True Crime All The Time - The Hillside Stranglers

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

On this episode we're tacking the case of the Hillside Stranglers. Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were cousins that teamed up to murder 10 young women in Los Angeles in a four month span in the late 1970s. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss this famous case from the 70s the sadistic cousins behind it. The murders were cruel and tragic. The investigation into the murders and the bizarre way that the two cousins were linked is fascinating. A media circus would ensue after their capture and the trial would be one of longest and most expensive in California history to that point.You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact and merchandise information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

on and welcome to episode 47 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Give me what's going on? Hey man. What's up? Hey man. What's up? Let's stick that back.

Can we get it back? We're bringing that back? What's up? You know right now somebody else has said it too with us. If somebody else says it, you can't help but say it. Yeah. You got to. It's like contagious.

It would be even better of the people that listen all. offices with their head buds in, headbuts? Their head buds? With their ear buds in? Or saying it too, you know? And people around them are like, what's up with that? Head buds. Yeah.

That's a new device coming out to you at your nearest Apple store. A minute 15 in. I know. We go head buds. Yeah. Oh, you know, I hurt my back. Maybe it's the muscle relaxers. I don't know.

Well, it could be an entertaining episode then. Yeah, it could be. So let's start out with our new Patreon supporters. We have James Klein, Jennifer Lucas. Valerie Power, Nancy Brooks. Yeah. Yeah? You agree with me?

Yeah, I don't know who Nancy is. Oh, okay. Yeah, Nancy's from Canada. A? A. Yeah. Take off, eh? Take off, eh?

Great White North. Bree Moore and Lisa Parker. Peter Parker's sister. Maybe. I don't know. So big shout out to all of our new supporters. Thank you. And then we go back into the vault, Gibbs.

With Michael J. Fox. Back into the vault? Yeah, back to the future. Oh yeah, very similar. Back to the future, back into the vault. Yeah, getting the DeLorean and go. Actually, that was the working title, back into the vault. They changed it to back to the future.

Yeah. They did a little testing and they realized it was. Didn't test well. Right. So we picked Julie McHugh and again, Julie's been a supporter of the show from the very beginning. She's been good to us. She has been. It's very much appreciated.

We appreciate it. We appreciate everybody. people that support us on Patreon. We had some PayPal supporters. So I want to give a shout out to them. Marjorie, Prezon, Monica Leal,

Kristen Smith, Sarah Smith. The Smith sisters. Yeah. And Christopher Bergman. So a big, big shout out to them as well. Thanks.

Thanks, everybody. You know, we talk about it, Gibbs. On top of that, we get amazing support on social media. We do.

Facebook. Twitter, Instagram. Now, we also take a lot of shit. I took a ton of shit this week. And you should have. For my leisure suit gaff. How could you not know? I knew, but for some reason, man, I got a track suit in my brain and I just went down

that path. You did. And it cost you. It did. I took a beating. But I deserved it. Yeah. So I think you should wear one.

Go on eBay. Get yourself one and wear it at CrimeCon for a day. Is that my punishment? And the listeners pick out the color. The color of the leisure suit? Yep. So got to give a big shout out to Maggie for her writing and research of this episode. Good job, Maggie.

Yep. She's unbelievable. We love her. And it gives. I got to give a huge shout out to Jared Kelly. Yeah. Great listener. Jared is an unbelievable artist.

You got to go. You got to go. You got to go. You have to go. You have to go to Jared Kelly.com. This guy is unbelievable. That was a cool thing. You sent you.

Yeah. So Jared, you know, big listener to the show, has heard me talk about what a Kentucky Wildcat fan I am. And he sent me a really cool Kentucky Wildcat print. The first thing we've ever gotten. Yeah. Nobody's ever sent us anything. No. But unbelievably cool.

I'm going to hang it up in the studio. I just got to get a frame. for it. You know what it would look really good with that? If he had a matching Gibby one. A big, just a big picture of Gibby? Well, just like the, like he had on that one, multiple pictures of Gibby's profile. And you can frame it and put it right up next to that. Yeah, and he's such a cool guy, man. He told you to, you know, email him. Yeah, I'm going to. If you, if you want something. Yeah, absolutely. So it was cool. It was just very cool. So I wanted to give a shout out to Jared. So after you've listened to this episode, make sure you jump over.

check out true crime all the time unsolved we got an episode that just dropped on stephanie crow unsolved murder going back to the 90s gibbs going back and this is one where they had a quite a few suspects yeah and they actually tried a lot of people tried a few that's for sure yeah i mean this is a little different from some of the other cases that we've covered, they had so many different strong suspects that they actually took a bunch of them to trial. One guy twice. It's going to be a good one. It is.

It is. So check that out. And we got voicemails this week, Gibbs. We'll play those at the end. All right. So you're ready to get into this week's episode. I've been ready. Been ready.

Excited. We're talking about Kenneth Bianchi. We're talking about Angelo Bono, A.K. A, the hillside stranglers. These guys are lower than low, lower than dirt. Scum. Scum of the earth. So these two murdered a high number of women in California.

In a relatively short period of time, we're talking about like a four-month span of time, late 77 to early 78, and they dumped these women on hillsides. And that's how they got their nickname. That's their nickname. the Hillside Stranglers. So we start off talking about Kenneth Bianchi, born in May of 1951. He was born in Rochester, New York to an alcoholic mother who was a sex worker. And very quickly after he was born, she gave him up for adoption.

Two weeks old. Just gives him up. Well, that's not a bad thing. Not if she couldn't take care of him. No, I agree with that. I mean, she's working the streets, drinking. It's probably a good thing. He was adopted by a couple, Nicholas and Francis Bianchi, in August of 51.

And Francis, his adopted mother, is the sister to Angelo Bono's mother. So they were cousins by adoption. I guess you'd say it that way. Kenneth would be the only child of Nicholas and Francis, but he's going to have a lot of issues from a very young age that are going to impact the rest of his life. life. You know, it was said that he was a compulsive liar from a very early age, caused a lot of problems like a troublemaker, more than the average kid. Yeah, pesky little kid. Oh, pesky. And he also had these very intense daydreams. So he couldn't focus. He would completely lose his focus.

