THE HILLSIDE STRANGLERS

Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi – better known as the Hillside Stranglers – were cousins on their mothers’ side. Over a five month period from late 1977 to early 1978, these two men terrorized the Los Angeles area raping, strangling and dumping the nude corpses of young women on the various hillsides. Amid public panic and political pressure and a dedicated task force, Los Angeles police were at a loss for credible leads that would help identify these murderers.

Having been established in California for many years Angelo agreed to take in his troubled much younger cousin Ken in January 1976 when his mother suggested that a change of scenery would do him good. The union unleashed the violence that had been brewing inside of him since childhood and left a town reeling from the murders of ten young women. It wasn’t until January 1979 with similar murders of yet another two young women discovered in Bellingham, Washington that the pieces started to fit together.

Angelo Buono was the crueler of the two cousins. At about forty years of age at the time of the strangling, Angelo had brutalized several unfortunate women that had been in a relationship with him and was father to at least a dozen children for which he claimed no accountability for their well-being.

Born to Jenny and Angelo Sr. on October 5, 1934 in Rochester, New York, Angelo struggled with his perception of women from the age of five when his parents separated. Jenny moved Angelo and his older sister to Glendale, California where she entertained many boyfriends. He alleged that Jenny often offered sexual favors for goods and services to make ends meet while a young Angelo waited outside of the house. By age 14, he described his mother as a whore and had no respect for women, considering them all like Jenny. Because of his hatred of his mother’s behavior, he was already sadistic toward his girlfriends.

Semi-literate at sixteen, Angelo dropped out of school and stole a car which awarded him a stay in California’s Youth Authority facilities where he escaped. Rearrested in December 1951 and sent to the Paso Robles School for Boys, a tougher facility, he learned to idolize gangsters and their violent ways of interacting with people.

At 20, his first marriage to a pregnant 17-year-old Geraldine was a reluctant union which resulted in a son born January 10, 1956 while he was in prison on another theft charge. She divorced him shortly after the birth. Angelo’s marriage to second wife Mary (a.k.a. Candy) lasted from 1957 to 1962, the year the last of their six children was born. During this time, he sodomized, beat and raped her often in front of the children and refused to financially support them after Candy finally divorced him. Shortly afterward, Angelo met Nanette and allowed her and her two children to move in with him. They subsequently had two more children amongst his beating and humiliating her. But it was only after Angelo began fondling her 14 year old daughter that she left with all four children and moved to Florida. A year and several women later, he met and married Debbie in Las Vegas but never lived with her.

In 1975, Angelo opened his own auto upholstering business and had built up such an excellent reputation as a first class upholsterer specializing in classic cars that he was sought out by Hollywood celebrities for work on their antique cars. However, despite his thriving business, Angelo’s unhappiness had given him a stomach ulcer for which he was taking regular medication. Never an alcohol or drug user for fear of losing control, Angelo continued taking his frustrations out on women, some as young as thirteen. Yet with a long history of abusing girlfriends, spouses and his own children, Angelo had never killed anyone until Ken came out to join him in Los Angeles.

Kenneth Bianchi, while not openly vicious toward his girlfriends like his cousin, displayed many warning signs of the violent monster growing inside of him at a very young age. Born in New York on May 22, 1951 to a troubled teenaged mother, he was left frequently with neighbors for the first three months of his life and was not shown affection until adopted by Frances and Nicholas Bianchi.

Frances, unable to have children, was in her early thirties at the time she became Ken’s adoptive mother. She has been described by social workers as domineering, overly protective, high-strung, a hypochondriac and had a pathological connection to Ken. Frances sounds pretty typical of the mothers of other serial killers that fostered a love/hate relationship with their disturbed sons. Nicholas in contrast was a quiet, subdued man with a speech defect who was away for much of Ken’s childhood working to support his family while Frances spent most of Ken’s childhood dragging him from one doctor to another convinced that there was something wrong with his sexual development.

