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01:00It was a county fire department helicopter that first spotted the victim's car
01:21over a cliff on Angeles Crest Highway above La Cunada.
01:25Twenty-year-old Cindy Lee Hutspeth died by strangulation.
01:31Ms. Hutspeth's nude body was found stuffed in the car's trunk.
01:35There were marks on her neck and chest.
01:36That's the word from the coroner's office,
01:38lending just a little more credence to the contention
01:41that the tall, attractive girl was the hillside strangler's victim.
01:44We are seeing that she is a strangler victim, yes.
01:49Somebody, one killer, or a team, has been murdering young girls.
01:53Lots of them.
01:54The other victims were found nude on hillsides,
01:57also in the northern part of Los Angeles County.
02:00They ranged in age from 12 to 28.
02:06Darkness manifests however it can, in whatever way it can.
02:12Big fucking deal, so I killed a couple of kinds.
02:14It's no fucking big deal.
02:16I killed four.
02:17I got one in a couple.
02:20How's it going?
02:22Strangling them all.
02:23It's the easiest way to go.
02:27What's the attitude of this community today?
02:30It's very tense.
02:32It's very nervous.
02:33It just scares me.
02:36I can't, I'm afraid to go anywhere alone.
02:39The places where they found the bodies were our backyard.
02:42What were her last moments like?
02:43What were her last moments like?
02:44They brutally killed these women.
02:482,081 clues have been reported to the task force.
02:52All of them are investigated as quickly as they possibly can be.
02:57We don't think that enough is being done.
03:00And fast enough.
03:01We want that!
03:03It was a collective trauma broadcast into people's living rooms.
03:09No matter what the situation is, you fight.
03:12You fight for your life.
03:13The city of Los Angeles, our first stop, Hollywood.
03:18Suddenly, the film studios, that had always seemed bigger than life, were right behind the scenes.
03:22The city of Los Angeles, our first stop, Hollywood.
03:25The city of Los Angeles, our first stop, Hollywood.
03:44Suddenly, the film studios, that had always seemed bigger than life, were right there.
03:52Star-studded, isn't it?
03:53It's incredible, isn't it?
03:55It was in the music, it was on television, and people believed it.
04:01So beautiful out.
04:02This could only happen in L.A.
04:05They're hearing all this stuff, they're seeing these things.
04:09It'll be great.
04:10My life will be just like paradise.
04:12Come to L.A.
04:13L.A. will surprise you.
04:17Well, with the dreamers...
04:21...come the predators.
04:25Sharks go where the food is.
04:33Nobody's worth it out there.
04:35It's just a fucked up world.
04:37I want to kill those broads.
04:39This was the highlight of, you know, the discos and the private nightclubs.
04:49After nightclubs would close, men would drive down Sunset Boulevard.
04:53There was 50, 60 girls working on one corner.
04:57The girls on the street came in contact with everything and all the lowlifes, that's for sure.
05:05So I went out on the streets and interviewed many of them.
05:10Lois Lee, a sociologist who works with prostitutes in the Hollywood area.
05:14Because of the adversity, people who didn't care about prostitutes, the way law enforcement treated them.
05:22I met girls on the street and ended up meeting Yolanda Washington.
05:28Yolanda was a very pretty little black girl who was working to support her daughter.
05:34Yolanda came to L.A. to be a model and this is what happens so often.
05:44People come to a place like Los Angeles and they try to make it and they find themselves just scraping to survive.
05:50And she basically was forced into survival type sex work in Hollywood.
05:58Friends called me up one day and said, remember that girl you met on the streets with us?
06:04And I go, well, which one was that?
06:05And she says, the black girl and it was Yolanda.
06:08And I said, yeah.
06:13And she said, she's dead.
06:16Getting killed was an occupational hazard.
06:25She was 19 years old.
06:27She was a sex worker.
06:28She was found posed.
06:30She was naked.
06:31She'd been strangled to death.
06:34And she was found on Forest Lawn right near Warner Brothers Studios.
06:40I talked to the police and I took them out to introduce them to the girls because the girls on the street had information.
06:46And LAPD homicide just snubbed them.
06:50They said to me, what do you think?
06:51The whores are going to solve this murder investigation?
06:56Nobody really cared.
06:59At the time she died, I don't even know if there was an investigation.
