The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating from the fact that many of the victims' bodies were discovered on the wooded hillsides surrounding the city. The perpetrators were identified as cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr.
All except one of the murders were committed in Buono's upholstery shop in Glendale, California. The victims, who ranged in age from 12 to 28, were raped, sodomized, beaten, and sometimes tortured, before being strangled to death with ligature. Their corpses were then cleaned and dumped naked across wooded hillsides in Los Angeles. Buono and Bianchi impersonated police officers to lure their victims from nearby locales, then drove them to Buono's upholstery shop to be raped and killed.
The murders began with the deaths of two prostitutes who were found strangled and dumped naked on hillsides northeast of Los Angeles in October and November 1977. It was not until the deaths of five young women who were not prostitutes, but those who had been abducted from middle-class neighborhoods, that the media attention and subsequent "Hillside Strangler" moniker came to prominence. The murders caused a moral panic among young women who were terrified to go out after dark, as well as being pulled over by police. There were two more deaths in December 1977 and February 1978 before the murders abruptly stopped. An extensive investigation proved fruitless until Bianchi's arrest in January 1979 for the rapes and murders of two more young women in Bellingham, Washington, and the subsequent linking of his past to the Strangler case.
In order to avoid the death penalty, Bianchi named Buono as the other perpetrator of the Hillside Strangler killings and agreed to testify against him, leading to Buono's arrest in October 1979. Bianchi pleaded guilty to five of the murders, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole, two consecutive terms for the Washington murders and five concurrent terms for the California murders. Bianchi is currently serving his sentence at Washington State Penitentiary and was denied parole twice in 2010 and 2025, respectively. Buono pleaded not guilty and was convicted of nine of the murders in November 1983 before being sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in January 1984. Buono died of a heart attack on September 21, 2002, at age 67 while serving his sentence at Calipatria State Prison.
Background
In January 1976, Kenneth Bianchi left Rochester, New York, and moved to Los Angeles, California, to live with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. Buono provided a strong role model for the docile Bianchi. When Bianchi was short of money, Buono came up with the idea of getting some girls to work for them as prostitutes. Two teenage runaways, Sabra Hannan and Becky Spears, met Bianchi and Buono, and once under their control, were forced to prostitute themselves. Eventually, Spears happened to meet lawyer David Wood, who was appalled at her situation and arranged for her to escape from the city.
Encouraged by Spears' escape, Hannan ran away from Bianchi and Buono a short time later. With their pimping income gone, they decided to find more teenage girls. Impersonating police officers, they eventually found another young woman and installed her in the previous girl's bedroom. Additionally, they purchased (from a prostitute named Deborah Noble) a supposed "trick list" with names of men who frequented prostitutes. Noble and her friend, Yolanda Washington, delivered the trick list to Buono in October 1977.
Murders Yolanda Washington The nude body of the first Hillside Strangler victim, 19-year-old Yolanda Washington, a sex worker and part-time waitress, was found on October 18, 1977, on a hillside near the Ventura Freeway. Detectives determined that her corpse was cleaned before being dumped, while faint marks were also visible around the neck, wrists, and ankles, signs of a rope being used, and she had been assaulted, raped, and strangled.
According to Bianchi, they picked Washington up from a street corner on Sunset Boulevard and Detroit Street the previous evening in Bianchi's Cadillac.Farr, Bill "Prosecution Memos List Holes in Strangler Case," The Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1981, pg 1, 3. Buono, who was in the driver's seat, flashed his badge and handcuffed her, after which Bianchi stripped her, raped her, and strangled her to death after a brief struggle.
Judith Miller On November 1, 1977, police were called to Alta Terrace Drive in La Crescenta,Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers p. 24 a community 12 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, where the body of a teenage girl was found naked, face up on a parkway in a middle-class residential area. The homeowner had covered her with a tarp in the early morning hours to prevent the neighborhood children from viewing her on their way to school. Ligature marks were on her neck, wrists, and ankles, indicating to police she was bound and strangled. The body had been dumped, indicating she was killed elsewhere.
Detective Salerno also found a small piece of light-colored fluff on her eyelid and saved it for the forensic experts. A coroner's report further detailed that she had been raped and sodomized. The girl, who was described as being "small and thin, weighing about 90 pounds and appearing to be about 16 years old", was eventually identified as 15-year-old Judith Lynn Miller, a former student of Hollywood High School. After dropping out, Miller ran away from home in September 1977 and became a small-time sex worker."Girl, 15, is sex murder victim," Valley News, November 12, 1977, pg 4.
Miller was last seen alive on Halloween 1977 talking to a man driving a large, two-toned sedan on Sunset Boulevard next to Carney's. The stranglers had told her they were "undercover" police officers, handcuffed her, and took her to Buono's Auto Upholstery Shop at 703 E. Colorado St. in Glendale, where she was raped and murdered.
