Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: The Hillside Strangler from Los Angeles

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

This episode was originally released in August 2019, and is one of sixteen episodes from the archives we'll be bringing you every Thursday, now through end of year... for good reason! ;) We highly recommend you listen to each episode between now and end of 2024, and follow us on Instagram @crimejunkiepodcast so you're the first to know what's coming next!

Hi Crime Junkies, Britt here, and if you're a midwesterner like me, I can guess you're probably craving the sunshine too. We are officially getting into Chile territory here, and a little jaunt over to California for some quintessential Los Angeles sunshine would do me some justice. But not nearly like the type of justice we've seen over the last few decades of prolific cases in California. Because the 70s and 80s in California were absolutely terrifying. There weren't just one or even two serial killers, but a handful of them. Some which took decades to identify, like the Golden State Killer. And others, while they were caught within a short window of time from when they

started committing their crimes, managed to cause just as much devastation. Kind of like the case I'm going to reshare with you today. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And you guys know that on our show, we are big into personal safety, and we've given you several rules to follow to help keep yourself safe. One of those rules is to remain skeptical of everyone all the time. Your co-workers,

your neighbors, even figures of authority, because you never really know anyone ever. This rule has come into focus throughout several of our episodes, but this rule is perhaps best exemplified in today's story, which is one of the scariest crime sprees that maybe you've never heard of. This is the story of the Hillside Strangler. Our story begins on October 18, 1977, when a detective is called out to a crime scene just outside of Los Angeles, California, along the Ventura Freeway. The body of a young woman had been abandoned just off the freeway, and she appeared to have been brutally murdered. As the detective examined her body, he quickly spotted the marks around her neck,

her wrists, and her ankles. It was clear that she had been bound with a rope before being strangled, and this was later confirmed by a coroner to be her cause of death. The coroner also determined that the victim had been raped before her death. More than the ligature marks or cause of death, there was something that stuck out. The victim had been thoroughly cleaned by the killer prior to being dumped along the freeway, indicating to the police that this was a premeditated crime, not an impulsive one. This victim would later be identified as Yolanda Washington, a sex worker that lived in the region. She'd been killed at another location and then dumped along the side of the road.

But with almost no physical evidence, there was little that police could do. They didn't know why Yolanda had been targeted or even where she was originally killed. And they had no idea that this was just the beginning of the largest and longest case of their careers. You see, Yolanda was the first victim of this killer, but she was not the last, not by a long shot. Less than two weeks later, on November 1, 1977, police were called out to La Cresida,

a suburb about 12 or so miles north of Los Angeles. There, in the middle of a residential neighborhood, police found the body of a young woman laying face up and completely nude. Actually, when the police got there, the body had been covered up, but that was only because the body had been found first by the home owner whose driveway that she was in. And he had covered the body up with a tarp so that children on their way to school and others headed to work wouldn't have to see it.

But the body of this young woman had basically been dumped in a driveway naked and showing similar signs of physical violence as the first victim. In fact, the circumstances of the death were so similar that police immediately connected the two crimes. This victim had been bound at her wrists and ankles, and a similar ligature had been wrapped around her neck, likely in the process of strangulation. And like the first victim, she had been raped prior to her death,

killed elsewhere, and then dumped in a separate location. Seems like such a bold move to dump a body in a super residential area and in a driveway. Like what are the chances that someone would actually see the killer? Well actually, based on how she was found, police theorize that she likely had been tossed out of a moving car. That seems impossible for someone to be able to do. Not if you have more than one person who might have been involved,

which quickly became the running theory because of this particular case. So we're in a new type of dumping ground, but there was something else that was different about this victim as well. She was much younger than the first. In fact, early estimates by police and the coroner put her age at around 16 years old, but she was eventually identified as just a 15-year-old, a girl named Judith Lynn Miller, who had recently attended Hollywood High

School, but had dropped out and run away from home. Police began reaching out to those that knew her before running away and discovered that she had been finding work as a sex worker in the week since. Judith had last been seen on the night prior to her discovery, October 31st, which of course is Halloween. Exactly. And on that night, at least one witness told police they recall seeing Judith get into a large two-tone sedan along the iconic Sunset Boulevard. This would really become the first lead for detectives as they continued their search for the repeat offender who was targeting sex workers in and around the Los Angeles

area. But this notion that the killer solely targeted sex workers would quickly fade. Within days, police would find yet another body, and this victim had no prior connection to any kind of sex work. On November 6th, this is just five days later, another body had been found just outside of the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale, California. This is about 10 miles south of where the last victim was found. Like the first two victims, this young woman had been bound with what looked like rope.

