pretense of hiring her for sex. Once inside, they pulled out their fake badges.
She was trapped, and this time, Buono and Bianchi had even more sinister plans. - They took her to Buono's auto upholstery shop,
where she was... systematically raped. - DR. YARDLEY: This change in offending is really
significant for me because, when you're taking your victims to somewhere that's private,
an environment over which you have control, this suggests that you wanna escalate your offending,
you wanna spend more time with your victims, you want to harm them more. - NARRATOR: Using a ligature placed around her neck,
they strangled 15-year-old Judy. Then, the killer cousins dumped her naked body in bushes
off a quiet residential street in the neighborhood of La Crescenta. When she was found the next day,
detectives noted the lack of drag marks on her body. - BOB: That gave us a kind of an indication
that they might've been two guys, because... if you have a dead body and you're lugging it around,
you wanna put it--place here and place there, it's very difficult, and if you do that,
you usually have, like, marks on the body if you're dragging the heels. But she was placed in an area,
and that's where her body was found. - There was a fiber on her eyelid that was visible, uh,
and obviously she was blindfolded, which left the fiber. - NARRATOR: But despite the police's hunch
that there might be two killers working together, there was little else left at the crime scene
in the way of clues to help them identify the murderers. Buono and Bianchi felt unstoppable.
And on the 5th of November, they decided to target a different type of victim. - GEOFFREY: Now, you have a complete change of pace.
It wasn't only directed at sex workers. Lissa Kastin was a perfectly ordinary, outright girl, 21.
She was a dancer, quite a good career, with her extraordinary group called the LA Knockers.
- JUDGE NASH: Lissa Kastin was walking to her apartment, and police ruse was used with her,
she was brought back to Buono's shop, you know, raped and murdered, and her body was found in the bushes
off a street in Glendale. - NARRATOR: Now, Buono and Bianchi had killed three young women.
They were reveling in their success and growing in confidence. They were getting into their stride.
- BOB: They were discussing-- according to Kenneth Bianchi-- they would sit down, "What do you wanna do tonight?"
"Let's try Hollywood again, let's pick up another whore in Hollywood." They took them to Buono's upholstery shop
and sexually assaulted them, strangled them, took their nude body and threw them in the hillside along the city of Los Angeles.
It was a game. - NARRATOR: The rampage continued. Just 4 days later, on the 9th of November,
28-year-old actress and model, Jane King, was stopped at a Hollywood bus bench. She was taken to Buono's workshop,
where she was raped, strangled, then dumped next to the freeway in Glendale. The killer cousins had claimed four victims
in nearly as many weeks. - It was the most extraordinary spree. And I think one of the things that made them, in the end,
terrify Los Angeles, there was no pattern. They literally, like lightning strikes,
they had an appetite, and that appetite knew no bounds. - NARRATOR: But Buono and Bianchi's killing spree
had barely just begun, and soon, they'd become the talk of Tinsel Town. On Sunday the 13th of November,
they set their sights on 2 children: Sonja Johnson and Dolores Cepeda were spotted
getting on a bus after a Sunday afternoon shopping. - They get off the bus, almost certainly,
they're impressionable, they're 12 or 14, 2 men stop them, they say they're police officers,
they get them into the car, they take them back to Buono's. I mean, it is unimaginable.
- NARRATOR: This time, the victims were imprisoned and held captive in Buono's home.
The two schoolgirls were gagged and bound then repeatedly raped over five days. - GEOFFREY: What they must have subjected them to,
and what those girls must have felt, is literally horrifying. Depravity is too good a word for it.
It is utter depravity. - NARRATOR: At the end of their torture, the two children were strangled.
The killers dumped their bodies four miles from Buono's home, on a hillside near the famous LA Dodgers stadium.
- It's a street that Buono referred to and-- since he'd grown up in the area--as The Cow Patch,
and apparently, their bodies were just thrown down the hill. - It is behavior of the most... disgraceful.
