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Hunting the Hillside Stranglers · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine living in a city of millions, right? But feeling
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: like you are the specific active target of a hunt
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: every single time you just walk to your car.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's just a terrifying thought.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: It really is. And so you're in Los Angeles. It's
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the late 1970s. And the collective memory of this era
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: usually defaults to the sunshine, the sprawling beaches, the birth
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: of the modern blockbuster.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: The whole roller disco aesthetic, basically.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: But beneath that very thin, I mean, very commercial veneer
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of Hollywood glamour, the reality was violently different.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Radically different.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The city wasn't pulsing with West Coast energy. It
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: was paralyzed by this singular suffocating fear. The Hollywood Hills,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: which is a place synonymous with exclusivity and safety, right?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It had literally been transformed into a hunting ground. Yeah.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: And it was a structural and psychological nightmare for the city.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: When you look back at the historical landscape of Los
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Angeles during that specific window, the geography itself weaponized the fear.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because the hills are isolating. You've got winding roads,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: blind corners, properties tucked away behind high walls.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: All the stuff meant to keep people out.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. What was designed to keep the public out suddenly
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: became the perfect cover for something far, far darker.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to our mission for you today. We
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: are doing a deep dive into a Brilliant. Deeply unsettling
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: article written by Steve Helling.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Published in April of 2017. Right.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: And it pulls the infamous Hillside Strangler case entirely apart.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: But let me be clear right out of the gate here.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is important.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We are not here to recount the macabre details just
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: for the sake of shock value. No, not at all.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Our mission is to look well beyond the surface level horror.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We're going to analyze the underlying mechanics of how this
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: case completely broke the standard logic of law enforcement. We're
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: going to look at the enduring psychological toll this exacted
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: on the detectives who worked it and dissect the unprecedented
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: media spectacle that, you know, physically altered how the police
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: had to operate. Yeah.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And to give you a sense of our source material,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Helling's article is an exploration of an episode of The
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Real's channel docuseries. Oh, right.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Murder made me famous.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the true value of this piece isn't just
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: the timeline of events. It's the access. It features incredibly
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: rare interviews with key figures, most notably former LAPD detective
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Bob Grogan, speaking four decades after the crimes.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. Forty years.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It provides this incredible retrospective lens on a real-time crisis.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: You get to see the fallout of the investigation from
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: a distance, but through the eyes of someone who is
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: literally standing at ground zero.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: That is so rare to get. So let's start with
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the sheer anatomy of a city on edge. Because, I mean,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: on edge almost feels like too mild a phrase, doesn't it?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: It really does. It was pure panic. Right.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: According to Helling's article, during this period in the late 1970s,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: at least 10 women and girls were kidnapped, raped, tortured,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and murdered.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: It's just staggering. It is.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: With the geographical center of this terror being the Hollywood Hills.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: But the detail that turned general anxiety into total panic
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: unmitigated hysteria was the demographic spread.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the ages. Right.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: We were talking about 10 female victims, but their ages
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: ranged from a 12-year-old child to a 28-year-old woman.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: And that age range is the defining variable of the
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: panic here.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Well, the article explicitly notes that this case confounded California police,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: and we really need to unpack what it means for
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: a massive, sprawling metropolis to be paralyzed like that.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, let's break that down.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: In public psychology and even in criminology, fear is managed
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: through compartmentalization. The public relies on parameters.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Like putting things in neat little boxes so we don't
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: freak out.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If a serial predator is targeting a highly specific demographic,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: let's say women in their mid-30s with a specific occupation
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: or people frequenting one distinct neighborhood, the public unconsciously uses
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: that narrow profile to feel safe.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Right. It's a defense mechanism. You read the paper and think, Well,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: that is an absolute tragedy. But I am a 20-year-old
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: college student or, you know, I'm a mother of three. Right.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I don't fit the description. So it provides this psychological buffer.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: It creates a boundary line between them and me. But here,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: 12 to 28.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: That's huge.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: It spans middle schoolers walking home, high school kids at
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: the mall, college students, young professionals, mothers.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Anyone, basically. Yeah.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: That isn't a target profile. It's an incredibly wide, violent net.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: And because of that vast range, the parameters completely evaporated.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Virtually no female in the entire city of Los Angeles
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: felt a buffer of safety. The randomness, or at least
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: the perceived randomness, is what breeds absolute paralysis.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: It's like trying to navigate your own home in pitch darkness, right?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Knowing a trap is set, but having absolutely no idea
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: what the trigger is.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Like, Is it stepping on a certain floorboard? Is it
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: turning a doorknob? When you don't know the rules of
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the danger, every single interaction becomes the potential trigger.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Every walk to the bus stop.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Every trip to the grocery store. But let me throw
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: a wrench in the law enforcement side of this, because
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I imagine this demographic spread was just as terrifying for
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the police.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: When a killer's victim profile is this violently wide... How
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: does that exponentially complicate the LAPD's ability to warn the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: public without just pouring gasoline on the hysteria?
