♪♪
Bianchi: There may have been another killing or two.
[ Door creaks ]
It's something that happened, but it's not there all the time.
[ Woman screams ]
It's just like a bad dream.
And no disrespect for the girls,
dead people tell no tales.
[ Woman screaming ]
♪♪
Welcome to "Very Scary People."
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
For four months in 1977 and 1978,
Los Angeles was terrorized by a series of sadistic killings.
The victims, all women, were tortured,
then humiliated in death as their nude bodies
were displayed on hillsides.
The press dubbed the murders the Hillside Stranglings.
In February 1978, the killings suddenly stopped.
1,200 miles away in Bellingham, Washington,
a young father named Kenneth Bianchi
was charged with the murders of two college students.
The women were strangled.
Could Bianchi be connected to the killings in Los Angeles?
This is Part 2 of "The Hillside Stranglers."
♪♪
Davis: Dolores Cepeda and Sonja Johnson,
12 and 14-year old girls,
spent the day shopping in East L.A.
Renner: They caught the bus to come back,
and what they didn't know is that they were being hunted.
They were motioned over to this car by these two guys.
One of them badges them and he says,
"You shouldn't be out here. It's not safe.
We're from the police. We'll take you home."
So they get in the car.
Dolores and Sonja weren't in the habit of not returning home,
and so when they didn't show up,
their families are really concerned.
Everyone's looking for these two missing girls,
and of course, as the hours tick by
and then a couple of days roll by,
the families may not know it,
but the police know that the outcome's likely not to be good.
♪♪
De Reyes: A 9-year-old boy was rummaging
through a trash dump near Dodger Stadium.
Renner: He walks up to what he thinks are mannequins, and they're not.
It's Dolores and Sonja.
They were victims number four and number five.
♪♪
Davis: The body of Kristina Weckler was found.
She was an art student.
She had a huge future in front of her.
Renner: There were marks on her arms
that were consistent with needle marks.
Davis: She was injected with a substance
usually used to clean windows,
which caused her to go into violent convulsions.
She was tortured.
She was gassed before she was finally killed.
♪♪
It became clear that there was a serial killer on the loose.
Meredith: They had been strangled.
Martin: Some had been sexually assaulted.
Their bodies were dumped largely in public places.
Davis: Who will be the next victim? Where will they be found?
Will it be someone I know?
News people came up with a scary moniker,
the Hillside Strangler.
♪♪
Davis: Serial killers are almost always one figure.
One thing that threw all of us off is,
a pair of serial killers is almost unheard of.
A theory circulated
that the killers might be in law enforcement.
Martin: There was statements badges had been flashed.
They were either imposters posing as police officers,
or they were police officers.
[ Sirens wail ]
I mean the fear, the panic in the community was tremendous.
We wound up joining with the L.A. Sheriff's Department
and the Los Angeles Police Department
to form a task force.
We were defenseless.
We were clueless, trying to solve this.
I mean, we went through 10 murders and had no leads.
♪♪
One of the interesting things that occurred
after the last victim was found --
the murders stopped.
They completely stopped.
We don't have closure.
♪♪
McEachran: Bellingham was very concerned about these two young women,
Karen Mandic, Diane Wilder, who were missing.
This really had a note to it
that really concerned the police.
Reporter: The bodies of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder
were found stuffed in the back seat of Ms. Mandic's car.
McEachran: There were large ligature marks on the necks
of both of the girls,
and which should indicate they were strangled.
And it was something the police department
put all of their energy to solve.
Reporter: The first hint of their disappearance
came late Thursday, when Karen Mandic failed to return
to the local Fred Meyer from her dinner break.
Which is a large department food store.
Davis: Karen asked her manager if she could take a long dinner break,
because she had a job opportunity that came up.
McEachran: She had a security job.
Karen found out about this security job
from a former Fred Meyer's employee.
♪♪
McEachran: There was a note there that indicated
"Ken B. Called."
Investigators had called the security company
and found out a man by the name of Kenneth Bianchi worked there.
He had also previously worked at Fred Meyer.
McEachran: They also found a pubic hair when they lifted
Diane Wilder's body out of the car
that matched microscopically the characteristics
of pubic hair from Mr. Bianchi.
