The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

by Nigel Cawthorne

  By the time the decomposing body of Jane King was recovered on the 22nd, female residents of Los Angeles were in uproar. Then on 29 November, the police found the naked body of 18-year-old Lauren Wagner. Again she had been strangled and there were ligature marks. But this time there were electrical burns on her palms that indicated she was tortured.

  A task office of 30 officers was established. The police now knew that they were looking for two suspects, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, including one prospective victim – the daughter of 1940s screen villain Peter Lorre – who had managed to escape the stranglers’ clutches.

  On 9 December, prostitute Kimberly Diane Martin – who worked under the name “Donna” – answered her last call-out in Glendale. The following morning her naked body was found on a hillside in Echo Park. Then on 16 February 1978, a helicopter spotted an orange Datsun that had run off a cliff in Angeles National Forest. In the trunk was the naked body of 20-year-old Cindy Hudspeth. She had been raped and her body showed the marks of ligatures.

  In May 1978, Bianchi moved to Bellingham in Washington State to be with his girlfriend Kelli Boyd, and newborn son. Finally he got the position he craved with the police and was taken on by the Whatcom County Sheriffs Reserve. He also worked as a security guard at a number of properties, including a house whose owners were in Europe. On 11 January 1979, he told college roommates Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder that a burglar alarm needed repairing, and gave them $100 to house-sit for a few hours. While showing them around the house, Bianchi attacked Karen Mandic on the stairs to the basement, raped and strangled her with a ligature. Then he raped and killed Diane Wilder the same way. He put both bodies in their car and dumped it in a heavily wooded area, though it was found soon after. When the police investigated the murder of the two women, they discovered that they had last been seen when they went for the house-sitting job. This led them to Bianchi. A search of his home turned up items stolen from sites he was paid to guard, evidence that linked him to the murders of Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder, and jewellery belonging to Yolanda Washington and Kimberly Martin. In June 1979, he was indicted for five of the Hillside murders.

  In custody, Bianchi at first denied everything. Then he began to manufacture a complex insanity defence. He had just seen the movie Sybil, about a schizophrenic suffering from multiple personalities triggered by childhood abuse. He claimed one of his multiple personalities committed the crimes and pretended to have large gaps in his memory when talking to his attorney Dean Brett. Brett asked a memory expert, Dr John Watkins, to look at his client. Bianchi then feigned to submit to hypnosis and introduced the evil personality, Steve Walker. Walker admitted killing in the Bellingham and Hillside murders, implicating Angelo Buono. In the process, he convinced Dr Watkins that he suffered from multiple personality syndrome.

  But LA Detective Frank Salerno was not so easily taken in. When he watched video footage of the hypnosis, he noticed that “Steve” referred to himself as “he”, instead of “I”. Salerno persuaded the court to find a second expert, Dr Ralph Allison. But Allison was also convinced and even seemed afraid of Steve. A third psychologist, Dr Martin Orne, was called in. He tricked Bianchi. Orne explained to Bianchi that that type of schizophrenia usually involved more than just two personas. Under hypnosis session Bianchi duly produced a third persona, named Billy, and two others emerged as well. Clearly Bianchi was a fake.

  Having been found out, Bianchi agreed to testify against Buono if he was spared the death penalty in Washington State. He told his interrogators how the prostitutes were easy prey. Posing as police officers, they found it easy to persuade the girls to get in their car on the pretext that they were going to be taken downtown and booked for soliciting. With other victims they asked for directions, or pretended to have some trouble with their car, before bundling them into the vehicle. The victims were tied up, raped, in some cases tortured, strangled and dumped. He pleaded guilty to five counts of homicide.

  In October 1979, Angelo Buono was arrested and indicted on ten counts of first-degree murder. After ten months of preliminary hearings, Buono was ordered to stand trial on all counts.

  Meanwhile in June 1980 Bianchi received a letter from Veronica Lynn Compton, a 23-year-old poet, playwright, and aspiring actress, who sought his advice on her new play which dealt with a female serial killer. She visited him in jail. Their ongoing conversations and correspondence revealed her bizarre masochistic obsession with murder, mutilation and necrophilia. This encouraged Bianchi to suggest a bizarre defence strategy. With barely a second thought, Veronica Compton agreed to go to Bellingham, strangle women there and sprinkle some of Bianchi’s sperm on their bodies. Bianchi was a non-secretor – that is, a person with A or B type blood whose body secretions do not contain the identifying A or B substances. This was before the development of DNA fingerprinting. So if Compton mimicked Bianchi’s MO, it could possibly lead police to believe that the real killer was still at large.

