Going West: True Crime - The Hillside Stranglers // 9

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

In the late 1970's, Los Angeles was in a panic due to an unknown perpetrator killing young women and leaving their strangled, naked bodies on hillsides across the city. It wasn't until over a year and a half into the murders that police finally got a lead... or, leads. This is the story of The Hillside Stranglers. **GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN ANY OF THE NEWS CLIPS PRESENTED** NBC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4IxYsGR2Ww  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's going on, true crime fans? I'm your host Heath. And I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. We got a really great episode for you guys today, but before we get into that, I just wanted to mention that we actually just added a donation button to our website if you guys wanted to help out the show a little bit. Yeah, if you guys enjoy what we do and you love listening to the show, make sure you go over to our website

and hit the donate button, donate what you can and we'll give you guys a shout out on our following episode. Also, for those of you Patreon users out there, we're gonna be on Patreon pretty soon. We're gonna have some cool, exclusive stuff for you guys, so stay tuned for more information on that. Yeah, we'll have some stickers,

we'll have some t-shirts, and some exclusive episodes for you guys to check out. Yeah, we're hoping to release merch really soon. So if you guys follow us on Instagram, you probably saw our post including our merch ideas. If you haven't, go check it out at going West Podcast. Today's episode is going to be a wild ride so buckle up and let's get into it. In Los Angeles a killer the police are calling the hillside

strangler has murdered 10 young women and left their bodies on the hillside along the highways. The victim was a woman about 20 years old and the body was new. Another young woman strangled in the hill. The hillside strang apparently struck again. 27-year-old Kenneth Bianchi was taken into police custody last week in Bellingham, Washington. I can hear the antelope filter. This broad eye too. These two antelope two.

I was standing behind her and angel standing in front of her and it was still one stuff on to that. Bianchi pretended to go under hypnosis called multiple personality disorder. Police would not say whether Bianchi has confessed to any of the California killings. He is in custody in Washington where he pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. On October 18, 1977, on a hillside near the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles, a naked body was found, and Detective Frank Silernau of the LA Sheriff's Department was called to the

scene. The woman was Yolanda Washington, a sex worker who often frequented the same stretch of sunset boulevard. Her body had been cleaned before being dumped, so no DNA or fingerprints were detected on her body. However, faint marks were visible around her neck, wrists, and ankles where it appeared rope was used. It also appeared that she had been raped. Less than two weeks after Yolanda was found murdered, a frantic call came into Los Angeles Police Department reporting a dead body found. In La Crescente, which is a neighborhood about 12 miles from downtown LA, police discovered

the body of a teenage girl who was naked and face up on a parkway in a middle-class residential area. The homeowner actually covered up her body with a tarp before law enforcement arrived so that children wouldn't have to see the body on their way to school. A coroner's report stated that the girl, who was small and thin and only 15 years old had been raped and sodomized. A former student at Hollywood High School, Judith Lynn Miller, was a runaway and occasional sex worker.

Judy was last seen alive on October 31, 1977, talking to a man driving a large two-tone sedan on Sunset Boulevard next to Carnie's express limited. And for those of you who don't know, Carnie's is a super casual restaurant on the Sunset Strip. It's actually an vintage train and they serve hot dogs and burgers and it's actually still there to this day. So about five days after Judy's body was found

on October 6th, 1977, the nude body of yet another woman was discovered near the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale, which is about 16 miles away from where Judith Miller's body was found. Like Judith, she had five-point ligature marks around her neck, wrists, and ankles from being strangled. She was also brutally raped but not sodomized. She was later identified as 21-year-old waitress, Lissa Castin, who was last seen leaving the restaurant where she worked, and she was actually a professional dancer for the All Girls Dance Troop, the L.A. knockers at the time. So I guess she was doing that while she was serving as well.

