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The Fate of the Hillside Stranglers · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this. You are in Los Angeles, and it's the
0:04
Speaker 1: late 1970s.
0:05
Speaker 2: The absolute height of that classic L.A. glamour.
0:09
Speaker 1: Right, exactly. You've got the sprawling, sun-drenched hillsides, the palm
0:13
Speaker 1: trees framing the skyline. I mean, it is the ultimate
0:16
Speaker 1: American dreamscape.
0:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really was. But there's a really dark underbelly
0:22
Speaker 2: to that specific time and place.
0:24
Speaker 1: Oh, completely. Because over a terrifying five-month period, specifically from
0:28
Speaker 1: October 1977 to February 1978, that entire picturesque landscape is
0:34
Speaker 1: just completely paralyzed by panic.
0:36
Speaker 2: Paralyzed is the right word for it, yeah.
0:39
Speaker 1: You literally cannot look at the hills the same way
0:41
Speaker 1: anymore because over those five months, ten women are kidnapped, raped,
0:48
Speaker 1: and strangled.
0:49
Speaker 2: And then their bodies are just discarded.
0:51
Speaker 1: Yes, just left discarded along those scenic city hillsides. It's
0:56
Speaker 1: a level of visible, inescapable terror that completely rewrites the
1:00
Speaker 1: reality of an entire city.
1:02
Speaker 2: It fundamentally dismantles a community's baseline sense of safety, you know?
1:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, imagine you're just driving to work or
1:09
Speaker 1: looking out your kitchen window and the very geography of
1:11
Speaker 1: your neighborhood has been turned into a display case for
1:14
Speaker 1: a serial killer.
1:16
Speaker 2: When the geography of your daily life becomes a graveyard...
1:20
Speaker 2: The psychological toll on the public is just, it's immeasurable.
1:23
Speaker 1: Right.
1:24
Speaker 2: Because this isn't a hidden crime happening in back alleys.
1:27
Speaker 2: It's right out in the open.
1:28
Speaker 1: It's unavoidable.
1:29
Speaker 2: Exactly. The perpetrators are utilizing the iconic natural beauty of
1:34
Speaker 2: Los Angeles as part of their messaging. And that casts
1:38
Speaker 2: a shadow over everything.
1:39
Speaker 1: You stop trusting your environment.
1:41
Speaker 2: You really do. You stop trusting the setting sun.
1:44
Speaker 1: And you'd think a story like that ends with the capture, right?
1:46
Speaker 1: Like the bad guys are caught, the city breathes a
1:48
Speaker 1: sigh of relief, and the nightmare is just over.
1:51
Speaker 2: Which is usually how the Hollywood version of this goes. Yeah.
1:54
Speaker 1: But as we've been combing through this massive People magazine
1:57
Speaker 1: retrospective on the Hillside Stranglers, the really terrifying part isn't
2:01
Speaker 1: just the crimes.
2:02
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
2:03
Speaker 1: It's how incredibly close these guys came to completely beating
2:06
Speaker 1: the justice system using like cutting-edge 1970s pseudoscience.
2:11
Speaker 2: Exactly. And that retrospective lens provided by the source material
2:15
Speaker 2: is so crucial here.
2:16
Speaker 1: It really is.
2:17
Speaker 2: When you look back at a case from nearly 50
2:20
Speaker 2: years ago, you're just blinded by the panic of the moment.
2:23
Speaker 2: We have the luxury of looking at the entirety of
2:25
Speaker 2: the timeline.
2:26
Speaker 1: Right. From the very first crime to the bizarre psychological
2:29
Speaker 1: games played during the interrogation, all the way to the
2:32
Speaker 1: legal battles.
2:33
Speaker 2: And finally, to where these individuals are right now. It
2:36
Speaker 2: gives us a complete autopsy of a societal trauma.
2:40
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because our mission for this deep
2:43
Speaker 1: dive is to figure out the how and the why.
2:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to get into the mechanics of it.
2:47
Speaker 1: We want to understand how two killer cousins managed to
2:49
Speaker 1: hold a city hostage. You know, how they weaponized the
2:52
Speaker 1: very concept of law enforcement against the public.
2:54
Speaker 2: Which is a huge factor in why the city was
2:56
Speaker 2: so terrified.
2:58
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And how their eventual capture led to a trial
3:01
Speaker 1: so chaotic that a sitting judge actually had to intervene
3:04
Speaker 1: to stop the district attorney from letting a serial killer
3:07
Speaker 1: walk free.
3:08
Speaker 2: It's still hard to believe that actually happened.
3:10
Speaker 1: I know, right? So rather than just marching through a
3:13
Speaker 1: list of dates, I want to figure out how this
3:14
Speaker 1: specific type of terror actually operates.
3:17
Speaker 2: And that starts with understanding who was targeted.
3:21
Speaker 1: Exactly. The first known victim was a young woman named
3:24
Speaker 1: Yolanda Washington. She was a 19-year-old sex worker.
3:27
Speaker 2: So young. Yeah.
3:29
Speaker 1: And her body was found in October 1977, bound and
3:33
Speaker 1: dumped near Griffith Park.
3:35
Speaker 2: Finding her near Griffith Park is a massive detail. Griffith
3:39
Speaker 2: Park isn't just some patch of grass. It's a sprawling,
3:43
Speaker 2: iconic public space in Los Angeles.
3:45
Speaker 1: That's where everyone goes.
3:46
Speaker 2: Right. It's where families go, tourists go there. So dumping
3:50
Speaker 2: a victim there is a deliberate statement.
3:53
Speaker 1: It's incredibly brazen.
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Speaker 2: It signals a complete disregard for the risk of being caught.
3:59
Speaker 2: And more importantly, it signals a desire to incite maximum
4:03
Speaker 2: public fear. They wanted her to be found.
