By Gary C. King
Cousins Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi enjoyed killing Los Angeles women just for the thrill that they experienced during the process of torture and murder. Both men were natives of Rochester, N.Y. Buono was born in 1934, but relocated to Glendale, Calif., early in his life where he began an upholstery business. Buono had a significant criminal history for offenses such as failing to pay child support, grand theft auto, assault and rape. It was little wonder that his criminality would continue and escalate in severity. Bianchi, born in 1949 to an alcoholic prostitute who put him up for adoption within weeks of his birth, left Rochester in 1975, when he was only 26. Wanting to be near his older cousin who had somehow impressed him with his lifestyle, Bianchi also relocated to Glendale where he resided with Buono for a while. It was shortly after Bianchi's arrival in California that the murders known as the "Hillside Strangler" killings began. Their reign of terror commenced in October 1977 and continued until February 1978, during which time 10 female victims ranging in age from 12 to 28 were raped and murdered by this diabolic duo.
Buono, who considered himself a dashing ladies man, at first persuaded his cousin to cavort with a number of women from various walks of life, often just bedding them for the night. Later, they became pimps to some of the women. However, their behavior soon escalated into holding the women as prisoners, and later into killing them. Many of the women's bodies were merely tossed like rubbish onto the hillsides around Los Angeles, except for two victims who were found in the trunk of a car that had been pushed over a cliff. Perhaps after their first kill, Buono and Bianchi decided that they enjoyed killing women and agreed that working together as a team would make the kidnappings and murders not only easier to commit but more difficult for the police to zero in on a suspect.
Their murderous scheming was fairly simple. Buono frequently dressed as a police officer and carried a fake badge to gain their intended victim’s trust and persuade them to get inside his “unmarked police car.” After targeting a victim, Bianchi often assisted with the abduction and in bringing the victim to Buono's house. Locked inside a spare bedroom that Buono and Bianchi referred to as the torture chamber, the terrified women were strapped into a chair. At various intervals the women were raped repeatedly and penetrated with foreign objects, tortured, and ultimately strangled to death. With each successive victim, it seemed that the two cousins became more desensitized to the violence they were committing and as such became more callous and sadistic. As an example, they injected one young victim with cleaning fluid, then placed a plastic bag connected by a hose to the oven and gassed her to death. Yet another victim was tortured with electric shock and later strangled. Strangulation, however, proved to be their preferred method of murder.
During the course of their investigation of the 10 murders, Los Angeles cops were clearly stumped. Although some of the detectives were convinced early on that the murders were being committed by two men, in reality they had no one to focus on. The public became critical of the job they were doing and demanded that the police step up their efforts to catch the so-called Hillside Strangler. Although the efforts of the homicide division were intensive, many detectives believed that the case might never be solved.
