By Megan Leitch-Dymond
The serial killers most prominently featured in popular culture tend to be men who acted individually. Many people instantly recognise the names Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Although one person can commit heinous acts alone, when two people decide to team up the end result can be far more deadly. Many serial killer couples are assumed to be in a romantic relationship, but there have been cases of two individuals in a platonic relationship engaging in abhorrent activities. There are many different variations such couples; some could team up with a family member to execute their sick fantasies, some romantic couples may engage in criminal activities to show their commitment to each other and strengthen their love, and some are brought together through friendship and shared interests. Despite the reasons why they come together, they both work toward a common goal together and this is when things become much more deadly.
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka: ‘The Ken and Barbie Killers’
Born in August, 1964, Paul Bernardo never stood a chance in life. When he was only nine-years-old, his father Kenneth was arrested and charged with child molestation and the sexual abuse of Paul’s older sister. Kenneth was also exposed for being the neighbourhood ‘Peeping Tom’, an activity which young Paul would ultimately inherit. When the reality of her husband’s sexual deviance finally sunk in, Paul’s mother became extremely depressed and continued to gain weight until she was morbidly obese. Her children were ultimately neglected, and Paul was significantly affected. To add to this, Paul discovered Kenneth was not his biological father, and thus his attitude toward women was forever impacted.
His early adulthood saw a deadly evolution of his hatred of women. Although it was unknown at the time, Bernardo was the Scarborough Rapist. Beginning in May 1987, he sexually assaulted and raped 43 women and was never caught. The women were attacked from behind so the only description they were able to give was ‘a young, white male’, and during the attacks he called them derogatory names. Although he never attempted to kill any of the women he attacked, he was only interested in violently assaulting them. When a police sketch was released to the public, many acquaintances of Paul were suspicious of the likeness and reported his name to the police. Bernardo eventually graduated college with a business degree and found employment at a prestigious accounting firm.
So, when Paul and Karla met he was already an established criminal. Their sexual attraction was based on sexual preferences - he was a sadist and she was a masochist. After meeting in a hotel restaurant, it was only a matter of hours before they slid off to a private room together.
Their relationship progressed quickly and, despite the 6-year age gap, Karla’s parents approved of the seemingly respectable and mature young man. Despite seeming like an unproblematic couple on the outside, Paul was incredibly upset that Karla was not a virgin when they met. He was a virgin-hungry rapist and his sight was set on Karla’s younger sister Tammy. Paul developed an obsession with the 15-year-old, while Tammy only viewed Paul as an older brother figure and saw nothing sinister in their relationship. Karla, however, feared that she would be replaced, and so she decided to share his fantasies rather than fight them, and quickly learned how much it strengthened their relationship. When she asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he replied ‘Tammy’. He felt Tammy’s virginity was owed to him since Karla had been with another man before him. And so Karla began to develop a plan to make this happen.
Karla worked in a veterinary office and took advantage of her access to medication. She obtained tranquiliser in preparation, and on Christmas Eve, 1990, Tammy was invited to drink alcohol with Karla and Paul. Unbeknownst to her, Tammy’s drinks were laced with the tranquiliser and she eventually passed out. As Tammy lay unconscious, Paul video-recorded himself raping Tammy while Karla held a halothane soaked cloth over her sister’s face. Paul successfully encouraged Karla to participate in the sexual assault of her sister and not long later, Tammy began to choke on her own vomit. Sadly, she died and the emergency services were called. Tammy’s death was treated as an accidental alcohol poisoning and no one was suspicious.
In a tape discovered many years later, Karla could be seen holding a pair of Tammy’s underwear and talking to her husband. She said how much she loved it when he violated her sister and she wanted to do it again. She told him he “can take their virginity...they’ll be our children”. When Paul asks why she would do this, she says because ‘I love you’.
Paul was furious that his ‘Christmas present’ had died and he demanded another virgin. And so, 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffey was targeted in June 1991. Similar to Tammy, she was encouraged to consume alcohol laced with tranquiliser. However, this time Paul and Karla prolonged her suffering, and raped and abused her over 24 hours. Leslie was lured to Bernardo’s home after finding herself locked out of her home at 2am. When they were finished with her, she was given sleeping pills and while unconscious, Paul strangled her with an electrical cord. Two days later, he dismembered her body and encased the pieces in 7 blocks of cement which were subsequently dropped into Lake Gibson.
The blocks were found on June 29th 1991, the same day Karla and Paul were getting married many miles away.
15-year-old Jane was the perfect wedding gift for her new husband. Jane was a friend of her late sister, and she felt completely safe visiting Karla’s home. She was served drug-laced alcohol and once out cold, Bernardo raped and sodomised her as Karla stood by the side and recorded the whole thing on video. Bernardo was delighted that Jane was a virgin. After she awoke she had no memory of anything bad which happened.
