Twelve women’s lives were taken with sickening brutality by a pair of men pretending to be police officers. Those two men were Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr.
Kenneth Bianchi was born on the 22nd of May 1951 in Rochester, New York. Just two weeks after his birth, Bianchi was put up for adoption. He wouldn’t be in the system for too long as Nicholas Bianchi and Frances Scioliono-Bianchi adopted him in August of the same year. Bianchi was the couple’s only child.
Bianchi was described as a compulsive liar from the day he could talk by Frances. Often he would have daydreams described as inattentive and trance-like, during these episodes Bianchi’s eyes would roll to the back of his head. At age 5 these episodes were diagnosed as petit mal seizures. On top of the seizures, Bianchi frequently went to have physical examinations for involuntary bladder problems which caused him great humiliation.
With all the medical troubles that Bianchi faced he also began showing behavioural issues as well. He would have outbursts described as fits of anger. This would lead to Bianchi being diagnosed with Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder at age 10.
At school, Bianchi was deemed an underachiever despite having his IQ measured at 116 when he was 11. The same description of Bianchi being an underachiever followed him through multiple schools, each switch because he didn’t get along with the teachers. Frances called him lazy and teachers claimed he was working below capacity.
Tragedy hit the family in 1964 when Nicholas sadly passed away from Pneumonia. Bianchi refused to show any signs of grief, nobody seeing him cry for the passing of his father. During this time, Frances was the sole provider for the home and became known for taking Bianchi out of school for long periods at a time.
Bianchi graduated from Gates-Chili High School in 1970 and quickly married his girlfriend at the time. Their relationship ended after 8 months when she supposedly left Bianchi without explanation.
The next time Bianchi went into education was college but he dropped out after just one semester. Afterwards, he bounced through multiple menial jobs before settling on a security guard job in a jewellery store. At this job, Bianchi’s life of crime would begin as he started stealing valuables that he would then give to girlfriends and prostitutes. These crimes forced Bianchi to move around a lot.
In the early 1970s, Bianchi was working as an ice cream vendor in Rochester when he came onto police radar as a suspect in the murders of three young girls. The murders are now known as the Alphabet Murders or Double Initial Murders.
A brief summary of the case is three young girls ages 10 and 11 were kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered via strangulation. All the girls had double initial names (Carmen Colón, Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza) and were dumped in or near a town or village with the same starting letter as their names.
Bianchi was a suspect in the case as his place of work was near two murder sites and he drove a dark-coloured Ford Pinto hatchback. Bianchi vehemently denies that he had any responsibility for the deaths.
This takes us to Bianchi moving to Los Angeles, California in 1976, going to live with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr.
Angelo Buono was born to first-generation Italian-American emigrants on the 5th of October 1934. Not much is known about his early life aside from when Buono was 5 his parents divorced and Buono moved to Glendale, California with his mother and sister.
At age 14, Buono began boasting to his friends about raping and sodomizing girls. This comes around the same time as he started idolizing Caryl Chessman, a serial rapist in Los Angeles active in January 1948. Buono supposedly believed that Chessman should have murdered the women he assaulted instead of leaving them alive. He would also call his mom things like “whore” and “cunt”.
A couple of years later, Buono dropped out of school and was shortly after arrested for larceny. After police had to arrest the 16-year-old Buono a handful of times, he was sent to a reform school. Buono was recaptured by California Youth Authority.
Upon his release in 1955, Buono got Geraldine Vinal (17) pregnant. They got married but Buono left just a week later, they remained married until the birth of Buono’s first child in January 1956. After their divorce, Buono refused to pay child support and wouldn’t allow his son to call him ‘father’.
Towards the end of 1956, Mary Castillo, Buono’s girlfriend at the time, gives birth to Buono’s second son. In a similar fashion to Geraldine, Buono marries Mary soon after the birth in April 1957. Mary, throughout the relationship, would have a total of five children. Two sons were born in 1957, another son in 1958, Buono’s fifth son in 1960, and a daughter in 1962.
After his daughter was born, Buono was put into jail for 5 days. He was jailed again a couple of years later for petty theft. There are a couple of speculations that around this time Buono raped his daughter but there is limited information so it is unclear what happened.