By age three, doctors noted that Ken was deeply unhappy and afraid. He wet the bed and suffered sleepless nights. Also noted by doctors was that he seemed fine until his mother entered the room. Frances simply would not give him any privacy, even in the bathroom, and continued to ignore each doctor’s medical advice. By school age, Ken had difficulty concentrating in class and developed facial tics including his eyes rolling to the back of his head when his mother was mentioned. It was thought that he had a mild form of epilepsy or severe tension especially since the behavior manifested at the mention of his mother. Frances had a habit of keeping Ken home from school for weeks on end for perceived illnesses, even threatening to sue the school on one occasion when Ken fell from a climbing frame and cut his lip.

Ken’s physical and mental health improved while two foster children were in the home. However, Social Services removed the fostered children for reasons unknown and Ken’s ailments returned. One has to wonder why Social Services did not remove Ken as well if they were observing Frances to such as an extent as to disallow her from fostering children. Social Services did note however that when Frances took a job to assist the family’s finances and left Ken with a neighbor for a few months, his bedwetting stopped and his overall mood lifted. Then Frances quit her job and you guessed it, Ken’s psychologically induced medical issues started again.

By now, doctors were concerned that Frances was robbing Ken of a healthy outlet for him to express that he was hurting. They felt that if his illnesses remained his only way to get his feelings out in the open, he may become a violent boy. By age 11, the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reported that Frances was a “deeply disturbed person” with paranoid tendencies, but still did not remove Ken from her care. That same year a doctor on staff at the local DePaul clinic concluded that he “depends on his mother for his very survival and expends a great deal of energy keeping his hostility under control” while also noting his extreme anxiety and loneliness due to his mother’s objection at his choice of friends. Give that doctor a prize.

When Ken was 13, his adoptive father died suddenly of a heart attack a few days after they had gone on a fishing trip together devastating Ken as he had always been fond of Nicholas. Social Services noted that at the funeral, Frances behaved provocatively in front of him – pulling down her already low-cut tops and crossed her legs suggestively. This served to corroborate earlier observances by Ken’s childhood doctors and clinicians of Frances’ unhealthy relationship with her adoptive son and Ken’s growing rage.

Ken fell in love and married shortly after graduating from high school. Being still young and immature, his new wife didn’t settle into the homebody role that Ken had envisioned. He emotionally withdrew from the relationship and at that time, his wife began to see other men, eventually leaving him while he was at work. Afterward, he tried taking college courses in politics and police work but when his slacking didn’t earn him the grades he had expected, he dropped out. Moving from menial job to menial job, he grew more frustrated until his mother made arrangements in January 1976 for Ken to move to Glendale, California to stay with his older cousin Angelo.


There are theories that state that had Ken and Angelo never gotten together, they never would’ve committed murder on their own. Although Ken was turned off by Angelo’s cruelty to women, Ken had shown his violent tendencies while still living in New York in his late teens when he smashed in the window of a girlfriend when she refused to open her door to him. She dropped the charges against him but refused to have anything to do with him. It is also documented that while working as a bouncer, he hit a man with far more force than deemed necessary. Ken only needed the right spark to take these tendencies to the next level.

Now living in California, Ken was able to enjoy some of the young girls who came to Angelo’s apartment although he had trouble establishing relationships having been told that women were either virgins or whores. When dating a woman, he insisted that they cover up with baggy sweaters and long skirts. Pathologically jealous, he flew into a rage at parties if his girlfriends danced with someone else. So as Angelo continued to brutalize his girlfriends, Ken began to join in. Having been turned down twice by the police department and working menial jobs, he took out his frustration on Angelo’s girlfriends by beating and sodomizing them.

In July, tired of sharing an apartment with his cousin, Ken moved into his own place while Angelo devised a plan to begin prostituting some of his girlfriends as a little side business. He beat and raped them repeatedly and sent them out to men who he had met through his garage. Wanting to expand his business and to make it more formal, Angelo bought a list of men who wanted a girl sent to their homes from a prostitute who was accompanied by another prostitute by the name of Yolanda Washington. However, the list proved useless as the men actually wanted to come and visit the girl, not the other way around as Angelo was led to believe. He did not want men coming to his house at all hours of the night and he became enraged and declared that he wanted to kill a prostitute. Whether he was serious we will never know, but Ken egged him on nonetheless.

