Chapter One: “Like a Machine”

Explicit content warning

06/06/22 • 34 min

Hillside: The Investigation and Trial of the Hillside Strangler

When the bodies of three young women are discovered in Los Angeles over a period of three weeks, detectives wonder whether their deaths are connected.

When the bodies of three young women are discovered in Los Angeles over a period of three weeks, detectives wonder whether their deaths are connected.

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Hillside Trailer

Over five months in the fall of 1977 and the winter of 1978, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi committed a series of crimes known as the Hillside Strangler murders.

In the new podcast HILLSIDE, author Joseph Rodota revisits the investigation into these slayings, followed by the longest murder trial in U.S. history. Rodota interviewed more than 40 people connected to the case – detectives, friends and families of the victims, defense attorneys and prosecutors, journalists, and the presiding judge – and unearthed new documents about the case from archives and private hands.

HILLSIDE answers a number of lingering questions about this case:

Why were these crimes so difficult to solve?
Why did the Los Angeles District Attorney attempt to drop all murder charges against one of the killers?
And why, decades later, did the case continue to haunt someone very close to one of the victims?

HILLSIDE is a riveting story of crime, politics and personal redemption.