"The Mind of a Murderer": Kenneth Bianchi on the 1979 Jailhouse Tapes (PBS Frontline, Part One, 1984)

Name: "The Mind of a Murderer": Kenneth Bianchi on the 1979 Jailhouse Tapes (PBS Frontline, Part One, 1984)
Uploaded: 2021-04-01
Duration: 57 min 44 s
Description: Frontline's 1984 documentary used the court-ordered videotapes of Kenneth Bianchi's 1979 jail examinations to show how he persuaded experts that a second personality, "Steve", had committed his murders.

Frontline's 1984 documentary used the court-ordered videotapes of Kenneth Bianchi's 1979 jail examinations to show how he persuaded experts that a second personality, "Steve", had committed his murders.

Subject: Kenneth Bianchi
Recorded: about March 19, 1984
Runtime: 57:44

Content warning: A documentary about the rape and strangling of ten women and girls in Los Angeles (two of them aged 12 and 14) and two women in Bellingham. It includes Bianchi, speaking as "Steve" under hypnosis, describing a killing in crude terms, a racial slur, his description of how victims were tied and killed, and (per Frontline's own on-air warning) brief graphic photographs of victims' bodies.

The Interview

This is the first part of "The Mind of a Murderer", a two-part Frontline documentary broadcast on PBS in 1984. Frontline said it had obtained "exclusive access to over 60 hours of interviews videotaped after Kenneth Bianchi's arrest", and the program uses excerpts of those court-ordered tapes from the Bellingham jail. In them Bianchi tells an interviewer why he came to California, insists he "hadn't killed any girls", and is hypnotized by Dr. John Watkins, Dr. Ralph Allison and Dr. Martin Orne. Under hypnosis he speaks as "Steve", who claims the killings. Without hypnosis, in July 1979, he describes the Los Angeles killings to Dr. Donald Lunde. Bianchi speaks for about ten minutes of the hour; the rest is narration and interviews with police, his girlfriend Kelli Boyd, colleagues, his lawyer, the prosecutor and the experts.

Historical Context

Between October 1977 and February 1978, ten women and girls were abducted, raped and strangled in the Los Angeles area, most of their bodies left in the hills around the city; the press called the killer the Hillside Strangler. The killers were Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. Bianchi then moved to Bellingham, Washington, where on January 11, 1979, he lured Karen Mandic, 22, and Diane Wilder, 27, students at Western Washington University, to a house he was guarding and strangled them. He was arrested the next day. The program follows the investigation from Los Angeles to Bellingham: the driver's license check that placed Bianchi's Los Angeles address next to two victims, the hairs found on a Bellingham staircase, and the fingerprint match.

Circumstances of the Interview

After his arrest Bianchi said he remembered nothing of the murders. His lawyers asked Dr. John Watkins, a psychologist from the University of Montana, to hypnotize him. In those sessions a personality calling itself "Steve" appeared and said that he, not Ken, had done the killings. On March 29, 1979, Bianchi entered an insanity plea, and the court called in further experts. Dr. Ralph Allison, a psychiatrist advising the judge, regressed him to age nine, where he spoke of a friend called "Stevie Walker", and reported that Bianchi was a dual personality and not competent to stand trial. The prosecution then retained Dr. Martin Orne of the University of Pennsylvania. Part One ends as Orne asks Bianchi on tape how he can know that Bianchi did not "cook this".

What the Interview Covers

On the tapes, Bianchi describes his move to California ("the sun, the girls, the beaches"), denies the killings, and later says that seeing the hypnosis tapes "scared the hell out of me". As "Steve" he tells Watkins he killed "the first girl", sorts photographs of victims into those he says he killed and those he says Angelo killed, and tells Allison how Angelo picked up a victim. Regressed to nine, he talks of his mother hitting him and of hiding under his bed. To Lunde, without hypnosis, he describes how victims were tied and killed in a spare room. The program also shows the police reaction ("this is bullshit", one Los Angeles detective wrote in his notebook), and Bianchi's account to police of stopping Kathy Lorre, daughter of the actor Peter Lorre, and letting her go.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The "Steve" tapes are the core record of one of the best-known attempts to fake multiple personality in a murder case. Frontline presented the broadcast as the first time viewers could watch psychiatrists examining a "mass murderer" (Frontline's own claim). Frontline says four experts at first concluded he was insane; Dr. Orne concluded that Bianchi was simulating, and investigators found that the name "Steve Walker" came from a real student whose identity Bianchi had tried to use to pose as a psychologist. Bianchi dropped the defense and on October 19, 1979, pleaded guilty to the two Bellingham murders; under the plea agreement he also admitted five Los Angeles murders, to which he pleaded guilty, and agreed to testify against Buono. He received life sentences. Buono was convicted of nine of the Los Angeles murders in 1983 and sentenced to life without parole.

Archival Importance

The program preserves a substantial selection of the original 1979 evaluation tapes in broadcast form, together with interviews recorded a few years after the case with the police officers, the examining experts and the people around Bianchi. Part Two, broadcast separately, shows Dr. Orne's tests and his conclusion; it is not part of this record.

Important Caveats

The multiple-personality claim was judged a fake: everything said as "Steve" or as the nine-year-old is Bianchi speaking under hypnosis, and is his claim, not a record of events. Part One deliberately ends without resolving the question, and includes experts (Watkins and Allison) who believed the diagnosis; the page should say that Orne's finding of simulation prevailed and that Bianchi later pleaded guilty. The program calls Bianchi a "mass murderer" and uses the 1984 language of "multiple personality". The YouTube copy is a VHS-quality unofficial upload. Several police officers and the prosecutor are identified only by on-screen captions; Frontline's own published transcript gives their names.

Announcer: Major funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.

Narrator: Tonight on Frontline. The scene: Los Angeles, 1977. A frightening series of murders by the Hillside Strangler. One suspect: an all-American boy.

Kenneth Bianchi: I've always wanted to go to California, the sun, the girls, the beaches, you know, the dreams.

