Original subtitles

♪♪

Bianchi: There was no real discussion of a killing.

It just seems like it was an automatic thing

that would happen.

It was always a spur of the moment thing.

There was never any planning beforehand.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "Very Scary People."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s

was a place where dreams were made,

in the movie studios, and on the beaches.

But in the fall of 1977, over a period of four months,

the city was terrorized by a predator,

hunting young women

and displaying their dead bodies in public.

Despite a massive police effort to find the killer,

the body count kept rising.

The terrifying murder spree would go down

as one of the most notorious in U.S. history.

This is "The Hillside Stranglers."

♪♪

♪♪

Renner: Kristina Weckler was a 20-year-old art student,

talented girl.

Everyone described her as studious and quiet,

a real sweetheart.

She lived on her own, and she and a friend,

another student at the Art Institute,

both single women in L.A.,

they kind of made, like, a pinky swear,

"Let's keep each other safe."

So they made a promise to each other to be there just in case.

♪♪

And so on a Monday morning,

when Kristina didn't show up for her class,

as she normally would,

her friend became very, very alarmed.

This is not like Kristina at all.

This is out of character.

♪♪

So the friend drove over to Kristina's apartment

and found Kristina's Volkswagen was parked in its usual spot.

So she thought, "Well, maybe she's just sick."

She went up to Kristina's apartment door and knocked,

and there wasn't any answer.

Now she's starting to get really worried,

so she went and cornered the apartment manager.

He opens the apartment.

They go in, and everything looks normal.

Her art supplies are out.

Her bed is turned down.

There's no evidence of any kind struggle

or any kind of violence in the apartment.

The really eerie thing is that Kristina is not there.

♪♪

The body of Kristina Weckler was found.

And things got even sicker.

Renner: There were marks of sexual assault.

She had been violently sexually assaulted and just dumped.

There were marks on her arms, like maybe an IV drug user.

But that didn't fit Kristina's personality at all.

It was my understanding that she was not a drug addict

or involved in drug activity.

♪♪

Renner: There was a knock at her door...

[ Knocking ]

...and it was a former neighbor of hers.

And he said, "Something's happened to your car,

and I think you better come out and take a look at it."

So she did.

"She was driven to a house where she was dragged around

and tied up."

♪♪

She was injected with a substance,

usually used to clean windows.

Which caused her to go into violent convulsions.

♪♪

But she didn't die.

She was dragged into the kitchen,

and a plastic bag put over her head,

and a gas pipe put into the bag.

She's gasping for air, the bag is going in and out

as the gas is being pumped into it.

So in the course of however long she was in captivity there,

she was injected with a cleaning substance,

and she was gassed before she was finally killed,

and it was by means of a cord wrapped around the neck.

Death must've seemed a mercy for her.

Kristina was just one of the many victims

of the Hillside Stranglers.

♪♪

Some people had puncture marks.

Some had Burns on their hands.

They were tortured.

♪♪

Meredith: People were being taken off the streets

and turning up murdered in some very horrendous ways.

Davis: Everyone is going crazy.

Police knew they were dealing with a real sicko out there.

Are we dealing with someone with a medical background,

because the bodies were all cleaned?

No one knew.

It was getting stranger by the week.

It was extremely alarming.

And no solution to the series of murders

appears to be in sight.

We were defenseless.

Who will be the next victim?

Where will they be found?

Will it be someone I know?

It was a crazy, crazy time.

♪♪

Renner: The 1970s in Los Angeles was pretty much wide open.

So there were a lot of people on the streets,

especially in Hollywood,

because there was a lot of nightclubs there.

A lot of social activities, a lot of concerts,

rock 'n' roll, very laissez faire.

♪♪

It was also a much more trusting era.

A lot of people were hitchhiking.

Now parents don't even let their children walk down

one block to school without an escort.

I think it was just a different time.

Renner: And there was still that element of sexual revolution,

and so women were behaving in ways

that they hadn't done in earlier years.

Davis: I think women felt a lot more comfortable

walking down the street, and it was a free time.

It was a little post-the hippie era.

It was going to the beach.

It was a party atmosphere in Los Angeles.

It was a have-no-fear period of time.

But it was about to be overshadowed by tragedy.

Renner: In late 1977, bodies of young women start turning up

around Los Angeles.