The next victim was 15-year-old Kristen who was abducted in April 1992. She stopped to help Karla with directions and was forced into the car at knifepoint. Over the course of the next three days, she was tortured and raped. Her naked body was found one month later in a dumpsite.
When Bernardo’s likeliness to the Scarborough Rapist sketch was reported to the police, he was asked to provide DNA samples to compare with the DNA of the unknown rapist. He gave the samples in 1991, yet they were not tested for two years. As he was not immediately arrested after providing the samples, Bernardo assumed himself to be in the clear until they were finally tested in 1993 and he was formally identified as the Scarborough Rapist.
In January 1993, Paul inflicted his worst beating yet on his wife when she was attacked with a flashlight and left with two black eyes. When Paul left home, she made the choice to leave him and resided with her aunt and uncle so Paul would not know where to find her. Once DNA proved Paul was the Scarborough Rapist, the police interviewed Karla first before making an arrest. She denied her husband was the Scarborough Rapist, but when the police left she told her aunt and uncle she and Paul had murdered Kristin French and Leslie Mahaffey. However, she minimised her role in the crimes.
Paul Bernardo was finally arrested in February 1993 and authorities spent the following 6 weeks searching their home, eventually logging over 500 items of evidence.
After Paul’s arrest, Karla negotiated a plea bargain under the guise that she only committed the murders out of fear for her own life. Paul vehemently denied committing the murders and swore he only participated in the sexual assaults and the dismemberment of Leslie Mahaffey. According to Paul, Karla was the murderer in the relationship; whereas according to Karla, it was all Paul.
In May, Paul told his lawyer where to find the video-tapes of the assaults. The lawyer found six video-tapes altogether and after watching them said they were the most disturbing things he had ever seen. The footage completely contradicted Karla’s ‘battered wife’ defence, as it featured her sodomizing victims with wine bottles and laughing. Frustratingly, the lawyer withheld the evidence for 16 months as he felt it would be worse for his client’s defence. During this time, Karla was able to sign her plea deal and get away with it all.
As there was no solid evidence proving Paul had committed the acts of which he was accused, Karla’s testimony was the most crucial element of this case. In exchange for her testimony against Paul, she was convicted on two counts of manslaughter and received a 12 year sentence. Bernardo was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and two aggravated assaults. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in September 1995.
When news broke of the depraved acts committed by this seemingly perfect couple, it was horrifying for the public. Sex crimes are typically always committed by a male, and it was incomprehensible to imagine a woman being capable of committing such heinous acts. While Paul continues to live his life behind bars, Karla Homolka married her lawyer’s brother and gave birth to three children with him.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley: ‘The Moors Murderers’
Ian Brady was born in January 1938 in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother was a single mother who struggled to take care of him and sent him to live with an older couple who could. Despite not raising her son, she tried to maintain contact with him. As a young man, Brady was described as having above average intelligence and loving the outdoors. However, there were multiple accusations of zoosadism (cruelty toward animals), and he accumulated convictions for petty offences before moving to Manchester.
Myra Hindley was born in July 1942 in Manchester, England. She had a capable nature and was often trusted with babysitting local children. Her hobbies included swimming, and her swim buddy was Michael Higgins. Sadly, when she was 15, Michael went swimming without her and drowned. When she was 15-years-old, her swim buddy drowned and Myra was devastated. She soon began to show a macabre fascination with death afterwards and her friends noted she showed ‘no empathy for anybody else’. She became obsessed with grisly accident sights and showed no emotion upon observing them.
She met Ian Brady when she was 19 and he was 23, and she was instantly smitten. Despite being engaged at the time, once she became infatuated with Brady she called it off. She tried many times to capture his attention but he seemed to show no interest in her. It took a while for him to finally notice her. He asked her to dance at the office Christmas party and walked her home afterwards. On their first date, he took her to see ‘The Nuremberg Trials’. Prior to meeting Brady, Myra practiced Roman Catholicism, but when Brady told her there was no God she immediately stopped attending church.
When it came time for them to make love for the first time, he bit and beat her. She began to become more like him and would happily engage in whichever fantasy he proposed.
Eventually, Brady realised she would literally do anything he asked and he told her that the ‘supreme pleasure’ in life was the rape and murder of another. She showed no hesitation to the idea. One of her diary entries said “he is cruel and selfish, and I love him”.
Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, whom Myra looked after as a child. In July 1963, Pauline left home to attend a dance and Myra offered to give her a lift. Before she took her to the dance however, Myra asked for Pauline’s assistance in locating a missing glove on the Moors. They drove to Saddleworth Moor and met up with Brady. Myra stayed in the car whilst Brady took Pauline. In this time, Pauline was raped, beaten, stabbed and almost decapitated. Brady came back for assistance in burying the body and Myra complied.