She had also been strangled with the rope in what investigators referred to as a five-point ligature marks. And she, like the other victims, had been raped. This third victim was 21-year-old Alyssa Casten, nicknamed Alyssa, who was not a sex worker. Alyssa found work as a waitress and was actually a dancer with the LA Knockers, which was an all-female dance troupe that was like somebody popular at the time, like throughout the 70s and early 80s. She had no history of drug use and seemingly had no relation or ties to the first two victims. Lyssa had been at work the night before the discovery of her body and was last seen by

co-workers leaving the restaurant that she worked at. Now just hours later, she was found in an isolated area, having fallen prey to a killer that police believe was targeting women regardless of occupation or social status. At this point, the investigation into this string of murders was entering full tilt. Three young women were now dead, seemingly murdered by the same offender or offenders who had managed to kidnap, bind, rape, and strangle all three before dumping their bodies in separate locations. Police knew the cases were linked, but had no idea who they should be looking for,

at least not yet. In the meantime, the public at large didn't really have an idea of what was going on. The first two cases had not raised much public awareness. After all, the first two victims were sex workers, and the public's apathy towards sex workers has been noted, like, since the days of Jack the Ripper. I mean, yeah, we saw the same thing happen with Gary Ridgere, the Green River killer.

The fact that the media and the press and really the public don't give these cases attention is what allows men to keep killing them. Exactly. And while police were looking for the killer, it wasn't until this third victim was found that they even really began to take the cases seriously. They knew they were linked, but it wasn't getting the notoriety until now. They now had the killer using the same method to murder women, and whoever he was, he was no longer just targeting sex workers. By all indications, Lyssa had been abducted by the killer and had not gone along willingly, so the urgency in this case was now amped up significantly. It's during this time period that some odd encounters were noted, not only by friends and family of the three murdered women who reported these

findings to police, but by those with no real relation to the case at all. This included a girl named Katherine Laurie Baker, who was the daughter of the famous actor, Peter Laurie. At some point in early November, Katherine had a chance encounter with two men claiming to be Los Angeles police officers. Now, they even had badges, which they flashed at her, and then they demanded that she go with them for questioning.

And she said, like, when they came up to her, they seemed like they were ready to arrest her. And she was just minding her own business and had no idea what to do. She was totally taken off guard. Now, it wasn't until the two men looked at her wallet when they saw pictures of her with her father that they seemed to back off a little bit.

At this point, Peter Laurie was deceased, but he was still one of the most well-known actors in Hollywood history. After seeing this photograph, the two men seemed spooked. Was she just like too high profile for them? I think that was the problem. They seemed to drop interest in Catherine and they kind of just like wandered off. Catherine assumed that this was just a case of like mistaken identity. Like, again, this happens when they look at her wallet. They think, oh, maybe, you know,

I'm not the right person. I'm not who they were looking for. And she doesn't think anything of it until months later. So keep this encounter in mind because it comes up again. Roughly two weeks would pass until police learned that another body had been found. However, in one day, police would discover that this unknown killer or killers had nearly doubled their victim total. This next discovery took place on a hillside near Dodger Stadium where a nine-year-old boy was out treasure hunting with some friends. That's when he stumbled upon two figures in Elysian Park which looked almost like mannequins from a distance. Okay, but I think we all know it's never a mannequin.

Never. The boy did in fact discover that these were not mannequins, but rather two girls not much older than him who had been stripped naked and left exposed to the elements. The victims were 12 year old Dolores Ann Cepeda and 14 year old Sonia Maria Johnson who had last been seen about a week prior. The two girls had boarded a bus in front of a plaza and they rode the bus approximately two miles and there some witnesses saw them approach a two-tone sedan. Sound familiar? And that was the last time either girl had been seen. I assume they had been reported missing, right? Yes, they had been. These were two typical young girls who had spent the weekend hanging out.