Kelli Boyd: The kid I knew couldn't have ever hurt anybody or killed anybody.

Kenneth Bianchi: This one I killed. This was the first one I killed.

Narrator: The question: is he insane?

Expert: I was quite convinced that he was a full-fledged multiple personality.

Investigator: I believe that he is playing a role and playing a part.

Narrator: Through court-ordered videotapes, we examine with the experts the terrifying psychology of a killer. The Mind of a Murderer.

Announcer: From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit and WGBH Boston. This is Frontline.

Judy Woodruff: Good evening, I'm Judy Woodruff. As unpleasant as it is to hear, mass murders are on the rise in this country. The Justice Department says that in the last decade there have been at least 30 mass killers, and that each of them murdered at least six people. These gruesome numbers raise disturbing questions. What sort of man is Charles Manson, or the Son of Sam? Are they insane? That's sometimes the defense if they come to trial, and it's one that is increasingly controversial.

Judy Woodruff: Tonight on Frontline, a remarkable event. For the first time, you can journey with psychiatrists as they try to get inside the mind of a mass murderer: Kenneth Bianchi, the man who came to be known as the Hillside Strangler. Bianchi looked like an all-American boy, but he was involved in the murders of at least 10 women in Los Angeles and two more in Washington state. After his arrest, Bianchi took on the behavior of a multiple personality, and four experts concluded he was insane. But was he? Frontline has obtained exclusive access to over 60 hours of interviews videotaped after Kenneth Bianchi's arrest. So it is possible for us tonight to see and hear what happened behind the jailhouse doors, to see some of what the experts saw as they made up their minds about this man. The program is produced and directed by Michael Barnes. And a warning: there are brief but graphic photographs of the victims' bodies, as well as some strong language.

Kenneth Bianchi: Oh, you want to get back to why I came to California?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Kenneth Bianchi: Well, I came there hoping to find a better job. I've always wanted to go to California, the sun, the girls, the beaches, you know, the dreams. You don't think of the smog and the crazy city.

Narrator: Our story begins three years after Kenneth Bianchi's arrival in Los Angeles, in September 1977.

Radio News: This is KFWB News. Good afternoon, everyone, I'm Vince Campania. Here's the latest news at noon. Geneva talks on a test ban of nuclear weapons is stalemated by the three major powers, the United States, Britain and Russia. KFWB's Jim Mitchell will report on the discovery of a nude woman's body found in the La Crescenta area, and the ongoing investigation. [unclear: "For Los Angeles" (captions only)], it's going to be a beautiful weekend, it's going to be a high tomorrow of about 77 degrees. Glendale police have another apparent murder of a young woman on their hands. KFWB's Cecilia Pedroza has a direct report from Chevy Chase Drive.

Radio News: Another young woman has been found in the Highland Park area. I repeat, the body of another young woman has been found in the Highland Park area. Since Sunday morning, the bodies of three other young girls, aged 12, 14 and 20, have been found within a few miles of this spot. All of the killings have occurred within the past four weeks. All ten. Members of the Hillside Strangler Task Force are trying to trace the last movement for the young Glendale woman, now listed as the Hillside Strangler's victim.

Narrator: Most of the Strangler victims were found in the hills surrounding Los Angeles, often near freeways or in ravines. The victims were mostly teenagers and young women.

Lapd Official At A Press Conference: I wish I could come here and give you some good news. Unfortunately, I cannot. Apparently he is very good. He has certainly not left us the kind of evidence that we would need to make a direct connect-up. If he had, we would have him in jail today.

Narrator: Identikit pictures have so far failed to produce useful leads. Police psychologists believe he has a compulsion to repeat the crimes, and he will kill again.

Lapd Detective: This city was completely in the grip of the Hillside Stranglers. We spent hour after hour, night after night, right here in Hollywood. Hollywood is not what most people think of it, or as it's portrayed in movies. We were talking to people with no names, prostitutes, male and female, street people. People that were loaded didn't know if it was daylight or dark. And because of that, we got a lot of false leads and a lot of bad information.

Lapd Official: We had theorized early in the investigation the possibility of someone that had some police training or background, or was familiar with police tactics. We were forced to tell our citizenry not to stop for a police officer on a side street; to go to a lighted area, particularly young women, go to a lighted area or drive to a police station. The police would follow them and wait to talk to them at that location, because we felt it was too dangerous, with this information in our possession, to allow our citizenry to stop on the side streets for our officers.

Narrator: Perhaps the most appalling in this series of murders was the murder of the two little girls. Dolly Cepeda and Sonja Johnson were 12 and 14 years old.

Lapd Detective: These girls were considered good girls, family girls. They were not girls of the street. When they came here on Sunday afternoon, the families expected them to be safe. This shopping center is guarded, and it's in a safe area. We didn't have any idea where they went, where they were killed, who took them. We had no witnesses, we had no physical evidence, and all we had was, eight days later, we found the nude bodies of these two young girls on the hillside not far from here.

Narrator: All the victims had been raped and strangled to death. They included 19-year-old Yolanda Washington, 15-year-old Judith Miller, 21-year-old Lissa Kastin, 20-year-old Kristina Weckler, 14-year-old Sonja Johnson, 12-year-old Dolly Cepeda, 28-year-old Jane King, 18-year-old Lauren Wagner, 17-year-old Kimberly Martin and 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth.

Commentator: What was so frightening about the Hillside Strangler was that the picture I had in my mind was of the average, ordinary man: someone that could be my colleague in the office, someone that could be waiting on my table in a restaurant, taking my tickets at the theater. He was not going to be a monster. He was going to fade into anonymity among all the other people. He was going to be somebody's loving son, loving husband, sweet brother, good neighbor. People were going to be surprised when we found out. And that was really frightening, because you didn't have a way to guard yourself, to protect yourself, because it could have been anybody.

