Hillside Strangler: Murder in the Shadows of Los Angeles

[00:00:02] Kyle Risi: yet another woman's body had been found nearby.

[00:00:06] Adam Cox: Yet another one?

[00:00:07] Kyle Risi: the bruising across her body suggested she had gone through prolonged torture.

[00:00:12] Adam Cox: Sounds pretty horrific.

[00:00:14] Kyle Risi: Bob initially assumed she was just another casualty of the city, sex, work trade, if the girls were poor runaways or sex workers, they barely made the news.

[00:00:24] Adam Cox: I think, you know, there's this perception that, sex workers, put themselves in that [00:00:30] danger. Therefore, it's their own fault,

[00:00:32] Kyle Risi: That's one of the most disturbing aspects of this case, I think.

[00:00:35] Public panic only erupted once respectable young women started turning up dead.

[00:00:40] Wow.

[00:00:42] Adam Cox: How many are we on now?

[00:00:43] Kyle Risi: The three that were found in Glendale Uhhuh. The three that were found in the previous weeks. Yeah. Lauren and now we're onto Kimberly

[00:00:52] And this is all within the space of a couple of weeks?

[00:00:55] What would eventually unfold will be one of the most unique serial killer, true crime cases in [00:01:00] American history.

[00:01:27] Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating [00:01:30] things, a weekly variety of podcasts that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:36] Adam Cox: Each week we explore stories from the darker corners of true crime and the hidden gems of history and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:43] Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your ringmaster for this week's episode.

[00:01:46] Adam Cox: I'm Adam Cox, the onsite body piercer for this week. It's my first day I've, uh, I've got ever or body piercing. And I looked at a YouTube video mm-hmm. And I think I can do it. Oh, okay, [00:02:00] great. I've got faith in you. Yeah. There's, how hard is it, right?

[00:02:02] Yeah. I've got, give everyone a piercing today.

[00:02:04] Kyle Risi: Even the ringmaster, you don't want to just have a little test out on. No. No. Okay.

[00:02:12] Adam Cox: We'll start with you.

[00:02:13] Kyle Risi: Guys. If you've already binged everything we have to offer on the main feed and you still want more, then remember you can sign up to our Patreon where you'll get next week's episode a whole seven days before anyone else.

[00:02:25] Adam Cox: And if you want even more then consider supporting us by becoming a fellow freak [00:02:30] of the show.

[00:02:30] Kyle Risi: We're for as little as $5 a month, you can unlock all of our early access episodes up to six weeks early. Our entire full back catalog of vintage compendium episodes and of course are all the latest things, episodes.

[00:02:45] Adam Cox: But the p de resistance, Kyle, is that the certified freak and big top tier members. Also receive an exclusive compendium key chain. We have just received another new batch. It's beautiful. It's high quality.

[00:02:58] Kyle Risi: and wonderfully tacky.

[00:02:59] Adam Cox: [00:03:00] Yes.

[00:03:00] Kyle Risi: No,

[00:03:01] Adam Cox: I like to think it's, um, it's elegant. Oh, elegant. Now, is it, and it's the single most effective way for us to always be there dangling right near your crotch. That That is actually true. Actually. The only legal way we can do it. Yes. Without some kind of

[00:03:17] Kyle Risi: the only legal way, without some kind of like restraining order. We are even willing to absorb the US tariff charges just to make this happen for you.

[00:03:25] Adam Cox: Take that Trump.

[00:03:26] Kyle Risi: Also, guys, please don't forget to follow us wherever you listen to [00:03:30] podcasts and leave us a review. Supporting us in this way really helps others discover the show.

[00:03:34] Adam Cox: Or leave us five stars and tell the algorithm we are emotionally stable.

[00:03:39] Kyle Risi: Emotionally unstable, more like.

[00:03:42] And now we'd like to recognize some of our freaks out there. We see you. We appreciate you. And now actually, we're putting you guys to work because as you know, the circus always needs staff. We can't keep doing it. Adam keeps jumping from job to job.

[00:03:57] We've got some wonderful little freaks that have joined [00:04:00] up over the last few weeks. First of all, we have Rosie Dale, our Ambient Circus Music Volume Guesswork Technician.

[00:04:08] Adam Cox: Uhhuh. Then we've got Katie Quez, our Deputy Peanut Shell D ispersion Mapper.

[00:04:13] Kyle Risi: Who signed that role off? That's choice. That's hr, like blasting through our budget Uhhuh. We then have Mimi. She is our Circus Glitter Cross-Contamination Risk Assessor.

[00:04:23] Adam Cox: Then we have Alicia Middleton, our Balloon Knot Delay Time A nalyst.

[00:04:27] Kyle Risi: And then I dunno how to pronounce this one is, I think it's[00:04:30] Rouxve Meyer. Our junior Whisperer of Disobedient Tent R opes.

[00:04:34] Adam Cox: They are disobedient though things

[00:04:35] Kyle Risi: And then we have our certified freaks have joined us recently. We've got Brainrot our Meme to Circus Content Translator Specialist.

[00:04:43] Adam Cox: Amy Sutzer, our Seasonal Acrobat Net Hole Cataloger.

[00:04:49] Kyle Risi: And we've got Laura Gunney, Official Investigator of Unattended Juggling O bjects.

[00:04:54] Adam Cox: And then we've got Araceli Valdovinos. Ooh, great name, brilliant name. [00:05:00] They are our Night Circus Dew Accumulation Forecaster,

[00:05:05] Kyle Risi: God. and then we have Savannah Edmiston, our Balloon Animal Structural Failure Analyst.

[00:05:11] Adam Cox: This is a very expensive circus.

[00:05:14] Kyle Risi: It is. We have no idea what these roles entail. All we know is that we have the budget. And so we'd love you to write in and tell us what you think your job description should be. Who do you report to? What do your duties evolve, and what are your KPIs? We'll read them out in an [00:05:30] episode coming soon.

[00:05:31] But Adam, that is enough of the housekeeping because today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of false badges, stolen innocence, and a city that woke to horror.

[00:05:45] Adam Cox: Okay, it's safe to say Kyle. No clues. A city that worked a horror.

[00:05:50] Kyle Risi: Adam Los Angeles in the late 1970s has this eerie split personality because by day it was all sunshine, roller skates, and [00:06:00] suburban comfort. But underneath the city was drowning in missing women, rising street violence, and a police department that barely communicated with each other.

[00:06:08] So when young women started appearing on the hillsides, naked, strangled, and tortured, terror and panic started erupting across the city.

[00:06:17] Adam Cox: So this is a serial killer.

[00:06:18] Kyle Risi: Yes. The most terrifying element of this wasn't just the brutality, but it was the way that some of the victims mattered more than others. If the girls were poor or runaways or sex workers, they [00:06:30] literally barely made the news. Public panic only erupted once respectable young women started turning up dead.

[00:06:37] What would eventually unfold will be one of the most unique serial killer, true crime cases in American history.

[00:06:44] Adam, in today's episode, I'm gonna tell you about the Hillside strangler.

[00:06:49] Have you heard of this before?

[00:06:50] Adam Cox: No. But I'm guessing he strangled some people in the hills.

[00:06:54] Kyle Risi: Normally the monikers that these serial killers are given are pretty indicative of what they were doing. It's on the nose. This [00:07:00] is a crazy story that I'm surprised isn't up there with some of the other major well-known serial killers that we are aware of, like Ted Bundy or you did one on the Night Stalker not that long ago as well.

[00:07:13] Adam Cox: Yeah, You're right. I don't think I've ever heard of this guy. I'm assuming it's a guy. That's a huge assumption.

[00:07:17] Kyle Risi: I mean, it's the same assumption. Just make a big.

[00:07:19] Adam Cox: Maybe. When you get to revealing this person's name mm-hmm.

[00:07:22] Kyle Risi: Maybe I will have heard of him. Do you think you would've come across it in, in your previous research?

[00:07:26] Adam Cox: Maybe, but the hillside strangler doesn't ring a bell at the [00:07:30] moment.

[00:07:30] Kyle Risi: But Adam, today is a shocking case. I'm gonna tell you about the Hillside Strangler the fear that grip Los Angeles, the prejudice actually, that really slowed down the investigation and the deeply unsettling speed and brutal ways that this guy killed his victims, but will also follow how law enforcement finally cracked this case and brought this killer to justice.

[00:07:51] Adam Cox: Serious game, face. Let's go,

[00:07:53] Kyle Risi: Adam. Just after Dawn on Sunday, the 20th of November, 1977, residents on a quiet [00:08:00] street in Glendale. Were waking up to breakfast. I'm talking eggs, bacon, orange juice. It was It was the kind of gentle Sunday morning where the Pav boy was out delivering the news.

[00:08:08] Sprinklers were running across the front lawns and families were just easing into their day. Glendale was largely a safe neighborhood. Only a stones throw away from Burbank Airport, not the sort of place that you'd expect anything bad to happen.

[00:08:24] And yet, detective Bob Grogan receives a phone call that yet another woman's body [00:08:30] had been found nearby.

[00:08:31] Adam Cox: Yet another one?

[00:08:33] Kyle Risi: Yes. This was the stark reality of 1970s Los Angeles. As pleasant as Glendale was, it lived on the edge of a city undergoing a really grim transformation. Across la violent crime and drug use were on the rise. Prostitution was becoming increasingly more normalized with more and more teenagers being pulled into it.

[00:08:52] For detectives, another body being dumped on a dusty verge wasn't surprising anymore. It had become heartbreakingly routine.

[00:08:59] [00:09:00] The only unusual detail today was how far out of town this body had been left. When Bob Grogan arrived at the scene, he expected something familiar instead, several details struck out to him immediately.

[00:09:12] The dead woman lay openly near the curb with almost no attempt to conceal her body. She was naked. She had deep ligature marks carved into her wrists, her ankles and her neck. She'd been tied up for a considerable amount of time.

[00:09:26] The bruising across her body suggested she had gone through a [00:09:30] prolonged session of torture.

[00:09:32] And among her injuries were these odd puncture marks that Bob initially assumed was caused by drug use.

[00:09:39] But the absence of any needle tracks beneath the skin challenged that assumption.

[00:09:44] He also noticed that the site itself showed no signs of a struggle or any drag marks. However she arrived there, she had not been killed at this location.

[00:09:54] Adam Cox: Sounds pretty horrific.

[00:09:57] So this guy, he's looking for needle marks. [00:10:00] So is he expecting these victims to, I dunno, lead a certain life like their sex workers or something?

[00:10:06] Kyle Risi: For sure. That's exactly what the expectation was. At this moment in time, he believes that she's a prostitute.

