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All About the Hillside Stranglers and the Victim They Spared · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep Dive. Today, we're going back way
• 0:03
  back to a time of just intense fear in Los Angeles.
• 0:07
  We're talking late seventy seven, early seventy eight.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, between October nineteen seventy seven and February nineteen seventy eight,
• 0:14
  it felt like the city was under siege. There was
• 0:16
  this predator leaving bodies, young women, girls on these brushy hillsides.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Dump naked posed. It seems so random but also chillingly calculated.
• 0:28
  And everyone, the media, of the public, they thought they
• 0:30
  knew who.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: It was, right, The press jumped on it immediately. The
• 0:33
  visuals are stark, you know, bodies on hillsides of Boom Hillside,
• 0:36
  Strangler singular.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: That name alone conjures this image, doesn't it One shadowy
• 0:41
  maybe brilliant monster lurking.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Out there totally, And that perception, while understandable given the
• 0:47
  absolute terror gripping the city, was just wrong, dead wrong.
• 0:51
  The panic was real though. Hitchhiking basically stopped overnight.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: People were forming a pro groups, right, and the LAPD
• 0:56
  they threw everything at it, hundreds of officers, a massive investigation,
• 1:00
  a marathon.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but here's where we really start our deep dive
• 1:03
  because the narrative everyone knew it was built on a
• 1:05
  shocking misconception.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The biggest twist, the sort of core deception here
• 1:11
  is that it wasn't one killer, it wasn't the strangler,
• 1:14
  it was the.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Stranglers, two of them working together, adoptive cousins, Angelo Buono
• 1:19
  Junior and Kenneth Bianki.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And that's our mission today. We want to peel back
• 1:23
  the layers on this duality, go beyond the headlines.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: We're going to look at their really twisted partnership, how
• 1:29
  their methods evolved over those ten La murders, plus the
• 1:32
  two Bianchi did later alone up in Washington and.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: The investigation, which was incredibly complex, almost fell apart. And critically,
• 1:40
  we're also digging into this almost unbelievable true story the
• 1:44
  one woman they let go, Yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: The one who got away because of well, a very
• 1:48
  strange kind of shield. It's quite a story.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Okay. So to really get this spree, you have to
• 1:53
  understand the guys involved, Bueno and Bianchi, and the source
• 1:56
  material makes it pretty clear. Bruno, the older cousin, he
• 2:00
  was kind of the anchor, right, the controlling one.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, Angela Borno junior. He was the senior partner,
• 2:05
  definitely the more dominant, volatile personality. Born in thirty four
• 2:09
  upstate New York, but moved to Glendale, California when he
• 2:13
  was just a little kid.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Like five. And his personality, what was driving him?
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  Speaker 2: Well, he dropped out of high school, but he was
• 2:18
  obsessed with appearing powerful successful. He ran this auto upholstery shop,
• 2:25
  seven oh three East Colorado Street, and it was legit successful.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Even so, that was his cover, the shock.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly his cover, his money maker, and crucially his base
• 2:35
  of operations. That seemingly ordinary shop he hit a.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Lot, became the stage for unimaginable horror. Right, what about
• 2:42
  his attitude, his misogyny? Where did that come from?
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: People who knew him talked about his temper, his deep
• 2:48
  seated hatred of women. But what's really fascinating, and the
• 2:51
  research points this out, is who he looked up to.
• 2:53
  Carol Chessman, the.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Infamous serial rapist from what the.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Fifties, yeah, like twenty years earlier. Chessman also posed as
• 2:59
  a cops times. Wana didn't just admire the violence, he
• 3:02
  seemed to admire Chessman's ability to kind of manipulate the system.
• 3:05
  The media.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Interesting. So he's building this public persona.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Right swaggering ladies man on the surface, but underneath, he's
• 3:12
  praying on vulnerable people. He was pimping women, teenage runaways
• 3:16
  mostly long before the murder start. Is like this small
• 3:20
  time criminal thing built on control and violence.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's Bueno. Then comes Kenneth Bianci, much younger,
• 3:28
  born in fifty one. How does a guy seventeen years
• 3:31
  younger get pulled into something this dark?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Well they were adoptive cousins. Bueno's ant adopted Bianchi and Beyonci.