And it was said that his eyes would actually roll to the back of his head. Really? Well, that's interesting. Yeah, almost like he would look, you'd see the whites. That's all you'd see. I mean, I have some pretty vivid daydream sometimes, like when I'm recording with you. Yeah. I'll drift off on a little daydream. It's like you're not even here. Sometimes you don't say anything for like 20 minutes. I know. I'm like, what the hell you're doing? Is he still breathing? Luckily I am. But because of this, you know, Bianchi has a lot of trouble paying attention to what's going on around him. So you know he's not going to do well in school. They take him to a doctor. and he's diagnosed with pettemal seizure disorder when he was only five years old.

Really? What was that he had again? I think it's pronounced petit mao. It is. Petit mal. I don't know. I think you're correct. I heard it pronounced like 17 different ways. That's the way I would say it. That's the closest I came. So we got to be correct. But Bianchi would see this doctor for a whole bunch of different issues. And, and, you know, And he was known as a dribbler. He was known as the dribbler? A dribbler, not the dribbler. I just want to make sure.

A dribbler, like involuntary urination. He just couldn't stop it. It would just kind of trickle out, I guess, or dribble out. That's how you get it to be the dribbler. Or a dribbler. Now you got me saying it. And it's not funny because, I mean, people have it. Oh, yeah.

And especially as a little kid, that would be really tough. It would be tough because, you know, brutal kids are man and it's not like today you mean you have like products that yeah i don't know what they had back then in the 50s it was like probably didn't have anything not the pharmaceutical advantages we have today yeah it didn't even have depends back then so i mean if you're if if you're a kid and you're just standing there and all of a sudden wet yourself it's not going to be good for your self-esteem it's kids are going to make fun of you it's never good but to try to figure out what was going on with him, they had to examine his genitals.

Which is frightening at that age. It is. And it caused him a lot of shame and humiliation. I remember the first time I got a hernia check by a female doctor. I do remember getting a physical, like a sports physical. Yeah. When I was in high school. And it happened to be a female. But it was.

It was uncomfortable. Yeah, unpleasant for sure. And when Bianchi was a young kid, he fell off of a jungle gym, landed right on his head and face. Ooh. So we're talking about head trauma. Right. Seems to be a serial killer type of thing.

Other behavioral issues that he had growing up would force him into seeing other specialists, psychiatrists. You know, it was said that he had a lot of anger and he would go into like rages, fits. And at 10 years old, he's diagnosed with a passive. aggressive personality disorder 10 years old so meaning what he's passive aggressive but how i don't know wasn't there oh it's 1961 i wasn't there you weren't even born yet i wasn't even born yet man me neither but he's you know he's he's got a lot of issues in his first 10 years of life but he had an above average IQ don't we all some of us do you know he was at like 1116 so as an 11 year old kid

That's above average. As an adult, that's above average. It's on his way to be in Einstein. Only 16% of the population has an IQ above 115. Oh, I know. I've got the card. Mensa? Is it on the back of your Mensa card?

Club carrying member. Do you know what Mensa is? I hope it's not the other club that you don't want it to belong to. No, it's for smart people. Okay. That's why I knew you didn't know what it was. I want to make sure it wasn't some sicko club. Oh, I know.

Yeah, no. I wouldn't label you as anything like that. Oh, okay. But we talked about all the problems that he's having in school. It's because of all these issues, right? He can't concentrate. No matter what his intelligence is, he's not going to do well. He's daydreaming all the time.

He can't concentrate. Well, and I'll say this too when you really, and all joking aside, when you are that intelligent, it is hard for you to stay engaged with the lessons that are trying to teach you in school. Seriously. How would you know that? I am just saying people of that high. I believe that. No, I believe that.

His own mom would call him lazy. All of his teacher said they knew he was fairly intelligent, but he wasn't living up to his potential. Didn't apply himself. Didn't apply himself. Sounds like my seventh grade teacher. Is that what she said to you? Second, third, fourth, fifth, six, though. Didn't apply yourself?

But again, it comes back to his behavior problems. At the age of 12, Bianchi pulled down the pants of a little girl. And it was said that even at that young age, he knew that was something that excited him. He knew that was something or he did it because he wanted to. It excited him. He liked it. And we know, Gibbs, that's not a good road. That's not a good sign, a good precursor.

That's a bad road there. That type of, and you have to call that some form of abuse, right? You can't go around pulling down little girl's pants. It's just not going to be a good sign for you going forward. In 1964, his adopted father, Nicholas, dies of pneumonia. And what would come out of this funeral was that Kenneth Bianchi, he's only 13 years old. He did not cry at all. He didn't show any type of emotion, display any type of grief when it came to the death of

his father. And that's not a good sign. Bianchi ends up graduating from high school in 1971. And he marries his high school sweetheart. But they end up divorcing less than a year later. So, you know, their high school sweethearts, they get married at a very young age. And that marriage, it doesn't last, not even a year. Yeah, you know, once you move in with somebody, you find out who they really are.

Yeah, well, relationship in high school is a hell of a lot different than living with somebody day in, day out. It is. And you're right. I mean, and I'm not even making fun of that. It's just. It's a different world. I think that's why a lot of relationships don't last. It's different when you get to know somebody on that level and then you find out whether you really can handle them or not.

Yeah. Well, how in high school you were doing that. No, you go. No, you go. No, you go. Well, and you're going up. You hang up. And you're going back to your own house.

Yeah. You get a break. Yeah. There is no break. When you're married, there's very little break. But she leaves him. So when we're talking about trying to figure out who can live with who, I think she figured out pretty quickly, I can't live with this guy.

