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Angelo BUONO Jr.

 
 
 

 

Edwin Henderson, head of the Hillside Strangler Task Force, talks to news media about latest efforts to find the killer of the eleven young women pictured here. In the end, the line-up changed, but at this time, this is the order and number of victims known. The victims pictured here in order of known occurrence of the murders at the time are: Laura Collins, Yolanda Washington, Judith Ann Miller, Elissa T. Kastin, Jill Barcomb, Kathleen Robinson, Kristina Weckler, Sonja Johnson, Dolores Cepeda, Jane King,
and Lauren Wagner.

 

 

Yolanda Washington was the first victim of the Hillside Strangler.
Yoland
a was 20 years old at the time of her death.

Her naked body was found on the slopes of the distinguished Forest Lawn Cemetery, the resting
place of movie stars, on the night of Oct. 18, 1977. The body was naked, cleaned by the killlers so
as to leave no clues, and posed in a lascivious position. Yolanda was raped and strangled.

 

 

Judith Ann Miller was the second victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 15 years old at the time of her death.

On Oct. 31, 1977, her naked body was found on a hillside, laying close to the road, in the middle-class residential neighborhood of La Crescenta. She had been raped, sodomized and strangled to death. Her wrists, ankles, and neck bore the marks of the ropes that had bound her, as was the case with Yolanda Washington and those victims to come. She was small and thin, weighing about ninety pounds. The coroner determined that she had been strangled to death around midnight, some six hours or so before she was found. She had last been seen leaving the Fish and Chips restaurant at nine p.m. on the evening before she was found dead. Judith's family was down on its luck and had nothing to contribute about their daughter's friends.

 

 

Elissa Teresa Kastin, twenty-one, was murdered on Oct. 6, 1977 making her the third victim of the Hillside Strangler.

She was a waitress at the Healthfaire Restaurant near Hollywood & Vine and lived just off Hollywood Blvd. She had made a comment to her mother that she was thinking of turning to prostitution to earn some extra money. She had last been seen leaving the Restaurant just after nine o'clock on the night she was murdered. Her naked, strangled body had been found near Chevy Chase Drive in Glendale, near a country club. There was evidence of rape, but not sodomy. There was a sizeable guardrail between the road and the spot where the body lay. It would have taken two men to lift the stocky victim over the guardrail, police estimated.

 

 

Jill Barcomb, 4th victim of the Hillside Strangler. Jill was 19-years old at the time of her death.

She was living in Hollywood, having recently moved from New York shortly before her death and was last seen alive on November 9, 1977. Her beaten and strangled body was discovered the next day in Franklin Canyon, north of Beverly Hills. She had also known Judith Miller, another victim. Jill had pleaded guilty to prostitution in Syracuse, N. Y. in January 1977 and was placed on a one year probation. She was arrested once for violation of her probation and was allowed to continue on probation in September of that same year. Six weeks later she was found nude, beaten & strangled. Tests showed she had been sexually molested.

 

 

Kathleen Robinson was the fifth victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 17 years old.

She had been living in Hollywood and was a high school student. She was last seen alive on November 17, 1977 near the beach in Santa Monica. She was found strangled the next day in a parkway near Pico Boulevard in the Los Angeles Wilshire area. According to authorities, she had not been sexually molested. She had been living with her mother at the time of her murder and was a frequent hitchhiker.

 

 

Kristina Weckler was the sixth victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 20 years old.
She died on Nov. 20, 1997.

Her nude body was found in an obscure area in the ills between Glendale and Eagle Rock. Kristina was
a quiet honors student at the Pasadena Art Center of Design. She lived in an apartment at 809
 E. Garfield Avenue in Glendale.
Kristina's parents lived in San Francisco.

 

 

Sonja Johnson was the 7th victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 14 years old.

Sonja, who was from Eagle Rock and a student at St. Ignatius school in Highland Park had been missing since November 13. She had gone shopping at the Eagle Rock Plaza, with her friend, Dolores "Dollie" Cepeda. A witness had seen the girls get off a bus and go over to a large two-tone sedan to talk to someone on the passenger side of a car. A person on the passenger side of the witness' car corraborated the theory that they were two men, probably the killers. On Nov. 20, 1977 the bodies of Sonja Johnson and her friend were discovered by two little boys, whose parents did not beliee them at first, in Elysian Park.

 

 

Dolores "Dollie" Cepeda was the 8th victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 12 years old.

 Dolores, who was from Eagle Rock, had been missing since Nov. 13 when she had gone with her friend, Sonja Johnson to the Eagle Rock Plaza. A witness had seen the girls get off a bus and go over to a large two-tone sedan to talk to someone on the passenger side of a car. A person on the passenger side of the witness' car corraborated the theory that they were two men, probably the killers. On Nov. 20, 1977 the bodies of Dolores Cepeda and her friend were discovered by two little boys, whose parents did not believe them at first, in Elysian Park. Dolores had been a student at St. Ignatius School in Highland Park.

 

 

Jane Evelyn King, twenty-eight, was killed on Nov. 23, 1977. She was the 9th victim
of the Hillside Strangler.

Her body was found dumped at a southbound Los Feliz off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway.
Her maggot covered body was estimated to have been there approximately two weeks.

 

 

Lauren Wagner was the 10th victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 18 years old.

She had been a student at Monroe High School in the San Fernando Valley and lived with her parents. This photo is a copy of Lauren's photo from her high school yearbook, class of 1977. Her parents had found her car parked across the street from their home with the door ajar. They had gone to bed the previous night, expecting her home before midnight. When her father questioned the neighbors, he found that the woman who lived at the house where Lauren's car had been parked saw her abduction. Beulah Stofer, the neighbor, said that she had seen Lauren pull over to the curb around nine o'clock in the evening. Two men had pulled their car up beside hers. There was some kind of disagreement and Lauren ended up in the car with the two men. Her body was found on Tuesday, November 29 in the hills of Mount Washington on Cliff Drive.

 

 

Kimberly Diane Martin was the 11th victim of the Hillside Strangler. She was 17 years old.

 Police found her naked body on Dec. 14, 1997. Kimberly was a tall blonde girl who had been working for the Climax "modeling agency" (prostitution). Kimberley's last client had beckoned her to apartment 114 at 1950 Tamarind, which turned out to be a vacant apartment. The murderer had called from a pay phone in the lobby of the Hollywood Public Library on Ivar Street.

 

 

Cindy Lee Hudspeth was 21 years old when she died on February 16, 1978. She was the 13th victim of the Hillside Strangler.

Her strangled, violated body was put in to trunk of her Datsun and was pushed off a cliff on Angeles Crest Highway. She had been a clerk that everybody liked. She hoped to make enough money to go to college one day and planned to give dance lessons to help raise the money. A vivacious young woman, she had won several dance contests. She had last been seen in her apartment building at 800 E. Garfield Ave. from where she had probably been headed toward Glendale Community College where she worked nights answering the phone. Between her apartment building and the community college, Cindy had been kidnapped in the late afternoon. Cindy had lived across the street from another victim, Kristina Weckler, even though the two women did not know each other.

 

 

There is some discrepancy about Laura Collins being one of the Hillside Strangler victims.

The back of one of these two photos says "not linked to 10 others". However she is shown
as a victim in the Hillside Strangler Task Force poster. Laura Collins was 26 years
 old at the time of her death.

 

 

 
 
 
 
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