  On 16 September 1980, Compton visited Bianchi in prison, where he gave her a book. Inside was part of a rubber glove containing his semen. She flew to Bellingham and checked into the Shangri-la Motel. Picking out a potential victim, a woman who worked in a bar, she invited her back to the motel. But the woman was too strong. When Compton tried to murder her, she fought her off and escaped. Arrested in California on 3 October, Compton was convicted in Washington in 1981 and sent to prison with no hope of parole before 1994.

  At Buono’s trial, Bianchi admitted faking multiple personality disorder. This undermined his testimony. Veronica Compton also took the stand and admitted that she had conspired with Bianchi to kill women in the manner of the Hillside Strangler. The defence implied that Bianchi and Compton had intended to frame Angelo Buono and let him take the heat. This brought reasonable doubt to the case, which the defence then moved to have thrown out. However, the judge refused. A new prosecution team was brought in and in November 1983, Buono was convicted on nine counts of murder – Yolanda Washington’s murder was excluded. He was sentenced to nine terms of life without parole.

  Buono also found love in prison. In 1986, Buono married Christine Kizuka, a mother of three, who met him through another inmate. He left her a widow when he died in Calipatria State Prison on 21 September 2002 from “unknown causes”.

  In jail in Washington, Bianchi married serial killer groupie Shirlee Book in 1989 after a three-year correspondence. He was just one of many prisoners she had written to – even Ted Bundy was on her list. It is said that Book had bought her wedding gown and had invitations printed before she had even met Bianchi.

  Slighted, Compton turned her attentions to “Sunset Strip Slayer” Douglas Clark, who had shot his victims in the head while they were giving him oral sex, then had sex with the dead body or just the severed head. To win her, Clark sent Compton a red rose when she was convicted for attempted murder and, as a Valentine, a photograph of a decapitated female corpse. Compton wrote back to Clark: “Our humor is unusual. I wonder why others don’t see the necrophiliac aspects of existence as we do.” She also admitted under oath that she and Clark planned to buy a mortuary together so that they could have sex with the dead bodies, once he was free. Their plan was that Compton should testify on his behalf at Clark’s trial, which, by coincidence, took place across the hall from the trial of the Hillside Stranglers. Carol Bundy, Clark’s accomplice who had lured his victims into his car, was in the same jail as Compton and Compton was to say that she had heard Bundy admit to the murders.

  The affair ended when Compton lost her bottle in court and pleaded the Fifth Amendment, which allows witnesses to refuse to give testimony that would incriminate them. Clark then married a woman named Kelly Keniston, who crusaded to prove his innocence while he awaited execution at San Quentin. Carol Bundy was sentenced to 27 years to life and 25 years to life – the equivalent of two life sentences in the UK. The terms were to run consecutively. She died in the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowcilla on 9 December 2003 at the
age of 61.

  Although Bianchi was suspected of the Alphabet Murders in Rochester, no evidence was ever found to connect him with the killings. A film was made about The Alphabet Killer and is due for release in 2007.

  Veronica Compton wrote a book about her prison romances called Eating the Ashes. Then on 27 July 1988, she escaped from the women’s prison at Gig Harbor, Washington. She remains at large.

  The San Diego Strangler

  When prostitute killings began in San Diego in the summer of 1985, the police feared that the Green River Killer had moved down the coast from Washington State. But as the body count climbed towards ten, they realized that another, but just as elusive, serial killer was on the loose. Then almost exactly three years after he had started, he stopped, leaving the police baffled. He has neither been identified nor caught.

  His first victim was 22-year-old Danna Gentile, who was last seen alive on 22 July 1985. Her naked, lifeless body was found three days later. Gravel and rocks had been forced into her mouth and she had been strangled.

  A year after Danna Gentile had gone missing, the naked body of an unidentified woman was found. She had been strangled. Then on 3 August, Theresa Brewer was found dead. She had been tied up and strangled. The following April, the naked body of 29-year-old Rosemarie Ritter was found. And on 22 June, the body Anne Varela was discovered. Like the others, she was naked and had been strangled.

