You Never Know What a Guy Does at Night: You Never Know What A Guy Does At Night, #1

By Roger Boren

Compiled from police records, reports, and court transcripts, ths book tells the complete and complex story of how the identities of the Hillside Strangler Murderers were revealed. This book also describes how justice was almost defeated, and why the trial was the longest murder trial in history at the time (November 1981-November 1983). This book was written by Roger Boren, who was a California deputy attorney general, and the chief prosecutor of People v. Angelo Buono Jr. in a trial that took over 2 years. Kenneth Bianchi, who was purported to have multiple personalities was the key witness, but Bianchi's craziness almost torpedoed the prosecution.

 

After the Buono trial, Roger Boren became a California judge, who presided over several notorious trials, including the Twilight Zone Movie Manslaughter trial. He was elevated to the California Court of Appeal, where he was a presiding justice for three decades, and is now retired.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Boren
• Release date: Jun 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223480655

Book preview

YOU NEVER KNOW

WHAT A GUY DOES AT NIGHT

By Roger Boren

©2019

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

1 – The Media & Marks of the Murderers 7

2 – Sleuths 18

3 – Bellingham 44

4 – Cousins, Girlfriends, and Scams  75

5 – Panderers, Pimps, and Prostitutes  118

6 – Nut Game 133

7 – A Flood of Memory or Bits and Pieces 179

8 – The Deal 222

9 – Only Game in Town 237

10 – Conspiracy, Co-Criminality, and Severance 328

11 – Reservations for an Italian Dinner 380

12 – Hypnosis and Fibers 426

13 – The Hand of God 501

14 – Informants and Opening Day 584

15 – The Children of the Night 655

16 – Modus Operandi 691

17 – Trapped 754

18 – More Forensics, Fibers, and Hypnosis 800

18 – Clues and Lies 826

19 – Time of Death 874

20 –The Faked Multiple Personality 896

21 – The Real Personality 936

About the Author 1045

Introduction

This story does not resemble a mystery novel.  Like the story of the Titanic, the ending is well-known.  Not well-known is what actually happened on the stormy voyage. The full and complete story of how 10 young women were abducted from the streets of Hollywood Hillside the Hillside Strangler, actually two serial killers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, who were cousins, is told in two volumes.  It’s a chronicle of their sordid lives from their childhood, through many murders, to the present.  It also is the tale of the long and bumpy legal road from crime to punishment.  It describes how the two killers were unmasked and the crimes solved.  But solving the crimes is not the same as proving the crimes in court.

The murders occurred during the years 1977-1979.  The trial took place in 1981-1983.  The Hillside Strangler trial in Los Angeles was not only the longest murder trial on record, but one of the strangest.  It took six years to bring both killers to justice.  The trial itself lasted two years and two days.  The jury heard 416 witnesses, some multiple times; one witness was on the stand for six months. 

The circumstances at the end of the trial were such that Deputy Attorney General Michael Nash, my fellow prosecutor, and I decided to retain copies of all significant documents in the case.  For 40 years, the court reporter’s transcripts, witness summaries, police reports and other materials used in the case have remained in our possession.  All of these were used in the writing of this book.  The facts, statements, and testimony recited herein are primarily a matter of public record and are true and correct. 

Because the geography of Los Angeles County played a large role in the Hillside Strangler case, these two volumes provide very specific addresses for the locations described in this book.  A reader can resort to Google maps or similar resources and quickly visualize the geographic relationships involved.

Volume I recounts the frustrated investigation of the Hillside Strangler murders, the eventual arrest of Ken Bianchi in the state of Washington, his guilty plea, and the first year of the trial in the case of People of the State of California v. Angelo Buono.  Volume II recounts the second year of the trial, and the verdict.

During the Hillside Strangler Trial, my co-counsel Mike Nash and I; with our trial investigator, made a cold contact on a minor league underworld figure, living in Glendale, California.  This man was a potential witness because he had partnered with Angelo Buono in some business activities both legal and illegal.  As we sat talking in his kitchen, the man said that he had visited Buono after Ken Bianchi had been arrested and before Angelo Buono was arrested.  He asked Buono if he thought Bianchi was capable of being the Hillside Strangler.  Buono replied, "You never know what a guy does at night."

This is Volume I of You Never Know What A Guy Does At Night,  the story of the Hillside Strangler Murders which occurred during the years 1977, and 1978.  Ten young women were abducted in and near Hollywood, sexually assaulted, and then brutally strangled to death. Their nude bodies were dumped in or near hillsides in and around Glendale, California.  Volume I  describes the hysteria and fear that gripped Los Angeles and the ensuing  police investigation.  That investigation finally resulted in the arrest of Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi.  To avoid the death penalty, Ken Bianchi pled guilty to murders in California and in Washington, according to a plea bargain that required Bianchi to testify against Angelo Buono in a Los Angeles trial .  The evidence against Buono was seemingly meager, and Bianchi’s mental problems presented serious difficulties.

The Los Angeles District Attorney sought to abort the prosecution as it was stymied by Bianchi’s multiple personalities.  The California Attorney General was handed the case after the District Attorney described it as unwinnable.  The stormy trial  that began in the fall 1981, ended in 1983.

The trial in Los Angeles was not only the longest murder trial on record, but one of the strangest.  The jury heard 416 witnesses, some multiple times; Ken Bianchi was on the  witness stand for six months.  The court admitted 1,807 exhibits into evidence: 1,309 prosecution exhibits and 498 defense exhibits.  Volume II reports the prosecution’s case against Angelo Buono and Buono’s defense case, and the jury’s determination.  The  political circumstances at the end of the trial were such that the prosecutors,  (Deputy Attorney General Michael Nash and myself ) retained copies of all significant documents in the case.  For 40 years, the court reporter’s transcripts, witness summaries, police reports, and other materials used in the case have remained in our possession.  All of these were used in the writing of this book.  The facts, statements, and testimony recited herein are primarily a matter of public record and are true and correct.  The reporter’s transcripts of the trial alone consisted of 324 volumes. 

Because the geography of Los Angeles County played a large role in the Hillside Strangler case, specific addresses for the locations  in this book are provided.  A reader can resort to Google maps or similar resources and quickly visualize the geographic relationships involved.

Volume 1 takes the story through the first half of the trial and explains the derivation of the title of this book. Volume 2 also relates the subsequent history of principal figures in the book.