• 3:38
  He seemed to grow up feeling, I don't know, inadequate.
• 3:40
  He developed this really destructive habit. He was a compulsive liar,
• 3:45
  like pathologically.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: So always trying to seem like something he wasn't.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly, faking psychological problems, stuff like that. And here's the
• 3:52
  key thing that made him maybe the perfect accomplice for Borno.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: He was obsessed with law enforce a classic wannabe cop thing.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that chilling contradiction. He craved the authority he couldn't
• 4:02
  actually earn. So nineteen seventy six, he's twenty six, moves
• 4:06
  from Rochester.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: To la and he's impressed by Bueno.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Totally dazzled. Buono had the flashy car, the house with
• 4:11
  the Italian flag, this whole manufactured image of success and
• 4:16
  you know, control. Bianchi just kind of fell into line.
• 4:19
  He was the junior partner, totally manipulated by Bruno, desperate
• 4:23
  for his approval.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: So first it's pimping. They're forcing runaways, Sabra Hannan Baky
• 4:28
  Spears into prostitution. Would push it over the edge from exploitation.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: To murder control. It always seems to come back to
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  control with Bueno. The sources suggest the big catalyst was
• 4:40
  when those two girls handed and spears, they escaped, They got.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Away, and Bueno couldn't handle that.
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't just anger, It was like this massive ego blow.
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  His property had defied him. For Buono, losing control was unacceptable,
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  So the goal shifted. It wasn't just about exploitation anymore.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: It became about ultimate control, absolute subjugation.
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  Speaker 2: Death exactly. And that's when and their killing methodology really
• 5:02
  took shape. It combined Buono's need for authority with Biyanki's
• 5:05
  cop fixation.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: The fake badges.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yep, Bianci knew enough about police procedure to make it convincing.
• 5:11
  They'd pose as undercover cops, pull women over, approach them,
• 5:15
  say it was an official investigation. That was the lure.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Get them into the car, Bueno's Cadillac.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Or the VAM right, and once they were inside, they
• 5:24
  were taken back to the shop, to Buono's upholstery place.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about that chat for a second, because it's
• 5:29
  so central.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: It really was the perfect place for them. Big probably
• 5:33
  noisy anyway with machinery, but BRNO had built this lake
• 5:37
  false wall, created a hidden space behind it, and it
• 5:40
  was soundproof. Critically, yes, the sources confirm it was soundproof.
• 5:44
  Total privacy. That's what allowed them to do what they did,
• 5:48
  the prolonged torture, the rapes, saw toomy, the electric shocks,
• 5:52
  and then the strangulations without anyone hearing a thing. It
• 5:55
  was their own little chamber of horrors.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: What really hits you about the Hillside stranglers, I think
• 5:59
  is just how it all happened. It wasn't drawn out
• 6:02
  over years. It was this intense four month blitz October
• 6:06
  seventy seven to February seventy eight.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a concentrated rain of terror and the methods, the violence.
• 6:12
  It wasn't static. You can see this awful, evolving, experimental
• 6:17
  kind of pathology.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It was incredibly sadistic, wasn't it. The sources are pretty graphic.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Aar ligature strangulation usually rope records. That was the constant,
• 6:25
  the signature way they killed. But the torture before that
• 6:29
  shows this chilling experimentation, pushing boundaries in that soundproof room.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: What kind of experiments were we talking about? It sounds
• 6:35
  like it went way beyond just physical assault.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, it did really disturbing stuff. They tried injecting victims
• 6:41
  with cleaning fluids.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Like windex wind decks.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Why it seems like it was less about efficient killing
• 6:47
  and more about introducing this bizarre, agonizing chemical shock, pure sadism.