They were coming home from the mall when police believed that they had been abducted. Again, there was a witness sighting of them getting in the two-tone sedan, which they said the girls seemed to approach willingly, but other than that, there wasn't much in the way of evidence. The two girls had been missing for about a week, and by the time their bodies were found, they had already started to decompose. What about their cause of death? Was it similar to any of the other victims? It was. Their cause of death was strangulation, just like the other victims? It was. Their cause of death was strangulation just like the other victims of this unknown killer. And the police will learn that the girls had been raped before their deaths as well, even despite their young age. But due to the fact that the decomposition process had already

started, there was really not a lot that they could tell. And it limited how much they could learn at the time. I mean, especially since it was 1977. Right. Unfortunately, these were not the only two bodies that police would discover on this same day. Earlier that same day, another body had been found just outside of Glendale. This body had been found by hikers who stumbled upon the nude figure while hiking, and the victim was later identified as a local college student. Christina Welker was a 20-year-old honor student at the Art Center College of Design who, like our last few victims, had no history of drug use or sex work. She was by all accounts a punctual, responsible student who is believed to have been yet another

opportunistic victim of this savage killer. Christina's body had the exact same ligature marks as the prior victims at her wrists, her ankles, and her neck, and she had been strangled to death. However, unlike the other victims, she seemed to have been abused pretty violently before her death. In particular, there was some bruising over her torso and what appeared to be signs of some pretty serious sexual trauma. Most peculiar though, it appeared like Christina had been injected with some unknown substance.

Wait, what do you mean? Okay, this is the strange part. So investigators wondered if it was some kind of drug. Like, they couldn't tell what it was at first. And they thought maybe this could indicate some kind of possible connection to this killer. But Christina had no track marks on her body that would indicate that she was a regular drug user. She just had two puncture marks on her arms, which had come from a syringe. The substance, when they were able to, you know, take it out and test it, was later determined to be Windex. Like the Windex you have under your sink right now, that Windex.

What? Yeah. It was and still is unknown why Christina had been injected with this, but it was believed to either be like a misguided attempt to like harm her, just maybe just to see what happened, or an attempt to cover up the crime itself. So in one day, police had found three bodies, which they now attributed to the same killer, bringing the total victim count up to six at this point. But just three days later, on November 23rd, another body was discovered, this time near the Los Felix off-ramp along the

Golden State Freeway. Unfortunately, this victim was found too late for any significant testing to take place. Police estimated that she'd been there decomposing for weeks, but they were at least able to identify her. The victim was 28-year-old Evelyn Jane King, an actress that had gone missing earlier that month. Sometimes they think her around maybe like November 9th. Just like the others, she'd been strangled to death, but due to decomposition, it was impossible to know if she had endured any kind of rape or torture prior to her death. So now, this killer has murdered at least seven women and girls over a very short period

of time. Yeah, it's only been like a month. Yeah, not even. And police finally had to admit that they had a serious problem on their hands. Their investigation really had nothing to show for it. No suspects, no persons of interest, not even any serious leads other than rumors of a two-tone sedan, which back in the 70s was like super common.

Yeah. So finally, in an attempt to get ahead of this killer or killers, a task force was assembled to catch the man that the media was calling the Hillside Strangler. On November 29th, police were called to the location of yet another body, which had been found near Glendale at Mount Washington. Like we were seeing over and over and over again, this victim had ligature marks, neck, ankles, wrists, just the same, and it was telling investigators that she belonged to the same crime spree that officials had been investigating for around a month at this point. It wasn't reported at the time whether or not she'd been sexually assaulted like the other victims, but the coroner noted that she had electric

burns on her hands, likely some kind of torture inflicted by the now-named Hillside Strangler. This victim was Lauren Rae Wagner. She was 18 years old and lived in the San Fernando Valley with her parents. She was a business major at a nearby college and was normally punctual, reliable. However, the night before her discovery, she hadn't returned home as expected, and her car was found parked across the street from her parents' home with her door just wide open.

A witness that lived in the house across the street said that they saw Lauren return home that night, and they said they saw her be abducted from her car, not by one man, but by two. This person said that one man was older, shorter, and had bushy hair, and the other man was younger and very tall. And these were the first physical descriptions that they had of their killers, and this gave police their first confirmation that more than one man might be involved in this killing spree.