She said, I'm out. And one day just up and leaves. Doesn't even tell him why, gives him no warning. and she's gone. So what's that tell you? Something happened. Or she was getting a feeling. Or she could just tell in what's a relatively short amount of time, this is not a guy

that number one, I can be around and number two, I can be married to. He did go to college, ended up dropping out after one semester. But what's interesting is he was actually studying police science, psychology. he wanted to be in law enforcement or some form of that. He doesn't realize he's going to be on the wrong side of it. Yeah, he's definitely going to be on the wrong side of it. After dropping out, he bounced around, string of low paying jobs. He tried to get on at the sheriff's department, but he got rejected.

He did have a job for a while as a security guard at a jewelry store. To me, this is a guy that wants to be on law enforcement. He can't get in. The next best thing is to be a security guard. where I have some form of power. Now, I wanted the power that being a police officer gives, but I couldn't get it. And he used this job as security guard to steal jewelry from the store. So he's supposed to be watching over it.

And instead, he's ripping them off. And he would give all this jewelry to women, some sex workers. You know, he's buying affection, basically. Now we got to talk about Angelo Bono. You know, he was a little bit older. He was born in October of 1934. His parents had immigrated from Italy. But they divorced when he was very young and he ends up moving to Glendale, California

with his mom and sister. And it was said that Angelo became obsessed with sex from a very early age and allegedly had told some of his classmates that he had sexually assaulted a sexual. series of girls. I mean, he's bragging about this to his fellow students. Creepy already. Oh, yeah. I mean, both these guys are something, but this guy, you know, right from the beginning, because it was said that Angelo Bono idolized a serial rapist by the name of Carol Chessman. As a kid, you should be idolizing who? Yeah, some sports figures, some comic book hero.

Han Solo, Michael Jordan, whatever time frame you're from. Gibby. Gibby. How do you start idolizing a serial rapist? I mean, I can't even make sense of that one, dude. That'd be like idolizing Dexter. But Dexter is a fictional character. Is he?

Do we know that for sure? And by the time that he was a teen, he was stealing cars, and he got caught and placed in reform school. And just like Bianchi, he ends up marrying his high school sweetheart. from reform school? Maybe from reform school. I don't know. But differently than Bianchi,

he had actually gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant. So they end up getting married. But he leaves her less than a week after the marriage. A week. Didn't even like it after one week. No. He said, man. Wow.

I need my space. You know, he ends up divorcing this woman, refuses to pay child support, doesn't want to have anything to do with the son. scum. Yeah, scum of the earth. But he would later go on to get married to another woman and would have five kids with her.

Yeah, busy. So reconcile that. I don't know what it was about this first relationship and this first child. But some point later, he's okay because he has five kids. But we said this guy is scum and you want to talk about scum. It was alleged that in 1964, Angelo Bono, raped his own two-year-old daughter. Worst thing imaginable.

That's terrible, man. I think I'm going to be sick. Take that K-bar and cut his pecker right off, Gibbs. Oh, I would, I would just... I can't... I mean, there's a lot of horrible things that people do, and obviously murder is horrible, but that's humble.

That's, uh, God, I can't even put words to it. Yeah. I can't think of anything. That's how bad that is to me. Now, a second marriage ended. His wife would later say that he was abusive. He sexually assaulted her. I mean, this guy is a sexual sadist. You know, he's abusive. He's a rapist. I mean, whatever words you want to use. But he married for the third time in 1965, had two more kids with this woman. So that's seven. He's got seven kids. But he gets arrested for Grand Theft Auto. And he's given a year. He's given a year. He's a year. He's. He's got seven. He's got seven kids. But he's given a year. He's. He's. He's. He's. He's sentence in jail. But he doesn't do the whole year. It gets suspended because it was said that he needed to get out so he could work because he had such a big family to support. And I know that pisses you off because we talk about it. Yeah, a little work release. Right. You've talked about it before.

Slap on the wrist. Now, that was Grand Theft Auto. They didn't know about some of this other stuff that he was doing, obviously. Right. They would have done something even worse to him. Time after time, we talk about these guys, they're not held accountable for their early actions. And so what does that tell them? Go back out dude again. Yeah. I, you know, okay, they gave me a slap. They let me out early. I can go back and either do that again. I can go on to do some worse things, continue some of these bad things I've been doing, because I'll get out of that too. And he does go on to do some of these bad things again. His third marriage ended in divorce as well in 1971 and, you know, that woman, his third wife would come out and say he was abusive and he was also inappropriate

with one of his daughters from that marriage. So this is a track record. This is not just somebody making something up because they didn't like the way the relationship ended. There's too much smoke here, right, for there not to be fire. Right. And he got married for a fourth time. It was said that he dated a teenage girl who he got pregnant twice. I mean, this guy is all over the place. In 1977, Bianchi moves to Los Angeles.

And he starts to spend time with his cousin, Angelo Bwono. And this is the kind of guy that you want as a role model showing you the ropes in Los Angeles. So Bianchi's trying to apply for jobs out in Los Angeles. He tried to apply at some other police departments. He keeps getting rejected. But he ends up getting a job at a title company. And it was there that he met a woman named Kelly Boyd. And in May of that year, 77, Bianchi found out that Kelly Boyd was pregnant with his child, but she didn't want to marry him. But the two did stay together. She just didn't want to get married. You know, we talked about Angelo Bono, who's married a bunch of times, and it was said that he had a way of charming women. You know, he had no problems talking to women,

disarming them, getting them to like him. You know, he wore designer clothes. He wore flashy jewelry. You know, we are talking the late 70s here. He probably wore a leisure suit. I just say he had a leisure suit. I bet you anything. He probably had a leisure suit. maybe even a track suit when he worked out. He might have. He had it open, a little chest hair with a gold chain. That's what I'm picturing. If that's what you have in your head, if that's what you think about, all right, man.

Don't judge me, man. I mean, you do have a Don't Johnson poster in your workout room. Don't put my Don't John Johnson poster down. But, Bwono. He can charm women. He's got the clothes. But the one thing that was said about him is that he enjoyed, putting women in their place.