♪♪

♪♪

Davis: 19-year-old Yolanda Washington's body

was found on the slopes of Forest Lawn Cemetery.

A prostitute had been murdered

and dropped off naked on a hillside.

Davis: There were ligature marks on her and her body was cleaned.

But in a rather sad commentary, maybe on our society,

it didn't receive that much news coverage

because she was a prostitute,

another day, another murder in L.A..

I became involved in researching prostitution

as a graduate student at UCLA,

and that's how I met Yolanda Washington.

Yolanda Washington was a beautiful, young

African-American woman

who was very slim and very sweet and very endearing.

She had a 3-year-old child at home.

She was trying hard to get off the streets,

also working as a waitress,

and did a little bit of prostitution work.

[ Car horn honks ]

She did a number of things in order to support her baby.

♪♪

Her friends called me and said, "We know who killed her."

And I said, "Well, what happened?"

And they said, "She'd stolen a car from her pimp,"

who was a dope dealer and had a lot of drugs in the trunk,

and they're sure that he had killed her,

which turned out not to be the case.

♪♪

Meredith: Not too long after that, there was a homicide.

It was the morning after Halloween, November 1st, 1977.

A young girl, her body was found posed naked

on a front lawn of a house in an area

that doesn't have any crime, and it's very remote.

It was just a few blocks from the junior high school

that I had attended.

This wasn't something that happened in our neighborhood.

Absolutely positively unheard of.

Judith Miller, that's the one that alarmed

and unhinged everybody.

Davis: Judy Miller went to Hollywood High School.

She was considered a runaway street child.

Body was face up, and, actually,

a neighbor put a tarp over the body

before the police even arrived

to hide it from neighborhood school kids going to school.

Police later find a witness who says that he saw Judy Miller

getting into a car with a man outside

Carney's restaurant in West Hollywood.

But that was all the guy knew,

and it didn't give investigators much to work with.

♪♪

Meredith: Then, several days after that,

we had a murder in the city of Glendale.

Renner: Elissa Kastin was a member

of a dance troupe called the L.A. Knockers.

Davis: The L.A. Knockers fit in with the disco scene

of dancing on roller skates, and it was a happy period

during that time in Southern California.

♪♪

De Reyes: Her body was found on an embankment

near the Glendale Country Club.

Once again, raped, tortured, rope marks on her,

body had been cleaned.

That's when it hit us.

There's a strangler out there.

♪♪

Martin: Many of the young women are scared out of their minds.

We're young people.

We've not experienced something like this

anywhere in our life's history.

The series of murders was completely foreign to us.

There was all this talk about, we all need to stick together.

Broberg: Lissa Kastin wasn't a prostitute.

She's looked at as this middle-class tragedy,

whereas the other victims were portrayed

as having this inappropriate lifestyle,

and, therefore, I think were easier to dismiss

in terms of any patterns of possible serial murder.

And in some ways, you could probably argue that this is

where the turning point happened,

where the police begin to get pressure to form a task force.

We're starting to pay attention a lot more to what is going on.

And then shortly thereafter, other bodies started popping up.

And then, more and more and more bodies, all women,

all showed up on hillsides

in fairly close proximity to one another.

There turned out, though, to be certain traits --

that the body had been moved, number one.

Usually a body is found near where they were killed.

Number two, the ligature marks.

Number three, the cleaning of the bodies,

which was extremely unusual.

Of course, news being news and profit being profit,

news people came up with a scary moniker,

"The Hillside Strangler."

And it's got the residents,

particularly the women, in a state of panic,

because nothing seems to tie these victims together.

They haven't got a lead on a killer.

They have no idea what's going on.

Davis: Fear permeated the air of Southern California

like an invisible poisonous gas.

Women were scared for their lives.

Men were scared for their wives and their daughters.

It was a very frightening time.

♪♪

I had been married a year.

My wife was a deputy sheriff.

She carried a gun, and I still worried for her.

Every police officer I know was working

was fearful for their families.

I graduated from high school in 1977.

I went to work in retail in the Glendale Galleria.

It was a very large shopping mall.

By and large, the feeling was terror.

All the employees were required to park

in a specific section at the mall.

That both made things easier and a little more difficult.

So somebody studying the women working at the mall,

they knew where they would be transitioning

to at the start at work and at the finish of work.

