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Surviving the Hillside Strangler · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in a room for a second. Just, you know,
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: imagine it. The air is overly conditioned. It's cold. And
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: it's heavy with that kind of tense, formal silence that
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: you really only get in a courtroom. Right.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: That very specific, heavy atmosphere.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you are sitting at a witness stand.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: You're surrounded by lawyers, stenographers, bailiffs with their hands just,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you know, resting right near their hips.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Which is intimidating enough on its own.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Right. But then, sitting across that room directly in your
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: line of sight... are the very people who tortured you.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. I mean, it is a terrifying scenario to
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: even try to visualize.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: It really is. And, you know, years have passed since
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: you managed to escape them. You fled. You completely changed
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: your life.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: You spent every single day looking over your shoulder.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Jumping at the sound of a car door slamming
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a little too hard. But now here you are. You
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: are the one willingly walking back into their space.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: You are coming face to face, with the monsters who
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: treated your life like something they could just snuff out
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: for practice. Yeah. So the question is, how do you
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: find the sheer, undeniable will to not just walk into
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that room, but to lift your chin, hold eye contact
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: with a monster, and refuse to blink?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: It's an incredibly profound threshold to cross. I mean, you're
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: taking the exact mechanism an abuser uses to maintain control
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: over a victim... The gaze, right? Exactly. The gaze, the
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: physical presence, the instilled terror. And you're actively dismantling it
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: in a highly public forum. Yeah. Because surviving the physical
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: act of violence is one thing. But it's an entirely different,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: highly complex kind of survival to then return and use
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: your own presence to put the people who tried to
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: destroy you behind bars.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And that very specific, deeply complex kind of survival is
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: exactly what we are getting into today. Right.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's unpack this, because for this deep dive, we
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: are pulling from a really intense, revealing piece of source material.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: We are. It's quite the read.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It really is. It's a People magazine article written by
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Christina Coulter, and it was published on February 7th, 2026.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Right, just recently. Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: It's titled, She Escaped the Hillside Strangler Killers and Says
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: She Would Have Been Their First Victim. And the timing
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: of this piece isn't random at all.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: No, it ties perfectly into the release of episode four,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Of the MGM Plus docuseries.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: The Hillside Strangler, yeah, which aired the very next day
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: on February 8th.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And reading through this article, you get this unprecedented insight
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: into a woman named Sabra Patterson.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Who went by the alias Sabra Hannon back then. Exactly.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And she survived Kenneth Bianchi and Angela Buono Jr.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: The cousins notorious as the Hillside Stranglers. Right.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: These two are responsible for abducting and killing at least
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: 10 women and girls in Los Angeles in the late 70s.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: And our objective here needs to be clear right from
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: the start. We are not just doing a standard true
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: crime rundown today.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, we all know the sensationalized bullet points of
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: serial killers. Our mission today is to examine the actual
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: mechanics of survival. Yeah. We're breaking down the terrifying calculated
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: escalation of violent control. We're also going to look at
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the deeply unsettling infectious ripple effect of copycat crimes.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Which happen even after a killer is locked away, which
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is just wild. Right.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: But we're doing all of this entirely through the lens
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: of the survivors, the women who lived, who carried the
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: immense burden of what they endured, and who ultimately weaponized
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: their own voices to dismantle these men.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's really get into the reality of what
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Sabra Patterson actually survived. Because to understand her escape, we
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: have to understand the environment she was trapped in.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Right. The context is everything here.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: So we're looking at Los Angeles, 1977, specifically Angelo Buono's
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: home in Glendale. Sabra was living in that home.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: But I want to be clear, this wasn't just a
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: bad roommate situation. She was forced into prostitution while living
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: under his roof.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Which is a crucial detail.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It is. And reading this, I realized we have to
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: completely reframe how we think about the word captivity or,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: you know, kidnapping.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: How do you mean?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Well, usually you picture a stranger in a van, right?
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  Speaker 1: A violent snatch off a dark street. A sudden rupture
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: of your normal life.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Right, the classic movie scenario. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But this feels so much more insidious. It actually reminds
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: me of deep sea diving.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting analogy.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the pressure doesn't crush you all at once.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: You descend slowly, your body acclimating to the weight until
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you look up and realize you're way too deep to
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: swim back to the surface without your lungs bursting.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what happens psychologically.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Right. The physical walls of her own house became a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: psychological prison long before the extreme physical torture even started.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: How does a person's mind even process that kind of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: creeping captivity.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the deliberate, incremental dismantling of a
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: person's agency. And it's devastatingly effective. Yeah. When you're grabbed
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: off the street, your brain instantly registers the threat, right?