07:05It's the belief that Yolanda was working under the control of a pimp.
07:10In the 70s, there were sex workers being murdered all over Los Angeles.
07:19Everybody kind of turned a blind eye.
07:21Prostitutes were seen as they're only hurting themselves, so who cares?
07:25That was the attitude.
07:29Predators can single you out from the herd, separate you, and you're gone before anyone even misses you.
07:36I'd only been in homicide a year and a half.
07:37I'd only been in homicide a year and a half.
07:53I can't tell you the exact numbers per year, but we worked in a number of the homicides in Los Angeles County.
07:54I can't tell you the exact numbers per year, but we worked a number of the homicides in Los Angeles County.
08:01and a number of the homicides in Los Angeles County.
08:05Nothing really surprises you after a while.
08:08Pick up three!
08:15I got a call at home, said that they had a case,
08:19a dead young female, nude, laying in the front yard.
08:25The witness who lived there knew that there were
08:27a number of kids that walk out going to school,
08:31so we covered the body with a tarp.
08:35The way the crime scene was laid out,
08:38she was laying in a bed of, like, ice plant.
08:41Whoever placed her there picked out that spot
08:46for whatever reason, which I couldn't understand.
08:50We processed the scene.
08:52She'd been strangled.
08:54You could see ligatures on her ankles.
08:58We canvassed the neighborhood.
09:00No evidence, no witnesses.
09:04Homicides were common.
09:08We had four or five hundred a year,
09:11which is more than one a day.
09:16It was just another young lady that was murdered and dumped.
09:20But before we get our victim identified,
09:27Glendale Police Department calls us and says,
09:30they've got a case
09:34where a young female was dumped nude
09:38about seven, eight miles away from ours.
09:41The victim was Lisa Caston.
09:42She was a 21-year-old waitress and dancer
09:45working with a troupe called L.A. Knockers.
09:47She was last seen leaving her place of work
09:48on Hollywood Boulevard.
09:51Lisa was found nude with very distinctive ligature marks
09:54at the side of the road by the Chevy Chase Country Club
09:56in Glendale.
09:57The first victim was still unidentified
09:59and in the coroner's office.
10:01He went to the Lisa Caston autopsy.
10:03We had the coroner's
10:24And as soon as you looked at them,
10:28it was no doubt.
10:28They had the exact same ligature marks on the throat.
10:33on the wrists and on the ankles.
10:37Looks like they came out of a Xerox machine.
10:42At that point, we knew we were looking for an individual responsible for both murders.
10:50Whoever killed Kasten killed our Jane Doe.
10:54One of the first things we did is we looked for other body dumps that may be similar to ours.
11:01We found the Yolanda Washington case that was over off Forest Lawn Drive.
11:07She had been manually strangled, so we didn't connect that case to ours immediately.
11:23We didn't have a starting point, so our goal was trying to identify our Jane Doe.
11:31She had been laid in this plant material.
11:37A number of ants and other insects had bitten her.
11:41So we had one of our staff artists come in and draw a picture of her in an attempt to get her identified.
11:48As a result, we started receiving numerous calls about our victim being possibly the name of Judy.
11:56No last name, Judy.
11:58That Judy hung out on Hollywood Boulevard.
12:02So we went down there trying to find somebody that knew her.
12:08Hollywood is not what most people think of it, or as it's portrayed in movies.
12:14We were talking to people with no names.
12:20Prostitutes, male and female, street people.
12:24A lot of these girls came from such terrible families.
12:29Parents didn't care where they were.
12:31Some of them didn't even know that their child, you know, was prostituting.
12:36It was very, very sad.
12:40One of the kids we talked to said she lives with her mother and father in a small hotel off of Hollywood Boulevard.
12:50So we went down to that apartment, knocked on the door.
12:54Is your daughter home? No. Have you seen her recently?
12:57And she said no, because she runs away all the time.
13:02She said the last time she saw her, she was walking on the other side of Hollywood Boulevard,
13:07and we waved to each other.
13:16We positively ID'd our Jane Doe as Judy Miller.
13:22She was 15 years old.
13:25She was a runaway, and at 15 there's not a whole lot you can do for a living.
13:32She was engaged in sex work.
13:35She wasn't in the true sense of a prostitute.
13:38She would spend the night with somebody if they'd provide them a room and a meal.