Our store mandated that the male employees

escort the women to and from their cars.

You look at what went on in the U.S.

in terms of serial murder, it was a very active time.

Jones: Theodore Bundy was a suspect

in the sex-related murders or disappearance

of more than 30 other women in four states

between 1974 and 1978.

Man: Gacy was convicted of the sex slayings of 33 young men.

The seven-year killing spree

ended with the discovery of dozens of bodies

buried under his home in suburban Chicago.

Broberg: It was just a scenario where serial killing,

for whatever reason, whether it's because

people were doing these copycat-type of aspects

or whether it was just the frustration

of what was going on in society,

and you have a lot of men kind of going down

this path of serial killing during this time.

♪♪

♪♪

Renner: Dolores Cepeda and Sonja Johnson,

12- and 14-year-old girls, took a bus from their home

out to the Eagle Rock Plaza to go shopping.

Sonja, you can see that she looks just like

on the cusp of womanhood, just kind of getting there,

but still you can still see that gangly kid.

And Dolores, she's just flat out a kid.

They spent the better part of the day out there

like teenage girls will do.

They caught the bus to come back,

and what they didn't know is that they were being watched,

and they were being hunted.

There was another passenger on the bus,

and he's watching them get off the bus in Eagle Rock area.

And he notices the girls go over to a two-tone car,

and they sort of lean in on the passenger side,

and they're talking to someone, and then the bus pulls away,

and he loses sight of them.

♪♪

Dolores and Sonja weren't in the habit of not returning home

when they said they were gonna be home,

and so when they didn't show up, after their shopping excursion,

their families are really concerned,

and they're on it right away.

And they report them missing.

They put their school pictures on flyers

that they put up around the neighborhood.

♪♪

A week later, a 9-year-old boy

was rummaging through a trash dump near Dodger Stadium.

Renner: He's going through a trash heap,

and he comes on what he thinks may be mannequins.

As he got closer, he said that there were flies all over them,

and that's when he realized that something was wrong.

Renner: It's Delores and Sonja in garbage.

What really made this one hurt, they were just 12-

and 14-year-old girls.

Renner: They were so small and so helpless.

I mean, there's no way that any rational reasonable person

can comprehend that level of depravity.

I don't see how anyone of us could do it.

♪♪

De Reyes: Once the girls were found, police spoke to the boy

who saw them exit the bus.

Renner: He saw Dolores and Sonja go up to a car

to the passenger side,

which led them to believe there were two people in the car.

Reporter: And you feel it would have had to have been

two people to handle the two girls?

Well, certainly, because Sonja was brought up

that she didn't get into a car with anybody, except me.

So she must have been forced into the car by someone.

Certainly.

Regardless of whether or not the two girls were forced,

detectives realized they were likely

looking for two perpetrators.

One thing that threw all of us off

is a pair of serial killers is almost unheard of.

Serial killers are almost always one figure.

Serial killers do not operate in pairs.

Broberg: It is unique, because when you study serial killers,

we refer to those as team killers.

According to what data we have, I would say it's uncommon.

Meredith: There was statements badges had been flashed

and a lot of concern.

We weren't sure what we're looking at.

Were they impersonating cops or were they cops?

♪♪

A lot of my girlfriends would say, "I saw a guy in a car.

A guy tried to stop me in a car."

Lee: Women were so scared in Los Angeles,

and the police were so worried

that it could be one of their own

that they issued a statement

that if a single woman was driving in a car,

and a police officer tried to pull them over,

that they didn't have to pull over.

They were free to drive to a lighted area

where they felt safe.

That I don't think's ever been done.

As the theory circulated that the killers might be

in law enforcement,

the daughter of a well-known celebrity

was stopped by two men with badges.

Actor Peter Lorre was famous primarily in the '30s and '40s.

Catharine Lorre was a student,

and she and a friend of hers were out in Hollywood.

We got to about the middle of the street,

and this car came around the corner and just cut us off.

At which point, two men got out of the car.

Both of them were just kind of flashing badges.

They asked Catharine for her ID.

Lorre: In the first leaf of the wallet

was pictures of my father and me.

And so he started reading down the paper,

and he got to the point at which he saw the name "Peter Lorre."

At that point they kind of were just hesitant.

