They were the demented teamwork of two serial killers.
The first to die was a black prostitute, whose naked corpse was dumped near Forest Lawn Cemetery in mid-October, 1977. Two weeks later, the body of a 15 year old female runaway turned up in the L.A. suburb of Glendale. Over the next few months, eight more bodies would be found. The vics ranged in age from twelve to 28. All had been sexually violated (sometimes with objects like soda bottles), strangled, and tortured in a variety of ways. One had been burned with an electric cord. Another had been injected with cleaning solution. Yet another had been killed with voluptuous cruelty--strangled to the point of unconsciousness, then revived, then strangled again, and so on until her tormentor finally put her to death.
From early on in their investigation, police suspected that two killers were involved, since semen found inside the vics indicated that the women had been raped (often both vaginally and anally) by different men. That suspicion was confirmed when an eyewitness caught sight of two men forcing a young woman into their car.
As a rule, serial killers keep murdering until they are caught. In February 1978, however--four months after they started--the Hillside Stranglings abruptly ceased. The killers might well have gotten away with their atrocities--if it hadn't been for the twisted compulsions of one member of the unspeakable duo.
One year after the last of the L.A. murders, two young women were raped and strangled in Bellingham, Washington. Suspicion immediately lighted on a 26 year old security guard named Kenneth Bianchi, who had recently moved to Bellingham from L.A. Before long, police had ferreted out the truth--Bianchi and his 44 year old cousin, a brutish sociopath named Angelo Buono, were the Hillside Stranglers.
Though Buono led an outwardly respectable life as the owner of a successful auto upholstery business, he was also a sadistic pimp with a long history of violence against women. (He allegedly once sodomized his wife in front of their children after she refused to have sex with him.) Bianchi was a small-time con artist who had moved in with his cousin after relocating from Rochester, N.Y., in 1976. Seperately, neither one had ever been known to commit murder--but together, they brought out the most monstrous impulses in each other.
For awhile, Bianchi had authorities believing that he suffered from a split personality. Ostensibly, it was his evil alter ego, "Steve," who had participated in the murders. But a psychiatric expert finally established that "Steve"--a sadistic sex-killer who emerged under hypnosis--was a ruse.
In the end--in order to avoid a death sentence--Bianchi agreed to plead guilty to the murders and to testify against his cousin, who was convicted after a highly protracted trial. Both Hillside Stranglers are currently serving life sentences.