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: The fight or flight response fires off immediately because the
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: danger is external and obvious.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: You know you have to run.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But when the threat is inside your own home,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: when the architect of your trauma is the exact same
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: person controlling your shelter or Your movements and your daily
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: existence through forced prostitution.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Those lines just blur.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: They dissolve completely. He establishes a baseline of control so
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: deep that the control itself just becomes the victim's new normal. Wow.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: You stop looking for the exits because your brain is
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: entirely occupied with just surviving the next hour.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Which means any escalation in the violence is going to
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: feel entirely unpredictable yet completely inevitable at the same time.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: You're basically just waiting for the pressure to spike.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Let's look at the specific testimony Saver gave regarding
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Buono's temper.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this part was wild.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: You can see it in the archival courtroom footage used
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: in the docuseries. She noted that his temper would flare
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: up effortlessly if he didn't get his way.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And she quoted him directly, which is chilling. He told her,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I'm going to slap you around until you realize I
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: mean business.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Until you realize I mean business.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Think about the phrasing there. That isn't just a spontaneous
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: outburst of anger. It's a declaration of a curriculum.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: A curriculum. I like how you phrased that.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Well, he's actively telling her that he's teaching her a
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: lesson in submission. He is stating out loud that his
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: violence has a specific educational goal.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: The complete systemic breaking of her will.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And the methods he used to teach that lesson were
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: so intensely calculated. Like, there's a specific detail from her
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: testimony that I just keep coming back to.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: The towel?
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  Speaker 1: The towel. It completely changes the picture of who this
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: guy is. Sabra recounted a beating where Buono didn't just
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: hit her. Right. He went and got a towel, soaked
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: it in water, wrapped it around his fists, and then
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: started hitting her with it.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's horrific.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: In the footage, she says, That phrasing is so telling.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: First off, the understatement of a survivor saying, that's pretty severe,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I guess, just breaks your heart.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: It really does. It's a trauma response, minimizing the horror. Absolutely.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: But the wet towel, I really got hung up on that.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Why a wet towel? I mean, if you just want
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: to hurt someone, you hit them.
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  Speaker 2: You'd think so.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Why go through the whole process of walking to a sink,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: soaking a towel, wringing it out, and wrapping your hands?
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Because it's about maximizing the physical impact while protecting the
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: abuser's own hands. It allows them to strike harder. and
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: for a much longer duration.
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  Speaker 1: So it's basically a weapon.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. A wet towel is incredibly dense. It carries significantly
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: more weight and force than a dry towel or a
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: bare fist. Wow. When you strike someone with that, it
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: delivers a deeply concussive blow. It causes immense internal pain,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: deep tissue bruising, and internal bleeding without necessarily breaking the skin.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Or leaving the surface lacerations that raw knuckles would.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: So it's all about inflicting maximum agony while keeping his
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: own hands completely pristine.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it shows a level of premeditation that shifts
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: this from abuse to outright torture.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: This wasn't a blind, impulsive rage where he just lashed out.
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  Speaker 2: This was violence as a practiced, refined technique.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The sheer psychology of it is horrifying. Imagine being in
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  Speaker 1: the room while he does this.
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  Speaker 2: Just waiting.
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  Speaker 1: He takes the time to get the towel. He turns
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  Speaker 1: on the faucet. He wrings it out. He wraps his fists.
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  Speaker 1: Every single second of that preparation is a second he
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  Speaker 1: could have stopped, cooled down, or walked away.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: But instead, he used every one of those seconds to
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: construct a more effective weapon. It tells the victim, I
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: am not just mad at you. I am methodical in
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  Speaker 1: how I am going to destroy you.