Narrator: And then the murders stopped. Ten women had died in five months. They appeared to be perfect crimes. There were no clues. Almost 150 detectives had conducted the biggest manhunt in the history of Los Angeles. It failed, and the killer or killers remained at large. But as the weeks passed, there were no more murders, and the city began to relax. Nearly a year later, two young women, university students, were reported missing 1,100 miles north in Bellingham, a small lumbering and fishing center just below the Canadian border in the state of Washington, a town with just six detectives.

Bellingham Police Detective: [unclear: "Bellingham Police. Missing from where?" (Whisper; partly in captions)] The girl reported missing to us was Karen Mandic. We then contacted her boyfriend, and he told us that she had received a job, a house-sitting. This would be when a person goes away for some reason and leaves the house vacant. Security agencies here in the city of Bellingham will have people come to the home and stay in the home for a period of time, [unclear: "like two an hour" / "like to an hour"], while they put in security alarm systems or something on this order. She was to receive $100 for this hour's work. With her at the time, she took her roommate, Diane Wilder. We contacted the security agency, and the person in charge of this particular house-sitting told us that he did not know Karen or Diane.

Narrator: But the police soon learned that, unbeknownst to the agency, one of their own security managers had lured Karen Mandic to the house with the promise of a well-paid job. Karen had been working at the Fred Meyer department store. She was last seen driving her car to the house-sitting job. Eighteen hours later, the bodies of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder were found in their car on this hillside overlooking Bellingham. They had been strangled.

Bellingham Police Detective: There were no fingerprints in the vehicle. However, there were strangulation marks on the bodies, and at this point it was decided to arrest the security guard, and this was a uniformed security guard. So arrangements were made with his boss to call him on the radio and have him dispatched to the south terminal guard shack area, and we could arrest him there. As a uniformed security guard, he is armed, and this would be a much safer area for the police and everybody else to make an arrest of this type.

Narrator: The man arrested was 27-year-old Kenneth Bianchi. He had left the Glendale area of Los Angeles a few months earlier and come to live here with his son and girlfriend, Kelli Boyd.

Kelli Boyd: The kid I knew couldn't have ever hurt anybody or killed anybody.

Interviewer: What sort of person was he?

Kelli Boyd: He was very thoughtful, and real helpful with the baby. And even around the house, he was real helpful. He, um, he just wasn't the kind of person that could have killed somebody.

Narrator: His employers and colleagues could not believe it when Kenneth Bianchi was arrested.

Former Employer: I thought he was very good, professional-wise, as far as security officer. And I told his employer when he came to me that I'd like to have about, you know, 15 or 20 more like him, because he handled his job very well. And I had a lot of faith in him, and he was dependable. And he carried himself very neat, and his uniform was very neat.

Former Co-Worker: My girlfriend and I went down to the security office here and applied for our job. And he was the first thing that we saw walk around the corner for our interview, and we both went, "Wow, look at that hunk." And when we went in for an interview, he was talking about his little boy, and just a really nice guy. And then he came out to visit us a few times, and helped us take down our tree, and sent us flowers for Christmas. Just an all-around good guy.

Narrator: Could Ken Bianchi really be a killer? Even the chief of police had his doubts.

Bellingham Chief Of Police: My impression was, and I mentioned it to Bob Knudsen from our department, that whoever did this, this is not the first time around. He's killed before. I think we both felt very strongly about that. On the other hand, the suspect at that time, we knew somewhat his background: that he had been a security guard, was considered a good applicant for our own police department, was studying to be a sheriff's reserve officer. And that didn't really seem to blend with the evidence that this was someone who was not a neophyte killer.

Narrator: To the lawyer appointed to defend him, Bianchi presented further peculiarities.

Defense Attorney: He seemed pretty normal, but there were some things that didn't fit. He indicated he didn't know anything about the homicides, and yet he gave a series of increasingly incredible explanations of what he had been doing on the night of the murders. And so I checked out the psychiatric background by calling Don Lunde from Stanford Medical School.

Narrator: Dr. Lunde was clinical associate professor of psychiatry and had been an expert witness in the Patty Hearst trial.

Dr. Donald Lunde: The thing that puzzled me was that there were some things he seemed not to remember, or had different versions of, which had no relation to the crime. And the two that stand out the most in my mind are his description of his mother as a wonderful, saintly kind of woman, when I knew from records from childhood and so on that that was not the case. And secondly, the fact that he had no memory, he had a loss of memory, amnesia as we would call it, for various events in his childhood, including periods when he was in psychiatric treatment. And so I was puzzled by this. But other than that, say, he seemed like a nice enough fellow.

Narrator: This was how Bianchi came across to most of his interviewers.

Kenneth Bianchi: I don't remember.

Interviewer: I just asked [unclear: "that last one" (Whisper only)].

Kenneth Bianchi: I seriously don't remember.

Interviewer: [unclear: "Can't remember what you ran the hundred in" / "I can't remember what you ran under you"]? Because it was very good.

Kenneth Bianchi: Oh, it might have been good. I really don't remember. I, I never thought about it. No, I think it was more like 10.1, something like that.

Interviewer: Good for high school.

Kenneth Bianchi: 10.1. Yeah, I was always physically fit, through high school, through college. As a matter of fact, in college I ran two to three miles every other day. I ran with a friend, one of the original [unclear: "doctors" / "jokers"]. Yeah, I just loved it.

Narrator: While psychiatrists continued to examine Bianchi, a Bellingham detective began telephone checks in Los Angeles, because Bianchi had a California driver's license.

Lapd Detective: During that conversation, he related the facts of how their case occurred. Our investigator said, "Have you ever heard about the Hillside Strangler?" He said no, that he hadn't. He said, "I think you've got something there. It's awfully close to what we've been working on." Said he would get back to him. Subsequent to that, the investigator came to this machine, entered Kenneth Bianchi's name and his birth date, received this teletype from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Says Kenneth Alessio Bianchi, 809 East Garfield, Apartment D. Kristina Weckler, one of the victims, lived in Apartment C or E, right next door at 809 East Garfield. Also Cindy Hudspeth, our last victim, lived across the street at 800 East Garfield. With this teletype, we had tied him into two of the murders right away.

