Hillside Stranglers (23 page)

The news reached Los Angeles in ways Kenny had not anticipated. He was checking on security the next day at the South Terminal, a waterfront warehouse filled with canned salmon that he enjoyed stealing, when he was arrested on suspicion of double homicide. Karen Mandic had told her boyfriend about the housesitting job, mentioning Kenny’s name, and in Karen’s apartment the police found a note in Diane Wilder’s handwriting saying that Ken Bianchi had telephoned. A search of Kenny’s house turned up masses of obviously stolen goods, so the police booked him for grand theft as well, to make sure that they could hold him, first in the Bellingham City Jail and then at the Whatcom County Jail.

The Bellingham police, noting Kenny’s California driver’s license, telephoned the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to check on the suspect’s background. They made no connection themselves between Kenny and the Hillside Strangler
case, but their call was referred to Frank Salerno, who, once he heard Bianchi’s Los Angeles address, knew what had happened. That telephone call was for Salerno a profane epiphany. In an instant the entire case broke open for him in a dizzying series of connections that had obsessed and eluded him since Halloween of 1977. From that moment Salerno knew that between the Hillside Stranglers and justice there stood only the law.

On Sunday, January 14, Bob Grogan answered a long-distance call from his partner, Dudley Varney.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Bellingham, Washington. I’m up here with Frank Salerno.”

“What are you guys doing? Where in hell is Bellingham?”

Grogan was just unpacking from a trip to Greeley and Pueblo, Colorado. Another false lead to the Stranglers. A San Marino, California, socialite had charged her boyfriend with raping her in the Rocky Mountains. She said that the boyfriend had confided to her that he was the Hillside Strangler. Just another wacko, Grogan had concluded after interviewing the man.

“You better check on these addresses: 809 East Garfield, Glendale; 1950 Tamarind,” Dudley Varney said.

“Check on those addresses? Dudley, are you kidding? Check on them? That’s Kimberly Martin and Kristina. What’s going on?”

Varney told Grogan about the phone call Salerno had gotten from the Bellingham police. Salerno had recognized what he was on to immediately when he traced Bianchi’s driver’s license. Now they were up in Bellingham and everything was breaking open. In Bianchi’s house they had found a big stash of jewelry—rings, pins, watches, loose diamonds—and one of the rings matched the description of a turquoise one Yolanda Washington was supposed to have been wearing. A gold ram’s-horn necklace matched Kimberly Martin’s.

“What about the other guy?” Grogan wanted to know.

“There’s a lead on that. Looks good. Bianchi’s wife says his
only friend in L.A. was a guy named Angelo Buono. It’s his cousin. Some auto upholsterer on Colorado Street in Glendale.”

“Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono. Jesus Christ, Dudley, do you know what this means? That wacko German detective was right. Two Italians. He said brothers. Cousins is close enough. You said Bianchi has a
wife
,
for Christ’s sake?”

“Common-law. That’s not all. He’s got a baby. Little boy born right after Cindy Hudspeth.”

“Excuse me,” Grogan said. “I got to throw up.”

“Yeah. I’m kidding Salerno about the Italian connection. Great family people.”

Grogan immediately telephoned Joe Wagner and Charlie Weckler. The Wagners were moving up to Oregon, and the Wecklers were thinking of moving to Hawaii, hoping a change of scene would blur memories, but Grogan had kept in touch with both. Then Grogan got busy. He arranged for surveillance of Angelo Buono: an undercover officer would stalk him everywhere. Grogan checked Buono’s address on a map. It made sense. 703 East Colorado Street was in the center of a circle formed by the locations of the body sites. Kristina and Lauren had been dumped almost in the same neighborhood as Buono’s. But it was difficult to think of murderers living in Glendale, a peaceful community for Los Angeles, full of retired people and the silence of Forest Lawn. Casey Stengel had owned a house there and had died and was buried there beside his wife, and he seemed other than for his fame the typical Glendale resident, middle-American, down-to-earth, a relic of innocence.

Grogan telephoned Frank Salerno’s new partner, Deputy Pete Finnigan, and arranged with him to go talk to Buono after Frank and Dudley returned from Bellingham with all their information. Bianchi was denying everything up there, including the two new murders, but Grogan was feeling optimistic for the first time in fourteen months.