4:06
Speaker 1: But wait, I have to challenge that a bit. If
4:09
Speaker 1: they are so calculated, why put bodies out in the
4:12
Speaker 1: open where anyone could see a car pull up?
4:14
Speaker 2: It seems counterintuitive, I know.
4:17
Speaker 1: I mean, a jogger could spot them the next morning.
4:18
Speaker 1: That feels entirely contradictory to me. Are they calculated masterminds
4:23
Speaker 1: or are they just reckless?
4:24
Speaker 2: That is the core paradox of the serial killer psychology.
4:27
Speaker 2: It's a tension between the compulsion for notoriety and the
4:32
Speaker 2: instinct for self-preservation.
4:33
Speaker 1: So they want to be seen, but they don't want.
4:35
Speaker 2: To be caught. You're right. It is highly reckless to
4:39
Speaker 2: dump a body in a public park. But you have
4:41
Speaker 2: to understand why they do it. The public display is
4:44
Speaker 2: part of the psychological payoff. Right.
4:47
Speaker 1: It's not just about the killing.
4:48
Speaker 2: Exactly. They aren't just killing a person. They are holding
4:52
Speaker 2: an entire city hostage. The bodies are the ransom notes. Wow.
4:57
Speaker 1: The bodies are the ransom notes.
5:00
Speaker 2: They're willing to accept the elevated risk of being seen
5:02
Speaker 2: because they're The reward, in their twisted minds, is waking
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Speaker 2: up the next morning and seeing their handiwork on the
5:08
Speaker 2: front page of the L.A. Times.
5:11
Speaker 1: They feed off that energy.
5:12
Speaker 2: They want to look out over the city and know
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Speaker 2: that millions of people are terrified of them.
5:18
Speaker 1: That makes the reality of it so much darker. It's
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Speaker 1: not just murder. It's psychological warfare against the public.
5:24
Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
5:26
Speaker 1: And it really set the tone for the nightmare that followed.
5:28
Speaker 1: Because after Yolanda Washington, the breadth of this spree just changed.
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Speaker 2: It escalated so quickly.
5:36
Speaker 1: Over those five months, nine other women were killed in
5:39
Speaker 1: a similar horrific manner. We're talking about Judith Miller, Lissa Kasten,
5:44
Speaker 1: Dolores Cepeda, Sonia Johnson, Christina Weckler, Jane King, Lauren Wagner,
5:49
Speaker 1: Kimberly Martin, and Cindy Hutspeth.
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Speaker 2: And when you look at the demographics of these victims,
5:55
Speaker 2: it is chillingly wide.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the women ranged in age from just 12 years
6:00
Speaker 1: old up to 28.
6:02
Speaker 2: Think about that age range from a public safety standpoint.
6:06
Speaker 2: When a predator targets a very specific, narrow demographic, say,
6:10
Speaker 2: only women in their early 30s who work in a
6:12
Speaker 2: specific industry, a city might try to hyper-protect that one group.
6:17
Speaker 1: Right. They put out warnings for that specific type of person.
6:20
Speaker 2: And the rest of the public engages in this kind
6:21
Speaker 2: of psychological compartmentalization. They tell themselves, well, I don't fit
6:26
Speaker 2: that profile, so my family is safe.
6:29
Speaker 1: It's a defense mechanism.
6:30
Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. But when victims range from a 12-year-old child
6:34
Speaker 2: to a 28-year-old woman, that perceived threat level for the
6:38
Speaker 2: average citizen just skyrockets. That compartmentalization shatters.
6:43
Speaker 1: You can't mentally protect yourself from that because the victims
6:47
Speaker 1: included runaways, sex workers, and even aspiring actresses and models.
6:51
Speaker 2: There was no single profile.
6:53
Speaker 1: Everyone felt like a potential target. And if everyone is
6:57
Speaker 1: a target, you naturally think, OK, how are they getting.
7:00
Speaker 2: To these women? How are they snatching them off the
7:02
Speaker 2: street without causing a massive scene? Exactly.
7:05
Speaker 1: And this is where we get into the method, which
7:07
Speaker 1: really explains why the panic was so absolute. These killers
7:11
Speaker 1: were luring victims by posing as police officers.
7:15
Speaker 2: Which is arguably one of the most psychologically damaging tactics
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Speaker 2: a predator can possibly use. It completely breaks the social contract.
7:23
Speaker 1: It totally does. I mean, think about how you're raised.
7:26
Speaker 1: You are conditioned from childhood to seek out the police
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Speaker 1: when you are in danger.
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Speaker 2: They are supposed to be the safe harbor.
7:33
Speaker 1: If you are a young woman in L.A. in 1977,
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Speaker 1: and you know there is a serial killer out there,
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Speaker 1: your baseline anxiety is through the roof. If a car
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Speaker 1: pulls up and a police officer approaches you?
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Speaker 2: Your initial instinct is relief.
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Speaker 1: Yes, your brain tells you, thank God, an authority figure,
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Speaker 1: I'm safe. They completely subverted that very instinct to seek help.
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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the absolute paralysis this causes within
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Speaker 2: a society. When the symbol of safety becomes the trap,
8:03
Speaker 2: who do you trust? Nobody.
8:06
Speaker 1: You literally can't trust anyone.
8:08
Speaker 2: Think about the ripple effect on the actual investigation. If
8:12
Speaker 2: a real detective approaches a potential witness on the street
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Speaker 2: at night, that witness is going to be absolutely terrified.
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Speaker 1: They might run.
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Speaker 2: They might run. They might fight back. The killers essentially
8:22
Speaker 2: weaponize the public's trust against the very people trying to
8:25
Speaker 2: stop them.
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Speaker 1: So the police are fighting the killers, but they're also
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Speaker 1: fighting the very fear the killers have attached to the badge.