Chapter 1

The Media and Marks of the Murderers

The Hillside Strangler murders in Los Angeles occurred late at night, a time when there were few potential witnesses.  The bodies of the victims, all young women, were dumped naked in remote areas the same night they were abducted and killed.  There were no witnesses to the murders, no identification or even clothing or jewelry with the bodies, and almost no recognizable clues.  The chances of apprehension of the perpetrators were not good.

Although the first murder, that of Yolanda Washington. Occurred in mid-October 1977, the media did not become aware that there was a serial killer marauding in Los Angeles until around thanksgiving in 1977. Eventually, the media and some detectives believed that certain other victims who did not fit the pattern might be among the serial killer’s victims.

With hysteria and panic rising near the end of 1977, Los Angeles law enforcement agencies formed a coalition of police investigators, seeking to identify and capture the Hillside Strangler.  Not until 1979 and an arrest of one of the murderers in another state was this detective task force able to identify the duo that had committed the murders of 10 young women.  The evidence against one of the defendants was extensive while that against the other was meager.  Two more years elapsed before a trial could begin, and then not before the District Attorney of Los Angeles sought to abort the prosecution.  The prosecutor proclaimed the case unwinnable.  A state team of attorneys had to take over the prosecution.

Kenneth Bianchi, the key prosecution witness, often seemed deceptive and was acknowledged as faking being hypnotized and faking a mental disorder of multiple personalities.  Many critical witnesses had challenges to their credibility.  The case itself was filled with unusual and crazy coincidences, puzzles, and conundrums, some of which have never been resolved.  The case of the Hillside Strangler today remains uniquely strange and mysterious.

Contrary to common belief, not every serial killer receives news media attention.  The media may not even be aware that there is a string of linked murders.  Some of it depends on the nature of the killer and the locations of the murders.  It may also depend on the sort of victim the killer selects.  Murders in a city as large as Los Angeles are not unusual. The news media paid scant attention to the hillside strangler crimes, so the public was generally ignorant of these murders.

Anxiety and fear rose to a new level when the bodies of four victims were discovered over a single weekend just before Thanksgiving 1977.  Then another Hillside murder was committed right after Thanksgiving, and the young female victim was from the San Fernando Valley, unconnected to Hollywood, Glendale, or prostitution.  Moreover, the circumstances suggested that the crime was committed by two men, who were either rogue cops or used a police ruse to abduct their victim.

In the perennial and popular holiday movie Home Alone, a young boy, Kevin McCallister (played by Macaulay Culkin,) initially helpless and vulnerable, is accidentally left home alone by his parents, who have flown to Paris, France, without him.  The boy, however, rises to the occasion and matches wits and battle tactics with two burglars, Harry and Marv, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern.  The movie depicts the two burglars breaking into a neighbor’s house, plundering all the gifts under the Christmas tree, and generally trashing the house.  Before leaving, Marv plugs up the kitchen sink and leaves the water running, causing greater damage as water cascades through the home for days.  As they leave the burgled house, Harry sees the grin on Marv’s face and says in a disgusted tone of voice, You did it again, didn’t ya?  Marv answers, "It’s our calling card.  All the great ones leave their mark.  We’re the Wet Bandits."

In reality, only inept crooks leave behind obvious identifying marks, and those criminals are easily apprehended.  Professional criminals try to leave as little a trail as possible.  But many crimes are impulse-driven, and the criminals not only do not plan but do not consider the consequences of their actions.  On the other hand, serial killers are almost always sociopaths, impelled by the power, thrill, or rush they feel from killing.  But they become serial killers, only if they have a modus operandi (M.O.) that keeps them from being trailed or identified.  If their M.O. is a successful one, they continue to employ it and are difficult to identify and catch.  Usually it is a slip up or an unforeseen intervening act that ends their string of murders.  But if a serial killer is identified, the M.O. is often distinctive and unique, sometimes ritualistic.  It does act as a signature, which may eventually unveil the serial murderer.

Autumn of 1977 was typical for Los Angeles, with warm but not hot or humid nights, and no significant rain.  Around Halloween of 1977, the nude bodies of two young Hollywood females were found discarded beside roads in Los Angeles County, each in a different law enforcement jurisdiction about 25 miles apart. The bodies of Judy Miller and Lissa Kastin, the second and third victims, bore identical marks. Subsequently, the investigators referred to these marks as the five-point ligature marks.

The media listed three strangulation murders as being committed by the hillside strangler. Three victims attributed to the hillside strangler were Jill Barcomb, Kathleen Robinson, and Laura Collins, but were later eliminated as such victims.

Ultimately, the official death tally of the hillside strangler victims were ten victims, Yolanda Washington, Judy Miller, Lissa Kastin, Jane King, Sonja Johnson, Delores Cepeda, Kristina Weckler, Lauren Wagner, Kimberly Martin, and Cindy Hudspeth. Only two of the bodies did not bear all five marks.

A curious anomaly in the case of the Hillside Strangler, that also would remain confidential, concerned the rape and/or sodomizing of the victims.  Acts of rape and sodomy usually leave identifying serological markers tied to the blood systems of both the victim and the assailant.  The type of scientific sleuthing that was standard in the 1970s is now obsolete and has been eclipsed by identification through DNA evidence.

After the Hillside Strangler killings became a public concern, news reporter Jack Jones wrote an LA Times article headlined: "Another Girl Strangled, Found Nude at Side of Road Body, Discovered in Same Area as 7 Others in Last 6 Weeks; Victim Reportedly Taken in Car by 2 Men.  Jones wrote that the body of Lauren Rae Wagner, 18, was discovered Tuesday morning at the side of a twisting Mt. Washington area street [near] where at least seven other women have been found strangled within six weeks.  Police had learned that Wagner, a business school student, had been dragged to a car and abducted by two men, as she returned to her [nearby] home. . . .  Because of the nature of the abduction and murder and the rash of similar killings in the Glendale-Highland Park area, officers of a special task force hurried to the scene."  Police were going over the victim’s rust-colored Ford Mustang, parked just across the street and a few houses south of the home, where she had lived with her parents.

The article hinted that the investigators were trying to establish which murders were linked by a common killer – or killers, now that it appeared that the deaths might be the work of two men.  It did not bode well that it was possible that rogue police officers were involved or that a police ruse was used by the abductors.