Yolanda Washington was an African-American prostitute with a baby she adored and thought that turning a few tricks would pay well enough and would afford her time with her son. On October 17, 1977 she was picked up by Ken Bianchi and Angelo Buono and would never see her son again. Ken handcuffed her, raped and sodomized her in the back seat of Angelo’s car while Angelo drove. They changed seats of course so Angelo could have his turn. Then Ken strangled her and took a turquoise ring from her finger which he gave to his live in girlfriend, Kelli. Her body was dumped naked near a cemetery where police discovered her the next day. Examination of the corpse revealed semen in her vagina and rectum, but police had thought that common for a prostitute and never realized she had been raped and murdered. She was the only victim killed in a car.

A couple of weeks later on October 30, 1977, Judy Ann Miller, 15, got into Angelo’s car while working the street. A run away from an impoverished family and naïve, she believed Ken when he flashed a fake police badge and told her that she was under arrest. He then stuffed a rag into her mouth, handcuffed her, taped foam pads over her eyes so she couldn’t see that she was actually taken to Angelo’s house, not the police department. After undressing her, Angelo raped and sodomized her first, Ken taking his turn immediately after. As Ken sat on her legs, Angelo put a bag over her head and sealed it with a cord which he pulled tighter until she died. She was dumped naked at midnight to a location Angelo had chosen and left her on her back with her legs spread for maximum shock.

Lissa Teresa Kastin, 21, was a dancer and waitress who had been picked up on November 5, 1977 by the cousins when she parked her car just after 9:00 p.m. in front of her house. With Ken flashing his fake badge, Angelo parked immediately behind her and informed her that her car had been witnessed leaving the scene of a robbery. Even though she protested, she eventually got into their car where she was handcuffed and driven to Angelo’s house. Angelo cut off her clothes but realized that he wasn’t attracted to her so he turned her over to Ken who violated her with a beer bottle. Because these types of lust murders are more about power than sex, it wasn’t so baffling then to learn that Angelo couldn’t rape a woman he was not attracted to. That didn’t deter the men from torturing her anyway. They strangled her with a cord just enough to watch her struggle and then loosened the cord to allow a little oxygen. They repeated this exercise, enjoying her terror until she died. They dumped her naked body in a ditch near a Glendale country club where it was found the next day.

Jane King a Scientologist was waiting at a bus stop on November 9, 1977 when Ken joined her. Having once stolen a psychologist’s degree certificate to hang in a rented office to pose as a psychologist, he was able to talk with her about psychology and won her confidence. Angelo “coincidentally” drove up to offer him a lift home, in turn offering Jane a ride as well. As they drove up to Angelo’s house, they grabbed Jane, handcuffed her and manhandled her inside. Tied and blindfolded, she was stripped naked and led to a spare room where Angelo raped her while Ken watched. Ken then hog-tied and sodomized her while Angelo put a bag over her head, strangling her repeatedly until she died and Ken had completed his rape. They dumped her naked body in bushes off the Golden State Freeway where she was found two weeks later.

Wanting to “up the ante” in their search for emotional release, Angelo and Ken decided they wanted to abduct a very young virgin they referred to as an “innocent who didn’t yet have pubic hair”. Dollie Cepeda, 12, and Sonja Johnson, 14, were the unfortunate innocents that happened by Angelo’s car on November 14, 1977 when they were called over by the two men. Pretending to be cops, Angelo and Ken lured them into the car and drove to Angelo’s house where they were stripped of their clothes, raped and sodomized. The cousins strangled Sonja in the spare bedroom and Dollie in the lounge of the house. The naked bodies were dumped on a trash heap where a 9-year-old boy found them on November 20, 1977. Sonja’s heartbroken father attempted to take his own life when he received the news.

Yolanda Washington and July Miller’s deaths aroused little interest in the media because they were prostitutes. Jim Mitchell, a reporter with CBS Television may have been the first person to begin making a connection among the murder victims after the third victim’s body was found. He thought that if a pimp killed his whores, they wouldn’t have been found on hillsides, nude and strangled. He reasoned that killing a prostitute would be bad for business for her john. Lissa Kastin, however was not a prostitute but bore the same signature as Yolanda and Judy.

