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The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating from the fact that many of the victims' bodies were discovered in the hills surrounding the city. One unusual twist to the investigation was the arrival in L.A. of a psychic from Berlin. Detective Bob Grogan was polite, but unenthusiastic, when the psychic wrote in German what they should be looking for: Two Italians. Brothers. Aged about thirty-five. It was initially believed that only one person was responsible for the killings. The police, however, determined from the positions of the bodies that two criminals were working together, but withheld that information from the press. The perpetrators were eventually discovered to be cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr., who were later convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering 10 women and girls ranging in age from 12 to 28. The Hillside Strangler murders began with the deaths of two prostitutes who were found strangled and dumped naked on hillsides northeast of Los Angeles in October and early November 1977. It was not until the deaths of five young women who were not prostitutes, but girls who had been abducted from middle-class neighborhoods, that the media attention and subsequent "Hillside Strangler" moniker came to prominence. There were two more deaths in December and February before the murders abruptly stopped. An extensive investigation proved fruitless until the arrest of Bianchi in January 1979 for the murder of two more young women in Washington and the subsequent linking of his past to the Strangler case. The most expensive trial in the history of the California legal system at that time followed, with Bianchi and Buono eventually being found guilty of those crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. Background In January 1976, Kenneth Bianchi left Rochester, New York, and moved to Los Angeles, California, to live with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. Buono provided a strong role model for the docile Bianchi. When Bianchi was short of money, Buono came up with the idea of getting some girls to work for them as prostitutes. Two teenage runaways, Sabra Hannan and Becky Spears, met Bianchi and Buono, and once under their control, were forced to prostitute themselves. Eventually, Spears happened to meet lawyer David Wood, who was appalled at her situation and arranged for her to escape from the city. Encouraged by Spears' escape, Hannan ran away from Bianchi and Buono a short time later. With their pimping income gone, they decided to find more teenage girls. Impersonating police officers, they eventually found another young woman and installed her in the previous girl's bedroom. Additionally, they purchased (from a prostitute named Deborah Noble) a supposed "trick list" with names of men who frequented prostitutes. Noble and her friend, Yolanda Washington, delivered the trick list to Buono in October 1977. Murders Yolanda Washington Yolanda Washington happened to mention to Buono that she always worked on a certain stretch of Sunset Boulevard. When Bianchi and Buono found that Deborah Noble had deceived them about the list but were unable to find her, they decided to take out their rage on Washington; her naked body was found on October 17, 1977, on a hillside near the Ventura Freeway. Detective Frank Salerno of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department was called to the scene, where it was determined that the corpse was cleaned before being dumped, while faint marks were also visible around the neck, wrists and ankles, signs of a rope being used. The victim had also been raped. Judith Miller On November 1, 1977, police were called to Alta Terrace Drive in La Crescenta, a neighborhood 12 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, where the body of a teenage girl was found naked, face up on a parkway in a middle-class residential area. The homeowner had covered her with a tarp in the early morning hours to prevent the neighborhood children from viewing her on their way to school. Ligature marks were on her neck, wrists and ankles, indicating to police she was bound and strangled. The body had been dumped, indicating she was killed elsewhere. Detective Salerno also found a small piece of light-colored fluff on her eyelid and saved it for the forensic experts. A coroner's report further detailed that she had been raped and sodomized. The girl, who was described as being "small and thin, weighing about 90 pounds and appearing to be about 16 years old", was eventually identified as 15-year-old Judith Lynn Miller, a former student of Hollywood High School. After dropping out, Miller was a runaway and small-time sex worker. Miller was last seen alive on Halloween, October 31, 1977, talking to a man driving a large, two-toned sedan on Sunset Boulevard next to Carney's. The stranglers had told her they were ‘undercover’ police officers, handcuffed her, and took her to Buono's Auto Upholstery Shop at 703 E. Colorado St. in Glendale, where she was murdered. Lissa Kastin Five days later, on November 6, 1977, the nude body of another woman was discovered near the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale. Like Miller, her body bore five-point (neck, wrists, and ankles) ligature marks, and showed signs of having been strangled and brutally raped, but not sodomized. The woman was identified as 21-year-old waitress Elissa Teresa "Lissa" Kastin, who was last seen leaving the restaurant where she worked the night before her body was discovered. In addition to working full-time, Kastin was also a professional dancer in the all-female dance troupe The L.A. Knockers and (unlike the previous two victims) was not a prostitute, drug user or runaway. The stranglers followed Kastin after she was seen driving home from work, pulled her over on the street she lived on, presented a fake ‘police badge’, and told her that they were detectives. They then handcuffed her and told her they needed to take her in for questioning. Aborted abduction of Catharine Lorre Baker At some point in early November 1977, the two men approached 24-year-old Catharine Lorre Baker, the daughter of actor Peter Lorre — famous for his role as a serial killer in Fritz Lang's film M — with the intent of abducting and killing her. However, when Lorre produced not only her driver's license when requested, but also a picture of her sitting on her father's lap as a child, the two let her go without incident, fearing the murder of a celebrity's child would attract an unusually high amount of police and press attention. Lorre did not realize who the men were until they were arrested, at which point she recalled that two men flashing L.A. police badges had approached her in the past. Dolores Cepeda and Sonja Johnson On Sunday, November 13, 1977, two girls, 12-year-old Dolores Ann "Dolly" Cepeda and 14-year-old Sonja M.... Discover the Kristina Howells popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kristina Howells books.