Bianchi had long cherished an ambition to be a cop and fell in line with Buono’s suggestion that they emulated Caryl Chessman, who had impersonated a policeman so that he could rob and rape his victims. But this couple would go further than Chessman, who never murdered. Armed with fake badges, they would stop female motorists or nab prostitutes, then subject their victims to an ordeal of rape, torture, sexual humiliation and brutality, before garrotting them.
On 31 October, police retrieved the body of 16-year-old Judith Miller. Wrapped in a tarpaulin, it had been dumped in a flowerbed in La Cresenta, a residential neighbourhood north of downtown Los Angeles. There were marks of ligatures on her ankles, wrists and neck. The slim teenager had been trussed up, raped and strangled.
Twenty-one-year-old Hollywood waitress Elissa Kastin was abducted on 5 November, raped, strangled and sodomized. Her naked body was found near a Glendale Country Club and showed ligature marks similar to those on Judith Miller’s body. Three days later, 28-year-old aspiring actress and model Jane King was kidnapped, raped and smothered. Her body was dumped on an off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway, where it lay undiscovered until 22 November.
So far, the police had not taken much notice of these crimes as the victims were considered to have lived a high-risk lifestyle. But then the killers turned their murderous attention on young girls. On 13 November 1977, classmates at junior high Dolores “Dollie” Cepeda, aged 12, and Sonja Johnson, 14, disappeared after they got off their school bus. A week later a nine-year-old boy cleaning up trash found their naked bodies in Elypsian Park. The schoolgirls had been raped and there were ligature marks on their bodies. In picking these young girls, was Bianchi reliving the Alphabet Murders?
That same day, 20 November, the naked body of 20-year-old art student Kristina Weckler was found by hikers on a hill near Glendale. She had been sexually assaulted and had ligature marks on her inner arms and neck. Bianchi later recounted Kristina Weckler’s last moments: “She was brought into the kitchen and put on the floor and her head was covered with a bag and the pipe from the gas stove was disconnected, put into the bag and then turned on. There may have been marks on her neck because there was a cord put around her neck to make a more complete sealing.” Bianchi and Buono kept her in there for 90 minutes before she died of asphyxiation.
By the time the decomposing body of Jane King was recovered on the 22nd, female residents of Los Angeles were in uproar. Then on 29 November, the police found the naked body of 18-year-old Lauren Wagner. Again she had been strangled and there were ligature marks. But this time there were electrical burns on her palms that indicated she was tortured.
A task office of 30 officers was established. The police now knew that they were looking for two suspects, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, including one prospective victim—the daughter of 1940s screen villain Peter Lorre—who had managed to escape the stranglers’ clutches.
On 9 December, prostitute Kimberly Diane Martin—who worked under the name “Donna”—answered her last call-out in Glendale. The following morning her naked body was found on a hillside in Echo Park. Then on 16 February 1978, a helicopter spotted an orange Datsun that had run off a cliff in Angeles National Forest. In the trunk was the naked body of 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth. She had been raped and her body showed the marks of ligatures.
In May 1978, Bianchi moved to Bellingham in Washington State to be with his girlfriend Kelli Boyd, and newborn son. Finally he got the position he craved with the police and was taken on by the Whatcom County Sheriffs Reserve. He also worked as a security guard at a number of properties, including a house whose owners were in Europe. On 11 January 1979, he told college roommates Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder that a burglar alarm needed repairing, and gave them $100 to house-sit for a few hours. While showing them around the house, Bianchi attacked Karen Mandic on the stairs to the basement, raped and strangled her with a ligature. Then he raped and killed Diane Wilder the same way. He put both bodies in their car and dumped it in a heavily wooded area, though it was found soon after. When the police investigated the murder of the two women, they discovered that they had last been seen when they went for the house-sitting job. This led them to Bianchi. A search of his home turned up items stolen from sites he was paid to guard, evidence that linked him to the murders of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder, and jewellery belonging to Yolanda Washington and Kimberly Martin. In June 1979, he was indicted for five of the Hillside murders.
In custody, Bianchi at first denied everything. Then he began to manufacture a complex insanity defence. He had just seen the movie
But LA Detective Frank Salerno was not so easily taken in. When he watched video footage of the hypnosis, he noticed that “Steve” referred to himself as “he”, instead of “I”. Salerno persuaded the court to find a second expert, Dr Ralph Allison. But Allison was also convinced and even seemed afraid of Steve. A third psychologist, Dr Martin Orne, was called in. He tricked Bianchi. Orne explained to Bianchi that that type of schizophrenia usually involved more than just two personas. Under hypnosis session Bianchi duly produced a third persona, named Billy, and two others emerged as well. Clearly Bianchi was a fake.
Having been found out, Bianchi agreed to testify against Buono if he was spared the death penalty in Washington State. He told his interrogators how the prostitutes were easy prey. Posing as police officers, they found it easy to persuade the girls to get in their car on the pretext that they were going to be taken downtown and booked for soliciting. With other victims they asked for directions, or pretended to have some trouble with their car, before bundling them into the vehicle. The victims were tied up, raped, in some cases tortured, strangled and dumped. He pleaded guilty to five counts of homicide.
In October 1979, Angelo Buono was arrested and indicted on ten counts of first-degree murder. After ten months of preliminary hearings, Buono was ordered to stand trial on all counts.
Meanwhile in June 1980 Bianchi received a letter from Veronica Lynn Compton, a 23-year-old poet, playwright, and aspiring actress, who sought his advice on her new play which dealt with a female serial killer. She visited him in jail. Their ongoing conversations and correspondence revealed her bizarre masochistic obsession with murder, mutilation and necrophilia. This encouraged Bianchi to suggest a bizarre defence strategy. With barely a second thought, Veronica Compton agreed to go to Bellingham, strangle women there and sprinkle some of Bianchi’s sperm on their bodies. Bianchi was a non-secretor—that is, a person with A or B type blood whose body secretions do not contain the identifying A or B substances. This was before the development of DNA fingerprinting. So if Compton mimicked Bianchi’s MO, it could possibly lead police to believe that the real killer was still at large.
On 16 September 1980, Compton visited Bianchi in prison, where he gave her a book. Inside was part of a rubber glove containing his semen. She flew to Bellingham and checked into the Shangri-la Motel. Picking out a potential victim, a woman who worked in a bar, she invited her back to the motel. But the woman was too strong. When Compton tried to murder her, she fought her off and escaped. Arrested in California on 3 October, Compton was convicted in Washington in 1981 and sent to prison with no hope of parole before 1994.
At Buono’s trial, Bianchi admitted faking multiple personality disorder. This undermined his testimony. Veronica Compton also took the stand and admitted that she had conspired with Bianchi to kill women in the manner of the Hillside Strangler. The defence implied that Bianchi and Compton had intended to frame Angelo Buono and let him take the heat. This brought reasonable doubt to the case, which the defence then moved to have thrown out. However, the judge refused. A new prosecution team was brought in and in November 1983, Buono was convicted on nine counts of murder—Yolanda Washington’s murder was excluded. He was sentenced to nine terms of life without parole.
Buono also found love in prison. In 1986, Buono married Christine Kizuka, a mother of three, who met him through another inmate. He left her a widow when he died in Calipatria State Prison on 21 September 2002 from “unknown causes”.
In jail in Washington, Bianchi married serial killer groupie Shirlee Book in 1989 after a three-year correspondence. He was just one of many prisoners she had written to—even Ted Bundy was on her list. It is said that Book had bought her wedding gown and had invitations printed before she had even met Bianchi.
Slighted, Compton turned her attentions to “Sunset Strip Slayer” Douglas Clark, who had shot his victims in
