Between October 1977 and February 1978, ten girls and women were killed in the Los Angeles area, their bodies left on hillsides and roadsides that gave the case its name. Cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were eventually convicted, but the case was held together less by a confession than by a mix of autopsy patterns, trace evidence and a stubborn task force. Here is how it came together, with the focus on the evidence and on the people who died.
The Victims and the Timeline
The first known victim, Yolanda Washington, 19, was found on October 18, 1977, near the Ventura Freeway. Over the next four months came Judith Miller, 15; Lissa Kastin, 21; Dolores Cepeda, 12; Sonja Johnson, 14; Kristina Weckler, 20; Evelyn Jane King, 28; Lauren Rae Wagner, 18; Kimberly Diane Martin, 17; and finally Cindy Lee Hudspeth, 20, found February 17, 1978. Several of the bodies were discovered by ordinary people: a homeowner, hikers, a child, a helicopter pilot who spotted a car.
The killings stopped after Hudspeth. Sources I consulted agree on the count of ten victims; they differ on how many counts Buono was ultimately convicted of, a detail I address below.
What the Coroner’s Findings Showed
The bodies themselves carried the case. According to accounts of the autopsies, victims showed ligature marks consistent with strangulation and signs of sexual assault. For Washington, the record describes a body that had been cleaned before it was left on the hillside, an early sign that the killer or killers were thinking about evidence.
The most cited trace clue came from Judith Miller. A small piece of light-colored fluff was found on her eyelid and sent for forensic analysis, and it has been reported as upholstery foam that pointed toward Buono’s auto-upholstery shop in Glendale. I could not verify the exact lab report, so I describe it as “reported.” What the pattern did, taken with the others, was convince investigators that one pair of offenders, not several killers, was responsible. A task force of around 30 officers from the LAPD, the Sheriff’s Department and Glendale police was formed after the Evelyn King killing.
Why Investigators Believed It Was Two People
Early in the case, detectives and pathologists compared victims side by side. An MGM+ docuseries summary says police noticed the similarities between early victims, including Washington and Kastin, which helped establish a single pattern. Catharine Lorre Baker, daughter of actor Peter Lorre, was approached in early November 1977 and released unharmed, which gives some sense of how the men operated: Bianchi often lured women with the promise of work, while Buono is generally credited with logistics and disposing of the bodies. Both claims come from secondary summaries, so I treat them as the prosecution’s narrative, not settled fact.
The Arrest That Cracked It
The break came from outside California. On January 12, 1979, Bianchi was arrested in Bellingham, Washington, for the rape and murder of two women. That arrest led investigators back to Los Angeles. Bianchi first tried to blame an alternate personality, but court-appointed psychologists, among them Dr. Martin Orne, concluded he was faking. He then pleaded guilty to five California murders and agreed to testify against his cousin in exchange for leniency.
Physical evidence also tied him to the case: Bianchi’s fingerprints were reported on the pay phone used to dispatch Kimberly Martin, and at the apartment she was taken from.
The Trial of Angelo Buono
Buono was arrested on October 22, 1979, and always maintained his innocence. His defense stressed the lack of direct physical evidence. Prosecutors relied on Bianchi’s testimony, witnesses and the trace evidence from the shop. The trial ended in 1983. Buono was convicted of nine murders in November 1983 and sentenced to life in prison without parole in January 1984. He died of a heart attack on September 21, 2002, at Calipatria State Prison. Bianchi remains in prison; Wikipedia reports he was denied parole in 2010 and 2025.
Counts, witness totals and trial length vary between summaries. The most reliable route is the court record from People v. Buono.
Reading the Evidence Critically
Buono’s defense argued that no physical evidence tied him to the killings and noted that investigators could not find even his own fingerprints in his house. The prosecution answered with volume: one account counts more than a thousand exhibits and about 250 witnesses, another says more than 400 witnesses testified, which is exactly why I send you to the transcript. A woman Buono had menaced at a Hollywood library reportedly identified him and tied him to the pay phone used in the Kimberly Martin case. The trial was widely described as one of the longest and most expensive in California history. A cooperating co-defendant who had already lied once about a split personality is a hard witness to rely on, and that is why the physical details mattered so much to the verdict.
Why the Case Still Matters
The Hillside Strangler case is a lesson in how coroner findings connect scenes that look unrelated. A single speck, a pattern of marks and a fingerprint did what a hundred tips did not. It is also a case where the victims were mostly young and often vulnerable, and they deserve to be remembered by name rather than by the killers’ nickname.
To learn how those reports work, read our guides on forensic identification and toxicology and autopsy reports, and request public records through the process we outline in our public-records explainer.