8:32
Speaker 2: It's a logistical nightmare for law enforcement.
8:35
Speaker 1: But here is a detail from our source material that
8:37
Speaker 1: highlights just how bizarre and calculated their operation actually was.
8:42
Speaker 1: Because amidst all this chaos, there is the story of
8:45
Speaker 1: the one who got away.
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Speaker 2: Oh, this is such an incredible pivot in the story.
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Speaker 1: In November 1977, they attempt to kidnap a young woman
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Speaker 1: named Catherine Laurie Baker. Now, she happens to be the
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Speaker 1: daughter of the famous Casablanca actor Peter Laurie.
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Speaker 2: This is one of the most surreal and revealing moments
9:01
Speaker 2: in the entire timeline.
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Speaker 1: Right. They are in the middle of attempting to kidnap her.
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Speaker 1: The trap is sprung. But they actually stop and let
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Speaker 1: her go.
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Speaker 2: And you have to ask why.
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Speaker 1: Because she produces identification proving who her famous father is.
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Speaker 1: They look at the ID, realize who she is, and
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Speaker 1: they just stop the crime and let her walk away.
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Speaker 2: And if we look at that from an analytical perspective,
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Speaker 2: this completely punctures the myth of the uncontrollable compulsion.
9:27
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
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Speaker 2: Well, Hollywood and pop culture often train us to think
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Speaker 2: of serial killers as these mindless forces of nature, like
9:35
Speaker 2: a shark that smells blood and just can't stop itself.
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Speaker 1: Right, like they're just driven by some primal urge.
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Speaker 2: But here, right in the middle of a felony, they
9:43
Speaker 2: make a highly calculated risk assessment.
9:46
Speaker 1: But wait, earlier we were talking about how dumping bodies
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Speaker 1: in Griffith Park was reckless, and they accepted that risk
9:51
Speaker 1: for the notoriety. So why does the risk assessment change here?
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Speaker 2: Because it's a completely different category of heat.
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Speaker 1: Why is Peter Lorre's daughter suddenly too hospitable?
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Speaker 2: To handle? Leaving a body in Griffith Park gets you
10:02
Speaker 2: on the local news and terrifies the LAPD jurisdiction. Kidnapping
10:06
Speaker 2: and murdering the daughter of Hollywood royalty?
10:09
Speaker 1: That brings the feds.
10:11
Speaker 2: That brings down the FBI. That brings federal resources, national
10:15
Speaker 2: media scrutiny, and a level of heat that you simply
10:18
Speaker 2: cannot outrun.
10:19
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
10:20
Speaker 2: They saw the ID, and the math in their heads
10:23
Speaker 2: changed instantly. They spared her not out of a twisted
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Speaker 2: moral code, not because they suddenly felt empathy for a
10:30
Speaker 2: young woman, but purely out of self-preservation.
10:33
Speaker 1: That is so cold.
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Speaker 2: It shows a chilling level of cognitive control during the
10:38
Speaker 2: commission of a crime. They knew exactly what they were doing,
10:42
Speaker 2: and they knew they could stop whenever it didn't serve
10:44
Speaker 2: their interests.
10:45
Speaker 1: Which honestly makes the murders they did commit even more horrifying.
10:49
Speaker 2: Because it proves it was always a choice.
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Speaker 1: You know for a fact they were entirely capable of
10:53
Speaker 1: just walking away. So if they have the audacity to
10:57
Speaker 1: pose as cops and the chilling calculation to let a
11:00
Speaker 1: celebrity's daughter go, who are these guys?
11:04
Speaker 2: That is the million-dollar question.
11:06
Speaker 1: How are they pulling this off logistically? Because they clearly
11:08
Speaker 1: don't have a real LAPD precinct to operate out of.
11:10
Speaker 2: To understand the logistics, you have to understand the dynamic
11:14
Speaker 2: between the two individuals involved. We are looking at two cousins,
11:18
Speaker 2: Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono.
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Speaker 1: And they are very different people.
11:23
Speaker 2: The contrast between these two men is a classic, albeit tragic,
11:26
Speaker 2: case study in criminology.
11:28
Speaker 1: Let's look at Kenneth Bianchi first. He was born in
11:31
Speaker 1: 1951 to a 17-year-old prostitute, adopted as a baby and
11:35
Speaker 1: raised by Nicholas and Frances Bianchi in Rochester, New York.
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Speaker 2: So he starts with a lot of instability.
11:41
Speaker 1: Our source notes he was a deeply troubled kid. He
11:44
Speaker 1: was prone to fits of anger. But here is the
11:47
Speaker 1: detail that really sticks out. He consistently underperformed in school
11:50
Speaker 1: despite having an above-average IQ.
11:52
Speaker 2: It happens a lot with these types of profiles.
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Speaker 1: He eventually drops out of college, moves across the country
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Speaker 1: to a Hollywood apartment, and in the most ironic twist possible,
12:01
Speaker 1: given what we just discussed, he has aspirations to become
12:04
Speaker 1: a police officer.
12:06
Speaker 2: That profile is dense with psychological red flags. When you
12:10
Speaker 2: see an above-average IQ paired with chronic underperformance and behavioral issues,
12:15
Speaker 2: it often points to a deep-seated frustration.
12:18
Speaker 1: Like he thinks the world owes him something.
12:20
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. It points to a profound inability to operate
12:24
Speaker 2: within normal societal structures. He likely thinks he's smarter than
12:28
Speaker 2: everyone around him, but he lacks the discipline to prove
12:31
Speaker 2: it in traditional ways. He feels entitled to status without
12:35
Speaker 2: doing the work.
12:36
Speaker 1: And that intense desire to be a cop. He fails
12:39
Speaker 1: at joining the actual police force. He can't earn the
12:42
Speaker 1: badge legitimately. So what does he do?