I charged Kenneth Bianchi with
murder in the first degree, two counts.
♪♪
Burkhalter: Then last week, Kenneth Bianchi was arrested
in Bellingham, Washington, and named as a prime suspect
in the strangulation murders of two co-eds there.
The Hillside Strangler cases we had heard about in the media,
but it was not something at least
that I specifically was following.
It was in California,
but our police chief in Bellingham was from Los Angeles,
and he was familiar with the Hillside Strangler cases.
He told me, "I think this looks like it,
has a lot of the connections
that we have seen, as far as the manner of death."
Burkhalter: The young women had been strangled, the car abandoned.
McEachran: And he started checking on Bianchi and realized
he had been in California.
He had lived in so-called Strangler country,
the Glendale area of San Fernando valley.
Burkhalter: A number of curious coincidences came to light.
Among them, Bianchi had,
during the period of the Los Angeles murders,
lived in a Glendale apartment building
where one Hillside Strangler victim also lived,
across the street from where another victim lived.
♪♪
McEachran: We went into his background,
and we sent officers immediately out to Rochester, New York,
where he was from.
To say that Kenneth Bianchi had a troubled childhood
is putting it mildly.
Bianchi's biological mother was a sex worker.
Broberg: His birth mother is very young when she gives birth to him.
She very quickly realizes she can't take care of Kenneth,
and then moves through the adoption,
and the Bianchis come into the situation.
The Bianchis then have their own interesting dynamic.
Kenneth's mother is the domineering personality.
The father plays a very submissive role.
His mother was overprotective.
When we looked at some of the records from schools
that Bianchi attended,
you can see references made to chronic lying.
He lied when there was no good reason to lie.
Schlesinger: When Bianchi was 12, he got in trouble
for pulling down a young girl's pants.
All young boys have sexual interests at 12-13 years old,
but he acted on it.
Most young boys don't do that.
Bianchi did do that.
Notwithstanding Bianchi being fairly bright,
he couldn't get along with the teachers.
He is an individual who wants to be dominant and in control,
and he wants to see other people as submissive --
submissive to him.
On the surface, though, Bianchi could appear normal.
Schlesinger: He's a handsome guy. He's well-spoken.
Davis: As a teen, he even dated quite a bit.
He met a girl and married her right out of high school.
She left him almost immediately.
There's little information about her reason for leaving.
Either way, Bianchi thought of the future
and had a conventional view of what he wanted to do.
Schlesinger: Bianchi wanted to be in authority.
He wanted a job in authority, a police officer.
Bianchi never made the cut to join the force,
so he did the next best thing.
He became a security guard.
McEachran: And his fellow employees and coworkers
thought he was a nice guy.
Schlesinger: He's smooth and manipulative,
and so he has a good ability to put people at ease.
And so the disturbance is masked and covered up.
That was, until he was caught stealing
from the stores he was hired to protect,
so he decided to make a change.
He decided, "Hey, I'm going to go out to L.A.
I'm going to change my life, see my cousin."
And sure enough, that's what he did.
He moved out to Glendale, California,
and moved in with Angelo Buono, who was his role model.
And that's when the real trouble began.
♪♪
Kenneth Bianchi told detectives he had nothing to do
with the Hillside Stranglings down in Los Angeles,
let alone the murders of Diane Wilder
and Karen Mandic up in Washington.
De Reyes: His girlfriend, Kelli Boyd, was raising their infant son
and didn't know what to think.
And he begins this process of writing to her, saying,
"It's not true."
De Reyes: "It takes a real maniac to do what was done.
God forgive him."
Broberg: And it continued on,
his ongoing belief that he was innocent.
Davis: As L.A. detectives continued to investigate
Bianchi for the Hillside Stranglings,
the evidence in the Washington murders continued to mount.
Once we reached a point where I felt all the evidence showed
clearly that Bianchi had killed both of these young women,
I filed for the death penalty,
and I'd notified the defense attorney.
The same day, he claimed that Mr. Bianchi
was a multiple personality.
Schulman: He is in custody in Washington,
where he pleaded innocent by reason of insanity
to two counts of murder.
Allnate: Bianchi was examined by a series of court-appointed psychiatrists
who recorded their sessions on video tape.
I just can't imagine killing anybody...
