- 3 months ago
A two-part look into the case of Kenneth Bianchi, who committed murders in Los Angeles (as one of the "Hillside Stranglers") and Bellingham, Washington yet sought to avoid trial by claiming mental incompetence.
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00:00Major funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
00:07Additional funding is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
00:13Tonight on Frontline.
00:16The scene, Los Angeles, 1977.
00:20A frightening series of murders by the hillside strangler.
00:24One suspect, an all-American boy.
00:27I've always wanted to go to California, the sun, the girls, the beaches, you know, the dreams.
00:35The kid I knew couldn't have ever hurt anybody or killed anybody.
00:39This one I killed. This was the first one I killed.
00:43The question, is he insane?
00:47I was quite convinced that he was a full-fledged multiple personality.
00:51I believe that he is playing a role and playing a part.
00:59Through court-ordered videotapes, we examine with the experts the terrifying psychology of a killer.
01:05The mind of a murderer.
01:07From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
01:29This is Frontline.
01:38Good evening. I'm Judy Woodruff.
01:40As unpleasant as it is to hear, mass murders are on the rise in this country.
01:45The Justice Department says that in the last decade, there have been at least 30 mass killers,
01:50and that each of them murdered at least six people.
01:53These gruesome numbers raise disturbing questions.
01:56What sort of man is Charles Manson or the son of Sam?
02:00Are they insane?
02:01That's sometimes the defense if they come to trial.
02:04And it's one that is increasingly controversial.
02:07Tonight on Frontline, a remarkable event.
02:10For the first time, you can journey with psychiatrists as they try to get inside the mind of a mass murderer.
02:17Kenneth Bianchi, the man who came to be known as the Hillside Strangler.
02:22Bianchi looked like an all-American boy.
02:25But he was involved in the murders of at least 10 women in Los Angeles and two more in Washington State.
02:31After his arrest, Bianchi took on the behavior of a multiple personality.
02:36And four experts concluded he was insane.
02:39But was he?
02:40Frontline has obtained exclusive access to over 60 hours of interviews videotaped
02:46after Kenneth Bianchi's arrest.
02:48So it is possible for us tonight to see and hear what happened behind the jailhouse doors.
02:54To see some of what the experts saw as they made up their minds about this man.
02:59The program is produced and directed by Michael Barnes.
03:03And a warning.
03:04There are brief but graphic photographs of the victims' bodies.
03:08As well as some strong language.
03:11Oh, you want to get back to why I came to California?
03:16Yeah.
03:17Well, I came there hoping to find a better job.
03:22I've always wanted to go to California.
03:25The sun, the girls, the beaches, you know, the dreams.
03:29You know, think of the smog and the crazy city.
03:32Our story begins three years after Kenneth Bianchi's arrival in Los Angeles in September, 1977.
03:39This is KFWB News.
03:43Good afternoon, everyone.
03:44I'm Ben Scampagna.
03:45Here's the latest news at noon.
03:47Geneva talks on a test ban of nuclear weapons is stalemated by the three major powers,
03:51the United States, Britain, and Russia.
03:53KFWB's Jim Mitchell will report on the discovery of a nude woman's body
03:57found in the La Crescenta area and the ongoing investigation.
04:00The forecast for Los Angeles is going to be a beautiful weekend.
04:02It's a high tomorrow of about 77 degrees.
04:04Glendale police have another apparent murder of a young woman on their hands.
04:09KFWB's Cecilia Pedroza has a direct report from Chevy Chase Drive.
04:12Another young woman has been found in the Highland Park area.
04:15I repeat, the body of another young woman has been found in the Highland Park area.
04:19Since Sunday morning, the bodies of three other young girls age 12, 14, and 20
04:24have been found within a few miles of this spot.
04:27All of the killings have occurred within the past four weeks, all ten.
04:31Members of the Hillside Strangler Task Force are trying to trace the last movement
04:34for the young Glendale woman, now listed as the Hillside Strangler's victim.
04:38Most of the Strangler victims were found in the hills surrounding Los Angeles,
04:42often near freeways or in ravines.
04:44The victims were mostly teenagers and young women.
04:47I wish I could come here and give you some good news. Unfortunately, I cannot.
04:57Apparently, he is very good. He has certainly not left us the kind of evidence that we would
05:06need to make a direct connect up. If he had, we would have him in jail today.
05:11Identicate pictures have so far failed to produce useful leads.
05:15Police psychologists believe he has a compulsion to repeat the crimes, and he will kill again.
05:20This city was completely in the grip of the Hillside Stranglers.
05:29We spent hour after hour, night after night, right here in Hollywood.
05:35Hollywood is not what most people think of it, or as it's portrayed in movies.
05:41We were talking to people with no names, prostitutes, male and female, straight people,
05:51people that were loaded, didn't know if it was daylight or dark.
05:57And because of that, we got a lot of false leads and a lot of bad information.
06:03Well, we had theorized, early in the investigation, the possibility of someone that had some police
06:09training or background or was familiar with police tactics.
06:14We were forced to tell our citizenry not to stop for a police officer on a side street,
06:20to go to a lighted area, particularly young women, go to a lighted area or drive to a police station
06:26and the police would follow them and wait to talk to them at that location
06:30because we felt it was too dangerous with this information in our possession
06:35to allow our citizenry to stop on the side streets for our officers.
06:40Perhaps the most appalling in this series of murders was the murder of the two little girls.
06:47Dolly Cepeda and Sonia Johnson were 12 and 14 years old.