Narrator: This looked like the break Los Angeles police had been waiting for. But could they prove it? They went to Bellingham, where Bianchi had been charged with murder, even though police there still had no conclusive evidence. Four weeks after Bianchi's arrest, officers Nolte and Knudsen revisited the house where they believed the two women had been killed, not so much by strangling, but by hanging.

Bellingham Police Detective: This staircase here in the city of Bellingham, on Edgemoor, after four or five weeks of working this house, is where we finally located the evidence that positively put the suspect with the two girls. And the homicide of the two girls occurred on this sixth step right here. We discussed many times the method by which the girls were hung, and of course in a hanging there's a certain amount of violence, kicking, thrashing. And this residence had absolutely no sign of violence in it. There was no overturned furniture or anything. And the only place that it could logically have been done was within the stairwell. Fred and I came over and decided to start at the bottom of the stairwell and do a search, careful search, for hairs and fibers. We spent four hours searching this stairwell. We started at the bottom with a bright light, on our hands and knees, and tweezers, and worked our way up. When we got to the sixth step, we found a pubic hair. And when we got to approximately the ninth and tenth steps, we found long blonde and long dark hairs. These hairs were later identified as belonging to our two victims, and the pubic hair was identified as belonging to Ken Bianchi. These hairs were the final piece of evidence that tied this case together for us. It put the cap on it. It was over. We were ready to go to court.

Interviewer: That must have been quite a day.

Bellingham Police Detective: It was a hell of a day.

Narrator: But did Bianchi also commit the Los Angeles murders? LA detective Dudley Varney had his doubts. The methods of strangulation were different. The Bellingham bodies were clothed, and those in Los Angeles were naked. But Varney did bring back a set of Bianchi's fingerprints from Bellingham to compare with the prints found during the Los Angeles investigation. Still, there was no real reason to believe they would match.

Lapd Fingerprint Examiner: This is the palm print of Kenneth Bianchi that was brought in by Dudley Varney. I immediately noticed, however, that he had a pattern in one of his fingers that we had been looking at for probably close to a year. So I immediately examined that one print. Here is an enlargement of the left ring finger of Kenneth Bianchi. The characteristics present in this latent fingerprint and the characteristics present in this exemplar matched, and from these characteristics I was able to make the identification. The more I began to look, the more things began to fall in. And before too much longer, I was jumping around here like a ping-pong ball. I was elated. It was unbelievable, 13 months of this kind of work, and coming on to identifying a suspect in a case like this was just the greatest thrill of my life.

Narrator: The police now felt that Bianchi was the Hillside Strangler and also had murdered the women in Bellingham. But had he acted alone?

Lapd Detective: We were looking for a co-conspirator on this series of crimes. We were looking for an associate. And our conversation with Kelli Boyd, we came up with one answer. The only person that Kenneth ran with was Angelo Buono. We said, "Well, who else does he see? Does he go out drinking with the boys at night, or stop for a beer, or play games, or play baseball, or anything?" And she just shook her head and said, "No. The only time he's away from home, he's with Angelo. He only has Angelo."

Narrator: Angelo Buono was Kenneth Bianchi's cousin, with whom he had lived when he first came to Los Angeles. Buono was a hard-working, well-respected car upholsterer who had renovated many antique cars for show business personalities. There was nothing to link him with any of the murders, but the police put him under 24-hour surveillance. Back in Bellingham, despite the fingerprint evidence, Bianchi continued to insist on his innocence.

Kenneth Bianchi: Between the publicity and the damage done to my family and to myself, and to a point where my lawyer and I just couldn't see eye to eye, because I knew what I had done, and I hadn't killed any girls.

Narrator: But police evidence was so strong that Bianchi's lawyers began to investigate whether his failure to remember meant he had serious psychological problems. Investigation now focused not on his guilt, but on his state of mind. Dr. John Watkins, professor of psychology at the University of Montana, was asked by Bianchi's lawyers to use hypnosis to try to unblock Bianchi's memory. His arrival produced a sensational turning point in the case.

Dr. John Watkins: He seemed to be an easy-going, nice, friendly young man, like the boy next door. He was much more concerned about what was happening inside of himself than he was in regards to what the law might do to him. He didn't believe he could possibly have done these crimes, and refused to allow his attorney to plead an insanity defense. And I spent about the first hour getting acquainted with him.

Narrator: Dr. Watkins visited Bianchi in the Bellingham jail. It was there that over 60 hours of interviews were eventually videotaped.

Dr. John Watkins: And we're going to be tape recording, just a regular audio recording. And we also have some videotape here, which we may use later. And we'll use it only because it could be of help to you.

Kenneth Bianchi: I can't tell you, I'm terrified about this whole thing.

Dr. John Watkins: And if you agree to it?

Kenneth Bianchi: No, I don't, I don't mind. [cut] Something inside of me was just boiling. I don't know why. [unclear: "It, yeah" (captions only)]. I'm sorry I just ran out like that.

Kenneth Bianchi: Yes. Yes, I do.

Dr. John Watkins: Well... I'd like to try [unclear: "with something" (Whisper only)], and [unclear: "you understand you better" (Whisper only)], okay?

Kenneth Bianchi: Okay.

Narrator: Bianchi agreed to allow Dr. Watkins to hypnotize him in an attempt to restore his memory.

Kenneth Bianchi: Do you want me to sit back?

Dr. John Watkins: Yes. [pause] [unclear: "Yes, of course" (Whisper only; speaker uncertain)]. Close your eyes, Ken. Um... You were telling me that you were feeling very uncomfortable. I was sort of wondering why that feeling of uncomfortableness...

Narrator: Over the next few weeks, in a series of interviews that usually, but not always, included hypnosis, something totally unexpected happened. Dr. Watkins began to uncover an astonishing and different side to Kenneth Bianchi.

Dr. John Watkins: [unclear: "He'd like to know a little more why" / "I think I could know a little more"] that uncomfortableness is there.