And this is his words, not mine. So this guy was an asshole to women. He didn't treat women well at all. He was a bully. And I don't know if that made him feel good. I don't know if that made him feel like a big man to push women around, bully women, as he called it, put them in their place. I don't know why people do that. I don't know what the feeling is they get, give.

I'm going to say yes. Made him feel like a man in his head. So he already has the clothes. He's got the jewelry. And Bono gets Bianchi, his cousin, to go in with him and they start working together as pimps. And obviously, as we know, they're going to graduate from that into murder. And the Hillside Strangler murders began in October of 1977. And like we said in the beginning, this is a four month time span. These guys are going to commit some very, very brutal, violent crimes, and a lot of them in a short amount of time. So it was in this effort to try to be pimps that the two men acquired a list of names. These were men that like to use sex workers. And they got this list from two women, one named Deborah Noble and her friend named Yolanda Washington.

And they got it in October of 1977. and they were going to use this in their pimping, I guess. I don't know how to say it. But the list turned out to be a lie. It was made up. And Bianchi and Buono got so upset about this that they'd been lied to that they decided to take it out on Yolanda Washington. And they knew Yolanda, who was a sex worker, worked on a certain part of Sunset Boulevard.

And they were able to find her. They couldn't find Debrose. So they chose Yolanda Washington. She was 19 years old. And her naked body would be found on October 18th, 1977, on a hillside near the Ventura Freeway. And Detective Frank Salerno from LAPD was called to the scene. And as they were investigating this crime scene, Gibbs, one of the things that they

figured out pretty quickly was that the body had been. cleaned up before it was disposed of. There were some faint ligature marks around the neck, some other ones around the wrists and ankles. So they knew that, you know, this person had been tied up. They were also able to determine that Yolanda had been sexually assaulted. So in the matter of a couple of weeks,

November 1st, 1977, police find a second victim. And this is a woman named, Judith Miller. Police were dispatched to a neighborhood 12 miles north of L.A. That was called La Crescenta. And Judith Miller was a teenage girl. She was found naked as well, face up on a parkway in the middle of this nice middle class La Crescenta neighborhood. Her body was found by a homeowner and he placed a tarp over her because there were kids, Gibbs, on their way to

school. And this guy didn't want them to see the dead body of a naked teenager. Yeah. I can't blame him one bed. No, good call. We all know that could possibly hurt the crime scene. Right. But you got to weigh. You got to weigh that. Yeah. You got to. You can't have young kids see something like that. And very much like the first victim, you know, she had marks on her neck, wrist, ankles, looked like she'd been tied up and they were able to tell that she had been strangled. And the same detective, Salerno, comes out to the scene. They're able to tell that she had not been killed in this location. She was killed somewhere else, dumped here, and they find a piece of fluff. It was described as lightly colored fluff, Gibbs, fluff on her eyelid. And of course, they bag it,

they save it. And when they do the autopsy, they find out what happened. I mean, they find out she'd been raped. She'd been sodomized. She was only 15 years old. That makes it very tough. Yeah, it's definitely young. Now, Judith was a runaway. She had a drug problem. She was a known sex worker. Yeah, they kind of go hand in hand, you know. Yeah. We've done a lot of episodes where we kind of talk about that one leads to another, which leads to another, unfortunately. It leads down a bad path. But no matter what, she didn't deserve what happened to her. You and I both know that. And it would only be five days later, November 6th, 1977, 21-year-old Lisa Kasten found nude near the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale, California. Same luggage remarks, basically the same MO.

these first three, you know, bound, strangled, sexually assaulted. Now, the last time that Lisa had been seen was the night before November 5th. She was leaving a place where she worked as a waitress. She was not a sex worker. And she was the first victim that wasn't. So Bianchi and Buono have murdered three already. They tried to murder another woman, 24-year-old Catherine Lori Baker. And she was the daughter of famous actor Peter Lorry. And the interesting thing about Peter Lurie is that he played a serial killer who prayed on little girls in the famous movie M. So just kind of an interesting fact there. But Catherine was approached in November of 1977 by two men, Bianchi and Bono.

they had planned to kidnap and murder her. But they didn't. They didn't go through with it because they saw a picture of Catherine sitting on the lap of her father, Peter Lorry. And they knew who he was. And because of that, they decided that they didn't want to kill her. Now, at the time, she had no idea that she had just escaped two serial killers. And she wouldn't know until they were ultimately caught.

and she saw their picture on the news. Now, we've talked about this before Gibbs. What would it be like to know you were this close? People can't see how close my fingers are together to being a serial killer's victim. What would that feel like? It'd be freaky. Yes, for sure. All of a sudden, you see these guys' pictures on the news.

You realize these were the two guys that you had met. It wouldn't be too much of a leap for you to say, I was probably going to be a victim or could have been a victim. Yeah. Holy shit. Batman. Batman. Now what she would tell police later is that, you know, after seeing the two men,

she remembered them. But all, but all she really remembered was that they had false LAPD type police badges. So that kind of gives you a clue maybe on how they were doing some of their work. But since nothing happened to her, she had no reason to, reported at the time. She wasn't in fear of her life. She didn't know what was going on, really. The next incident would happen on November 13th, 1977, two middle school students, they're on the school bus headed home, 12-year-old Dolly Sapita, and 14-year-old Sonia Johnson. The last time anyone saw them alive, they were getting off the school bus, and someone saw them being approached by two

men driving a two-tone sedan. And a week later, their bodies were found by a nine-year-old boy. Again, you talk about trauma. Nine-year-old boy finding two dead girls. And it was said that he was looking for treasure in like a trash area on a hillside near Dodger Stadium. Terrible, man. To come across that. It's like when those boys found that dead body on the train tracks. Stand by.