It was later found that the perpetrators had pulled her over on the street she lived on, should a fake police badge, and told her they were detectives. They then handcuffed her and told her that they needed to take her in for questioning, but instead they murdered her. And that is such a terrifying thing to think about because this poor girl is being pulled over by who she thinks is the police and then, you know, because police have this authority over us, we basically have to do what they say. So if they say, oh, we have to take you in for questioning for whatever their reason was, you know, she felt as if she had to go with them.

And unfortunately, they weren't actual police and they were just there to harm her. Yeah, this is a really unfortunate circumstance for Lissa. I mean, we've seen this in other cases where killers have acted as police officers and had fake badges and sometimes even fake sirens on their cars. So it's just really unfortunate that this is the way it went down. So at this time the police were definitely questioning why so many young women were turning

up beaten, raped and strangled around Los Angeles, but they had absolutely no evidence and no leads. Just after police found Lissa Caston, a 24-year-old woman named Catherine Lour Baker was approached by two men. The two identified themselves as police officers and asked her for identification. Along with her ID, the men found a picture of her sitting on her father's lap, who was actor Peter Lour, and then they let her go. It was discovered later that they did have intent to abduct and kill her, but they didn't.

By the way, her father had actually passed away about 13 years prior to this occurrence. So Peter lore was actually in a number of movies. He was in a couple Alfred Hitchcock movies. He was in Casa Blanca. So to me, I kind of think that it's possible that they didn't abduct Catherine because maybe they wanted to keep their victims more low profile,

because we already know that they have taken a lot of sex workers that probably wouldn't have raised a lot of alarms for police Yeah, it's unclear if they even knew who Peter lore was I mean he was in a lot of film noir movies and like he said he was in Kasa Blanca and some Alfred Hitchcock movies But it's still unclear if maybe they did it because the photo somehow pulled on their heartstrings Which doesn't really make sense to me because how would their it because the photo somehow pulled on their heart strings, which doesn't really make sense to me because how would their heart strings not have been pulled on for the other women that they killed. So suddenly a photo of a girl with her father does the trick.

Like, it's very unclear. I don't know what happened there. I mean, it's even possible that maybe it just what the timing wasn't right. Maybe there was a lot of people around and maybe the picture didn't really even have anything to do with it in the first place. On Sunday, November 13th, 1977, two girls, 12-year-old Dolores Ann Sapida, who went by Dolly, and 14-year-old Sonia Marie Johnson,

boarded a RTD bus in front of the Eagle Rock Plaza and headed home. The last time the two girls were seen was when they were getting off the bus on York Boulevard in Avenue 46, while approaching a two-tone sedan which reportedly had two men inside. Their bodies were found by a nine-year-old boy who had been treasure hunting in a trash heap on a hillside near Dodger Stadium in downtown LA on November 20th, so a week after they were last seen. Both of their bodies had already begun to decompose, but it was still determined that they had been

strangled and raped. As if this situation wasn't fucked up enough, I mean a nine-year-old boy was the one that found the two bodies. I mean, that's just terrifying. So it was after these murders that the media began to connect all of the murders where the perpetrator was then nicknamed the hillside strangler. So of course it wouldn't be found till later that it was in fact two men behind this, so now they're called the hillside stranglers plural. So obviously at this point people in LA were freaking out because I mean this was this all happened in the course of about a month so you can just imagine what it would feel like to be young or just to be female or just to be alive in Los Angeles at this time knowing that there's this

killer on the loose and they have no idea who he is. Yeah and I think actually reporters stated that there was a lot of young women that were taking self-defense classes during this time all because of the hillside strangler hype. I mean go for them that's what you should do honestly. Yeah exactly. Panic said in even more when that same day, the naked body of 21-year-old Christina Wechler, a quiet honor student at Art Center College of Design was found. This was really weird to hear because I've been to that school so many times and so many of my best friends went there. It's like a beautiful art school and it's in