♪♪
Taking life.
Allnate: Two of the doctors reported that Bianchi
suffered from multiple or split personalities.
They said the murders were committed
by one of the hidden personalities
who called himself Steve Walker,
a personality which allegedly surfaced
when Bianchi was hypnotized.
Psychiatrist: Okay, I'm gonna start counting...
25, 26, 27...
And now I wanna talk to Steve.
What's your name?
Steve.
What's your last name?
You, you're the [bleep]
that's been trying to get me to leave him.
Broberg: So when Steve, one of his personalities,
comes out, he confesses to all sorts
of criminal type of behavior.
I [bleep] killed those broads, you know, to smart him up,
to show him that he couldn't push me [bleep] around.
Here in Bellingham?
That's right.
Strangled 'em, it's [bleep] plain as that.
Strangled them with a [bleep] cord, nothing to it.
The name Stephen Walker was a name that interested us.
We had taken a briefcase when Mr. Bianchi was arrested,
and in the briefcase, there were papers showing
that he had a degree in psychology
and that he had gone to Pepperdine.
We checked with Pepperdine, and he was not a student.
But we had transcripts for Thomas Stephen Walker,
and he had graduated from Pepperdine.
He had a degree in psychology.
And he had responded to an advertisement in the paper
in Los Angeles in which a psychologist
was asking to have someone join his practice
and invited the people to send in transcripts.
The so-called psychologist who wanted the transcripts
was Kenneth Bianchi.
He was pretending to be a psychologist,
and that's where Walker sent his transcripts.
McEachran: Bianchi changed the names
and put "Kenneth Bianchi" in the names on the transcripts
and started a scam psychological business.
Psychiatrist: Up here in Bellingham,
what did Steve do up here?
Okay, Steve up here lured and killed the two girls.
We felt that the interviews
really were perpetuating this scam that Mr. Bianchi
was trying to present.
In one session, the psychologist urges Bianchi
to engage his alter ego in a dialogue.
You keep saying I killed those girls.
I didn't, you did.
It was me.
I'm the one that's getting the blame.
♪♪
You just don't understand, you know,
what happens to me is gonna happen to you.
Schlesinger: They also brought in Dr. Orne,
who is really an expert on hypnosis
and dissociative identity disorder.
McEachran: Dr. Orne told me,
"Look, I've looked at the video tapes.
I'll tell you what, I think he's simulating hypnosis."
Schlesinger: The psychologist suggested to Bianchi
that most people that have multiple personality disorders
have more than one personality.
And lo and behold, there's a new personality
that Bianchi comes out with.
Dr. Allison: Come on, Billy.
Now is not the time to be shy.
Dr. Allison, nice to meet you.
You have not seen me before, have you?
No, sir.
Right from the jump, it was a bad performance.
As I count backwards from 5 to 1, you'll be awake.
Anyone who knows anything about multiple personality disorder,
this is just a cheap acting job.
And it really underlined the fact that this was a scam,
and we thought we'd be able to wrestle him down in a trial.
But investigators were working hard to try to tie him
to the Hillside Stranglings in L.A.
They were asking about these cases in California,
and we had made enough of a connection there
that I'm sure he realized that was a real problem for him.
This is probably the major break in the case.
Let's go on listing the kinds of activities
Steve was involved in, in Los Angeles.
The killings of the girls.
The killings of the girls to get not only sexual gratification,
but also it gave a personal sense
of stimulation or excitement.
♪♪
He was trying to use a multiple personality
as a defense to anything that would come up there also.
He said to detectives, "I'll tell you what.
I'll turn state's witness,
and I'll tell you who the other strangler was.
It was my cousin, Angelo Buono."
Psychiatrist: Why did Angelo kill any girls?
What did he have against them?
I dunno, man. You know, he just...
He was just an easy guy to get with the program, you know?
I gave him the idea, and he went with it all the way.
Did you watch him kill them all?
You bet I did, strangled them all.
It's the easiest way to go.
He was giving a description of these homicides and described
how he and Angelo had done this together in California.
Who killed who?
I killed the first broad.
Who was she?
Some black broad, I don't remember her name.
How did you happen to pick her up?
She was a hooker.
Okay, who killed the second one?