I knew you were going to say that. by me. Yeah. Now, one thing I want to point out Gibbs is, is the, the difference in ages, right? These girls are very young. And it was a whole week before their bodies were found in California. So there was decomposition that had occurred, but police were still able to determine that both girls had been strangled and sexually assaulted. I mean, age is not an issue with these guys. I mean, I don't think anything. Well, you know, with Bono, it's not. No, I mean, raping his own two-year-old daughter, so no shocker there. But that very same day that the bodies of the two young girls are found, hikers find the body of a 20-year-old woman named Christina Weckler. She had been

an honors student at Art Center College of Design. Her body was found nude on a hillside between Glendale and Eagle Rock. She had the same type of ligature marks on her neck, wrist, and ankle, and police would find major bruising on her breasts and they also noticed blood coming from a rectal area. So they knew right away she'd been sodomized Gibbs. But there was something different about the murder of Christina Weckler. She had two puncture wounds on her arm, but police didn't find any other signs that she'd been a drug user.

And later on, it would be deterred. that she had been injected with Windex. I mean, that's a new use for Windex, but, you know, I mean, I watched that, my big fat Greek wedding. He put Windex on everything. What the hell are you talking about? My big fat Greek wedding. The dad, he would spray Windex on like everything.

You got a little creak in your elbow, put a little Windex on it. Creek went away. I don't remember. I remember seeing the movie. Yeah. At first I thought he was putting it on his food or something. No, no. Well, I don't know.

He carried a little bottle of windex every time he'd something he'd fix. He did a little windex. But obviously, that can't be good to have it injected into your body. I can't imagine that being good for anybody. And again, Gives, I mean, these guys are working so fast. I mean, there's not much of a cooling off period with these two. Because on November 23rd, a badly decomposed body was found. And this woman would be identified as 28-year-old Evelyn Jane,

King, she was an actress who'd vanished on November 9th. Her body was found near the Los Felos off ramp of the Golden State Freeway. But because her body was so badly decomposed, they couldn't tell if she'd been sexually violated. They couldn't tell if she'd been tortured like some of the other victims had been, but they were able to determine that she'd been strangled. And it was this murder that prompted. the police to start a task force to catch the individual or individuals that they were calling the hillside strangler.

Ooh, man. I was wondering how long they were going to wait until they put a task force together. Yeah. I don't know what the magic number was before you say, okay, enough is enough. Yeah, because these came quickly together. The MOs were all very similar. I wonder that too. I mean, I wonder what is it?

What's the magic number or the last straw that, forces police to say enough is enough. Yeah, we've got similar killings. We've got a possible serial killer on our hands. We need to start a task force. But they're going to have more to work with because it's just six days later that police find the body of Lauren Ray Wagner, an 18 year old business student. She lived with her parents in the San Fernando

Valley. And her body was found on a hillside around Mount Washington and Glendale. She had the same type of ligature marks, but Lauren Wagner had burn marks all over her hands. Now, she was supposed to be home before midnight, but she never made it. Her car was found later with the door open across the streets from her house. So imagine this as parents. You realize your daughter never came home, but you find her. car across the street, the doors open, you know in your heart something's not right.

But there was a witness that lived in the neighborhood across the street that actually saw Lauren Wagner be kidnapped. She said she saw two men. One was tall, younger, and the other was an older, shorter man with bushy hair. And she said that these two men took Lauren. And the woman also said she heard Lauren shout something like you won't get away with this as these two men are taking her away. Now after this, everything was quiet for a few weeks in LA until December 14th of 77. And it was on this day that the body of Kimberly Martin was found. She was 17 years old. It was said that she was a sex worker. Her nude body was found. And police noticed right away that it had obvious signs of torture.

And what was really strange about this Gibbs is that her body was found in a deserted lot near the LA City Hall. That is weird. It seems like a strange place to dump a body. Seems a little risky. And people that knew Kimberly Martin would come out later and say that she had actually joined a call girl agency because as she told them, she was terrified that she was going to end up becoming a victim of the hillside strangler. And she thought that by, you know, joining an agency,

people knew where she was a little bit different than, you know, just walking the street. Sure. It would help protect her. And she ends up becoming a victim of the hillside strangler. And what later comes out is that Bianchi and Blono, they actually called the agency that she worked for, requested a call girl, and it just happened to be her that was sent out. Yeah, this is bad luck. Clearly, they didn't do a lot of research or, you know, a lot of screening. Maybe that's just what they did back then. You just called the number. So what hotel you're at?

They sent the girl out. They didn't. What are you talking about? I mean, you think call girl or escort agencies, do a, like a background check? Probably today, I would think they would. I can't imagine. I think you just call a number and somebody comes out.

I think they probably do a little bit, some type of screening. Well, who the hell is going to give a fingerprint and submit a hair sample? Probably not that, but probably at least some, like, driver's license number or something. What? So when the girl comes missing, they know where to go. I don't know, dude. Let's call one. I mean, ask.

Obviously, thankfully, neither one of them. us know the answer to that. I doubt a lot of our listeners, they might anonymously write in. Yeah. You know, they like to message me. Let me know. They like to tell us how it works. But I just, I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that. I think it's an anonymous type thing. Now, you're right. It offers zero protection. There's got to be, if anything, they take maybe your, they verify your contact information and you have to roll the dice giving it to them thinking, And I hope they don't call my spouse. No, well, you could be right.

And some people may pay with a credit card. Maybe you have to pay with a credit card now. I don't know. If I was out there working it, I'd want credit card. I want to make sure I get that money up front. They might not want to pay me when they meet me. Dude, nobody would pay for that. I'd take American Express.

All right, Gibbs. We have to take a quick break to talk about our sponsor, Audible. You know, Audible has the best audio book performances, the largest library, and the most. most exclusive content. The best thing to do for our listeners is just to go straight to audible.com slash true crime. You can find out everything you need to know about audible. You can search the wide selection of books. Now, the book that I happen to be listening to right now is called Forever and Five Days. And it's a fascinating book about a serial killer in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Our listeners can start a 30-day trial and get their first audible book for free. All you have to do is go to audible.com slash true crime. That's audible, a-u-d-I-B-L-E dot com slash true crime. T-R-U-E-C-R-I-M-E. The last victim of the Hillside Stranglers was found on February 17th, 1978. And it was a helicopter pilot that spotted an orange Dotson abandoned off a cliff on the highway. Police went to go check it out. And they found the body. of 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth in the trunk. She had the same licature marks as the other victims. She had signs of being raped and tortured.