The series of murders became the television nightly news lead story in Los Angeles, especially because the latest victim had nothing to do with the Hollywood scene or with prostitution and rogue cops might be involved.  Now it was clear that prostitutes were not the only young women at risk.  As December with its holiday cheer entered, gloom and fear covered Los Angeles.

On December 1, 1977, the Times headlined: "10 of 13 Murders May Be Connected, Police Believe – As the "head of a special task force investigating the deaths of 13 young girls and women, Ed Henderson, the task force leader, stated that investigators now believe at least 10 of them were committed by the same person or persons."  Some of the details of the Lauren Wagner abduction and murder explained why investigators were uncertain whether one or two men were perpetrating the crimes.

The task force of officers formed from LAPD, the Sheriff’s Department, and the Glendale police was being beefed up from 29 to 40 men.  LAPD psychologist Martin Reiser was preparing a psychological profile of the killer or killers.  Police were reviewing the usual suspects with criminal records and hypnotizing some eyewitnesses, hoping to glean significant clues.

The next day (December 2, 1977) another Times article announced that $115,000 in rewards were being offered by Los Angeles County and others, with the City of Los Angeles expected to approve an additional $25,000.  That amount of money in the mid-1970s could purchase a nice house in a decent neighborhood.  The article also discussed the fact that, if the witnesses earning the reward became necessary for a trial, a defense attorney could make the witnesses look bad to the jury.  Such an attorney would invite jurors to question the motives and the veracity of a person who received a reward.  The police also announced a change in policy; they would begin investigations immediately upon receiving missing person reports where the suspected victim was a female over the age of 11.

Then the serial killer or killers acquired a name.  Yet another Times article (December 3, 1977), gave birth to the name Hillside Strangler.  The headline to the article read: "Special Metro Squad Joins Hunt for ‘Hillside Strangler’ 30 Officers Assigned to Highland Park; Police Also Considering Use of Decoys in Effort to Trap Killer.  The article related that calls from the public were jamming the telephone lines into the offices of the Police Department’s special Hillside Strangler" task force.

The Times story on December 15, 1977, began with this headline: "Slain Girl, 17, Believed 11th in ‘Strangler’ Series Found on Slope in Area of Homes Near Silver Lake; Victim Had Hollywood Prostitution Background.  The article related that the nude and strangled body of 17 year-old Kimberly Diane Martin was found lying on a steep slope of a vacant lot facing downtown Los Angeles.  A spokesman for LAPD said, It appears to be the work of the so-called Hillside Strangler.  The news article described the new and unusual details – that a call had been placed from the Hollywood Public Library to Martin’s outcall service, requesting a young, blonde, attractive, modelish, cute looking" girl.

The Times article described the escalation of community fear.  It also noted the nearness of the location where Martin’s body had been dumped to the hillside where the Cepeda and Johnson bodies had been found.

The next day the Times’ article described LAPD’s interest in finding eyewitnesses to the pay phone call.  But the article mainly focused on the political and community criticism of LAPD’s slow response to the report that a prostitute was missing.  Pickets outside police headquarters criticized LAPD’s slow response.

The following day, the Times article was not kind to the tenants of the Tamarind Apartments.  The December 17, 1977, article bore the headline: "Last Strangler Victim’s Screams Went Unreported.  The news article related that screams and running in the hallway were heard on the night Kimberly Martin was abducted from a unit in the Tamarind Apartments.  One person reported that a girl screamed Don’t kill me!  But no one reported the screams the night of the abduction and slaying.  A tenant stated, I hear screaming and hollering every night."  The manager stated that through the curtains of apartment 114 a tenant had seen a man and woman struggling.  Police had asked the apartment manager whether she had heard the name Mike Ryan, as that was the name used in the call from the public library to the outcall service.  Police would not reveal publicly if they had obtained any fingerprints, but they had – both from the phone booth and from the vacant apartment.

Two days later on December 19,1977, a Newsweek magazine article recounted the murder of Lauren Wagner (complete with a crime scene photograph in which her body is partially visible.)  She had been strangled –the latest victim apparently of the baffling killer known as the Hillside Strangler.  The article further read, over the last two months, ten women between 12 and 28 have been strangled and seven of them were also raped.  Eight of the bodies were found within a 6-mile radius of Glendale, and all them had been casually dumped by the roadside.  The article emphasized the rampant fear of the populace, the massive manhunt of the 110-member Hillside Strangler Task Force, and the monetary rewards offered – all triggered by the killing spree.  The article acknowledged that police had little to go on, no firm evidence that the crimes were even committed by the same person.

Another Times article on January 15, 1978 had the headline: "Strangler Case: Several Killers or One?" – The article discussed not only this lead question but also the uncertainty about which of the killings, if any, were connected to any of the other murders.  (A newspaper weather blurb also forecasted heavy rain, a circumstance that eventually affected the investigation.)  Some news reporters had fabricated stories about a bizarre mode of strangulation and electrical burns on the victims’ genitals, making life more difficult for the detectives.  The number of individuals posing as police officers may have also increased.

The final Hillside Strangler murder did not occur until February 16, 1978.  The body of Cindy Hudspeth was discovered in the trunk of her car which had plunged approximately 50 feet down in a steep embankment off a highway in the Angeles Crest Mountains.

The fact Cindy Hudspeth had resided on Garfield Avenue in Glendale immediately became an important fact, as an earlier Hillside Strangler victim, Kristina Weckler, had lived across the street from Cindy Hudspeth’s apartment building on Garfield.  A Times article authored by Bella Stumbo headlined: "Strangler Returns to a Quiet Street."  She commented that the two victims lived across the street from one another and noted that a lot of elderly people lived in that neighborhood.  She reported that some Garfield residents were acquainted with both girls.

Then, just as suddenly as the murder spree began, it ended.  A period of quiet developed during which no more murders occurred that could be connected to the Hillside Strangler. There was the occasional query about what might have happened with the Strangler.  Perhaps he was in prison or had died.  No one knew, but the mysteries in the case lingered.

The Hillside Stangler investigators did not reveal to the media the nature of the strangulation (whether it was a manual or ligature strangulation), only that they had been tortured. One of the consequences of murder by strangulation is that there is usually very little blood evidence.  In any event, DNA forensic analysis had not been developed in the 1970s and 1980s.