06:52These girls were considered good girls, family girls.
06:57They were not girls of the street.
06:59When they came here on Sunday afternoon, the families expected them to be safe.
07:03This shopping center is guarded and is in a safe area.
07:09We didn't have any idea where they went, where they were killed, who took them.
07:16We had no witnesses. We had no physical evidence.
07:20And all we had was, eight days later, we found the nude, raped bodies of these two young girls on a hillside not far from here.
07:29All the victims had been raped and strangled to death.
07:33They included 19-year-old Yolanda Washington, 15-year-old Judith Miller, 21-year-old Lisa Caston, and 20-year-old Christina Weckler, 14-year-old Sonia Johnson, 12-year-old Dolly Cepeda, 28-year-old Jane King, 18-year-old Lauren Wagner, 17-year-old Kimberly Martin, and 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth.
08:00What was so frightening about The Hillside Strangler was that the picture I had in my mind was of the average, ordinary man, someone that could be my colleague in the office, someone that could be waiting on my table in a restaurant taking my tickets at the theater.
08:19He was not going to be a monster. He was going to fade into anonymity among all the other people.
08:26He was going to be somebody's loving son, loving husband, sweet brother, good neighbor.
08:32People were going to be surprised when we found out.
08:35And that was really frightening because you didn't have a way to guard yourself, to protect yourself, because it could have been anybody.
08:43And then the murders stopped. Ten women had died in five months.
09:01They appeared to be perfect crimes. There were no clues. Almost 150 detectives had conducted the biggest manhunt in the history of Los Angeles.
09:14It failed, and the killer, or killers, remained at large.
09:19But as the weeks passed, there were no more murders, and the city began to relax.
09:29Nearly a year later, two young women, university students, were reported missing 1,100 miles north in Bellingham,
09:37a small lumber and fishing center just below the Canadian border in the state of Washington, a town with just six detectives.
09:45Go ahead, sir.
09:48Bellingham police. Missing from where?
09:52The girl reported missing to us was Karen Mandic.
09:57We then contacted her boyfriend, and he told us that she had received a job house-sitting.
10:05This would be when a person goes away for some reason and leaves the house vacant.
10:10Security agencies here in the city of Bellingham will have people come to the home and stay in the home for a period of time, like to an hour,
10:17while they put in security alarm systems or something on this order.
10:21She was to receive $100 for this hour's work.
10:25With her at the time, she took her roommate, Diane Wilder.
10:29We contacted the security agency, and the person in charge of this particular house-sitting told us that he did not know Karen or Diane.
10:39But the police soon learned that unbeknownst to the agency, one of their own security managers had lured Karen Mandic to the house with the promise of a well-paid job.
10:48Karen had been working at the Fred Meyer's department store.
10:52She was last seen driving her car to the house-sitting job.
10:56Eighteen hours later, the bodies of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder were found in their car on this hillside overlooking Bellingham.
11:07They had been strangled.
11:17There were no fingerprints in the vehicle.
11:19However, there were strangulation marks on the bodies.
11:23And at this point, it was decided to arrest the security guard.
11:29And this was a uniformed security guard.
11:32So arrangements were made with his boss to call him on the radio and have him dispatched to the south terminal guard shack area.
11:41And we could arrest him there.
11:44As a uniformed security guard, he is armed.
11:47And this would be a much safer area for the police and everybody else to make an arrest of this type.
11:54The man arrested was 27-year-old Kenneth Bianchi.
11:57He had left the Glendale area of Los Angeles a few months earlier and come to live here with his son and girlfriend Kelly Boyd.
12:08The kid I knew couldn't have ever hurt anybody or killed anybody.
12:12What sort of person was he?
12:14He was pretty thoughtful and real helpful with the baby.
12:17And even around the house, he was real helpful.
12:21He just wasn't the kind of person that could have killed somebody.
12:30His employers and colleagues could not believe it when Kenneth Bianchi was arrested.
12:35I thought he was very good, professional-wise, as far as security officer.
12:38And I told his employer when he came to me that I would like to have about, you know, 15 or 20 more like him because he handled his job very well.
12:47And I had a lot of faith in him and he was dependable.
12:50And he carried himself very neat and his uniform was very neat.
12:53My girlfriend and I went down to the security office here and applied for our job.
12:58And he was the first thing that we saw walk around the corner for our interview.
13:02And we both went, wow, look at that hunk.
13:04And when we went in for our interview, he was talking about his little boy and just a really nice guy.
13:11And then he came out to visit us a few times and helped us take down our tree and sent us flowers for Christmas.
13:18Just an all-around good guy.
13:20Could Ken Bianchi really be a killer?
13:23Even the chief of police had his doubts.
13:26My impression was, and I mentioned it to Bob Knudson from our department, that whoever did this, this is not the first time around.
13:33He's killed before.
13:34I think we both felt very strongly about that.
13:36On the other hand, the suspect, at that time, we knew somewhat his background, that he had been a security guard,
13:42was considered a good applicant for our own police department, was studying to be a sheriff's reserve officer.
13:48And that didn't really seem to blend with the evidence that this was someone who was not a neophyte killer.
13:57To the lawyer appointed to defend him, Bianchi presented further peculiarities.
14:02He seemed pretty normal, but there were some things that didn't fit.
14:07He indicated he didn't know anything about the homicides.
14:11And yet he gave a series of increasingly incredible explanations of what he had been doing on the night of the murders.
14:20And so I checked out the psychiatric background by calling Don Lundy from Stanford Medical School.