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: It completely breaks their ability to communicate effectively.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Think about the basic function of a police warning. When
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: law enforcement has a narrow profile, their warnings are tactical.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Meaning they give you something to do.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Right. they can offer actionable intelligence. They say, avoid this
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: specific area at night, or be vigilant if you drive
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: this type of vehicle. It gives the public a task,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: a way to participate in their own safety.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: But when the profile is essentially any female between the
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: ages of 12 and 28, what actionable intelligence exists? None.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, the warning just becomes, hey, be terrified.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And practically speaking, it destroys the investigative pipeline.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: How does it do that?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It creates an insurmountable signal-to-noise problem. When everyone in a
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: city of millions thinks they are a potential target, the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: police switchboards are flooded with thousands of tips.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: But 99% of them are driven by pure paranoia rather
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: than actual evidence.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Right, because everyone is suspicious of everything. Yes.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: A suspicious glance at a gas station gets reported as
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: a near abduction. The police are confounded not just by
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: the lack of forensic evidence at the crime scenes, but
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: by the chaotic, deafening noise generated by a city in
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: a state of ubiquitous panic.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: They are drowning in false leads.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Drowning.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Which means the detectives sifting through those leads have to
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: possess a terrifying level of resilience.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, the pressure from the public, the local politicians,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: the press. It must have felt like a physical weight.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: A crushing weight. Yeah.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to former LAPD detective Bob Grogan,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: who is heavily featured in the source material. Helling's article
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: gives us this incredibly raw window into the burden Grogan
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: has carried. And we aren't talking about something he just
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: reminisces about, right?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: We are talking about a 40-year wait.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: The Murder Made Me Famous docuseries captures Grogan nearly four
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: decades after the crimes. And what is striking is the
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: total absence of distance. 40 years later, Grogan still becomes
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: visibly angry, highly emotional, and physically tense when discussing the case.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: There's a direct quote from Grogan in the article that
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: really stopped me in my tracks.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Which one?
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: He's recalling one of the victims who was strapped to
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a chair in the killer's house. And Grogan says, I
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: can't imagine what it'd been like to be sitting in
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that expletive chair in Boino's house and going through this crap.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: The raw fury in that statement is palpable. It completely
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: shatters the cultural archetype we have, the stoic hardened cop.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: It really does. We are so conditioned by media and
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: procedural dramas to expect the clinical investigator.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Right, the guy in the trench coat who feels nothing.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The detective who builds an impenetrable wall of detachment
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: to survive the job. They arrive at a gruesome scene,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: they drink their coffee, and they look at a body
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: purely as a forensic puzzle.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Just pieces of evidence.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: But Grogan's quote is the antithesis of clinical detachment. He says,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine what it'd been like to be sitting
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: in that chair. That is pure empathetic projection.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: He is mentally placing himself in the exact physical and
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: psychological space of the victim in their final moments. Right.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: He isn't looking at the crime as a broken law.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: He is feeling it as human torture.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Which is a staggering psychological load.
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  Speaker 1: It has to be.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: To maintain that level of empathetic projection for 40 years,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: the human nervous system isn't designed to sustain that. The
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: trauma of the victim effectively bypasses his professional defenses and
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: becomes his own secondary trauma.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I want to push back on something here, though.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: OK, sure.