the woods of Pasadena. So for those of you who don't know the Los Angeles area, Pasadena is very close to Glendale and Eagle Rock, which is where a lot of these murders were happening. So they were all in just neighboring towns, all very, very close to each other. Christina was deemed to be a loving and serious young woman who had a bright future ahead of her. And she was found on the hillside between Glendale and Eagle Rock like you were talking about. When she was found, Detective Bob Grogan of the LAPD noted that she had ligature marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck, and when he turned her over she had obvious bruising

on her breasts. Unlike the first few victims, there were two puncture marks discovered on her arm, but there were no signs of needle tracks that would indicate these were from drug abuse. It later revealed that she had been injected with Windex. So, it turns out that this was actually a form of torture. The Windex caused her to go into convulsions, but it didn't kill her, which is just super fucked up. I mean, how do you even think of that as a form of torture? Yeah, this is so messed up. It seems kind of Dahmer-esque like the way he would, you know,

inject people or pour acid into their brains. I mean, this is like another level of just disgusting behavior. On November 23rd, 1977, the badly decomposed body of 28-year-old Jane King, an actress who had been reported missing just about two weeks earlier, had been found near the Los Files off ramp of the I-5 freeway. Because her body was so badly decomposed, it prevented them from determining whether or not she had been raped or tortured, but she had been strangled like the others. And just as another reminder, this is the eighth body that has been found in the Los Angeles

area that's been strangled in the past month. So it's such a short time span. This is like two a week at this point. So that's just such a scary thought. On November 29, 1977, police found the body of 18-year-old Lauren Ray Wagner in the hills of Glendale. She was a business student who lived with her parents in the San Fernando Valley. She too had ligature marks on her neck, ankles, and wrists, but there were also burn marks on her hands indicating she was tortured.

Apparently the two perpetrators had hooked up wires to a car battery in order to electrocute her, but it didn't work. Lauren's parents had expected her to come home before midnight and the next morning when they found her car parked across the street with a doorage ar. Her father questioned the neighbors. He found that the woman who lived in the house where Lawrence car had been parked had witnessed her abduction. The woman stated that she saw two men. One was tall and young and the other was older and shorter with bushy hair.

She apparently heard Lauren cry out. You won't get away with this during her abduction. On December 14, 1977, so two months after this all started, the body of 17-year-old sex worker Kimberly Diane Martin was found on a deserted lot near Los Angeles City Hall. She was found naked and showed signs of torture. Kimberly had previously joined a call girl agency because, ironically, she feared exposing herself on the streets with the hillside strangler on the loose. Unfortunately, the killers happened to call her agency from a Hollywood public library pay phone, and she was the call girl who was sent.

When police investigated the apartment that she had been dispatched to, they found it vacant and broken into. This is just so weird that this happened to her because she specifically signed up to this agency so that she wouldn't be a victim of the Hellside Strangler and then she just was one of the few victims. Like how did that work? Yeah, and it's also strange that they called her from a library pay phone to like order her services to come to this apartment.

It's just so strange to me. And also another weird thing is she seemed to have been the only sex worker that had been called from an agency. So the only one that they had called and it happened to be her. And this is a little different from the way that they actually did things because their M.O. is usually just picking up girls off the street. So it's it's weird to me that they would take this opportunity to call from a pay phone. Also it's unclear whose apartment it was because they still weren't able to find the perpetrators

after this incident, so I don't know whose apartment it was. Yeah, we didn't get that information in our research. On February 17, 1978, so just over two months after Kimberly Martin was found murdered, the final victim was discovered on the Angeles Crest Highway. When a helicopter pilot spotted an orange dots in abandoned off a cliff, police responded to the scene and found the body of the car's owner, 20-year-old Cindy Lee Hudspeth, a student and part-time waitress in the trunk. Her body showed ligature marks just like all the others,

and she had been raped and tortured. It appeared she had been strangled and put in the trunk of her car, which was then pushed off a cliff. In April 1978, Peter Mark Jones, a 36 year old handyman of Beverly Hills and convicted Boston bank robber, was held as a suspect in two of the hillside