By the time Jane, Dollie and Sonja were discovered, the media had been shocked into awareness of the “Hillside Strangler”. The police found themselves unprepared to handle ten sex murders in six weeks which was something of a record, even for Los Angeles where murder is common. The media reacted with hysteria, programming news of the Hillside Strangler on television all over the world. The police used the media to their advantage, careful not to advertise that they were looking for two men. The less the killers knew about the progress of the investigation, the better.

Kristina Weckler, 20, was an art student and former neighbor of Ken Bianchi who turned him down for a date when he moved into the building in July that year. Seeking vengeance for that rejection, Ken went to her apartment late November 1977 and showed her his fake police badge telling her he’d joined the force and someone had crashed into her car. She went with him to the car parking lot where she was abducted and driven to Angelo’s house. Both cousins raped and sodomized her then Ken injected her with Windex in her neck and upper arms which caused convulsions. They then bound her head to an exposed gas outlet and gassed her for at least an hour until she died. Kristina’s body was also found on November 20, 1977 with fingerprint bruises around her breasts and rectal bleeding. Police assumed she was an addict when they saw the injection sites again not realizing she was a murder victim.

Lauren Wagner, 18, a business student, parked across the road from the home she shared with her parents. Ken and Angelo, who had been driving behind her, came to an abrupt halt and launched into their usual “police making an arrest” routine. When she refused to get into the car, they picked her up and carried her into the car by force. The entire incident was witnessed by a neighbor who thought it was a lover’s spat, until Angelo called her and threatened her to keep her mouth shut. Lauren pleaded with them, even told them that she enjoyed sex but they didn’t listen. They raped and sodomized her then tortured her by taping barbed wires to her hands and administering electric shocks until the cousins grew bored and eventually strangled her. Lauren’s naked body was dumped near the Pasadina Freeway where it was found on November 29.

Kimberly Diane Martin was a prostitute from an escort service called the Climax that Ken had called on December 11, 1977 from a payphone requesting an attractive blonde. Despite the policy stating the girls cannot be solicited from a payphone, the service sent Kimberly to the Tamarind Apartments in Hollywood where Ken and Angelo waited in a vacant unit, having forced the lock. When she arrived, Ken opened the door to the apartment and started his cop routine but she turned to run when she saw Angelo lurking in the darkness. The cousins caught her, hit her, carried her to their car and drove to Angel’s house, where she was most likely raped and sodomized. They dumped her naked body on a hillside.

This propensity for dumping the bodies on hillsides dubbed them the “Hillside Stranglers” although it is unclear whether the media named them or the task force assigned to catch them. Regardless, the panic that ensued gripped the Los Angeles area like a vice and heavy demand was placed on the befuddled local police to stop the killers. Stores in the area sold out quickly of locks and weapons like mace by frightened women. The police however came up against one dead end after another as the bodies of degraded young women extended their list of victims without enough evidence to give them solid leads.

Three days after Kimberly’s murder, Ken went to the local police station telling them that he was interested in becoming a cop. He wanted to drive around with them to “get a feel for the job”. Becoming increasingly obsessed with the murder’s publicity, as is common with most serial killers, he requested that they drive past the Hillside Strangler sites. This boldness on Ken’s part would eventually hamper his relationship with Angelo.

The remainder of December and January were victim free due to Angelo’s mother’s diagnosis of terminal vaginal cancer and hospitalization. Although Angelo still harbored a love/hate relationship with her, he visited her every second day – sometimes stealing syringes for use on future victims - and seemed genuinely grief stricken when she died in January 1978. His partner otherwise occupied, Ken was fired from his job in December for frequent absences that he tried to explain away by saying he was receiving chemotherapy for cancer treatment, which he also told his pregnant girlfriend Kelli. His boss became suspicious and found it to be a lie after checking into his story which did nothing to help his on and off relationship with Kelli. Having lost his apartment as well, he was forced to move in with one of Kelli’s brother’s friends which added to Ken’s frustration.