Because it's inhuman. It is animalistic. - NARRATOR: Despite raping and killing six women and girls
in barely a month, Bianchi and Buono were left wanting for more. - They're varying their offending at this point in time,
and offenders will do this because they will get bored. They will want to mix things up.
They will wanna make things interesting. - NARRATOR: Their victims were no longer just randomly
picked off the streets. On the 20th of November, two days after their last killing,
Bianchi called at the home of 20-year-old art student Kristina Weckler. - BOB: Kristina Weckler had met Kenny Bianchi,
they lived near each other. He succeeded in getting her out of her apartment on the ruse that he was now LA police officer,
and her car was involved in an accident. Why the poor girl went, I don't know. But that was it, they abducted her,
took her back to Buono's house. - NARRATOR: Once at Buono's home, the killers had devised a new sickening act of torture
for their seventh victim. - GEOFFREY: They use a more elaborate method of killing her.
Not simple manual strangulation. But they put a plastic bag over her head and put a gas pipe into it, and effectively suffocate her.
- NARRATOR: The killers also injected Kristina's arms and neck with air and cleaning solutions
to try and induce a fatal embolism. - There was a mark on her neck where they put cleaning fluid
in her neck with a syringe. - DR. YARDLEY: This is incredibly sadistic, it's incredibly drawn out.
It's an escalation in their offending. They're enjoying the process of watching their victims die,
of having that ultimate power and control over their life and death. And this is something that's only going to get worse.
- NARRATOR: Then, they dumped Kristina's body on another remote hillside in Highland Park,
several miles from Buono's Glendale home. - BOB: It was a Sunday, I was notified at home.
They said, "We got a dead girl out here, and it's definitely a murder victim." So, I went out, did my usual crime scene investigation,
and I noted the ligature marks on her hands and on the ankles. - NARRATOR: Detectives also noticed that the bodies
continued to be placed and not dragged to each location. They were still convinced that they had
more than one killer on the loose. - We had put a lot of uniformed policemen in the area of Northeast Los Angeles,
looking for two suspects, or one suspect as a serial murderer. So we were focusing in the area
where the girls were originally abducted. I think that information got out somehow to the media.
So, what did Bianchi and Buono do? They drove all the way out to the Valley to look for the next victim 25 miles away.
- NARRATOR: On the 28th of November, 8 days after their last killing, Bianchi and Buono were cruising the streets
of the San Fernando Valley. They spotted 18-year-old business student Lauren Wagner
driving home. - BOB: They, uh, followed her. And she parked right across the street from where she lived.
They stopped her, pretended they were police officers, and said they would have to take her in a car,
and she resisted, she kind of--vocally resisted. And they got her in the car, and took her to Buono's house.
- NARRATOR: Lauren was bound to a chair and gagged in Buono's home. This time, the cousins thought they'd experiment
with a different type of torture. - JUDGE NASH: They took wires, plugged them into the wall,
kind of pulled the wires apart and taped the wire to the girl's hand, and then plugged it in
to electrocute her. There were burn marks in her hands from the wires. - NARRATOR: Lauren's body was dumped, once again,
on one of the city's hillsides. Her parents had noticed their daughter's absence
and were concerned when they found her abandoned car with the keys left in the ignition.
- And this was something that was out of the ordinary, she wouldn't normally do that, so immediately they knew
that something was wrong, they knew something was amiss, so they contacted the local police department.
- NARRATOR: She was discovered the next day, on the 29th of November. - Her body was found, once again, on the side of a hill,
on a little street in the Glendale LA area. And she was lying there, naked as the others,
with ants crawling all over her body. - Upon seeing her, we knew right away that she and Kristina Weckler were killed by the same people.