[00:10:12] Mm-hmm.

[00:10:12] However, later that afternoon, Bob Grogan's partner, Dudley Varney was called to investigate the discovery of two more bodies found on the other side of the same hill.

[00:10:22] The report came in after a 9-year-old boy had been treasure hunting in a trash heap. He had noticed the bodies much earlier, which is [00:10:30] just wild to me. But he just assumed that they were shop mannequins.

[00:10:33] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess that's the first thing you hope it is.

[00:10:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Do you know when I was a kid, I've been in this exact same situation. Me and my best friend were playing in a it's like a dam or like a reservoir I don't know, maybe it's an overflow from a dam or whatever. Mm-hmm. It's extraordinarily dangerous to play in this because it's like my 15, 20 foot high. And there's like ladders every, maybe two, 300 meters.

[00:10:54] And we were walking along essentially for miles. And eventually we came across as under bridge. We found [00:11:00] like a passport. We found like a purse and stuff like that. I slipped in human shit. It was gross. As we carried on walking, we thought we saw a body and we freaked the fuck out.

[00:11:10] 'cause we had just found someone's wallet and their personal effects and stuff. We ran all the way back miles and miles called Junior's Dad. We went all the way back up. The slus turned out was a mannequin.

[00:11:21] Adam Cox: All that You caused such a commotion.

[00:11:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:11:23] Adam Cox: Over a mannequin. Yeah. But then I guess as a kid, like you're gonna be scared if that's the first time you think you're seeing a body. 'Cause you [00:11:30] probably heard news stories about a dog walker discovered a body.

[00:11:33] Kyle Risi: But the thing is, this is what such an idiot I am growing up, obviously my very first bank account, we had to set a pin number for it. And the easiest thing to do when you're a kid is just set your, as your date of birth, right?

[00:11:43] Mm-hmm. So I'd said it as 1985 or whatever it is.

[00:11:47] So when we found this person's wallet, with their ID and everything in it, including the bank cards, we thought that we were in the money we've got a passport. We know her date of birth, let's go take all the money out.

[00:11:56] And Adam, that's what we did.

[00:11:58] We went to the shop [00:12:00] the next day on the way to school, we popped her card in, typed in her date of birth. Eh, eh, wrong. Oh, tried it two more times and yeah, it didn't work. Swallows got swallowed, but we were fully prepared to just empty out this woman's bank account.

[00:12:13] Isn't that awful?

[00:12:15] Adam Cox: If you had found an actual dead body, you then stole from that person the next day. Yeah. Wow. I know you were dragged up.

[00:12:23] Kyle Risi: I

[00:12:23] know. I can't

[00:12:23] believe, I've told you that story. But anyway, Adam, we've got this 9-year-old boy who's been treasure hunting in this trash heap. [00:12:30] He notes these, bodies. He thinks they are mannequins, but it's not until these treasure hunt takes 'em closer that he realizes they're not mannequins. But instead they are. The bodies of two women now decaying as insects are beginning to overtake their flesh. Grim.

[00:12:44] Yeah.

[00:12:45] When Dudley arrived, he noticed the same disturbing pattern as Bob had seen earlier. There were deep ligature marks around their necks, wrists, and ankles, clear signs of prolonged restraint.

[00:12:56] They were bruised and battered, and again, the site showed [00:13:00] no disturbance, no drag marks, no evidence of a struggle on site.

[00:13:05] Again, whoever killed these girls did so somewhere else and then planted them here in plain sight.

[00:13:12] But Adam, the most distressing detail is their age. These victims were Heartbreakingly young. In fact, they were identified as 12-year-old Dolores Edda and 14-year-old Sonya Johnson.

[00:13:25] What? They were basically kids.

[00:13:27] They were kids. They had been reported missing a week [00:13:30] earlier from Ignatius school, and they were last seen getting off a bus and approaching a large two-tone sedan from the passenger side.

[00:13:36] And now, a week later, Adam, both of their naked bodies been dumped on this trash heap.

[00:13:41] Geez,

[00:13:42] The very next day, the very first woman that was found She was identified as Christina ler.

[00:13:48] Bob initially assumed she was just another casualty of the city, sex, work trade, a grim reality that he had become somewhat desensitized to.

[00:13:55] But when Christina's identity was confirmed, that assumption obviously collapsed. She [00:14:00] wasn't a sex worker at all.

[00:14:01] In fact, she was a 20-year-old quiet honor student from Pasadena Art Center of Design. Things only become more harrowing for him after he visits Christina's apartment at 8 0 9 East Garfield Avenue.

[00:14:15] The familiarity of her life was everywhere from her trinkets, the posters on her wall, her earnest diary entries that were filled with these really silly, hopeful thoughts about the future and about boys.

[00:14:26] It reminded Bob of his own daughters. And so up until this point [00:14:30] before they discovered that she wasn't a sex worker, you kind of alluded to in the beginning that maybe they were treating this case a certain way, Adam. 100%. What is wild to me is The sad reality of life in LA and the way the ready shaped how police understood these cases.

[00:14:45] But after breaking the new to Christina's parents and witnessing their devastation, Bob promises that he would find whoever had done this.

[00:14:52] And that's also really sad in itself because he wouldn't have said that if she was just a sex worker.

[00:14:58] Adam Cox: I think, you know, there's this [00:15:00] perception that, sex workers, I dunno, they put themselves in that danger. Therefore, it's their own fault, and therefore it's not treated in the same way or the same respect.

[00:15:10] Kyle Risi: It's exactly that, Adam. It's quite a complex situation, like I said, this shaped how police understood these cases. Christina, Dolores and Sonya, they mattered in a way that many of the other victims found across the city. Simply did not. There was already a premeditated hierarchy before any investigation even began. [00:15:30] So with these three clean cut victims now found especially so close together.

[00:15:34] Bob began to question whether or not in his haste to assume these victims were sex workers, had, they perhaps dismissed similar cases. part of this was prejudice. Part of this was of course the overwhelming volume of cases that officers had to deal with. But there was very clean line between which victims were treated as tragedies and which ones became background noise.

[00:15:56] And so Bob Grogan from the LAPD, joined forces with [00:16:00] Sergeant Frank salerno from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, and together they quickly started reviewing recent cases involving other bodies of other women being found across the city to see basically, if anything matched the pattern that was now evident in these three victims.

[00:16:16] Mm-hmm. Almost immediately they find a case from just a few weeks earlier on the 17th of October where the body of 20-year-old Yolanda Washington had been dumped near the forest law and cemetery.

[00:16:26] Like the first three victims. Yolanda was naked, she had been [00:16:30] raped, and she was strangled. She also bore the same deep lire marks around her neck, wrists and ankles. But what really stood out was just how casually her body had been left there. it had been arranged in this kind of like ritualistic way. She was kind of spread eagle out.

[00:16:45] And this is all within the space of you say a week or a couple of weeks? Yeah, pretty much, yeah. In very short space of time.

[00:16:51] Again, there were no signs of a struggle, no drag marks, no disturbances. She'd been clearly killed elsewhere and then dumped here in plain sight. And at the time, Adam, [00:17:00] her case barely registered, she was dismissed as another statistic, a known sex worker from the Sunset Strip.

[00:17:07] And according to her file, she was last seen the night before getting into a car with a man who flashed what looked like a police badge.

[00:17:14] Adam Cox: Was that a two toned sedan by any point? Chance?

[00:17:17] Kyle Risi: It's not mentioned here, no.

[00:17:18] Mm-hmm. But at the same time, it also doesn't really raise any alarm bells for the police because a police officer being seen approaching a sex worker on the Sunset strip is pretty much routine. [00:17:30] Yeah. But are they approaching them to tell them to move on, or are they approaching them because they want some,

[00:17:34] I mean, the police in LA have been known to be very corrupt, as we've seen across the ages, so who knows?

[00:17:41] But the point is that it doesn't really raise any alarm be As investigators continue to search through more files. Sergeant Frank Solano pulled out another case that he had attended on the 31st of October. So this is two weeks after Yolanda's body was found. This one involved a 15-year-old girl named Judy Miller.

[00:17:59] Adam Cox: They're really [00:18:00] young girls.

[00:18:00] Kyle Risi: They're so young. It's crazy. Once again, Judy had been found naked, off a quiet residential street. She'd been raped, sodomized, strangled, with the same deep ligature marks called into her wrist, ankles, and neck. The bruising across her body again indicated that she'd been abused across several days.

[00:18:17] And just like the others, no signs of disturbance, no drag marks.

[00:18:21] However, they did find a tiny little speck of fluff just on her eyelid and that's the only evidence that they had really.

[00:18:29] Adam Cox: So this [00:18:30] fluff, is what the person who attacked her, his clothes,

[00:18:32] Kyle Risi: could be his clothes. It could be what he blindfolded her with. It could be a piece of material that will link back to him in some way.

[00:18:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay. That's a little seed that you just dropped there. A little seed. Yeah. But that is horrific injuries. This poor girl 15 and she's 15 years old. I'm guessing she's not a sex worker, she's just, someone's daughter.

[00:18:52] Kyle Risi: Well, actually, Adam. Despite being 15, she is treated as another statistic largely because no one comes [00:19:00] forward to report her missing. It ultimately takes detectives to speak to other sex workers on the strip to confirm her identity.

[00:19:07] Adam Cox: Oh wow. So she was then,

[00:19:08] Kyle Risi: Like I said, a lot of young teenagers were turning to prostitution on the strip just to earn a bit of extra money, and that's what we're gonna see again with the next victim.

[00:19:17] She was 21-year-old Elisa cast and discovered near the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale. Again, she was found naked, she'd been raped, strangled, dumped on the side of the road, with almost no effort to conceal her body.

[00:19:29] However, [00:19:30] her case revealed something new because she wasn't a small woman, between the road and the embankment was a sizeable guardrail that the killer would've needed to have hoisted her over.

[00:19:41] That detail suggested two possibilities. Either they were looking for two perpetrators working together. Or the killer was a physically strong guy.

[00:19:50] Now duo killers are extremely rare. So the working assumption became that they were looking for just one big, physically capable guy. Either way, this was [00:20:00] the first useful clue that might help when they're building like a police profile.

[00:20:03] Adam Cox: Right. Okay. Because she's the first larger lady to try and move her. Would've taken some strength.

[00:20:09] Kyle Risi: That's right.

[00:20:10] Her file actually went into a little more depth than the others, and this is because she'd been working as a waitress the night that she disappeared, which meant she warranted further investigation. She wasn't just another statistic. Right.