13:43It was a survival instinct.
13:46When prostitutes were killed, there wasn't any coverage
13:52because the news responds to the appetite of the American people.
13:58I just don't think anybody cared.
14:03Once we got Jane Doe identified as Judy Miller,
14:06then one of the things we were trying to do is to see if we could connect Judy with Lisa Kasten.
14:13One was a runaway, and one was working at a restaurant.
14:18No connection, other than the fact that both of them lived in the Hollywood area.
14:25During that time period, Hollywood Boulevard was overrun with young people
14:34who were runaways from all over the United States.
14:37The kids down there, they didn't know what day it was.
14:42I've been living in Los Angeles since 1975.
15:01I would cut school and take the bus off to Hollywood Boulevard.
15:07The reason all of the people in the punk scene were living there was because it was the only thing we could afford.
15:26We're all living within blocks of each other.
15:28It just became like a punk rock neighborhood.
15:45The punk scene was very close-knit.
15:51Like a club or a cult of people together.
15:58We were wild, crazy young people that were out all night.
16:03Normally, it wouldn't occur to anybody to walk home in a group.
16:21But our friend Jane had been missing, and everybody was terrified.
16:30A highway worker discovered this body.
16:3128-year-old Jane King.
16:33Described by her mother as a free spirit.
16:35Anyone who would do a thing like that, there would have to be something awfully terribly wrong with them.
16:36I don't know.
16:37I don't know.
16:38I don't know.
16:39I don't know.
16:40I don't know.
16:41I don't know.
16:42I don't know.
16:43I don't know.
16:44I don't know.
16:45I don't know.
16:46I don't know.
16:47I don't know.
16:48I don't know.
16:49I don't know.
16:50A highway worker discovered this body.
16:5228-year-old Jane King.
16:53Described by her mother as a free spirit.
16:58And anyone who would do a thing like that, there would have to be something awfully terribly wrong with them.
17:11This photo is always on our mantle.
17:16I mean, look at those shoes.
17:18Very 70s.
17:19I love the platform.
17:21Very kind of.
17:23Stevie Nicks long skirt.
17:27Yeah.
17:28From what I know from all the letters I've read, Jane was a free spirit.
17:39Very creative, taking voice lessons and acting classes.
17:46When you look at these pictures and you look at her smiling, I would like to think that I myself haven't lost the whimsy.
17:56And the magic that I think Jane had.
18:01But these photos of Jane are all we have.
18:09During the time that we're investigating Kasten and Miller, we started picking up on the series of cases from LAPD and from Glendale.
18:26Police had their first hard leads.
18:29A 28-year-old woman and then three girls.
18:32Series of crimes committed in the Los Angeles area.
18:34A baffled Los Angeles police department announced.
18:36They said they were beating up their investigative forces.
18:39Four young ladies went missing in a very short period of time.
18:44It's obvious that a series is in progress.
18:48The killer was still out there looking for victims.
18:54On November 9th, there was Jane King.
19:11On November 13th, there was Dolores Cepeda and Sonya Johnson.
19:16And then on the 19th, we've got Christina Weckler.
19:21We've got all these bodies showing up.
19:24The body of 28-year-old Jane King was found close to the Los Feliz off-ramp of the Interstate 5 freeway.
19:30The M.O. was so much alike.
19:33From Jane King to Christina Weckler.
19:41Nude, dump, ligature strangulation.
19:46And then we had Dolores Cepeda and Sonya Johnson.
20:02They're 12 and 14.
20:05We had no witnesses.
20:07We had no physical evidence.
20:09All we had was the nude, great bodies of these two young girls on a hillside.
20:17We had school children lost something so insidious.
20:27They had been at Eagle Rock Plaza shopping, because that's what girls do.
20:31And they were last seen kind of leaning into a car, talking to someone in a car.
20:37I have no words to describe how disgusting it was.
20:44Those poor little girls.
20:49The adult victims, it was tragic and bad enough.
20:53But these are young children.
20:55And that, I think, upped the ante for everybody.
21:00There is murder, bloody and foul, in the otherwise peaceful area around Glendale, California.
21:06There's a killer loose in the Los Angeles area.
21:09There may be more than one raping and strangling young women.
21:13We've had six bodies.
21:16The media went crazy over it.