And they said, "Well, okay, you know, I guess that's all right."

I've done thousands of news stories in the 30 years

that I worked in television.

The one that stuck with me most was with Catharine Lorre,

just because how close she came to death.

She just happened to pull that card out

and say that she was Peter Lorre's daughter,

and that it apparently froze them into inaction.

Davis: They didn't want to get involved with that

and let her go.

And now, two men had been spotted by witnesses.

Police officers and detectives were holding

constant news conferences

and having to put up with reporters

shouting questions to them, "Why can't you solve this case?"

Well, solving a crime is hard.

And no one was more frustrated than police.

We were clueless trying to solve this at this point.

♪♪

Even though detectives had no leads,

they started to notice a pattern.

Meredith: One of the things that came up in the case is

you started looking at the way the bodies were being dumped,

and it was actually painting what I will call a semi-circle

or crescent around the city of Glendale.

Reporter: Most of them found within a seven-mile radius

of Griffith Park and the Golden State Freeway.

My personal impression,

that it was somebody from the city of Glendale

that was trying to dump the bodies

outside of the city of Glendale

so that wouldn't lead back to them.

♪♪

De Reyes: The murders are mounting,

the public is terrified,

and police are facing tremendous pressure to solve this case.

The stranglers became bolder and bolder as time went on.

It was like there was a statement being made here.

This is what we think about women,

and this is what we think about the city of Los Angeles.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome back to "Very Scary People."

By late November 1977,

the bodies of seven young women have been found,

dumped on the hillsides of Los Angeles.

Investigators have few if any leads.

But the media has given the killer a name,

the Hillside Strangler.

Some witnesses report that the crimes

seem to be the work of more than one man,

and a terrifying theory begins circulating that the killer,

or killers, may be posing as members of law enforcement.

♪♪

The next body was found at a freeway off-ramp

that I went on five days a week.

I admit, it was getting a little close to home.

Her body was left face up.

♪♪

Jane King was the oldest victim.

She dabbled in Scientology.

She was apparently abducted from a bus stop

outside the Scientology Center.

De Reyes: The murders are mounting,

the public is terrified,

and police are facing tremendous pressure to solve this case.

What was kind of unique about this particular serial killing

versus other serial killings

I've seen is the rapid rate of committing the murders.

It was a tremendous amount.

The LAPD is getting a lot of heat from the public.

Everyone is going crazy, so they formed what was called

the Hillside Strangler Task Force.

That was the LAPD, the Glendale police department,

and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

So they could coordinate and look at all clues

from one source.

You got to realize the county of Los Angeles is made up

of 88 separate cities and plus unincorporated areas.

And when these occurred,

you know, the Los Angeles Police Department,

the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department,

the Glendale Police Department all became extremely cooperative

and forming this task force to come together.

And all the other agencies in the county would provide

as much information and support as they could to it.

In the big cities, sadly, murders happen all the time.

Often, bodies are found,

and maybe it wasn't the Hillside Strangler.

The police had to be extremely careful,

as did we in the media, to not misidentify it.

Meredith: We had a lot of clues coming in,

a lot of different tips coming in from all kinds of people.

You have to realize, at that time period,

we didn't have computers to do analysis or maintain logs.

Everything had to be hand-written and hand-logged,

every clue, every tip that would come in.

We didn't have access to DNA.

We couldn't just run fingerprints

through an automated system.

Broberg: They were getting so many calls,

they probably could not keep up with them.

Davis: Making it even more difficult were that the victims

were often completely different kinds of people.

One could be a prostitute.

One could be a straight-A student.

They were different races, different ethnic groups,

lived in different areas of town.

The task force couldn't work fast enough.

♪♪

Davis: Lauren Wagner was followed by the killers

to in front of her own parents' house.

A neighbor saw her arguing with two men,

and then heard her say, "You won't get away with this."

Unfortunately, the neighbor didn't immediately report that.

De Reyes: Like the other victims,

Lauren Wagner had been tortured

by whoever had abducted her.

Renner: They decide to use a bit of electrical wire,

which leaves marks on her hands.

They'd shock her.

It doesn't kill her, it's just painful.

They're sadists.

And that's what they want to do.

And finally, not to put her out of her misery,

they just strangled her to death.