Angelo. Were you with him?
He did a nice job doing it, too.
Where did you kill her?
Right at Angelo's house.
I would have to say that certainly we are looking at him.
He's had a relationship with Mr. Bianchi.
Angelo, now he's my kind of person.
He doesn't care a [bleep] about life, it's great.
Other people's life.
Has he killed anybody?
Yup, he has. How many?
Five girls.
What a team we were.
♪♪
Komo: 27-year-old Kenneth Bianchi,
charged with two homicides here in Bellingham,
pleaded guilty to the Bellingham charges
and admitted guilt to the Los Angeles slayings.
When he's getting sentenced, he cries to everybody.
He says how deeply sorry he is.
Bianchi: To even begin to try and live with myself,
I have to take responsibility for what I've done.
♪♪
And I have to do everything I can to get Angelo Buono.
It's ridiculous.
He's not sorry about anything, other than he got caught.
♪♪
Komo: Whatcom County prosecutor Dave McEachran
asked for life sentences to be served consecutively.
Bianchi says he will waive extradition to California
and travel down there to testify against his cousin,
Angelo Buono, whom Bianchi says was an accomplice
in a series of killings
known as the Los Angeles Hillside Stranglings.
Davis: As soon as the name Angelo Buono
was tied to the case,
I and my colleagues found out where he lived, where he worked.
His upholstery shop was right next door to his house.
Allegedly, people such as Frank Sinatra
were his customers.
He's an obsessive compulsive neat freak.
He cleans things that you could use as an operating table.
He cleans them again.
Davis: Bianchi was an unreliable witness.
So there was a period of time
there when Buono is loose on the streets.
He hasn't been arrested yet.
Now as a journalist, I was going to find out
everything I could about Angelo Buono.
♪♪
Angelo Buono was born in Rochester, New York, in 1934.
Schlesinger: Buono had a very, very troubled relationship with his mother.
Evidently, she was running around on his father,
which led to the divorce.
That, I really think affected him,
because she stepped out of her mother role
and acted out sexually, at least in Buono's mind.
He had a hatred for women that showed up again and again.
Angelo is known to say many times,
"Some women just deserve to die."
Schlesinger: When Buono was an adolescent,
he was telling other guys that he was sodomizing girls
and raping girls and this sort of thing.
Whether or not it's true, it's hard to know,
but just the fact that Buono is talking like that,
it's really beyond what average teenage boys talk about,
so you see deviancy emerging.
Buono was acting out in a typical antisocial way
as a young person -- left school, gets arrested,
steals, all these sorts of things.
At 21, Angelo impregnates a 17-year-old girl,
and she becomes his first wife.
He is awful to her, as he will be to his subsequent wives.
He fathers at least eight children,
never takes responsibility for any of them,
and that's just his life.
That's just how he goes.
Buono ended up marrying four times
and had numerous other relationships.
All of the women he married, he abused physically, verbally.
They also made the accusation that he had abused
one of his stepdaughters and that he said,
"Well, she needs to be broken in."
I wouldn't call him a charismatic person,
although apparently a lot of young women
found him attractive.
He was the kind of guy that carried a big wad
of $100 bills and liked to impress people.
One of the characteristics of a psychopath
is other people want to be around them.
They know how to ingratiate themselves with people,
and they can be attractive to some types of individuals.
Among the people who came to admire Buono was his cousin,
Ken Bianchi, who came out to California to live with him.
Renner: When Ken arrived in L.A.,
he had the Hollywood vision of Los Angeles in his head,
and he just seemed to be leading a normal life.
He found a girlfriend. She got pregnant.
He seemed to be delighted, really,
about the prospect of being a father.
And so on the surface, he seemed to be a perfectly normal guy
in his 20s with a bright future ahead of him.
But the real Kenneth Bianchi
was someone completely different from the guy
that he presented himself to be in Los Angeles.
When Bianchi gets to L.A.,
we know he establishes this kind of fake psychology service.
Renner: He really studied the subject.
He knew the jargon.
So he got a false license,
and he was so well-read in the subject
that he was able to convince another psychologist
to let him have an office space.
He even had one or two patients drop in.
De Reyes: But Bianchi, well, he needed more.
He set his sights on being in a position of authority,
something he was obsessed with since he was a little kid.