John Kilbride was reported missing by his mother in November 1963. The 12-year-old boy was last spotted at a market where he would earn pocket money by helping stallholders. As it reached nightfall, Myra offered him a lift home and he was never seen again. Like the last missing child, a massive search was held but turned up empty.
The next victim was taken over six months later. In June 1964, 12 year old Keith Bennett was walking to his grandmother’s house when he was lured into Myra’s car under the pretence of helping her load some boxes. His absence wasn’t noted until the next day, and the massive police search revealed nothing. After Keith was lured into the car, she drove to Saddleworth Moor and handed him over to Brady. Over the course of half an hour, the child was raped, tortured and strangled. His body was buried there.
Lesley Ann Downey was abducted from a local fairground in December 1964. This time, she was taken to their home rather than straight to the Moor. Brady and Hindley recorded the 10-year-old girl’s torture. Later on, Brady said Hindley strangled the young girl with a cord, and she liked to take that same cord out in public and ‘flaunt her secret’. Hindley had confessed to all the other murders but avoided any questioning regarding Lesley. The search parties found nothing, again, and all of the previous disappearances had not yet been connected.
Almost a year later, things were coming to an end. In October 1965, Myra’s brother-in-law - David Smith was invited in for a drink. While waiting, Brady appeared with a young man called Edward Evans who was much older than their previous victims. Evans was invited to Brady’s home with the promise of alcohol and a sexual encounter. When Evans was brought into the room, Brady began to strike him repeatedly with an axe. Afterwards as Evans lay dead on the floor, Hindley made them all tea and made jokes about the situation. They also made reference to other victims buried on the Moor. Smith was speechless and terrified and when Brady asked him to help clean-up, he agreed. Immediately after, David ran home and told his wife to alert the police.
After hearing David Smith’s horrific tale, the police had to verify the claims. The next morning, an officer posed as a bakery delivery man to gain access to the home. Once Myra let him inside he identified himself as a police officer and told Hindley to show him where Evan’s body was allegedly moved. The body was still there, along with the murder weapon, and Brady was immediately arrested. He told the police that an argument arose between the three men and things had gotten out of hand. Hindley supported this story and told the police she was horrified at what had happened. There was no evidence to charge her yet, so Myra was free for 4 days. She used this time to dispose of any incriminating evidence.
It was only when the recordings of Lesley Ann Downey were found that the police charged Hindley as a co-conspirator. Despite the clear evidence, Hindley still refused to admit participation in Downey’s murder. Hindley claimed Lesley was absolutely fine when she left their home, and she placed full blame of the murder on David Smith.
In May 1966, Brady and Hindley were each sentenced to life imprisonment
Myra Hindley died in prison in November of 2002, and Ian Brady died in May of 2017.
Fred and Rosemary West
Renowned as one of Britain’s most vicious couples, Fred and Rosemary West murdered 11 young women between 1967 and 1987. Each of their victims were sexually abused and tortured in their home before being murdered, dismembered and buried somewhere on their property. Many of their victims were lured from the outside world, such as bus stops, and the rest of their victims’ were their own children.
Fred and Rosemary West had no semblance of a normal familial relationship, and both were raised in homes where incest and sexual abuse was rampant. Fred’s father had sexual relations with his daughters and taught young Fred this behaviour was normal. Fred would reciprocate this mindset and tell his own daughters that it was a ‘father’s duty to take their virginity’.
Rose, in contrast, was at the receiving end of her father’s abuse. She was raped repeatedly by her father and their incestous relationship continued well into her adulthood.
Prior to meeting Rose, Fred was married to Catherine ‘Rena’ Costello in 1962. She already had one child to another man - a daughter named Charmaine. Catherine gave birth to Fred’s first child in 1964, Anne Marie. Their marriage was shaky and they separated a few years later. During this separation, Fred began an affair with a young woman by the name of Anne McFall. It didn’t take long for McFall to become pregnant, but Fred retaliated by strangling and burying McFall -- and her unborn child -- in a nearby field. She was his first victim.
In 1968, fate brought Rose and Fred together. When they first met, Rosemary Letts was only 15- years-old while Fred West was 27-years-old. Less than a year later, she moved in with Fred and helped raise Charmaine. Fred didn’t hide his sexual fantasies from his new girlfriend, and the young Rosemary was soon coerced into having sex with other men. She gave birth to her first daughter Heather, and many people speculate Heather’s father was none other than Rosemary’s own father.
Charmaine and Rose did not get on, and Charmaine despised her new stepmother. Rose’s response was to beat her and eventually, in 1971, murder her. Fred was serving time in prison for theft at that time, but upon release he helped bury the 8 year old. From that moment forth, Fred and Rose were bound by blood. They married a year later.