strangler murders. He was suspected by George Francis Shamsack, who was a 27-year-old Massachusetts convict serving a bank robbery term. He implicated himself and Peter Jones in the two killings. When the two were arrested it was a major breakthrough in the case and everyone had a moment of relief, but the two were actually released just a few short days after due to lack of evidence against them. So it's unclear why George Shamshack implicated the two of them if they didn't even do it, and you'll learn soon that it was not them. So I'm not really sure why he would do that. We also saw this happen in the last case we covered the Elis Attorney case, where Thomas Heimer, a convicted killer, actually implicated

himself in the crime, but we found out that he actually didn't commit that murder as well. So maybe since this guy was already in prison, he wanted to gain some fame or something. I know a lot of criminals like to do that, so that's possible, but I don't know why he dragged some other dude into it. Unless George had something out for Peter Jones, it's possible that maybe he just wanted to take him down for a crime. Maybe they committed crime before together and they had bad blood.

I'm not really sure. When law enforcement actually looked into these two men, they weren't even in Los Angeles at the time of these murders, so yeah, definitely not them. On January 11, 1979, two university students in Bellingham, Washington, Karen Mandak, 22 years old, and Diane Wilder, 27 years old, were attacked, raped, and strangled. Here's their story. Days before Karen Mandak had told some of her co-workers at Fred Meyer, which is a super store, that her and her friends were offered $100 each by Kenneth

Bianchi, a security guard at Whatcom security. To house sit a beautiful ranch-style home on Bayside Road in a secluded neighborhood for two hours while the security alarm system was being repaired. It was also owned by William V. Catlow, a recently retired Georgia-Pacific Corporation executive who was vacationing in Europe with his wife at the time. On Thursday, January 11, 1979, Karen Mandick left Fred Meyer for an extended dinner break at approximately 7 pm and was supposed to return at 9 pm.

The store manager, who considered Karen very reliable, became alarmed when she failed to return to work as promised. At about 11.30 pm, he called Steve Hardwick, a friend of Karen's who worked at the security office to see if he knew of her whereabouts. She told Bill Bryant, another friend who worked at the security office, about the house-sitting job. He offered to go along but Karen turned him down. Steve Hardwick and Bill Bryant scouted both Karen Karen Mandix House, the house she was watching, and other likely locations, but couldn't find the girls. Steve Hardwick then reported them to Bellingham Police Department. After hearing the story, the Bellingham Police contacted Whatcom security to see if they had any information about the two missing women.

The owner, Randall W. Moa, called Kenneth Bianchi who claimed he had been at the Wattcom County Sheriff's Office Reserve Unit meeting and denied knowing Karen Mandik. Police then contacted Gordon Scott, commander of the Reserve Unit, who said Bianchi asked to be excused from the meeting, claiming he had to teach a class for his employer. At 2.30 a.m., police spoke with Kenneth Bianchi who admitted he hadn't attended the meeting, but instead had gone driving alone in the countryside. By morning, there was still no sign of Karen or Diane. Bellingham Police chief Terry Mangin and Captain Duane Schneck visited the girls' house and

talked to their neighbors and friends to no avail. Convince they had intended to return the previous evening, Chief Terry Mangin ordered a full-scale investigation. Detectives obtained permission from the owner of the House on Bayside Road to search. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary other than wet footprints on the kitchen floor. It was reported that both Karen and Diane hadn't reported to their morning classes, so people quickly became frantic trying to search for answers. Kenneth Alicio Bianchi was born on May 22nd, 1951 in Rochester, New York.