[00:20:22] However that abruptly stops when detectives learn. That Eliza's mother told them that she was considering prostitution just to earn a little bit [00:20:30] of money. And again, these girls are young and they looking at prostitution as an option to earn a little bit of extra money,

[00:20:36] mm-hmm.

[00:20:36] And so because they're putting themselves into these high risk areas, again, they almost lose the concern from the police because they put themselves into that line of fire.

[00:20:45] Adam Cox: Isn't that crazy though? Because yes, they might be exposing themselves to obviously all these types of men, but the fact is someone still killed them. Exactly. And the therefore there is a murderer On the loose.

[00:20:57] Kyle Risi: It's crazy. It's so wild to me. [00:21:00] And so Adam, after hearing that her file is quietly placed alongside the other similar ones

[00:21:05] Adam Cox: because they suspect that she might be looking at it, and therefore that's enough for them to just, not really look into it.

[00:21:11] Kyle Risi: Sure. They think that's the most likely scenario of what's happened.

[00:21:14] Wow.

[00:21:15] So, for Bob Grogan and Frank salerno, seeing these cases together made something absolutely clear.

[00:21:21] They were dealing with a serial killer who had a very specific modus operandi and this is when Los Angeles finally starts paying attention.[00:21:30]

[00:21:30] Though it wasn't because of the three sex worker cases, it had nothing to do with that. Like public awareness was driven by the three bodies that were found in Glendale, a much more upper scale part of la.

[00:21:40] The press reporting on this framed the killer as someone murdering young women from middle class families with respectable futures. From there, the killer was quickly dubbed the Hillside Strangler named because of the way that the bodies were just dumped on these embankments.

[00:21:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. And just because they're middle class families. That's almost like those lives matter.

[00:21:59] Kyle Risi: [00:22:00] That's one of the most disturbing aspects of this case, I think.

[00:22:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. And also, I'm just thinking these, sex workers, they might, I dunno if they've got like a drug habit or anything like that, and therefore they're turning to prostitution because they probably can't hold down a regular job mm-hmm. Because of their drug habit, then it's like a vicious circle, they're not getting the help they need.

[00:22:19] Kyle Risi: But it's still sad.

[00:22:20] So the reporting triggers this widespread panic across Los Angeles. Authorities were called upon to address the public concerns, and in the end, they are forced Adam to hold a press [00:22:30] conference, urging people, especially women, to be careful.

[00:22:33] The warnings only intensified the anxiety because firearm purchases across the city. They started to search hardware stores. They sold out of deadbolts and padlocks families. They began adopting dogs, Adam, in numbers that the city had never seen before. And women across LA started scrambling to enroll in self-defense classes.

[00:22:54] But the sense of safety just proved futile because it wasn't long before the police [00:23:00] found another body.

[00:23:01] This time it was on the 23rd of November, so I think two days or the day before Thanksgiving. So you can imagine when that news breaks, with everyone together, everyone watching kind of the news, everyone at home chilling out, they're seeing this is only just gonna spark even more panic across the city. 'Cause everyone's watching it.

[00:23:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's a case that they're gonna be like canceling their plans, only go together in groups, that kind of thing. To try and protect themselves.

[00:23:25] Kyle Risi: That's right. And it matters as well what kind of victim this person is [00:23:30] as well. If it's another sex worker. What effect does that have?

[00:23:32] But if it's another respectable woman in inverted, then again, that's only going to add to that kind of, that anxiety.

[00:23:40] Adam Cox: That means, yeah, it could happen to anyone.

[00:23:42] Kyle Risi: And by the way, the 23rd November is three days after Christina, Dolores and Sonya had been found.

[00:23:48] So these all very close together. And it was the naked body of 28-year-old Jane King. And she was discovered near the lost Felice off ramp, off the Golden State Freeway.

[00:23:59] And [00:24:00] it was clear from her advanced state of decomposition that she'd been there for quite some time. she was reported missing on the 12th of November. And so that means that she'd been out there for, almost two weeks

[00:24:11] Adam Cox: But even still, there's quite a short space of time to be finding bodies pretty much. Sure. Weekly. Yeah. Multiple a week.

[00:24:18] That is crazy. And I'm guessing based on that, like the maximum time that she could have been killed is like a couple of weeks ago.

[00:24:24] This isn't, yeah. These bodies aren't being found months after someone's died. Exactly. That [00:24:30] someone is going out and killing these women pretty much every other night or whatever.

[00:24:33] Kyle Risi: And because of her advanced state of decomposition is a little more tricky to kind of tell whether or not her case fits the others. But after a quick autopsy, they find that she was raped. She showed the same ligature marks around her neck, ankles and her wrists. And again, she'd been brutalized before being dumped there.

[00:24:50] Adam Cox: There must be DNA though. They've all been raped.

[00:24:53] Kyle Risi: 1970s, Adam,

[00:24:54] Adam Cox: did they not have that SPAC then? Mm-hmm. When did DNA get invented?

[00:24:57] Kyle Risi: Well, did we not do something on the [00:25:00] OJ Simpson trial where it was one of the first times that they'd used DNA in a court case and they had to show the clipping from Jurassic Park that explained DNA works to the jury so they would understand.

[00:25:13] Adam Cox: They used a fictional film to tell them about science.

[00:25:17] Kyle Risi: So no. However, with the presence of semen or saliva, in some cases you can determine a person's blood type.

[00:25:25] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:25:26] Kyle Risi: But in terms of who Jane was, [00:25:30] like her friends say that she was described as a vibrant attractor blonde who was aspiring to be an actress. And so just like the other three Glendale victims, Jane was not treated as another statistic, which only intensified the public panic over their Thanksgiving weekend. Right.

[00:25:47] And so recognizing that these discoveries were not slowing down police, they waste no time in assembling a task force. that weekend, they are inundated with tip-offs from the public. Most of them were baseless, [00:26:00] but police have to treat all of them seriously, especially they're trying to catch an act of killer.

[00:26:04] Mm-hmm.

[00:26:05] One report that came in concerned an 18-year-old student named Lauren Wagner, who had just been reported missing.

[00:26:11] According to her parents. On the night that Lauren disappeared, she had gone to visit a friend in Glendale, and around midnight she had left to drive home, and then she never makes it back.

[00:26:21] The next morning, Lauren's parents, they notice her car is parked across the street with a door ajar, and her keys are still in the [00:26:30] ignition so she'd got home. She never made it in the door.

[00:26:33] Adam Cox: Wow. So someone waited for her, I'm guessing then.

[00:26:36] Kyle Risi: So thinking she might be close by, her father goes and questions some neighbors. A woman living across the street said that shortly before midnight, she had heard raised voices outside, which caused her dog start barking.

[00:26:46] When she looked out the window, she saw Lauren's car was parked on the curb and beside it was another vehicle with two men inside it.

[00:26:52] Two men.

[00:26:53] Now let's see if we believe her story. She described one of the men as being tall and young with acne scars, and the other [00:27:00] was older. He was shorter, he was Latin looking, he had bushy hair.

[00:27:04] She said that the men were arguing with Lauren who by then looked visibly upset.

[00:27:09] She heard Lauren say, you will not get away with this. And then moments later she saw Lauren being pulled towards their vehicle.

[00:27:16] She couldn't tell whether Lauren got in the car willingly But she did watch the men drive away with her.

[00:27:22] Adam Cox: Hang on a minute. So She said that she heard raised voices and a dog barking. She went and looked had [00:27:30] seen Lauren get in the car. Now, to me, I feel like you see someone getting in the car, you can usually tell if they're doing it willingly or not.

[00:27:37] Kyle Risi: Either way, she said that her gut said to her that she thought that Lauren knew the boys and they were having some kind of dispute.

[00:27:43] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:27:44] Kyle Risi: Later she receives a phone call from a man with what sounds like a New York accent, asking her if she was the woman with a Doberman dog.

[00:27:53] When she said yes, he threatens her, telling her to keep her mouth shut and says if she tells anyone what she saw, [00:28:00] he would come and kill her.

[00:28:01] Wow.

[00:28:02] When police hear about this account, they don't believe her, and it's because they feel that her description of these men were too precise to have been gathered from her window, It's about 30 feet from the street,

[00:28:12] Adam Cox: 30 feet, and

[00:28:12] Kyle Risi: it's dark. And it's

[00:28:13] Adam Cox: dark. Yeah. To see acne scarred skin. Yeah. That's quite a very specific thing.

[00:28:17] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:28:18] Unless she actually went outside. If she had, it would explain why the men knew that she had a Doberman dog.

[00:28:25] Adam Cox: Okay, so why is she hiding that?

[00:28:27] Kyle Risi: It's weird, isn't it? But she [00:28:30] insists to the cops that she stayed inside the whole time. They also questioned her credibility because her husband seems very shocked to learn that any of this had happened in the first place, especially the death threats since she didn't tell him.

[00:28:42] Adam Cox: Again, that's very odd.

[00:28:44] Kyle Risi: Very odd. So the police are skeptical. They put her statement down to her potentially being a bored housewife, trying to place herself at the center of this action. Of course, she's seen all the reporting on the news heard some of the speculation, the rumors and stuff.

[00:28:56] Is she potentially just trying to put herself in the center of all this?

[00:28:59] Adam Cox: Yeah. [00:29:00] She wants to make herself involved in the story. We see that before where people will come forward for sure with false narratives and stuff like that, because they want their name in the papers.

[00:29:08] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:08] the next day, however, on the 29th of November, police discover Lauren's body and Adam, like the others. She'd been dumped naked on a hillside with the same familiar ligature marks. But Lauren's injuries also include what appears to be burn marks on her palms of her hands and her feet.

[00:29:25] Now Christina also showed something very similar. Remember she had the puncture marks that they thought [00:29:30] were needle marks. Ah, yes.

[00:29:32] So now they've got all these bodies that seem to be following the same pattern, but there's one or two little details that are very different to everyone else's, which makes police question whether or not the killer was experimenting with different forms of torture.

[00:29:44] Adam Cox: Right. Okay.

[00:29:45] Kyle Risi: So you've got a real sadistic monster on our hands here,

[00:29:48] Adam Cox: and they're pretty sure it's all the same killer. It's not someone else. I guess there's enough similarities.

[00:29:52] Kyle Risi: think there's enough similarities. Yeah. They haven't really released those details to the public for other copy calculus to then start copying.

[00:29:59] [00:30:00] Mm-hmm. But they do also find sticky fluid on Lauren's neck and her chest, which they hope might be saliva or semen, something that they could potentially use to try and determine the blood type of the killer.

