The Hillside Stranglers, Darcey O'Brien

 

The Book

Trigger Warning: true crimes genre, gruesome subject matter, sadism, serial killing

Darcy O'Brien, crime writer and grandson of a former chief of police in San Francisco, perfectly captures the mood of the country and southern Califormia in his 1985 book chronicling the gruesome murders committed by the cousins widely known as the Hillside Stranglers. Before I go on, let me give the names of the widely acknowledged victims of this pair: Yolanda Washington, Judith Miller, Lissa Kastin, Delores Cepeda, Sonja Johnson, Kristina Weckler, Evelyn Jane King, Lauren Wagner, Kimberly Martin, and Cindy Hudspeth. All young women, many sex workers or college students, all living in Los Angeles and all in just a five month span. 

The peculiar interaction between Angelo Bueno and Kenneth Bianchi, led to a frenzy of killing of women. Their mutual hatred of women, their sexual proclivities, and their abusive, violent natures, all aligned, to create one of the most terrifying crime sprees in 1970s. 

Angelo Bueno was a violent, abusive man. By the time he was 40, he had been married multiple times and fathered at least 8 children. Despite having a successful auto upholstery business, he did not provide child support for any of his children. Kenneth Bianchi, grew up in New York State, and despite having above average intelligence, he mostly spent his time thieving. Due to being constantly in trouble with the law, he moved to California to escape the heat. 

The move to California by Bianchi proved to be pivotal. He used his charm to talk to victims, and in his cousin, he found a man who shared his same violent secret. Together they sexually assaulted and then murdered their victims in Bueno's home. 

After the birth of Bianchi's first child, Bianchi moved to Oregon to be closer to his son. While in Oregon, Bianchi murdered two more women. The smaller town, having smarter victims, and Bianchi's own mistakes quickly led to him being suspected in their murders. When the police traced him back to Glendale, the Hillside Strangler case broke wide open and the cousins were soon brought in. 

While in custody, Bianchi faked having multiple personality disorder (what we call today, dissociative identity disorder), hoping to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. He hoped after being in a mental institution, he could fake being well, be released, and go on with his killing spree. 

Due to the difficulties, many of them produced by Bianchi, and Bueno's refusal to cooperate the court case dragged on becoming the longest in history at the time. 

My Thoughts

Wow, nothing brings home how low the murder has fallen in my lifetime than the simple fact that despite the first known victim, Yolanda Washington, was dumped nude and displayed, it didn't even make the news. She was just one more dead body, murder, among many. Too many for the news to cover. In fact, their murders didn't even begin to make news until the middle of November. The cousins were able to kill over and over again, partly due to how violent the LA area was at the time, and partly because jockeying jurisdictions kept the cases from being linked. Unfortunate. 

Police incompetence also led to Bianchi getting away for far longer than he might today, with the rise of computers. I would like to believe that Bianchi's interviews, no matter how incompetently done, would have been linked in a computer, and if for no other reason than he came up three times would he have been more thoroughly investigated. Bueno, for all of his care, was not linked in the heat of things during the height of the killings. 

There is a fascinating aspect in duo killers, those people who kill together. Alone, neither may graduate to murder (although, Bianchi is listed a suspect in the Alphabet Murders, which stopped when he moved to LA), but together they are more violent and sadistic than alone. One half of the pair tends to be creative, charming, boundary pushing, with a low regard for the law, the other is violent, cold, a planner, and a need for control. Together, they are explosively more violent. 

I would note that neither Bianchi nor Bueno show the classic signs of serial killers, the torture of small animals, the fasciation with death and violence. And Bueno, while a really bad and violent person, graduates to being a murderer at the age of 44, which is really old for the beginning of a serial killer. Moreover, although it is clear Bueno thought he was manipulating Bianchi, once Bianchi was gone, Bueno showed no signs of needing to kill again. So despite the deep look into Bueno's thought process, it is clear, without Bianchi, objectionable as Bueno is, what he was not is a killer. 

The book's perspective rests in how O'Brien so clearly states what he believes are the self evident truths of the times, including commentary on the death penalty (which the jury refused to instate for Bueno, Bianchi made a plea to avoid it), hypnosis as an investigative technique, and how righteous some of the clearly violent and abusive tactics of the some of the investigators were. In today's world, more scrutiny would be paid to those outbursts.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me via a friend, who for privacy's sake I will call CM (not her initials).  She reads true crime and I asked to borrow this book from her. All of her books are in really good condition and it is clear she is a gentle reader of her books. So, while my library card has not saved me any money, she saved me $14.95 just by lending the book to me. Thank you CM!

Library Card

This Book                                                 $0.000

Items Reviewed This Year                      $235.92

Private Books

This Book                                                 $14.95

Total of Items Reviewed This Year        $250.97