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  Speaker 2: The anticipation of the pain, watching him prepare it, does
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  Speaker 2: as much psychological damage as the physical blows themselves.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine. And that cold, methodical approach leads
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: right into the next phase of her captivity, where the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: whole dynamic shifts again.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Right, from horrific domestic abuse to something that feels clinically detached. Exactly.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Sabra survived the rape, the beatings with a towel. She
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: even survived Russian roulette.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Which is incredible on its own.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: But there's an incident that completely recontextualizes what her purpose
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: was in that house. She details an event where the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: violence escalated to a premeditated attempt on her life.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: The gas incident. Yes.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: In her present-day interview, she says, Right. and the gas
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: put into the bag. And this next part just stops
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you cold. She says they did this to see how
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: long it would take for me to feel asphyxiated and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: then come back to.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: It completely transforms the environment. It's no longer just a prison.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: It's a laboratory.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Yes. A laboratory. A laboratory. But wait, let's pause on
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the sheer logistics of this for a second. Removing a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: kitchen stove is not a casual undertaking.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: No, it's a huge appliance.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: You have to pull out a heavy appliance, expose the
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: raw gas line, secure a bag. It's a massive amount
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: of physical effort.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: If they wanted to kill her or even just torture her,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: why go through this complex, labor-intensive setup? Why not just
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: use their hands or a rope? What is the psychological
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: payoff for setting up a literal gas chamber in a
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: domestic kitchen?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: To understand that, you have to look at the broader
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: methodology that the hillside stranglers eventually employed. Okay. In the
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: archival footage from Buono's trial, the presiding judge explicitly laid
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: out the killer's methods across their various later victims. Right.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: The judge noted, for the record, that these men administered
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: lethal gas, they used electrocution, they used strangulation by rope,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: and they used lethal hypodermic injections.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: These are absolutely not the methods of killers who operate
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: on impulse or heat-of-the-moment rage. These are the methods of
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: men who are deeply obsessed with the mechanical process of death.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: So they were experimenting.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When Sabra says they pumped gas into the bag
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: specifically to see how long it would take for her
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: to pass out and then revive, she is revealing the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: darkest truth of her captivity. She was their prototype.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: That is chilling.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: They were literally practicing on her.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: They were gathering data.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Data.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Think about it. How much gas is required to induce unconsciousness?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: How long does that unconsciousness take to set in? What
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: are the physical markers right before asphyxiation becomes lethal?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just mindless torture.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: No. By removing that stove and hooking up that bag,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: they weren't just terrifying her for the sake of terror.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: They were perfecting a process. Sabra states in the piece,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: if I hadn't escaped, I truly believe in my heart
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: of hearts I would have been their first victim.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: And the horrifying reality is that she was already their
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: first subject.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They were treating a living, breathing human being as
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: a test dummy to refine the brutal tactics they would
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: later use to murder at least 10 other women and girls.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Let the cold mundanity of that sink in. A kitchen stove.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: A place where you make coffee, where you cook dinner.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: And they dismantle it to test how long it takes
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: to suffocate you. To realize that you aren't even a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: person to your captors anymore. You're just a variable in
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: a sick experiment.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: A variable. That's exactly it.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: When they are playing Russian roulette with you or pumping
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: gas into a bag over your head, you are looking
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: into the eyes of people who are taking mental notes
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: on your terror. Yeah. How does the human mind compartmentalize
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: that level of dread? To know your suffering is just
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: a rehearsal.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: It forces a psychological fracture. It requires a level of
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: dissociation that most of us simply cannot comprehend.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: To endure the moment-to-moment reality of being a living test
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: subject for your own eventual murder, your mind has to
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: separate from your physical body.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: You just check out.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: You have to. You tuck the core of who you
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: are away in some deep, unreachable corner of your brain
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: just to survive the gas, the beatings, the waiting. Yeah.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: The fact that Sabra was able to maintain enough presence
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of mind, enough of her core self to eventually identify
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: a window of opportunity and physically escape that house is
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: nothing short of a miracle of human resilience.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It really is a miracle. And she did escape. She
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: gets out and she flees California entirely.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: The article notes she went into hiding for nearly two years.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Two years of vanishing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Because they had explicitly threatened to kill her multiple times.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And she knew exactly what they were capable of. She
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: had tasted the gas. She had felt the concussive force
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: of that wet towel.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: She knew they weren't bluffing. Exactly.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: But then a massive catalyst shifts the board. Kenneth Bianchi
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: is arrested up in Washington State in 1979. Right. And
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Sabra learns that Angela Wono is actively under police surveillance
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: back in L.A.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: A huge turning point.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: It is. And this is the moment that prompts her
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: to come out of hiding. But, I mean, I struggle
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: with this part a little bit.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting to me. If I
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: have spent two entire years hiding in absolute terror, two
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: years of keeping my head down, changing my life, flinching
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: at every shadow... Why on earth would I volunteer to
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: step back into the crosshairs? Right. Why take that risk
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: when one guy is already in cuffs and the other
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: is being watched? Why not just stay hidden?
