The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (8 page)

and displaying a precocious obsession with sodomy.

A: No, not that way. It was an offshoot, fringe-type thing.

Sentenced for auto theft in 1950, he escaped from the Q: Were John and Michael [Carr] with the Church of California Youth Authority and was recaptured in Scientology?

December 1951. As a young man, Buono idolized con-A: Well, not really that church. But something along demned sex offender Caryl Chessman, and in later that line. A very devious group.

years he would emulate the so-called red-light rapist’s Q: Did this devious group have a name?

method of procuring victims. In the meantime, though, A: I can’t disclose it.

he fathered several children, viciously abusing various Q: Roughly, how large would you say its membership wives and girlfriends in the process. Somehow, in defi-was?

ance of his violent temperament and almost simian
A: Twenty.

appearance, he attracted scores of women, dazzling
Q: Were they all residents of the New York metropoli-cousin Kenneth with his “harem” and his method of tan area?

recruiting prostitutes through rape and torture.

A: No.

Q: Were they spread across the nation?

A: Yes.

Q: Did they meet on occasion?

A: Yes, but I really can’t say more without counsel.

As Maury Terry noted, both the satanic Process Church of Final Judgment and its spin-off successor, the “Four P” cult, were “offshoot, fringe-type” movements spawned by Scientology. Both groups were also linked to the Charles MANSON FAMILY in California—as was convicted killer William Mentzer, named by Berkowitz in prison interviews as the triggerman in the January 1977

shooting of John Diel and Christine Freund. Investigation of the alleged cult continues, supported by testimony from convicted cannibal-killer Stanley Dean Baker, but no further indictments have been filed to date.

See also CULTS

BIANCHI, Kenneth Alessio, and BUONO, Angelo, Jr.

Born in May 1951 to a prostitute mother in Rochester, New York, Ken Bianchi was given up for adoption as an infant. By age 11, he was falling behind in his schoolwork and was given to furious tantrums in class and at home. He married briefly at 18. Two years later he wrote to a girlfriend, claiming he had killed a local man. She laughed it off, dismissing the claim as part of Ken’s incessant macho posturing, but homicide was clearly preying on Bianchi’s mind. By 1973, he was cer-Kenneth Bianchi (Wide World API)

19

BIANCHI, Kenneth Alessio, and BUONO, Angelo, Jr.

Two of Buono’s favorite hookers managed to escape his clutches during 1977, and Bianchi later marked their departure as the starting point for L.A.’s reign of terror at the hands of Bianchi and Buono. In precisely two months’ time, the so-called Hillside Stranglers would abduct and slay 10 women, frequently abandon-ing their victims’ naked bodies in a grim display, as if to taunt authorities.

Rejected for employment by the Glendale and Los Angeles police departments, longing for a chance to throw his weight around and show some “real authority,” Bianchi fell in line with Buono’s suggestion that they should impersonate policemen, stopping female motorists or nabbing prostitutes according to their whim. Along the way, they would subject their captives to an ordeal of torture, sexual assault, and brutality, inevitably ending with a twist of the garrote.

Yolanda Washington, a 19-year-old hooker, was the first to die, murdered on October 17, her nude body discovered the next day, near Universal City. Two weeks later, on Halloween, police retrieved the corpse of 15-year-old Judith Miller from a flower bed in La Crescenta. Elissa Kastin, a 21-year-old Hollywood waitress, was abducted and slain November 5, her body discovered the next morning on a highway embank-ment in Glendale. On November 8, Jane King, aspiring actress and model, was kidnapped, raped, and suffo-Angelo Buono led from court in handcuffs (Wide World API) cated, her body dumped on an off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway, undiscovered until November 22.

By that time, female residents of Los Angeles were Karen Mandic were raped and murdered in Bellingham, living a nightmare. No less than three victims had been last seen alive when they went to check out a potential discovered on November 20, including 20-year-old house-sitting job. Bianchi had been their contact, and honor student Kristina Wechler, dumped in Highland inconsistent statements led police to hold him for further Park, and two classmates from junior high school, investigation. A search of his home turned up items Sonja Johnson and Dolores Cepeda, discovered in stolen from sites he was paid to guard, and further evi-Elysian Park a week after their disappearance from a dence finally linked him to the Bellingham murders. Col-local bus stop. Retrieval of Jane King’s body increased laboration with L.A. authorities led to Bianchi’s the anxiety, and Thanksgiving week climaxed with the indictment in five of the Hillside murders in June 1979.

death of Lauren Wagner, an 18-year-old student, found In custody, Bianchi first denied everything, then in the Glendale hills on November 29.

feigned submission to hypnosis, manufacturing multiple By that time, police knew they were looking for dual personalities in his bid to support an insanity defense.

