Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Buono | The Hillside Stranglers - Part 8
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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 215. I am your humble host, Thomas Roseland Weyberg Thun. And this episode is the first TSK episode of 2024. Happy New Year, dear listener.

In the previous installment of this saga, I brought you details of Bruno and Bianchi's perhaps most depraved killings. As with so many serial killers, they were pedophiles. This fact is often under-communicated by mainstream media, for some reason. I have never really understood why.

Narcissistic psychopaths such as Bono and Bianchi would hate to be labeled with such a term, no doubt, but this just makes it more important to hammer home. They both lusted after, kidnapped, raped, and tortured children. In this episode, we continue down their downward spiral of death and depravity, and finally glimpse the end. Enjoy.

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You are truly the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you there would be no show. Thank you.

I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.

And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. The Hillside Stranglers were driving along Riverside Drive in Burbank at about noon when they caught sight of a girl sitting alone at a bus stop. A blonde. Young.

Bono said she looked like she needed company. Bianchi pulled over. Bono asked the girl whether she'd like to go to a party in Hollywood. The girl said no. Bono persisted, and when she still shook her head, he leaped out, grabbed her by the wrists, and started pulling her into the car. At that moment, another car drove up behind the Excalibur and stopped.

Buono now had the girl by the upper arms, wrestling with her. A woman in late middle age got out of the other car and rushed up, waggling an index finger at Buono, and in the tone and manner of a stern schoolteacher, breaking up some roughhousing on a playground, said, and I quote, "'You leave her alone! What are you doing?'

You come with me, dear. Don't let these men bother you. Let her go. I'll get the police. End quote. Bono, startled, released the girl. Glaring at the woman, fixing her with his most vengeful stare, he said to her, and again I quote, God will get you for this. End quote. In the rear-view mirror, driving off, Bianchi saw the woman comforting the girl and cursed.

He and Buono were not pleased to have had their sport ruined by a busybody. They drove home in a snit. Buono said that it was lucky for that old lady that she wasn't worth the rape. At this time, Bianchi had moved in with his wife, Kelly's brothers, two close male friends, on Corona Street in the Glendale Hills. He did not, he told Buono, like the idea of living with men he was sure were homosexuals,

But with no money and no job, he felt he did not have a choice. Buono just laughed at him and ignored the hint that he should take his cousin in again. If he did, Buono knew he might never get him out of the house again. Bianchi had also begun to get on Buono's nerves more than usual, so he was not about to help him out with a place to stay. With Bianchi, it was the other way around.

More and more, Buono was the only person Bianchi felt truly comfortable with. Buono gave him a lot of shit, but there was a bond. They had their secrets. Together they had the city at their mercy. If only they chose to use their power. Bianchi was out of sorts, resentful of life's inequities. Maybe Buono would buy him some dinner.

Bianchi did not like hanging around the Corona house anyway, to each his own, but he did not approve of that style of life. Fags. Nobody could call Bianchi a fag. He hoped he might be able to talk Buono into going hunting for more victims that night. When Bianchi arrived at Buono's, he saw a bright new orange Datsun parked in the driveway behind the white Mustang.

In Buono's shop, he found his cousin seated behind his desk, talking to a girl smoking a menthol cigarette. The girl looked good to Bianchi. Shiny, long strawberry-blonde hair, scrubbed face. Her figure looked great in black slacks, her stomach flat. Buono smiled at Bianchi's arrival and introduced a girl whose name was Cindy Hudspeth.

After introduction, Buono asked Cindy to wait a minute, as he just needed a quick word with Bianchi. Buono led Bianchi into the house. There he gleefully said, and I quote, "'Can you believe this? Can you believe the luck? What a cunt! One gorgeous cunt!' So she walks right in at closing time. "'Listen, how about we pull a scam?' end quote."

Bianchi had no problem with that. In fact, rape and murder was the very reason he had gone to Buono in the first place. Buono returned to his office and told Cindy Hudspeth that it was time to close up his shop now, but that he could give her some job openings if she would come into the house. She was grateful for his help. Once she sat down in the brown vinyl easy chair, her hours were numbered.