[00:30:10] Adam Cox: Right. A weird way to phrase that. Well, I hope that's saliva,

[00:30:13] Kyle Risi: I think it doesn't turn out to be either of those things. I think it ends up being some kind of liquid that insect might leave behind. Oh, okay. I think in the end,

[00:30:22] However, after Lauren's murder, there is a very brief pause of about two weeks where just no new bodies are found.

[00:30:29] on the [00:30:30] 13th of December, police receive another missing person's report.

[00:30:34] Adam Cox: How many are we on now?

[00:30:36] Kyle Risi: So we've got the three that were found in Glendale Uhhuh. We've got the three that were found in the previous weeks. Yeah. Then we have Lauren Uhhuh who was found, and now we're onto Kimberly

[00:30:48] Adam Cox: Number eight.

[00:30:48] Kyle Risi: Yes, and there'll be another one after this. Okay. So it's crazy, isn't it?

[00:30:53] But on the 13th of December, police receive a missing persons report. This time from 17-year-old Kimberly Martin, [00:31:00] she's basically a tall blonde sex worker. She's working as an escort for the Climax Modeling Agency. Kimberly is basically described as confident and experienced, and someone who is not easily intimidated.

[00:31:12] On the afternoon, she disappears. The agency receive a phone call specifically requesting Kimberly for that night.

[00:31:18] That immediately strikes the agency as unusual because most clients, they will literally just accept anyone that they can get Either way. Kimberly is dispatched from an address in Hollywood, apartment at 1 9 [00:31:30] 5 0 Tamarind Avenue. So this is just a short drive from Griffin Park.

[00:31:34] Adam Cox: And so does that mean by requesting Kimberly specifically, have they already met Kimberly before?

[00:31:40] Kyle Risi: Yes. And so the following day when Kimberly hasn't checked back in with the agency, of course they raise the alarm detectives, they go to the apartment.

[00:31:48] Adam is completely vacant, no one lives there. They return to the station and not long after they get back, a call comes in because someone has found Kimberly's body dumps in the heels.

[00:31:59] And again, [00:32:00] like the others, she's naked, strangled, displaying the same ligature marks the same familiar patterns as the other victims.

[00:32:07] it is just endless, but what's the significance of the apartment being emptied?

[00:32:11] Adam Cox: Well, All I can think of is the guy must have known that So someone that worked in real estate?

[00:32:18] Kyle Risi: No. So the police's thinking is that. even though the apartment was vacant, it was still a location that the killer had deliberately chosen, right?

[00:32:27] Mm-hmm. If he had lured Kimley there, then he [00:32:30] clearly knew the area enough to know that specific apartment was empty, and therefore he had a connection to the area.

[00:32:36] Adam Cox: Like a real estate person, I'm close.

[00:32:41] Kyle Risi: So the police, they then also track the call that requested Kimberly to go to the apartment, and they track it from a payphone inside Hollywood public library, which is only a three minute drive from that apartment.

[00:32:52] And so detectives begin to wonder, seriously, like is he local to the area? But more importantly, he was [00:33:00] brazen and relaxed enough to make that call in public view in broad daylight where dozens of people could basically see him, right?

[00:33:07] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:33:07] Kyle Risi: And so with every single murder, they're getting a little bit of a fragment of a clue or a bit of a profile around who the guy could be.

[00:33:15] Adam Cox: It's gotta be someone that can blend into plain sight. Right? Exactly. If you're saying that like you did it During the day. Mm-hmm. Then therefore, I dunno, is it like a caretaker or someone that's people will see, but not really take any notice of. Sure.

[00:33:27] Kyle Risi: Exactly. That is so key to what you've just said. He has to be [00:33:30] someone who blends in, and I'm gonna explain to you why in a minute.

[00:33:33] But Adam, on the 16th of February, so there's probably the longest break between murders so far, right around three months, fe receive a report that a helicopter pilot has spotted a car that has driven off a cliff along the Angeles Crest Highway.

[00:33:47] At first it looks like an accident, but when officers open the boot, they find the body of a 20-year-old Cindy Hupsberth bound, naked, strangled, just like the other girls.

[00:33:56] Cindy is not one of the statistics. She was a [00:34:00] clerk working in a Glendale business. She's described as polite, hardworking, kind, genuine. she was hoping to make it as a professional dancer.

[00:34:08] But Cindy's case stands out in a way that confirms something that detectives only suspected up to this point.

[00:34:15] That if someone had driven Cindy's car off this cliff, especially in such a remote spot, they would've had to have a long walk back along their highway risking being seen by another passerby.

[00:34:25] Yet, nobody comes forward to say that they seen a lone suspicious man walking along [00:34:30] next stretch of road.

[00:34:30] That silence leads the Texas to believe someone must have picked this guy up, meaning there were two perpetrators.

[00:34:37] Oh.

[00:34:38] But remind me to come back to this, and I hope we don't forget to come back to this because there's something very important that I need to clarify, but I can't tell you just yet.

[00:34:44] Adam Cox: Okay. But because you said it's a Hillside strangler, you haven't said the hillside stranglers. So that's why I'm like, I'm not sure it is two people.

[00:34:52] Kyle Risi: Fair enough. So investigators, they decide to head to Cindy's apartment and they discover that she lives directly across the street from Christina [00:35:00] ler that's the first victim that was found.

[00:35:02] Right? Detectives initially wondered whether or not the killer knew both victims because Cindy and Christina were friends, but after digging into their lives, there's no social connection between the two women.

[00:35:12] This basically means one thing. The killer must have had a direct connection to that neighborhood most likely, he either lived nearby or was able to watch these women come and go without attracting attention or suspicion to himself.

[00:35:24] With each subsequent murders. The investigators felt like they were getting closer and closer, but again, [00:35:30] just not close enough.

[00:35:30] Adam Cox: Like who could do that? That's what I mean. He is gotta be like some kind of maintenance man. A cleaner, a gardener, maybe a garbage man person.

[00:35:40] Kyle Risi: So it creates this really deeply unsettling reality, that in order for them to inch closer to catching this person, they needed someone else to die. Morbid when you really frame it in that way, right? Yeah.

[00:35:48] Yeah.

[00:35:49] Then everything stops because after Cindy's murder, there's no new bodies that turn up literally months go by. the investigators wonder whether or not the killer had either been incarcerated [00:36:00] or even moved to another jurisdiction. But if that was the case, there was no way of them knowing about it because at the time there's no central database to like check, unless they ring around asking.

[00:36:09] Adam Cox: Sure. Is there like a possibility that there hasn't been any deaths because the killer is just trying to lay low because actually the police are cottoning onto him.

[00:36:18] Kyle Risi: I don't think that's necessarily the case that he thinks that they're, the police are cottoning onto him. There's another reason why this guy has stopped killing, basically.

[00:36:26] one of the biggest challenges in the Hillside Strangler investigation [00:36:30] is literally the sheer number of agencies that are involved in this case, different jurisdictions that are responsible for different crimes depending where they happen geographically.

[00:36:41] And so you have these departments that have got this real deep rooted rivalry. None of them want the other agency solving the case before they do.

[00:36:48] So they routinely refuse to share vital information on the case. Mm-hmm. In the end, after months of no new murders, the task force is eventually downsized. And officers were reassigned to other cases, like they [00:37:00] couldn't just sit around waiting for another murder to happen.

[00:37:03] Adam Cox: It seems really stupid that they're not sharing information. you're trying to solve a case or it doesn't matter who wins. it's about protecting the public.

[00:37:10] Kyle Risi: Sadly, it matters to them.

[00:37:11] But the point is that Bob Grogan at the LAPD and Frank Solano at the County Sheriff's Office, any spare time that they do have, they spend their time looking into this case. They both realize that the inter-jurisdictional politics were becoming a serious obstacle probably the biggest reason why the investigation had somehow stalled.

[00:37:29] And so [00:37:30] the two of them, they decide to commit to full transparency. They pulled everything they had from all of the murders, and they decide to stop building a criminal profile of the suspect.

[00:37:38] And what investigators come up with is that they believe that they are likely looking for a white man, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. Most likely single, separated or divorced.

[00:37:50] They believe that he would be of average intelligence, probably unemployed or living off odd jobs. Someone who had never really held the same job for any meaningful length of [00:38:00] time.

[00:38:00] I also suspect that he's probably been in trouble with the law before. Someone may be passive, cold, manipulative, maybe even all at once, all of those things. But critically, based on the broad range of victims.

[00:38:11] Remember, it wasn't just sex workers that he was targeting, right? He was targeting runaways, teenage girls, students, even children. So whoever was responsible was able to get closer, wide range of people without immediately causing suspicion or weariness.

[00:38:28] Mm. Like sex [00:38:30] workers, they come into contact with strange men outta necessity. But girls like Christina, Dolores, Sonya, they weren't sex workers, right? They would be weary. Of a strange man.

[00:38:39] Adam Cox: So someone that they're willing to approach them, they're not gonna sound the alarm.

[00:38:43] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So Detectives began to consider whether the killer was someone extraordinarily charming, good looking guy like a Ted Bundy.

[00:38:51] Adam Cox: Sounds like it. They had like a teacher, but everything as a teacher, but someone like that, A public figure.

[00:38:57] Kyle Risi: Someone with authority maybe.

[00:38:58] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:59] Kyle Risi: They also [00:39:00] surmise that based on the prolonged torture that the killer was likely a product of a broken home with a childhood marker, cruelty and brutality, particularly at the hands of a woman.

[00:39:09] And Adam, at the end of this exercise, Bob Grogan turns to Frank and he says, G. all we've gotta do now is look for a white male who hates his mother.

[00:39:19] Adam Cox: Is that what he's surmised?

[00:39:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I'm always amazed and also a little bit dubious how investigators are able to kind of infer these, who these killers are. Especially when it comes to the personality [00:39:30] traits.

[00:39:30] Adam Cox: someone that's got mummy issues.

[00:39:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Like how do you get to that? I don't get it.

[00:39:34] Adam Cox: I would've thought, what I was thinking is, because he rapes these women and physically assaults them, is that how he gets his gratification? Mm-hmm. And therefore maybe it's some kind of weird kink or maybe, can't get aroused unless he does these things.

[00:39:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Possibly. It sounds plausible, doesn't it? Mm-hmm. But when it comes to like, you probably can't hold a job down for very long, how do you know that? What is it about the case that tells you that? Or what is it about the case that tells you that he's [00:40:00] between 25 and 35?

[00:40:01] Adam Cox: Is that again, based on statistics, statistically people that murder in this way is they've got this profile possibly. It has to be that, right?

[00:40:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you are right. I, stupid question then.

[00:40:12] They would. Then also, and this really dates this to the seventies, they consult a psychic from Berlin, she tells them that you need to be looking for two Italian brothers around the age of 35.