14:25Dr. Lundy was clinical associate professor of psychiatry and had been an expert witness in the Patty Hearst trial.
14:32The thing that puzzled me was that there were some things he seemed not to remember or had different versions of, which had no relation to the crime.
14:40And the two that stand out the most to my mind are his description of his mother as a wonderful saintly kind of woman when I knew from records from childhood and so on that that was not the case.
14:50And secondly, the fact that he had no memory, he had a loss of memory, amnesia, as we would call it, for various events in his childhood, including periods when he was in psychiatric treatment.
15:03And so I was puzzled by this.
15:05But other than that, he seemed like a nice enough fellow.
15:08This was how Bianchi came across to most of his interviewers.
15:12I don't remember. I just asked that. I don't know. I seriously don't remember.
15:16You can't remember what you ran the hundred years?
15:18It could have been very good.
15:20Oh, it might have been good.
15:21I really don't remember. I, I, uh, I thought about it.
15:27No, I think it was more like 10-1.
15:29Something like that.
15:30Good for high school.
15:3110-1. I, uh...
15:35Yeah, I was, I was always physically fit through high school, through college.
15:39Always, as a matter of fact, in college, I ran two to three miles every other day. I ran with a friend.
15:45One of the original doctors?
15:47Yeah, I, I just loved it.
15:49While psychiatrists continued to examine Bianchi, a Bellingham detective began telephone checks in Los Angeles because Bianchi had a California driver's license.
16:00During that conversation, he related the facts of how their case occurred.
16:05Our investigator said, have you ever heard about the Hillside Strangler?
16:08He said, no, that he hadn't.
16:10He said, I think you've got something there.
16:12It's awfully close to what we've been working on.
16:14Said he would get back to him.
16:16Subsequent to that, the investigator came to this machine, entered Kenneth Bianchi's name and his birth date.
16:22Received this teletype from Department of Motor Vehicles, says Kenneth Felicio Bianchi, 809 East Garfield, Apartment D.
16:30Christina Weckler, one of the victims, lived in Apartment C or E, right next door at 809 East Garfield.
16:36Also, Cindy Hudspeth, our last victim, lived across the street at 800 East Garfield.
16:42With this teletype, we had tied him into two of the murders right away.
16:46This looked like the break Los Angeles police had been waiting for.
16:50But could they prove it?
16:52They went to Bellingham, where Bianchi had been charged with murder, even though police there still had no conclusive evidence.
16:58Four weeks after Bianchi's arrest, officers Nolte and Knutson revisited the house where they believed the two women had been killed.
17:06Not so much by strangling, but by hanging.
17:10This staircase here in the city of Bellingham on Edgemoor, after four or five weeks of working this house,
17:18is where we finally located the evidence that positively put the suspect with the two girls,
17:24and the homicide of the two girls occurred on this sixth step right here.
17:29We discussed, many times, the method by which the girls were hung.
17:35And, of course, in a hanging there's a certain amount of violence, kicking, thrashing,
17:41and this residence had absolutely no sign of violence in it.
17:44There was no overturned furniture or anything.
17:46And the only place that it could logically have been done was within the stairwell.
17:51Fred and I came over and decided to start at the bottom of the stairwell
17:57and do a careful search for hairs and fibers.
18:01We spent four hours searching this stairwell.
18:04We started at the bottom with a bright light on our hands and knees and tweezers and worked our way up.
18:10When we got to the sixth step, we found a pubic hair, and when we got to approximately the ninth and tenth steps,
18:17we found long blonde and long dark haired.
18:20These hairs were later identified as belonging to our two victims,
18:24and the pubic hair was identified as belonging to Ken Bianchi.
18:29These hairs were the final piece of evidence that tied this case together for us.
18:35It put the cap on it. It was over. We were ready to go to court.
18:38That must have been quite a day. It was a hell of a day.
18:41But did Bianchi also commit the Los Angeles murders?
18:49L.A. Detective Dudley Varney had his doubts.
18:52The methods of strangulation were different.
18:55The Bellingham bodies were clothed, and those in Los Angeles were naked.
18:59But Varney did bring back a set of Bianchi's fingerprints from Bellingham
19:03to compare with the prints found during the Los Angeles investigation.
19:07Still, there was no real reason to believe they would match.
19:12This is the pulpit of Kenneth Bianchi that was brought in by Dudley Varney.
19:17I immediately noticed, however, that he had a pattern in one of his fingers
19:22that we had been looking at for probably close to a year.
19:27So I immediately examined that one print.
19:32Here is an enlargement of the left ring finger of Kenneth Bianchi.
19:39The characteristics present in this latent fingerprint
19:44and the characteristics present in this exemplar matched.
19:49And from these characteristics, I was able to make the identification.
19:55The more I began to look, the more things began to fall in.
20:00And before too much longer, I was jumping around here like a ping pong ball.
20:07I was elated. It was unbelievable.
20:09Thirteen months of this kind of work and coming on to identifying a suspect
20:16on a case like this was just the greatest thrill of my life.
20:19The police now felt that Bianchi was the hillside strangler
20:23and also had murdered the women in Bellingham.
20:25But had he acted alone?
20:27We were looking for a co-conspirator on this series of crimes.
20:32We were looking for an associate.
20:34And our conversation with Kelly Boyd became up with one answer.
20:38The only person that Kenneth ran with was Angelo Bono.
20:42We said, well, who else does he see?
20:44Does he go out drinking with the boys at night or stop for a beer
20:48or play games or play baseball or anything?