Not long after her child’s disappearance, Rena came looking for answers but was sadly killed by Fred.
After getting married, Fred and Rose moved into their new home. Fred’s sexual fantasies led Rose to become a prostitute and they turned a spare bedroom into a dedicated space to take clients. Covert peepholes were installed so Fred could watch in pleasure.
Eventually, watching was not enough for Fred and he then focused his attention on his 8-year-old daughter Anne Marie.
In 1973. 19 year old Lynda Gough - a girlfriend of one of the West’s lodgers - was reported missing by her mother. When her mother went to the West’s home seeking answers, Rose said Lynda had simply left town to look for a job.
15-year-old Carol Ann Cooper vanished in November the same year. She was on her way home after spending the day at the cinema with her friends.
In December, 21-year-old Lucy Partington vanished after spending the afternoon with a friend.
Therese Siegenthale was also 21-years-old when she embarked on a hitchhiking journey to Ireland in April 1974, but she never made her destination.
Shirley Ann Hubbard was 15-years-old when she vanished on her way to her foster parent’s home in November 1974.
18-year-old Juanita Mott was a frequent face at the West’s home, until she was nowhere to be seen after 1975.
Each of their victims were eventually found buried under the basement floor many years later.
Juanita Mott was their last victim until 1977, until Shirley Ann Robinson was killed and buried in their garden. Robinson was engaged in an affair with the couple and became impregnated with Fred’s child.
When Alison Chambers was 16-years-old, she was welcomed into the West’s home with open arms. In 1979, she told her mother of the ‘homely family’ she was living with. She was never heard from again.
Heather West is believed to have been their final victim. She suffered for many years before her death, beginning at the age of 14. Her depression worried Fred, as he believed she would tell someone of her home life. In 1987, he found a solution to his problem when he and Rose murdered her and buried her in the back garden. She was only 16-years-old.
His relief was short-lived, as another of his daughters confided in a friend about the abuse she suffered at her father’s hands. When she told a friend, her friend told their mother who then contacted the police.
A search was conducted on the property with the aim to find child pornography. They did find child pornography along with evidence of child abuse. It was sufficient enough to arrest Fred and put their children in care. However, their case fell through when Anne Marie changed her mind about testifying against her father and Fred was acquitted.
The police did not give up, and were adamant that there was much more to the story. Propelled by a family joke threatening the children to behave or ‘end up under the porch like Heather’, a search warrant was obtained for the property in 1994.
Fred was arrested and he confessed to Heather’s murder. Her remains were discovered the next day, but there were also extra bones uncovered. And then, Fred alluded to more victims. Shirley Anne Robinson and Alison Chambers were found next. After moving to the basement, 5 more corpses were discovered. Eventually, a total of 12 victim remains were found and identified and Fred West was finally unmasked as a serial killer who had been operating undetected for over 15 years.
Fred was charged with 12 murders, but he hanged himself on New Years Day 1995 before he ever faced trial for his crimes.
Rose did not get away as easily and she was convicted of 10 murders in November 1995. She was sentenced to life in prison, yet she claims she was innocent and knew absolutely nothing of her husband’s murderous activities. She remains in prison to this day.
Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi: ‘The Hillside Stranglers’
From October 1977 to January 1979, Los Angeles was terrorized by a series of killings committed by ‘the Hillside Strangler’. The police believed the murders were the act of one person, when in fact it was two cousins: Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi.
Angelo Buono was born in 1934, and he spent his teenage years in a youth reformatory for committing car theft. Eventually he became the owner of an auto-body shop in Glendale which proved to be quite successful as he gained a solid reputation as a first-class upholsterer. Buono’s personality was very dominant, and he was an intensely macho male. His infidelity and brutality tendencies resulted in four divorces before he reached 40.
Bianchi was the exact opposite of his elder cousin. His birth mother was a prostitute who didn’t want him and he was given up for adoption when he was three months old. He was said to have been an intelligent child but also had a tendency to lie compulsively. He grew up to be an attractive man with a weak character, which meant his relationships and flings didn’t last long. He was desperate to be in an authoritative position and tried to join the police force. His application was rejected, and so his alternative career was to become a night security guard.
Bianchi moved to LA following a divorce when he was 25-years-old, and there he applied to the LAPD twice, but was rejected both times again. Facing defeat, he considered a career in psychiatry and began to study psychology. He reconnected with Buono and was offered a place to stay. Bianchi was profoundly impressed by Buono and strongly admired how easy it was for Buono to bed young women. Buono eventually became tired of his younger cousin’s weak nature and told him he had to find somewhere else to live, although he wished to remain close. Buono wanted them to team up and become pimps. Bianchi agreed and it wasn’t long until he met a 16-year-old girl called Sabra. She was lured in with promises of modeling opportunities, and when they failed to appear, she was beaten and sexually abused until she agreed to become their prostitute. The two men eventually expanded their group of women and called them ‘The Foxy Ladies’.