Both had very similar ligature marks on the body, around the neck and one on each wrist
and one on each ankle. We began referring to that as five-point ligatures. - NARRATOR: Forensic investigators also found
a small fiber stuck to the adhesive left by the tape that had been used to attach the electrical wires
to Lauren's hand. Detective Bob Grogan went to her parents' home to break the devastating news about their daughter,
but word of an eighth strangling victim had got out, which meant the LA press were already one step ahead.
- On the street where the Wagners lived was all the media in Los Angeles trying to interview Mr. and Mrs. Wagner.
I hadn't even notified them, and they're running around with their microphones, looking for an interview.
And I ordered the uniformed police to move 'em up the street and get 'em out of there.
They turned this into a circus, and this is far from a circus. - NARRATOR: The press now had a name for the serial murderer:
the Hillside Strangler. But a neighbor had some important information for police, which confirmed their earlier suspicions.
- BOB: She came out and saw two guys putting a girl in a car. That was the first time we actually had visible proof
that there were two suspects. Couldn't identify them, but two were seen. - NARRATOR: With the killings making daily news in LA,
the police were now under pressure to step up their investigation. - BOB: After the murder of Lauren Wagner,
the detectives, we got together and said, "We got a serial murderer, we got a big problem. Big problem."
The chief wanted a task force, the media wanted a task force, so we got a task force, we got a hundred policemen.
- NARRATOR: But Buono and Bianchi were already planning their next killing, and another change of tactic.
- They enjoyed the feelings of power and control that killing gave them, um, but they didn't wanna go to the effort of going out,
they wanted to make it easier for themselves. And going out actually was quite a risky thing
at this time, 'cause this was a ruse that they'd used several times, so it was a combination of awareness of risk
and laziness on their part. - GEOFFREY: Bianchi has found a flat-- another apartment in the block he lives in,
which is vacant. - NARRATOR: On December the 13th, Bianchi called an escort service posing as a client.
Seventeen-year-old Kimberly Martin was sent to the empty apartment. - BOB: As soon as the door was open, she knew
she had made a mistake. Buono and Bianchi were there and a struggle broke out. - DR. YARDLEY: She had quite a severe head injury,
almost as if she'd been bashed against a wall. So, what I see in this case is an individual who knew
they were in danger and actually fought tooth and nail for their life, and I think that's testament
to the strength of character of this individual. - NARRATOR: Buono and Bianchi took Kimberly back
to Buono's workshop. After raping and strangling her, the killers planned a final act to taunt the city.
- Her body was deposited on the side of a hill, kinda overlooking the city of Los Angeles,
and her body was kind of displayed like this, and...she actually came to symbolize
the Hillside Strangler. Where she was thrown was kind of a way for these guys to thumb their nose at the world.
- And the media jumped on that, "Oh, the Hillside Strangler strikes again," so--it was a panic situation in the city of LA,
no question about it. - NARRATOR: The Hillside Stranglers had now claimed nine innocent lives.
Buono and Bianchi sat back and relished how their murders had become one of the biggest news stories ever in LA.
The Los Angeles Police Department were now under pressure to catch the killers before they struck again.
- NARRATOR: By December 1977, the Hillside Stranglers had claimed nine innocent lives.
Buono and Bianchi sat back and relished how their murders had become one of the biggest
news stories ever in LA. The Los Angeles Police Department were now under pressure to catch the killers
before they struck again. - GEOFFREY: It created an utter panic. If you were young, and a young woman in Los Angeles
at that time, I think you would be frightened-- anybody would have been. - NARRATOR: Bianchi was reveling with the headlines
his murders were generating. Still a member of the LAPD Reserves, he went on ride-alongs with the police
and was on patrol with a local sergeant just two days after Kimberly Martin's killing.
- DR. YARDLEY: He was asking questions about this murder and he was wanting to see the dumpsite.
So, he was trying to find out what the police knew, essentially, is trying to get some information.
- BOB: And the sergeant said, "Hey, I work uniform, I don't know anything about that."
So he was brazen enough to come out and make that kind of a statement. He told many people, "I could be the Hillside Strangler."