Meredith: We had a candidate that had applied to be a police officer
that my sergeant wanted to have rejected.
He goes, "I don't like this guy. There's something about him."
So we wound up disqualifying him.
His name happened to be Kenneth Bianchi.
♪♪
Welcome back to "Very Scary People."
Kenneth Bianchi had bright dreams
when he moved to Los Angeles
to be near his cousin, Angelo Buono.
For years, he'd imagined himself in a position of authority
and having others look up to him.
Although Buono and Bianchi barely knew each other,
the cousins found they had more in common than either realized.
♪♪
Davis: When Bianchi moved out to southern California,
he knew he needed to make some money.
Well, his older cousin Angelo said,
"Why don't we go into the prostitution business?"
Reporter: This is Sabra.
She was 17 years old when she was allegedly forced to work
as a prostitute on behalf of Angelo Buono
and his cousin and companion, Ken Bianchi,
now the two suspects in the Hillside Stranglings.
His temper flared up very easily,
and if he didn't get his way on things that he wanted,
then it was like,
"I'm going to slap you around a couple of times
until you realize that I mean business."
Lee: Sabra's a very pretty girl,
full of dreams, like many girls her age,
and believed that she was going to be a model or an actress,
and came to Hollywood.
Kenneth Bianchi posed as a modeling agent
when he lured Sabra.
He was a master of identities and of personalities.
Sabra was pressured to bring another girl in.
Becky Spears was a friend of sabra's.
And Becky came in,
and things started to get rough at that point.
I never saw a gentle side of either one of them.
I never saw a human side of either one of them.
I would say when I was there, I was kidnapped.
I was there not on my own will.
Becky was sent out to meet a lawyer as a customer,
and Becky told him the story, and he helped her escape.
De Reyes: They still had the other young woman,
and eventually she escaped.
Lee: There's a theory that after Sabra and Becky got away,
that these two wanted revenge,
but I think it was more complicated than that.
I think that they had the intentions
of setting up an escort service.
Davis: So Bianchi and Buono contacted two young prostitutes
in Hollywood, Yolanda Washington and Debbie Noble.
At one point, they were given a list of possible johns.
They soon found out, though, that the list was fake,
and that they were taken for money.
That angered them greatly.
Yolanda Washington happened to casually say to
Angelo and Ken where she walked the streets on Sunset Boulevard,
and they went and found Yolanda Washington.
Renner: They killed her in a car,
but once they decided that that was too risky,
they developed this whole M.O.
♪♪
Bianchi and Buono would drive around as if they're two cops.
The police ruse thing was used in almost all of them.
Psychiatrist: So they were under the impression
that they were being taken to a police station, right?
Right.
All signs pointed to the fact that most of the victims
were brought back to Buono's home
next to the upholstery shop.
The girls were undressed, bound, gagged, whatever.
There was sex with them.
They were apparently placed in a chair
where they were violated, tortured.
Fibers from that chair were found on several of the victims.
Then they were put on the floor and killed.
After they were dead, the body was loaded into the car,
the nude body.
De Reyes: The bodies had been dumped off in areas
that were pretty much in the general vicinity of Glendale.
It would put Angelo Buono's shop somewhat in the middle of it.
Buono and Bianchi were operating undetected,
and the body count continued to rise.
When law enforcement hasn't started to target them,
they get brave,
and they begin to push the envelope to see
if they can do more and more to kind of frustrate the police.
Davis: Kimberly Martin was the ninth victim.
She was working for an escort service.
These guys were so confident,
they asked the service to a girl to an empty apartment
in the same complex where Bianchi lived.
Schlesinger: When they called up and had a prostitute
go to an empty apartment in a place where Bianchi lived,
that's high-risk behavior,
because they can get connected to it.
Davis: Kimberly Martin ended up
getting into a struggle with the killers in Bianchi's building,
and some of the neighbors overheard the commotion.
Lee: The police officers were interviewing everybody
in the apartments
and forcing them to show their driver's license.
And they spoke to Kenneth Bianchi,
and he manipulated his way from showing them
the driver's license,
because if they would have seen the driver's license,
they would have noted that the address on the driver's license
was the same address as the previous victim.