21:20The search for the hillside strangler continues.
21:25Okay.
21:26And that's when the name, the hillside strangler, was coined by the media.
21:33It became the most publicized case at that point, I think, in Los Angeles history.
21:38Stand by, here we go.
21:39Second case.
21:40Three, one, thirty.
21:41This was the era in which TV news was becoming a show format.
21:47So sex and death becomes a primary driver because that was what sold the news.
21:55All were nude and most have been sexually molested.
21:59That gives me the chills.
22:03I don't want, you know, it to happen to me or any of my friends or my mother or anybody, you know.
22:08At that point, the only connection between these cases was the MO.
22:18Nude bodies, no trauma, ligature marks where they were, and dumped.
22:25But there was no connection between the victims whatsoever.
22:31So we had no way of knowing how these victims were selected.
22:36You know, it's frustrating.
22:55The victim's body was found in an isolated hillside area of Los Angeles.
23:13The victim was in her early twenties with red hair.
23:16Her nude body was dumped on the roadside.
23:19But at this point, there are no suspects and not many clues to go on.
23:28Lauren Wagner's victim number eight.
23:34When her body was found, she had electrical burns.
23:40It was an escalation in the violence.
23:44This is literally now torture.
23:46That's a level of sadism you don't always see in crimes.
23:54And that's something that investigators could focus on.
24:01When the Lauren Wagner murder occurred, the investigation led back to her home.
24:09Los Angeles Police Department detectives discovered a witness
24:12that had actually seen the kidnapping of Miss Wagner as she was arriving home.
24:23One neighbor heard a commotion last night about 10 o'clock.
24:27She saw Lauren Wagner out here.
24:29Lauren apparently got out of her car and got into a car with at least two men in it and drove away.
24:34That sort of solidified in our mind that we were dealing with two individuals committing these murders.
24:41It sort of took my thought process back to the Miller case where my impression was that two people were involved in how the body was placed and how she was found.
24:52As an investigator, you look at that as a break.
24:59Because if you have two, one's going to be the weak link.
25:04It's going to roll on as partner.
25:06Other than the fact that there were two suspects, this witness described how Wagner was abducted.
25:11It appeared like there were police officers talking to her and it looked like a police stop.
25:22The press jumped on that.
25:24Officers from the Police Department's Major Crimes Investigation Section are currently going through the active personnel files of police officers in Los Angeles.
25:34I want to make that very, very clear.
25:37We don't suspicion any of our police officers, but again, we don't want to disregard anything.
25:44There was a term that was used. It was called blue clues.
25:48Those were clues that were pointed at a specific police officer as possibly being a suspect.
25:55It was not unusual to hear about guys pretending to be undercover police officers, arresting a prostitute, and then pretending they're taking him into the jail, but then say, you know, I hate to do this.
26:16And basically, they'd work on an arrangement where the girl would give them sex and then they let them go.
26:21These killers probably utilize that in order to fool the women.
26:34So you're afraid?
26:36Yes, all of us are afraid.
26:40I'm, like, afraid to go outside, you know, and ride my bike.
26:44And, yeah, I'm afraid of it.
26:47Many women are enrolling in classes for self-defense.
26:51Then I turn my hips again, hitting here.
26:54Other women are purchasing guns.
26:57Officials say gun sales to women are going up.
27:00Women were quite traumatized.
27:03It's very frightening.
27:05I mean, you would go into a hardware store and there wouldn't be locks, because women had run down to buy all the locks to lock everything.
27:11The Strangler case makes a grim fact vividly clear.
27:14From the tree-lined streets of the suburbs all the way to the honky-tonk back alleys of the red light district, there's no way people can totally protect themselves from a madman who apparently chooses his victims at random.
27:29How has the Hillside Strangler affected your business and the way you do business?
27:37Dropped it 100%.
27:39He is right in this area, almost on this exact corner right now.
27:45I'm gonna wanna die.
27:46I was coming home one night and a male and a female cop stopped me and said, you look like you're in a gang.
28:05The lady just started frisking me and she found a pearl-handled switchblade.
28:12If you're not in a gang, why do you have a knife?
28:17I just said, the Hillside Strangler.
28:21Hillside Strangler.
28:24One, two.
28:25No rhyme or reason, just up in season, the cops can't find me.