It didn't bother him, but you gotta remember, you're dealing with a pathological liar,
so he could say anything at any given moment. - NARRATOR: The two murderers decided to lay low
for the next two months. But on the 16th of February, 1978, they couldn't resist 20-year-old Cindy Lee Hudspeth.
- BOB: She walked into Buono's shop to get upholstery work on her car. Big mistake.
The predator of predators she's talking to and doesn't know this. Next thing you know, she's victim ten.
- They put her body in the trunk of her Datsun-- her orange Datsun car. And they drive it to a higher area of Los Angeles.
- The car with her body in it was pushed off of Los Angeles Crest Highway, where she was found.
- NARRATOR: But soon, cracks began to show between the deadly duo. The status that Bianchi was enjoying as a serial killer
seemed to be going to the younger cousin's head. - Kenny Bianchi has got to the point where
he's kinda got Buono worried 'cause he's bragging about these murders now. "Hey I went on ride-along with the police department."
Buono couldn't believe that. So there was a falling out. Buono threw him out of the house,
says, "Out, I don't wanna see you ever again." - NARRATOR: The two killers finally went their separate ways.
That same month, Bianchi settled down to become a father when his girlfriend gave birth to their son.
- GEOFFREY: Now you have one of those wonderful contradictions. You have a superficially doting father,
who has evil intent, who presents--to use the contemporary phrase-- as an upright member of the community,
and yet is anything but. - NARRATOR: In May 1978, Bianchi's girlfriend left him and moved to Bellingham
in Washington State. Desperate to stay with his son, Bianchi followed, and found a job as a security guard.
- We've had this epidemic of killing, and it stops. But the trouble is, Bianchi can't stop.
It has just become too... addictive. - NARRATOR: On the 11th of January 1979, Bianchi offered to pay 2 university students--
22-year-old Karen Mandic and 27-year-old Diane Wilder-- $100 to house-sit one of the properties
that he was guarding. - It's unclear exactly how Bianchi forced these two down the stairs into the basement.
But there's no doubt that he did. He also put the noose around their necks and then strangled them.
- BOB: Kills the two girls, and he does it on his own. He does it poorly. He masturbated on one of the victims.
And he couldn't get it on, couldn't function. He's now acting alone. He doesn't have the street-smart, con-wise
Angelo Buono as a partner. - NARRATOR: Next day, on the 12th of January, Karen's car was found nearby by the police with their bodies
hidden in the trunk. Bianchi's employer revealed his whereabouts, and he was arrested.
- DR. YARDLEY: He claims that the killing wasn't done by him, but done by his second personality--Steve Walker.
So he's claiming that he has another individual in his head who is telling him to do particular things.
- NARRATOR: When the police in Bellingham realized their suspect had a Californian driver's license,
they contacted the LAPD. Detectives there noticed something interesting on Bianchi's driver's license.
- BOB: Whenever you moved in California, you had to write on the back of your driver's license
your new address. Bianchi diligently did that, he put his address when he moved,
which was on the same street that Kristina Weckler lived on. That's a pretty strong connection,
you got a guy who just killed two girls in Bellingham who used to live next door to a girl in Los Angeles
who got killed? That in itself is a strong connection. Doesn't prove anything, but it makes it worthwhile
to go talk to that guy. Now, there's a lot of things happening at that time. Bianchi is claiming to be a dual personality,
and he's decided that "This is gonna be my defense." - NARRATOR: So one of America's leading criminal psychiatrists
was sent to test Bianchi's alter ego, Steve, who allegedly appeared when he was under hypnosis.
- BOB: Dr. Martin Orne examined Kenneth Bianchi and had some techniques and tricks that he used,
and came to us and says, "The guy is a complete fraud." - NARRATOR: Now Bianchi's lies had been exposed,
he turned on his partner in crime. - BOB: He says there's another person with him
on the murders, and it's his cousin Angelo. And it's the first we've heard of Angelo.