Bianchi kept her occupied with small talk, while Buono fetched the gag, tape and cord. When she said that she lived in an apartment at 800 East Garfield Avenue, Bianchi said that that was quite a coincidence. He had lived right across the street last year. Bianchi won the coin toss this time, but before raping her, he agreed to Buono's suggestion that they tie her arms and legs to the legs of the bed.

The spread-eagled sacrifice appealed to both of them. They abused her for nearly two hours. At Werno's urging, Bianchi did the actual strangling. After she was dead and they were dressed, they agreed that her car was a problem. They would have to get rid of it, as well as Cindy's corpse. This time, Bianchi wanted to choose the dumping ground.

Buono had chosen all the others, and since the media made such a big deal out of the discovery of the bodies, Bianchi wanted to see his own handiwork on television and in the papers. They put Cindy's body into the trunk of her car, folding in her arms and legs. Bianchi remarked how much better the Cadillac had been for this purpose. Bianchi would drive the Datsun, and Buono would follow him in the Mustangs.

To guard against fingerprints, Buono, always prepared, presented Bianchi with a pair of rubber surgeon's gloves he had stolen from the hospital. Bianchi attached his false beard, and they headed up toward Angeli's crest in tandem. Bianchi found the turnout he had in mind. They pushed the Datsun front first over the side of the road, the body still in the trunk.

the car turned over once spun around and came to rest against some logs part way down the cliff on the way home buono stopped for cigarettes at a mom and pop store on glendale avenue where bianchi dropped the rubber gloves into a trash basket outside

The woman Buono had cursed, as the old lady not worth a rape, was Jan Sims, a teacher at the Heritage School in Glendale, just off Colorado Street. After she had frightened Buono and Bianchi into taking off, she shepherded the girl into her car, comforted her for half an hour, and put her safely onto a bus, learning neither her name nor her destination.

But seeing the girl safe and away was not an end to it for Mrs. Sims. She then went straight to the North Hollywood police station and told her story, describing Buono and Bianchi right down to Bianchi's leather coat and acne scars, and Buono's warning that God would punish her. With all of this talk about a hillside strangler in the city, Mrs. Sims explained, surely this incident ought to be investigated.

Unfortunately, the officer in charge took it upon himself to classify her as a fantasizing schoolmarm. He did not file her report and did not take her potentially life-saving statement seriously. A few hours later, Cindy Hudspeth was dead. During the next week, Mrs. Sims telephoned the North Hollywood police station.

she was sure that she had seen the car driven by the two men she wanted investigated parked on colorado street in glendale yet again she was not taken seriously and the police did not follow up on her statement autumn nineteen seventy eight

Bianchi and his wife Kelly had just become parents, and Bianchi liked being a father. He still acted poorly towards his wife, and she kept threatening to leave him, but he managed to dissuade her every time. At this time, Buono had become tired of Bianchi. Police had interviewed Bianchi several times, and even though nothing had come of it, he suspected it was only a matter of time before Bianchi's big mouth got both of them landed in jail.

With no job, no money, and no cousin, Bianchi agreed to move far away from L.A. with Kelly to her parents' hometown of Bellingham in the state of Washington. Once there, Bianchi tried to get a proper job, but failed miserably. He took up stealing, but soon he was bored to tears. He missed rape and torture and murder with his cousin. Then...

He had an idea. An idea so simple he was angry with himself not to have thought of it sooner. He would bring some California action to sleepy Bellingham. He would show everyone what he was capable of. He would surpass the great Buono. He would kill and kill again.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash SerialKiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SerialKiller. With renewed energy, Bianchi set his scam in motion. Bianchi would use his position to achieve his secret goal, just as Buono had used his badge and then his sheltered secret house.

How had Bianchi failed to think of this before? Bianchi had all kinds of houses at his disposal, empty vacation places, just as safe and secluded or more so than Buono's house had ever been. And he would out-Buono Buono. He would kill alone. He would make Buono look like an amateur. Everything about the plan filled Bianchi with eager anticipation.