Kenneth Bianchi: Yes.

Kenneth Bianchi: Guess what?

Dr. John Watkins: Hi.

Kenneth Bianchi: Hi.

Dr. John Watkins: [unclear: "How do you count?" / "How you can"]

Kenneth Bianchi: Do I look like Ken?

Dr. John Watkins: Well, no. Do you know who I am?

Kenneth Bianchi: Sure I know [who] you are.

Dr. John Watkins: Okay.

Kenneth Bianchi: Uh, you're [unclear: "a little disturbed of me" / "really disturbed with me"]. So what?

Dr. John Watkins: Okay. [unclear: "We just understand each other" (captions only)].

Kenneth Bianchi: I don't like you. I don't like you at all.

Dr. John Watkins: Well, why don't you like me? [unclear: "It is from Kenneth, sir" / "again"]?

Kenneth Bianchi: No, it's not. It's Steve.

Dr. John Watkins: Okay, Steve.

Dr. John Watkins: This entity emerged, and when I asked him if it was Ken, he said, "No, it's Steve." I then talked to Steve about his situation. And he kept talking about how he hated that turkey, meaning Ken, and how he was fooling that turkey. He also began to talk about the murders, said that he had conducted the murders, that Ken didn't know anything about it. And he laughed very heartily as he described how Ken would lose a tremendous amount of time. He asked me, he said, "How would you feel if you lost more time than a broken clock?" He also began to mention about killing those girls down in Los Angeles.

Narrator: Steve, the other personality, made a momentous confession. He admitted that he was the Hillside Strangler.

Kenneth Bianchi: Yeah, I killed the first girl.

Dr. John Watkins: You killed the first girl. [unclear: "Who was she here?" / "You moved here"]

Kenneth Bianchi: You know her. That n-----.

Dr. John Watkins: Oh. I see. How did you happen to decide on her?

Kenneth Bianchi: Well, I don't see anything wrong with it. It was just there.

Dr. John Watkins: I must admit that I was quite surprised when this came out, because I had been thinking in terms of an amnesia, maybe only possibly a multiple personality, and only very possibly that he could be connected to the Hillside Strangler crimes.

Narrator: Multiple personality is a rare mental disorder made famous in the books The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil, and the movies which followed. These were true stories of people in whom two or more personalities existed in the same body. The claim that Bianchi, like Eve, had more than one personality transformed the case.

Dr. John Watkins: In a true multiple personality, there are completely separate personalities within the same body. There may be two or three or four or more. Each one has its own identity. Each one has its own behaviors, its mannerisms, its speech. And when one is out, it may be completely unaware of the existence of the others.

Narrator: In later interviews, Steve, Ken's other personality, went on to say that his cousin Angelo was the other killer.

Kenneth Bianchi: [unclear: "See, I got your K, okay. You want to know which one is Angelo and I did away..."] If you want to think [unclear], I'm not going to tell you. Huh?

Examiner: I don't know if you're going to tell me or not.

Kenneth Bianchi: It's my decision, isn't it?

Examiner: I guess it is, right. You don't have to, you don't have to take credit for any of them, you don't want to.

Kenneth Bianchi: Hey, man, it doesn't bother me any. You know, I told you, killing a broad doesn't make any difference to me. Killing any fucking body doesn't make any difference.

Examiner: Maybe you didn't kill any of those, I don't know.

Kenneth Bianchi: Oh, hey, no, wrong, [unclear: "man" / "daddy"]. Hey, I killed a couple of these.

Examiner: Oh, come on. You think you did, right?

Kenneth Bianchi: I killed her. Angelo killed her. [unclear: "They mean the wanker when Angelo killed her" / "they mean the Wagner when Angela killed"]. This broad I'd never seen before. [unclear: "Mark" (captions only)]. This broad I'd never seen before. [unclear: "Hudspeth?" / "hud spent"]

Examiner: You never saw them at all?

Kenneth Bianchi: No. This broad I'd never seen before. [unclear: "Robinson" / "Robinson says"]. This broad I killed. These two Angelo killed. [unclear: "Mexico Johnson" (captions only)]. This one I'd never seen before. [unclear: "Angelo killed. Huh." (captions only)] This one I'd never seen before. This broad I killed. [unclear: "Bark home" (captions only)]

Examiner: This, Kastin, is the broad you killed, you say?

Kenneth Bianchi: Am I going too fast for you?

Examiner: [unclear: "Yeah, he goes to the empath" (captions only)] I'm not that smart. Okay. I'm not as bright as you are.

Kenneth Bianchi: Since I enjoy your taste here and your interest, and I'm really, you know, very pleased that you've taken interest in this, I'm going to do you a favor, [unclear: "and borrow your script here" / "let me draw your script here"], okay?

Examiner: Sure.

Kenneth Bianchi: Okay, I'll do you a favor, so that you don't get lost along the way.

Examiner: Okay, all right.

Kenneth Bianchi: It's real easy. [unclear: "This grand is" / "What you understand is"] this one I killed. These two I don't know about. This one I don't know about. This one I killed. This was the first one I killed. This one, this one...

Examiner: Remember that cut? [unclear: "She wore her hair differently" / "Could she have worn her hair differently"] or something.

Kenneth Bianchi: I don't fucking remember. How would I know? [pause] Angelo, Angelo will be a cross, okay? I'll make it nice and easy for you. He's my kind of man.

Examiner: Okay.

Kenneth Bianchi: There should be more people in the world like Angelo.

Examiner: All right. And [unclear: "once Angelo's across" / "the ones that Angelo's across"], which ones are you, then?

Kenneth Bianchi: I'm the X's.

Examiner: Oh, you're the X's?

Kenneth Bianchi: Yeah. You want me to write that [unclear: "in the top" / "out"] for you, so you can remember?

Examiner: Sure.

Narrator: Dr. Watkins's investigation had uncovered a violent character, horribly different from the all-American boy, Kenneth Bianchi, whom everyone had come to know. [unclear: "You didn't even know" (Whisper only; possibly a fragment of tape audio)] Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Bianchi's cousin Angelo denied any involvement. There was no evidence against him except what Steve had said.