His mother gave birth to him when she was 17 years old, and she was an alcoholic and a sex worker. She gave him up for adoption about two weeks after he was born. Kenneth was adopted by Nicholas and Francis Bianchi when he was three and a half months old. At a young age, Kenneth was a compulsive liar, had a quick temper, and was prone to throw violent tantrums. Although he had above average intelligence, he was a pretty poor student. Kenneth Bianchi married Brenda Beck, his high school sweetheart in 1971, when he was 20

years old. However, he would often cheat on her, which led their marriage to Anne just about eight months later. From a young age, Kenneth had a lot of interest in becoming a police officer and enrolled at Monroe Community College to begin taking courses in police science and psychology. But he did poorly and he soon dropped out. He then failed the test that would secure position with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department in New York, but he found work as a private security guard instead. However,

he would often steal from his employers, so he changed jobs pretty frequently. In January of 1976, so when he was 24 years old, he moved to Los Angeles to live with his adoptive cousin, Angelo Bono, who was about 17 years older than him and had a history of sexual violence. of Cousin, Angelo Bono, who was about 17 years older than him and had a history of sexual violence. In July, Kenneth started working at California Land Title Company and used his first paycheck to get his own apartment in Glendale. He still wanted to be a police officer, but the Los Angeles and Glendale police departments

turned him down. Just as a side note, can we just talk about how terrifying that fact is that this man wanted to become a police officer? Yeah, and we've actually seen this before in other cases as well, where, you know, Edmund Kemper wanted to become a police officer as well and even hung out at, like, the bars that police officers would hang out at. By the way, if you don't know, Edmund Kemper is a serial killer. So while at the title company, Ken started dating his coworker Kelly Boyd and she became pregnant in June 1977.

Ken then proposed to her and although she was skeptical and declined his offer, she continued to live with him. This really upset Ken and he started staying out all night with his cousin Angelo and lied to her about his activities. On February 23rd, 1978, Kelly Boyd gave birth to a son, Ryan, at the Glendale Adventist Hospital. In early March 1978, having tired of Ken and Los Angeles, Kelly decided to return to her parents' home in Bellingham, Washington to raise Ryan. By the way, just so you guys aren't confused, this is taking place a little bit less than a year before the incident of Karen and Diane happened. So like I said, Kelly was just super over Ken and he begged to make things right between them and she kind of gave in to this but she said that he had to move to Bellingham, Washington,

which he did in late May of 1978, so just a few months after she went there. Bianchi rented a small house and found employment with Whatcom Security Agency as a security guard. In August of 1978, he took a job in the security office at the Fredmeyer Shopping Center, where he met coworker Karen Mandick. He then was rehired at Whatcom Security Agency as a patrol captain. He applied to become a reserve deputy

for Whatcom County Sheriff's Department and began taking police courses. It was just months later that he asked Diane and Karen to house it. So back to that incident. On January 12, 1979 at 4.30 pm, Shirley Schlemmer, who lived on Willow Road, spotted a green mercury bobcat parked at the end of Willow Court North, which was a heavily wooded, undeveloped cold-assack off Willow Road, and she notified the police. Detectives rushed to the spot and found two bodies stuffed in the car's backseat. The Bellingham Fire Department arrived with a basket crane and floodlights to

illuminate the area. The bodies were carefully removed from the car, wrapped in clean white sheets to prevent the loss of any evidence, and taken to St. Luke General Hospital. A medical examiner conducted the autopsies and determined death was due to strangulation by ligature. The Mercury Bobcat was transported to the Bellingham Police Garage for forensic analysis. Meanwhile, the What Come Security Dispatcher contacted Bianchi and told him to report to the security guard's shack and they took him into custody for questioning. Acting on a tip, they searched the area around the guard's shack and discovered Diane Wilder's coat stuffed behind some pipes, only 20 feet from where Bianchi had parked his company pick-up

truck. On Saturday, January 13, the investigation intensified. Detective Nolte, noting Bianchi's California driver's license, contacted the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to check on his background. Crazy enough, Detective Frank Solerno, a member of the Hillside Strangler Task Force that had been investigating the murders of 13 women since October 1977, answered the call. Once he heard the address on Bianchi's license, Solerno immediately made the connection and made plans to fly to Bellingham.

Meanwhile, Bellingham detectives established links between Karen and Diane and Bianchi. At their house, they found a note to Karen in Diane's handwriting that can Bianchi had telephone on January 9. Also, like we mentioned earlier, Karen had told friends about the house sitting job and mentioned Bianchi's name. During a search of Karen's car, a piece of paper turned up that said, 334, Bayside 7PM, Ken.