Mary Castillo filed for divorce in terms of perverse sexual desires and violence. Buono didn’t show any care that the five children had witnessed the abuse towards their mother. Not long after their divorce, Mary tried to reconcile with Buono. He handcuffs Mary puts a gun to her stomach and threatens to kill her.
A year later, Buono moved in with Nanette Campina (25) with her two children. Their relationship soon became abusive and exactly like the relationship that Buono had with Mary. Nanette only stayed because she was fearing for her life.
Despite the fact that Buono hasn’t been arrested in a few years that would change in 1967. He was arrested for stealing cars and sentenced to a year in jail but his sentence was suspended so he could work to support his family. Not long after his released Nanette had Buono’s seventh child, another two years went by and Nanette had another child.
In 1971, Nanette’s daughter turns 14 and starts getting abused by a 37-year-old Buono, his supposed excuse for the abuse was simply “she needs breaking in”. He would brag to his friends about raping the girl and then forcing his sons to partake. Nanette took the children and ran from the state to save them.
The final marriage of Buono’s life is in 1972 to Deborah Taylor. They never live together nor do they divorce.
At some point from 1972 to 1975, unclear the exact date, Buono lived with a roommate. This roommate caught Buono standing at the apartment window, masturbating with binoculars watching children going to school. Buono confessed to this same roommate that he forced his sons to rape his daughter and that he had sodomized one of his sons.
Buono moved out of the apartment in 1975 and started living in his own place and opened up an upholstering shop. He would then frequently force women to perform oral on him and made them call him “The Italian Stallion”. He would have sex with his sons’ girlfriends, it’s unclear if it was consensual or not.
Around this time and started dating a teenage girl, getting her pregnant twice, the first one she aborted and the second she sadly miscarried. The girl remained loyal to Buono whilst he was continually cheating and had multiple girlfriends as well as her.
This then brings us to when Bianchi moved in with Buono.
Buono
was described as a “strong role model” to Bianchi and Bianchi looked up
to Buono for how he treated women, his business and his growing wealth.
When Bianchi began to run low on money, he and Buono came up with the idea of being pimps. They managed to get two teenage runaways to stay in their home, and once they trusted them, the girls were forced into prostitution. Becky Spears met a lawyer named David Wood and after explaining her situation, Wood helped her escape Bianchi and Buono. After she escaped, Sabra Hannan found the confidence to run away, she too managed to escape Bianchi and Buono.
Bianchi and Buono planned to purchase a list of men’s names that frequent prostitutes from a woman named Deborah Noble. Deborah went with her friend Yolanda Washington (19) to hand over the list. During the brief encounter, Yolanda mentioned she often worked on a stretch of Sunset Boulevard.
The next day Bianchi and Buono went looking for Deborah since the list they had bought wasn’t exactly what they wanted. Rather than finding Deborah, they found Yolanda working on the stretch she told them she worked on. They pulled over in one of Buono’s retired police cars, dressed in fake uniforms with IDs and got Yolanda to get into their car.
Yolanda Washington’s body was found the next day, October 18th 1977, on a hillside near Ventura Freeway. She was nude with faint marks on her ankles and wrists indicating she had been tied up, there was also a mark around her neck that showed she was strangled with a ligature. Police found that she was raped and cleaned thoroughly before being dumped.
On the 31st of October, the body of Judith Miller (15) was found on a parkway of a home on Alta Terrace Drive. The homeowner discovered her body and quickly covered her with a tarp to protect both the children heading to school and Judith from being seen nude and posed in a sexual position after her death.
Bianchi and Buono had picked Judith up whilst she was working on Sunset Boulevard the night before. They told her they were police tricking her into their car. She had been handcuffed and taken elsewhere.
Judith was found with ligature marks on her ankles and wrists. She too had been strangled via a ligature. Before her death, she had been raped and sodomized.
The next body discovered was on November 6th, Elissa Kastin (21) was working as a waitress the night before. Her co-workers noticed she was talking to 2 odd customers that followed her home after her shift was done.
Bianchi and Buono pulled Elissa over on the street she lived on, showing her fake police badges. They cuffed her and claimed to take her in for questioning.
Elissa was found nude near Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale. She had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, she had also been strangled by a ligature. Before her death, Elissa had been raped.
The fourth and fifth victims were killed on November 13th but weren’t discovered for a week. Dolores Cepeda (12) and Sonja Johnson (14) had gone shopping at Eagle Rock Plaza and had gotten an RTD bus back home.