In 1977, one of the ‘Foxy Ladies’, 15-year-old Becky, was sent to the home of a lawyer. He was horrified when she told him about the two men who kept her prisoner and how she was regularly beaten and sodomized. As such, the lawyer did not want to send her back to them and he put her on a flight back to her home in Arizona. When Buono discovered this, he was seething with rage and threatened the lawyer. The lawyer was not scared and sent some of his friends to Buono’s garage to threaten him. This encounter was one of the worst things a man like Buono could ever experience, as his masculinity was incredibly important to him.
Bianchi was also feeling angry as Sabra had run away and her replacement violently resisted him.
19-year-old Yolanda Washington was their first victim. She was a prostitute who was picked up by both men and after intercourse, Buono flashed a police badge and told her she was under arrest. She began to resist, but was raped by Bianchi and strangled. Her body was dumped on a hillside near Forest Lawns Cemetery. The two men enjoyed the experience so much that they were desperate to do it again.
Judy Ann Miller was their next victim and she was lured back to Buono’s home two weeks after Yolanda’s death. The 15-year-old was tied up and raped repeatedly by the pair, and then suffocated with a plastic bag over her head and tied with a chord.
7 days later, Lissa Kastin was abducted on her way home from her waitressing job. Buono and Bianchi, again posing as policemen, convinced the 21-year-old to get into the vehicle. She was driven to Buono’s home instead of the police station, but was not raped. It was later said they didn’t find her sexually attractive so they opted to violate her with a root beer bottle instead. Her death was prolonged, as they repeatedly strangled her into unconsciousness for over an hour before finally letting her die. Her body was found soon after.
Three days later, they struck again. Jane King was waiting at a bus stop when Bianchi approached her and engaged in conversation. Buono pulled up in a car not long after and pretended Bianchi was a long-time friend who he had not seen in months. Bianchi and Jane were offered a lift home by Buono. When they arrived at Buono’s house, the two men began their attack. She put up quite a fight, but Bianchi wanted to ‘teach her a lesson’. She was hogtied and sodomized with a plastic bag over her head, and by the time he had finished she was dead. Her body was found near the Golden State freeway.
Four days after Jane, they decided they wanted a virgin next. 12-year-old Dolores and 14-year-old Sonja were followed home by the two men and again, they posed as policemen to approach the girls. The two girls had shoplifted costume jewellery earlier in the day so they were too scared to argue against the officers and got in the car. After being taken to Buono’s home, they were brutally assaulted and their bodies were dumped in a rubbish tip. DNA deposits had been found on the two bodies, and analysis identified two separate perpetrators. Furthermore, one of the samples showed a non-secretor blood type -- this means that a person’s blood type is different to their other bodily secretions.
Kristina Weckler was abducted by Bianchi in November 1977. After being delivered to Buono’s home, she was raped. However, the two men decided to experiment and injected her with cleaning fluid with the intention to kill her. Instead, she experienced convulsions, so they improvised and placed a plastic bag over her head and piped coal gas into the bag while strangling her simultaneously.
The very next day, Lauren Wagner was abducted in front of her home. She was dragged into their car and tried to cooperate with the two men in hopes they would spare her life. She was strangled regardless.
Three weeks later, Kimberley Martin - a call girl hired by the men - was raped and dumped in a vacant lot.
Their final kill was Cindy Hudspeth in February 1978. She was a customer of Buono’s and called at his home to make an order request. She was lured inside and raped over the course of two hours before being strangled and placed in the trunk of her car. Her car was then pushed over the edge of a cliff.
The kills were beginning to gain a lot of media attention and the police enquiries were forcing the two men to slow down. Eventually an opportunity arose for Bianchi to move back to Washington, and after much persuasion from Buono, he took it. So, in May 1978, the Hillside Stranglers parted ways.
Once in Washington, Bianchi took up a job as a security guard. It didn’t take long for him to miss the thrill of the kill and he planned out a way to indulge these dark fantasies once again.
In January 1979, he offered a young woman he knew called Karen Mandic money to house-sit his ‘home’. She arrived that night with her friend Diane Wilder, despite Bianchi telling her to keep the job offer a secret. Bianchi asked Karen to escort him inside to turn on the lights while Diane waited in the car. He lured Karen into the basement and killed her. He then went back for Diane, where she was escorted to the basement also. He then strangled her from behind and she was dead in minutes. However, Bianchi did not rape either of the girls; rather he gained satisfaction by ejaculating into their underwear. He lifted the bodies outside and placed them in Karen’s car and he left the scene. When the bodies were found the next day, Bianchi was questioned in relation to the house-sitting job. He denied ever making that offer, but evidence was uncovered which proved he was lying.