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  Speaker 1: Because society constantly peddles this idea that time dulls the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: edges of trauma. We tell people, you know, time heals
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: all wounds.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Right. That old cliche.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: But looking at Grogan, four decades haven't dulled a single
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: edge of his anger. It is still razor sharp.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Very much so.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: So my question is, looking at the mechanics of an investigation,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: does this kind of visceral, enduring anger actually serve a
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: functional purpose? Like, does it help a detective stay committed
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: to a case? Or is it purely a heavy tax
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: they pay for doing the job too well?
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: That's a great question. I think framing it as either
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: a tool or a tax misses the reality that it
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: is inherently both and they feed into each other.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. How so?
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: It is undeniably a punishing tax. It damages personal lives.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: It ruins sleep. It alters your fundamental view of humanity.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: But from an investigative standpoint, that refusal to emotionally detach
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: is often the primary fuel that keeps a case alive.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: A clinical investigator might hit a dead end, look at
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: the lack of forensic data, and logically conclude the case
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: is cold.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: They just pack it up.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Right. But a detective operating on visceral anger and empathetic projection,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: they feel an agonizing personal duty to the victim. They
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: refuse to accept the easiest answer.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: They will stare at the same crime scene photos for
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: the hundredth time, looking for something they missed.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: So the inability to let go of the horror is
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: actually what keeps their eyes open to the evidence.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yes. And in this specific investigation, that intense empathy, that
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: hyper focus on the victim's physical reality and the brutal
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: logistics of what was done to them is exactly what
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: led Detective Grogan to a massive paradigm shifting epiphany.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: And this is where the investigation fundamentally pivots.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Because according to Helling's article, Grogan was one of the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: first authorities to look at the Hillside Strangler and realize
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a singular person.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: He realized it was a plural entity.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: His deduction, as quoted in the text, was rooted entirely
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: in the physical reality of the crime.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: What did he say?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: He said, the bodies were being carried to point A
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: to point B. It would have taken two to do it.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: It would have taken two to do it. Such a simple,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: pragmatic sentence.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Very simple.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: But the implications of that deduction completely rewrite the reality
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: for the LAPD.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, it completely short-circuits the established psychological profile.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Because they were looking for one guy.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Up until that moment, the entire law enforcement apparatus
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: was hunting a lone wolf. That is the baseline assumption
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: for a serial killer, the solitary, isolated predator.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: But Grogan stops looking at the psychological profile and starts
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: looking at the raw physics of the crime. Moving a
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: human body, what is grimly referred to as dead weight,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: is a logistical nightmare.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, anybody who has ever had to carry a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: sleeping child from the car to their bed knows how
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: surprisingly heavy 50 pounds of relaxed human weight feels.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: It throws off your center of gravity entirely. Now scale
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: that up to an adult human being.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Now take that adult weight and place it in the
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Hollywood Hills.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: You aren't just moving weight. You are navigating steep, uneven terrain,
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: loose dirt, and dense brush.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: In the pitch black.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, covertly, in the dark. You have to move a
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: body from a vehicle to a dump site without making noise,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: without alerting neighborhood dogs.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Without dropping physical evidence.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And without taking so long that a passing car
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: spots you. A single person trying to drag or carry
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: an adult body under those conditions is going to struggle immensely.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: They'd be exhausted.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: They are going to leave drag marks. They are going
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: to snap branches. They are going to be sweating and panting.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: So Grogan basically looks at the crime scenes. The fact
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: that bodies were moved from point A to point B
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: cleanly And realizes the physical mechanics simply do not support
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the lone wolf theory.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: He stripped away the profiling and looked at the logistics.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: By doing that, the hillside strangler became the hillside stranglers.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk about how incredibly difficult it
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: is to actually implement that realization.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It's monumentally difficult.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: It makes me think of an email spam filter. Imagine
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the LAPD set their internal investigative algorithm to look for
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: one man. Okay, yeah. Because that's the profile, right? That
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: becomes the filter through which every single piece of data
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: is sorted. So a tip comes in saying, hey, I
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: saw two guys in a suspicious van near the hills.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: The system automatically routes that tip to the junk folder
