Local News in Brief : ‘Hillside Strangler’ Conviction Upheld
The conviction of Angelo Buono for garroting nine young women in what became known as the “Hillside Strangler” murders was upheld Thursday by the state’s Los Angeles-based 2nd District Court of Appeal.
Justices Lynn D. Compton, Lester William Roth and Donald N. Gates refused in their 29-page opinion to discount the testimony of Buono’s cousin and accomplice, Kenneth Bianchi, who pleaded guilty to five of the murders in California and to two in the state of Washington.
Bianchi’s account, the court ruled, “was abundantly corroborated by wholly independent evidence.”
Bianchi testified that the two cousins lured victims to Buono’s Glendale upholstery shop by posing as policemen, then bound, gagged, sexually assaulted and murdered each woman before dumping her nude body in a hillside location.
Modifying the jury’s verdict only slightly, the appellate court struck down all but one of the nine findings of the special circumstance of multiple murders. The justices said that, under previous appellate rulings, there can be no more than one such finding in a case.
Buono had been sentenced to life without parole for the 1977-78 murders.
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