• 6:53
  Than there were the electric shocks.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Right connecting wires, leaving burn.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Marks, Yeah, distinct burn marks which later became really important
• 7:01
  forensic evidence. And they even played around with different ways
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  to suffocate victim's carbon monoxide from a car, exhaust gas
• 7:07
  from a stove. They were constantly seeking new ways to
• 7:10
  control that life and death moment.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And after all that, the final act dumping the body.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Which was their big screw you to the city, to
• 7:19
  the police, they'd washed the bodies first, trying to remove
• 7:21
  surface evidence shows calculation, right. Then they'd drive them out
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  to those hillsides, often near freeways, sometimes even near police stations,
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  left naked, pose crudely. It was a deliberate signature, designed
• 7:33
  to terrify, grab headlines, and just insult authority.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the victims, because the media initially tried
• 7:40
  to put them in a box. Maybe, but the reality
• 7:42
  is Buano and Bianchi's target spanned a really wide and
• 7:46
  terrifying range.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to remember the human beings here. It started,
• 7:50
  maybe predictably, with vulnerable women. The first official victim Yolanda
• 7:54
  Washington nineteen. She was a sex worker. They lured her
• 7:58
  with that fake police bust in October seventy seven, found
• 8:01
  near the Venturer Freeway.
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  Speaker 1: Then Judithan Miller only fifteen, a runaway, also working the streets,
• 8:07
  abducted on Halloween.
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  Speaker 2: So initially, yeah, targeting those who might not be miss immediately,
• 8:11
  people on the margins.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: But that didn't last long. Within weeks, they pivoted started
• 8:16
  targeting women from the general population, shattering any illusion that
• 8:20
  only certain people were at risk.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's when the real panic set in. Think about
• 8:24
  Alyssa Lissa Kasten, twenty one, a dancer waitress, pulled over
• 8:30
  near her home, just driving alone. They were actively hunting.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And the case that just terrified everyone.
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  Speaker 2: The two young girls, Delora Sepita just twelve and her
• 8:40
  friend Sonda Johnson, fourteen, mid November seventy seven, abducted from
• 8:45
  Eagle Rock Plaza. They missed their bus. These were schoolgirls,
• 8:48
  no connection to prostitution, nothing like that, clear family ties.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: That must have sent absolute shock waves through La. The
• 8:55
  idea that it could be anyone, any young woman or girl.
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  Speaker 2: It changed everything. That's when parents really started locking down,
• 9:01
  keeping daughters home. Neighborhood patrols started popping up. The killers
• 9:04
  proved they could take anyone anywhere. Maximum terror achieved and.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Even as the methods got weirder, they were still leaving traces,
• 9:11
  weren't they. Forensics started to play.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: A huge role, hugely important. The case of Christina Weckler,
• 9:16
  twenty years old, an art student, and chillingly, she was
• 9:20
  actually Bianki's neighbor.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: She was one of the victims injected with windex, but
• 9:26
  forensics found these tiny specific fibers on her.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Body, fibers from where they.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Were later matched definitively to the specific kind of automotive
• 9:35
  upholstery materials and carpets inside Bueno's shop from that soundproof room.
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  Speaker 1: Incredible connecting a victim found elsewhere directly back to that
• 9:44
  specific hidden location through microscopic evidence.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in seventy eight, that kind of fiber analysis was
• 9:49
  pretty cutting edge. It was a massive break, even if
• 9:52
  they didn't fully realize its significance.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Right away, and the torture methods left there on physical
• 9:56
  evidence too, right like the burn marks on Lauren.
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  Speaker 2: Ray Wagner yep Lornwadner, eighteen business student abducted right outside
• 10:03
  her home in the valley, Burns on her palms from
• 10:05
  the electrocution, direct evidence of the sadistic stuff happening.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: In the shop. This spree finally ended, at least in
• 10:11
  La with Cindy Lee Hutsmith in February seventy eight. Her
• 10:14
  body was found in the trunk of her own car.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Uh huh, and in silence the body stopped appearing in La.