Bianchi refused to confess to the murders and said he had no recollection of them. A background check showed he had recently moved from Los Angeles and when LAPD officers were contacted to enquire about Bianchi, the case was linked to the Hillside Stranglings. It was noted that the murders which had been regularly occurring for the past 14 months had suddenly stopped when Bianchi moved to Washington. During the abduction of Laura Wagner, a witness saw it was two men who dragged her into the car and she reported it to the police. When Buono was identified as a very close acquaintance of Bianchi, he immediately became a primary suspect in the murders.
Bianchi was desperate to avoid prosecution, and claimed to have multiple personalities. He claimed it was his alter-ego Steve who committed the murders. Bianchi was very well versed in psychology and knew how to fake the disorder. His knowledge served him well as he was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, but not everyone believed it to be true. After many interview attempts to prove Bianchi was lying, he eventually tripped up and he was officially declared legally sane and deemed fit to stand trial.
Bianchi pled guilty to the two murders in Washington and five of the Hillside Strangler murders, where he was then sentenced to life imprisonment without trial.
Meanwhile, in LA the police were still trying to charge Buono with the murders. Bianchi was offered a plea deal by the District Attorney which stated that if he pled guilty to the murder charges and testified against his cousin, he would receive life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He initially accepted and Buono was charged with the murders. However, Bianchi soon began to state his innocence and break the rules of the plea agreement, further delaying the trial.
The trial of the Hillside Stranglers was one of the longest and most expensive in American history. It began in November 1981 and ended in November 1983. The length was attributed to Bianchi’s ‘attempts to sabotage the case’ as he had changed his plea from guilty to not guilty after it had begun and the evidence presented was contradictory and useless. It was determined that Bianchi had broken the terms of his agreement and as a result, he was sentenced to 118 years in prison.
Bianchi is still alive and in his 70’s but still maintains his innocence to this day.
Buono, on the other hand, was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole, but he died in 2002 of a heart attack.
Roy Norris and Lawrence Bittaker: ‘The Toolbox Killers’
Roy Norris and Lawrence Bittaker, otherwise known as the ‘Toolbox Killers’, targeted five young women from June 1979 to October 1979 and tortured them using various tools.
They cruised the streets of California in a van which they named ‘Murder Mac’ to abduct thier victims and take them to the San Gabriel Mountains, where they were never seen again.
Lawrence Bittaker was born in 1940 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was placed for adoption at birth, and was taken in by a man named George Bittaker. George worked in aircraft factories which meant his family never stayed in one location for long. So as a child, Lawrence bounced around four different states before finally settling in California. He was a remarkably intelligent kid and boasted an IQ of 138, but sadly he did not graduate high school. By the time he reached 17, he had built up a criminal record consisting of mostly petty crimes. Over the next 15 years, he was in-and-out of jail for many different crimes, mostly motor vehicle crimes and armed robbery. His worst crime, at that point, was the attempted murder of a grocery store clerk and was sent to the California Men’s Colony. It was here that he met Roy Norris for the very first time.
Roy Norris was born in Greeley, California and he enlisted into the US Navy when he was 17-years-old. Most of his service was spent in San Diego until he received an administrative discharge from the Navy for reasons of ‘psychological problems and a severe schizoid personality’. In November 1969, he was arrested for the attempted rape of a female motorist and was released on bail three months later. During this time, he was arrested again for breaking into a woman’s home with the intention of raping her. And the following year, again while on bail, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon on another woman. He spent 5 years in a psychiatric hospital and was released when he was no longer considered a danger to others. However, three months after being released he strangled a woman until she was unconscious and then proceeded to rape her. He was convicted a month later for this and sent to the California Men’s Colony.
When Bittaker and Norris first met, they connected over their shared sexual fantasies and made plans to rape, torture and kill girls together. When they were both released, they found each other again and began to bring these fantasies to life.
In 1979, Bittaker bought the ‘Murder Mac’ - a cargo van with no side or rear windows and a large sliding door to easily snatch victims off the street. Their target profile was white girls in their teens with dark-blonde hair and they aimed to kill one girl for each age (e.g. one 15 year old, one 16 year old etc.). After luring the girls into their van, they would take them to a secluded trail on the San Gabriel Mountains and tie them up, assault them and torture them with various tools. Norris and Bittaker liked to kill them through either strangulation with a wire coat hanger or stabbing an ice-pick through their ears and strangling them until death. They also liked to take polaroids of their victims during this process and audio record their cries for help. Once they were finished with them, the bodies were dumped in the wilderness mountains.