There had been rumors beforehand. And I mean, again, because we had that one body who they thought got thrown out, it was assumed. But this is something definitive. OK, that's interesting at all. But can we stop and mention that they saw her get abducted? Yeah. Did the witness at least report this immediately? So I believe so, like it's not 100% clear to me, but from what I can tell, the police found Lauren's car with the door ajar before they ever found her body the next day. And so I think the two cases end up being

connected, but I do think there was a separate investigation into why her car was just found abandoned. Okay, that's fine. Right. So a few more weeks would pass before police learned that the hillside strangler had struck again. And this time, the strangler had been more brazen than ever before, disposing of the body in downtown Los Angeles. Oh my God. On December 14th, 1977, police were called to a deserted lot near LA City Hall, where the body of a 17-year-old sex worker had been abandoned. The victim, Kimberly Diane

Martin, had endured an extended period of torture prior to her death, which had been exactly like the other victims. But the circumstances of her death gave police even more cause for concern. You see, Kimberly had heard all of the news about murdered women in the area, especially since the killer had been targeting sex workers. So she decided to stop working on the streets and had signed up for a call girl agency, which she believed would result in her client being documented or vetted in some kind of way. Unfortunately, it was this decision that put Kimberly in the path of this mysterious offender.

On the day after her murder, Kimberly had been called out to an apartment in town. However, the address that was given was a vacant apartment, which wasn't being occupied or rented by anyone, just completely empty. And the killer had simply broken in and used it to lure Kimberly out there. When police checked in on the phone number used to contact her, they found out

that of course it was a public pay phone from like the Hollywood Public Library. She tried to do everything to protect herself and couldn't. Right. So frustrating. I know she tried to do everything right. She had taken steps to keep herself safe. Unfortunately, these killers had been planning on that and they used Kimberly's paranoia to their advantage. They were one step ahead of Kimberly and they were one step ahead of police, not leaving behind a single usable clue. It seemed like whoever this was had done a heck of a job covering their tracks.

Police believe that Kimberly had been subdued inside the apartment and then taken to a second location where she was murdered, and possibly where the other crimes had taken place. Because of that, again, there was no way for police to track them or their whereabouts, and nothing left in the way of physical evidence. Over the next couple of months, investigators struggled to find who they now believed were two killers. And they had very few even witness sightings to work with, because often the locations where many of these bodies were left had been abandoned places.

These were rural, isolated areas, often inaccessible to even cars. So this kind of added to the fact that police believed it was two people because police believed it would have taken two men working in tandem to carry out and deposit these bodies where they were later found. So to take it back to our story earlier, do you remember the witness sighting I told you about of the woman who said that she was accosted by two men pretending to be officers? Yeah, that was the actor's daughter, right? Right. Well, police finally start to link her sighting and others like it to the Hillside

Strangler case. Police believe that the two men had used the authority given to police officers to subdue their eventual victims and might have pretended to be cops to get these girls to go with them willingly. And it's a tactic we've heard in other cases like these days, but back then in the 70s, this wasn't a well-known thing. Like it almost feels like brand new. I don't know how often that actually happened. Despite having some general descriptions of these two men, one being tall and young and the other being older and short, police still had no idea who they were. They also didn't know what their motives might have been, other than being driven by some kind of sexual motive and wanting to harm women.

We have this kind of tentative connection between some of the victims who might have been sex workers, but other than that, there's no relationship whatsoever between any of the girls and women targeted. After a few weeks, with no new bodies showing up, it seemed like maybe, just maybe, the crime spree had officially come to an end. Up until this point, police had been unable to go more than a week or two without finding a body linked to this serial killer, but following the discovery of Kimberly, there would be a several week gap in which no more linked to this serial killer. But following the discovery of Kimberly, there would be a several-week gap in which no more

linked bodies would be found. Of course, there were still missing and murdered cases that piqued the interest of investigators. You know, it's Los Angeles in the 70s after all. But there was nothing definitive that they could connect to the Hillside Strangler. That is, until February of the next year, more than two months later, when the body of one more victim would be found in the most bizarre of circumstances. On February 17th, 1978 now, a helicopter flying overhead near a cliffside spotted an orange Datsun.