[00:40:24] Adam Cox: One's called Mario, the other one's called Luigi

[00:40:28] Kyle Risi: Adam. This is what she says. [00:40:30] Remember up until this point, police only suspected that there might be two killers involved, but that idea had never really made it into their official profile.

[00:40:39] And it's understandable why the chances of a serial killer acting with a partner are incredibly slim, Then it comes along the psychic telling police, look, you need to look for two Italian brothers, age around 35.

[00:40:52] Adam Cox: How has she landed on that?

[00:40:54] Kyle Risi: This is the thing. I don't get it. I'm very skeptical of psychics working for the police anyway, so you'd assume that a [00:41:00] psychic, working with the police, they wanna protect their credibility. So to make a claim as specific as this, and as bold as this, like the police must be thinking you're a whack job.

[00:41:10] Adam Cox: But then this does go back to what that neighbor said where she had seen two men.

[00:41:14] Exactly.

[00:41:14] And so are they gonna be like, hang on a minute. Mm-hmm.This has come up once before.

[00:41:18] Kyle Risi: And remember the, the carbon driven off the cliff

[00:41:21] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:41:21] Kyle Risi: suggested that as well.

[00:41:23] Now they don't believe it at this point, but Adam, they are really open to their possibility. Right? Problem is almost a [00:41:30] year goes by. There are no new murders. The Hillside Strangler has not struck.

[00:41:35] That was until police in Bellingham, in Washington. Receive a report of two missing roommates Karen and Diane from Western Washington University on January the 12th, 1979.

[00:41:49] So more than 12 months has gone by since the last killing.

[00:41:52] The girls were not the type to just simply disappear without telling anyone. When Karen failed to show up for work the next morning, her boss remembered that she'd [00:42:00] recently accepted a house sitting job in the affluence Bayside neighborhood from a security guard friend of this. It stood out to her because Karen and Diane were really stoked at the chance of earning an easy $100 each.

[00:42:13] Like to them, that was a massive deal. Right. And She'd been talking about it at work.

[00:42:17] So in response, Bellingham Police, contact the security company who in turn call one of the guards who was previously connected with this property.

[00:42:25] And over the phone. He says he knew nothing about it. He had never even heard [00:42:30] of the girls, and he reminded his employer that he had been at the Sheriff's Reserve meeting that night anyway. So it must have been someone else.

[00:42:36] Mm-hmm.

[00:42:37] When police check, they discover that he never actually turned up to that meeting So it's a bit suspicious, right? Mm-hmm. Why would he lie like that over the phone? Yeah. So investigators, they decide to, uh, go talk to him directly and when they do, they note just how friendly, polite he was. He was answering their questions willingly, and they explained that the reason why he skipped the Sheriff's Reserve meeting was because it was covering first aid and that he already knew that.

[00:42:59] But he didn't wanna [00:43:00] say that over the phone because he was speaking to the police through his employer, basically. I see. And otherwise, he would just get in trouble.

[00:43:05] Police, believe him 100% to them. He was clean cut. He was articulate at the time he was living at home with his girlfriend and their infant son. So to them he just did not look suspicious at all.

[00:43:16] Adam Cox: He's a family man.

[00:43:17] Kyle Risi: So investigators, they initially assumed that maybe Karen and Diane, they'd just gone away for the weekend without telling Karen's employers, which seems like the simplest explanation.

[00:43:27] However, the Bellingham Police Chief Terry [00:43:30] Mangan, is not comfortable with his assumption in any way. He decisive visit the girl's house and he's immediately met. They're very, very hungry cats and he thinks if they had gone away for the weekend, why did they not arrange for the cat to be fed? Or why is there no sign that they've left extra food out?

[00:43:47] Yeah.

[00:43:48] He also finds a note containing an address for the Bayside property where the girls were meant to be house sitting.

[00:43:54] So their story that Karen's employer gave them checks out. So next the police head [00:44:00] over to the Bayside house, which at the time is vacant because the owners were traveling around Europe inside their notice wet footprints in the kitchen. A very clear sign that someone had been in the property and also very recently

[00:44:12] They speak to the neighbor who explains that the security company had asked her to check in on the house while the owners were away, which is apparently something they do all the time, mm-hmm. Like rather than getting a house sitter, they say, Hey, neighbor, can you just check on this house while we're upgrading the alarm system, whatever.

[00:44:27] But she says that the previous evening she received a [00:44:30] phone call from a security guard asking her to skip her usual check because the company was scheduled to repair the alarm system and they didn't want her to be mistaken for an intruder.

[00:44:39] While all of this is happening, police receive a report that an abandoned car has been found in a wooded area.

[00:44:45] When the officers open up the boot, they discover the bodies of Karen, and Diane again, they were naked, strangled, brutalized, Bloody hell. It's very familiar to what we've seen with the hillside strangling cases.

[00:44:57] Right. the Hillside Strangler has come to [00:45:00] Bellingham, Washington.

[00:45:01] Adam Cox: Wow. And it sounds like whoever this guy, or people are for them to know about, like the security to tell someone not to go check. I feel like they're very well connected. How are they knowing all this sort of stuff?

[00:45:13] Kyle Risi: So they wanna speak to their security guard. And so, of course they're bringing him for questioning. And he, again, just like before, extremely polite, extremely cooperative. And he is described as handsome, articulate. He's nearly six feet tall, very forthcoming with answers. And his name is Kenneth [00:45:30] Alessio. Bianchi.

[00:45:31] That sounds Italian to me. Very Italian surname.

[00:45:34] Meanwhile, the forensics team, they begin examining the girls' bodies they try to recover any evidence that they can. They recover some carpet fibers from both Diane and Karen, as well as a few stray pubic hairs.

[00:45:47] The priority now is to see whether or not any of this material can be linked to either the Bayside House or to Kenneth himself.

[00:45:56] Adam Cox: So they're suspecting Kenneth at this point?

[00:45:58] Kyle Risi: Yes, he's the only connection that they [00:46:00] have. Right. So they have to start somewhere. But forensics of course is gonna take some time and the police, they don't want to risk letting him go in case he decides to disappear. And so they search his house for anything that might legally justify them holding him.

[00:46:12] And to their luck, they find a stash of stolen property in his house. It gives them time to kind of get everything tested. I see.

[00:46:18] while questioning Kenneth, they also learned that he once lived in Los Angeles, which became a pivotable moment.

[00:46:25] The way that Karen Diane had been found, reminded Terry of the Hillside Strangler [00:46:30] case. Terry decides to call Detective Frank Solano from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, Frank goes ahead and checks Kenneth's previous LA address, and he discovers that it is within Sightline of Cindy Hutz Smith's and Christina Wrecker's apartment in Glendale.

[00:46:49] Adam Cox: And when did he move away then? Do we know that

[00:46:52] Kyle Risi: The last murder happened in February. He moved away in May.

[00:46:56] Adam Cox: And so are they now gonna trace, and just try and work out the time they

[00:46:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah, [00:47:00] exactly. But they also find out that that same address also matched a location that Kimberly Martin had once visited as well. So again, he knew who Kimberly was, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:47:09] As they kept digging, more and more links between Kenneth and the Hillside victims start falling into place.

[00:47:13] The biggest breakthrough comes from jewelry that they find in Kenneth's house that match descriptions of items that some of the victims owned. Oh, really? So he had stolen keepsakes. He'd given it basically to his girlfriend,

[00:47:25] Adam Cox: tokens or whatever. Yeah.

[00:47:26] Kyle Risi: Eventually the forensics tests come back and the carpet [00:47:30] fibers on Karen's body match the carpet fibers in the Bayside house and a matching pubic hair to the one that was found on Karen's body was also found inside the Bayside property as well, Basically, that places the owner of the hair at the Bayside property itself.

[00:47:45] Adam Cox: Sure. So now is the owner of that hair.

[00:47:48] Kyle Risi: So I'm gonna tell you a bit about Kenneth, and we can see how accurate Bob and Frank's profile of him actually was.

[00:47:55] Okay. So Kenneth was born in Rochester, in New York in [00:48:00] 1951, that would make him around about 26 years old at the time, so not quite 35.

[00:48:03] Shortly after his birth, he was given up by his biological mother, who was an alcoholic and a sex worker.

[00:48:09] He's eventually adopted by Francis Bianchi and her husband, who have Italian roots. So Kenneth himself is not Italian by blood, but he's effectively raised as Italian.

[00:48:19] Adam Cox: Ah, because I didn't think Kenneth, if I was Italian, what I name my son, Kenneth

[00:48:24] Kyle Risi: Kenny, no.

[00:48:27] From a very young age, Francis notices that [00:48:30] Kenneth is a compulsive liar. not in a childish, kind of imaginative way. He just lies about the most meaningless things, And he just never grows outta this. When he's five years old, francis becomes really worried after Kenneth starts drifting in and out of these kind of trance-like states, like when he snaps out at them, he'll have no memory of what happened while he was in these trances.

[00:48:49] Adam Cox: Like a genuine thing or is he just making this up?

[00:48:51] Kyle Risi: It is genuine. There's records of it. Like his mom takes him to a doctor. The doctor basically reassures her that it's just something that he'll grow out of, which is just mental, like [00:49:00] that's not normal behavior. You'd never ever say, don't worry, you'll grow out of it.

[00:49:03] Adam Cox: Yeah. It feels like Yeah. They need to keep a close eye on that.

[00:49:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah, 100%.

[00:49:08] Adam Cox: Because, I dunno, he could go kill people,

[00:49:10] Kyle Risi: but despite having an average iq, Kenny is a chronic underachiever. He's prone to these violent outbursts when his mother sends him to a psychologist, the conclusion is that he's overly dependent on her, essentially blaming Francis for his emotional instability.

[00:49:27] By the late 1960s, Kenny's developed [00:49:30] Impossibly high set of standards for the girls that he dates and as a result, he carries a simmering resentment towards women,

[00:49:36] He becomes increasingly possessive and controlling, telling his girlfriends what they can and can't wear. he does eventually end up getting married. But Adam, the marriage lasts just eight months before she just gets up and leaves because he is awful to her.

[00:49:48] Like he's possessive, he's jealous, and when she leaves, this just reinforces Kenny's belief that all women are out there just to betray him.

[00:49:56] Adam Cox: So are we saying that he is getting revenge because he doesn't [00:50:00] like his adopted mother, his real mother gave him up, his wife has left him, therefore he's just gonna start attacking women.

[00:50:06] Kyle Risi: We should continue. Okay,

[00:50:10] So Kenneth decides that he wants to reinvent himself. He enrolls in community college to study police science and psychology. But he refuses to put in the work and eventually he has to drop out. His dream is to become a police officer.