A difficulty for the Hillside Task Force was that no belongings were found with any of the victims, except for some of Yolanda Washington’s jewelry.  The bodies were found nude with no clothing or any other identifying items.  Investigators of murders generally have the victims’ fingernails clipped and then examined for blood, fibers, or other material that the victim may have acquired during a mortal struggle for life.  (Those materials are referred to as trace evidence.)  None of the victims’ bodies showed signs of struggle nor was any evidentiary debris found in their fingernail clippings.

There were only four eyewitnesses to the abductions and those concerned only three of the nine abductions.  Each of these witnesses had problems ranging from mental instability to police use of hypnosis to enhance witness recall.  Otherwise, only the stranglers themselves were the other eyewitnesses who could fully explain what had happened.  There were some fingerprints, but these were not matched to persons who became suspects.  Nor did collected trace evidence lead investigators to specific individuals. Thus, the detectives had few promising leads to solving the case of the Hillside Strangler.

Chapter 2

Sleuths

People have been entertained over the years by various fictional heroes and sleuths.  During the twentieth century there were several incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, who had a loose arrangement with Scotland Yard, for whom he often solved cases.  Holmes relied on an encyclopedic knowledge of arcane scientific subjects and a sharply developed talent of deductive logic.  Later on, in radio, movies, and television, police themselves were largely ignored in favor of quick witted, fast-talking, and two-fisted private detectives like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Richard Diamond, who after first being knocked out cold from behind, solved mysteries that the police could not solve.  More realistic, tedious, and mundane law enforcement practices were displayed during the 1950s to the 1980s in TV and radio programs like Dragnet and 1 Adam 12.  By the 1970s, movies presented determined police detectives like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in the The French Connection, who ignored constitutional rights and used force, guile, and guts to apprehend sadistic criminals.

A couple of actors have portrayed pathologists, who solved murder cases in unlikely ways, although medical examinations in murder cases are often very important to the conviction of murderers.

More recent television crime drama is littered with various iterations of CSI organizations – Criminal Scientific Investigation – solving crimes and chasing and arresting criminals.  Multiple versions of CSI show special investigators, using modern scientific methods including DNA analysis and clever interview techniques to identify the bad guys, but these sleuths are depicted executing search warrants, securing evidence, interviewing witnesses, and chasing down and arresting the perpetrators.  While entertaining, as a whole such is not a true picture of law enforcement procedure.

In the first half of the 20th century, crime investigations relied on scientific evidence, including fingerprint and ballistic comparisons. By the 1960s, law enforcement organizations began hiring persons with degrees in criminalistics or those with degrees in related science fields such as biology, chemistry, etc.

In the 1970s, local law enforcement agencies, state law enforcement agencies, and the FBI had established laboratories employing educated criminalists.

Detectives depend on patrol officers to secure crime scenes and identify eyewitnesses so that evidence is preserved.  In rape and murder cases they especially depend on criminalists and medical doctors.  Doctors, who specialize in forensic pathology, establish the cause and time of death and also reveal other facts and circumstances surrounding the death.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau handled all the murder cases in the unincorporated areas of the county and in those cities that did not have law enforcement organizations of their own.  The Homicide Bureau was located in the late 1970s and 80s in the old Los Angeles Hall of Justice, which had formerly been the situs of many famous criminal trials.  The murder trials of Sirhan Sirhan and of the Charles Manson family were conducted in that building.  The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office had been located at the bottom of the building.  On the east side of the Hall of Justice, across Main Street, stood the venerable United States Court for the Central District of California, where famous Federal cases were heard, such as the paternity cases in the 1940s against Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable, the Pentagon Papers case involving Daniel Ellsberg in the 1970s, and in the 1980s the drug deal trial of car maker John DeLorean.  To the south of the Hall of Justice, directly across Temple Street, stands the newer Criminal Courts Building, to which Superior and Municipal Courts for the Los Angeles Central District had been primarily removed when the Hall of Justice was retired as a court house.

The Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau was located in the Hall of Justice, in a former court room on the eighth floor.  To get there a person had to take one of the ancient elevators.  Each of these old fashioned elevators had an operator who manipulated a lever to accelerate the elevator between floors and then level it with the floor where it stopped before door was opened manually.  The operator had a pull-down jump seat used if he or she tired.  Riding in those elevators could make one feel like he was traveling back in time.

On the eighth floor, the lieutenant in charge of the Homicide Bureau hid away in a remote office at the rear of the spacious courtroom, in the former judge chambers.  Out of sight, the lieutenant could avoid the fury of the storms that sometimes blew through the doors of the former courtroom.  The courtroom had a view through a bank of windows on the west side of the room, overlooking Broadway. The bureau had three double rows of standard issue metal government desks running north to south the length of the room.  The desks were placed back to back and side to side so that each detective faced another detective opposite himself, and one row of desks bumpered against an opposing row.  The open room arrangement worked very efficiently as the detectives shared information and questions about their assigned cases and would occasionally find evidentiary connections as they chattered.  Such communication often enabled them to solve whodunit homicides.  It was a very communal and collegial arrangement.

On each murder case, the Homicide Bureau prepared a Murder Book, containing the sheriffs’ initial reports, summary reports, and follow-up reports in chronological order, a guide to potential witnesses and their testimony, plus autopsy and evidentiary reports. The prosecutors relied heavily on these books. And the defendants also received a copy of the murder book.

The Sheriff detectives dressed rather uniformly, wearing sports coats, contrasting slacks, white shirts, and ties.  Understated and not flashy.  They all wore sturdy leather belts that supported not only their trousers but a gun and holster plus their badge.  Besides their badges, they all proudly wore the identical belt buckle.  In large numerals, the buckle was engraved with 187, the number of the section in the California Penal Code defining the crime of murder.

One afternoon, I went up to the eighth floor in the Hall of Justice to talk with the detectives.  A detective with whom I was familiar, but with whom I was not really acquainted, stood at one of the windows on the west wall, appearing to be pondering some question.  He casually turned toward the roomful of detectives and their few visitors and announced to his collegues that there was a homeless guy, probably a drunk, lying asleep in the shrubs next to the sidewalk across the street. The sidewalk runs along the west side of Broadway below, intersecting about 25 feet to the south with Temple Street, one of the busiest intersections in the civic center of downtown Los Angeles.  It sits beside a huge steam generation plant that serves all the nearby civic buildings, such as the court buildings, the County Hall of Records and the County Hall of Administration, the seat of Los Angeles County government.  Each morning and afternoon dozens of deputy district attorneys and deputy public defenders pass by the steam plant as they walk to and from a parking lot on their way to or from the Criminal Court Building across Temple Street.  The detective pondering at the window then added: That guy has not moved since yesterday.  Half the room hurriedly emptied the eighth floor and went across the street to investigate.  The derelict in the shrubbery was dead of natural causes, but most passersby had probably assumed he was just sleeping it off.