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't match the one-man parameter.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Wow, yes.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: The task force doesn't even look at it seriously.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: That is exactly how institutional momentum works. Once a major
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: task force commits to a profile, it takes monumental bureaucratic
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: effort to admit that the foundational assumption is wrong.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Because nobody wants to admit they wasted time.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Right. Grogan standing up and saying, we need to look
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: for two men means acknowledging that they may have inadvertently
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: ignored or deprioritized vital evidence for months.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: That's a tough pill to swallow.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: It requires reevaluating every piece of evidence, every suspect, every
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: tip through a completely new plural lens.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: It's not just a smart observation.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: It's a massive institutional pivot. And what makes it so
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: chilling is that his logistical theory proved terrifyingly accurate.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: The physics didn't lie.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: It led directly to what the article refers to as
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: a Hollywood-style twist regarding the identity of the killers.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: The killers were revealed to be Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And the twist wasn't just that there were two of them.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: It was that they were cousins.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Cousins.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: They were working in tandem.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Family.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Not two drifters who met in a bar, but relatives. Right.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: The source material outlines the final outcome here. They were
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: apprehended in 1979 and convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: murdering those 10 females. They received life sentences. Wono died
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: in prison in 2002 at the age of 67. Bianchi,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: who was 65 when Helling published this article in 2017,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: is serving his time in Walla Walla, Washington.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: But beyond the dates and sentences, it's Grogan's characterization of
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: their dynamic that is so disturbing.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: What did he call them?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: He calls them two animals in charge. noting their arrogant
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: belief that they could do whatever they want to do
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and get away with it.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: If we look closely at that dynamic, the familial complicity,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: it introduces a completely different mechanism of horror.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: When you have a lone killer, you are dealing with
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: a singular outlier, someone trapped in their own isolated, twisted psychology.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Just one sick mind.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: But when you have two people, especially relatives, operating together,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: you create a shared, normalized reality.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It's an echo chamber of depravity. Exactly.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: A dark, violent thought might remain just a thought if
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: a person is alone. They might have internal checks and balances.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Like a conscience kicking in. Right.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: But when one cousin voices that thought and the other
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: cousin doesn't recoil in horror, but instead agrees, validates it,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: and encourages it.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: That internal check is destroyed. They act as each other's
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: permission structure. It creates a feedback loop where the behavior
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: continually escalates. The horror becomes a shared enterprise, like a
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: family secret.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Which breeds the profound arrogance Grogan mentioned. They aren't just
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: getting away with murder. They are actively outsmarting the world together.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: They feel invincible.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: They really do.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: But I have to push back hard on Grogan's use
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of the word animals here. Oh. I mean, I understand
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: he uses it out of deep, justified disgust. But calling
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: them animals gives them almost too much of a pass.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I see what you mean.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: A mountain lion killing a deer in the Hollywood Hills
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: is brutal, but it's fundamentally innocent. It is caloric mathematics.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: It's survival. Right.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Nature being nature.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: What Bianchi and Buono did was entirely about human ego.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: They operated out of sadistic calculation and teamwork. Animals don't
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: believe they can do whatever they want to do and
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: get away with it.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: They don't torture for the thrill of feeling in charge.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Only a uniquely human ego is capable of that kind
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of malice.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: That is a crucial distinction.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: The word animal implies a lack of higher cognitive function,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a reliance on instinct.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: But everything about this case, the coordination, the evasion, the
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: specific torment of the victims, was highly calculated, conscious, human intent.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Their arrogance was a product of their intellect and their ego.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Just imagine the dark physics of that relationship for a
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: moment for you listeners. Two people continually validating the worst
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: impulses in each other.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: It's terrifying.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: If one hesitates, the other mocks him into compliance. If
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: one feels a shred of paranoia, the other bolsters his confidence.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: They were constantly competing to prove how in charge they
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: really were.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Fueling each other.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and when the LAPD finally shatters that delusion and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: captures these two men, men whose combined arrogance paralyzed the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: entire city of Los Angeles, the public reaction isn't just relief.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: It is explosive.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Which introduces an entirely new set of logistical failures for
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: the police.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Wait, what do you mean?