Kelli Boyd: Ken's attorney told me that some interesting things were coming out in the interviews, and he asked me if I'd ever heard of the book Sybil, or The Three Faces of Eve. And I had heard of Sybil, and so I asked him what he meant, how that related to Ken. And he said that under hypnosis another personality, or another part of Ken's personality, seemed to come out, and it was someone that acted unlike anything that he had seen so far. And he asked me a lot of questions about what he was like before, and tried to find out if I had ever seen any of that personality that had shown up on tapes in the jail during the interviews. And from what they described, I'd never seen that.

Narrator: What was the reaction of the Los Angeles police when they saw the videotapes?

Lapd Detective: I almost threw up. I've seen hypnosis before. I've never seen anything quite like this. From that point on, it just looked like a sham. I've still got my notebook where, after viewing the first tapes, I wrote in there, "This is bullshit," and underlined it three times.

Narrator: And what was Ken Bianchi's reaction when he was finally shown the tapes?

Kenneth Bianchi: Quite frankly, um, a little ways through the hypnosis session, it scared the hell out of me. I just, I just really [was] surprised, you know. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, and it just really bothered me really bad. Um, I can't touch on all my feelings that I was having, but it just really bothered me. As a matter of fact, I couldn't go any further [unclear: "far away" (both passes; possibly "halfway")] through this one particular tape, and I stopped. And Dean talked to me, and John talked to me, and you know, they really helped a lot, as far as, you know, putting some things in perspective, and giving me support and things like that, you know, and reinforcing the feelings that I actually had, but I had buried, you know, to let these other feelings out, when I was, you know, so disturbed by what I saw.

Narrator: After viewing these tapes, Bianchi still said he could not remember the crimes, and knew nothing of the personality called Steve. But for the first time, he did concede that his body must have done the murders. He entered an insanity defense before the Bellingham court on March 29, 1979. If successful, he could avoid the death penalty, and perhaps eventually even win his freedom. The judge was faced with a dilemma. For seven weeks Bianchi had refused an insanity defense. Now he had changed his mind. A panel of experts was appointed. The question was: was Bianchi truly a multiple personality? Dr. Ralph Allison, a California psychiatrist and leading authority on multiple personality, was called in to advise the judge. He was independent of both the defense and the prosecution.

Dr. Ralph Allison: The man was a very pleasant, very nice, very courteous, you know, just an ordinary middle-class working fellow, with a wife and child, who had no idea how he got into this jam, totally baffled by it. And then during the session where he had gone into a trance, out came this monstrous personality that called himself Steve, admitted to the killings, and made it quite clear he didn't give a damn about human life.

Kenneth Bianchi: Angelo went and picked her up. I was waiting on the street. He drove her around to where I was. I got in the car. We got on the freeway. I fucked her and killed her. We dumped her body off, and that was it. Nothing to it.

Dr. Ralph Allison: The only thing I had to go on in any of this was matching him off against what I had come to know about the patients that I had treated myself. And there are three basic areas. One is a history, and one is his appearance right there in front of me, and the third is certain psychological tests that you might apply. And certainly we had a good deal of history from him, psychological workups in his youth, and doctors' reports, and it showed a tremendous amount of pathology and difficulty in the family. And all of this, you know, he was considered a very disturbed child.

Dr. Ralph Allison: We collected the psychiatric records of Ken Bianchi. To give you an example, he was trotted from doctor to doctor with a series of physical ailments. His eyes rolled, he had tics, he fell down, he had what they thought were petit mal seizures, and the doctor said, "See a psychiatrist." His mother took him to the DePaul clinic, and these are quotes from their report. Quote: "Dr. Dowling reported that Kenneth is a deeply hostile boy who has extremely dependent needs, which his mother fulfills. He depends upon his mother for his very survival and expends a great deal of energy keeping his hostility under control and under cover. There seems some basic confusion about his own identity. He tries very hard to placate his mother, but she always seems dissatisfied." To sum up, Dr. Dowling said that "he is a severely repressed boy who is very anxious and very lonely." Now, I then contacted the psychologist who wrote that report when he was 11 years old. He responded, "In my opinion, the psychological test data from 1962, when he was 11, are quite consistent with a subsequent condition of multiple personality."

Investigator: During our interviews of the people that knew Bianchi, his co-workers, his friends, relatives, kids that he'd grown up with, at no time were we able to come up with a personality change or a mood change. He's a very, very smart man, and I believe to him this is a challenge. I believe that he is playing a role and playing a part. I think it's part of his ego. I think he feeds his ego with it, and he's having a ball.

Dr. Ralph Allison: We didn't rely just on the records. We found, for example, in his basement, this statue. This was traced to a high school sculpture class. Now remember, the psychologist reported that he told them fun for him was playing games, scary games, in which he was the monster. This is the product of his sculpture. [unclear: "The mother" / "My mother"] had been recommended for therapy, the child had been recommended for therapy; neither one had gone. So we knew no resolution had occurred. And then I did a hypnosis, and tried to carry him back in time to see what kind of specific difficulties occurred between him and his mother.

Dr. Ralph Allison: When I stop at a certain age, I want you to feel as you were at that age: not as you think you should have been, or what you hoped you might have been, but as you really were. And being able then to talk to me about whatever kind of problems occurred to you at that age, as if you are, you know, going through those problems very recently, but are now able to express them to me as if I was a counselor there for you at that time. I'll just count backwards slowly, and you allow your mind to gear into those age states as you get younger. [cut] 27, going down to 26, 25... [cut] 11, 10 and 9. I'd like to talk to the nine-year-old Ken, in any way that is comfortable for you being nine years old, being aware of me, not being bothered by anything else, not being upset about what's in the surroundings. I'd like you to be the nine-year-old Ken, telling me about what kind of important things have been going on with you in recent days. [pause] What's been going on, Ken?

