Kenneth Bianchi

What the record shows

Kenneth Alessio Bianchi is one of the two Hillside Stranglers who, with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr., murdered girls and young women in the Los Angeles area between October 1977 and February 1978. He then killed two university students alone in Bellingham, Washington, in January 1979. In October 1979 he pleaded guilty in Washington to two counts of first-degree murder and in Los Angeles to five murders, conspiracy and sodomy. Courts have convicted him of seven murders; he confessed to those seven; police attribute twelve killings to the Hillside Strangler cases. He is serving life sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

According to UPI and the Wikipedia article, Bianchi and Buono posed as police officers to lure victims, took them to Buono's upholstery shop in Glendale, strangled them and left the bodies on hillsides around Los Angeles. The ten Los Angeles victims named in the Wikipedia article were Yolanda Washington, 19; Judith Miller, 15; Lissa Kastin, 21; Jane King, 28; Dolores Cepeda, 12; Sonja Johnson, 14; Kristina Weckler, 20; Lauren Wagner, 18; Kimberly Martin, 17; and Cindy Hudspeth, 20. The first body was found on October 17, 1977, and the last on February 17, 1978.

According to HistoryLink, Bianchi was working for a Bellingham security company when, on January 11, 1979, he offered Western Washington University students Karen Mandic, 22, and Diane Wilder, 27, money to watch a house he was guarding. Both were found strangled in Mandic's car on January 12, 1979. A note in the car naming the house and "Ken" led Bellingham police to take him into custody that day. HistoryLink reports that jewelry in his home resembled items worn by Los Angeles victims, that FBI laboratory work matched fibers and hair to the house and to Bianchi, and that a Los Angeles task force detective recognized his name on January 13.

Charged on January 26, 1979, Bianchi pleaded not guilty and then, on March 30, 1979, not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming under hypnosis that a second personality named Steve had committed the crimes. According to the Wikipedia article, psychiatrist Martin Orne concluded he was simulating, and Bianchi later admitted faking the disorder. After being found competent, HistoryLink reports, he pleaded guilty on October 19, 1979, to both Bellingham murders under an agreement in which the prosecutor withdrew the death penalty request and Bianchi agreed to testify against Buono; Judge Jack Kurtz imposed two consecutive life terms. On October 22, 1979, in Los Angeles, he pleaded guilty to five Hillside Strangler murders, conspiracy to commit murder and sodomy, receiving concurrent life terms.

Buono was arrested in October 1979, and his trial became the longest criminal trial in United States history to that point. UPI reported that Bianchi testified for 80 days but that Judge Ronald George found he had not testified truthfully and completely, and ordered him to serve his sentence in Washington rather than California. A jury convicted Buono in November 1983 of nine of the ten Los Angeles murders; in January 1984 he received nine concurrent terms of life without parole. Bianchi was moved to Walla Walla on January 10, 1984. Buono died at Calipatria State Prison on September 21, 2002, according to the Wikipedia article and AP reporting cited by CBS News.

HistoryLink reports that in July 1990 the Washington parole board set Bianchi's minimum term at 116.5 years, with eligibility in 2059. CBS News, citing the Associated Press, reported that a California board denied him parole on August 18, 2010. The Los Angeles Times reported that the California Board of Parole Hearings denied parole again on July 10, 2025 with eligibility again in ten years, and that he maintains in appeals that his confession and pleas were coerced through hypnosis. Fox News reported that he changed his name to Anthony D'Amato in 2023 and that a Washington parole review was pending in July 2025.

Bianchi was born on May 22, 1951, in Rochester, New York, and was adopted as an infant. According to the Wikipedia article, he was a suspect but never charged in the 1971 to 1973 Rochester Alphabet murders, which he denies, and moved to Los Angeles in 1976 to live near Buono.