Kenneth A. Bianchi, one of the two men convicted in the so-called “Hillside Strangler” serial murders that terrorized Los Angeles in the 1970s, lost his most recent bid for parole Thursday after 46 years behind bars.
The California Board of Parole Hearings decided to deny Bianchi’s parole after hearing testimony from several victims and opposition from prosecutors. The panel determined that he should be eligible for parole again in 10 years, officials said. Behind bars, Bianchi, now 74, changed his name to Anthony D’Amato two years ago,
Bianchi has been behind bars, most recently in Washington state, since 1979 when he and his cousin and crime partner, Angelo Buono Jr., were apprehended in connection with 12 murders of women in Los Angeles and Washington state.
The two men impersonated police officers to lure in their victims from nearby locales — an bus bench in Eagle Rock, the Tamarind Terrace apartments in Hollywood — before raping, torturing and murdering them, then discarded their bodies on hillsides around the city.
Bianchi cut a plea bargain that held out the possibility of parole, and he agreed to testify against Buono.
Bianchi pleaded guilty to the five California killings and one count of conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap and rape in October 1979. He later pleaded guilty to the two Washington killings. He is serving his sentences for all the killings at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary in southeastern Washington state but is entitled to California parole hearings.
Buono, a Glendale upholsterer, was convicted after a two-year trial of nine of the Hillside Strangler killings in late 1983. Buono was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He died in a California prison in 2002.
In January 1979, Bellingham police detectives in Washington state arrested Bianchi as the prime suspect in the strangulation murders of two Western Washington University students, Karen L. Mandic and Diane A. Wilder. He would admit to those killings and then reveal his involvement in multiple murders in L.A.
Despite his plea and confession, Bianchi has insisted in appeals over the years on his innocence. Bianchi alleged his confession and guilty pleas were coerced by “hypnotic manipulation” and that the facts of his confession did not match the physical evidence.
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