I have a connection, though a slight one, with the Hillside Stranglers. In 1979, while I have a student in Bellingham, Kenny Bianchi murdered Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder in that city. They were also students at Western Washington University. Though I didn’t know either of them, I remembered the somber days on the campus as the news hit us. This crime doesn’t belong in Bellingham. It is more like the crimes of New York, Chicago, or even Seattle. Or Los Angeles! For that was where the Hillside Strangulations took place. Not Bellingham! Never Bellingham!
I never knew about the Hillside Stranglers those days or that Bianchi was one of them until years after that event. My college challenges took precedence, as did my budding social life. After the shock of the crime wore off, my thoughts and feelings faded with time.
Not for Sergeant Salerno and others in the Hillside task force, who still had ten murders to solve. The press always wrote in singular, Hillside Strangler, but Salerno knew, or at least had a strong suspicion, that they were chasing two or more men from the start. They were looking for Angelo Buono and Kenny Bianchi, but they didn’t know that at the time. Bianchi, who grew up in New York, came to Los Angeles to live with his much older cousin, Buono. Though the roommate situation didn’t last, the two men became best friends, and it became an evil alliance with killing their first victim, Yolanda Washington.
The Hillside Stranglers follows the case from the first murders to the trail of Buono, which last a year, making it the longest criminal trail in the United States. The book is nonfiction with elements of fiction thrown in, making what O’Brien calls hybrid story. The conversations between Buono and Bianchi about the crimes and how to commit them are clearly fiction, but no doubt, they had those conversations. I wish I could tell you the murders were fiction, but they happened, and O’Brien writes about them in ruthless detail. He doesn’t tell us everything, because somethings too private and sensitive to be share, but he told us more than I wanted to know about.
Is that true? More to want to know about the murders?
Yes. I was often uncomfortable reading this book, especially the murders, but also with the criminals’ attitude towards woman and their brutal treatment of the women they work as prostitutes. I felt uncomfortable reading about the prostitutes because I didn’t know the killers had tried to be pimps, and because, as abusive the pimp-prostitutes is, Buono and Bianchi were more abusive. They tormented the two women physically, sexually, and verbally. When the girls escaped their brutal lives, Buono and Bianchi turned to murder.
But no. As uncomfortable reading about the murders and other crimes was, I signed up for it. I brought the book knowing there were those details in it. In fact, I would have felt cheated if the details about the murders wasn’t in it. So what does that say about me? How I chase my entertainment? Entertainment? Perhaps that is not the right word. Pastime might be better, but it still leave me unsatisfied. I still says something about me that I don’t want to omit.
I like murder.
Or rather, I find murder interesting and worth researching. The Bible tells us about Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel, making him the first murderer, and God punished him by sending him into exiled with a mark on him. As a deterrent against murder, it failed for we have murder today. I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe the story, but it served to illustrate how bizarre and yet how ubiquitous killing a fellow human being is. Gangsters, robbers, angry spouses, rowdy drunks, fun- or experience-seekers, and others all commit murder. How many arguments include the threat of death. “I’ll kill you!” We created war to have an excuse for homicide on grand scale.
And yet, when it happens, we are surprised and shocked and horrified. Never in Bellingham! Not here! Never in my town! Yet, we need to know the salacious details. Was it motivated by drugs? Infidelity? Greed? Or something else? Was there even a motive?
When Buono and Bianchi killed Yolanda Washington it appears to be a punishment against prostitutes. Two prostitutes escaped, so all prostitutes are guilty, At least, that is my take of their mindset. They started by killing prostitutes, but then they victimized any vulnerable women they found. They posted as police officers to gain the trust of the victims, and they brought them to Buono’s home to rape and murder them. They killed the women to get away with raping them; they raped the women, since, well, they were going to kill them anyway, so what a little rape before? Was it about rape? Was it about murder? I don’t think the killers knew. They didn’t come across as strong on self-reflection. Like a beast, a lion or a shark or wolf, they killed because it was their nature. But is false. The lion and shark and wolf kills to eat. Buono and Bianchi kill to kill.
They were monsters. The Hillside Strangers is a book real life monsters.
Angelo Buono died in Calipatria State Prison on September 21, 2002, and he will not be miss. Kenneth Bianchi is still alive, but at age 73, he will die soon. Hopefully! He is a permanent inmate at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington, for the Bellingham murders. Before the Hillside murders, in Rochester, New York, there was a series of murders alled the ABC Murders, which he is a suspect, but nothing has been proven. The cases remain unsolved. I don’t think he did these murders, because the MO was totally different. They seemed better organized than Bianchi is capable of. I see Buono as the mastermind as the Hillside murders and Bianchi is a stumbling idiot. The Bellingham murders, which Bianchi was the sole murderer, were easily solved, and they blew the lid off the Hillside Stranglers.
The word in the book is epicene, meaning having characteristics of both sexes. It use in the following sentence: His voice, his manner, so unaggressive, rather epicene, reassured her. This is a scene in which Bianchi, with Buono waiting in the car, gained the trust of a victim, Jane King. The killers found her waiting for a bus, and using Bianchi’s charm, they convinced her to come with them.
The Hillside Stranglers detail the case of real murders. The details shocked me, and I am sure they will also shocked you.