Also, a witness had seen a man matching Bianchi's description in the area that night, driving a Wattcom security pickup truck. So Ken's just screwing up left and right. First of all, he leaves all this evidence and gives his name and to people he knows, and then he freaking drives his work truck like a dumbass. Yeah, I'm kind of thinking that without Angelo Bono, these crimes are just really not going Ken's way.

On January 14, Los Angeles detectives arrived in Bellingham to determine if there were any similarities to the murders in Los Angeles. Bellingham police served a search warrant at Bianchi's house and seized his clothing as well as property stolen from places he had been assigned to guard. They also found a cache of stolen jewelry, at least two pieces matched the description of jewelry worn by hillside strangler victims. Carpet fibers found on the clothing worn by Diane and Karen that night, as well as those found on clothing Bianchi wore that night. Match samples taken from the carpets at the Catlow residence. A single pubic hair found in the basement stairwell along with other pubic hairs found on Diane's

body. Matched Bianchi's and traces of her menstrual blood was found on his underwear. On Friday, January 26, 1979, Bianchi was formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder, which he pled not guilty to. On Friday, March 30, 1979, Bianchi changed his plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity. Defensive attorney Dean Brett said Bianchi claimed to have amnesia about the murders of Diane Wilder and Karen Mandick. He said three psychiatrists examined him and concluded he suffered from severe multiple

personality disorder. Judge Kurtz granted a motion to appoint a blue ribbon panel of six psychiatrists to examine Bianchi, including a brain scan, to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial. While psychiatrists were examining Bianchi, belling him detectives continued putting the finishing touches on their homicide investigation. On April 23rd, 1979, Los Angeles Police Chief Darrell F. Gates increased the pressure on Bianchi by announcing the task force had enough hard evidence to charge him with 10 hillside strangler slangs. On May 9, Los Angeles County District Attorney John Van DeCamp filed a complaint in Superior

Court, initially charging him with five murders, those with the best evidence. As the time approach for a competency hearing, the only thing clear about Bianchi's multiple personality disorder was that the psychiatrists were, as usual, divided. To believe that Bianchi did indeed have multiple personalities but was not competent to stand trial, two were certain that he was faking and stated that he should stand trial and two claim that they were not sure. Under hypnosis, Bianchi had created an alter ego, Steve Walker, who confessed to killing Karen Mandik and Diane Wilder and gave a detailed account of the

crime. Steve also talked freely about the murders in Los Angeles that occurred between October 1977 and February 1978, thoroughly implicating his cousin Angelo Bono. So this is how much of a mass manipulator Kenneth Bianchi is. He creates these alter egos telling police that he's this Steve Walker guy and implicating Angelo while he's under hypnosis. It's just kind of ridiculous. It sounds like so narcissistic, egotistical, and manipulative. I think I read somewhere also that he created a third personality as well, and you could just tell that he was totally faking it, so I mean, I agree with you.

Yeah, the dude's full of shit. So by the way, at this point, he has confessed to being the Hillside Strangler and Angel Obono, his cousin, to have done it with him. So they are the Hillside Stranglers. So going back to when we were talking about Kenneth's life and when he moved to LA and got Kelly Pregnant, when she didn't accept his marriage proposal and he started going out at night, those few months before she wanted to move to Washington

was when they were committing the crimes. The mystery of Bianchi's supposed multiple personalities became irrelevant when the Los Angeles and whatcom County prosecutors offered him a deal. If he pleaded guilty to the two belling him murders and to five murders in Los Angeles, he would receive life sentences, avoid the death penalty, and be allowed to serve his time in California. He also had to agree to testify truthfully and completely against Bono, his accomplice in the hillside Strangler's Langs.