In the next couple of weeks many of the pieces of the case fell together in spite of Bianchi’s persistent denials. When LAPD Chief Gates gave a press conference announcing that a
Strangler suspect was now in custody and released a photograph of Bianchi to the media, the undaunted Jan Sims telephoned the police again to offer her account of the Excalibur incident. This time Grogan and Varney interviewed her, and they believed her. David Wood, recognizing Bianchi’s name, told a television reporter friend of his, Wayne Satz of KABC, about his experience with Becky Spears, and Satz talked Wood into flying to Phoenix in the company of a sheriff’s deputy to interview her and Sabra Hannan, who was also living in Phoenix. They brought the girls to Los Angeles, where Salerno interviewed them and learned all the details of Angelo and Kenny’s pimping operation and the names of other people who knew dark and valuable things.

Much to his relief, Salerno was able to persuade Wayne Satz not to air his videotaped interviews with Sabra and Becky until Angelo Buono was in custody. Grogan wanted to arrest Buono immediately, but Salerno’s boss, Lieutenant Bullington, insisted that they needed more evidence first, ideally a confession from Bianchi. No one doubted that Buono was the other killer, but after all this time and the mistakes that had already been made, they wanted to be sure that they had the goods on Angelo when they took him. When Grogan learned that Bianchi had been interviewed so sloppily by LAPD officers in March 1979, he vowed to handle as much as he could himself from then on.

Grogan let only one day pass before going to see Angelo. On January 16 he and Pete Finnigan drove over to the Trim Shop, where they found Angelo seated behind his desk in his office. Finnigan, who had been Salerno’s partner off and on since joining the Sheriff’s Department in the early sixties, working his way up through vice and narcotics to homicide, had been assigned to the Strangler case the previous autumn. He had a special feel for the territory, having been born and raised in Glendale.

He and Grogan made a striking pair, this rare cooperative link between the Sheriff’s and the LAPD, Grogan the looming Cro-Magnon, Finnigan about five nine, a fireplug with dark, curly hair, always a cigar in his mouth, his knobby face impassive,
alert but unreadable dark eyes giving away nothing. Grogan as usual wore a light-colored suit, Finnigan a dark tweed jacket unbuttoned over his round belly. Only their Irish names made them alike. Grogan was garrulous and profane; Finnigan preferred to speak only when he had a point to make, and, like his partner Salerno, he rarely cursed.

It was only a preliminary visit this time, a way of feeling Buono out so they could decide how to go after him later. They found him cocky, not hostile but not giving an inch either. He pretended to want to cooperate. He admitted knowing Bianchi but implied that his cousin was pretty much a mystery to him. During this session they learned nothing except, to their surprise, that Angelo had married once more.

On January 28, they visited Angelo again. By this time Sabra and Becky had been interviewed, but again this was a preliminary session, so Angelo had to answer only general questions. They talked to him in his house and noted its extreme tidiness. Unaware as yet of the location of the actual murder scene or scenes, they could not apprehend the significance of the place. There was the gold-smoked mirror, the little sign saying “Please Remove Your Clothes,” the brown vinyl chair, and, beyond the wall, the spare bedroom. They knew that they were talking to the murderer but not that they stood within the walls that had harbored his acts.

Angelo broke things off by saying that he had to go buy rabbit food. With his beak of a nose and his dyed black hair and crooked teeth and slurred, rough speech, he seemed repulsive to Grogan and Finnigan. As they drove away, Grogan said that he could not remember seeing a human being before who so closely resembled a piece of shit. Yet already they had learned of his reputation as a stud.

“Hard to imagine all those women going after that,” Finnigan said.

“Must have a big dick,” Grogan said. “We’ll have to check his peeker out.”

Salerno and Varney returned from Bellingham, and what were now the five principal investigators went over with one another everything they had on the case. They also consulted
the Glendale Police Department. Bianchi, Salerno reported, was pretending problems with his memory, but the evidence against him was already conclusive as far as the Bellingham murders were concerned. And fortunately the courts in Washington were not as sentimental as the ones in California. Bianchi would get death unless they could get him to talk about the Hillside murders. Grogan and Finnigan prepared meticulously for their next interview with Angelo. They would lay everything they had on him and try to break him down. It might be that they could play one cousin off against the other.