He moved swiftly to implement it, quickened by this new sense of purpose. On Tuesday, the 9th of January, 1979, Bianchi telephoned Karen Mandic, a girl he had met when working at Fred Meyer's Hardware. Her roommate, Diane Wilder, answered, saying that Karen was out. Bianchi left a message for Karen to call him.

When Karen returned his call, he told her that he had a house-sitting job for her if she wanted to make $100. A new security system was being installed at the Catlow house on Bayside Drive. The house would be without an alarm Thursday night. The Catlows would be away. If she would stay in the house, it would help him out. He suggested that Karen bring Diane along to keep her company.

And one other thing. It would be better not to say anything about this to anyone other than Diane. Karen said that she and Diane would meet him at the house at nine Thursday evening. On Wednesday evening, Bianchi telephoned the sheriff's reserves office. He could not make the class on first aid Thursday evening, he said. Unfortunately, he had to teach a class himself for his company.

The next twenty-four hours Bianchi spent in a dream. He made several trips over to the Catlau house to check everything out and make sure that their daughter, who was in town, was not going to drop by Thursday evening unexpectedly. He decided that the basement would be the best place for action and left a length of strong cord there.

He did not think through the details of his scheme, so as not to spoil it. Improvisation had always played a part in Los Angeles, and not knowing everything that might happen added to his excitement. It was cold and wet in Bellingham that night when Karen and Diane arrived at the Catlow house. Bianchi was waiting for them outside in his what-come-security pickup.

He suggested that Karen accompany him inside first to turn on the lights and check things out. There would only be a minute, he told Diane, and he was scarcely longer than that. Inside, he urged Karen down the basement stairs to check the fuses, he said, and in the basement he grabbed the cord and wrapped it quickly around her throat from behind and strangled her with quick, fierce and deadly force.

She did not even have a chance to cry out. So great was his fury that the rope cut right through her flesh. He would worry about sex later. He hurried up the stairs to get Diane, and wasted no time with her either. Once she stepped inside the door, he shoved her down the stairs and strangled her immediately. It was done. Bianchi was winded. He looked at the bodies and pondered what to do next.

He did not feel particularly aroused. More for form than from passion, he opened his pants and masturbated over the fully dressed bodies as a last rite. He wondered where to dump the bodies. He remembered a cul-de-sac near a school less than a mile away. He dragged the bodies one by one up the stairs and put them into Karen's hatchback Mercury. Then he drove the Mercury to the cul-de-sac

"'left it with the bodies heaped together in it, "'walked back through the rain to the catlows, "'and drove his pickup home, "'disposing of the ligature on the way. "'Climbing into bed, "'Bianchi was careful not to disturb Kelly. "'He slept well that night, "'feeling disburdened, "'secure in the certainty "'that he had gained the headlines again "'and that he had done it on his own.'

He hoped the news would reach Los Angeles. The news reached Los Angeles in ways Bianchi had not anticipated. He was checking on security the next day at a South Terminal, a waterfront warehouse filled with canned salmon that he enjoyed stealing, when he was arrested on suspicion of double homicide. Karen Mandic had told her boyfriend about the house-sitting job, mentioning Bianchi's name.

And in Karen's apartment, the police found a note in Diane Wilder's handwriting saying that Ken Bianchi had telephoned. A search of Bianchi's house turned up masses of obviously stolen goods, so the police booked him for grand theft as well, to make sure that they could hold him, first in the Bellingham City Jail, and then at the Whatcom County Jail.

The Bellingham police, noting Bianchi's California driver's license, telephoned the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to check on the suspect's background. They made no connection themselves between Bianchi and the Hillside Strangler case, but their call was referred to Frank Salerno, who, once he heard Bianchi's Los Angeles address, knew what had happened.

That telephone call was for Salerno a profane epiphany. In an instant, the entire case broke open for him in a dizzying series of connections that had obsessed and eluded him since Halloween of 1977. I have said this in several episodes here on TSK, and it bears repeating. Many serial killers are not particularly smart.

The reason they managed to keep killing for extended periods of time is due to police incompetence rather than their own ingenuity. It was always quite clear that Buono was the brains of the hillside stranglers. Bianchi was a rather dim-witted follower, who also happened to be a sexual deviant and narcissistic psychopath.