♪♪

Kimberly Martin was a lovely, young 17-year-old girl,

pretty, blue-eyed, blonde hair.

Davis: She was a call girl,

and she had taken herself off the street

because the strangler was out there,

so she was using an agency instead.

♪♪

It wasn't enough to save her life.

♪♪

When the police investigated the murder,

they learned about an altercation

she had at a Hollywood building the night she died.

Davis: They questioned all the neighbors in the building,

that included a guy named Kenneth Bianchi,

who recently moved from Rochester, New York,

to spend time with his cousin.

When the police came to look for the escort that never came home,

Bianchi talks to them, jokes around and so on,

and the police fill out the report, and we're done.

♪♪

De Reyes: Bianchi continued to follow

every aspect of the Hillside Strangler case,

including stories about different suspects

questioned by police.

♪♪

Reporter: After intensive investigation,

the Los Angeles Police Department

finally has booked a suspect in the Hillside Strangler case.

We have arrested a man by the name of Ned T. York,

male Caucasian.

Chambers: Assistant Chief Daryl Gates met with newsmen

shortly after the suspect was booked today,

and said York had made certain statements implicating himself.

If police had the right guy, the entire city of Los Angeles

could take a collective sigh of relief.

The question is, is Ned York the Hillside Strangler?

♪♪

De Reyes: In a story so typical of Hollywood,

a small-time actor named Ned York

said he might be the Hillside Strangler.

And he just comes out of nowhere.

And the task force is hoping

they can finally put people's fears to rest.

But those hopes started to fade pretty quickly.

When they first started questioning him,

he was rambling incoherently.

They weren't sure whether it was drugs or what.

Finally, during the questioning, he fell asleep.

Last we heard, he was still asleep.

♪♪

Davis: It turns out Ned York said he was on angel dust

when he approached police.

In fact, he had nothing to do with the hillside stranglings.

Police had no choice but to release him from custody.

Sometimes there are false confessors,

that's another feature of crimes like this.

The police in Los Angeles seem to be back

where they started in the Hillside Strangler case.

Sternoff: There are 55 officers that work full time

on the series of murders, and they would welcome a break.

We'll always accept a lucky break

and be very appreciative of it.

A lucky break helps you crack them sooner.

We'll keep at it until it is cracked.

Davis: Suddenly, the killings appeared to stop.

We went through Christmas, Valentine's day.

Those of us in the media thought that maybe two things happened.

Either the monster discovered a conscience

or maybe he met the same fate as his victims.

♪♪

Then, right after Valentine's day,

a helicopter spotted an orange Datsun

off of Angeles crest highway, north of Los Angeles.

Reporter: The victim was found in the trunk of her new car

50 feet down a steep hillside.

Davis: When they went down to pull it up,

they found the body of Cindy Hudspeth in the trunk.

In Los Angeles, another young women strangled in the hills,

a 20-year-old bank clerk who taught Bible classes

and wanted to be an actress.

Police were particularly curious as to how Cindy's body

ended up in such a remote location.

Meredith: Her car was up on Angeles Crest Highway,

which goes up in the Angeles National Forest,

and to drive a car up there,

you're gonna need a second vehicle

to drive away from there.

So somebody would have to follow you up

and pick you up and take you away.

Davis: Since Hudspeth's car was pushed over a cliff,

it indicated once again

that more than one strangler was involved.

De Reyes: Now investigators were more certain than ever that

they were looking for two killers.

They also noticed a strange connection

between Cindy Hudspeth and another victim.

Wilson: Investigators are greatly interested in the fact

that this victim lived just across the street

from victim number seven, 20-year-old Kristina Weckler.

Meredith: Cindy Hudspeth was actually related

to one of my officers,

and that, you know, also becomes a thing is that.

We've not solved it.

We haven't got closure even for him.

I mean, we went through 10 murders

and had no leads that we could really go back

and say that we got probable cause to arrest somebody.

Reporter: Los Angeles Sheriff's Investigators

have found a witness who saw Cindy Hudspeth

driving north on Glendale Boulevard

in Glendale.

Meredith: Cindy Hudspeth was last seen

on Colorado and Glendale Avenue

at that intersection.

We were handing out flyers to passing motorists,

trying to get clues about the time of night

she went through there,

seeing if anybody recognized anything,

not knowing that a block and a half away

from where we were standing

was where all these murders were occurring.