Oh, what's that? Datsun is a type of car that was made by Nissan. So seeing this car, they originally feared that maybe this could have been an accident over the cliffside, which happened like not too long ago. There was like a recent accident. So a rescue effort was launched to check out this car. Now police quickly found the orange car and discovered that there had been no car accident. The Datsun had been intentionally driven off of the road,

and inside the trunk of the car, police found the body of the vehicle's owner, a young woman. She was 20-year-old Cindy Lee Hudspeth, who was a student in the region and who worked as a part-time waitress. Again, this was another victim that did not have any ties to drug use or sex work, but who had been raped, tortured, and strangled. Just like the other victims,

she had the exact same ligature marks. No one knows exactly when Cindy had gone missing, but she was believed to have been targeted because of her young age and good looks. Following her murder, she had been set in the trunk of her own car and then literally pushed off the cliff, which is where her body had been found some time later. Again, we don't even really know how long it had been in that trunk off that cliff. Despite police not knowing the exact circumstances of Cindy's abduction and murder, they knew one thing for sure. The hillside strangler had not gone anywhere. Whoever they were, they were still out there and they were preparing to kill again.

It would be months before police were confronted with another case that had the similar MO. This time, two victims, and this time in a completely different state. The bodies were found in Bellingham, Washington. Okay, guys, I'm 100% serious now. Get out of Washington. I know. I'm seriously going to make a shirt that says that. We should cancel Bellingham and we're canceling Puyallup while we're at it. So on January 11th, 1979, two young college students, 22-year-old Karen Mandick and 27-year-old Diane Wilder were lured to a staircase and strangled from behind. When police found them, they had all the signs of the Hillside Strangler. But this time,

there was a ton of evidence, and it pointed right to one man. A man named Kenneth Bianchi, the security guard at the college. He was apprehended by police the very next day after the murders, and when police in Bellingham noticed his driver's license was from California, they put two and two together. They thought, oh my god, this might be the man that the entire state of California has been looking for. When they finally look into Kenneth, they realize that he, a tall, younger man, had ties to a short, older man, his cousin Angelo Bono.

And here's what they learn about the two men. Angelo Jr. was born in 1934 in Rochester, New York, and he was raised primarily by his mother, but they didn't have a great relationship. In his teenage years, Angelo began a lengthy criminal career, which would eventually include crimes like grand theft auto, assault, rape, and failure to pay child support as he got older. You see, Angelo married a few women in his early adulthood, but those relationships would. You see, Angelo married a few women in his early adulthood, but those relationships would always turn sour when Angelo's true nature broke free. He was an incredibly abusive man who didn't seem to respect women at all. In

fact, he didn't even seem to like them very much. He used women for what he wanted from them. Sex, money. In all of his relationships, Angelo would end up becoming incredibly vile and abusive, but not before popping out a couple of kids with each one of his wives. Well, and considering you said he racked up some failure to pay child supports, I'm guessing he wasn't a super great dad? Oh yeah, he was an absentee father who basically turned into an all-around scumbag. Eventually, Angelo

moved out of New York to California, where he carried on with, you know, being a dirt bad. Basically, he became a self-proclaimed ladies man who was able to get young and impressionable women to do what he wanted. And like something I read about him that I just like couldn't stand is people claimed that he, you know, really was able to quote, put women in their place. It was right. But it's out here in California that Angelo was befriended by his younger cousin, Kenneth Bianchi, who like Angelo had grown up in New York. Now, Bianchi was born in 51 to an alcoholic sex worker and he was actually put up for adoption as an infant and was eventually adopted by his aunt and uncle.

But he had a bit of a troubled childhood. Unlike Angelo, Kenneth was apparently like very bright, but his parents scolded him a lot for his laziness and they chastised him for being a compulsive liar from an early age. Like to the point where he would lie about things that weren't even important, just lying for the sake of lying itself. As if that wasn't bad enough, Kenneth also had a number of personality issues, uncontrollable anger, and he had issues with wetting the bed. Like one of the McDonald Triads?