When Bianchi made his first foray into murder on his own, he left so many clues that it did not take police more than a few hours to apprehend him. And when his wife Kelly was interviewed by police, she quickly told them all about her husband's problematic close relationship with his cousin, Angelo Buono. In fact, she said, Buono is the only friend her husband had ever had as far as she knew.

Police investigated Buono, even moved him into a motel as they searched his house. But Buono was actually intelligent, and, as stated previously, extremely focused on keeping his house neat and tidy. He had scrubbed and cleaned his place so thoroughly that police could not find one single fingerprint in the whole place, not even Buono's own. No blood, no bodies, no clues.

And simply knowing a killer did not make you a killer as well. So unless Bianchi did something stupid again, Buono knew he would be able to walk free. But Bianchi did something stupid again. He loved to talk. And he loved to think that he was smarter than he was. When questioned by a psychiatrist, Bianchi tried to pretend like he had split personality disorder.

that his alter ego called Steve had actually been responsible, not meek and mild Kenny. He did a terrible job pretending, and the psychiatrist saw right through his act. And yes, Bianchi brought Buono into the case. When describing what terrible crimes Steve had done, he told the psychiatrist all about how Steve had made Buono kill a lot of women.

Even in prison, Bianchi was eager to be seen as the main protagonist. During the two years leading up to the Strangler's trial, Bianchi formed a relationship with Veronica Lynn Compton, an actress and playwright with an obsession with serial killers from behind bars.

She sent him a copy of a screenplay titled The Mutilated Cutter about a female serial killer she had written asking for his thoughts on the subject. She grew increasingly fixated with him until he managed to manipulate her into copycatting a hillside strangler murder in order to make it look like the killer was still at large, even smuggling out some of his semen out of prison in a rubber glove.

DNA evidence had no forensic use at the time, but semen could still be analyzed to show what blood type the man who produced it had. Compton lured a woman to a motel and attempted to strangle her, but was overpowered and promptly arrested. During the trial, Bianchi tried at first to continue pretending to suffer from multiple personalities disorder,

When this did nothing to persuade anyone, Bianchi eventually admitted that he had been faking the disorder. He was instead diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder with sexual sadism. In an attempt to obtain a reduced sentence, Bianchi agreed to testify against Buono. However, in giving his testimony, he made every effort to be as uncooperative and self-contradictory as possible.

apparently hoping to avert Bo'ono's conviction. In the end, Bianchi's efforts were unsuccessful, as Bo'ono was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Bianchi himself was also ultimately sentenced to six terms of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Bianchi is serving his sentence at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington.

he was denied parole on the eighteenth of august twenty ten by a state board in sacramento he will be eligible to apply for parole again in twenty twenty five the legal case against bono was based largely upon bianchi's testimony

Deciding that Bianchi was an unreliable and uncooperative witness, the case's original prosecutors, from District Attorney John Van de Kamp's office, moved to dismiss all charges against Bono and set him free. The presiding judge, Ronald M. George, refused to release Bono and reassigned the case to California Attorney General George Deukmeierhine's office.

Buono's trial would become the longest in American legal history, lasting from November 1981 until November 1983. The jury convicted Buono on nine counts of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment, with Judge George commenting that he felt a death sentence would have been the appropriate punishment.

In 1986, Buono married Christine Kizuka, a mother of three and a supervisor at the California State Employment Development Department. He died of a heart attack in September 2002 while incarcerated at Calipatria State Prison. His body was cremated. The most powerful designer drugs are the digital ones we use daily, and we get high off them when touch...

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As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleon set sail for adventure. But there was one problem. Paperwork. Mountains of it. Filing, invoices, you name it. This work ain't fit for a pirate. Luckily, their captain had an idea. She used the smart buying tools on Amazon Business so they could work more efficiently and get back to doing what they do best. I know, right? Amazon Business, your partner for smart business buying.

And with that, we come to the end of this rather long series covering the saga of the Hillside Stranglers. In two weeks, I will bring to you a fresh Serial Killer expose. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.