[00:50:22] In his mind, a uniform and a badge meant that nobody would ever underestimate him. So He applies for multiple police jobs. Of course his grades are [00:50:30] horrendous. So he just repeatedly gets rejected from every single application that he submits.

[00:50:34] And eventually he ends up settling as a security guard. It wasn't kind of police work, but it did come with a uniform and a badge, just enough to give mad sense of authority that he would then use to impress women.

[00:50:46] After his wife leaves, he just ends up feeling really stuck in New York. Like his life feels really stagnant.

[00:50:53] And so his cousin, Angelo invites him to California. Angelo gets him a job in his upholstery shop, and for a [00:51:00] while, Kenny is seduced by the lifestyle, the parties, the sex, drugs.

[00:51:03] But at the heart of all of this, like he does actually wanna turn his life around.

[00:51:07] Adam Cox: Okay. And he wants to be a police officer. Mm-hmm. And there's also that sighting that one of the girls was flipped a police badge. Yep. Okay.

[00:51:16] Kyle Risi: So he applies for more police openings. He keeps getting rejected. Eventually he settles into a job working for a title company and he manages to secure his own apartment at 8 0 9 East Garfield Avenue in Glendale. This [00:51:30] is where he meets his neighbor, Christina ler. And he becomes immediately interested in her, but she shows no interest.

[00:51:39] Good for him. He just moves on.

[00:51:41] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:51:42] Kyle Risi: He eventually meets a woman called Kelly Bond, and in May, 1977, Kelly Falls pregnant. But Kenny's jealousy is far too much for her. They stay together, but she moves out to her own apartment on Tamarind Avenue in Hollywood. Very, very close to the [00:52:00] vacant unit that Kimberly Martin would later be sent to.

[00:52:04] I see.

[00:52:05] So he has a connection to that neighborhood, right? Yeah. Kelly hoped that they will, of course, still get back together at some point, but he needs to get his life in order first things only get worse though when Kenny loses his job. And so the idea of them moving in together is just off the table.

[00:52:18] Kenny decides to reinvent himself again this time as a psychiatrist, basically. He uses fake degrees and business cards. He rents a small office and he starts selling [00:52:30] counseling sessions under the name of Steve Walker. is that even possible? I don't know. Is psychiatry such a new thing in the seventies that that's possible for you to do?

[00:52:39] Adam Cox: He faked some certificates and then went, yeah, I can diagnose whatever shit's going on in your life.

[00:52:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah, and he is such a quack. He diagnoses people with these imaginary disorders.

[00:52:49] He speaks in this weird, strange clinical language that he doesn't even understand himself. And Adam, it is around this time. The Hillside Strangler murders start making the [00:53:00] headlines. Kenny is off killing these women

[00:53:01] Adam Cox: and he is definitely doing that.

[00:53:03] Kyle Risi: He is killing these women.

[00:53:04] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:53:05] Kyle Risi: But he needs a cover story to tell Kelly where the hell he has gone and why he is absent so often.

[00:53:10] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:53:11] Kyle Risi: Remember, he's murdering a lot of women in a very short space of time, right?

[00:53:14] Yeah. He begins complaining that he has a cough and he tells Kelly that he's going to go see a doctor. She's fucking relieved because that cough sounds bloody worrying.

[00:53:24] When he comes back, he tells her that he has lung cancer, it's terminal, and that he needs [00:53:30] radiation and chemotherapy.

[00:53:31] Okay.

[00:53:32] This of course is a complete lie, but it does give him a built-in explanation of why he's absent and he can just say, oh, I was at the hospital,

[00:53:39] Adam Cox: But then a lot of these murders I'm assuming are happening at night.

[00:53:43] Kyle Risi: He's not also living with Aretha, right? Mm-hmm. So he could just be like, I'm at home. Okay.

[00:53:47] you gotta remember Adam. She's also heavily pregnant with his baby. She's devastated, mm-hmm. Like she's suddenly facing this idea that she has to raise this child alone. It's awful. After Christine's body is found, the police come knocking on Kenny's door and they wanna ask him [00:54:00] if he has seen anything suspicious.

[00:54:01] It's during that visit that he asks one the officers about joining their ride along program, which allows civilians to kind of patrol along with the police, which remember in friends when, Chandler and Joey, they go on a ride along with Gary. Yes. And it's the whole sandwich gate kind of thing.

[00:54:17] It's that basically where people can go and do these ridealongs.

[00:54:20] Is that, do they even do that anymore? It feels like Apparently in the nineties you certainly could do 'cause they were doing it in New York. Yeah, that's true. On this RideAlong, he obsessively asked about the [00:54:30] strangler murders.

[00:54:30] Like he's questioning about the profiles, the suspects and what the police think of the crime scenes. Adam, it is enough for the officers on duty to make a note about that.

[00:54:39] Adam Cox: It's, they like, oh, this guy, this civilian is a bit, it's a bit nosy. Yeah, but we're just gonna make a note of it.

[00:54:44] Kyle Risi: We came knocking on his door to ask him if he's seen where his murdered neighbor was, and now he just keeps talking about it. That sounds suss, right?

[00:54:52] Yeah. Does go anywhere.

[00:54:54] Adam Cox: I was gonna say they clearly didn't think enough of it at the time. Exactly.

[00:54:57] Kyle Risi: eventually Kenny and Kelly's son is [00:55:00] born. And for a brief moment in time, things feel stable between them. But Kenny still lacks responsibility and Kelly desperately just needs stability for her infant child. She understands he's sick, but she also has to focus on her baby. And so she decides that she's gonna move back to Bellingham in Washington to be with a family.

[00:55:16] Adam Cox: Ah. And is this the same time that the murder stop? Yes. So in early, the murders

[00:55:21] Kyle Risi: had stopped maybe in February.

[00:55:23] Mm-hmm. He moves in May Uhhuh, so I think he like it eased off. Kenny is crushed. He sees us as [00:55:30] another abandonment, but he becomes determined to win a back. He writes through it every day and eventually Kelly agrees to give him another chance, but he has to move to Bellingham.

[00:55:38] Mm-hmm.

[00:55:38] There is a real question though. About whether or not Kenny left because of Kelly or whether or not he left because the media had just released an EFI that looked suspiciously like him.

[00:55:50] Adam Cox: interesting. So there'd been enough people that could identify this guy or at least give them some details of what he looked like.

[00:55:57] Kyle Risi: Curveball, it was for a completely different [00:56:00] incident.

[00:56:01] Oh yeah.

[00:56:02] Basically the suspicion stemmed from a statement made by two girls called Becky Spears and Sabra Hanan, I believe. They reports that Kenny and another man have been holding them prisoner and forcing them into prostitution.

[00:56:15] With Kenny obviously gone the police decide to go and visit the other man involved. Angelo Bueno.

[00:56:22] Adam Cox: Ah, so the other Italian brother, so to speak.

[00:56:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Unlike Kenny Angelo is widely described as [00:56:30] physically, emotionally, and intellectually unpleasant He's coarse, vulgar, selfish. He's ignorance. He's openly sadistic. He has thick, curly hair dyed black ring a bell.

[00:56:40] Adam Cox: Yes. That was the other guy that neighbor. That woman, With the dog.

[00:56:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Called up and said, if you tell anyone what you saw, I'm gonna fucking kill you.

[00:56:48] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:56:49] Kyle Risi: He wears gold chains and rings. He insists on only wearing silk underwear. He's deeply, deeply sleazy. Yet somehow women, they find him [00:57:00] irresistible. They refer to him as the Italian stallion. Adam. He is disgusting. By this point, Angelo has been married multiple times. His father, several children, many of whom he abuses both physically and sexually

[00:57:11] Adam Cox: Gross.

[00:57:11] Kyle Risi: He moves to Glendale from New York with his mother after his parents' divorce. And like any, he performs poorly in school. When he reaches adulthood, he develops a taste for sadism, especially towards women.

[00:57:23] He harbors this deep loathing towards him, combined with this really gross drive to humiliate and abuse them. Like he's [00:57:30] horrible Adam. He routinely will tie them up only to rape and sodomize them. It's his favorite thing to do is to sodomize them.

[00:57:37] Adam Cox: Well, I think anyone that wears silk underwear, is a bit No, he shouldn't trust them. I wouldn't put them as far as saying that they're murderers. Mm-hmm. But just don't trust him.

[00:57:45] Kyle Risi: He gets really genuinely aroused by their pain. He also refers to his mother as a whore to a face.

[00:57:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. And that's what the two detectives wanted, wasn't it? They wanted a guy that hated his mother. He was white in his twenties, isn't it? Or young [00:58:00] male.

[00:58:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it. So do you think Kenny did this? Or do you think it's Angelo?

[00:58:04] Adam Cox: Well now I think it's Angelo or could have been both of them, because we still have that account of them being two people. And then the slightly larger lady, they said that there may have needed to be two people that exactly carried her.

[00:58:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:58:17] Adam Cox: Okay. You might as well just tell

[00:58:18] Kyle Risi: you now that the last murders that they did, 'cause of course Kenny was in Bellingham. Mm-hmm. He commits those murders himself. Yeah. That's when he gets busted. Basically.

[00:58:25] The last murder with Cindy. That was [00:58:30] Angelo on his own.

[00:58:31] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:58:31] Kyle Risi: But it's interesting because there was that case that really made police go, there must be two of them. 'cause how the hell did he walk all the way back into town? Unless

[00:58:41] Adam Cox: there was two of them. Yeah. But he did then,

[00:58:43] Kyle Risi: but he did that one on his own.

[00:58:45] Adam Cox: Ah. So that was almost like a bit of a fluke that they thought that. Yeah. But actually on that incident it wasn't No way.

[00:58:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:58:52] Adam Cox: Crazy.

[00:58:53] Kyle Risi: And of course, unsurprisingly, as the profile says, Angelo routinely in trouble with the law, he has several convictions for [00:59:00] stealing cars. His self-proclaimed hero is a guy called Karl Chessman.

[00:59:04] He's a notorious rapist, and Angelo admires his ability to lure women in by pretending to be a police officer. Ah,

[00:59:14] Angelo would then eventually get his own badge, which he would just flash tell women that he was taking them down to the station. Or just to simply win their trust and then get them to give him head or whatever it was.

[00:59:26] by the time they started killing women together, that was their mo, that's how [00:59:30] they were able to get respectful women into their car because they're like, oh, it's a police officer.

[00:59:33] Why would I not trust them?

[00:59:35] Adam Cox: Yeah. And then equally, that's how the sex workers would potentially get in the car. Either they were being busted Exactly. Or they were, you know, having gang work.