The detectives generally worked in pairs or teams of two, one detective being the senior partner.  Because murders happen haphazardly at all hours of the day, mostly at night, however, the detectives worked on a rotating case schedule with a matrix in which the next homicide call falls to the detective team that is in the barrel.  The detectives may be sitting at their desks on the eighth floor, locating and questioning witnesses, or lying peacefully in their beds at home when they get the call.  At a later date, a couple of the detectives gave me a Homicide Bureau commemorative coffee mug that suggested with dark humor what being in the barrel was like.  A caricature on the mug shows a detective receiving a telephone call and remarking, Our day begins when yours ends.

Most homicide scenes are far from pleasant.  The detectives may carry cigars to smoke at a crime scene where decomposition of a body has already become obvious.  Some choose to put some Vaseline up their noses or use chewing gum.  Sometimes a dead body has been concealed in a rolled-up carpet or blanket for a lengthy period of time or has lain in a car trunk for a while.  Such situations require special procedures.  The body’s skin may slip off the limbs upon handling or a trunk lid upon unlocking will explode open from the build-up of gases in the trunk.

Sergeant Frank Salerno of the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau was in the barrel on Halloween morning, October 31, 1977, and responded to the report of a dead body found on a street in La Crescenta.  He arrived at 2844 Alta Terrace at about 8:00 A.M. that Monday morning.  He removed the tarp that the resident, Charles Koehn, had placed over the body in front of his house.  Sergeant Salerno noticed that the ice plant had been disturbed at the curb-line not far from the body.  Either a foot or a car tire had raised a divot.  He also clearly saw the ligature mark on the dead girl’s neck and marks on her wrists and lower legs suggesting that she had been restrained.  He had as yet no way to immediately identify her.  She was not on a missing persons list nor were any personal items of any kind on or near her completely nude body.  She was a Jane Doe.  He spotted a white tuft of fiber on her right eyelid and collected it before the body was removed.  Sergeant Salerno also noticed fresh dried blood along the upper gum line in the girl’s mouth.

The next morning in the autopsy theater at the coroner’s office, a veteran pathologist, Dr. Joseph Choi, performed the autopsy on the body, later identified as that of Judy Miller. 

On Monday, November 7, 1977, Sergeant Salerno viewed the body of Lissa Kastin in the Coroner’s office.  Dr. Choi also conducted the autopsy of Lissa Kastin’s body the following morning.  On November 17, the two bodies were placed side by side, and Sergeant Salerno and Dr. Choi precisely compared the ligature marks.  Both men thought that with respect to the markings the bodies of the two girls were twins.

On November 10, 1977, a few days before the final comparison, Judy Miller had been identified by some of her Hollywood Boulevard friends and then her parents.  That comparison of the Judy Miller and Lissa Kastin bodies resulted in a realization that someone had strangled two unrelated girls, who were both living in Hollywood.  It would not be long before homicide investigators in Los Angeles became generally aware that a strangler was killing more than a couple of girls from the streets of Hollywood.

Yolanda Washington’s murder had occurred a couple of weeks before Judy Miller was killed.  That was within the jurisdiction of LAPD, unlike the Judy Miller murder which was within the Sheriff’s jurisdiction and the Lissa Kastin murder, which fell within the Glendale Police Department’s jurisdiction.  The strangulation murder of Yolanda Washington was not readily connected with that of Judy Miller and Lissa Kastin.

The Lissa Kastin murder had been assigned to Sergeant Roger Brown of the Glendale Police Department.  It was the only Hillside Strangler murder case of which Glendale Police had jurisdiction, even though all the murders had some kind of a Glendale connection.  Brown’s professional demeanor was similar to that of Salerno.  Although he clearly took a serious interest in his investigative work, he seemed neutral as to the outcome, a dispassionate Sherlock Holmes.

Sergeant Salerno probably had the most professional bearing of all the Hillside Strangler key investigators.  He stood six feet tall,  wore glasses, and always appeared cool, collected, and confident.  He seemed almost professorial.  He was commanding, yet courteous, pleasant, and reassuring.  He was also an Italian, whose father had been a car upholsterer.

Frank Salerno’s partner was Detective Peter Finnigan.  Except for his name, you would not have thought him Irish.  He was shorter than Salerno, looking a little pudgy, and he seemed like a Southern-bred good old boy.  He was humorous, yet feisty, and had the knack of describing in a few choice words the character of a witness. 

Sergeant Bill Williams was from LAPD’s Hollywood Detectives, when he was assigned on October 18, 1977, to investigate the Yolanda Washington murder.  He was a handsome detective, a lady’s man.  He was also a steady and painstaking investigator.  He had previously worked for two years in LAPD’s SID, the Scientific Investigation Division, where he had lifted latent prints and made casts of tire marks and shoe marks.  His demeanor was serious but cordial and amiable.  He had no reason to suspect that Yolanda Washington’s murder was anything less than a prostitution tryst gone wrong.  He certainly saw nothing to suggest that a string of serial killings was about to be committed in Los Angeles.

Even after several Hillside Strangler murders were linked, the Yolanda Washington connection was not clear.  She had been strangled, and there were marks on her wrists, but manual strangulation or strangulation by use of a soft cloth did not closely resemble the other strangulations.  And she was Black, unlike the other victims.  Still, as in most of the subsequent cases, there were as yet, no eyewitnesses to the abduction nor a likely location where the murder occurred.  The similarities, in addition to death by strangulation, were that the body had been dumped nude, without identification, in a relatively remote location in metropolitan Los Angeles, and she had marks on her wrists indicating she had been restrained.

At the Forest Lawn crime scene, however, Yolanda Washington’s body still had a chain necklace with metal pendant around her neck and metal earrings.  A turquoise ring that she habitually wore was missing from her body.  And there were no marks near her ankles as were on the bodies of both Judy Miller and Lissa Kastin.  Sergeant Williams saw no drag marks on the ground that lead to Yolanda Washington’s body, although the report of the assigned coroner’s investigator had so stated.  Nor were there any indications on her feet that she had been dragged.