Mm-hmm. This kid had issues, but those were all exacerbated in 1964 when Kenneth was just entering his teenage years, and that's when his dad passed away. From all accounts, this seemed to mess Kenneth up, even more than he already was. From here, he began to withdraw into himself, and his relationship with his mother was even more splintered beyond repair. For the next decade or so, Kenneth grew up in this weird, broken household, eventually marrying his high school sweetheart and working a series of dead-end jobs. The marriage fell apart pretty quickly, and from there, Kenneth began pursuing relationships with other girls that he liked, even sex workers, who felt pity for him, but they weren't really interested in dating him. However, he started stealing

valuables to give these women flashy things because he thought that's how you bought women's love. It's during this time period when Kenneth is just kind of adrift looking for purpose in life that he comes into contact with his older cousin Angelo. Now Angelo's nearly 20 years older than Kenneth and from Kenneth's perspective, like he had it all put together. He had found steady work as an upholsterer, he lived in sunny Los Angeles, California, and he always seemed to have this group of young, attractive women around him. After living a little bit of a dull life in New York, Kenneth made the decision to move

out to California in 75, and he and Angelo actually move in together. Now that they're living together, Angelo seemed to provide a lot of guidance for Kenneth. He was almost like this cool older brother that Kenneth never had. Yeah. And I could definitely see Angelo becoming kind of like a father figure for Kenneth, especially having lost his dad. Kenneth is young and impressionable. Right. But we know that Angelo wasn't the best person in the world, so this relationship would eventually begin to sour.

In the meantime, Kenneth struggled to adjust, and he really wasn't able to find work in California. He didn't have any skills or knowledge that could make him qualified for any, like, really good job. And eventually, he runs out of money. At this point of time, Angelo and Kenneth could have like buckled down, found better jobs, tried to be better people, but they find the laziest way to make a quick buck and they commit a bunch of crimes in the process. Angelo comes up with his

plan to make some easy money. He said the two men are going to find a couple of girls to start pimping out and they would use that money to fuel their California lifestyle. Within days, they found two potential candidates, two teenage runaways that were simply looking for a place to crash. Once these girls were living in their home, Kenneth and Angelo began to force them into their plan that these girls never consented to.

They began pimping out these two teenagers and began to express an insane amount of control over these two girls. They acted as their pimps. They would take almost all of the money that they earned and they would never let the two girls out of their sights. These two men became incredibly possessive and abusive and soon began harassing, torturing,

and even raping these two young girls whenever they pleased and when these two girls Tried to like leave they were basically locked in the room without food or water until they became pliable again The scheme lasted for a while, but eventually Think the Lord these two girls were able to escape with the two girls now gone Lord, these two girls were able to escape. With the two girls now gone, Angelo and Kenneth were left high and dry. They didn't have a source of income anymore. So they begin looking for another young, impressionable girl to take money off of. But when they can't find anyone, they kind of come up with this new plan. They begin asking around in illicit circles for a trick list, which if you're like me and you've never heard of a trick list before, it's a list of customers who have like frequented local sex workers. So

likely, I think they're looking for this list to try and like use it for blackmail or extortion purposes. I feel like this is kind of a lot of work for two people who don't want jobs. Like, wouldn't it be easier? Yeah, to me, they just get a regular job. It seems like they're going through a lot of work to not work, just like you said. All of their work to not work pays off, and they seem to find someone willing to put together this trick list for them. A local sex worker named Deborah.

One day, Deborah and another sex worker show up at their home and sold them this supposed trick list, which Angelo and Kenneth could use to blackmail these men to like get some money. However, they quickly find out that this list was a complete fake. And they begin plotting revenge against the sex worker that sold it to them. Now, remember, it was Deborah and one other person. This other person's name was Yolanda Washington, which you might recognize as the name of our first victim of the Hillside Strangler.

She often worked on a stretch of road along Sunset Boulevard and that's how they knew where to find her. Angelo and Kenneth pretended to be a couple of undercover police officers and they arrested her as she worked. A witness told police that they recalled Yolanda getting into the back of an unmarked two-tone sedan before her body ended up being discovered. Now, Yolanda was the first victim of the two men, but we know she wasn't the last. They would go on to kill 10 women over the next few months, conducting all of their crimes in virtually the same manner.