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: You might assume that once the handcuffs click, the hard
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: part of law enforcement is over.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: You'd think so, yeah.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: But Helling's article details a media frenzy upon their apprehension
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: that was so unprecedented, the police actually had to transport
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Kenneth Bianchi in a private airplane simply to avoid the
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: crush of reporters and cameras.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Let's really analyze the mechanics of that. The LAPD, a
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: municipal police force, having to procure and utilize a private
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: aircraft just to move a suspect securely from point A
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: to point B.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It's wild to think about.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: It is. Grogan compares the intensity of the media at
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: that specific time to the election of Donald Trump. And
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: just to frame that contextually, for you, the listener, we
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: are taking absolutely no political stance here. Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: We need to be clear about that.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: We are just reporting what's in the article. Grogan is
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: using that solely as a metric of pure sensory overload
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and omnipresence. It's a benchmark for the deafening volume, the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: chaotic intensity, and the absolute 24-7 saturation of press coverage.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it perfectly illustrates the physical manifestation of media interference.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: We traditionally view the press as observers of the justice system.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: They stand outside the yellow tape and report on what
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: happens inside. But what the private plane detail reveals is
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: the moment the media crosses the threshold from being passive
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: observers to becoming a physical movement. barricade that impedes the
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: mechanics of law enforcement.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture the reality of that scenario.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: The police have finally captured one of the monsters who
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: kept the city awake at night for months. Finally. They
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: need to interrogate him, process him, transport him, but they
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: literally cannot walk him out the door because there is
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a solid wall of human beings... camera lenses, and microphones
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: blocking the path.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: It's a physical wall.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The police are no longer just fighting the criminal element.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: They are actively fighting the architecture of the media. They
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: have to design a covert airborne extraction plan just to
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: do their basic jobs. It begs the question, at what
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: point does the public's abstract right to know cross the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: line into becoming a tangible, physical obstacle to the justice system?
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: It is the eternal friction between transparency and operational security.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: The public absolutely has a right to know that the
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: threat has been neutralized.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: The press has a constitutional mandate to report that fact.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: But when the sheer physical mass of the media threatens
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the secure transport of a suspect or risks tainting the
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: suspect's rights by creating a circus atmosphere before a trial
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: even convenes, the justice system begins to buckle. In this moment,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: the Hillside Strangler case transitioned. It stopped being a local
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles tragedy and became a global commodity.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: It's as if the moment the handcuffs went on, Bianchi
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and Buono stopped being criminal suspects and instantly became the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: lead characters in a global real-time thriller.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: The media frenzy didn't just report the news. It metabolized
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the tragedy into entertainment. And the reality is that frenzy
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: didn't die down in 1979. Not at all. The cameras
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: never really turned off. They just evolved into the massive
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: true crime entertainment complex that we are completely immersed in today.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Which brings us directly to the cultural legacy of the case,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: which Hellinger addresses in the final section of his article.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Nearly four decades later, this case continues to be a
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: subject of intense, lucrative fascination.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: The article points out that the case sparked films, including
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: a 2004 movie starring Nicholas Turturro and C. Thomas Howell.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: And of course, the primary focus of the article is
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the Reels docuseries itself, Murder Made Me Famous, This is
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: a show hosted by Steve Helling, who is a People
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: senior writer. And the production uses dramatic reenactments, never-before-seen photos,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and exclusive interviews to package and retell the story.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: If we look at the mechanics of why society continues
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: to consume these stories decades after the perpetrators are locked
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: away or dead, it reveals a deep psychological need.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Well, on one hand, by revisiting grisly cases through the structured,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: predictable format of documentaries... Society is attempting to make sense
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: of senseless violence.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: We want to understand the forensic how and the psychological
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: why so we can create an illusion of control over
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: the uncontrollable. We study the monsters so we can assure
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: ourselves we'd spot them if they ever crossed our path.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: It's the rubbernecking effect.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: When you were driving down the highway and there's a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: terrible car crash, everyone slows down to look. We all
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: We can't help it.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: It's horrific. We don't actually want to see the suffering,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: but we are absolutely desperate to understand the physics of
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the disaster. We tell ourselves we are looking so we
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: can learn how to keep ourselves safe, to see what
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: mistake the driver made so we don't make it.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: But let's be honest. There is also an undeniable morbid curiosity.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to the darker side of this consumption.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Look at the literal title of the docuseries, Murder Made
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Me Famous.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: That title strips away the noble pretense of educational true
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: crime and speaks to a very uncomfortable truth about our culture.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: By consuming this content, we inadvertently reward the most heinous
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: acts with exactly what the perpetrators often crave, which is
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: historical notoriety.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: We established that Bianchi and Buono operated out of profound ego.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: They felt they were in charge and invincible. And decades later,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: we are still saying their names.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Still talking about them.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: We are casting actors to play them. We are producing
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: television shows dissecting their brilliance and their cruelty.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: It raises an incredibly difficult question. By producing documentaries with
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: dramatic reenactments, by framing these real-world tragedies with Hollywood-style twists
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: to keep viewers engaged through the commercial break, well, are
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: we genuinely honoring the 10 victims whose lives were brutally stolen?