It became like, what are we looking for?

We really don't know.

You and your team, follow up on this clue

or follow up on that clue, most of which were just tips

that would amount to nothing in the end.

♪♪

I had the only video camera in the department,

so they would say, "Hey go out and video this crime scene."

Probably the one that was the premiere one

was Richard Reynolds.

Richard Reynolds was known to the Glendale Police Department,

the Los Angeles Police Department,

and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department

as a registered sex offender.

Reporter: Baker said that Reynolds was in a nearby bar

just 20 minutes before he and 29-year-old Roxanne Barnwell

were found shot to death in her car

behind Glendale Community Hospital.

Baker says there's evidence

that Reynolds was waiting for his victim

and forced his way into her car,

attacker and victim then shooting each other to death.

Geographically, the location of this very unusual incident

raised a lot of suspicions.

Reporter: The Hillside Strangler Task Force was called in

after Glendale Police found a pattern.

Reynolds and the Barnwell woman were killed

just a block and a half from where two victims

of the Hillside Strangler had lived.

Kristina Weckler and Cindy Lee Hudspeth

lived across Garfield Avenue from one another,

and Barnwell lived a block away from them.

Then police noted that Reynolds' home in La Crescenta

is just two blocks away from the spot

where Judith Ann Miller's body was found October 31st.

That made police particularly suspicious.

We thought this must be the Hillside Strangler.

Why else would a man shoot a woman

and a woman shoot a man in that particular area?

Man: The house is being checked.

This is part of a routine investigation

to determine whether he is or is not he is a suspect.

At the conclusion of what I can call a very thorough search

of the residence, officers were unable,

and I emphasize, unable to readily identify

anything to connect Mr. Reynolds

to the hillside strangler murders.

Turned out he was not related to the case at all.

Burkhalter: How long does a case like this remain open?

Ed Henderson says...

Forever.

How about yourself? How long will you be on it?

Well, I won't be here forever, I know that.

But I'll be on the case until it's solved or I retire.

♪♪

♪♪

Meredith: One of the interesting things that occurred

after Cindy Hudspeth was found was,

the murders stopped, they completely stopped.

Renner: People don't know whether to breathe

a sigh of relief

or be even more wary.

Is the killer taking a break?

What is going on?

That makes everybody uneasy.

From a law enforcement standpoint,

we look at why did they stop?

Is a person in custody and we're not aware of it?

Did they die?

We don't have closure.

♪♪

Bellingham's a beautiful spot, right on Puget Sound,

very nice community.

Definitely a safe place to live.

But in January 1979, that would all change.

McEachran: Bellingham was very concerned

about these two young women --

Karen Mandic, Diane Wilder --

who were missing.

Reporter: The two women were roommates.

Both attended Western Washington University.

The first hint of their disappearance

came late Thursday,

when Karen Mandic failed to return to the local Fred Meyer

from her dinner break.

McEachran: The one girl, Karen Mandic,

was working at Fred Meyer's store,

which is a large department food store in Bellingham.

Karen asked her manager if she could take a long dinner break,

because she had a job opportunity that came up.

She told her manager she was going to take

from 7:00 to 9:00, that she had a security job

and was going to be making quite a bit of money.

And she was gonna come back in two hours.

De Reyes: Karen found out about the security job

from a former Fred Meyer's employee.

He said, "Hey, you know,

I'm in the private security business now,

and I've got this great gig for you."

McEachran: He indicated they were putting a security alarm

in this house.

And the house had some very valuable things,

and they needed to have security for two hours.

If you want to just house-sit for a little bit,

you can make 100 bucks.

McEachran: And she asked if her roommate could be involved,

Diane Wilder.

Renner: It's nine o'clock, Karen doesn't come back to the store

from her dinner break.

This is not like her at all.

She is very, very responsible.

So the police get called when she doesn't turn up.

What the hell happened to her?

McEachran: The police put out the vehicle description,

which was a Mercury Bobcat,

and asked people in the community

to be aware of this vehicle, and if they saw it to call

the Bellingham Police immediately.

Renner: They really, at this point, need to get over

to her apartment, check it out, see if there's anything going on

that explains why she didn't go back to work.