In June 1979, they made their move. 16-year-old Cindy was forced into the truck and bound and gagged. They raped her and tortured her before finally killing her and dumping her body in a canyon.
In July 1979, they grabbed 18-year-old Andrea and took turns assaulting her. They taunted her by encouraging her to scream for help as they knew no-one could hear her, and then they killed her.
In September, they decided to take two girls at once - 15-year-old Jackie and 13-year-old Leah were the chosen two. They were kept alive for two days.
A few weeks later, a young girl named Shirley Sanders was abducted but after raping her, she was able to escape and report the assault. However, she was unable to provide any useful information regarding her attacker’s appearance or a registration plate for the van, so the police chose not to investigate her claims further.
They took their final victim on October 30th. Shirley Bedford was abducted and raped and her body was dumped on a residential lawn in Hermosa Beach rather than up high in the mountains. Her murder was completely different to the previous, as she was assaulted while the car was being driven around rather than being taken to the Mountains and assaulted and killed there.
It was this final kill which finally shone a spotlight on the duo’s crimes. Due to the nature of Shirley’s torture and death, the perpetrator was dubbed ‘The Toolbox Killer’, as the police had no reason to suspect two people were behind the crimes. Norris could not ignore the attention, and bragged about the crime to an old criminal friend by the name of Jimmy Dalton. Dalton reported the incident to his lawyer, who in turn told the LAPD. The LAPD staked him out for a few days and took the opportunity to arrest him for marijuana possession and a parole violation. He was also charged with the abduction and rape of Shirley Sanders after she positively identified him as her attacker.
Less than three hours into the interrogation Norris confessed to his involvement in the murders and identified his accomplice as Lawrence Bittaker. However, Norris said he was merely a helper and Bittaker played a bigger role in the murders. He was offered a plea bargain which said Bittaker would take the most responsibility for the crimes in exchange for Norris’ help in locating the bodies of Jackie and Leah. He accepted and helped the police; when Jackie’s body was found there was still an ice-pick embedded in her skull.
Norris and Bittaker were both charged with several counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, sexual assault, murder, and criminal conspiracy, but they pinned the blame on the other man and refused to accept full responsibility. However, audio recordings of their attacks were eventually found and upon listening to them, it was accepted that Norris was an equal participant in the murders. Due to this discovery, he received a sentence of 45 years to life in prison before dying in February 2020.
Bittaker was convicted on five counts of murder, five counts of kidnapping and various charges for criminal conspiracy, rape, and sodomy and received the death penalty. He died just before Norris in 2019 while awaiting execution.
It took the jury only 15 minutes to serve Bittaker the death penalty.
Charles Ng and Leonard Lake
Charles Ng and Leonard Lake are regarded by some as the most disturbed and sadistic serial killers out there. They murdered as many as 25 victims between 1983 and 1985.
Leonard Lake was born in 1945 in San Francisco. His parents separated when he was young and he was raised by his grandparents. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps at the age of 19 and served in Vietnam as a radar operator. In 1971 he was medically discharged following a diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder and he decided to move to San Jose. It was then that he developed an obsession with the possibility of a global nuclear war and began to explore survivalist lifestyles.
Charles Ng was born in Hong Kong in 1960. His father was a strict man and often punished young Charles for minor infractions. He developed a taste for stealing when he was young and carried it through to adulthood. When he was 15, he was arrested for shoplifting and his father punished him by sending him to a boarding school in England. He didn’t last long and was soon expelled for stealing from his fellow classmates. When he finally became an adult, he moved to the US to pursue a life there. He joined the US Marine Corps under false nationality. He was caught stealing $11,000 worth of automatic weapons and received a dishonourable discharge and a sentence of 14 years in prison. He evaded custody and found his way to California where he crossed paths with Leonard Lake and not long after they met, Charles was invited to stay with Lake on his Calfiornian ranch.
They instantly connected through their extreme right-wing views of the government and their survivalist interests. Lake confided in Ng his desire to create the ‘perfect woman’, as he was a misogynist who wanted a completely submissive partner. He wished to have an ‘off the shelf lover’ with whom he could do whatever he wanted and throw her away when he was done. Ng was utterly devoted to this idea, and they both sought to make it real.
They saved up to buy a property deep in the Sierra Nevada’s and worked hard to create an underground bunker perfect for the captivity and torture of their victims. They earned their money through a host of criminal methods; for instance, they would steal cars and property and scam people out of money. They would also shoplift many of the supplies they needed. Lake also liked to steal identities; he would find a man who looked similar enough to him, kill him, rob him and steal his identity. The bodies were then disposed of.
Lake was so married to his fantasy that he killed his best friend and his own brother during this process.