• 10:20
  But the killing impulse, as we find out, didn't stop,
• 10:23
  It just moved. What broke up the partnership.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It came down to Bueno's paranoia really yea operational security. Biyanchi,
• 10:31
  trying to live out his cop fantasy, did a civilian
• 10:34
  ride along with the lapd.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Oh seriously while they were actively killing people. Yeah, and
• 10:40
  he apparently mentioned, maybe just casually, that he'd been questioned
• 10:44
  by some officers during that ride.
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  Speaker 1: Along, and Bueno found out.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Bueno freaked. He saw Biyanci as this huge liability,
• 10:51
  someone who could bring the whole thing crashing down. He
• 10:54
  basically threatened to kill Bianci if he didn't get.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Out of town protecting the operation. Not because he suddenly
• 10:58
  grew a conscience.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: All it was pure self preservation. So that's what sends
• 11:03
  BEYONCEI packing May nineteen seventy eight. He takes his girlfriend,
• 11:07
  his son and heads north to Bellingham, Washington.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The partnership dissolves, but one of the predators is just relocated.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, So I'm amidst all this horror, this relentless killing,
• 11:17
  there's this one story that just completely breaks the mold.
• 11:21
  It gives us this, I mean, almost unbelievable window into
• 11:24
  how these guys thought.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Catherine laur Baker the one who walked away, And it
• 11:30
  wasn't mercy, was it. It sounds like pure cold calculation.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Absolutely not mercy. This happened late seventy seven, right in
• 11:37
  the middle of their killing spree, when they were operating
• 11:40
  with like total confidence. They're cruising around Hollywood, spot her
• 11:44
  Catherine Laur Baker twenty five, walking alone.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Same routine, fake badge, force her into the car.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: YEP, standard procedure for them. She's in the car, she's trapped,
• 11:54
  completely vulnerable, But.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Then she shows them her ID and the sources say
• 11:59
  they just froze.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: What happens The second they saw that name, Catherine Laura Baker,
• 12:03
  it clicked. This wasn't just some random person they could
• 12:06
  make disappear without immediate massive attention, because she was Peter
• 12:10
  Laura's daughter.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Peter Lourie from Casablanca m the legendary actor.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: The one and only, and it turns out Bono and
• 12:16
  Bianci were actually fans of his movies. Suddenly the dynamic
• 12:20
  shifts completely, the name, the fame associated with it. It
• 12:23
  acted like this instant shield that's surreal.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: One minute their predator is about to torture and kill,
• 12:29
  the next their starstruck fans.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Bizarre right, they started chatting about her dad's films, asking
• 12:35
  for autographs apparently, but beneath that, you know, Bono's mind.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Is racing, calculating the risk immediately.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Kidnapping Peter Laura's daughter. That wouldn't be like the other
• 12:46
  case of the slow investigation's confusion. This would be international news,
• 12:50
  instant overwhelming heat on them, on the shop everything.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: The risk was just too high. It would blow their
• 12:55
  whole operation way too high.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: They couldn't control that kind of attention. So they let
• 12:59
  her go completely unharmed.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And initially she didn't even realize how close she'd come.
• 13:04
  She thought they were just weird fans.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she apparently just brushed it off as some overly enthusiastic,
• 13:09
  kind of creepy fans of her dad. Didn't report it.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Right away, When did the penny drop?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Months later, when Borno and Bianki's mugshots finally hit the
• 13:18
  news after Bianki's arrest in Washington, she saw their faces
• 13:21
  and instantly recognized them the strange guys who cornered her, and.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Her testimony became crucial, later absolutely critical.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: At Borno's trial, she confirmed their method, the fake BADG routine,
• 13:34
  and she described that moment they realized who she was.
• 13:37
  Her exact words in court were something like they were
• 13:40
  thrilled it saved my life.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Just an incredible story of survival based purely on calculation.
