How A Hillside Strangler Nearly Went Free

Christopher Goffard (0:00)

This is an LA. Times Studios podcast.

Chris Goffard here at LA. Times Studios. Thanks for joining us on Crimes of the Times. Today, the story of the Hillside Stranglers and the prosecution that almost never happened. Tell us what you think in the comments below.

In July 1981, homicide detectives who had been working the Hillside Strangler case gathered in a Los Angeles courtroom in anticipation of disaster. One of the two men implicated in the murders was Angelo Buono, a 46-year-old car upholsterer from Glendale. He was a wiry, foul-mouthed little man, a high school dropout with an air of swagger and an Italian flag flying from his house. He had been a pimp and fancied himself a ladies' man. Now, Buono was in custody awaiting trial, charged with the murders of 10 women and girls. But a week earlier, the district attorney had announced that he had no stomach for the case. The trouble was that the state star witness was Buono's cousin, Kenneth Bianchi. He was a slippery 30-year-old con man whose nickname was Slick Ken and had been Buono's partner in the murder spree. Bianchi had already pleaded guilty to five of the LA murders plus two in Washington State and was serving a life term. He had been an aspiring cop with a Hollywood apartment and a glib patter that reminded people of a used car salesman. He was a skillful liar who at various times had successfully posed as a cop, a psychologist and as a sex therapist. He had a closet full of fake diplomas.

Can you give me a thumbnail psychological profile of this guy?

Frank Salerno (1:51)

He's a sociopath, he's a pathological liar.

He doesn't know what he's going to say when he wakes up in the morning. He just makes it up as it goes.

Christopher Goffard (2:01)

Frank Salerno is a retired homicide detective from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and was one of the leads on the Hillside Strangler Task Force.

Frank Salerno (2:11)

You know, the guy's a con man.

Of the twosome, he was the front guy, the talker. Bono was, you know, the hammer. Bono was the streetwise guy.

Christopher Goffard (2:25)

In court testimony, Bianchi had admitted that Bono had been his accomplice during the LA killings, but his stories kept shifting. He would put his cousin at the scene of the murders one day and recant the next.

Frank Salerno (2:39)

I believe they got too close to him, because every time you talk to Bianchi, he'd tell you a different story. I think they just talked to him too much and he kept changing stories and he didn't think a jury would buy it.

Christopher Goffard (2:55)

A week earlier, the deputy district attorney on the case Roger Kelly had announced, quote, I would not put someone on the stand who was not credible.

The judge had posed a question to the prosecutor. Did he intend to file similar charges against Bono later? No, the prosecutor said, quote, We have no reason to believe that new evidence will come to light.

The case had dominated headlines for years. It had cast a pall of fear over Southern California in a way that few murder cases ever had. Thousands of women had been frightened to go outdoors during the height of the terror in late 1977 They were buying guns, getting guard dogs, wondering what the monsters looked like. And now the DA's decision to drop the 10 murder counts meant that one of the killers would likely do a little time on pimping charges, maybe three years, and then go free.

Frank Salerno (3:51)

It was a big disappointment, to say the least. A lot of work had gone into it. A lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of resources.

Christopher Goffard (4:00)

The DA could not dismiss the case unilaterally. Superior Court Judge Ronald M. George had to approve the move. In such cases, a judge almost always goes along with a DA's decision to scuttle the charges. It was hard to think of a case, much less one this serious, in which it hadn't gone that way.

So Salerno and his partner, Pete Finnegan, who had spent years building a case against Bono, went into the courtroom that day, expecting that they would essentially watch a serial killer escape punishment.

Frank Salerno (4:33)

I mean, we were pissed off, thinking that that was going to happen, but our hands were tied. We'd done everything we could do.

The day that Judge George was going to make his decision, we all went to court. We're sitting back there, starts talking about the motion and what he'd found and this and that. And he's halfway through with it, two-thirds feet, and I look at each other, and we say, I don't think he's going to dismiss this the way he's talking.