Now, they approached most of their victims as undercover police officers. Apparently, they even used fake badges, and in many of the cases, they would get the women to go with them willingly. And once they had them, they would take them back to Angelo's upholstery shop in Glendale. And this is where they would torture the women and kill the women. Other than the first victim, Yolanda Washington, all of the other victims were chosen at random. Angelo and Kenneth had, from what we can tell, no motive other than a general hatred of women,

which expressed itself in terrible violence. As you've heard, this carried on for several months with police finding bodies quite literally every week at one point. Most of the victims were abducted and killed between October and December of 1977, which just so happened to be the period of time which Kenneth and, you know, one half of the serial killing duo was, wait for it, attempting to become a police officer with the LAPD. What? Yeah, I'm not joking.

He had quite literally started participating in numerous ride-alongs and by all accounts was becoming friendly with local police officers as he was committing these crimes with his cousin. Now in December of 1977, the murders began to slow down and there's a reason for that. Police had finally started to pay attention to the crimes and were actually starting to narrow in on Kenneth. He had done something to put himself in investigator sites and they had pegged him as a person of interest. Around this time, Kenneth told Angelo about his relationship with the police all the right alongs like hanging out with them. And he mentioned that he had even been questioned once or twice by investigators.

And as you can imagine, this did not go over well, and Angelo exploded with anger. Between the two, Angelo seemed to clearly be the smarter one, and he realized that police were likely on to Kenneth, or both of them, and had likely been playing Kenneth for a fool. So he blew up on Kenneth, and in so many words basically like told him, you need to get out of California or I'm going to kill you myself. So in May of 1978, this is roughly three months after the last murder, that's when Kenneth moves to Bellingham, Washington and gets the job as a security guard.

Kenneth killed those two college students and that was the last time he struck before his capture. Following Kenneth's arrest, police quickly had linked his older cousin to the crime spree as well and together they were each charged with 10 murders and numerous other crimes including kidnapping, rape, sodomy and that was not even including Kenneth Bianchi's two separate crimes from Washington State, which he was charged with alone. Prosecutors believed that the case against Kenneth was more airtight because he had done such a poor job of covering up the double murder in Washington,

so they decided to move against him first. If they could get a conviction on him, then it would be a lot easier to take Angelo to trial. However, as the trial got started, Kenneth tried to establish mental illness as the root cause of his crimes. He heavily implied that he had a dissociative identity disorder, which he basically said he split off into a completely separate persona that he said was the one that carried out the violent crimes. And he even gave this identity a name. He called this person Steve Walker. And police later found out that this was actually a college student that Kenneth knew. And they

believe that he probably had just like thought of the name like in court as he's making up the excuse. It was like the first name that popped into his head. As you can imagine, this like wasn't a very successful legal defense. And the court psychologist examining him saw right through it. And they said they knew he was faking it because most people who have this disorder have like three or more personas. So when Kenneth hears this, of course, he's like trying to play along and he's like, just kidding. I do have a third and his name's Billy. Of course you do.

Yeah, thankfully this fool just about no one and the mental illness argument was pretty much DOA. So Kenneth had no other option but to turn on his own cousin and begin cooperating with prosecutors who were planning to pursue capital punishment against him. Now he agreed to testify in exchange for leniency and pled guilty to the crimes that he'd been charged with. The case against Angelo though was a much tougher affair than Kenneth's trial had been. The trial would be delayed for several months as prosecutors tried to figure out the best way to incorporate Kenneth's testimony against his cousin, who by all accounts was the mastermind and the originator of all of this stuff. Angelo's legal team tried to lay the groundwork that Kenneth was the corrupting force in Angelo's life,

and this was actually a much more effective defense than you might think. During the trial, Kenneth seemed to do everything in his power to obstruct the trial and in general became a terrible, unreliable witness. Do you think he was trying to defend Angelo? I kind of think so. From everything that I read, it seemed like Kenneth pled guilty because he wanted to escape the death penalty, but he didn't want to turn on his cousin, so he kind of began dragging his heels throughout the trial. Angela's trial actually eventually became the longest in American history. Do you know how long it lasted?