On Friday morning, October 19, 1979, Judge Kurtz conducted a hearing to determine if Bianchi was competent to stand trial. With the concurrence of the six psychiatrists, the judge found Ken competent to stand trial. Whether or not Bianchi was insane when he murdered Karen Mandik and Diane Wilder would be left for the jury to decide. With the deal already in place, Bianchi withdrew his insanity plea and pleaded guilty to both murder charges. After listening to arguments about how Bianchi should be treated, judge Kurtz sentenced him to two life terms to run consecutively without the possibility of parole.

Within 30 minutes of his guilty plea, the Hillside Strangler Task Force arrested Angelo Bono at his residence slash automobile upholstery shop in Glendale, California. By the way, that's something that we didn't mention. Angelo owns a car re-opholstery shop, so that probably was pretty convenient for them murdering women in their cars like they did. Yeah, I actually think that most of the victims were killed either in the car or at Angelo's house slash shop. Bona was taken into custody without a struggle and charged in Los Angeles County Superior Court with 24 felonies, which included 10 murders, extortion, conspiracy,

sawdemy, and pimping and pandering. Although the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office had evidence linking Angelo Bono to the crimes, they believed his fate rested on Ken Bianchi's credibility as a witness. The acceptance of his guilty plea by judge Kurtz and belling him had rendered him a competent witness in the eyes of the law. So one quick thing to note about these guys is that while they were hanging out together, they actually were trying to start a prostitution business because they needed money. They actually held two girls captive in Angelo's house for a couple weeks, but those two

girls escaped. Do you know if this was before or after the murders? I believe it was before the murder started happening. On October 20, 1979, Bianchi was flown from Bellingham to Los Angeles where he appeared in court, pleading guilty to five of the ten hillside strangler killings. The judge immediately sentenced Bianchi to five life terms for the murders, one life term for the conspiracy, and an additional five-year sentence for Sodomy. Bianchi began violating the terms of his plea agreement,

almost as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles. In what became the longest preliminary hearing in the history of Los Angeles County, 10 months, he attempted to influence judicial proceedings by making contradictory statements to destroy his credibility and have the case against Bono dismissed. But on March 16, 1981, Judge H. Randolph Moore ruled there

was sufficient probable cause to believe Bono had committed murder and ordered him to stand trial. During the prolonged preliminary hearing, Bianchi met Veronica Lynn Compton, aged 24, a self-proclaimed actress, poet, and playwright. In June of 1980, she sent Bianchi a letter at the Los Angeles County Jail asking him if he would read her screenplay about a female serial killer called the mutilated Cutter and help her with characterization. The plot gave him an idea to gain his freedom. The hillside strangler was still in the loose and killing women. Veronica Compton visited Ken Bianchi in Jail on numerous occasions between June and September 1980,

while he was waiting to testify against Bono, and they concocted in a elaborate scheme to prove his innocence. Veronica would fly to Bellingham, strangle a girl with a white clothesline and plant evidence. Additionally, she was to send letters and cassette tapes to various locations in Los Angeles and Bellingham with messages that the wrong man was in jail and the Strangler would strike again. So Ken just really doesn't know when to quit. Now he's trying to get a woman to strangle another girl so it looks like these Hellside Stranglers still at large. I guess so. I mean it's kind of smart but it still doesn't take away the fact that he clearly murdered Diane and

Karen and he's just so obviously linked to the other murders. So I don't really know how he really thought he was going to get away with this, because copycats exist too. This could have just been a copycat, you know? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, he's got all of this DNA everywhere all over this crime scene. Like, what was he even thinking? Did he actually think that this plan was gonna work? On Thursday, September 16th, their

last meeting, Bianchi provided Veronica with the final touch, a seaman specimen in the fingertip of a latex glove to smear on the victim's body. He had concealed it in the spine of a book she had previously loaned to him. Okay this makes no sense. He's gonna put his own semen at a crime scene. How does that point the finger at somebody else? Yeah, I really don't know what he was thinking in this case, because like clearly he's in jail, and if his semen is found on another body, they're just gonna think it's another crime he committed. Then he would just get more jail time. Like, this doesn't make sense. It would make more sense

if it was somebody else's semen, but I don't know how he would have gotten that. So... Veronica flew to Bellingham on Friday, September 19, 1980. She befriended Kim Breen, aged 26, a Bellingham Parks and Recreation employee, while drinking at the Coconut Grove Tavern at 710 Marine Drive. After spending several hours together, Veronica lured Kim Breen to her room at the Shangri-La downtown motel, with the promise of some cocaine. Veronica managed to tie Breen's hands and twice strangled her almost to the point of unconsciousness.