• 13:45
  But her life story has a sad footnote, doesn't it.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: It does tragically, she apparently struggled quite a bit with alcohol,
• 13:53
  maybe living in her famous father's shadow. She died quite young,
• 13:56
  only thirty two, back in nineteen eighty five, from health
• 13:58
  complications related to diabetes.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: But she remains the only person known to have been
• 14:03
  in their clutches together and walked away alive.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: A key witness, and her survival really underscores something important.
• 14:12
  These guys weren't just mindless killing machines. They were predators, yes,
• 14:15
  but highly calculating ones who responded very specifically to perceived risk.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Bianki flees La ends up in Bellingham, Washington.
• 14:23
  The partnership with Boono is over, but the compulsion that
• 14:26
  urge it's still there, definitely not gone.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: He tries to maintain this normal facade, gets a job
• 14:32
  as a security guard, and he's still chasing that law
• 14:34
  enforcement dream. Applies to the Bellingham Police Department, gets rejected, thankfully.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: But the pressure is building, and in January nineteen seventy nine,
• 14:42
  he acts alone.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: He does January eleventh, he lures two young women students
• 14:47
  from Western Washington University, Karen Mandick twenty two and Diane
• 14:51
  Wilder twenty seven.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: How did he lure them?
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Not the cop routine this time, no different approach, but
• 14:56
  same principle deception. He posted an ad or somehow offered
• 15:00
  them a fake house sitting job, got them to a
• 15:02
  vacant house, the same horrific pattern, rape and strangulation. But
• 15:07
  BIYONCEI operating solo, he was way less careful than Warno.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the cops caught him almost immediately, didn't they? What
• 15:12
  were the mistakes?
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: He was arrested the very next day. It was almost
• 15:15
  embarrassingly quick. First, his car still had California plates, big
• 15:19
  red flag up in Washington, Okay. Second, investigators found stuff
• 15:22
  on him or in his place, jewelry, other items that
• 15:25
  were quickly linked back to victims in Los Angeles. Connected
• 15:28
  him straight to the Hillside strangler case down south.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Wow. And there was physical evidence at the scene too.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yep. The clincher, a pubic hair, found that the murder
• 15:37
  scene was matched directly back to Biyanci. It wasn't some
• 15:40
  complex deduction, it was just connecting pretty obvious dots very quickly.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: So he's caught facing murder charges in Washington, possibly the
• 15:50
  death penalty, and he tries to play a card he's
• 15:52
  maybe used before, the mental health angle exactly.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: He digs into his history of faking things and tries
• 15:58
  this multiple personality disorder defense MPD as it was often
• 16:04
  called then. It was kind of a hot topic legally
• 16:06
  and psychologically at the time.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: So he claimed he wasn't responsible.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Right, He invented this alter ego. Steve Walker claimed Steve
• 16:14
  was the one who did the killings and not Ken Bianki.
• 16:16
  He'd even do these dramatic shifts in personality during interrogations
• 16:20
  trying to sell it.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Did it work even for a little while.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: It caused confusion? Definitely. The defense hoped they could argue insanity,
• 16:27
  you know, that he wasn't in control, But forensic psychiatrists.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Took a hard luck and they saw through it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They basically concluded it was a performance. The personalities
• 16:35
  were too convenient, too focused on avoiding guilt, didn't match
• 16:38
  the patterns of genuine MPD, so the ruse failed. Facing execution,
• 16:43
  Bianki realized he had only one card left.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: To play testify against Bueno.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the plea deal. It was huge. Plead guilty to
• 16:51
  the two Bellingham murders, plead guilty to five of the
• 16:53
  LA killings, not all ten notably, and testify against Angelo
• 16:57
  Bueno in exchange washing wouldn't seek the death penalty.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: He saves his own life. But the whole LA case
• 17:04
  against Buono now rests on the word of well, a
• 17:07
  proven pathological liar.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Precisely, it's a massive gamble for the prosecution. LAPD detectives
• 17:12
  Frank Salerno and Bob Grogan, who had been working the
• 17:15
  LA si relentlessly, they fly up to Washington. Bianki's information,
• 17:19
  combined with the evidence they.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Already had, the vibers, the tire track.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Catherin Laura Baker's testimony about seeing both of them, it
• 17:25
  was finally enough. They arrest Bulono October twenty second, in
• 17:28
  nineteen seventy nine, right at the upholstery shop.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: But getting Bueno arrested is one thing. Convicting him with
• 17:34
  Bianchi as your star witness, that turned into a nightmare.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, a total circus. Bianchi's testimony, even in pre trial hearings,
• 17:41
  was all over the place. He changed details, contradicted himself constantly.