Eventually the LAPD would have jurisdiction over seven of the 10 Hillside Strangler murders, and so a greater number of their detectives were assigned.  As the number of murders increased, the number of investigators also increased.  The investigators assigned were mostly from RHD, the Robbery-Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department located at LAPD headquarters in Parker Center.  Parker Center was on Los Angeles Street, two blocks from City Hall and the Hall of Justice.  Criminals had long ago dubbed Parker Center The Glass House, because it was a flat sided modern rectangular building enclosed with large permanently sealed windows.

That RHD office was quite small compared to the spacious quarters of the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau in the Hall of Justice.  There seemed to be more filing cabinets than desks, and the lieutenant was quartered in a small nook.  But the office seemed to be a place of pleasantries, where good humor prevailed despite the office being cramped, congestive, and the work hardly inspirational.  Lieutenant Ed Henderson was an unflappable, congenial red-head, who led the unit with quiet aplomb and sometimes sharp prodding.

The LAPD forensic laboratory was in the same building, although on a different floor.  The Sheriff’s crime laboratory had its own spacious brick building out on Beverly Boulevard in the Ramparts district, about a mile away from the Hall of Justice.  It was an innocuous unmarked building, unrecognizable to the uninitiated.  LAPD also had separate detective units in the local police stations. Shortly after the serial nature of these murders was recognized, Sergeant Williams was transferred from Hollywood Detectives to RHD, to include him in the Task Force that was formed.

The lead detective concerning the Jane King, Dollie Cepeda, Sonja Johnson, and Kimberly Martin murders was LAPD Sergeant Dudley Varney.  He was also the head detective of the Hillside Strangler Task Force, sometimes referred to as the coordinator of the Task Force.  His partner was Detective Bob Grogan, who was assigned as the primary detective on the Kristina Weckler and Lauren Wagner murders.

Sergeant Varney had been an LAPD officer for 21 years and for the last 14 years had been an RHD detective.  He was handsome, good natured, quiet, and thorough, the kind of person who can calm upset people who need to settle down.  Varney wore cowboy boots and spoke with a slight and pleasant western drawl.  Every year he joined friends in LAPD and went up to Clovis, California, for its annual rodeo.

Sergeant Varney was perfect as the nominal head of the Hillside Strangler Task Force.  He fended off the slings and arrows of the news media quite well.  He also was able to soothe the overactive egos of some of the detectives, an even tougher assignment.  Because several law enforcement agencies were involved, the responsibility was similar, on a much smaller scale, to that of General Eisenhower in leading the Allied forces of World War II in Europe.

Detective Grogan was one of those larger than life characters.  He was a hulking and irascible Irishman from Boston.  He was brash, but good-humored and big hearted.  His large hands were ham-like.  A pronounced Boston brogue colored his speech.  Grogan wore his feelings on his sleeve, never hesitating to offer contrary opinions.  In a different place and era, Grogan could have been the perfect cop on a neighborhood foot beat.  Although Grogan was sometimes a bull in a china shop, he endeared himself to victims and witnesses, as well as to their families.  He was not simply a cop or a detective.  He was a seeker of justice, who did not handle technicalities well.  Grogan also knew how to make and keep useful contacts.  He cultivated connections in Hollywood’s entertainment business and regularly was called on to organize LAPD gala retirement confabs that featured Hollywood personalities as MCs or hosts.  Grogan also managed to acquire gigs as a consultant to some TV and film productions.

Dudley Varney had to orchestrate the crime scene investigation at the two sites where the bodies had been decomposing.  On Landa, where the bodies of Cepeda and Johnson were discovered on November 20, 1977, by two young boys on bicycles, Varney had electric generators with lights transported to the hillside above I-5.  Into the night Varney, other detectives, and the coroner’s representative had to carefully negotiate the steep slope down to where the bodies lay amongst the discarded debris and search for any physical evidence that could be identified.

Three days later, November 23, 1977, Varney was summoned to the Los Feliz off-ramp of the south bound I-5.  As with the Cepeda and Johnson murders, the elapse of time before discovery of the body resulted in decomposition beginning.  Thousands of cars had passed by daily, within 15 feet of where Jane King’s body lay among the trees and shrubbery.  Her body lay there for 13 days.  Despite the decomposition, mainly of her head which lay in a deep pillow of fallen leaves, Varney saw the 5-point ligature marks.

With regard to Kimberly Martin’s death, Varney had a situation similar to the Cepeda/Johnson crime scene – a steep slope.  And instead of the glare of portable lights, he had to contend with a large day time contingent of the media, including helicopters, as well as a large number of law enforcement officials on that morning of December 14, 1977.

The pivotal crime scene of the Hillside Strangler murders was also processed during morning daylight hours, where the body of Lauren Wagner had been dumped during the night on Cliff Drive.  That was on the morning of November 29, 1977, just nine days after Detective Grogan examined the strangled body of Kristina Weckler on Ranons Avenue.  Kristina Weckler’s body was found on November 20, 1977, the morning after she was killed.  It was the same day the bodies of Dollie Cepeda and Sonja Johnson were found.  The bodies of both Kristina Weckler and Lauren Wagner bore the same 5-point ligature marks in common among the Hillside Strangler victims.  But there were signs on their bodies that each had been cruelly treated in ways that the other victims had not been.  Lauren Wagner had burn marks on the palms of her hands.  Kristina Weckler had puncture marks on her elbows.  She was not a drug user.  Those wounds were carefully kept from the media and the public.

Grogan became close with the fathers of both Lauren Wagner and Kristina Weckler.  He assured them that he would do all in his power to obtain justice for their daughters.  He had also befriended the fathers of Dollie Cepeda and Sonja Johnson.  He kept close to Beulah Stofer, knowing she needed to be coddled into telling all she had seen, in part because she felt a certain amount of guilt relating to the death of Lauren Wagner.  Before Beulah Stofer testified, Grogan visited her more times than he could count.