Cindy Hudspeth, a waitress at one of Angelo’s favorite restaurants took her car to Angelo when her new car needed floor mats on February 16, 1978. When she told Angelo that she was saving for college, he offered her a list of employment opportunities that he had at his house. Successfully luring her into the house, Ken jumped on her, stripped and tied her spread-eagled to the bed. She was repeatedly raped and sodomized before finally strangled. Her naked body was put in her trunk of her Datsun and pushed off of a cliff. When found, the coroner believed that many of the punctures and cuts found on her body were the result of the car crashing at the foot of the cliff.

Just a week after Cindy Hudspeth’s murder, Ken’s girlfriend Kelli gave birth to their son Ryan. Kelli, having been given a black eye during a fight with Ken a few weeks before, moved out and refused to live with him. Nonetheless, she was very pleased to see that Ken was a doting father to their son. Ken’s façade about this time had begun to show some cracks. Even though he managed to charm the police when they came to question him about the recent murders, one of his girlfriends became suspicious at how often Ken talked about the Strangler case and how strange he sometimes looked and acted. He asked the police for ride-alongs so often that Angelo accused Ken of deliberately drawing attention to the cousins by following the case so obsessively. When Angelo discovered that Ken had been stealing jewelry from most of the victims as gifts for Kelli, he ended his “partnership” by persuading him to follow Kelli to Bellingham, Washington where she had moved. Free of Ken, Angelo resumed his life prior to the Stranglings. There is no evidence that he killed any additional women.

For a while, Ken Bianchi embraced the change and tried to establish himself as a devoted father and husband figure. He got a job as a security guard with Coastal Security Agency and took some classes in law enforcement but soon became bored with his new life. He began stealing from numerous houses that he was sent to guard but when his urges continued to escalate, he came up with a plan.

In January 1979, Ken set his sights on Karen Mandic, a student at Western Washington University, whom he met at a department store where she worked and he was sent to guard. He asked Karen if she’d like to make $100.00 to house-sit for a couple of hours at the home of a couple that were travelling in Europe. He explained that the alarm system had failed in their upscale Bayside home and someone was needed to stay at the house while the security company conducted repairs, but she was to keep it a secret. Excited about the prospect of earning an easy hundred bucks, she told her boyfriend anyway and brought her friend Diane Wilder to “house sit” with her. Ken was waiting in the security van outside the house when the girls arrived telling them that he would let them into the house, Karen first.

At gunpoint, he forced Karen into the basement of the house and ordered her to strip, tied her up and carried her to the nearest bedroom. He then led Diane into the house and took her to the bathroom stripped and bound. He went back and forth terrorizing and raping them using several condoms so he wouldn’t leave a semen trace. After ordering them to redress, he forced them onto their stomachs and strangled them using a heavy cord. After redressing them, he put both bodies in the trunk of Karen’s green Mercury Bobcat and abandoned the car in a nearby cul-de-sac.

When an always punctual Karen did not return to work at 9:00 p.m. as promised, her manager worried that something was amiss. He called Karen’s boyfriend, a security guard at the University to see if he knew where she may have gone. He knew of the house-sitting job and thought that it sounded suspicious that she would not return to work. When he didn’t see any trace of her at either her house or the Bayside address at midnight, he called the Bellingham Police Department. When it was discovered the next morning that Karen had not been home to feed her cat, police chief Terry Mangen suspected something was wrong and began investigating.

This time, Ken made mistakes that aided the police in finally capturing the Hillside Stranglers. When the girls were found dead the police began questioning those that Karen and Diane had last spoken to. Ken’s boss, Mark Lawrence, owner of Coastal Security Agency initially denied that Ken had anything to do with Karen’s disappearance citing Ken’s excellent reputation as a good worker and devoted family man. Ken himself, of course, denied ever hearing of Karen Mandic, however Karen’s boyfriend identified Kenneth Bianchi as the man that had offered her the house sitting job that became her last known whereabouts.

With evidence mounting against Ken, his boss agreed to help the police set a trap and radioed him to go guard a shack on the south side of town. When Police showed up to arrest him, he surrendered without protest. As a matter of fact, the arresting detective Terry Write noted that he seemed so guilt-free that Detective Write began to doubt that they had the right man.