♪♪
Meredith: In the city of Los Angeles, we went through 10 murders,
and the Cindy Hudspeth case was the last one we had.
Renner: Cindy Hudspeth's on her way to work.
She's in her car. She's driving along.
She sees an auto upholstery shop
and just on a whim, she stops in,
and it's Angelo Buono's upholstery shop.
Angelo and Ken cannot believe their good luck.
They don't even have to go cruising for anyone.
This woman just walked right into the trap.
And at this point, their M.O. Is really solid.
And they get her tied up, and they do what they always do.
They sexually assault her and they strangle her.
♪♪
Since she just walked in, her car is there.
They have to get rid of it. They put her body in the trunk.
Ken's driving in her car with her body in it.
They get it to a hillside.
Angelo parks at the side of the road behind him.
They look around to see if anyone's watching,
and they just pitch the car over the side.
♪♪
So despite the extensive manhunt for the Hillside Stranglers,
including after the death of Cindy Hudspeth,
Bianchi continued to take unnecessary risks.
At the time, LAPD had a program
to take citizens on a ride-along with police.
Bianchi, who always wanted to be in law enforcement,
took them up on it.
Schlesinger: Buono, who's very street smart
and knows you can only take it so far,
said to Bianchi, "You got to get out of here,
and if you don't I'm going to kill you,
because you're gonna get me implicated in this."
So then Bianchi moved to Washington state.
De Reyes: After moving to Washington,
Bianchi was arrested for the murders
of Diane Wilder and Karen Mandic.
And then he started to talk,
fully implicating Angelo Buono in the L.A. murders.
Davis: Finally, detectives in L.A.
were ready to move against Buono.
We immediately deployed our tactical team.
We had placed some snipers on the roof
of an apartment building
behind Angelo Buono's upholstery shop.
We had secured the area.
♪♪
When he walked out in handcuffs,
I looked at him and I thought, the arrogance,
the confidence, the demeanor, the evilness that he possessed.
♪♪
I was relieved. Finally, we've got him.
We get to do something about it.
Everyone was getting ready for Buono's trial
when Bianchi's life took a turn no one expected.
McEachran: Veronica Compton was a woman
who likened herself as a playwright,
and she wanted to interview Bianchi.
Renner: She'd written a play called, "The Mutilated Cutter,"
which is just one heck of a name for anything.
And she approached Bianchi in prison
and wanted to talk to him to do some sort of research.
Well, one thing led to another.
She became romantically involved with Bianchi.
And apparently, they fell in love.
Renner: She's attractive,
But the thing that really attracts Ken is,
in this screenplay that she's written,
it revolves around a female serial killer,
and she lays a false trail for investigators
by taking the semen of innocent men
and leaving it at the scene to throw the police off.
The wheels start turning in Ken's head.
Bianchi and Compton came up with a plan
that they thought would convince authorities
that they had the wrong man, and that
the real Hillside Strangler was on the loose.
Renner: Never mind that he's already confessed to the crimes,
but she's going to do this thing for him.
De Reyes: He gave her a condom of semen
to put on the victim so that they could say,
"Hey, there's, there's somebody else doing those crimes."
McEachran: She came to Bellingham and had a disguise
on making her look pregnant,
had a long wig on, and went to a local bar here
and encountered a young woman whose name was Kim Breed.
And they started drinking together,
and Veronica Compton invited her back to her hotel room.
When they got there, Veronica indicated
she wanted to just change her clothes,
and went in the bathroom and came back out
and was able to get behind this young woman
and put a ligature around her neck
and started choking her, trying to kill her.
She was a very strong woman.
Was able to get the ligature off her neck,
and knocked Veronica Compton down
and Veronica Compton ran out of the room.
Davis: It wasn't long before police caught up with Veronica Compton.
I charged her with attempted murder in the first degree.
Veronica, did you attempt to murder Kim Breed?
No.
It was supposed to be a game. She was in on it.
The jury wasn't buying Veronica Compton's claim.
She was convicted in a jury trial.
Renner: Veronica Compton does spend 22 years in prison for this.
The whole thing was just bizarre.
I think that's the best word that I can think of.
With the Compton distraction out of the way,
prosecutors were now concentrating on getting justice
for the victims of the Hillside Stranglers.