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Well, because living in hiding is its own form of captivity.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's true.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yes. Her invisibility kept her alive for two years. And
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: that hypervigilance, that paranoia you mentioned, that is a completely
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: valid biological trauma response.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: But when she gets the news of Bianchi's arrest and
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Bono's surveillance, a psychological shift occurs. She realizes that her silence,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: while protective, is also the last remaining threat of control
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: they have over her life.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Because they were still dictating how she lived.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She told the filmmakers they needed to be prosecuted
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: to the fullest extent. And if there was any way
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: I could help bring them to justice, I was ready. Wow.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: That requires an active, conscious, and terrifying choice. She had
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to take off the armor of invisibility and willingly make
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: herself a target again. trusting the confines of a legal
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: system to protect her while she took them down.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Which culminates in that courtroom stare down we talked about
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: at the beginning.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, that incredible moment.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: She said, I remember going into the courtroom and waiting
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: on Angelo Buono. I wanted to make sure I had
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: eye contact and didn't waver.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: She looked right at him, the man who put a
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: gas bag over her head, and she thought to herself,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I don't fear you anymore.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Such a powerful statement.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: It really is. But again, playing devil's advocate here, why
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: poke the bear? He's on trial. He's surrounded by cops.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Why not just look at the judge, give your testimony,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and get the heck out of there? Why force the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: eye contact?
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture of abuse,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the eye contact is where the power resides. Okay. We
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: talked about how Buono used violence as a curriculum to
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: teach submission, right?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the I mean business quote.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And how is submission almost always communicated in a
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: dynamic of abuse? Through the eyes. Oh, wow. It's the
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: averted gaze. It's looking at the floor. It's flinching away
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: when the abuser enters the room. Those are the nonverbal
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: cues that tell a torturer they are still God in
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: that room.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: By sitting in that witness chair, waiting for him to enter,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: and intentionally deciding to lock eyes and refuse to waver,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Safer was systematically dismantling the entire dynamic he had built
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: in that house in Glendale.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Man, that gives me chills. During the gas asphyxiation, her
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: head was in a bag. Yes. She was deprived of sight,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: deprived of air, treated as a literal object. In that courtroom,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: she demanded that he look at her.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: She forced him to see the humanity he tried to extinguish. Yeah.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: She was proving definitively that his experiment had failed. She
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: didn't break.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: She absolutely didn't.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: It's an incredibly triumphant moment. You feel like the cord
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: to the monster has finally been severed.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: You'd hope so. Right.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Sabra walks out of that courtroom breathing free air, having
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: taken her power back. But she hasn't entirely severed the cord.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: No, she hasn't.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Because the story takes a wildly unexpected, almost grotesque turn here.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Bianchi somehow found a way to extend his reach right
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: through the prison bars.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: It's almost unbelievable.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: While he's incarcerated, he forms a relationship with a woman
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: on the outside named Veronica Compton. And this relationship breeds
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: a plot that is just, well, it's hard to even
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: wrap your head around.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Compton attempts a copycat attack. Her goal is to make
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the authorities believe the real Hillside Strangler is still actively killing.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Which is insane. Right.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And the thought process is this could potentially clear Bianchi
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: or at least create enough reasonable doubt for an appeal.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering manipulation of reality. I mean, you
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: have a man whose physical capacity for destruction has been
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: completely neutralized by the state.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: He's locked up.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: He is locked in a cage. Yet he manages to
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: exert such overwhelming psychological control over a woman on the
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: outside that she is willing to commit premeditated murder on
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: his behalf.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just some vague, half-baked idea. In September 1980,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: up in Bellingham, Washington, Veronica Compton actually puts this plan
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: into motion.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: She really does.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: She goes to a local bar. She befriends a woman
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: named Kim Breed. They have drinks together. They establish a rapport.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And then they head to a motel later that night
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: under the guise of buying drugs. And that's when the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: attack happens. Compton actually says in the documentary, and this
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: is a direct quote, I took this noose out of