Their primary targets were women, but in some instances where it was not possible to abduct a woman without arousing suspicion, they would kill anyone who stood in their way. They were not limited to adults, and would kill children alongside men. Leonard would pretend to be a photographer and once ‘hired’, he would recommend a remote setting for the photoshoots. Once there, he would kill everyone who arrived except with the target. Official court documents state that Leonard once took the infant of one of the women they abducted and twisted the child’s body until their neck snapped; he did this in front of the mother to destroy her emotionally and help mould her into their ‘ideal woman’. Furthermore, there was also another incident where Ng allegedly cooked an infant in a wok while the family were forced to watch in horror.
Once the woman was abducted, she was held in a small sound-proofed room built under the ranch and tortured and raped over the course of a few days. Ng and Lake would record themselves in the act and meticulously take notes of everything they did, almost as though they were ‘perfecting their craft’. The victims were all murdered, whether it was by strangulation or being shot, and their bodies were buried in shallow graves around the property or dismembered and burned.
Charles Gunnar was killed in May 1983 so Lake could use his identity. He was their first victim.
In July of 1984, Ng and Lake slaughtered the Dubs family; Harvey and Deborah Dubs. and their 1 year old son Sean.
October saw them kill 34-year-old Randy Johnson.
They killed 23-year-old Michael Carroll in April 1985, and 18-year-old Kathleen Allen shortly after.
They targeted a family again; this time it was Lonnie and Brenda Boys and their 2-year-old son Sean Lonnie Jr.
Shortly after the Bond family’s murders, they killed a man named Robin Stapley; the identity which Leonard Lake would claim when he was arrested a few months later.
There are more suspected murders due to the amount of bone fragments found. The victim count is suggested to be as high as 25.
Their spree ended on June 2nd 1985 when Ng was caught shoplifting. When he was faced with arrest, he panicked and violently assaulted the security officer and immediately fled the scene. Lake, on the other hand, was waiting outside in the car and immediately arrested when he was found to be in possession of an illegally suppressed revolver. Lake firstly identified himself to the police as Robin Stapley, a former victim of Lake and Ng, and presented Stapley’s real drivers license with Lake’s photograph on it. However, Lake could not alter the date of birth and the police were not convinced that Lake was 26. He was taken to the police station for further questioning, but when he was left alone in the room, he swallowed a cyanide tablet which had been sewn into his jacket. He fell into a coma and died four days later.
Ng was able to escape to Canada and remained on the run for a month before being caught when he was arrested for shoplifting. He was taken to the police station, and began struggling with the police officers and it resulted in one officer being shot in the hand.
Ng was convicted for the shoplifting charge, felonious assault, and possession of a concealed firearm and sentenced to 4 years in prison. When his location was finally revealed to US officials, they attempted to have him extradited from Canada to the US. But the Canadian authorities refused to transfer him because Canada had abolished capital punishment and the extradition would surely result in Ng’s execution. The US authorities were able to interview him, and it was during these interviews that Ng confessed to his involvement in the murders which had been committed alongside Lake. However, Ng claimed that he only played a minor role in the murders and he was mostly involved with the disposing of bodies.
The police conducted a search on the ranch and discovered the remains of 7 men, 3 women, and 2 infant boys in shallow graves throughout the property. They also found 45 pounds of bone fragments and the police were able to estimate a total of 25 victims. The search also turned up journals written by Lake, alongside video recordings of the two men raping and torturing their victims.
In 1991, Ng was finally extradited to the US. 6 years had passed since he was arrested in Canada, and by this point the US had more than enough evidence to charge Ng.
However, 7 more years would pass before he was finally put on trial for his crimes.
In July 1999, Charles Ng was found guilty for the murder of six men, three women, and two baby boys. He was sentenced to death and remains on death row in San Quentin. To this day, he maintains Lake was the mastermind behind it all and has never participated in a single interview.
Editor's note: this article ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as written. Three figures are worth setting against this archive's record. Paul Bernardo is recorded here at two first degree murder convictions, with a third death, Tammy Homolka, never charged as murder, and at least fourteen rapes; the forty three assaults given here is the attributed total from the Scarborough series, not the charged one. Karla Homolka's two manslaughter convictions and twelve year sentence came from the plea agreement struck before the videotapes were found, which is the whole controversy of that case and the article covers it. Andrei Chikatilo was convicted on fifty two counts, and this archive gives fifty two to fifty six. The Wests are as stated: Fred was charged with twelve murders and killed himself before trial, Rosemary was convicted of ten. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are both recorded here at five. Angelo Buono is at ten and Kenneth Bianchi at twelve, the difference being the two Washington killings Bianchi committed alone. Leonard Lake died by suicide days after his arrest and was never tried; Charles Ng has eleven convictions, with twenty five deaths attributed to the Calaveras County series.