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Or are we inadvertently giving Kenneth Bianchi and Angela Buono
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the eternal, immortal notoriety they arrogantly thought They deserved all along.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: That is the central moral friction of the entire genre.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: It's tough.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Documentaries like Murder Made Me Famous perform a crucial historical
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: function by securing exclusive interviews with people like Detective Grogan.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Right. Without that, we wouldn't have his insights. Exactly.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: They ensure that the institutional memory of the investigation, the
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: raw emotion of the people who fought the monsters, is
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: preserved for the record. But the packaging of that history,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: the dramatic scoring, the reenactments, the sensational titles, inescapably commodifies
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: the tragedy. The violence becomes a product.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: And navigating that friction is exactly why we do these
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: deep dives. We have covered massive ground today.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: We really have.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: We started in the terrified, sun-drenched streets of the Hollywood
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Hills in the late 1970s, examining a city paralyzed by
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: a threat that lacked any predictable parameters, targeting victims from
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: 12 to 28. We traveled through the haunting, enduring emotional
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: burden carried by Detective Bob Grogan, a man whose profound
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: raw empathy allowed him to see past the flawed psychological
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: profiling and realize, through pure logistical physics, that a crime
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: of this magnitude required two perpetrators.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: And we analyzed the terrifying echo chamber of familial complicity
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: between cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, breaking down the arrogant,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: uniquely human delusion that they were entirely in charge of.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Life and death. And finally... We looked at the physical
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: manifestation of the media spectacle that erupted upon their capture,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: a frenzy so dense it required a private plane just
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: to bypass, which ultimately laid the groundwork for the complicated
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: true crime entertainment landscape we still grapple with today.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: It is a profound case study in the mechanics of fear,
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: the burden of deduction, and the consequences of notoriety. But
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: before we close, I want to leave you with one
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: final lingering thought to ponder on your own, building on
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: everything we've discussed about logistics and media.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, lay it on us.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: We talked about how in 1979, the media frenzy was
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: so physically intense that the LAPD had to commandeer a
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: private plane to hide a suspect from the cameras. Think
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: about the logistics of that.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Now, fast forward to today. If an investigation of this magnitude,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: a pair of serial killers operating in the Hollywood Hills,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: were happening right now, how would it survive in our
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: current era?
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: We live in an age of citizen sleuths, ring doorbell
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: cameras on every porch. smartphones with 4K lenses in every pocket,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: and 24-7 internet tracking.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Everyone is recording everything.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Would a case like the Hillside Stranglers be solved in
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: a matter of days because of the sheer volume of
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: digital surveillance? Or would the uncontrollable, deafening noise of the
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: digital circus, the TikTok theories, the viral misinformation, the online mobs,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: make it absolutely impossible for the police to separate the
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: signal from the noise and actually catch them?
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: It's a chilling thought. Does technology illuminate the dark?
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Or.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Does it just blind the investigators? Thank you so much
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: for joining us on this intense deep dive today. We
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: know this was a heavy subject, but understanding the underlying
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: mechanics of how we seek justice and how society reacts
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: to terror is vital. As always, stay curious, keep looking
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: beneath the surface, and keep questioning the information around you.