The police were able to figure out that she had been strangled, placed in the trunk of the car, and then the car was pushed off the edge of the clip. Wow. It's like a movie. Or a bad TV show. Bad, yeah. Back in the 80s. Bad hooker movie.

It's something that's the name is. the TV. You're talking about T.J. Hooker. TJ Hooker. T.J. Hooker. Oh, my goodness, dude. Now, at this time, police knew they were looking for two people. You know, originally they thought they weren't sure. It could have been one person doing all this killing, but they knew it was two,

but they didn't leak this information to the press. And that's why the media at this point in time, they're still referring to this as the Hillside Strangler. Ah, not plural. Not plural. Singular. Yeah. Uno.

Not dose. Not yet. Givy showing off his language skills. That's about as far as it goes. Uno. And we talk about the time frame. You know, they had taken a break before their last victim. The victim before was in 77 and now we're all the way into February of 78.

Now, it's not a long time, but compared to how quickly they were murdering people before, that's a long break for them. And one of the reasons that police think that this break occurred was that Kenneth Bianchi had a son that was born in early 1978. And also during this time, it was said that Bianchi was still trying to get a job in law enforcement the whole time that they're murdering all of these women. And because of these different job searches, he had actually gotten to know some officers in the LAPD.

And he'd done some ride-alongs. I don't know, Gibbs. Have you ever done a ride-along? Not in the front seat. I did one one time in Detroit. Yeah. Scary as shit. Really?

Yeah. In the middle of the night in Detroit, that's not where you want to do your ride-along. No. Might want to pick up like a real nice neighborhood where nothing happens. Yeah, that would be pretty scary. Yeah, I knew this guy up in Detroit. It was a Detroit police officer.

And he was like, you want to go on a ride along? I was like, oh, my gosh. Yeah. that would be so cool. I mean, there was shootings. I think there was two shootings at night. Sign a waiver. Roll them up. Sign a waiver. That's what I said. Roll them up. Roll them up. But Bianchi's going on multiple ride-alongs. And on these ride-alongs, the police are talking about and actually looking for the hillside strangler. And here's Bianchi sitting in the front seat with the police officer knowing the whole time that, Hey, I'm right here, dude. He had to be eaten.

that up. Now, we said that was the last victim, but Bianchi and Buono had plans for an 11th victim. And they tried to kidnap a woman, but the cousins ended up getting into this huge argument because Bianchi told Buono that he had actually been questioned by police in the Hillside Strangler case. And Angelo got pissed. He told Kenneth Bianchi either, you leave town. And he's or I'm going to kill you. So Bianchi left town, took his family and he moved up to Bellingham, Washington in May of 78. And in Bellingham, he got work as a security guard. So Bianke's up in Bellingham, Washington. And in July of 1978, he managed to coax two female students into a house that he was supposed to be watching over. They were Western Washington University.

these students, Karen Mandick, 22 years old, and Diane Wilder, who was 27 years old. Bianchi forced both women into the house. He strangled them, raped them, tortured them. But Bianchi was very sloppy without his partner, Angelo Bono, to help him out. And when Karen doesn't show up for work, her boss becomes worried. He calls the police and tells him something interesting that Karen had made. to him, she had a security guard friend who had offered her a house sitting job. So the police from there, they're trying to figure out, you know, number one, who's this security guard?

Where's this house? So through their investigation, the police find out the security firm that was hired to watch over the house. That in turn leads them to the security guard, which ends up being Kenneth Bianchi. And when police go to talk to him, Gibbs, he lies. He says, I never did that job. I don't know anything about these girls. But when police go to the girls' home, they find an address of the house where they were supposed to be house sitting.

And the security firm records confirmed that it was Kenneth Bianchi that was supposed to be watching over that house. So that's how they tie him in. Now, during this time, the police had put out the description of the girls. They put out a description of the car that they were driving. And a woman calls in and says that she thinks she saw the car abandoned near her house in the woods. And when police gets there inside the car are the bodies of Karen Mandick and Diane Wilder. Both had been strangled.

They had a lot of bruises, Gibbs. over their bodies, leading police to think that there was a lot, they sustained a lot of injuries. And it's at this point that police go pick up Kenneth Bianchi and in a search of his home, they find some jewelry. And ultimately, this jewelry is going to come back. One piece was a necklace that belonged to Kimberly Martin and another was a ring that belonged to Yolanda, Washington. Two of the Hillside Strangler victims. And the chief of the chief. of police in Washington, Bellingham, he knows he's

got his guy for the two murders in Washington. But the other thing that he knows is that Kenneth Bianchi has a California driver's license, has California plates on his car, and he starts thinking about the Hillside Strangler

murders, right? It's all over the news. Everybody in the country knows about it. And he calls Detective Salerno, gets in touch with him in L.A., tell tells him about these two murders. And when he gives him Kenneth Bianchi's address back in L.A., Detective Salerno is able to figure out that the addresses of Cindy Hudspeth and Christina Weckler were very close to where

Kenneth Bianchi lived. So police are now sure that Kenneth Bianchi is one of the hillside stranglers. and Bianchi would ultimately admit his part in the Hillside Strangler murders. And on top of that, he would tell police that his cousin, Angelo Bono, was involved as well. And the reason why Bianchi did this is because he wanted to get out of the death penalty, plain and simple. I mean, he was willing to rat on his cousin in exchange for them taking the death penalty off the table. And Angelo Bono would be arrested on October 22nd, 1979. So both cousins are now in jail, awaiting trial.