• 17:46
  At one point He even claimed his confession about Buono
• 17:49
  as fake, something implanted under hypnosis.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: He's actively sabotaging the prosecution's case while on the stamp.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. It got so bad that the LA prosecutors
• 17:58
  seriously considered drop all charges against Bruno. They were terrified
• 18:03
  Bianki's unreliability would let Buono walk free.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Imagine that a known killer potentially getting off because their
• 18:09
  star witness is destroying his own credibility. That's intense, huge
• 18:13
  legal drama.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: But the judge, Ronald M. George, he stepped in. He
• 18:17
  refused to let them drop the case. He insisted the
• 18:20
  trial go forward.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Why. What was his reasoning?
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: He basically felt the other evidence, the physical stuff, the fibers,
• 18:26
  the tire tracks, the other witnesses like Laura Baker, was
• 18:28
  strong enough on its own. He believed jury deserved to
• 18:31
  hear it all and make the call, even with the
• 18:33
  risk Bianki posed. It was a gutsy move.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And that decision led to one of the longest, most
• 18:38
  complex trials in US history at that.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Point, absolutely stagger It ran for two solid years, November
• 18:46
  eighty one to November eighty three. Think about that, four
• 18:50
  hundred witnesses testified, they had eighteen hundred exhibits.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: The cost was estimated at over two million dollars, which
• 18:56
  is just astronomical back then for a single trial. Bono's
• 18:59
  defense fought hard trying to paint him as the victim
• 19:02
  framed by this lying cousin.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: But the physical evidence held up.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It did, especially those fibers linking him directly to that
• 19:09
  hidden room in his shop and Lord Baker's testimony about
• 19:12
  seeing them working together. It was just too much to overcome,
• 19:14
  even with Biyanki's chaos.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: So after two years, the verdict.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: October twenty first, nineteen eighty three, Angelo Bono Junior guilty
• 19:22
  convicted on nine counts of murder. Interestingly, the jury took
• 19:25
  ten days just to decide on guilt shows you how
• 19:27
  complicated Bianchi.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Made things with the sentencing phase.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: One hour life without parole, no hesitation. One juror famously
• 19:34
  said death would be too good for him. Captures the
• 19:37
  feeling I think.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: And Bianki his deal held.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Yep, he got his life sentence, but Judge George, clearly
• 19:43
  disgusted by Bianki's lies and manipulations throughout the trial, made
• 19:47
  a point of ordering him sent to Walla Walla Penitentiary
• 19:50
  in Washington, a much tougher maximum security prison.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: What happened to them in the long run?
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Borno died in prison heart attack in two thousand and two.
• 19:57
  He was sixty seven, died alone his cell at Calpatriot
• 20:01
  State Prison.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And Beyoncey still alive.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: He's seventy four now, still locked up in Walla, Walla.