When Sheriff’’s Homicide had been called up to road marker 2886 on Angeles Crest Highway on February 17, 1978, it was because there was a body in the trunk of an orange Datsun.  The Datsun had plummeted to the bottom of a cliff.  A homicide with a body in the trunk of a car hardly hinted at another Hillside Strangler victim.  So when it was seen that a dead and bloodied body was in the car trunk, Detective Larry Gandsey, who had been in the barrel in the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, was dispatched to the scene.  After he arrived, he watched as the coroner’s investigator removed Cindy Hudspeth’s body from the trunk of the orange Datsun and placed it in a black body bag, which was then winched awkwardly to the top of the cliff.  As Cindy Hudspeth’s body was being placed in the body bag, Detective Gandsey saw the ligature marks on the neck and limbs and called in.  Sergeant Salerno was soon on his way.  By the time Salerno arrived, the Datsun and body had been hoisted up to the turnout. When Sergeant Salerno examined the body at the scene, he could clearly see both the distinctive 5-point ligature marks and also marks on Cindy’s face, indicating that a gag had been used and then removed.

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, had years earlier vacated the Hall of Justice, and moved to a new and spacious facility on the campus of the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, located about a mile east of the LA Civic Center.  The Medical Center was frequently seen on national television as the hospital in the TV soap General Hospital.  The facility provided the county Medical Examiner not only the convenience of propinquity with the largest hospital in Los Angeles, where many homicide victims were pronounced dead, but the office was now freed from the complaints of the Superior Court judges in the old Hall of Justice, where, on hot summer days with windows open for ventilation, the odor from the morgue below wafted to the upper stories of the building.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner or Coroner has a staff of several well-trained forensic pathologists – deputy medical examiners.  When on duty, they each routinely perform three autopsies a day.  Dr. Wei-Han Chou, performed the autopsy on the body of Yolanda Washington and Dr. Manuel Breton performed the autopsies on the bodies of Dollie Cepeda and Sonja Johnson.  Dr. Joseph Choi had performed the autopsy on Judy Miller and then was assigned a week later to perform the autopsy on the body of Lissa Kastin.

The bodies of Kristina Weckler, Dollie Cepeda, and Sonja Johnson arrived at the coroner’s office at about the same time.  The autopsies of all three girls were performed on November 21, 1977.  The connection of Kristina Weckler’s murder with those of Judy Miller and Lissa Kastin was quickly made.  Connecting the murders of Dollie Cepeda and Sonja Johnson to the others was a slower process because of the condition of the bodies and the ages of the girls.  Once those connections were made, however, the County medical examiner and the homicide detectives came to a full realization that a serial killer was on a spree.  The highly experienced Dr. Choi would be assigned all subsequent victims of this killer.  When the spree ended, Dr. Choi had been the pathologist on seven of the ten Hillside Strangler murders.

Dr. Wei-Han Chou trained as a physician in Taiwan but served his residency and achieved his pathology certification in the United States.  Dr. Choi, Korean born, also completed his internships and residencies and achieved his board certification in the United States.  Much of the training and experience in pathology of both took place in Canada.

When Dr. Chou examined the body of Yolanda Washington on October 21, 1977, she appeared to have been murdered by manual strangulation.  There were also bruises on her neck that hinted it could have been a strangulation by a soft cloth ligature, but Dr. Chou clearly leaned toward manual strangulation as the cause of death.  As is a common finding with all strangulations, petechial hemorrhages were visible in the upper neck of Yolanda Washington, on her lips, on her eyelids, and in her epiglottis and vocal cords. 

Dr. Chou also found slight hyperemia on the wall of Yolanda’s vagina, consistent with sexual penetration.  Hyperemia is an engorgement of blood.  But since Yolanda was working as a prostitute, the hyperemia conceivable could have been from consensual sexual penetration rather than rape.

Dr. Choi performed the autopsy on the body of Judy Miller on Tuesday, November 1, 1977, and a week later, on Tuesday, November 8, he performed the autopsy on the body of Lissa Kastin.  Both victims had been murdered by ligature strangulation.  Judy Miller’s body bore no outward signs that she had been raped or sodomized.  Lissa Kastin’s did bear indications that she had been raped and sodomized.  In the lab, the sheriff’s criminalists found from smears that had been taken from the bodies of each victim that their vaginal vaults contained spermatozoa.  Judy Miller’s anal smear also contained spermatozoa.  Thus, it was likely that both victims had been raped and sodomized.  The bladder of each victim was empty of urine.  If the victim had been dragged to the spot where the body was found, it would have been likely that the bottoms of the feet or heels would have marks indicating such.  There were no such marks on the feet of either Judy Miller or Lissa Kastin.

For the most part, the autopsy findings on the 10 Hillside Strangler victims were similar.  All except Yolanda Washington had been strangled to death by a ligature of narrow width, probably one that was around 1/4 inch wide.  The wrists of every victim except Sonja Johnson had marks indicating a ligature of some kind.  Only the ankles of Yolanda Washington, Dollie Cepeda, and Sonja Johnson did not bear any ligature marks.  The ligature marks on the limbs, bruises, were, for the most part, not continuous around the wrist or ankle.  And they could have been made by a fixed-type ligature such as handcuffs or by smooth cord, twine, or rope.

The feet of none of the victims had any marks, so, it did not appear that the dead bodies had been dragged.  Criminalists in the two crime labs had examined the nail clippings of the victims that had been collected at each crime scene.  No material of evidentiary value was found.  The bladder of every victim was either empty or nearly empty.  The bladders of Jane King and Kristina Weckler each had 50 cubic centimeters of urine.  The bladder of Kimberly Martin had 10 cubic centimeters.  The bladders of the remaining victims were empty.  50 cubic centimeters is less than a fourth cup of liquid; 10 cubic centimeters is 1/5th of that.

Some differences were noted.  The body of Yolanda Washington was the only one accompanied by a personal item; a pendant on a necklace was around her neck and her ears still had earrings, but her turquoise ring was missing.  She also had the two needle marks on her hip.  Although she had been known to use and even sell drugs, she was not known to use a needle, and the hip is not a usual place of injection.  These were not track marks – evidence of repeated injections.  These were solely marks of recent injection, within 24 hours of death.

The inside of the elbows of Kristina Weckler also bore needle marks, and she definitely was not a drug abuser.  She had a curious bruise on her neck near the ligature mark.  That bruise was not noted during the autopsy.

Jane King had a hemorrhage on her head.  She had also shaved her pubic hair.  Lauren Wagner had what looked like electrical burns in the palms of each of her hands.  Kimberly Martin had a skull fracture, and her vagina contained a Tampax tampon.  The face of Cindy Hudspeth had bruises that suggested she had been gagged.