20:51And she just shook her head and said, no, the only time he's away from home,
20:54he's with Angelo.
20:55He only has Angelo.
20:57Angelo Bono was Kenneth Bianchi's cousin
21:00with whom he had lived when he first came to Los Angeles.
21:03Bono was a hard-working, well-respected car upholsterer
21:07who had renovated many antique cars for show business personalities.
21:11There was nothing to link him with any of the murders,
21:14but the police put him under 24-hour surveillance.
21:18Back in Bellingham, despite the fingerprint evidence,
21:21Bianchi continued to insist on his innocence.
21:24Between the publicity and the damages done to my family and to myself
21:28and to a point of where my lawyer and I just couldn't see eye to eye
21:34because I knew what I had done and I hadn't killed any girls.
21:38But police evidence was so strong that Bianchi's lawyers began to investigate
21:43whether his failure to remember meant he had serious psychological problems.
21:47Investigation now focused not on his guilt but on his state of mind.
21:51Dr. John Watkins, professor of psychology at the University of Montana,
21:55was asked by Bianchi's lawyers to use hypnosis to try to unblock Bianchi's memory.
22:00His arrival produced a sensational turning point in the case.
22:04He seemed to be an easy-going, nice, friendly young man like the boy next door.
22:09He was much more concerned about what was happening inside of himself
22:12than he was in regards to what the law might do to him.
22:15He didn't believe he could possibly have done these crimes
22:19and refused to allow his attorney to plead an insanity defense.
22:23And I spent about the first hour getting acquainted with him.
22:27Dr. Watkins visited Bianchi in the Bellingham jail.
22:31It was there that over 60 hours of interviews were eventually videotaped.
22:36And we're going to be tape recording, just a regular audio recording.
22:44And we also have some videotape here, which we may use later.
22:47And we'll use it only because it could be of help to you.
22:52I can't tell you I'm terrified about this whole thing.
22:54Dr. And if you agree to us.
22:56No, I don't mind.
22:57Something inside of me was just boiling.
23:00I don't know why it...
23:02I'm sorry I just ran out like that.
23:05I don't know why.
23:07I just ran out like that.
23:09I apologize.
23:10You feel okay now?
23:11Yes.
23:12Yes.
23:13Okay.
23:14Yes, dear.
23:15Well...
23:16I'd like to try a little something.
23:17I understand you better, okay?
23:18Okay.
23:19Okay.
23:20Yankee agreed to allow Dr. Watkins to hypnotize him in an attempt to restore his memory.
23:35I don't care.
23:36Can you let me just sit back?
23:37Yes.
23:38I'm just going to shut you up.
23:39Okay.
23:40Close your eyes, Ken.
23:41Um...
23:42You were telling me that you were feeling very uncomfortable.
23:48I was sort of wondering why that feeling of uncomfortableness.
23:49Over the next few weeks, in a single day, I was wondering why that feeling of uncomfortableness.
23:53Over the next few weeks, in a series of interviews that usually, but not always, included hypnosis.
23:54I was wondering why that feeling of uncomfortableness.
23:58And...
23:59I was wondering why that feeling of uncomfortableness.
24:03I was wondering why that feeling of uncomfortableness.
24:16Over the next few weeks, in a series of interviews that usually, but not always, included hypnosis, something totally unexpected happened.
24:24Dr. Watkins began to uncover an astonishing and different side to Kenneth Bianchi.
24:30I could, I could know a little more why that uncomfortableness is there.
24:56Yeah.
24:59Guess what?
25:04Hi.
25:05Hi.
25:07Are you Ken?
25:10Do I look like Ken?
25:14Well...
25:15No.
25:16Do you know who I am?
25:17Sure, I know who you are.
25:19Okay.
25:20Uh, you're Ken.
25:21You're a little disturbed of me.
25:22So what?
25:23Okay.
25:24We just understand each other.
25:25Okay.
25:26I don't like you.
25:27I don't like you at all.
25:28Well, why don't you like me Ken?
25:29Apparently, it isn't Ken, is it?
25:30No, it's not.
25:31It's Steve.
25:32Okay, Steve.
25:33This entity merged, and when I asked him if it was Ken, he said, no, it's Steve.
25:48I then talked to Steve about his situation.
25:55He kept talking about how he hated that turkey, meaning Ken, and how he was fooling that turkey.
26:03He also began to talk about the murders, said that he had conducted the murders, that Ken didn't know anything about it, and he laughed very heartily as he described how Ken would lose a tremendous amount of time.
26:23He asked me, he said, how would you feel if you lost more time than a broken clock?
26:28He also began to mention about killing those girls down in Los Angeles.
26:33Steve, the other personality, made a momentous confession.
26:38He admitted that he was the Hillside Strangler.
26:41Yeah, I killed the first girl.
26:43You killed the first girl.
26:45Who was she here?
26:46Do you know her?
26:47Uh, that nigger.
26:49Oh.
26:50Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, a black witch.
26:54I see.
26:55How did you happen to decide on her?
27:02Well, I didn't see anything wrong with it.
27:04It was just there.
27:10I must admit that I was quite surprised when this came out because I had been thinking in terms of an amnesia, maybe only possibly a mobile personality and only very possibly that he could be connected to the Hillside Strangler crimes.
27:23Multiple personality is a rare mental disorder made famous in the books Three Faces of Eve and Sybil and the movies which followed.
27:32These were true stories of people in whom two or more personalities existed in the same body.
27:38The claim that Bianchi, like Eve, had more than one personality transformed the case.