12:44
Speaker 2: He decides to just put on the uniform himself.
12:47
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's the ultimate expression of needing authority, needing to
12:51
Speaker 1: dominate others, but lacking the character to earn that authority legitimately.
12:55
Speaker 1: So he counterfeits it.
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Speaker 2: And then you contrast him with his cousin, Angelo Buono. Right.
13:01
Speaker 1: So Bianchi is 27 at the time of his arrest.
13:03
Speaker 1: Angelo Buono is 44. That is a massive 17-year age gap.
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Speaker 2: It's generational almost.
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Speaker 1: Buono wasn't some young, frustrated college dropout. He was an
13:13
Speaker 1: older high school dropout. who operated his own auto upholstery
13:17
Speaker 1: shop out of his garage in Glendale, California.
13:20
Speaker 2: He was established.
13:22
Speaker 1: So you have Bianchi, the younger, adopted, frustrated guy from
13:25
Speaker 1: New York, dreaming of being a cop, teaming up with
13:27
Speaker 1: his much older cousin, a guy running a cash business
13:30
Speaker 1: out of a garage in L.A.
13:31
Speaker 2: It's a collision of different types of marginalization. Buono has
13:36
Speaker 2: the physical space, the garage, the house, an established, gritty independence.
13:41
Speaker 1: And Bianchi brings what?
13:43
Speaker 2: Bianchi brings the grandiose delusions and the performative energy. And
13:48
Speaker 2: we see how their partnership evolved. The source material outlines
13:51
Speaker 2: that they didn't just start with murder.
13:53
Speaker 1: No, they didn't. They initially operated an out-call prostitution service together.
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Speaker 2: Which feels like a crucial stepping stone. Yes.
14:00
Speaker 1: They are already operating outside the law together. They are
14:03
Speaker 1: already in the business of exploiting women for profit.
14:05
Speaker 2: It lowers their inhibitions.
14:07
Speaker 1: And then, by the fall of 1977, this legal enterprise
14:10
Speaker 1: escalates from exploitation into rape and murder. They started utilizing
14:15
Speaker 1: Bono's house as an actual trap.
14:17
Speaker 2: A controlled environment.
14:18
Speaker 1: We know this because later, during the trial, two young
14:21
Speaker 1: women who lived in Bono's house around that time, Rebecca
14:23
Speaker 1: Spears and Sabra Hannon, testified for the prosecution.
14:26
Speaker 2: And their testimony was horrific.
14:28
Speaker 1: Hannan actually accused the men of forcing her into prostitution
14:31
Speaker 1: and violently raping her. So Buono's home was essentially the
14:35
Speaker 1: logistical base of operations.
14:37
Speaker 2: It was their headquarters.
14:38
Speaker 1: But I have to push back on the dynamic here.
14:40
Speaker 1: When you look at that 17-year age gap and the
14:43
Speaker 1: fact that Buono had the house and the established criminal enterprise,
14:46
Speaker 1: did Buono groom the younger Bianchi into becoming a killer?
14:50
Speaker 2: That's a very common theory.
14:52
Speaker 1: Or did Bianchi's inherent psychological issues, that intense anger, the
14:56
Speaker 1: failed ambition to be a cop, the high IQ frustration,
15:00
Speaker 1: act as the catalyst that ignited them both.
15:02
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate pathology versus environment question. If we connect
15:07
Speaker 2: this to the broader picture of toxic psychological partnerships, we
15:11
Speaker 2: often see what psychologists call a folie a deux, a
15:15
Speaker 2: madness shared by two.
15:16
Speaker 1: I've heard of that.
15:18
Speaker 2: It is very likely that neither man would have reached
15:20
Speaker 2: this horrific, prolific extreme on their own. Let's break down
15:24
Speaker 2: the mechanism of how that works. Imagine the conversations between them.
15:29
Speaker 1: Okay.
15:29
Speaker 2: Buono had the established criminal mindset, the deep misogyny and
15:33
Speaker 2: the physical location, the trap house. He provides the logistical framework.
15:38
Speaker 2: But Bianchi brings the performative aspect, the grandiosity of posing
15:43
Speaker 2: as police, the escalating violent urges.
15:46
Speaker 1: So they feed off each other.
15:47
Speaker 2: In a fully adieu, one person's darkest impulses are constantly
15:52
Speaker 2: validated and escalated by the other.
15:55
Speaker 1: So they are basically hyping each other up into monsters.
15:59
Speaker 2: Precisely. If Bianchi mentions a dark urge, instead of being
16:03
Speaker 2: met with horror, which is what would happen in normal society,
16:06
Speaker 2: he is met with agreement from his older cousin. Wow.
16:10
Speaker 2: Their worst traits didn't just add together, they multiplied. They
16:14
Speaker 2: created a closed psychological loop where morality ceased to exist,
16:19
Speaker 2: replaced entirely by their shared delusion of dominance.
16:23
Speaker 1: That is deeply unsettling, but it explains how two guys
16:26
Speaker 1: could maintain that level of intensity for five months. But then,
16:30
Speaker 1: as abruptly as the terror began, the source notes that
16:33
Speaker 1: by early 1978, the L.A. murders just suddenly stop.
16:38
Speaker 2: Which is incredibly rare. L.A.
16:40
Speaker 1: Is holding its collective breath, expecting the next body to
16:42
Speaker 1: be found on a hillside, and then nothing.
16:45
Speaker 2: Serial killers operating at that level of escalation rarely just
16:50
Speaker 2: age out of it or lose interest. The compulsion usually
16:53
Speaker 2: drives them until they are caught, killed, or incarcerated. Exactly.
16:57
Speaker 1: And they weren't caught or killed. It turns out the
17:00
Speaker 1: timeline just shifted geography. A year later, we are in
17:05
Speaker 1: a completely different state. January 1979.