- DR. YARDLEY: This is incredibly revealing, because there's no sense of loyalty whatsoever here.
He's got what he wanted out of Buono, so he just cast him aside and places the blame
squarely on him. - BOB: In order to get him to give us enough information so we can go down and arrest Mr. Buono,
we have to make a deal. The deal is that he won't get the death penalty in the state of Washington,
and that he would testify truthfully in Los Angeles in the trial, if and when we have a trial.
- NARRATOR: With Buono now in the frame, forensic teams searched his home and workshop.
Astonishingly, they could not find a single fingerprint because of his obsessive cleanliness.
However, they did find some evidence. They discovered the white polyester fiber on Judy Miller's eyelid matched upholstery material
in Buono's workshop. They also found forensic evidence which placed another victim at his home.
- BOB: In the chair in the living room, where we've learned from Bianchi where the victims were originally placed,
a fiber was found down inside the chair, and that fiber was connected to a fiber that was found
in Lauren Wagner's fingers. That's pretty positive evidence that this girl was in Buono's house.
- And that fiber evidence was extremely important evidence in this case. - NARRATOR: As Bianchi had already pleaded guilty
to seven counts of murder as part of his deal, he did not face trial. His cousin, Angelo Buono, appeared in court
on November the 16th, 1981. At the time, it was the longest trial in US criminal history,
with Michael Nash, the deputy attorney general, prosecuting. - JUDGE NASH: The jury selection alone
took almost four months. And then, on top of that, Kenneth Bianchi was on the witness stand for about six months.
The problem was that he changed his mind about everything. He did everything possible to sabotage that case
against Angelo Buono. - NARRATOR: But the ploy failed. After a mammoth trial lasting more than 2 years,
in November 1983, Angelo Buono was found guilty on 9 counts of murder. He was acquitted on the tenth count--
that of Yolanda Washington-- as it was accepted that he had been driving the car
while Bianchi strangled her in the back. Both cousins were later sentenced to life in prison.
- JUDGE NASH: Someone said, "So, how come you're not celebrating?" And I said, "You have all these dead girls,
"they had family and friends who are forever scarred by all this, this is tragedy."
- NARRATOR: But the brutal killers could no longer haunt the streets of LA. - GEOFFREY: In September 2002,
Buono dies at the age of 67... in jail. And Bianchi remained in jail in Washington State.
- JUDGE NASH: They're not the first serial killers, and they're not the last. But they were two of the worst human beings
who've ever walked the face of the Earth. - They are among the most horrifying killers
you could encounter, because the rape, torture, and in the end killing of utterly innocent young women
for nothing but their own pleasure, and their own gratification is unimaginably evil.
- NARRATOR: The two cousins reigned terror over the city of Los Angeles, they strangled and raped ten females in just four months,
including four girls. They electrocuted and gassed some of their victims, and relished watching their slow, painful deaths.
That makes Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi two of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ ♪♪ - [swishing sounds]

In the late 70s, adoptive cousins Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi reigned terror over Los Angeles by strangling ten young women and dumping their bodies on hillsides.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

The episode details the horrific crimes of the Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, who murdered ten women in 1977 Los Angeles.

Key points

The Hillside Stranglers' Terror. Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi murdered ten young women in just four months, instilling fear in Los Angeles.
The Abduction of Sonja and Dolores. Schoolgirls Sonja Johnson and Dolores Cepeda were abducted by the killers, leading to a horrifying five-day captivity.
The Cow Patch. Bodies were discarded in a place Buono called The Cow Patch.
Escalation of Violence. The killers devised a new sickening act of torture for their seventh victim.
The Hillside Strangler Strikes Again. The press dubbed the serial murderer the Hillside Strangler after multiple killings.
Bianchi's Arrest. Bianchi was arrested after killing two university students in Bellingham.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It is beyond depraved.

Describing the killers' actions.

0:35WatchAug 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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