They were last seen getting off their bus and being approached by a two-tone sedan. The girls spoke to whoever was in the passenger seat, Bianchi and Buono flashed fake police badges to get the pair inside their car.
Dolores and Sonja’s bodies were found by a 9-year-old boy who was on a treasure hunt in a trash heap on a hillside near Dodger Stadium. All that was officially determined in the autopsy was that they were strangled and raped.
The same day that Dolores and Sonja were discovered, so was the sixth woman. Kristina Weckler (20) used to live next door to Bianchi so when he knocked on her apartment door the familiar face made it easier to trust.
According to Bianchi, he lied to Kristina about being an officer that wanted to talk about an accident involving her car. It got Kristina out of her home. He didn’t say how but Bianchi and Buono got Kristina into the car.
Kristina was raped and sodomized. Bianchi and Buono tried to kill Kristina in three different ways. First, they injected her with air, then they tried injecting her with a mixture of cleaning fluids. They then tied a plastic bag over her head with a rope put a hose from the kitchen stove into the bag, turning on the gas. Kristina was partially hidden under a bush on a hillside in a residential area near Los Angeles.
Evelyn King (28) was the seventh victim found on November 23rd but she was murdered on the 9th. She was in the bushes near the Los Feliz off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway. Due to decomposition, it was unable to determine if Evelyn was raped or tortured, all they could work out was that she had been strangled.
After Evelyn’s body was found a task force specifically made to find the killer deemed the Hillside Strangler was put together. It was initially composed of 30 officers coming from Los Angeles Police Department, Sherrif’s Office and Glendale Police Department.
Not even a week later, Lauren Wagner (18) was found in the hills around Los Angeles’s Mount Washington. She had ligature marks on her ankles and wrists, the marks on her wrists having evidence of handcuffs being used. This leads police to believe that an officer or someone pretending to be an officer was the killer. She had been strangled with a ligature. Before Lauren was killed she too was raped and had been burnt on her hands.
The night that Lauren went missing her neighbour had seen her abduction. She saw two men, one taller but younger and the other older and shorter with bushy hair. The neighbour claimed Lauren cried out “you won’t get away with this”.
After this information was brought forward, police made an announcement that female drivers weren’t obligated to pull over and could drive home and call the police for safety.
On the 14th of December, Kimberly Martin (17) was discovered in a deserted lot near Los Angeles City Hall, she was visible to police headquarters. Her body had ligature marks on her ankles and wrists and she was strangled with a ligature. Kimberly’s body also showed signs of torture.
Bianchi and Buono called a call girl agency from the Hollywood Public Library payphone. Kimberly was sent out to a vacant and broken-into apartment that Bianchi and Buono had requested the agency be sent to.
The final victim found in California was discovered on February 16th 1978. Cindy Hudspeth (20) had just gotten her beloved orange Datsun when she went to Buono’s upholstery shop around closing time. Bianchi showed up and the two cousins had a conversation at that moment they decided that Cindy is going to be their next victim.
Her car was discovered by a helicopter pilot abandoned midway down the cliff of Los Angeles Crest highway. Police managed to recover the car and found Cindy, nude, in the boot of her car. She, just like all the other victims, had been bound, raped and tortured before being strangled with a ligature.
Bianchi fled soon after Los Angeles after Cindy’s death and went to Washington. He started working as security in Fred Meyers alongside a young woman named Karen Mandic (22). Bianchi left that job for another security job and after a few months, he contacted Karen, asking for her to be a housesitting job. It would be a couple of hours of work for $100.
Karen brought her roommate Diane Wilder (27) on for the job and to also get paid for her work. When Karen didn’t return from her lunch break her employer got concerned and started calling around.
Police got evidence that linked Bianchi to Karen and Diane and when they questioned him, Bianchi lied to them saying he hadn’t spoken to Karen in months. He was brought in and police in Washington contacted LAPD for information, this was the beginning of the end for both Bianchi and Buono.
Karen’s car was found on 12th January 1979 in a remote area of Bellingham. In the boot, Karen and Diane’s bodies were found, they were sexually assaulted and strangled with a ligature. They had been re-dressed before getting dumped.
After Bianchi was arrested it didn’t take long before he turned on Buono and both were caught. They were both sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
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