[00:59:42] Kyle Risi: By 1975, Angelo has a mean reputation. He owns an auto upholstery shop, and because he has this real sleazy swagger, he becomes this magnet for teenage girls in the neighborhood.

[00:59:54] Most of them are so inexperienced, he has just no trouble convincing them that the sadistic [01:00:00] practices that he likes in bed are completely normal. They have no idea. So he just routinely abuses them.

[01:00:06] It's around this time that Kenny actually arrives in Los Angeles. He sees Angelo as his own role model. Angelo teaches Kenny how to get sex from sex workers. Again, by flashing that badge. It helps that Kenny is really good looking and approachable. Right? And So the two of them team up together. When Kenny loses yet another job, Angelo suggests that they start recruiting some girls that hang around the [01:00:30] upholstery shop and get them to work for them as sex workers.

[01:00:33] They use Kenny's charm to obviously convince the girls they should do this. And then Angelo will use his connections to bring in customers, right? 'cause he's a sleazy kind of partner guy. He knows a lot of sex workers. This is how Becky Spears and Sabra Hannon, fall under their influence. They are essentially kidnapped. They lock them in one of the rooms in the upholstery shop, and they are forced to become sex workers.

[01:00:56] But before they can make any money, they need lists of customers [01:01:00] Angelo purchases a trick list, which is delivered by a sex worker named Yolanda Washington.

[01:01:06] Remember she was the first case file that Bob and Frank looked through and they found this case from back in October. That was her, the list turned out to be useless.

[01:01:16] And so Kenny and Angelo, take this out on Yolanda. She becomes their first victim. She's the first person that they kill.

[01:01:22] Adam Cox: Right? And so it doesn't sound like they set out to kill women because it sounds like they were trying to set up basically almost like a [01:01:30] business, make money off these women.

[01:01:31] Mm-hmm. So they lashed out on her and then that awoken something.

[01:01:36] Kyle Risi: They've got a taste for killing, right? Mm-hmm. Off the back of it.

[01:01:39] And Adam, that is the thing that leads to nine more murders in the space of three months. Wow. So it's like, it's not like something that brewed up slowly. But the second that got unleashed, there was just no stopping them. It's just one murder off the next motor off to the next motor.

[01:01:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then I guess Angelo, like you say, sadistic. He likes that kind of violence. So it was only like a slippery [01:02:00] slope or one step matter of time. Yeah, yeah. Before getting to this place.

[01:02:03] Kyle Risi: Grim. And so that brings us back to Kenny now sitting in this police cell in Bellingham. All the pieces for Terry, Bob, and Frank, they all begin to fall into place.

[01:02:12] It does not look good for Kenny if he's found guilty. He faces prosecution in both Washington and California. And in California prosecutors are almost certainly guaranteed to try and pursue the death penalty against him.

[01:02:26] Good.

[01:02:27] Because Kenny has a long history of these [01:02:30] trans like amnesia episodes from his childhood. So he says his lawyers think that they can use this as his defense.

[01:02:38] They call in a team of psychiatrists. And eventually Kenny is diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. It is a stretch. But if this defense works he might be able to avoid criminal responsibility and be committed to a psychiatric unit instead of a prison where theoretically. He could one day be deemed cured and then argue for his release so he can use this insanity plea to escape the [01:03:00] death penalty, basically.

[01:03:01] Wow.

[01:03:02] Kenny has already dabbled in psychology before, remember?

[01:03:05] Adam Cox: Um, I mean, yes, but not really.

[01:03:08] Kyle Risi: So he thinks he's got this in the bag. Okay. He undergoes repeated hypnosis sessions between January and October of that year. During these sessions, a personality emerges called Steve Walker, who confesses to all the murders and it implicates directly Angelo as his accomplice.

[01:03:28] Great. Can we go and arrest [01:03:30] Angelo?

[01:03:30] No. Really? Why not? On paper, it's a confession. It's also a major breakthrough in the case because it of course confirms that there's two murderers, right? uhhuh. But the cops can't use a hypnosis confession to arrest Angelo because hypnosis testimony is inadmissible in court, mostly due to the risk of suggestibility or confabulation and false memory kind of creation essentially.

[01:03:53] Adam Cox: Can they not just at least go investigate this guy though?

[01:03:56] Kyle Risi: They can't get a warrant to search his property. Nothing. What Frank [01:04:00] needs is a confession without Kenny being under hypnosis. Of course, Kenny has no intention of doing that because it would completely undermine his entire insanity defense. Right.

[01:04:09] Frank, however, is convinced that Kenny is of course, faking

[01:04:12] Adam Cox: well. Yeah.

[01:04:13] Kyle Risi: It's because he discovers that this personality that has come out that he's saying, kill these girls. Steve Walker is the same alias that Kenny used when pretending to be a psychologist. I

[01:04:26] Adam Cox: was just gonna say this, like that's, yeah. How can he say [01:04:30] he's an idiot? Idiot, idiot. Yeah.

[01:04:31] Kyle Risi: He also notices that Kenny repeatedly refers to Steve Walker as he, rather than I, which suggests that he was play acting rather than kind of having a proper dissociation. Mm-hmm.

[01:04:42] Frank points us out to a psychiatrist he agrees to test Kenny to see if he's lying.

[01:04:48] So during one of their hypnosis sessions, the psychiatrist casually mentions that Kenny's lawyer was present in the room. He wasn't.

[01:04:56] The idea is simple. If Kenny genuinely had multiple [01:05:00] personality disorder, he would perceive this imaginary lawyer as real. Kenny instantly plays along, He pretends to shake his hand. He even talks to the lawyer. Great. That's not the actual test though.

[01:05:13] The real test is how he would react when the actual lawyer walks into the room.

[01:05:18] Oh.

[01:05:18] Someone with a real personality disorder would accept both lawyers as real. in their kind of subjective reality.

[01:05:25] Uhhuh.

[01:05:25] There'd be no distinction between the two. Who'd be like talking to the lawyer? Talking to the lawyer. Oh, there's two of you. Yeah. [01:05:30] He wouldn't even be surprised by it. It would just be that's the reality.

[01:05:32] Mm-hmm.

[01:05:33] Instead, when the lawyer enters, Kenny becomes confused and disorientated he basically, in that confusion, claims that the imaginary lawyer just vanished.

[01:05:42] But later the psychiatrist then moves on to the next test he casually mentions to Kenny that it was very unusual for someone with multiple personality disorder to only have one alternate personality. Most people have at least two or three. He basically wants to see whether or not Kenny would adapt to this new information.

[01:05:58] Adam Cox: He's like, oh yeah, there's um, [01:06:00] little Timmy, um, he's a 5-year-old boy. Yes. He lives inside me

[01:06:04] Kyle Risi: and sure enough, during a later session, two additional personalities just suddenly emerge. Oh, interesting. Which convinces the psychiatrist that Kenny had been faking this whole time.

[01:06:13] Adam, he's arrested in January. This is now October.

[01:06:16] What?

[01:06:17] Yeah, they have not been able to act on Angelo this whole time. Angelo is still out there. Possibly gonna harm someone else. Because remember, he already, they don't know this right now, but he's already killed one woman on his own. He could easily just go off and do it [01:06:30] again.

[01:06:30] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:06:30] Kyle Risi: They can't act,

[01:06:31] Adam Cox: but this is crazy. 10 months and they're still like, oh, we have to prove that he's not, you know, he is lying before we can actually do anything. Yeah. That is unreal. And has Kenny been charged then, or is he just, he has been charged but not sentenced or anything.

[01:06:44] Kyle Risi: He hasn't been sentenced just yet. Mm-hmm. this is pre-case stuff, right? Pretrial stuff. He's claiming that he's innocent and he's due to go to trial. He's saying that I'm insane. I've got multiple personality disorder. But at this point, his entire defense falls apart. The psychiatrist tell Kenny, we no longer believe [01:07:00] that you have multiple personality disorder. And they remind him that if he's convicted, he would face prosecution in both Washington and California. And in California the prosecutors would most certainly pursue the death penalty against him.

[01:07:11] But if he confesses to everything not under hypnosis right now and testifies against Angelo, they would ensure that he was prosecuted only in Washington and would very likely avoid the death penalty.

[01:07:24] So the walls will closing in on him and he realizes. I have to just confess and accept life in [01:07:30] prison basically.

[01:07:31] And so he agrees. He tells him everything. He explains that Angelo took the lead, and together they pretended to be police officers to lure the victims in.

[01:07:39] He described how they brought women to Angelo's upholstery shop, and then they just brutalized them. They experimented with different methods of torture, including electrocution and stabbing these women with different objects.

[01:07:52] The marks that were found on Christina's body that they thought were need or track marks. They were the pin from his police [01:08:00] badge the electrocution explains the burn marks on Lauren's hands and feet. they were fucking around with her.

[01:08:05] And Disturbingly, Kenny recounts all of this with almost no concern or remorse.

[01:08:10] They also describe how they tortured and killed Christina and how they put a bag over her head and they gassed her using a pipe from the oven. He talks about how it takes her an hour and a half to eventually die.

[01:08:22] Adam Cox: That's

[01:08:22] Kyle Risi: It's horrific.

[01:08:24] Adam Cox: Had they getting satisfaction or some weird gratification from this that's so [01:08:30] sick. I just thought based on the name, that they would just be there strangling women, which almost yeah. Feels, a better way to go than this. This is, he would, they were torturing

[01:08:38] Kyle Risi: him.

[01:08:38] Yeah.

[01:08:39] But the important next bit is that he talks about how they restrained Judy Miller using material from the upholstery shop to blindfold her.

[01:08:47] Which now that they have this information in a non hypnotic confession, police could finally obtain a warrant to search the upholstery shop and match the blindfold fabric to that pale, tiny speck of [01:09:00] fluff that they found on her eyelid.

[01:09:01] Mm-hmm. They knew about this upholstery shop and this potential material for 10 months. but they couldn't act on it because it was under hypnosis.

[01:09:11] Adam Cox: That is wild. It's lucky that, well, I don't know. To be fair. But I'm hoping it's lucky that Angelo didn't stroke again.

[01:09:17] Kyle Risi: And Kenneth basically, because he's now confessed. He doesn't go to trial. He receives seven consecutive life sentences across Washington and California, because of course the plea deal. Washington [01:09:30] retains custody of him and he is now able to avoid the death penalty.

[01:09:34] And so the case against Angelo begins and Adam, it is slow and it's fraught. Kenny was the prosecution's main witness against Angelo. But because he was now entering prison as a snitch, he's fucking terrified that he is gonna be murdered by the other inmates.