When Kelli showed up, she convinced the police interrogators that the idea of her boyfriend as a murderer was horrifying. Yet, both Ken and Kelli gave the police permission to search their home without hesitation. Unfortunately for Kelly, the search proved that her perception of Ken as an innocent man was completely wrong. The police uncovered several stolen items from places where Ken had worked as a security guard which was enough to charge him with grand theft. A search of his truck revealed keys to the Bayside house where Karen Mendic and Diane Wilder went to “house sit” and a woman’s scarf later identified as belonging to Diane.

Evidence collected from examination of the bodies included pubic hair, semen stains and carpet fibers that linked Ken to the girls. It was enough to take him into custody. Continuous research into Ken’s history showed that he had lived in Los Angeles during the time of the Hillside Stranglings. Information shared with L.A. detectives Sergeant Frank Solerno of the homicide division confirmed that Ken Bianchi was the sex killer that he had been looking for as well. Interviews with key witnesses had described a man that resembled Ken as an abductor in at least 2 of the murders. Satisfied that they had gotten one of the Hillside Stranglers, the L.A. detectives organized a surveillance operation on Angelo Buono, whom they believed to be the second half of the killer couple.

Unable to deny his involvement any longer, and facing the death penalty for up to 12 murders, Ken hinted to the prison psychiatrist that he was having vague feelings of being taken over. Dr. John Johnston was as impressed by Bianchi’s charm gentleness and intelligence as his defense attorney and concluded that if his protestations of amnesia were genuine then he had multiple personalities. From watching the movie “Sybil” Ken learned that “multiples” suffered from blinding headaches and weird dreams and was eager to participate in a hypnosis session.

Under hypnosis with Dr. Martin Orne, the prosecution’s expert, he pretended to have a murderous alter ego named Steve Walker who first appeared when he was being abused as a child. Police investigators discovered that Steve Walker was the name of the psychology graduate whose certificate Ken had stolen for his earlier façade as a practicing psychologist. Dr. Orne noticed that during the course of the sessions, “Steve” seemed to develop which was thought as suggestive of an actor. Because good hypnotic subjects can be made to hallucinate, in an experiment, Dr. Orne informed Bianchi under hypnosis that his defense attorney was sitting in a chair in the corner. Bianchi immediately leapt up and walked over to shake the hand of his imaginary lawyer which confirmed Dr. Orne’s suspicion that he was faking because a hypnotized subject will only talk to but never tries to touch their hallucinations.

The fatal experiment for Bianchi conducted by Dr. Orne showed without a doubt that he was faking. After Dr. Orne casually mentioned that most multiple personalities have more than one alter ego, Ken quickly came up with “Billy” a frightened child who told Dr. Orne that “Steve” was a bad egg. He even kept a diary filled with “remembered” dreams. He convinced himself that his stellar performance would award him with only a couple of years in a mental hospital.

But the multiple personality ploy didn’t work so Ken struck a deal with the district attorney. If he testified truthfully against Angelo, he might be sent to a more amenable California jail rather than the brutal Walla Walla in Washington. Bianchi grabbed it. Even though he didn’t take responsibility for his role in the murders, the details he provided to the detectives in the interview were corroborated by the autopsy photographs giving credence to his participation in the murders.

At his sanity hearing on October 19, 1979 Ken Bianchi plead guilty to the two Bellingham murders for which he’d serve two constructive life sentences and to five Hillside strangling murders: Yolanda Washington, Jane King, Kristina Weckler, Kimberly Martin and Cindy Hudspeth for which he sobbed and professed deep remorse. Parole would be possible after 26 years and 8 months. But Ken kept changing his testimony so the authorities sent him to Walla Walla prison after all. The police, however, did not sob nor profess deep remorse at having lied to Ken about his future residence.