suspects, based on the testimony of eyewitness includ-Psychiatrists saw through the ruse, and after his indicting one prospective victim—the daughter of screen star ment in Los Angeles, Ken agreed to testify against his Peter Lorre—who had managed to avoid the stranglers’

cousin. His guilty plea to five new counts of homicide clutches. On December 9, prostitute Kimberly Martin was followed by Buono’s arrest in October 1979, and answered her last out-call in Glendale, turning up nude Angelo was charged with 10 counts of first-degree mur-and dead on an Echo Park hillside next morning. The der. A 10-month preliminary hearing climaxed in March last to die, at least in California, was Cindy Hudspeth, 1981, with Angelo ordered to stand trial on all counts.

found in the trunk of her car after it was pushed over a Bianchi, meanwhile, was desperately seeking some cliff in the Angeles National Forest.

way to save himself. In June 1980, he received a letter Bianchi sensed that it was time for a change of scene.

from Veronica Lynn Compton, a 23-year-old poet, Moving to Bellingham, Washington, he found work as a playwright, and aspiring actress, who sought Ken’s security guard, flirting once more with the police work opinion of her new play (dealing with a female serial he craved. On January 11, 1979, Diane Wilder and killer). Correspondence and conversations revealed her
20

BITTAKER, Lawrence Sigmund, and NORRIS, Roy Lewis obsession with murder, mutilation, and necrophilia, October 31 and found the next morning in a Tijunga encouraging Bianchi to suggest a bizarre defense strat-residential neighborhood. Strangled with a wire coat egy. Without a second thought, Veronica agreed to visit hanger, she had first been subjected to “sadistic and Bellingham, strangle a woman there, and deposit speci-barbaric abuse,” her breasts and face mutilated, arms mens of Bianchi’s sperm at the scene, thus leading slashed, her body covered with bruises.

police to believe the “real killer” was still at large.

Detectives got their break on November 20, when On September 16, 1980, Compton visited Bianchi in Bittaker and Norris were arrested on charges stemming prison, receiving a book with part of a rubber glove from a September 30 assault in Hermosa Beach.

inside, containing his semen. Flying north to Belling-According to reports, their female victim had been ham, she picked out a female victim at random but bun-sprayed with Mace, abducted in a silver van, and raped gled the murder attempt. Arrested in California on before she managed to escape. The woman ultimately October 3, Compton was convicted in Washington dur-failed to make a positive ID on Bittaker and Norris, but ing 1981 and received a life sentence. She published a arresting officers discovered drugs in their possession, memoir ( Eating the Ashes) from prison in 2002.

holding both in jail for violation of parole.

As Buono’s trial date approached, Bianchi issued a Roy Norris started showing signs of strain in cus-series of contradictory statements, leading prosecutors tody. At a preliminary hearing in Hermosa Beach, he to seek dismissal of all charges in July 1981. A coura-offered an apology “for my insanity,” and he was soon geous judge, Ronald George, refused to postpone the regaling officers with tales of murder. According to his trial, which ultimately ran from November 1981 to statements, girls had been approached at random, pho-November 1983. Convicted on nine counts of murder—

tographed by Bittaker, and offered rides, free mari-oddly excluding Yolanda Washington’s—Buono was juana, jobs in modeling. Most turned the offers down, sentenced to nine terms of life imprisonment without but others were abducted forcibly, the van’s radio parole. His cousin was returned to Washington State for drowning out their screams as they were driven to a completion of two corresponding life terms in the remote mountain fire road for sessions of rape and tor-Bellingham case. Buono died at Calipatria State Prison, ture. Tape recordings of Jacqueline Lamp’s final in California’s Imperial County, on September 21, 2002.

moments were recovered from Bittaker’s van, and detectives counted 500 photos of smiling young women among the suspects’ effects.

BITTAKER, Lawrence Sigmund, and NORRIS,

On February 9, 1980, Norris led deputies to shallow
Roy Lewis

graves in San Dimas Canyon and the San Gabriel Lawrence Bittaker was serving time for assault with a Mountains, where skeletal remains of Lamp and Jackie deadly weapon in 1978, when he met Roy Norris at the Gilliam were recovered. An ice pick still protruded from California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. A con-Gilliam’s skull, and the remains bore other marks of victed rapist, Norris recognized a soul mate in Bittaker, and they soon became inseparable. While still confined, they hatched a grisly plot to kidnap, rape, and murder teenage girls “for fun,” as soon as they were freed. If all went well, they planned to kill at least one girl from each “teen” age—13 through 19—while recording the events on tape and film.

Paroled on November 15, 1978, Bittaker began

making preparations for the crime spree, obtaining a van that he dubbed “Murder Mack.” Norris was

released on June 15, 1979, after a period of observation at Atascadero State Hospital, and he hurried to Bittaker’s side, anxious to implement their plan.

Nine days later, on June 24, 16-year-old Linda Schaeffer vanished following a church service, never to be seen again. Joy Hall, 18, disappeared without a trace in Redondo Beach on July 8. Two months later, on September 2, 13-year-old Jacqueline Lamp and 15-year-old Jackie Gilliam were lost while thumbing rides in Redondo Beach. Shirley Ledford, 16, of Sunland, was Lawrence (“Pliers”) Bittaker takes the stand at his murder the only victim recovered by authorities, abducted on trial. (Wide World API)

21