McEachran: There was a note there that indicated "Ken B.

called, wants a call back," and there was a phone number.

Renner: It's in Diane's handwriting.

De Reyes: Investigators had called the security company

and found out a man by the name of Kenneth Bianchi worked there.

He had also previously worked at Fred Meyer.

Renner: "Did he, by any chance, have a job tonight?"

"No. No, he wasn't supposed to be working at all."

So that's when they decide, uh-oh,

and that's when they start looking into Ken Bianchi.

Davis: Ken had recently moved to the area

and was living with his girlfriend, Kelli Boyd,

and their infant son.

McEachran: So they met him at about 2:30 that morning.

He tried to present himself as a very likable, affable person.

He at first denied knowing Karen Mandic.

And then he said, well, he did remember meeting her

at one point, so they were concerned about him

and whether he was being honest to them.

Then at about 4:30 that afternoon,

a car had been sighted.

Police responded,

and the officer could look into the vehicle

and could see that there were two bodies,

and he could tell that both of the young women looked deceased.

♪♪

Reporter: The bodies of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder

were found stuffed in the back seat of Ms. Mandic's car.

McEachran: The bodies were very carefully removed,

and the evidence was preserved,

and the bodies were then taken to a funeral home

where autopsies were conducted that morning.

There were large ligature marks

on the necks of both of the girls,

and this looked like it was a rope.

It wasn't a wire, it was something wider,

which would indicate they were strangled.

Reporter: The women were killed only hours

after the disappearance.

McEachran: This just was a very alarming case,

because Bellingham's a very safe place.

These were two young college girls.

And it really concerned everyone in the community.

It is something that we just did not

have a great deal of background with.

♪♪

I started getting search warrants.

And in Bianchi's apartment we found a piece of paper

with Karen Mandic's name on it,

which really contradicted what he said,

that he just knew her in passing.

That just wasn't the case.

We also found a number of items

that had been stolen from Fred Meyer's.

And so I have only 72 hours to charge someone

with a crime when we're holding them,

so I charge him with possession of stolen property.

Reporter: Charging the suspect

with possession of stolen property

this afternoon buys authorities some time

to complete their investigation.

Wilson: Police have not charged Bianchi with the murders,

but they say they believe

they have evidence linking him to the killings.

At the crime scene, it looked like the entire home

had been wiped down.

McEachran: There were not fingerprints on areas

that you would expect to find fingerprints

from people living in a home.

They also found a pubic hair,

when they lifted Diane Wilder's body out of the car,

that was on her clothing that matched, microscopically,

the characteristics of pubic hair for Mr. Bianchi.

Hair isn't a positive identification.

It's not like fingerprints.

We didn't have DNA in those days.

But it certainly is enough to get you closer and closer.

The evidence was sent to the FBI Laboratory

in Washington, D.C..

The investigation is proceeding rapidly.

The FBI is proceeding very rapidly with our examination.

Once the FBI gave us the further facts,

tying Bianchi with the girls,

we were starting to really get the full picture

of exactly what was going on here.

And I subsequently amended the information

that I charged him with, possession of stolen property,

to two counts of first degree murder.

♪♪

Davis: To say that Kenneth Bianchi

had a troubled childhood is putting it mildly.

He is an individual who wants to be dominant and in control,

and he wants to see other people as submissive,

submissive to him.

On the surface, though, Bianchi could appear normal.

You keep saying I killed those girls.

I didn't.

He had said a number of times

that the real killer is still there.

I'm the one who's getting the blame.

The defense attorney claimed that Mr. Bianchi

was a multiple personality.

Man: What's your name?

Steve.

The name, Stephen Walker, was a name that interested us.

Up here in Bellingham, what did Steve do up here?

Right from the jump, it was a bad performance.

While he was supposedly under hypnosis,

"Steve" mentioned his cousin.

Has he killed anybody?

Yeah.

How many? He has.

Five girls.

And we all are thinking, this is probably the second strangler.

♪♪

The arrest of Kenneth Bianchi

for the murders of two young women

in Bellingham, Washington, at first,

appears to be an isolated incident.

But very quickly, detectives realize the case

is much bigger than it seems.

Could Bianchi and the Washington killings

be tied to something more sinister?

A shocking confession in part two of

"The Hillside Stranglers."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Goodnight.