One Tuesday, February 6, Grogan and Finnigan arrived at Angelo’s at five in the afternoon, when they knew he would be closing up shop. They wanted no interruptions. Angelo had already figured out that he was being watched. He had popped into a police station one day to complain about it, the irate citizen invoking his civil rights. This time Grogan carried a little tape recorder concealed in the breast pocket of his suit. He switched it on as he approached Angelo’s front door:

“Okay, it’s two-six-seventy-nine and it’s seventeen hundred hours. Peter Finnigan and Bob Grogan at 703 East Colorado, interviewing Angelo Buono. Maybe he’s in the house.”

Grogan knocked. No answer. He and Finnigan walked up the driveway toward the Trim Shop.

“Angelo,” Finnigan called, “where are you hiding? There you are.” Angelo was stitching the seat on a sports car. “How’re you doing?” Music blared from the radio. Top-forty tunes.

“Hi, Angelo,” Grogan said, affable as could be. “How’re you doing?”

“Okay,” Angelo grunted.

“Busy?” Grogan asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s good,” Grogan said. “You’re making money, anyhow. I wonder if we could take a little bit of your time and chat with you. I know it’ll be a pain in the neck, but . . . ah . . .”

“Why not?” Angelo said. “I didn’t have a good day anyway.”

“We might as well put the finishing touches on it,” Finnigan said, blowing cigar smoke.

“Gee,” Grogan said, “that’s a good car. Looks like an Austin Healy.”

Angelo led them into his office, where they sat down, Angelo behind his desk. A buzzer went off on the wall. Angelo explained that that meant his wife was entering the house. That way he knew what was going on even though he couldn’t see anything from his office. Grogan said that he understood that Angelo needed to watch his customers carefully. This guy, Grogan thought, lives like he’s in a war zone. He remembered Becky and Sabra telling about how closely they had been watched. Grogan said that there were a few more things he and Finnigan wanted to clear up about Angelo’s association with Ken Bianchi. The detectives asked Angelo about the restaurants he frequented, and Angelo named the Red Vest, the Copper Penny, and Henry’s, before it had closed.

“Okay,” Grogan said. “Did you ever go to the Robin Hood?” The question was important, because Salerno had found a waitress at the Robin Hood Inn who said that she had seen Angelo Buono talking to Cindy Hudspeth there, when Cindy had been a waitress. She had told Cindy not to give Buono the time of day; he looked unkempt and crude.

“Robin Hood? Where’s the Robin Hood?” Angelo asked.

“Up here on Glendale Avenue.”

“Is it an eating place?”

“Yes,” Finnigan said. “Restaurant and cocktail lounge. Robin Hood Inn. You’re not familiar with it?”

“It’s on the left-hand side going up Glendale Avenue?”

“Yeah.”

“Never been in the place,” Angelo said.

“You’ve never been there?” Finnigan pressed. “Do you know if Ken has ever been there?”

“Don’t know. I don’t drink, so I don’t go nowhere it has booze.”

They asked him about other restaurants, about where he used to go with Kenny, about whether his father had been a policeman or a security guard, and about his new wife. Angelo seemed concerned that they believe that he was truly married. He brought out the certificate of his marriage to Tai-Fun Fanny
Leung. The phone rang. “I’ll get on his ass in the morning,” Angelo said to whoever was on the other end of the line and hung up. Did he have his father’s security guard badge? Angelo said no, he had never had it: “I didn’t take nothing of my dad’s when he died. They haven’t sent me anything and I didn’t ask for anything, and that’s the way I left it.”

“How about a gal by the name of Becky Spears?” Grogan asked abruptly.

“Becky?”

“Rebekah or Becky Spears.” Grogan pulled a picture of Becky out of his pocket. “This gal here. Did you ever see her before?”

“The name don’t sound familiar.”

“How about a gal by the name of Sabra Hannan? We’ve got a picture here. See if you know her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sabra. Sabra Hannan.”

“I know her, Sabra.”

“Where do you know her from?”

“From Kenny. I know her from Kenny.”

“What’s the relationship between Kenny and her? Do you know? Was it one of his girlfriends or what?”

“They had a thing going. They had a thing going.”

“Who? Her and Kenny?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know J. J. Fenway?”

Angelo admitted knowing the owner of the Foxy Ladies outcall service and Fenway’s driver, although he pretended not to recognize the driver’s picture. He had met them “through another guy,” he said. He continued to refuse to admit knowing Becky. To try to throw him off stride, Grogan then asked about Israel Katz, the delicatessen owner, and his daughter Marlene. Had Angelo helped Kenny with his pretending to be a movie talent scout to Marlene?