[01:09:48] He tries repeatedly to change his story so they can't move forward with the case This causes so many delays. It takes almost two years before Angelo's trial can even start. Really? 'cause he [01:10:00] keeps lip flopping. He's the only witness they have and he's like, mm, yeah, I'm gonna retract my statement, whatever.

[01:10:05] Adam Cox: What a piece of shit like. Just admit what you've done. Fair enough. If you get killed in prison, sure. You kind of deserve it

[01:10:11] Kyle Risi: straight away. I'd be like, oh, okay. If you won't cooperate, fine. It looks like you're going back to California. We'll get you prosecuted. Exactly. Get you the death penalty. But no, he's testing his luck.

[01:10:19] That was the whole point.

[01:10:21] Get this though. It caused so many delays that at one point the prosecution seriously considered just dropping all charges against Angelo. So he'll be out there [01:10:30] free, free man, and he's voted nine people.

[01:10:31] Adam Cox: That's crazy to think that they even considered that.

[01:10:34] Kyle Risi: Kenny goes to such crazy lengths either to try and get himself off or to protect Angelo one of the more bizarre examples involves a woman called veronica Compton.

[01:10:44] Basically when the news breaks that the Hillside Strangler was caught, Veronica reaches out to Kenya in prison. She was writing a play about a serial killer, and she basically wants insight into the mind of a serial killer.

[01:10:56] Eventually they fall in love and Kenny tells her that he [01:11:00] sees a way that they can be together and he asks her to travel to Bellingham to go off and strangle a girl in the same way that he had killed Karen and Diane.

[01:11:09] Adam Cox: And is that to try and get Angelo off the hook by basically suggesting there's another killer out there, or this is someone else?

[01:11:15] Exactly. The cops will think that the real killer is still out there

[01:11:18] Kyle Risi: and they've got the wrong guy.

[01:11:19] Adam Cox: I mean, this woman. How is she gonna be able to attack another woman? Exactly. Well, in the same way. I mean, uh, it's not gonna be quite the same.

[01:11:27] Kyle Risi: He basically gives her his [01:11:30] semen sample so he can plant the semen on the body after she has killed this woman.

[01:11:34] Adam Cox: But then that's his, Kenny is a nons secretor, which means that obviously before DNA testing his blood type cannot be determined from his semen sample. He discovers this when, of course his semen is left on all these other bodies and the police are unable to match him to it. And he is like, oh, okay. Great.

[01:11:51] Well, weird way of phrasing that. A nons secretor. And does this woman, does she accept doing that? I'm hoping she doesn't. She must, like, goes to the police. Mm. [01:12:00] Actually, maybe I shouldn't do this.

[01:12:01] Veronica Ghost to Bellingham.

[01:12:03] Oh God. She lures a young woman to a motel. She tries to strangle her with an electrical cord, but the victim fights her off and she gets away. Good.

[01:12:12] veronica in a moment of clarity, realizes this is a catastrophically stupid idea.

[01:12:17] Yes,

[01:12:18] she returns back to California, but eventually she relapses back into delusion and she thinks, okay, so I didn't kill the girl, but there was an attempted strangulation.

[01:12:28] So let's try get [01:12:30] Kenny Outta prison based off that.

[01:12:31] So she sends a letter and a cassette tape to the police insisting that Kenny was not the Hillside strangler because an attempted strangulation in Bellingham proved that someone else was responsible.

[01:12:43] No, it didn't.

[01:12:44] Kyle Risi: Wim Police tracked down this victim. She confirms. Yeah, someone did try to kill me, but it wasn't a man. It was a woman. And police like, hold up. And they go, is this her? And they show her a photograph and she's like, yep, that's her. And so [01:13:00] police, they arrest Veronica and she's charged

[01:13:02] Adam Cox: with attempted murder.

[01:13:04] Kyle Risi: Oh, this is wild. This case that's fucking mental. And once Veronica is no longer useful to Kenny, his love for her just evaporates.

[01:13:12] he was just using her from day one just to either protect himself in prison or to kinda repair his relationship with Angelo because he was on the hook.

[01:13:19] Adam Cox: That is absolutely crazy. Like I'm surprised this woman that almost got strangled, she didn't go to the police about, yeah,

[01:13:26] Kyle Risi: why

[01:13:26] Adam Cox: should I report

[01:13:27] Kyle Risi: it?

[01:13:27] Yeah. It's so dumb. Anyway, [01:13:30] eventually after the bullshit, I think a judge finally goes, listen guys, stop dragging your feet. Bring Angelo to trial. I don't care. So his trial begins over the course of the proceedings, the prosecution. Exhibit over a thousand pieces of evidence. They call in 250 different witnesses to testify about him and his behavior and his history.

[01:13:50] They take the jury to all the locations where all the victims' bodies were found. Long story short, Angelo is found guilty of nine counts of first degree [01:14:00] murder The only count they do not reach a unanimous verdict on was the murder of Yolanda Washington. That was the first victim. They basically cited that the evidence in her case was the weakest out of the 10, but in my opinion, she was the first, and therefore she set off the pattern. I would argue that like that was the first time we see this pattern. And then all the others that came after that showed the same pattern. It would be too much of coincidence for another random body to turn up that matched the same methods.

[01:14:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. Unless they're saying that, uh, [01:14:30] Yolanda was Kenny. Is that what they're sort of suggesting? Or they just don't feel like there's enough proof to pin it on?

[01:14:34] Kyle Risi: I think they just don't think there's enough proof. Yeah.

[01:14:36] In January, 1984, Angelo is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and that is where he remained until he died in prison in 2002.

[01:14:46] He is found dead in his cell at the age of 67. Suspected heart attack, but this next bit is wild because in 1986, he marries a woman called Christine Kuka the ex-wife of the man who is [01:15:00] in the next cell to him.

[01:15:01] Adam Cox: So did he meet her when she was visiting? Yeah. And then decided to go, Hey, let's started writing

[01:15:07] Kyle Risi: to each other? Yeah. But how does that even happen? Like, I would not wanna be the person who has to say to someone in prison, Hey, I've been running to your wife behind your back, and Yeah, when you guys get divorced, I'm gonna marry her.

[01:15:19] Adam Cox: That's asking for a shanking.

[01:15:22] Kyle Risi: Spanking. Spanking, then a shanking. But apparently they don't get conjugal visits.

[01:15:28] Adam Cox: Well, yeah. Good. But they're allowed to [01:15:30] get married.

[01:15:30] Kyle Risi: They got married, yeah. As for Kenny, he is still alive. Adam, he legally changed his name in 2023 and he now goes by anthony Dito. And I guess maybe it's to distance himself from the murders. I don't know.

[01:15:42] Adam Cox: Yeah. I must surprise that you can even change your name in prison. Like why?

[01:15:45] has he got the money or to even do that?

[01:15:47] Uh, 20 quid, Adam. I know, but I just feel like it's, You're gonna be in prison to life. I don't wanna do the admin.

[01:15:51] Kyle Risi: No, I think maybe he was really motivated to do it. Remember he entered prison as a snitch.

[01:15:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. I understand that he's doing it to cover himself. [01:16:00] Yeah, I get it.

[01:16:00] Kyle Risi: Currently at the time of recording this episode, it's December, but on the 18th of January, 2026, Netflix is releasing a four part true crime docuseries titled The Hillside Strangler, it's expected to feature interviews with Frank Solano and Kenneth himself.

[01:16:17] Really,

[01:16:18] these will largely include police interviews where he obviously is pretending to have multiple personality disorders, so from an investigative standpoint, I think it's gonna be interesting to see him try and weave together this insanity [01:16:30] defense on camera.

[01:16:30] There is just so much more to the story that I just have not been able to explore in a single episode, so I really hope the docuseries covers some of it, including some of Kenny and Angelo's kind of failed abductions as well. They try to abduct someone before they realize that they're the daughter of someone famous.

[01:16:49] But there's also more on Veronica Crompton as well, because after her failed attempt to strangle that woman, Veronica begins writing to another serial killer named Douglas Clark, who by [01:17:00] Kenny and Angela standards, it's far worse than they are.

[01:17:03] They fall in love. And so they're letters to each other. Adam, they're so disturbing, to say the least.

[01:17:09] In one of them, she writes about how she wants to cut his veins with her straight razor and let his blood soak into a swelled breasts.

[01:17:17] When she was called in to testify about her plotting to kill this woman. She was asked whether or not it was true that they had discussed buying a mortuary together so they could have sex with the corpses. And [01:17:30] she does not deny it.

[01:17:32] but Adam, at the end of the day, when we tell these stories, it's important to remember the victims. Like 10 innocent women did die. There is such a clear line between the victims that mattered and the ones that didn't.

[01:17:44] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think the way that you've told the story is regardless of their background, it doesn't really make a difference. There's 10 people here that died at the hands of these two men.

[01:17:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah, good. And I think we should be outraged by that because it does not matter. And it should not [01:18:00] matter that they become class as statistics.

[01:18:02] Adam Cox: Do you know what? And there's 'cause of the story that I'm researching, it's kind of another strangler to be fair, that involves sex workers and things didn't really change a lot in 30 years. Really? I'll let put it that way. Mm. So that's another story coming soon.

[01:18:17] Kyle Risi: Another Strangler case. Are we ready for that?

[01:18:19] Adam Cox: I might put that one hold after for a little while

[01:18:21] Kyle Risi: and Adam. That is the story of the Hill side Strangler.

[01:18:25] Adam Cox: I knew nothing about that.

[01:18:26] Kyle Risi: No, I didn't either.

[01:18:27] Adam Cox: It's a kind of fascinating lots of different [01:18:30] twists and turns.

[01:18:31] Kyle Risi: So many, So much going on.

[01:18:32] Adam Cox: Yeah. So that's that Great to listen to. Great to hear it. Um, tell me more. I feel Yeah. Pretty sad about it.

[01:18:40] Kyle Risi: These stories, they are intriguing because they really touch upon a real dark aspect of human nature. Right. And so having a fascination with, it's completely natural, but it's easy to forget that these are women, young, innocent women Yeah.

[01:18:54] Anyway, should we run the outro for this week? Let's do it. And that brings us to the end of another [01:19:00] fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

[01:19:03] Adam Cox: If today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people like you discover the show.

[01:19:13] Kyle Risi: don't forget the next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon. And as always, it is completely free to access.

[01:19:20] Adam Cox: And if you want even more, then join our certified freak tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:19:29] We'd [01:19:30] love for you to be part of our growing community.

[01:19:32] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday and until then, remember, the hills remembered what the killers try to bury.

[01:19:39] We'll see you next week.

[01:19:41] See ya. [01:20:00]