17:07
Speaker 2: They moved on.
17:10
Speaker 1: Kenneth Bianchi has relocated to Bellingham, Washington. And guess what
17:13
Speaker 1: he's doing for work? He's a security guard.
17:16
Speaker 2: Placing himself right back into a position of quasi-authority. He's
17:20
Speaker 2: wearing a uniform again. He's patrolling. He's holding keys.
17:25
Speaker 1: He just cannot let go of that need to play
17:26
Speaker 1: the enforcer. But the urge hasn't gone away, and the
17:30
Speaker 1: killings resume. In Bellingham, he targets two young women, 22-year-old
17:35
Speaker 1: Karen Mandick and 27-year-old Diane Wilder.
17:39
Speaker 2: They were local college students.
17:40
Speaker 1: And the mechanism of how he gets them is similar
17:43
Speaker 1: in its deception, even if the disguise is different. They
17:46
Speaker 1: are lured to a house in South Bellingham under the
17:48
Speaker 1: guise of a house-sitting job.
17:50
Speaker 2: So again, he's using false pretenses.
17:53
Speaker 1: He uses an employment opportunity as the bait. Once they
17:55
Speaker 1: arrive at the controlled environment of the house, they are
17:58
Speaker 1: raped and strangled to death.
18:00
Speaker 2: It's the same predatory instinct, just a different flavor of bait.
18:05
Speaker 2: Instead of posing as police on a dark LA hillside,
18:08
Speaker 2: he uses the mundane, trustworthy offer of a house-sitting job
18:12
Speaker 2: to get them into a space he controls.
18:15
Speaker 1: It's all about control for him.
18:18
Speaker 2: But this time, his operational security slips. This time, it
18:22
Speaker 2: leads directly to his capture.
18:24
Speaker 1: Yes, the police connect him to the victims, and he
18:27
Speaker 1: is arrested in Washington for the murders of Mandick and Wilder.
18:30
Speaker 1: And this is where the story takes a hard turn
18:33
Speaker 1: into some deeply bizarre late 1970s territory.
18:37
Speaker 2: It gets really weird from here on out.
18:40
Speaker 1: Because to get a confession out of him, law enforcement
18:43
Speaker 1: uses hypnosis.
18:45
Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the intersection of law
18:49
Speaker 2: and psychology during that era. Today, the idea of hypnotizing
18:53
Speaker 2: a murder suspect to extract a confession seems completely absurd.
18:57
Speaker 1: It sounds like something out of a bad movie.
18:59
Speaker 2: It's legally treacherous, and no judge today would allow it
19:02
Speaker 2: as primary evidence. But in the late 70s, it was
19:06
Speaker 2: actually considered a cutting-edge, albeit controversial, investigative tool.
19:11
Speaker 1: And people actually believed in it.
19:14
Speaker 2: Police departments genuinely believe they could bypass a suspect's conscious
19:18
Speaker 2: defenses and unlock repressed memories or hidden truths hiding in
19:22
Speaker 2: the subconscious.
19:23
Speaker 1: So they put Bianchi under hypnosis. And what happens next
19:26
Speaker 1: is wild. Under the guise of being hypnotized, Bianchi confesses
19:30
Speaker 1: to killing the two women in Washington, and he confesses
19:33
Speaker 1: to five of the L.A. Hillside Strangler murders.
19:35
Speaker 2: He just starts spilling everything.
19:38
Speaker 1: Even more importantly for the LAPD, he completely corroborates Angela
19:41
Speaker 1: Buono's involvement in all 10 of the LA murders. But
19:44
Speaker 1: then he introduces a massive twist into the narrative.
19:48
Speaker 2: And this is where his high IQ really comes into play.
19:52
Speaker 1: While allegedly hypnotized, he attempts to convince the authorities and
19:55
Speaker 1: the analyzing psychiatrists that he suffers from multiple personality disorder.
20:00
Speaker 2: Which is a brilliant, if utterly desperate, strategic move. Think
20:04
Speaker 2: about what he is trying to achieve mechanically. He is
20:07
Speaker 2: trying to weaponize a very complex, highly debated psychological diagnosis
20:12
Speaker 2: to escape the death penalty.
20:13
Speaker 1: By blaming it on someone else inside his head.
20:16
Speaker 2: If he can convince the state that he has multiple personalities,
20:19
Speaker 2: he can claim that an alter committed the murders.
20:22
Speaker 1: It's like he was basically trying to create a psychological LLC.
20:27
Speaker 2: Psychological LLC. That's good.
20:29
Speaker 1: He's trying to put all the legal liability on a
20:32
Speaker 1: subsidiary personality. So his main self, the core Kenneth Bianchi,
20:36
Speaker 1: couldn't be prosecuted or executed.
20:38
Speaker 2: I love that analogy. That is exactly the legal mechanism
20:41
Speaker 2: he is trying to exploit. He's trying to bankrupt the
20:44
Speaker 2: alter personality while shielding the parent company.
20:47
Speaker 1: With the sheer audacity of it.
20:49
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate act of posing. Think about the
20:53
Speaker 2: through line of his life. He spent his entire life posing.
20:57
Speaker 1: It's all he knows how to do. He posed as
20:59
Speaker 1: a cop to lure women on the hillsides. He posed
21:02
Speaker 1: as a security guard in Washington to exert authority. And now,
21:05
Speaker 1: cornered in a sterile interrogation room facing the death penalty,
21:09
Speaker 1: he attempts to pose as multiple different people inside his
21:12
Speaker 1: own mind.
21:13
Speaker 2: His entire existence was just a series of dangerous, pathological performances.
21:19
Speaker 1: That is a phenomenal observation.
21:21
Speaker 2: The multiple personality disorder claim wasn't just a sudden legal defense.