27:45In a true multiple personality, there are completely separate personalities within the same body.
27:50There may be two or three or four or more.
27:53Each one has its own identity.
27:55Each one has its own behaviors, its mannerisms, its speech.
27:59And, uh, when one is out, uh, it may be completely unaware of the existence of the others.
28:05In later interviews, Steve, Ken's other personality, went on to say that his cousin Angelo was the other killer.
28:11You wanna know which ones? See, I got your cake.
28:13Okay.
28:14You wanna know which ones Angelo and I did away?
28:17You think I'm not gonna tell you, huh?
28:19I don't know whether you're gonna tell me or not.
28:21Huh?
28:22I don't know whether you're gonna tell me or not.
28:24It's my decision, isn't it?
28:25I guess it is.
28:26Right.
28:29You don't have to take credit for any of them, you don't want to.
28:32Hey, man, it doesn't bother me any.
28:35Oh.
28:36You know, I told you, killing a broad doesn't make any difference to me.
28:39Why do you wanna tell me?
28:40Killing any fucking body doesn't make any difference to me.
28:41Yeah, well, maybe you didn't kill any of those, I don't know.
28:43Oh, hey, no wrong, Randy, I killed a couple of these.
28:46Oh, but come on.
28:47You think you did, right?
28:51I don't know.
28:54I killed her.
28:55Angelo killed her.
28:56They mean the Wagner one Angelo killed.
28:58This broad I'd never seen before.
29:00Markman.
29:01This broad I'd never seen before.
29:03Hudspeth, you never saw them at all?
29:04No.
29:05Huh?
29:06This broad I'd never seen before.
29:08Robinson.
29:09Yes.
29:10This broad I killed.
29:11These two Angelo killed.
29:12Make sure.
29:13Johnston.
29:14This one I'd never seen before.
29:16Angelo killed.
29:17Huh?
29:18This one I'd never seen before.
29:19This broad I killed.
29:20Mark, whom you've never seen before.
29:22And this Kasten is the broad you killed, you say.
29:25Am I going too fast, can you?
29:26Yeah, you're going to them, Pat.
29:27I'm not that smart.
29:28Okay.
29:29Okay.
29:30I'm not as bright as you are.
29:31So let's...
29:32Since...
29:33Since I enjoy your taste here and your interest, and I'm really, you know, very pleased that
29:38you've taken interest in this, I'm going to do you a favor and follow your script here,
29:42okay?
29:43Sure.
29:44Okay.
29:45So that you don't get lost along the way.
29:46Okay.
29:47See?
29:48All right.
29:49It's real easy.
29:50Yeah.
29:51What you understand is, this one I killed.
29:54These two I don't know about.
29:58This one I don't know about.
30:00This one I killed.
30:01This was the first one I killed.
30:03Yeah.
30:04I remember that cut.
30:05Could she have worn her hair differently or something?
30:07I don't know if I can remember.
30:08How would I know?
30:09Angelo...
30:10Angelo will be across, okay?
30:11I'll make it nice and easy for you.
30:12Yeah.
30:13He's my kind of man.
30:14Okay.
30:15There should be more people in the world like Angelo.
30:16All right.
30:17And the ones that Angelo are across, which ones are you then?
30:19I'm the X's.
30:20Oh, you're the X's.
30:21Yeah.
30:22You want me to write that on top so you can remember?
30:23Yeah.
30:24I don't sure.
30:25I don't know.
30:26You know what you're saying.
30:27You know?
30:28I don't know.
30:29I don't remember.
30:30You know something?
30:31I don't know if the fuck ever.
30:32How would I know?
30:33Angelo...
30:34Angelo...
30:35Angelo will be across, okay?
30:36I'll make it nice and easy for you.
30:37He's my kind of man.
30:38Okay.
30:39There should be more people in the world like Angelo.
30:40And the ones that Angelo's across and which ones are you then?
30:41Dr. Watkins' investigation had uncovered a violent character,
30:50horribly different from the all-American boy, Kenneth Bianchi,
30:53whom everyone had come to know.
30:56Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Bianchi's cousin Angelo denied any involvement.
31:01There was no evidence against him except what Steve had said.
31:06Ken's attorney told me that some interesting things were coming out.
31:11In the interviews, he asked me if I'd ever heard of the book
31:15Sybil or Three Faces of Eve, and I had heard of Sybil.
31:20And so I asked him what he meant, how that related to Ken.
31:24And he said that under hypnosis that another personality
31:31or another part of Ken's personality seemed to come out.
31:36And it was someone that acted like unlike anything that he had seen so far.
31:43And he asked me a lot of questions about what he was like before
31:47and tried to find out if I had ever seen any of that personality
31:51that had shown up on tapes in the jail during the interviews.
31:54What was the reaction of the Los Angeles police when they saw the videotapes?
32:08I almost threw up.
32:12I've seen hypnosis before.
32:16I've never seen anything quite like this.
32:19From that point on, it just looked like a sham.
32:22I've still got my notebook where, after viewing the first tapes,
32:24I wrote in there, this is bullshit, and underlined it three times.
32:27And what was Ken Bianchi's reaction when he was finally shown the tapes?
32:33Quite frankly, a little ways through the hypnosis session,
32:38it scared the hell out of me.
32:40I was just really surprised.
32:43You know, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing,
32:45and it just really bothered me really bad.
32:49I can't touch on all my feelings that I was having,
32:52but it just really bothered me.
