Kenneth Bianchi

Kenneth Alessio Bianchi (born May 22, 1951) is an American serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist.

He is known for the Hillside Strangler murders committed with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. in Los Angeles, California, as well as for murdering two more women in Washington by himself.

Bianchi is currently serving a sentence of life imprisonment in Washington State Penitentiary for these crimes.

Kenneth Bianchi was born on May 22, 1951, in Rochester, New York, to a 17-year-old alcoholic sex worker who gave him up for adoption two weeks after he was born.

He was adopted in August 1951 by Nicholas Bianchi and his wife Frances Scioliono-Bianchi, and was their only child.

Bianchi was deeply troubled from a young age, with his adoptive mother describing him as "a compulsive liar" from the time he could talk.

He would often fall into inattentive, trance-like daydreams where his eyes would roll back into his head.

From these symptoms, a physician diagnosed the 5-year-old Bianchi with petit mal seizures.

He was also frequently given physical examinations by doctors because of an involuntary urination problem, causing him a great deal of humiliation.

Bianchi had many behavioural problems and was prone to fits of anger as well as bouts of insomnia and habitually urinating in his own bed constantly when he was young.

On January 2, 1957, Bianchi accidentally fell off of a jungle gym and landed on his face.

His mother, in an attempt to change his ways, sent him to a private Catholic elementary school and also responded by taking him to a psychiatrist multiple times, with Bianchi being diagnosed with a passive-aggressive personality disorder at the age of ten.

Bianchi's intelligence quotient was measured at 116 at the age of eleven, but, despite having above-average intelligence, he was an underachiever and was removed twice from schools because he failed to get along with teachers.

Frances described him as "lazy" and his teachers claimed that he was working below his capacity.

He pulled down a 6-year-old girl's underwear sometime in July 1963 after deciding that he liked doing it.

After his adoptive father died suddenly from pneumonia in 1964, the teenaged Bianchi refused to cry or show any other signs of grief.

After her husband's death, Frances had to work while her son attended a public high school and was known for keeping him home from school for long periods of time.

Nonetheless, Bianchi dated frequently and even joined a motorcycle club.

Shortly after he graduated from Gates-Chili High School in 1970, Bianchi married his high school sweetheart, Brenda Beck.

The union ended after eight months.

Supposedly, she left him without an explanation.

As an adult, Bianchi decided that he wanted to become a police officer, and he enrolled at Monroe Community College to study police science and psychology but dropped out of college after just one semester and drifted through a series of menial jobs, finally ending up as a security guard at a jewellery store.

This gave him the opportunity to steal valuables, which he often gave to girlfriends or prostitutes to buy their loyalty.

He applied for a position at the sheriff's department but was rejected.

Because of his many petty thefts, Bianchi was constantly on the move.

Bianchi was also at one time a suspect in the Alphabet murders, three unsolved murders in his home city of Rochester, New York, from 1971 to 1973.

Bianchi moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1976 and started spending time with his older cousin and Frances' nephew, Angelo Buono, who impressed Bianchi with his fancy clothes, jewellery, and talent for getting any woman he wanted and "putting them in their place."

Before long, they worked together as pimps and, by late-1977, had escalated to what would become known as the "Hillside Strangler" murders.

Buono flew into a rage and threatened to kill Bianchi if he did not move to Bellingham, Washington, which he did in May 1978, thereby ending their criminal partnership.

The total number of crimes and murders that the duo committed together are as follows:

Footnotes

Bianchi and Buono had raped and murdered ten young women and girls by the time they were arrested in early 1979.

Bianchi and Buono would usually cruise around Los Angeles in Buono's car and use fake badges to persuade women that they were police officers.

Their victims were women and girls aged 12 to 28 from various walks of life.

They would order the victims into Buono's car, one of several retired squad cars they were able to purchase at auction and outfit with flashing roof lights to simulate authentic police vehicles.

They would then drive them to Buono's home to torture and murder them.

Both men would sexually abuse their victims before strangling them.

They experimented with other methods of killing, such as lethal injection, electric shock, and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Even while committing the murders, Bianchi applied for a job with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and had even been taken for several rides with police officers while they were searching for the Hillside Strangler.

Shortly after Bianchi committed the eleventh and twelfth murders, he revealed to Buono that he had gone on LAPD police ride-alongs and that he was currently being questioned about the Strangler case.