The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, cousins who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing girls and women ranging in age from twelve to twenty-eight during a four-month period from late 1977 to early 1978 in the hills above Los Angeles.
On November 20, 1977, hikers found the nude, dead, sexually-assualted body of Kristina Weckler on a hillside near Glendale, California. That same day, two more female bodies were found in the other side of the same hilly area, and over the next four months police discovered ten more victims. The law enforcement task force--LAPD, LA Sherriff's Department and Glendale Police Department--always assumed more than one person was responsible for the slayings, even though the media continued to use the singular, Hillside Strangler.
After intensive investigation, police charged cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr. with the brutal crimes.
Bianchi had fled to Washington State, where he was soon arrested for raping and murdering two women he'd lured to his home there. After first claiming he committed his atrocities in an altered, unconscious state as one of his multiple personalities, Bianchi eventually agreed to testify against his cousin. Bianchi is serving a life sentence in Washington. Buono died on September 21, 2002 in Calipatria State Prison where he was serving a life sentence.
The Hillside Strangler is also the name of an interchange in Hillside, Illinois, where Interstate 88, 290 and 294 merge into one lane. One of the most hated stretches of the Chicago expressways, improvements to the interchange were completed in 2001