32:53As a matter of fact, I couldn't go any further our way through this one particular tape.
32:59And I stopped, and Dean talked to me, and John talked to me,
33:03and they really helped a lot as far as putting some things in perspective
33:11and giving me support and things like that,
33:14and reinforcing the feelings that I actually had,
33:17but I had buried to let these other feelings out
33:22when I was, you know, so disturbed by what I saw.
33:26After viewing these tapes,
33:28Bianchi still said he could not remember the crimes
33:31and knew nothing of the personality called Steve.
33:34But for the first time, he did concede that his body must have done the murders.
33:40He entered an insanity defense before the Bellingham Court on March 29, 1979.
33:46If successful, he could avoid the death penalty,
33:49and perhaps eventually even win his freedom.
33:52The judge was faced with a dilemma.
33:55For seven weeks, Bianchi had refused an insanity defense.
33:59Now he had changed his mind.
34:02A panel of experts was appointed.
34:04The question,
34:06was Bianchi truly a multiple personality?
34:09Dr. Ralph Allison,
34:10a California psychiatrist and leading authority on multiple personality,
34:14was called in to advise the judge.
34:16He was independent of both the defense and the prosecution.
34:20The man was very pleasant, very nice, very courteous,
34:25you know, just an ordinary middle-class working fellow with a wife and child
34:29who had no idea how he got into this jam, totally baffled by it.
34:33And then during the session where he had gone into a trance,
34:38out came this monstrous personality that called himself Steve,
34:42had been to the killings and made it quite clear he didn't give a damn about human life.
34:46Angelo went and picked her up.
34:49I was waiting on the street.
34:51He drove her around to where I was.
34:53I got in the car.
34:55We got in the freeway.
34:57I fucked her and killed her.
34:59We jumped her body off, and that was it.
35:03Nothing to it.
35:04The only thing I had to go on in any of this
35:09was matching him off against what I had come to know about the patients that I had treated myself.
35:14And there are three basic areas.
35:16One is a history, and one is his appearance right there in front of me,
35:20and the third is certain psychological tests that you might apply.
35:25And certainly we had a good deal of history from him,
35:28psychological workups in his youth and doctor's reports,
35:32and it showed a tremendous amount of pathology and difficulty in the family.
35:36And all of this, you know, he was considered a very disturbed child.
35:40We collected the psychiatric records of Ken Bianchi.
35:42To give you an example, he was trotted from doctor to doctor with a series of physical ailments.
35:49His eyes rolled, he had tics, he fell down, he had what they thought were petty mal seizures.
35:55And the doctor said, see a psychiatrist.
35:58His mother took him to the DePaul Clinic.
36:00And these are quotes from their report.
36:04Quote,
36:05Dr. Dowling reported that Kenneth is a deeply hostile boy who has extremely dependent needs which his mother fulfills.
36:13He depends upon his mother for his very survival
36:16and expends a great deal of energy keeping his hostility under control and undercover.
36:22There seems some basic confusion about his own identity.
36:26He tries very hard to placate his mother, but she always seems dissatisfied.
36:30To sum up, Dr. Dowling said that he is a severely repressed boy who is very anxious and very lonely.
36:39Now, I then contacted the psychologist who wrote that report when he was 11 years old.
36:45He responded,
36:46During our interviews of the people that knew Bianchi, his co-workers, his friends, relatives, kids that he had grown up with,
37:10at no time were we able to come up with a personality change or a mood change.
37:18He's a very, very smart man.
37:20And I believe, to him, this is a challenge.
37:22I believe that he is playing a role and playing a part.
37:29I think it's part of his ego.
37:30I think he feeds his ego with it.
37:32And he's having the ball.
37:34We didn't rely just on the records.
37:36We found, for example, in his basement, this statue.
37:40This was traced to a high school sculpture class.
37:45Now, remember, the psychologist reported that he told them fun for him was playing games, scary games, in which he was the monster.
37:55This is the product of his sculpture.
37:59The mother had been recommended for therapy.
38:01The child had been recommended for therapy.
38:03Neither one had gone, so we knew no resolution had occurred.
38:06And then I did a hypnosis and tried to carry him back in time to see what kind of specific difficulties occurred between him and his mother.
38:15When I stopped at a certain age, I want you to feel as you were at that age.
38:22Not as you think you should have been or what you hoped you might have been, but as you really were.
38:26And being able then to talk to me about whatever kind of problems occurred to you at that age.
38:36As if you are going through those problems very recently, but are now able to express them to me as if I was a counselor there for you at that time.
38:47I'll just count backwards slowly and you'll allow your mind to gear into those age states as you get younger.
39:0027, go down to 26, 25, 11, 10, and 9.
39:12I want you to talk to the 9-year-old Ken in any way that is comfortable for you.
39:18Being 9 years old, being aware of me, not being bought by anything else, not being upset about what's in the surroundings.
39:28I'd like you to be the 9-year-old Ken telling me about what kind of important things have been going on with you in recent days.
39:37What's been going on with you in recent days?
39:42I've been playing.
39:47Been a lot of fights between my mom and dad.
39:54My mom hits me a lot.
39:56Your mom hits you?
39:59And he was a very lonely child.
40:01He felt that his mother kept his playmates away.
40:04He was the victim of her anger at her husband who was going out to the racetracks and losing a family paycheck.
40:14So she took it out on her son because his husband wasn't there.
40:17I don't want to get hit.
40:19When I do what I want to do, I get hit.
40:22I don't want to get hit anymore.
40:25She hits my dad.