21:26
Speaker 2: It was the climax of his lifelong habit of adopting
21:28
Speaker 2: false identities to manipulate his environment. He thought he was
21:32
Speaker 2: smarter than the cops. And now he thought he was
21:35
Speaker 2: smarter than the psychiatrists.
21:37
Speaker 1: But how did the psychiatrists actually figure out he's faking?
21:40
Speaker 1: Because at the time, MPD was a huge pop culture phenomenon.
21:43
Speaker 1: Books like Sybil were everywhere. How do you prove someone
21:47
Speaker 1: doesn't have an alter?
21:49
Speaker 2: It requires meticulous psychological dismantling. And the experts brought in
21:53
Speaker 2: to evaluate him didn't just take him at his word.
21:56
Speaker 2: They look for malingering, which is the psychological term for
22:00
Speaker 2: faking an illness for secondary gain.
22:02
Speaker 1: So they test him.
22:03
Speaker 2: They test the consistency of the alters. A true dissociative
22:07
Speaker 2: identity has deep, ingrained, historically consistent traits. Bianchi's alters were sloppy.
22:15
Speaker 2: How so? They found that his alternate personalities would conveniently
22:19
Speaker 2: only remember things that helped his legal case and forget
22:23
Speaker 2: things that hurt him.
22:24
Speaker 1: Oh, that's convenient.
22:25
Speaker 2: Very convenient. They also utilized psychological testing that is designed
22:29
Speaker 2: to catch people who are trying to fake severe psychopathology. Eventually,
22:33
Speaker 2: the inconsistencies piled up so high that the illusion completely broke.
22:38
Speaker 2: The experts concluded he was acting.
22:40
Speaker 1: Right. The psychological LLC went bankrupt. The act failed and
22:45
Speaker 1: he couldn't sell the diagnosis to the court. So recognizing
22:48
Speaker 1: he was completely out of options and, you know, staring
22:50
Speaker 1: down the barrel of the death penalty, Bianchi agreed to
22:53
Speaker 1: a plea deal.
22:54
Speaker 2: He had to save himself.
22:55
Speaker 1: Right. He waived his right to a trial. He pleaded
22:58
Speaker 1: guilty and agreed to testify against his cousin, Angelo Buono.
23:01
Speaker 2: And with that confession and that deal in hand, the
23:04
Speaker 2: justice system now faces a monumental, almost impossible task. They
23:09
Speaker 2: have to bring Angelo Buono to trial for his role
23:11
Speaker 2: in a 10-victim killing spree.
23:13
Speaker 1: Which sounds straightforward, but it wasn't.
23:15
Speaker 2: But think about their foundation. They are relying heavily on
23:18
Speaker 2: the word of a man who just spent months meticulously
23:21
Speaker 2: lying to top psychiatrists about having multiple personalities.
23:25
Speaker 1: And that leads us to the legal circus, the trial
23:28
Speaker 1: of Angelo Buono. Our source lays out some statistics for
23:31
Speaker 1: this trial that are just staggering to comprehend. It began
23:35
Speaker 1: in 1981, and it took two full years to reach
23:39
Speaker 1: a verdict.
23:40
Speaker 2: Two years for a single criminal trial is almost unfathomable.
23:44
Speaker 2: The sheer logistical endurance required from the judge, the lawyers,
23:47
Speaker 2: and especially the jury is immense. You're asking citizens to
23:51
Speaker 2: pause their lives for 24 months.
23:53
Speaker 1: Just Listen to the sheer volume of this trial. 400
23:59
Speaker 1: witnesses were called to the stand.
24:02
Speaker 2: 400. That's insane.
24:03
Speaker 1: There were more than 50,000 pages of transcript testimony generated.
24:07
Speaker 1: And the jury deliberations alone, these were sequestered jury deliberations,
24:11
Speaker 1: meaning they were cut off from their families and the world,
24:14
Speaker 1: lasted 20 days.
24:15
Speaker 2: That takes a massive toll on a person.
24:18
Speaker 1: At the time, it was the longest and most expensive
24:20
Speaker 1: trial in California history. And to this day, it remains
24:22
Speaker 1: the longest murder trial in United States history.
24:25
Speaker 2: Try to visualize 50,000 pages of testimony. Imagine a jury
24:31
Speaker 2: sitting in that box day after day, month after month,
24:34
Speaker 2: trying to process that cognitive load.
24:36
Speaker 1: It's just too much information.
24:38
Speaker 2: They have to sit through two years of horrific forensic details,
24:42
Speaker 2: dense scientific evidence, cross-examinations, and deeply conflicting testimonies, and then
24:47
Speaker 2: spend 20 days locked in a hotel room trying to
24:50
Speaker 2: parse it all out. It tests the absolute limits of
24:53
Speaker 2: the human capacity for judgment and attention.
24:56
Speaker 1: But the real question is why it took so long.
24:58
Speaker 1: Why did it drag on for two years? And the
25:01
Speaker 1: source points the finger directly at the prosecution's star witness,
25:05
Speaker 1: Kenneth Bianchi.
25:06
Speaker 2: He was a nightmare on the stand.
25:08
Speaker 1: Because Bianchi proved to be a deeply, deeply unreliable witness
25:12
Speaker 1: on the stand. He didn't just get up there and
25:14
Speaker 1: tell the truth. He would change details. He would vacillate
25:17
Speaker 1: between different versions.
25:18
Speaker 2: Of his story. He couldn't keep his lies straight.
25:21
Speaker 1: He would outright deny several elements of his own original
25:25
Speaker 1: confession while under oath.
25:27
Speaker 2: This is the inherent danger of a prosecutor making a
25:30
Speaker 2: deal with the devil. When you rely on the testimony
25:32
Speaker 2: of a co-conspirator, you are inherently putting a known criminal
25:36
Speaker 2: on the stand.