It Gibbs, this is where like one of the strangest things happened because a woman named Veronica Compton actually reaches out through correspondence with Kenneth Bianchi. And eventually the two of them, Bianchi and Compton, would come up with a plan. designed to make police think that the real hillside strangler was still on the loose. And what they did, Gibbs, is Compton came to visit Bianchi and he smuggled a rubber glove filled with his semen inside of it to her during the visit. And the idea was that Veronica Compton was going to commit a copycat murder, placed the seaman inside the victim, and this would somehow make police think that he couldn't have been the killer. And Compton actually plans to carry out this murder in Washington State, where Bianchi had killed the two

students, and she even picked out a victim, Gibbs, a woman inside of a bar in Bellingham, Washington. She invited this woman back to her hotel room so that they could drink together. and it's inside the hotel room that she tries to strangle this woman. But she doesn't end up killing her. The woman gets away. Veronica Compton freaks out and hops on a plane back to California. Compton was so delusional that she had even sent a letter to police in Washington saying that

this attempted strangling was proof that the hillside strangler was still free. and couldn't have been Kenneth Bianchi. But police figure this out, and they connect Compton with this attempted murder. And she's actually arrested and convicted in Washington for this attempted murder. So Gibbs, I want to play a clip of Kenneth Bianchi after he was arrested.

To even begin to try and live with myself, I have to take responsibility for what I've done. And I have to do everything I can. to get Angela Bono and to devote my entire life to do everything I possibly can to give my life so that nobody else will hopefully

follow my footsteps. So this is after he was caught. He's basically confessed. He's told the police about his cousin, Angelo Bono. But as he's preparing for trial in 1981, he kind of has a change of

because at this point, he figures out that he wants to plead insanity. And the way he's going to do this is to claim that he has multiple personalities. And one of the personalities is named Steve Walker. And it was Steve Walker that committed all the murders, not Kenneth Bianchi. You know, the smarting him up, to show him that he couldn't push me. I don't want to. I want to stay now. I don't want to go away.

Ken is going to have to come out. Come on, Ken. Come on, Ken. So that was from an interview that Kenneth Bianchi did with a psychiatrist. And you can hear him play acting that he has this different personality named Steve. And then at some point, the psychiatrist gets him to come back as Ken. But it's all fake. Yeah, it sounded fake.

Yeah, the whole thing was an act. and he was interviewed by, you know, a bunch of different people that specialized in multiple personality disorders. And every one of them was able to figure out that it wasn't true. You know, it was an act that he was putting on. And what would come out is that Kenneth Bianchi, the night before he came up with this whole idea, he had been watching the movie Sybil in prison, I guess. You get to watch movies like Sybil and prison.

Yeah, you get food and education. All kinds of good stuff. Yeah. And obviously, for people that know the movie Sybil, you know, that's a movie starring Sally Field where, you know, she plays a character named Sybil that has a lot of different personality, multiple personalities. So he watched this movie, came up with the idea and he said, I can do that. But they busted him.

Do you want me to pull my one of my other personalities out during the podcast? I hope that's all you pull out during the pie. You actually really scared me when you started that out with the way you did. Is that why you backed up? Yep. Got to back up a little bit. Yeah, that's what they say. So with all these doctors Gibbs coming forward and basically proving that Kenneth Bianchi

didn't have this multiple personality disorder, he was found competent to stand trial. And it was at this point that the district attorney's office offered him a deal. And the deal was that if he pled guilty to the Washington murders and to some of the California murders, he would get a life sentence instead of the death penalty. But he had to agree to testify against his cousin, Angelo Bono. And he does. He takes this deal. So Angelo Bono's trial starts. And on July 6th, 1981, Kenneth Bianchi is on the stand to testify. But his testimony is all over the map, Gibbs.

I mean, at one minute, he's denying any role in the slings. And then he's describing the killings in detail. But his testimony was very conflicting when it came to talking about his cousin. You know, at some points he would say he couldn't remember whether it was himself or his cousin who had strangled somebody. he wasn't sure who had sex with who. And the prosecution was floored by this testimony by Kenneth Bianchi. And the defense pounced on it. I mean, they actually filed a motion to have all the charges against Angelo Bono dismissed.

And the prosecution was about Ray to do it. I mean, they were thinking long and hard, Gibbs, that they were going to have to drop the charges because they didn't think they could win the case with a Kenneth Bianchi telling all of these conflicting stories. And the prosecution actually ends up filing a petition in late July to dismiss the case against Angelo Bono. But the very next day, the judge dismisses the petition. He's not going to let them drop this case. And what happens is, a new group of prosecutors are brought in and the trial is pushed to November of 1981. This trial, starting in November of 1981, would last two years.

And it's going to be one of the longest murder trials in the history of the United States. And the prosecution spent a lot of time looking at geography. Basically, you could take a map and draw a circle around. the streets where the victims had been dumped. They would look hard at the areas of Glendale and Los Angeles and really were able to show that there was this radius where the bodies were dumped. All the sites were accessible by major streets and the Golden State Freeway. And Angelo Bono lived in a house located near these dumping sites.

They actually took the jury Gibbs, drove them around to the places where these victims had been left. You know, it came out at trial that Bianchi and Buono were able to get police badges and use those in the commission of some of their crimes. They even were able to get a county seal, which they used for special parking and other things like that. There were over 500 witnesses in this case. That's unbelievable, Gibbs. That's a lot. That has a lot. There were over 200 exhibits and over 7,000 pages of transcripts from pretrial hearings.

The prosecution had some trace evidence with which to work. They had found fibers from Angelo Bono's upholstery shop as well as his home on two of the victims. They also found some rabbit hairs. I guess he raised rabbits. and there were some hairs from his rabbits found on a victim. And one thing the prosecution did is they brought a lot of witnesses, women, to testify to how Angelo treated women.