40:26She hits me.
40:26She hits me.
40:34Where are you living now?
40:38In Green House.
40:40On what street?
40:43Villa Street.
40:44What town?
40:46Rochester, New York.
40:48Older.
40:52Just turning 9.
40:54How did you celebrate your 9th birthday?
41:02I thought I'd have a cake and a lot of friends over.
41:05Yeah.
41:08Mom got mad at me.
41:11I didn't have any of my friends over.
41:13I was going to have a party and there was no party.
41:18Where do you hide?
41:19Under my bed.
41:23In my closet.
41:27Behind the house.
41:33The best, the best place.
41:36Do you ever hide inside your own head?
41:45Sometimes, just to get away.
41:47What do you do in there?
41:51Talk.
41:54Anybody else here to talk to?
41:56My friend.
41:57Who's that?
42:00Stevie.
42:01He's my second best buddy.
42:04Was that a last name?
42:08He did have a last name.
42:11What was it?
42:15I can't remember.
42:16What's Stevie?
42:18Walker.
42:18Walker.
42:19Where did he get that name?
42:22You know his parents?
42:25He didn't have any parents.
42:26Stevie was alone.
42:28This is characteristic of most personalities.
42:31Because they just cannot run away physically.
42:34So they run away inside their minds.
42:36They create somebody who does the escape or handles it.
42:39It would seem that Ken coped with this by a process of denying that problems really occurred.
42:49That denying that his mother was being so hard on.
42:52She was in his mind a very loving person and he manufactured this fantasy.
42:57Because that didn't follow through.
42:58Then he would repress his feelings of anger toward her.
43:03Bury them in his mind somewhere.
43:05And this then would be walled off from the rest of his mind as a sewer.
43:10That's what would later erupt.
43:12But at the time he was a child he would pour more and more of his hostility, resentment toward her into this portion of his mind where he could store it up.
43:23Eventually it would erupt.
43:25And when it erupted these women got killed.
43:27They were raped and then killed.
43:28So I wrote a report to the judge stating my opinion.
43:34This is what I said to him.
43:37He said he is a dual personality and has been so since the age of nine.
43:42At that time he created an alter personality which took the name of Steve Walker.
43:46This was while he was hiding under the bed in his bedroom trying to escape his mother's vicious tongue and punishing hand.
43:52As time elapsed Steve Walker became more and more independent in action and was able to take over the body of Kenneth Bianchi.
44:00And caused a great deal of trouble in the family and later in the world outside the family.
44:06Then it concluded that Ken Bianchi is able to understand what he is charged with.
44:10But he has amnesia for the actual incidences during which his body was under the control of Steve Walker.
44:16Therefore he has not been able to discuss his whereabouts actions and motives with his attorney.
44:22Since all of that time is completely unknown to him.
44:25Steve Walker on the other hand does not consider Mr. Brett to be his attorney.
44:29Therefore at the present time I would not consider Ken Bianchi or Steve Walker competent to stand trial for the crimes charged.
44:37And that's what I reported to the judge.
44:39But the Bellingham investigators were not impressed by the videotaped interviews.
44:43And even less impressed by Dr. Allison.
44:46When he first came here and we were waiting to start a session.
44:49And we were standing around outside the area talking.
44:53And he indicated that it was very important to him to establish this multiple personality.
45:01Because he was close to a world record number of finds of multiple personalities.
45:08And he was writing a book or had a book going on this topic.
45:12And I felt that it was more important to him that the multiple personality be found than, in my mind, the facts of the case be brought forth.
45:24The Los Angeles police never had the opportunity to talk to the Steve personality.
45:29So they decided to take Ken back to Los Angeles.
45:32To the streets from which the victims had been abducted.
45:35To retrace the steps of each crime.
45:38While they were doing this, Bianchi began to remember more about the murders than he had so far admitted to the doctors.
45:44A couple of things that he told us about became very important in the case.
45:49One of the incidents was an incident involving Kathy Laurie.
45:53Kathy Laurie is a young daughter of Peter Laurie, a very famous Hollywood actor.
45:59Bianchi told us of this incident where they had stopped her on the streets in Hollywood a short distance from here.
46:06Around the time of the Judy Miller abduction, and using police badges, they had stopped her and told her that they were police officers.
46:18After asking her for identification, she presented a wallet.
46:22In the wallet, along with her identification, was a photograph of her as a youngster on her father's knee.
46:29And anybody that's grown up in this area or familiar with movies recognized Peter Laurie.
46:35Discretion, the better part of Valor, they decided they'd back off this one and let her go.
46:40She subsequently ended up taking us to the location where the incident that Bianchi related to us had occurred.
46:46And she described it exactly the way Bianchi described it.
46:49As far as I know, they were laughing at us behind our backs.
46:53They thought Bianchi was just putting on a real great show for us and leading us down the primrose path.
47:00They didn't understand how we could be fooled so easily, I think.
47:05But do you feel that it's a difficult condition to understand?
47:08Very difficult.
47:09I mean, we were trying to find out how these different sections of his mind were operating.
47:17And in the process, there had to be a leakage from one to the other.
47:22We could not help that.
47:24And when there's a leakage, then there's a change in the status.
47:27The part that didn't know about things now knew about things.
47:30So that means he can change from month to month.
47:33That means he can change from day to day.
47:35And there was at least one point where he had a major change,
47:39where one night a lot of awareness of the crime suddenly came into his mind.
47:44He became acutely suicidal.
47:46He called for his lawyer.