Lissa Kastin Five days later, on November 6, 1977, the nude body of another woman was discovered thrown down an embankment near the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale."LA police say Hillside Strangler left 'signature' in latest slaying," The Modesto Bee, February 19, 1978, pg 5. Like Miller, her body bore five-point (neck, wrists, and ankles) ligature marks, and showed signs of having been strangled and raped, but not sodomized. The woman was identified as 21-year-old waitress Elissa Teresa "Lissa" Kastin, who was last seen leaving the restaurant where she worked the night before her body was discovered.
In addition to working full-time, Kastin was also a professional dancer in the all-female dance and cabaret troupe, The L.A. Knockers. Unlike the previous two victims, Kastin was not a sex worker, drug user, or runaway. The stranglers followed Kastin after she was seen driving home from work, pulled her over on the street she lived on, presented a fake "police badge", and told her that they were detectives. They then handcuffed her and told her they needed to take her in for questioning.
Aborted abduction of Catharine Lorre Baker At some point in early November 1977, the two men approached 24-year-old Catharine Lorre Baker, the daughter of actor Peter Lorre—famous for his role as a serial killer in Fritz Lang's film M—with the intent of abducting and killing her. However, when Lorre produced not only her driver's license when requested, but also a picture of her sitting on her father's lap as a child, the two let her go without incident, fearing the murder of a celebrity's child would attract an unusually high amount of police and press attention.
Lorre did not realize who the men were until they were arrested, at which point she recalled that two men flashing police badges had approached her in the past.
Dolores Cepeda and Sonja Johnson
On Sunday, November 13, 1977, two girls, 12-year-old Dolores Ann "Dolly" Cepeda and 14-year-old Sonja Marie Johnson, boarded an RTD bus in front of the Eagle Rock Plaza on Colorado Boulevard and headed home. The last time they were seen was getting off the bus on York Boulevard and North Avenue 46, and approaching a two-tone sedan that reportedly had two men inside. They were forced into the car by the duo and were taken to Buono's home in Glendale, where they were killed."Buono convicted of 3 more killings," Thousand Oaks Star, November 9, 1983, pg 15. Their corpses were discovered by a 9-year-old boy who was treasure-hunting in a trash heap on a hillside near Dodger Stadium on November 20, 1977. Both of the girls' bodies had already begun to decompose and it was determined that they had been strangled and raped.
Kristina Weckler Earlier that same day, November 20, 1977, hikers found the naked body of 20-year-old Kristina Weckler, a quiet, unassuming honors student at the Art Center College of Design, described by Detective Bob Grogan of the Los Angeles Police Department as a "…loving and serious young woman who should have had a bright future ahead of her". Weckler was discovered on a hillside near the 4100 block of Ranons Way between Glendale and Eagle Rock. The last person to speak to Weckler was her father in San Francisco, who she had a telephone conversation with the previous evening.
When found by Detective Grogan, the typical ligature marks were on her wrists, ankles, and neck, and when he turned her over, bruises were observed on her breasts and blood oozed from her rectum. Unlike the first three victims, there were two puncture marks on her arm, but no signs of the needle tracks that indicated a drug addict. According to Bianchi, he and Buono tried to kill her by injecting air into her veins to cause an embolism. When this failed, they then injected with Windex, a common ammonia-based window, glass and hard-surface cleaner. This caused her to have convulsions, but again did not kill her. They then tied a plastic bag around her head with a rope and siphoned gas from the stove into it. She was determined to have been killed by strangulation.Farr, Bill "Prosecution Memos List Holes in Strangler Case," The Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1981, pg 1, 3, 24.
Evelyn Jane King At about 8:40 p.m. on November 23, 1977, the badly decomposed body of 28-year-old Evelyn Jane King was discovered in bushesTwo of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers p. 52 near the Los Feliz Boulevard westbound off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway. King had gone missing on November 9. The severity of decomposition prevented determination as to whether she had been raped or tortured, but she had been strangled like the others.
Buono and Bianchi allegedly picked King up from a bus stop in the 5900 block of Franklin Avenue. King, an aspiring actress, had just finished an actor's workshop held at the nearby Church of Scientology center. According to Bianchi, the duo posed as police officers to gain her trust and offered her a ride. She was taken to Buono's upholstery shop where she was killed on either November 9 or 10th.
In response to her murder, authorities created a task force—initially composed of 30 officers from the LAPD, the Sheriff's Department and the Glendale Police Department—to catch the predator now dubbed the "Hillside Strangler".
Lauren Wagner
On November 29, 1977, police found the body of 18-year-old Lauren Rae Wagner at 1217 Cliff Drive in the Glassell Park neighborhood. She had ligature marks on her neck, ankles, and wrists, as well as burn marks on her hands indicating she was tortured.