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the drawer and put it around her neck and started pulling.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I straddled her and I pulled.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: She had a noose pre-staged. In the drawer.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Pre-staged. But the absolute darkest part of this, Compton claimed
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: that Kenneth Bianchi actively taught her how to strangle someone
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: to death from behind bars. Yes. How does that even happen?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: How does an isolated prisoner groom someone to commit murder?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about how prison dynamics actually work.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: It happens by weaponizing the very isolation of the prison environment. Okay.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Unpack that for me.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: We often view serial killers as these isolated anomalies, right?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Monsters kept in a box. But the pathology of control
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't disappear just because the physical freedom is gone.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: They still need to control someone.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Bianchi likely preyed on a very specific psychological vulnerability
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: in Compton. Often, in these cases of prison correspondence, the
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: outsider is drawn to the infamy.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Like groupies. Yes.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Or they harbor a deeply distorted savior complex. The I
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: am the only one who truly understands him delusion.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Bianchi would have cultivated that. He isolates her emotionally from
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: her own life, feeds her a narrative where they are
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: a team against the world, and slowly intertwines his desires
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: with her sense of purpose.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So she thinks it's her idea, almost.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Or at least her duty to him. He didn't just
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: hand her a blueprint for murder. He convinced her that
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: committing this murder was the ultimate act of loyalty and validation.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: He effectively turned her into an extension of his own hands.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The dark irony of this is inescapable. You have Sabra Patterson,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: who survived the hillside stranglers, dragging herself through the hell
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of her own trauma to testify and put them away.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And then completely unconnected to her, you have Kim Breed,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: another woman unexpectedly thrust into a fight for her life
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: against a proxy of the exact same killer.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: It's a horrible echo of the original crimes.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: It is. Thankfully, Kim Breed fought Compton off, she survived
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the motel attack, and she survived to testify against Compton,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: eerily echoing Sabra's journey of taking the stand to face
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: her attacker.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Two incredible survivors.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: But I am stuck on Veronica Compton. Contrast Sabra's profound bravery,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: her fight to reclaim her mind from these men, with
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Compton's dark willingness to walk right into Bianchi's psychological trap
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and do his bidding.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a stark contrast.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: How do you surrender your agency to someone who is
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: locked in a cell?
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: It is a chilling juxtaposition of agency, isn't it?
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Sabra Patterson had her agency violently, brutally stripped from her.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: She was forced into prostitution, treated as a test subject,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: suffocated and beaten. Yeah. Her entire journey from that house
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: in Glendale to the witness stand was a grueling, hard-fought
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: battle to take her agency back.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Veronica Compton, on the other hand, willingly surrendered hers. She
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: wasn't abducted. She wasn't tortured into compliance.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: She just handed it over.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: She allowed Bianchi's narrative, his sociopathy, to override her own
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: basic human morality to the point where she was hiding
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: a noose in a motel drawer.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It's just wild.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: It perfectly demonstrates how the desire for proximity to infamy
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: or a twisted sense of devotion can be just as
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: effective a cage as the physical walls of Buono's house. Wow.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Bianchi didn't need a wet towel or a gas line
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: to control Compton. He just needed her willingness to be
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: consumed by his darkness.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the aftermath. How does the legal
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: system actually process a web of crimes this interconnected and bizarre?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: It's complicated, to say the least.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the scales of justice here, because frankly,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: this deal makes me sick. So what does this all mean?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: We have Kenneth Bianchi, one of the masterminds, the guy
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: literally teaching proxy murder from his cell. He cuts a deal.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: He pleads guilty to five murders, and in exchange, he
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: agrees to testify against his own cousin, Angelo Buono.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And the specific reason he does this? To avoid the
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: death penalty. He gets to save his own life by
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: turning on his partner.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: It's a very common tactic, but always tough to swallow.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Meanwhile, Buono is convicted of nine killings and gets
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison. He eventually died in prison
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: in 2002. Bianchi remains incarcerated today. He's been denied parole
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: multiple times. Veronica Compton gets sentenced to life for the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: premeditated attempted murder, though she was actually released from prison
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: in 2003.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, she served her time.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Look, I understand how plea deals work mechanically, but Bianchi
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: walks away from the death penalty. How does the state
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: justify trading the ultimate punishment for a guy like that?