Kenneth Bianchi: I've been playing. [pause] There've been a lot of fights between my mom and dad. [pause] My mom [unclear: "pissed me" / "hits me"] a lot.

Dr. Ralph Allison: Your mom hits you?

Dr. Ralph Allison: He was a very lonely child. He felt that his mother kept his playmates away. He was the victim of her anger at her husband, who was going out to the racetracks and losing the family paycheck. So she took it out on her son, because her husband wasn't there.

Kenneth Bianchi: I don't want to get hit. When I do what I want to do, I get hit. I don't want to get hit anymore. She hits my dad. She hits me.

Dr. Ralph Allison: Where are you living now?

Kenneth Bianchi: [unclear: "Big greenhouse on one street, Phillip Street, Woodtown"] ... Rochester, New York. [unclear: "It's an old art" (captions only)]

Dr. Ralph Allison: Just turning nine. How'd you celebrate your ninth birthday?

Kenneth Bianchi: I thought I'd have a cake and a lot of friends over. My mom got mad at me. I didn't have any of my friends over. I was gonna have a party, and there was no party.

Dr. Ralph Allison: Where do you hide?

Kenneth Bianchi: Under my bed, in my closet, behind the house. [pause] The bed's the best place.

Dr. Ralph Allison: Do you hide inside your own head?

Kenneth Bianchi: Sometimes, just to get away.

Dr. Ralph Allison: What are you doing there? [unclear: "Talk." / "Somebody else"] Anybody else there to talk to?

Kenneth Bianchi: My friend.

Dr. Ralph Allison: Who's that?

Kenneth Bianchi: Stevie. He's my second best [unclear: "friend" / "buddy"].

Dr. Ralph Allison: Was there a last name?

Kenneth Bianchi: He did have a last name.

Dr. Ralph Allison: What was it?

Kenneth Bianchi: I can't remember.

Dr. Ralph Allison: [unclear: "What's Stevie?" / "What's Dean?"]

Kenneth Bianchi: Walker.

Dr. Ralph Allison: Walker. Where did he get that name? [unclear: "He knows his parents" / "Do you know his parents"]?

Kenneth Bianchi: He didn't have any parents. Stevie was alone.

Dr. Ralph Allison: This is characteristic of multiple personalities, because they just cannot run away physically, so they run away inside their minds. They create somebody who does the escape, or handles it. It would seem that Ken coped with this by a process of denying that problems really occurred: denying that his mother was being so hard on him. She was in his mind a very loving person, and he manufactured this fantasy. Because that didn't follow through, then he would repress his feelings of anger toward her, bury them in his mind somewhere, and this then would be walled off from the rest of his mind as a sewer. That's what would later erupt. But at the time he was a child, he would pour more and more of his hostility, resentment toward her, into this portion of his mind where he could store it up. Eventually it would erupt. And when it erupted, these women got killed. They were raped and then killed.

Dr. Ralph Allison: So I wrote a report to the judge stating my opinion. This is what I said to him: "That he is a dual personality, and has been so since the age of nine. At that time he created an alter personality, which took the name of Steve Walker. This was while he was hiding under the bed in his bedroom, trying to escape his mother's vicious tongue and punishing hand. As time elapsed, Steve Walker became more and more independent in action, and was able to take over the body of Kenneth Bianchi and caused a great deal of trouble in the family, and later in the world outside the family." Then I concluded that "Ken Bianchi is able to understand what he is charged with, but he has amnesia for the actual incidents during which his body was under the control of Steve Walker. Therefore, he has not been able to discuss his whereabouts, actions and motives with his attorney, since all of that time is completely unknown to him. Steve Walker, on the other hand, does not consider Mr. Brett to be his attorney. Therefore, at the present time, I would not consider Ken Bianchi or Steve Walker competent to stand trial for the crimes charged." And that's what I reported to the judge.

Narrator: But the Bellingham investigators were not impressed by the videotaped interviews, and even less impressed by Dr. Allison.

Bellingham Police Detective: When he first came here and we were waiting to start a session, we were standing around outside the area talking, and he indicated that it was very important to him to establish this multiple personality, because he was close to a world-record number of finds of multiple personalities, and he was writing a book, or had a book going, on this topic. And I felt that it was more important to him that the multiple personality be found than, in my mind, the facts of the case be brought forth.

Narrator: The Los Angeles police never had the opportunity to talk to the Steve personality, so they decided to take Ken back to Los Angeles, to the streets from which the victims had been abducted, to retrace the steps of each crime. While they were doing this, Bianchi began to remember more about the murders than he had so far admitted to the doctors.

Lapd Detective: A couple of things that he told us about became very important in the case. One of the incidents was an incident involving Kathy Lorre. Kathy Lorre is the young daughter of Peter Lorre, a very famous Hollywood actor. Bianchi told us of this incident where they had stopped her on the streets in Hollywood, a short distance from here, around the time of the Judy Miller abduction. And using police badges, they had stopped her and told her that they were police officers. After asking her for identification, she presented a wallet. In the wallet, along with her identification, was a photograph of her as a youngster on her father's knee. And anybody that's grown up in this area, or is familiar with movies, recognizes Peter Lorre. Discretion the better part of valor, they decided they'd back off this one and let her go. She subsequently ended up taking us to the location where the incident that Bianchi related to us had occurred, and she described it exactly the way Bianchi described it.

Dr. John Watkins: As far as I know, they were laughing at us behind our backs. They thought Bianchi was just putting on a real great show for us and leading us down the primrose path. They didn't understand how we could be fooled so easily, I think.

Interviewer: But do you feel it's a difficult condition to understand?

Dr. John Watkins: Very difficult. I mean, we were trying to find out how these different sections of his mind were operating, and in the process there had to be a leakage from one to the other. We could not help that. And when there's a leakage, then there's a change in the status. The part that didn't know about things now knew about things.

Interviewer: So that means he can change from month to month?