The criminalists at both the LAPD crime laboratory and the Sheriff’s crime laboratory had examined and analyzed the samples of blood that had been collected from each victim. They also used microscopes to examine the vaginal, anal, and oral smear samples from the victims.

The analysis for the ABO blood type of the victims showed that Yolanda Washington, Kristina Weckler, Delores Cepeda, Sonja Johnson, Kimberly Martin, and Cindy Hudspeth were all type O.  Judy Miller, Lissa Kastin, and Lauren Wagner were type A.  Jane King was type B.

The analysis of victims’ vaginal, anal, and oral smears led to a curious conclusion.  Instead of showing a mix of a victim’s and the killer’s blood markers, as would be usual in a case of rape or sodomy, the analysis showed only blood markers that coincided with those of the victims.  Since almost all of the victims were raped and sperm discovered in some cases, the conclusion had to be that the rapist or rapists were non-secretors of blood markers: the perpetrators had not secreted ABO or PGM blood markers in their semen.

The autopsies of the victims were mixed with respect to sexual assault.  On the body of some of the victims, the pathologists saw physical manifestations of rape and/or sodomy in or on the victims’ bodies.  The criminalists found spermatozoa present on some of the vaginal and anal smear slides but not on all.  A rape victim may or may not have abrasions or tears indicating the forceful nature of rape.  The presence of abrasions or tears may not conclusively show rape.  And the absence of spermatozoa may be the result of the rapist not having an orgasm or the result of using a prophylactic device.  So the autopsy results and the presence of spermatozoa are not conclusive.  But the combination of circumstances and results provide a good indication of whether a victim was raped and/or sodomized.  The matter is made more complicated, however, where the victim is a prostitute or had consensual sexual relations shortly before the crime.

The autopsies here indicated that Yolanda Washington, Lissa Kastin, Dollie Cepeda, Sonja Johnson, Kristina Weckler, and Lauren Wagner may have been raped and sodomized.

With their microscopes, the criminalists saw spermatozoa on the vaginal smear slides for Yolanda Washington, Judy Miller, Lissa Kastin, Dollie Cepeda, and Cindy Hudspeth.  The only victim whose anal smears showed spermatozoa was that of Judy Miller.  The oral slides were negative as to all of the victims.

Based on the circumstances of the murders, the autopsy findings, and the serological findings of the criminalists, it is reasonable to conclude that all the victims except Kimberly Martin were raped.  It is also reasonable to conclude that Judy Miller, Lissa Kastin, Jane King, Delores Cepeda, Sonja Johnson, Kristina Weckler, and Lauren Wagner were sodomized.  It is possible that Kimberly Martin was raped and sodomized but there was no scientific evidence specifically indicating that.

The director of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s forensic laboratory, Dr. Ronald L. Taylor, examined the burns in the right and left hands of Lauren Wagner and concluded that the white sticky or gooey material on the right hand was probably from adhesive tape.  But he also believed that the material could be melted white wire insulation.  Using the coroner’s scanning electron microscope, assisted by a dispersive spectrometer, he confirmed that bluish green material in the burns was in fact the residue of oxidized copper.  It seemed likely, therefore, that some sort of electrical current, transmitted by copper wire, had caused the burns in Lauren Wagner’s hands.

What the detectives and the criminalists did not have to investigate was a crime scene, the place or places where the victims were killed.  They had no weapons to examine.  Nor did they have any viable suspects.  There would have been considerable more work – and valuable evidence – for the detectives and the criminalists if they had known where the victims had been killed.  As it was, they did have suspects, just not viable ones.  The suspects they did have fit in two rather broad categories: (1) Persons who brought themselves to police attention.  (2) Persons who were brought to police attention by others and whose names were in the Clue File.

There was, for example, Ned York, an unsuccessful actor, who had minor roles in a few TV shows and movies.  One TV series in which he had appeared both as a criminal and a police officer was Starsky and Hutch, a crime show about two unique detectives.  York confessed in a very unconvincing fashion to being the Hillside Strangler and was clearly mentally unstable.

Subsequently, a man named George Shamshak, incarcerated in a Massachusetts prison, led police to believe that he and another man had killed two women in Los Angeles.  The media thought these two women were numbered among the Hillside Strangler’s victims, but the Hillside Strangler Task Force did not accord them the same characterization.  The pattern or M.O. attributed to Shamshak and his partner did not fit.  The media trumpeted that at least some of the Hillside Strangler slayings were being solved.  They were not.

Richard Reynolds, a sex offender with a record to prove it, was found shot to death.  A woman named Roxanne Barnwell was found near him, and also shot to death.  It appeared that they had shot each other, likely simultaneously.  Reynolds had apparently not expected his intended rape victim would resist an assailant armed with a firearm; however, Barnwell was herself armed with a firearm and prepared to defend herself.  Barnwell also lived not far from the neighborhood in which Kristina Weckler and Cindy Hudspeth had lived.  It looked like Reynolds might be good for the Hillside Strangler murders.  A quick but thorough investigation soon showed, however, that Reynolds did not have the opportunity to commit those crimes.  Detectives found that sturdy alibis meant he could not have been the Hillside Strangler.

Another name that came up was Ferrell Mickens, a man with tattooed swastikas on each hand, an ex-biker.  In September 1978, he had picked up a young woman at the Copper Penny Restaurant in Glendale and had taken her to his apartment.  There he assaulted her, knocked her unconscious with a bayonet, covered her with an American flag, and strangled her.  He brought the body to the top of Mt. Washington near Highland Park and threw her body over the side of the road.  Police interrogation soon produced his confession to murder, and he was convicted of that murder.  He received an LWOP (Life Without Possibility Of Parole) sentence.  He was eliminated as a suspect in the Hillside Strangler murders.

Another curious occurrence involved a German private detective, who told the Hillside Strangler detectives to look for "Two Italians, brothers, about age 35."  Perhaps he was psychic.

With the pressure to solve the case, detectives also sought to use hypnotism to gain additional information that might identify suspects.  Detectives had some eyewitnesses hypnotized.  A small amount of information was extracted.  Hypnotizing witnesses became legally improper just about the time the trial in this case started.

When public feelings approached hysteria, the Hillside Strangler Task Force implemented a clue system that resulted in a Clue File containing eventually the names of over 10,000 suspects.  The information was digitized and entered into a computer system.  Unfortunately, in the late 1970s, digital search engines were not as perfected or as ubiquitous