Although intoxicated, Kim was bigger and unusually strong and manages to struggle free and escape. After this, Veronica quickly disappeared from Bellingham, but she was easy to trace. On Thursday, October 2, 1980, she was arrested at her home in the Shangri-La trailer park in Carson, California on a Wattcom County warrant, charging first degree attempted murder, and held on $500,000 bail. The media was super excited about this turn of events apparently,

and they started calling her the copycat strangler. Veronica's trial began on Monday, March 9, 1981, before a Whatcom County Superior judge. To guarantee a fair trial, a jury of four men and eight women was selected from Pierce County, bust a bellingham, and sequestered, and a hotel for the duration. Kim testified that Veronica had tried to kill her, but Veronica claimed that the incident had just been a charade to gain publicity for her screenplay the mutilated cutter, and

that Kim was in on it. After deliberating for just three hours, the jury found Veronica Compton guilty of first degree attempted murder with a special finding of being armed with a deadly weapon, which carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. On May 22, 1981, the judge sentenced her to life with possibility of parole due to the calculated viciousness of the attack on Kim Bred. Veronica was actually released from prison in 2003, which was just over 20 years after she had been sentenced to this. So crazy. Yeah, and I guess she had never

been heard from again. So three years after this, a judge formally sentenced Angela Bono to nine concurrent terms of life without the possibility of parole, which is a penalty set by the jury. Angela Bono was sent to the Folsom Prison where in 1986 he married for the fourth time. His wife Christine Kazuka, mother of three, and supervisor at the California State Department of Employment Development in Los Angeles. Because Bono was not eligible for parole, he was denied conjugal visits. On Saturday, September 21st, 2002, Angelo Bono, age 67, died from a massive heart attack in his cell at the Calipatria state penitentria.

Are you Italian? Okay, wait, not penitentria. Penitentria, I'm not Italian. Okay, you had a heart attack in jail. pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of pinnacle of a Louisiana in a 15-minute ceremony in the prison chapel. The day before their wedding was actually the first time that they ever met, but they've been corresponding for about three years from exchanging tape messages and they enjoyed numerous film calls together. Funny enough, Shirley had previously tried to correspond with serial killer Ted Bundy, but all of her letters had been

rejected, either by officials at the Florida State Prison or by Bundy himself. So I guess then she just settled for Kenneth Bianchi. When prison officials denied Bianchi conjugal visits, he sued, but a wall-a-wallet county superior court judge declared that they had acted within their authority. The visits had been denied for security reasons and because of his record of extreme violence towards women. And Ken Bianchi is actually still alive to this day and he's currently 67 years old, still in prison. And think out for that. Yeah, that man is never getting out. Thank you everybody so much for listening to episode 9 of Going West. Make sure to head over to our website goingwestpodcast.com and let us know what you think about this

case. Yeah, we have like a little tab that says listen and you can go ahead and click on all the episodes and even comment about your thoughts. Also, if you guys feel like donating, please do on our website goingwestpodcast.com. And make sure to check us out on Instagram at GoingWestPodcast and on Twitter, going WestPod. By the way, if you're not fully caught up on our episodes, you can find our others on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Podbean currently. And make sure to check out our last episode if you haven't. It's on the disappearance of a list of turning.

So everybody out there in the world and in the penitentiaries, keep it real and stay weird. Cheerio. 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh

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1 tbh 1 tbh Thank you. you you