25:37
Speaker 1: The defense is always going to tear them apart.
25:40
Speaker 2: The defense is always going to attack their credibility. But
25:43
Speaker 2: when you rely on Kenneth Bianchi, you are putting a
25:46
Speaker 2: man who has already proven to be a pathological liar
25:49
Speaker 2: on the stand. a man who tried to fake a
25:51
Speaker 2: psychiatric disorder to manipulate the system.
25:54
Speaker 1: He treated the witness box as just another stage for
25:56
Speaker 1: his performances.
25:57
Speaker 2: By constantly changing his story, he wasn't just playing games.
26:00
Speaker 2: He was actively sabotaging the prosecution's case against Buono.
26:04
Speaker 1: But why would he sabotage it if his own plea
26:06
Speaker 1: deal depended on his cooperation?
26:08
Speaker 2: Because it's about control. Remember, he's been locked in a cell.
26:12
Speaker 2: He's lost all his power.
26:14
Speaker 1: So this is his way of getting it back?
26:16
Speaker 2: Sitting on that witness stand, with the judge, the jury,
26:19
Speaker 2: the prosecutors, and his cousin all hanging on his every word,
26:23
Speaker 2: that is immense power. He realized he controlled the fate
26:26
Speaker 2: of the entire trial.
26:28
Speaker 1: So if he answers clearly, the trial ends.
26:31
Speaker 2: But if he changes his story, he keeps everyone dancing
26:34
Speaker 2: to his tune.
26:35
Speaker 1: And his sabotage almost worked. Because the sheer friction caused
26:38
Speaker 1: by Bianchi's unreliability led to one of the most shocking
26:41
Speaker 1: moments in L.A. legal history.
26:43
Speaker 2: This part is wild.
26:45
Speaker 1: In July 1981, the district attorney at the time, John Vandekamp,
26:49
Speaker 1: made the highly controversial decision to drop all murder charges
26:53
Speaker 1: against Angelo Buono.
26:54
Speaker 2: Which, understandably, sparked absolute public outrage.
26:58
Speaker 1: Think about the whiplash for the citizens of Los Angeles.
27:01
Speaker 2: They thought they were finally safe. The city had been
27:04
Speaker 2: deeply traumatized. They finally had the men responsible in custody,
27:08
Speaker 2: and the DA is suddenly dropping the charges because the
27:11
Speaker 2: star witness is playing games on the stand?
27:13
Speaker 1: But then a superior court judge named Ronald George steps in,
27:17
Speaker 1: and he basically rescues the case from the DA.
27:19
Speaker 2: Which is a huge judicial overstep in most normal circumstances.
27:24
Speaker 1: He orders the district attorney's office to vigorously and effectively
27:28
Speaker 1: resume the prosecution. So what does this all mean? I mean,
27:32
Speaker 1: I have to stop and express just complete disbelief here.
27:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's highly unusual.
27:37
Speaker 1: How does a sitting judge have the power to force
27:39
Speaker 1: a district attorney to prosecute a case? I thought prosecutors
27:42
Speaker 1: had the ultimate discretion on what charges to bring.
27:45
Speaker 2: It highlights the immense, almost crushing pressure the justice system
27:50
Speaker 2: operates under when massive public terror collides with a crumbling
27:54
Speaker 2: legal case. You're right. Normally, prosecutorial discretion is absolute.
27:59
Speaker 1: So how did he do it?
28:01
Speaker 2: But the judge was looking at the broader mandate of
28:03
Speaker 2: justice and the specific mechanisms of this trial. The DA
28:08
Speaker 2: was looking at the evidentiary reality. The legal threshold for
28:12
Speaker 2: a conviction is beyond a reasonable doubt.
28:15
Speaker 1: And Bianchi was creating a lot of doubt.
28:18
Speaker 2: The DA's office felt that with Bianchi lying and contradicting
28:22
Speaker 2: himself on the stand, the defense had been handed a
28:24
Speaker 2: mountain of reasonable doubt. The DA was afraid of a spectacular,
28:29
Speaker 2: humiliating loss at trial.
28:31
Speaker 1: So the DA wanted to fold a bad hand.
28:34
Speaker 2: Exactly. But Judge Ronald George fundamentally disagreed with folding. He
28:38
Speaker 2: essentially ruled that the crimes were too heinous and the
28:41
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence outside of Bianchi's testimony was too significant to
28:46
Speaker 2: just dismiss the case without letting a jury decide.
28:49
Speaker 1: He wasn't going to let them off on a technicality.
28:51
Speaker 2: You cannot let a man accused of participating in 10
28:54
Speaker 2: brutal murders walk free simply because your star witness is
28:58
Speaker 2: a difficult narcissist.
29:00
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating philosophical debate. Do you proceed with a
29:04
Speaker 1: deeply flawed case because the crimes are so horrific, or
29:06
Speaker 1: do you drop it because the strict legal threshold of
29:09
Speaker 1: beyond a reasonable doubt seems compromised by your own witness?
29:13
Speaker 2: It was a massive gamble forced by the judge.
29:16
Speaker 1: But ultimately, that gamble paid off. After two years, Angela
29:20
Speaker 1: Buono was convicted of nine of the homicides.
29:23
Speaker 2: It was a monumental victory for a deeply exhausted legal
29:26
Speaker 2: system and a crucial moment of closure for a traumatized city.
29:30
Speaker 2: The system bended almost to the breaking point, but it
29:34
Speaker 2: did not break.
29:35
Speaker 1: So having secured those convictions after the longest murder trial
29:39
Speaker 1: in U.S. history, let's move to the present day. Where
29:43
Speaker 1: are they now?
29:44
Speaker 2: Well, the source material gives us the ultimate fates of
29:46
Speaker 2: these two cousins, and it is a study in contrast.
29:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's look at what happened to them after the trial.
29:53
Speaker 2: For Angelo Buono, the story is definitively over. He received
29:57
Speaker 2: a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Right. He
30:00
Speaker 2: lived out his days behind bars and died of a
30:02
Speaker 2: heart attack at Calipatria State Prison in California in 2002.
30:07
Speaker 2: He was 67 years old.
30:08
Speaker 1: But for Kenneth Bianchi, the illusion of escape is somehow
30:12
Speaker 1: still ongoing. He is currently serving his life sentence in
30:15
Speaker 1: Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington.
30:17
Speaker 2: He's still fighting it.
30:18
Speaker 1: And he has spent decades navigating endless appeals and parole hearings.
30:22
Speaker 1: The source notes that in July 2025, he was denied
30:25
Speaker 1: parole for the eighth time.
30:27
Speaker 2: And he'll just keep trying.
30:29
Speaker 1: His previous denial before that was way back in 2010,
30:32
Speaker 1: and now he won't be eligible again for another 10 years.
30:35
Speaker 2: It is the relentless, mechanical turning of the justice system.
30:40
Speaker 2: The dramatic trial is over, and now it is just bureaucracy.
30:43
Speaker 2: Just paperwork. He applies, the parole board reviews the staggering
30:47
Speaker 2: weight of his crimes, the devastating impact on the victim's families,
30:51
Speaker 2: and he is denied over and over again. It is
30:55
Speaker 2: a slow, grinding reality that he cannot manipulate his way
30:59
Speaker 2: out of.
30:59
Speaker 1: But here is the detail that absolutely blew my mind.
31:03
Speaker 1: To this very day, Kenneth Bianchi continues to maintain his innocence.
31:07
Speaker 2: Of course he does.
31:08
Speaker 1: He still alleges that his original confession, the one made
31:11
Speaker 1: under hypnosis back in 1979, was coerced and untrue. And
31:15
Speaker 1: he has taken this denial to an astonishing new level.
31:18
Speaker 2: What did he do now?
31:20
Speaker 1: The source notes that in 2023, he legally changed his
31:23
Speaker 1: name to Anthony D'Amato.
31:25
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, to everything
31:28
Speaker 2: we've discussed about his psychology from the very beginning, this
31:31
Speaker 2: name change makes total twisted sense. Really? How so? This
31:36
Speaker 2: is a man who thrives on adopting false identities to
31:39
Speaker 2: exert control. He couldn't be a legitimate cop, so he
31:43
Speaker 2: posed as one. He couldn't escape justice, so he tried
31:46
Speaker 2: to pose as a psychiatric patient with multiple personalities.
31:51
Speaker 1: It's just another mask.
31:52
Speaker 2: And now locked in a cell for the rest of
31:54
Speaker 2: his life, completely stripped of his agency. His final act
31:57
Speaker 2: of posing is changing his name on a piece of paper.
32:00
Speaker 2: He fundamentally refuses to accept reality.
32:04
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
32:05
Speaker 2: The ongoing claims of coerced hypnosis, the legal name change,
32:09
Speaker 2: these are the desperate attempts of a man trying to
32:11
Speaker 2: exert some tiny fraction of control from inside a cage.
32:15
Speaker 1: It really is the ultimate delusion.
32:17
Speaker 2: He is essentially trying to erase himself.
32:20
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the end of this incredible arc.
32:23
Speaker 2: We covered a lot of ground today.
32:25
Speaker 1: We really did. We've gone from the panic-stricken hillsides of
32:29
Speaker 1: Hollywood to the bizarre pseudoscience of 1970s interrogations, right through
32:35
Speaker 1: to a historic legal showdown that almost fell apart at
32:37
Speaker 1: the seams.
32:38
Speaker 2: It's a case that tested every single layer of society.
32:42
Speaker 2: It tested the public's resilience against terror, law enforcement's methodology
32:46
Speaker 2: in the face of manipulations, and the judicial system's stamina
32:50
Speaker 2: during a two-year marathon.
32:52
Speaker 1: And for you listening, I want you to consider how
32:54
Speaker 1: this case fundamentally altered public trust. Because the terror of
32:58
Speaker 1: the Hillside Stranglers wasn't just in the unimaginable violence they
33:02
Speaker 1: committed against those 10 women.
33:04
Speaker 2: That was awful enough, but there was more to it.
33:06
Speaker 1: The true terror was in how they weaponized the badge.
33:10
Speaker 1: They turned the very symbols of safety, the people we
33:12
Speaker 1: are taught from childhood to run toward in a crisis,
33:16
Speaker 1: into a deadly trap. They made a whole city second-guess
33:18
Speaker 1: their deepest instinct for survival.
33:21
Speaker 2: And as we close, I want to leave you with
33:24
Speaker 2: one final thought regarding that name change we just discussed.
33:28
Speaker 2: In 2023, Kenneth Bianchi legally changed his name to Anthony D'Amato. Right.
33:34
Speaker 2: When a person whose identity is globally synonymous with monstrous
33:38
Speaker 2: acts attempts to wipe the slate clean with a simple
33:41
Speaker 2: clerical name change, is it a sign of ultimate delusion?
33:45
Speaker 2: Is it a profound refusal to face the man in
33:47
Speaker 2: the mirror? Or is it just one final, pathetic attempt
33:51
Speaker 2: to escape a history that will forever define him?
33:54
Speaker 1: That is something to chew on. When you spend your
33:57
Speaker 1: entire life putting on disguises to hurt people, eventually, even
34:01
Speaker 1: you might forget who you really are beneath the mask.
34:04
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on the Steep Dive. Keep
34:06
Speaker 1: questioning the narratives around you, stay curious, and we will
34:09
Speaker 1: catch you next time.