• 20:06
  He actually legally changed his name in twenty twenty three
• 20:09
  to Anthony Dematto. Seriously, he keeps getting denied parole eight
• 20:12
  times so far, files appeals, they get rejected. His next
• 20:16
  parole hearing isn't until twenty thirty five. So justice was
• 20:19
  served eventually. But man, the costs and the complexity were
• 20:22
  just immense.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: When you look back at this whole case, the Hillside
• 20:25
  strangler investigation, it really did change things, didn't it, Especially
• 20:29
  in terms of how crimes were investigating.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, It became this landmark case for forensic science,
• 20:34
  pushing it right into the spotlight. You really can't overstate
• 20:37
  the impact of that fiber evidence, matching.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Those tiny microscopic fibers from Buenos shop to victims found
• 20:43
  miles away exactly.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: It showed how crucial trace evidence could be, even if
• 20:48
  you clean up a primary crime scene. The environment itself
• 20:51
  sheds evidence. It proved you could link a suspect definitively
• 20:55
  to a hidden location, not just proximity.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: That was huge back then, things too.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Tire treads, Yeah, matching tire treads became more refined, and
• 21:03
  the whole ordeal highlighted just how vital it was for
• 21:07
  different police departments, even across state lines like California and Washington,
• 21:11
  to communicate and cooperate effectively. Lessons were definitely learned.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The technical side is fascinating, for sure, but the real
• 21:18
  legacy it has to be about the victims, right the
• 21:20
  twelve women whose lives were just stolen. The media label
• 21:23
  bodies on a hill is so dehumanizing, it.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Really is, and we have to consciously shift focus back
• 21:28
  to them. They weren't just data points in a case file.
• 21:31
  Yolanda Washington dreaming of a different life, Lissa Casten, the dancer,
• 21:35
  Christina Weckler, the quiet art student, Bianci lived near, Lauren Wagner,
• 21:39
  the business student.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: The young girls Dolores Sipita and Sanja Johnson, whose murders
• 21:45
  terrified families everywhere, and Karen Mandick and Diane Wilder up
• 21:49
  in Washington, just college students looking for a job.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: They all had futures, families, friends. As one victim advocate
• 21:56
  put it so well, they were daughters, sisters, friends, not
• 21:59
  just on a hill. This whole case, this deep dive,
• 22:03
  it just underscores how calculated and indiscriminate their cruelty really was.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: They targeted based on opportunity, vulnerability, the perceived chance of
• 22:13
  getting away with it, not because of who the victims
• 22:16
  were as people exactly.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: And the families left with this unimaginable grief, made even
• 22:20
  worse by the horrific details that came out.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: It was four months of terror for La followed by
• 22:25
  years of this incredibly difficult legal battle, a testament really
• 22:29
  to the detectives and prosecutors who stuck with it against
• 22:31
  some pretty crazy odds.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it brings us back to those strange moments
• 22:34
  of calculation. We talked about the survivors, so.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Thinking about what this all means, maybe for you listening.
• 22:40
  We talked about Catherine laur Baker being spared why because
• 22:44
  Bono and Bianchi feared the fame, the instant high profile
• 22:48
  attention her father's name would bring.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Right pure risk assessment, But the sources also mentioned something
• 22:53
  else another weird calculation with Bianci later on his girlfriend
• 22:57
  at the time he was arrested in Washington, Kellison. She
• 23:01
  survived his solo spree. Why her Apparently, Bianki told investigators
• 23:05
  he didn't harm her because he was afraid of hurting
• 23:07
  her parents. He liked them, didn't want to face their
• 23:10
  disapproval or anger.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, wow, so that's the final thought we want to
• 23:13
  leave you with. Put those two stories side by side.
• 23:16
  Catherine Lorbaker walks because they fear the big external consequences
• 23:21
  the media, the police, attention from a celebrity connection.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: And Cheryl Kellison is spared because Bianki, acting alone, apparently
• 23:29
  feared the much more personal, localized consequence disappointing people he knew,
• 23:33
  her parents.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Both women survived not because of any shred of mercy,
• 23:38
  but because of the killers very specific, very narrow fears,
• 23:42
  fear of institutional blowback in one case, fear of personal
• 23:45
  social fallout in the other.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: So what does that tell you about the limits, the
• 23:49
  strange boundaries that guide even the most monstrous people. It
• 23:53
  suggests that even predators like Bruno and Bianchi are ultimately
• 23:56
  constrained not by morality but by what specific content sequences
• 24:00
  they personally are most afraid of.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: A chilling thought to end on. Thanks for joining us
• 24:04
  on this deep dive