28:32I don't have any indication of what type of suspect we're dealing with, or a description of a suspect, or any physical evidence that would indicate anything to us in regards to a suspect.
28:46Hillside Strangler!
28:51Shit, just catching.
28:56At that point, we have these six bodies and we have no suspects whatsoever.
29:04It's mind-boggling, it's frustrating, but we tried to concentrate on our case and develop as much information on it and still try to learn what was being developed on these other cases from LAPD and from Glendale.
29:22So it makes it much more difficult.
29:28Los Angeles, just by its very nature, is serial killer friendly.
29:33You're almost always close to a freeway.
29:36You can cross jurisdictions, multiple jurisdictions, in 15 or 20 minutes.
29:41And in the 70s, you have an amazingly mind-boggling patchwork quilt of law enforcement all over Los Angeles.
29:55That's perfect for someone who wants to commit a crime.
30:01You could kill someone on the west side and dump them on the east side.
30:05There might not be any crosstalk. They have no idea.
30:15The Los Angeles police don't know if they're looking for one killer or for several.
30:20But Frank Bergholzer reports a special task force has been formed to find out.
30:28Right from the get-go, we had about 24 people following up on what leads we were getting and trying to see where it would lead us.
30:38The police had a really tough time.
30:42They were working 20 hour days and they just could not find the offenders,
30:47largely because they had not left any clues.
30:52They didn't have much forensically to go on.
30:54We're frustrated because we don't have enough evidence to give us enough to...
31:01No, send it to me.
31:09Despite hours of work by detectives from the Sheriff's Department, Glendale Police and Los Angeles Police,
31:15the 52-man task force has not been able to crack the Strangler case.
31:19The mayor of L.A. was putting pressure on the police.
31:21The governor was putting pressure on the police.
31:24You know, as long as there were killings going on, it caused the pressure to build even more.
31:31Even the head of the task force trying to catch the killer was forced to admit
31:36the Hillside Strangler has a knack for the deadly game he's playing.
31:40Officers say their efforts so far have produced very little.
31:44From the time the task force started and enlarged itself to over 100,
31:49there was no significant progress whatsoever as far as a viable suspect.
31:55It had been just over two weeks since the last body was found.
31:58The longest period the Strangler had gone between killings.
32:00Police were hopeful that publicity might have scared him off, but apparently not.
32:01It had been just over two weeks since the last body was found.
32:04The longest period the Strangler had gone between killings.
32:06Police were hopeful that publicity might have scared him off, but apparently not.
32:10Victim number nine was Kimberly Martin, and she's 17.
32:17As with the other victims, there was no attempt to hide the body.
32:19It seemed to be a brutal, open display of the Strangler's work.
32:28Not only are there photographs of her at ground level, there are aerial photographs of her in full view.
32:53If you stood on the hill and faced the direction her body was facing, you could see City Hall.
33:07It was almost like the perpetrator wanted to just give a giant middle finger to all of Los Angeles.
33:18They were playing to the media on this one.
33:25You've got to deal with this, and that's a tough thing to do.
33:32When Kimberly Martin got killed and it was front page news,
33:35I think the public thought that the police were not doing their job.
33:39Let's face it, there was just a lot of fumbling all the way around,
33:44because I knew what happened.
33:46And the night Kimberly was killed, a prostitute from an escort service called me.
33:53She said, you know, I've sent out a girl and I can't find her.
33:58And so I said to her, okay, do you have the phone number he called from?
34:02She said, yeah.
34:03She said, it's a pay phone.
34:05He claimed it was his home phone number, which was a lie.
34:10And so I called the police and I said, there's a prostitute who's been sent out to meet a man.
34:17Here's the address where she was sent. We believe there's foul play.
34:21There's a lot of people, because you can't find out there.
34:23There's no one that's not there, but it's not there.
34:24No, no, no.
34:26No, no, no.
34:28No, no.
34:29No, no, no.
34:31No.
34:32No, no, no.
34:33No, no, no.
34:34No, no, no.
34:36No, no, no.