Dr. John Watkins: That means he can change from day to day. And there was at least one point where he had a major change, where one night a lot of awareness of the crime suddenly came into his mind. He became acutely suicidal, he called for his lawyer, they had a meeting, and he calmed down. From then on he had no doubt he had done the crime, and he certainly was a great deal different to an examiner, because he didn't deny it anymore.

Narrator: In July 1979, six months after his arrest, Ken Bianchi, as Ken, began to remember the Los Angeles murders. Without hypnosis, he described them to Dr. Lunde.

Kenneth Bianchi: And then they were brought into... all the killings occurred in the spare room next to the bathroom.

Dr. Donald Lunde: Wait a minute, we skipped the sex here.

Kenneth Bianchi: Oh, we're not there yet.

Dr. Donald Lunde: Oh, okay.

Kenneth Bianchi: [unclear: "Hands are" / "His hands are"] tied, and then they're taken to... Hands are tied, and then they're taken into the spare room next to the bathroom. [pause] That's when there was sex with, with the girls. [pause] After that, they were, they were untied, allowed to dress themselves, tied up again, and they sat back on the, on the bed. And meanwhile, the, um, everything was made ready. [pause] They were then...

Dr. Donald Lunde: What did that involve?

Kenneth Bianchi: Um, getting the rope, uh, to kill them with.

Dr. Donald Lunde: Okay.

Kenneth Bianchi: Or whatever.

Dr. Donald Lunde: Okay. [unclear: "Come on" (Whisper only)].

Kenneth Bianchi: Um, I can't believe I'm talking about this. I've come a long way, Dr. Lunde.

Narrator: Four experts now agreed Bianchi was insane, and the county prosecutor feared he could go free.

Whatcom County Prosecutor: I was very concerned. I spoke to the defense attorney, and he's a person I've worked with in many cases, and he's a very straightforward attorney, and he was absolutely convinced that Mr. Bianchi was a multiple personality, and felt that he could actually convince me of that, and he believed that he would be acquitted by reason of insanity. That concerned me a great deal, because that meant he would be out on the streets if he could just convince a number of psychiatrists that he was cured of his problem, which [unclear: "I don't think he could easily do" / "I felt he could easily do"].

Interviewer: So how did you handle this?

Whatcom County Prosecutor: We sought an expert in hypnosis, and in fact we obtained a worldwide recognized expert, Dr. Orne.

Narrator: Dr. Martin Orne is professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Could he shed new light on Kenneth Bianchi?

Dr. Martin Orne: He seemed like a pleasant, cooperative individual. But whenever I see an individual in a forensic situation, somebody accused of premeditated murder, facing a death penalty, I always have to ask myself: is this individual telling me how he really feels, or is he malingering, or faking? Because after all, there's a tremendous motivation to appear insane, and that way not be responsible for the things he did. And so before you can make a diagnosis, well, I have to decide whether he is for real.

Dr. Martin Orne: I've met Ken, but I haven't met Steve yet, so I'd like to meet Steve for a bit.

Kenneth Bianchi: What do you want?

Dr. Martin Orne: I'd like to talk to you.

Kenneth Bianchi: You got a fucking cigarette? [pause] Give me a cigarette.

Narrator: During hypnosis, Steve appeared for Dr. Orne, as he had for Drs. Watkins and Allison. But this time there was a new surprise: other personalities also appeared.

Expert: I knew that he had been appointed by the prosecuting attorney, and the hopes were that he would demolish the insanity defense by showing no evidence of a multiple personality. And here I saw the personalities laid out. I mean, Ken was there, and clearly Steve came out, and then we had this little boy that was a scared little kid. And I thought, my goodness, Dr. Orne's now on the side of truth and justice, you know. He will now be able to testify that he's got the multiple personalities. So I was very happy with it. I thought it was a very good presentation.

Narrator: But Dr. Orne thought there was another possibility: Bianchi could be faking. Orne asked Bianchi directly.

Dr. Martin Orne: You have to recognize, given your ability and your motivation, the possibility of your using a multiple personality, perhaps even using some of the psychiatrists, psychologists who saw you, to your own ends, has to be considered very serious.

Kenneth Bianchi: Sure. Absolutely.

Dr. Martin Orne: And I don't think it has been considered thus far. How do I know that you didn't [unclear: "try to" / "have to"] cook this?

Narrator: Is Dr. Orne right? Did Bianchi cook it? The other psychiatrists were convinced he was insane. The police were equally convinced that Bianchi had fooled the experts. They feared that two mass murderers, Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono, could go free. But can the police prove their case? Is Kenneth Bianchi insane, or is he a cold-blooded killer faking insanity?

Judy Woodruff: Next week we'll bring you Part Two of The Mind of a Murderer.

Narrator: Dr. Martin Orne, the psychiatrist brought in by the prosecution, continues his study of Kenneth Bianchi. Dr. Orne pulls a dramatic surprise. He replays key sections of the interview tapes, retests Bianchi, and submits a startling diagnosis: Kenneth Bianchi is a streetwise and dangerous psychopath who brilliantly fooled four psychological experts.

Dr. Martin Orne: Either he is giving me a bare-faced lie, and he's been accused of being a pathological liar by many people, or the same thing could be explained by his being a multiple personality and really not knowing. And the problem is to distinguish between these two possibilities. The behavior could be explained in both ways.

Expert: I couldn't see that this was fake. I couldn't see that it was a play act. And I really couldn't comprehend his reasoning. I was totally baffled.

Investigator: Well, he's a man with a tremendous ego, that is intelligent, has the ability to do whatever he wants to do. But he is also a multiple murderer.

Judy Woodruff: Who is right, Dr. Orne or the other experts? The surprising conclusion to The Mind of a Murderer, next week on Frontline. I'm Judy Woodruff.

Announcer: For a transcript of this program, please send $4 to Frontline, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts 02134. Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH Boston, which is solely responsible for its content. Major funding for Frontline was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide. For videocassette information about Frontline, write to PBS Video, Box 8092, Washington, D.C. 20024. [End of recording, 57:44] ---