Free The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton

of eyewitness includ-Psychiatrists saw through the ruse, and after his indicting one prospective victim—the daughter of screen star ment in Los Angeles, Ken agreed to testify against his Peter Lorre—who had managed to avoid the stranglers’
    cousin. His guilty plea to five new counts of homicide clutches. On December 9, prostitute Kimberly Martin was followed by Buono’s arrest in October 1979, and answered her last out-call in Glendale, turning up nude Angelo was charged with 10 counts of first-degree mur-and dead on an Echo Park hillside next morning. The der. A 10-month preliminary hearing climaxed in March last to die, at least in California, was Cindy Hudspeth, 1981, with Angelo ordered to stand trial on all counts.
    found in the trunk of her car after it was pushed over a Bianchi, meanwhile, was desperately seeking some cliff in the Angeles National Forest.
    way to save himself. In June 1980, he received a letter Bianchi sensed that it was time for a change of scene.
    from Veronica Lynn Compton, a 23-year-old poet, Moving to Bellingham, Washington, he found work as a playwright, and aspiring actress, who sought Ken’s security guard, flirting once more with the police work opinion of her new play (dealing with a female serial he craved. On January 11, 1979, Diane Wilder and killer). Correspondence and conversations revealed her 20

    BITTAKER, Lawrence Sigmund, and NORRIS, Roy Lewis obsession with murder, mutilation, and necrophilia, October 31 and found the next morning in a Tijunga encouraging Bianchi to suggest a bizarre defense strat-residential neighborhood. Strangled with a wire coat egy. Without a second thought, Veronica agreed to visit hanger, she had first been subjected to “sadistic and Bellingham, strangle a woman there, and deposit speci-barbaric abuse,” her breasts and face mutilated, arms mens of Bianchi’s sperm at the scene, thus leading slashed, her body covered with bruises.
    police to believe the “real killer” was still at large.
    Detectives got their break on November 20, when On September 16, 1980, Compton visited Bianchi in Bittaker and Norris were arrested on charges stemming prison, receiving a book with part of a rubber glove from a September 30 assault in Hermosa Beach.
    inside, containing his semen. Flying north to Belling-According to reports, their female victim had been ham, she picked out a female victim at random but bun-sprayed with Mace, abducted in a silver van, and raped gled the murder attempt. Arrested in California on before she managed to escape. The woman ultimately October 3, Compton was convicted in Washington dur-failed to make a positive ID on Bittaker and Norris, but ing 1981 and received a life sentence. She published a arresting officers discovered drugs in their possession, memoir ( Eating the Ashes) from prison in 2002.
    holding both in jail for violation of parole.
    As Buono’s trial date approached, Bianchi issued a Roy Norris started showing signs of strain in cus-series of contradictory statements, leading prosecutors tody. At a preliminary hearing in Hermosa Beach, he to seek dismissal of all charges in July 1981. A coura-offered an apology “for my insanity,” and he was soon geous judge, Ronald George, refused to postpone the regaling officers with tales of murder. According to his trial, which ultimately ran from November 1981 to statements, girls had been approached at random, pho-November 1983. Convicted on nine counts of murder—
    tographed by Bittaker, and offered rides, free mari-oddly excluding Yolanda Washington’s—Buono was juana, jobs in modeling. Most turned the offers down, sentenced to nine terms of life imprisonment without but others were abducted forcibly, the van’s radio parole. His cousin was returned to Washington State for drowning out their screams as they were driven to a completion of two corresponding life terms in the remote mountain fire road for sessions of rape and tor-Bellingham case. Buono died at Calipatria