34:37when she failed to telephone the service that she had arrived they became suspicious and called an
34:59organization known as California Association for Trollops I kept calling LAPD and they kept
35:06referring me to different office to a different office to the strangulation task force that they
35:10couldn't do anything they said she's just a whore she just changed trick pads on you wanna send a
35:15police car there potentially could have checked that phone with right then and there and to check
35:20the people that where the phone call was made to see if anyone had seen this man if they would
35:25have gone when I called Kimberly Martin would have been alive Kimberly and I were friends our
35:34relationship was like I was an older sister to her we did everything together I met her when she was 16
35:41I heard on a radio that another body was found and it had a cross with four dots on her arm and that's
35:51her tattoo so I started screaming this was shocking to me my whole life became the news then well these
36:07murders it's awful and something like this has a fallout they have to try to solve it
36:16police say they don't know whether they're looking for one killer or many killers and they have no
36:23suspects there was a time there when due to the pressure and attention in the communities that our
36:30brass they wanted to hang this thing on somebody and make it go away and the press had their own pet
36:37suspect police have questioned a man with long hair and a mustache who walks with a limp he is no
36:44longer a suspect friends of Ned York say the actor is a soft-spoken religious man they were stunned when
36:53he called the Los Angeles police claiming he was the hillside strangler York was unintelligible when he
36:58was questioned but police booked him on suspicion now they say his battling may have been caused by
37:03drugs and they do not believe he has committed the crimes they will likely let the bit part actor go
37:09this weekend
37:19after Martin was the longest period of time between murders
37:25we went through December January
37:28we started wondering what's happened we're the killer killer is that we're waiting for other bodies to start showing up
37:58we hour
38:07the
38:10you
38:12you
38:18it was a county fire department helicopter that first spotted the victim's car
38:31it was in an isolated spot three miles north of los angeles in the angeles national forest
38:38the victim was found in the trunk of her new car 50 feet down a steep hillside
38:44remove the body we take a closer look then we saw the ligature marks real clear there are striking
38:55similarities between the other victims and this victim we are saying that she is a strangler victim
38:59yes she was Cindy Hudspeth pushed over a cliff
39:14so you can see that they escalated and now it's this dramatic display in Los Angeles another young
39:25woman strangled in the hills a 20 year old bank clerk who taught Bible classes and wanted to be
39:30an actress funeral services were held today it was somber and emotional two of those attending
39:38the services fainted and had to be brought outside this house back lived with a roommate in this
39:44middle-class section of Glendale California the 800 block of Garfield Avenue in Glendale is a quiet
39:49street Michelle Exner who first reported Cindy missing Thursday night was accompanied by two
39:55deputies to the 160 dollar a month apartment they share a 19 year old neighbor Bob Young dated Cindy
40:01occasionally and attended class with her at Glendale College she was pretty conservative she
40:06frequented discos quite a bit she was an excellent dancer when I got home from work my roommate had
40:14the TV on with the news and that's how I found out we were pretty close and she was like my little sister we
40:27would go dancing different clubs to partake in dance contest and she really wanted to become a good
40:33dancer and even professional we had fun together I was devastated you know it's like why she had goals
40:51and she worked hard to get what she wanted she ended up buying a Datsun b210 and it was a brand new car and
40:59she was so proud of that she felt like she had accomplished in one of her dreams you know being
41:04able to own a brand new car she didn't deserve for this to happen to her when it comes that close to
41:15home you realize guess what it happens to all kinds of people not because they did anything because they
41:23were women they were like pieces of meat to them and it didn't matter how old or what they were all 10
41:31victims of these murders were different but when you look at it superficially in the news what they
41:37talk about is who she was where she was that's the kind of judgment that was made a lot of times maybe
41:47she was in a place where she shouldn't have been didn't she know better I just it so bothers me
41:56that characterizations of the victims it's a it's a cruel thing to do to just to sell a newspaper the
42:02portrait of Cindy Lee Hutzpah that emerges is one of being a nice girl her lifestyle doesn't bear much
42:08resemblance to the other murdered girls the research of journalists was what did these women do to cause
42:15them to have this happen this doesn't say violence against women is ubiquitous in almost every form of
42:24media this says individual women have been victimized through some fault of their own