I have no idea. How long do you feel like is the longest in American history? Oh gosh, like a couple of months maybe? Two years. Whoa. Yeah. It came to a head in 1983. And that year, Angelo was finally found guilty on nine counts of murder and finally convicted

during his sentencing. The overseeing judge who actually went on to become like the chief justice for California Supreme Court. They told Angelo that he wished he could impose the death penalty upon him, but that power was out of his hands. So what were the sentences then? Well, because of his plea deal, Kenneth had accepted a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Angelo, on the other hand, who fought the charges received a stiffer sentence. He got life without the possibility of parole. And he was already like 50 at the time. So this is basically a death sentence for him. Following their convictions, both of the cousins prepared themselves for lifelong stays in prison. Kenneth is actually sent to a place we've heard of before. He's at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Same place as Gary Ridge, right? And Angelo was sent to Calipatria State Prison in California. He was there for a

few years, but actually he died in September of 2002 of what newspapers reported as a massive heart attack. Kenneth is still behind bars today, just outside of Walla Walla. However, he has not been locked up without incident. During the research of

this episode, I discovered just a little tidbit about kind of his life. That's equal parts amusing and terrifying. I guess following his arrest, he struck up a relationship with a woman named Veronica. And she's one of these like, you know, we've heard of them before there are women who are attracted to men in prison. I don't know if they want to save them. I don't know if they love the bad boy or whatever it is. Oh, did you know that there's actually a term for that? Really? Yeah, and I have no idea if I'm pronouncing it correctly,

but I learned a little bit ago that the term for that is hybristophilia, I think, but it basically is like Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Weird. Yeah, it's 100% a real thing. Yeah, I mean, I've heard of it happening in a lot of big cases. It's something I will never understand. But these two apparently struck up a relationship during Kenneth's incarceration,

and they got married months later. This is insane. Months later, after he'd been found guilty, the two came up with this insane plot with... Basically, it started that Kenneth had to stockpile his own semen. And... Oh, I don't like where this is going. Somehow he like smuggled it to her. And she takes the semen, arranges to meet up with a sex worker at a motel not too far from the original crime scene,

and she actually attempted to strangle this woman. Of course, this woman survives and turns her in, and in custody, Veronica spills the beans. She basically says the plan was, apparently, for her to strangle this woman, plant the semen at the crime scene, and then make it seem like the hillside strangler was still out there in the real world. Oh, okay. But it's still his DNA. Right. Like, that's the part that I can't understand. Like, I thought you were going to say, like, Ed, he had a secret twin or something and nothing.

Right. Their plan was to say that, like, oh, Kenneth and Angelo were just patsies and they'd taken the fall for the real killer. But it's your own DNA at the crime scene. Like, girl, Kenneth is still the dumb one. Yeah. So is he ever going to get out? I hope not. He was denied parole in August of 2010, but he seems prepared to apply for parole again in the near future. I think his next parole day is actually in 2025. And for the sake of his victims and their surviving loved ones, I really hope he does not get out.

I fully believe in rehabilitation, but like you're not mentally ill. You weren't a child when this happened. Like you raped and strangled a dozen women. You took away daughters and sisters and friends from people and I have no sympathy for you anymore. Like they don't get another chance and I don't think he should get one either. I totally agree. This case has been adapted into all kinds of TV shows, movies, books, documentaries, and it actually remains one of the most well-known criminal cases in all of California history. However, it's not really talked about anymore. And it's kind of been overshadowed by a lot of similar cases that unfolded,

you know, in the years after, even in the same area like Green River Killer, Ted Bundy, BTK. Which is a shame. And I'm not saying that because I think we should memorialize these two horrible men. But we don't hear about the victims and their lives when their stories don't get told. 100%. I mean, the people we should be remembering here are Yolanda Washington, Judith Miller, Lyssa Castan, Jane King, Dolores Cepeda, Sonia Johnson, Christina Weckler, Lauren Wagner, Kimberly Martin, Cindy Hudspeth, Karen Mandek, and Diane Wilder. These were all real people who were meant to have a future that was stolen by these two horrible men.

You know, there was nothing good that came out of what these men did, but I do think there is something we can learn from every case to protect ourselves, to not give men like this power over any of us. And it's a crime, junkie, life role that we've said before. Like, if you get pulled over by an unmarked car or someone who is claiming to be an officer, like, it's okay to ask questions. It's okay to call in and verify they are who they say they are. You don't need to be aggressive or rude, but you do need to make sure everything is on the up and up, because horrible men will take advantage of the fact that we want to comply with police. And I think it's always important that we keep that in the back of their minds. I feel like I'm hearing more and more stories of stuff like this happening. Music Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.

So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?