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: It is the cold, uncomfortable mathematics of the justice system.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: The system constantly has to prioritize secure convictions over absolute
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: moral symmetry.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Moral symmetry, that's a good way to put it.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Well, the prosecution knew what they were up against. Buono
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: was on trial for nine horrific killings. To secure that conviction,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: to ensure that the primary architect of that Glendale laboratory
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: never saw the outside of a cell again, they needed
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: the ultimate insider testimony.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: They needed Bianchi.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: They needed the co-conspirator. From a purely pragmatic, legal standpoint,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: trading the death penalty for Bianchi in exchange for a rock-solid,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: guaranteed life sentence for Buono It's a victory for the state.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: They neutralized the threat.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, logically, I get it.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: But from a moral standpoint, from the perspective of the survivors,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: it is a deeply hollow, bitter pill to swallow.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I can't even begin to imagine how that feels to
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: someone like Sabra. She risked everything. She spent two years
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: jumping at shadows, finally came out of hiding, sat in
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: that courtroom and stared down the man who put a
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: gas bag over her head.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: She gave them the testimony they needed.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: She did the hardest thing imaginable to help the prosecution.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: And then she has to sit there and watch one
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: of the men who orchestrated her torture use the very
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: legal system she is trusting as a shield to save
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: his own life.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: It's infuriating. And that visceral frustration wasn't just felt by
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the survivors. It permeated the court itself.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Yes. The article highlights a statement from the presiding judge
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: at Buono's trial, and it is incredibly telling. In the
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: archival footage, the judge is remarkably candid.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: What did he say?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: He formally lists their methods on the record, the lethal gas,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: the electrocution, the strangulation, the hypodermic injection. And then he says,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I would not have the slightest reluctance to impose the
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: death penalty in this case if it were in my
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: power to do so. Wow. He said that on the record.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: He did.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: He went on to say, if ever there was a
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: case where the death penalty is appropriate, This is that case.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: You can feel the anger there.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: You can literally hear the anger in the court's voice.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: The judge is essentially acknowledging that the pragmatic parameters of
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: the law, the deals that had to be cut to
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: secure the conviction, have fundamentally restricted his ability to deliver
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: a punishment that actually matches the severity of the torture
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: these men inflicted. Yeah. The legal system closed the case.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: But the judge's own words make it crystal clear that
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: the scales of justice were not perfectly balanced.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: That quote, I would not have the slightest reluctance, is
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: so powerful because it validates the horrific reality of what
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Sabra and the other victims endured.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It puts it right in the historical record.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: The system might have been forced to compromise with Bianchi,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: but the historical record reflects the absolute severity of their depravity.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And as we pull all these threads together, from the
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: house in Glendale to the motel in Bellingham, the absolute
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: through line of this entire deep dive is the incredible
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: resilience of Sabra Patterson and Kim Breed.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Without a doubt.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: This source material is dark. It's profoundly disturbing. But at
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: its absolute core, it is a testament to the power
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of surviving women taking their voices back.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: They literally took the stand.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: They did. They used their presence to dismantle the killer's power.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Both the original and the proxy.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Precisely. These killers built their entire methodology around extinguishing life
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: and silencing voices. They relied on fear to maintain their control.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: And yet, the very voices they failed to extinguish were
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: the exact instruments that ultimately condemned them.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And it serves as this vital reminder that courage is
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: never the absence of fear. Sabra was terrified.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Beyond terrified.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: She was so consumed by fear that she erased her
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: own identity and hid for two years. But courage is
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: making the agonizing decision that justice, that the truth, is
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: ultimately more important than that fear. Right. She walked into
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: that courtroom terrified, but she held his gaze anyway.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Which leaves us with a final lingering thought to process.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: When you are a survivor of something this intensely calculated,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: society forever labels you as the one who got away.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Which sounds like a good thing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: It's framed as a title of victory. And in many
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: ways it is. But when you consider the specifics of
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: this case, the fact that these killers literally used Sabra
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: to experiment, to practice their methods with the gas line
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and the bag. Yeah. Does the label survivor fully capture
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: the immense psychological burden she carries? She knows intimately that
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: her tormentors used her physical suffering as the rough draft
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: for the murders. of at least 10 other women and girls. Wow.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: That's heavy. It is. How does a person go about
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: rebuilding a normal life? How do you ever find true
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: peace when you are forced to carry the weight of
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: knowing your survival was the blueprint for someone else's death?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Staring down the monster in the courtroom is one kind
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of courage, but waking up in the down the reality
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: of what your body was used for every single day
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: for the rest of your life, finding a way to
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: live with that might be the most profound survival of all.