On October 22, 1979, Angelo Buono was arrested at his work. The officers noted that he showed so little emotion you’d have thought they were giving him a parking ticket. His trial began on November 16, 1981 with Judge Ronald M George overseeing the case. For two years, the prosecution proved his guilt with fiber evidence found from Lauren Wagner’s body in his home and place of work; positive identification from a girl that escaped; sexual assault charges on record from the two prostitutes he’d kept among many other examples. Over 1000 exhibits were introduced and 251 witnesses were called to testify against him with Bianchi as the 200th witness taking the stand in June 1982 spending five months on the stand which damned his cousin. Conclusion of the longest murder trial in American History as of on November 14, 1983 convicted Angelo of nine murders – all except Yolanda Washington. Sentencing of nine life terms with no possibility of parole was passed on April 1, 1984.

Still trying to convince the authorities of his innocence, Ken befriended Veronica Lynn Compton, a 22 year old playwright in June 1980. For the next year, she visited or called him daily until they finally professed their undying love for one another. In one of Veronica’s plays, a female serial killer plants sperm in one of her victims to confuse detectives. Ken convinced her that if she did this for him, the authorities would assume Ken was innocent of the Bellingham murders and release him. He seemed to have forgotten all about the California stranglings.

Smuggling Ken’s semen out of prison using a rubber glove, Veronica picked up a woman in a Bellingham university campus bar called Kim Breed. Kim drove Veronica back to her hotel room where Veronica begged her to come in. She persuaded Kim to indulge in some light bondage and took photos using a ruse that it was a prank she was playing on a friend. Veronica then tried to strangle her with a cord but broke down crying saying that “he” made her do it. Unable to find out who “he” was, Kim fled and reported the incident to the police. At the airport, Veronica sent three tapes each read by different male actors claiming to be a Hillside Strangler. She’d used cocaine prior to the attempted murder and acted so strangely that the staff called the police. They let her go after questioning but she was picked up again after Kim went to the authorities. In Veronica’s trailer, police found a practice version of one of the tapes. In March 1981, she was sent to prison for the attempted murder and became known as the Copycat Strangler. After that Ken lost interest in her.

Angelo Buono didn’t do so well in California’s Folsom Prison. He was terrified that he’d be killed so he confined himself to his cell. Still fancying himself a ladies’ man despite his weight gain and grey hair, he married again in 1986 at the age of 52 to a 35 year old woman. Shortly afterward, he was moved to Calipatria State Prison where he died of a heart attack on September 21, 2002 at the age of 67. It would’ve been more fitting if he had died of venereal disease or a gang rape.

Kenneth Bianchi also gained weight and lost his boyish good looks and spent much of his time in isolation. To try to conceal who he was, he tried to change his name to Anthony D’Amato, then to Nicholas Fontana but the newer prisoners still recognized him as one of the Hillside Stranglers. In 1986, he was contacted by a true-crime fan named Shirlee Joyce Book, 36, an unemployed divorcee with a teenage son. For the next two years, Ken and Shirlee talked on the phone, wrote letters and exchanged tapes. He proposed and sent an engagement ring through the mail. They met for the first time on their wedding day. The ceremony attendees were their mothers and two convicts. The request to consummate the marriage in a prison trailer was naturally denied. Shirlee moved to Washington to be closer to the prison, sure that her husband would soon be released.

In 1987, Ken attempted to sue writer Darcy O’Brien claiming her portrayal of him as an evil child of a doting mother was grossly inaccurate in her book Two of a Kind. Although he had a case, the judge threw it out explaining that “Bianchi’s name was already sullied because of his crimes”. He again attempted to sue another company for using his image on true-crime trading cards in 1998 but lost that case as well. Ken Bianchi is also a suspect in the Alphabet murders that occurred in New York in the early 1970’s while Ken was employed as an ambulance technician in Rochester. The Alphabet murders are so named because all three victims’ first and last names began with the same letter. Ken to date maintains his innocence of these crimes and sufficient evidence has not been recovered to link him.

We will never fully know why Ken Bianchi and Angelo Buono went on their killing spree in the late 1970’s in California. Ken had no further contact with his cousin after his incarceration and why would he anyway after ensuring that his testimony shut him away for the rest of his life. For all of his efforts to try to convince the authorities that he is a mere victim of circumstance, Ken still resides in Walla Walla, still trying to clear his name and has become a born-again Christian, reverting to his adoptive mother’s faith.