♪♪
Reporter: Buono wore a jail uniform
to and from the criminal courts building.
At that time, we had a system in Los Angeles
where judges would appoint attorneys to represent someone,
so the first person who was appointed was Gerry Chaleff.
Gerry was looking for somebody in particular.
He wanted to have a female.
He knew a woman was going to be sitting next to Angelo Buono.
And here's a man that's charged with raping
and torturing and killing 10 women,
and if he can get along with what appears to be a nice woman
for a lengthy period of time,
and the jury is watching everything,
then maybe he's not that bad after all.
The district attorney at the time
realizes that Bianchi lies constantly.
And so the district attorney is saying,
"I can't go to court and charge Buono
when my star witness is Bianchi,
who can't tell the truth about anything."
Mader: And so the district attorney of Los Angeles
at the time went into court to dismiss the case.
And the judge, Ron George, said, "Mm, wait a minute here.
I'm not necessarily going to just on the spot here
dismiss the case.
I need more information."
I would say in over 99% of the cases,
one would not second guess a prosecutor,
but in this case, I felt obliged to.
He picked up on a lot of scientific investigations,
reports, particularly the fiber evidence,
that appeared to connect Buono and Buono's house
to the murdered young women.
De Reyes: So they appointed a couple of attorneys to handle the case,
and these guys were much more gung-ho.
These guys were much more battle-tested, you could tell.
And I think that Gerald Chaleff and Katherine Mader
had their hands full with these two.
♪♪
Davis: The trial went on and on.
In fact, it was the longest trial in Los Angeles County
at that time.
De Reyes: The prosecution was determined to use Bianchi
as their star witness.
He'd already pleaded guilty to the two murderers
in Washington state and the five in L.A.
The defense countered that it was impossible for Bianchi
to tell a consistent story.
Chaleff: I think he's a liar.
He's a sophisticated con man who will use anything
and anybody to get what he wants.
Perhaps I had convinced myself
that we really had a shot of getting an acquittal here
as to all the murders.
♪♪
The convictions came in piecemeal.
The first verdict that the jurors reached
was with the victim Yolanda Washington,
and the jurors came back fairly quickly
with a not guilty verdict.
I think that must have freaked out the prosecution.
And then for the subsequent nine victims,
they convicted him of everything.
Reporter: Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald George
lamented that he had no legal choice
but to follow the jury's recommendation of life sentences
instead of the death penalty.
George: Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi
terrorized this city for several months,
as Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi
slowly squeezed out of their victims their last breath of air
and their promise of a future life.
And all for what?
The momentary, sadistic thrill
of enjoying a brief, perverted sexual satisfaction
and the venting of their hatred of women.
♪♪
Davis: Buono was serving his sentence in 2002
when he met a sudden end.
De Reyes: Angelo Buono died of a heart attack,
which was a very merciful thing
to happen to a very unmerciful individual.
♪♪
McEachran: Mr. Bianchi has filed
a number of lawsuits and appeals.
He has said a number of times
that the real killer is still there.
That's all he has to do, is try to argue these things,
and it's just crazy at this point.
Lee: Bianchi's never gonna get out on parole,
so he's just stuck there.
And I think that's a good place for --
those are the kind of people that belong in jail.
Davis: Sadly, cases like this,
it's another attack on our fortress of feeling safe.
For those of us who lived through
the Hillside Strangler case, we'll never forget it.
Renner: There are ripples from these crimes
that go on literally for generations.
It's the fabric of the universe,
and that's what each one of these victims represents to me,
just a tear in the fabric of the universe
that never gets put right again.
It did change the way people looked at the city,
the way they lived.
That's what serial killers did for Los Angeles.
It set us up for this kind of paranoid lifestyle
that we still sort of live now.
♪♪
Meredith: I have seen a lot of horrific crimes in my time,
but I cannot imagine anything being as horrific
as what occurred to these women and these girls.
I've dealt with some evil people,
but nobody as evil and dark as Buono and Bianchi.
Kenneth Bianchi will be eligible for parole again in 2025,
the same year he turns 74.
Sadly, while his name still generates headlines,
the identities of his victims remains largely unknown,
except to their friends and loved ones.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
Thanks for watching.
Goodnight.