42:31and the media in LA in particular had chosen to depict all these murders without any consciousness
42:46about how it would affect women when Cindy's nude body was found on the roadside we were pretty angry
43:16I am here for the rage of all women I am here for women fighting back warning and ray as we recognize
43:45our own collective strength through action
43:49for all of the women here now for all of the women who will see them we are here today in memory of the ten women
44:03even callous workers in downtown Los Angeles had never seen anything like this which was exactly the effect
44:22these women were trying to create we were critiquing the media coverage of the hillside strangler
44:29memorial mixed with Greek theater women expressing their personal grief and anger over the recent strangulation murders in the area
44:38in memory of our sisters we quiet back but they pointed out that the killings were just part of what they called an ongoing condition of violence against women
44:48we are here in memory of all women who have been and are being battered raped and killed throughout this country
45:00and I think for us really sharing this kind of grief as well as this rage for what women were going through and what we were going through in LA was critically important
45:16after Hudspeth nothing was occurring
45:30no more victims
45:35our leads were petering out
45:38you don't want to wish for one more but give us one more chance type of thing
45:45you know
45:48when's the next one going to happen
45:51but then
45:53it stopped
45:56and without having caught a killer
45:59everyone is just relieved but still uneasy
46:02because you just don't know what happened
46:05the big thing is why they were so active
46:19and all of a sudden now there's nothing
46:22the killers had done a good job
46:24they did not leave their fingerprints and DNA analysis was not yet a thing
46:28the case really went cold
46:31in January 1979 the hillside strangler task force was gutted to a shadow of itself
46:40it was whittled down to just a dozen officers
46:44we went back into the rotation you know working other cases it's never an ideal situation
46:57you think god you can't let a string of ten murders just die a natural death
47:03in January 1979 I got a car
47:32I got a call at home
47:34two young women were murdered in Bellingham Washington
47:37it was a double murder
47:39they were strangulation murders
47:41and they've got a guy in custody up there with a California driver's license
47:45so they asked me to do a background check
47:48went into the system and I started running them
47:52Kenneth Alicio Bianchi
47:56the investigator came to this machine
47:59entered Kenneth Bianchi's name and his birth date
48:01received this teletype from Department of Motor Vehicles
48:06says Kenneth Alicio Bianchi 809 East Garfield Apartment D
48:09Christina Weckler one of the victims lived in apartment C or E right next door at 809 East Garfield
48:15also Cindy Hudspeth our last victim lived across the street at 800 East Garfield
48:20not only had he lived in the same street as two victims he lived in the same apartment block
48:27so I went downtown pulled the suspect printouts looked down the line
48:35Bianchi one two three four five times he's in there five times
48:41there was no doubt that the hillside strangler squad should have taken Ken Bianchi seriously as a suspect
48:48and they followed up they were on the next flight up there to Bellingham
48:55to find out what they could about this suspect
48:59it was a rush
49:01we've got a good suspect here
49:03and it also explained why a year had gone by without any other murder in Los Angeles County
49:09because he'd moved to Bellingham
49:11we're off and running now on this case
49:14he was arrested on January 12th
49:17and his first court appearance was January 26th
49:21his bail was set at a huge figure of $150,000 which Bianchi couldn't raise
49:28he was locked away and it was kept in solitary confinement
49:33news spread fast
49:39and the interest in him was intense
49:44Bianchi lived in the same apartment as one victim across the street from another
49:48a third woman was believed killed in a Hollywood apartment where he stayed
49:52and he worked at a real estate title firm with a fourth victim's sister
49:55he looked like the kind of guy you'd bump into at the local disco
49:59if I had been at a nightclub and that man asked me to dance with him I would have
50:05and that's scary
50:06he wasn't a drooling monster
50:08he was an average to a little bit better than average looking guy
50:12so well how could someone like that commit these crimes in the first place
50:22to accept this pre-call press one to refuse this pre-call press two
50:27I am innocent
50:34whoever committed these crimes
50:40is still out there
50:42the first time
50:45is still out there
50:46the first time
50:47is that
50:50the first time
50:52is
50:53was
50:55one
50:59I stop the hillsides
51:01I find my big guns
51:03Nowhere to pick them
51:05Hillside's Wrangler
51:08Once I got queasy
51:12Now it's so easy
51:14No rhyme or reason
51:16Just open season
51:18Cows can't find me
51:20They're far behind me
51:22And when I strike next
51:23Is anyone's kids
51:25I'm a Hillside's Wrangler
51:29Never know what the night
51:33Can't breathe
51:34Express myself with a simple
51:36Piece of string
51:38Scum of a city
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