You know, basically Gibbs, these women got on the stand and talked about how, you know, he brutalized them, you know, how he was a sexual sadist. And then, of course, you had Kenneth Bianca. testifying against his cousin. But even then, he really didn't want to until the judge told him that if he didn't cooperate, he would be violating his plea bargain. And that caused him to change his tomb pretty quick. And the prosecution had a pretty key witness. And this was a young girl who Angelo had harassed and terrorized in the Hollywood Library the night that he and Kenneth killed Kimberly Martin. And this girl testified that Angelo used a pay phone in the library to call

Kimberly Martin that night. And this was really important because police knew where the call had come from. Yeah, they knew were generated. They just needed to. And it was this girl that was able to put Angelo using the pay phone. So then you get to the defense. And there's really not much to talk about Gibbs because Angelo Bono, he wouldn't cooperate. So his defense had very little to work with. They actually called to the stand Veronica Compton, that lady that we talked about that hatched that plan with Bianchi. I mean, she was a train wreck, apparently.

Yeah. And did him no favors. Closing arguments in themselves took 11 days. And the jury gets the case October 21st, 1983. and the jury would eventually decide on the following verdicts for Angelo Bono. Guilty on Lauren Wagner, not guilty for the murder of Yolanda Washington, guilty of the murder of Judith Miller, Dolores Sapida, Sonia Johnson, Kimberly Martin, Christina Weckler, Lisa Kasten, Jane King, and Cindy Hudspeth.

I would not have the slightest reluctance to impose the death penalty in this case were it within my power to do so. Ironically, although these two defendants utilized almost every form of legalized execution against their victims, the defendants have escaped any form of capital punishment. So he ends up getting sentenced to life in prison. He doesn't get the death penalty. And he originally gets sent to Folsom Prison with Johnny Cash. Johnny. The water there really sucks. Johnny says, Warden, you drink his water? Oh, I do remember that. Remember that? Well, Johnny doesn't say it, but Keanu Reeves, Keanu Reeves was then walked the line.

No. Waukeen Phoenix. You know, Keanu Reeves, Joaquin Phoenix. Yeah, they're all buddies. It's all the same. Yeah. So, Angelo Bono, he eventually gets transferred to Calapagia State Prison. And, And in September of 2002, he dies from a heart condition. But there wasn't a tear in sight. No, no way. And Kenneth Bianchi actually made it to Walla Walla after all, Gibbs, because that's where he's at.

I mean, he's serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole at Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington State. And he actually came up for parole in 2010 and was denied. And his next parole hearing will be in 20, 2025. So maybe you can talk to him then, Gibbs, 2025. Well, we still have the voicemail on our website. So call us. Call us. Leave us a voicemail. Call us from prison. Let's do a prison interview. And as we wrap this one up, Gibbs, there's one interesting fact about Bianchi. And it's that he was a suspect in the unsolved alphabet murders that happened in Rochester, New York,

1971 to 1973. We haven't done those unsolved yet. I know we're going to. And the girls there were killed in a very similar way. And Bianchi was still living in the area at the time of the murders. And it was said that he was working as an ice cream vendor. The old ice cream truck.

Stop me when I'm passing by. And there was some evidence. I mean, you know, apparently his car was seen at two of the murder scenes. And the last victim apparently said, to her father, I'm going out for ice cream and was never seen again. And that case is still unsolved. So maybe we'll be talking about him again when we get to that case on true crime all time on salt. Maybe he'll come clean on it. But for now, that's the case of the Hillside Stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Bono and another episode of True Crime All the Time. Voice mail.

We got voicemails. Voice mails. Hey, Mike and Gibby. My name is Maddie and I'm from California. and my boyfriend and I absolutely love T-Cat. We drove from Sacramento to Whistler, Canada this summer, and we listened to T-Kat the entire way up and down. There's not an episode we haven't heard. We really appreciate this podcast and the show. You guys rock.

Continue doing what you do. Thank you. That's a great voicemail from Maddie. Yeah. And her boyfriend. And we just talked about Sacramento a little bit. Yeah. She might be in the California.

foreign your area maybe we're venture up to whistler canada one day as well good skiing place hey mike and gibby this is angie calling from montreal canada i just wanted to let you know that i love your podcast and i listen as much as i can while i'm doing my job as a housekeeper um also just a suggestion for an episode is the Luca Magnata case. He's not a serial killer, but his story is very fascinating. And yeah, keep up the good work, guys. Keep your own time ticking. All right.

Thanks, Angie, so much for the voicemail. Appreciate it. And I'll be honest with you, Gibbs. The Luca Magnata case is one that I've had on the list. Yeah. But it's one that gives me nightmares. It is such a brutal case. I mean, this is the one, I don't know if you're familiar with it.

It's the one where this guy kills another guy, films it, puts it on the internet, and all these people are watching it wondering whether it's real. Thank you. Some movies has been made. Yeah, it is very, very creepy. Hey, Mike and Mike, this is Mike. I was just calling to make a suggestion. I know you guys did a podcast on Scott,

But I was wondering if you guys ever heard of Drew Peterson. Go ahead and check him out. He's pretty crazy. Thank you. Bye. All right. That's too many mics. Mike, Mike and Mike.

Mike, Mike and Mike. Mike, we appreciate it, buddy. And Drew Peterson is definitely on the list. Very, very familiar with his story. So he will be done. Hey, Mike and Gibby. This is Danny Jack. I just received your mug.

I want to thank you for that. It came quick. and drink a lot of coffee. It is a staple of my sobriety. I'm eight years dry on the dock. Keeping my own time ticking. Man, love that voicemail from Danny. And Danny's been a great supporter of the show.

So, Danny, glad you're enjoying the mug. Hope you washed it. Or washed it. But congratulations on the eight years, man. Yeah, that's great. That is a major, major accomplishment. And we're proud of you, brother. Yeah, awesome.

All right, Gibbs. That's it for us. Is that it? That's it. You sure? Yeah. What about that other thing? That's it.

That's all I got, man. That's it? Yeah. All right. All right. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.