47:47They had a meeting, and he calmed down.
47:50From then on, he had no doubt he had done the crime.
47:54And he certainly was a great deal different to an examiner because he didn't deny it anymore.
48:00In July 1979, six months after his arrest,
48:04Ken Bianchi, as Ken, began to remember the Los Angeles murders.
48:09Without hypnosis, he described them to Dr. Lundy.
48:12And then they were brought into, all the killings occurred in the spare room next to the bathroom.
48:23Wait a minute, we skipped the sex here.
48:25Oh, we're not there yet.
48:27Oh, okay.
48:28The hands are tied, and then they're taken to...
48:30The hands are tied, and then they're taken into the spare room next to the bathroom.
48:33That's when there was sex with the girls.
48:49After that, they were untied, allowed to dress themselves, tied up again, and they sat back on the bed.
49:08And meanwhile, the, the, um...
49:14Everything was made ready.
49:17They were then...
49:19What did that involve everything made ready?
49:22Um, getting the rope, uh, to kill them with.
49:25Okay.
49:27Or whatever.
49:29Okay, come on.
49:31I can't believe I'm talking about this.
49:33I've come a long way, Dr. Lundy.
49:39Four experts now agreed Bianchi was insane.
49:43And the county prosecutor feared he could go free.
49:47I was very concerned.
49:49I spoke to the defense attorney, and, uh, he's a person I've worked with on many cases, and he's a very straightforward attorney.
49:55And he was absolutely convinced that Mr. Bianchi was a multiple personality, and felt that he could actually convince me of that.
50:01And he believed that he would be acquitted by reason of insanity.
50:04That concerned me a great deal, because that meant he would be out on the streets if he could just convince a number of psychiatrists that he was cured of his problem, which I felt he could easily do.
50:13So how did you handle this?
50:15We sought a, an expert in hypnosis, and we, in fact, we obtained a worldwide recognized expert, Dr. Orne.
50:23Dr. Martin Orne is professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
50:28Could he shed new light on Kenneth Bianchi?
50:34Uh, he seemed like a pleasant, cooperative individual, but whenever I see an individual in a forensic situation, uh, somebody accused of premeditated murder facing a death penalty,
50:46I always have to ask myself, is this individual telling me how he really feels, or is he malingering or faking?
50:56Because, after all, there's a tremendous motivation to appear insane, and that way not be responsible for the things he did.
51:05And so that before you can make a diagnosis, well, I have to decide whether he is for real.
51:11I've met Ken, but I haven't met Steve yet.
51:16So I'd like to meet Steve for a bit.
51:18What do you want?
51:31I'd like to talk to you.
51:36I want a fucking cigarette.
51:38I don't have a cigarette.
51:40Give me a cigarette.
51:40During hypnosis, Steve appeared for Dr. Orne, as he had for Drs. Watkins and Allison.
51:47But this time, there was a new surprise.
51:50Other personalities also appeared.
51:52I knew that he had been appointed by the prosecuting attorney, and the hopes were that he would demolish the insanity defense by showing no evidence of a multiple personality.
52:04And here I saw the personalities laid out.
52:07I mean, Ken was there, and clearly Steve came out.
52:12And then we had this little boy that was a scared little kid.
52:15And I thought, my goodness, Dr. Orne's now on the side of truth and justice.
52:23You know, he will now be able to testify that he's got a multiple personalities.
52:28So I was very happy with it.
52:29I thought it was a very good presentation.
52:33But Dr. Orne thought there was another possibility.
52:37Bianchi could be faking.
52:39Orne asked Bianchi directly.
52:41You have to recognize, given your ability and your motivation, the possibility of your using a multiple personality,
52:57perhaps even using some of the psychiatrists, psychologists who saw you, to your own ends,
53:06has to be considered very seriously.
53:11Sure, absolutely.
53:13And I don't think it has been considered thus far.
53:19How do I know that you didn't try to cook this?
53:26Is Dr. Orne right?
53:28Did Bianchi cook it?
53:30The other psychiatrists were convinced he was insane.
53:33The police were equally convinced that Bianchi had fooled the experts.
53:39They feared that two mass murderers, Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Bono, could go free.
53:46But can the police prove their case?
53:50Is Kenneth Bianchi insane?
53:51Or is he a cold-blooded killer faking insanity?
53:55Next week, we'll bring you part two of The Mind of a Murderer.
54:02Dr. Martin Orne, the psychiatrist brought in by the prosecution, continues his study of Kenneth Bianchi.
54:09Dr. Orne pulls a dramatic surprise.
54:12He replays key sections of the interview tapes, retests Bianchi, and submits a startling diagnosis.
54:18Kenneth Bianchi is a streetwise and dangerous psychopath who brilliantly fooled four psychological experts.
54:26Either he is giving me a bare-faced lie, and he's been accused of being a pathological liar by many people,
54:34or the same thing could be explained by his being a multi-personality and really not knowing.
54:40And the problem is to distinguish between these two possibilities.
54:44The behavior could be explained in both ways.
54:47I couldn't see that this was fake.
54:50I couldn't see that it was a play act.
54:53And I really couldn't comprehend his reasoning.
54:56I was totally baffled.
54:57Well, he's a man with a tremendous ego that is intelligent, has the ability to do whatever he wants to do.
55:05But he is also a multiple murderer.
55:06Who is right?
55:07Dr. Orne or the other experts?
55:09The surprising conclusion to the mind of a murderer, next week on Frontline.
55:15I'm Judy Woodruff.
55:16The
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