  In 1987 three more women – Diana Moffitt, Sara Gedalicia, and Sally Moorman – had been killed, the murderer using the same MO. In April 1988 the body of another unidentified woman was found. The following month, the body of Melissa Sandoval was found just 30 yards away. Sandoval had been last seen eight days earlier driving off with a customer.

  Then, for no discernable reason, the killings stopped. Two men who were later convicted of prostitute killings in the San Diego area during 1988 were suspects, but nothing linked them to these killings. There was a great deal of speculation about another one-time suspect, who has since died. Again there was no hard evidence linking him to these killings. The murders of these ten women remain unsolved.

  San Francisco’s Zodiac Killer

  An unidentified killer terrified the Bay Area in the late 1960s. Dubbed the “Zodiac Killer”, he killed at least six people, though his body count may have been as high as 37, or even 49.

  His reign of terror began on a chilly, moonlit night around Christmas in 1968, when a teenage couple pulled up in an open space next to a pump house on Lake Herman road in the Vallejo hills overlooking San Francisco. This was the local lovers’ lane and David Faraday and Bettilou Jensen were indifferent to the cold. They were so wrapped up in each other that they did not even notice when another car pulled up about ten feet away. They were rudely awoken from their amorous reverie by gunfire. One bullet smashed through the back window, showering them with glass. Another thudded into the bodywork. Bettilou threw open the passenger door and leapt out. David tried to follow. He had his hand on the door handle when the gunman leant in through the driver’s window and shot him in the head. His body slumped across the front seat. Bettilou’s attempt at flight was futile. As she ran screaming into the night, the gunman ran after her. She had run just 30 feet when he fired five shots into her. She collapsed and died. Then the gunman calmly walked back to his car and drove away.

  A few minutes later, another car came down the quiet road. Its driver, a woman, saw Bettilou’s body sprawled on the ground, but did not stop. Instead, she sped on towards the next town, Benica, to get help. On the way, she saw a blue flashing light coming towards her. It was a patrol car and she flashed her lights frantically to attract the driver’s attention. The car stopped and she told the patrolmen what she had seen. They followed her back to the pump station, arriving there about three minutes later. They found Bettilou Jensen dead, but David Faraday was still alive. He was unconscious and could not help them with their enquiries. They rushed him to hospital, but he died shortly after arriving there.

  There was little to go on. The victims had not been sexually assaulted, nor was anything missing. The money in David Faraday’s wallet was untouched. Detective Sergeant Les Lundblatt of the Vallejo county police investigated the possibility that they had been murdered by a jealous rival. But the police could find no jilted lovers or any other amorous entanglements. The two teenagers were ordinary students. Their lives were an open book. Six months later, Bettilou Jensen and David Faraday had just become two more of the huge number of files of unsolved murders in the state of California.

  Then, on 4 July 1969, their killer struck again. Around midnight, at Blue Rock Park, another romantic spot just two miles from where Jensen and Faraday were slain, Mike Mageau was parked with his girlfriend, 22-year-old waitress Darlene Ferrin. They were not alone. Other cars of other courting couples were parked up there. Again Mike and Darlene were too engrossed in each other to notice when a white car pulled up beside them. It stayed there just a few minutes, then drove away. But it returned and parked on the other side of the road.

  Suddenly, a powerful spotlight shone on Mike Mageau’s car. A figure approached. Thinking it was the police, Mike reached for his driver’s licence. As he did so, he heard gunfire and Darlene slumped down in her seat. Seconds later, a bullet tore into Mike’s neck. The gunman walked calmly back to the white car, paused to fire another four or five shots at them, then sped off, leaving the smell of cordite and burning rubber behind him.

  A few minutes later, a man called the Vallejo county police and reported a murder up on Columbus Parkway. He told the switchboard operator: “You will find the kids in a brown car. They are shot with a 9 mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.”

  When the police arrived, Darlene Ferrin was dead. Mike Mageau was still alive, but the bullet had passed through his tongue and he was unable to talk. However, there were some other leads. Four months earlier, Darlene’s babysitter had spotted a white car parked outside Darlene’s apartment. Suspicious, she asked Darlene about it. It was plain that the young waitress knew the driver.

  “He’s checking up on me again,” she told the baby-sitter. “He doesn’t want anyone to know what I saw him do. I saw him murder someone.”

  The baby-sitter had had a good look at the man in the white car. She told the police that he was middle-aged with brown wavy hair and a round face. When Mike Mageau could talk again, he confirmed that the gunman had brown hair and a round face. But after that clues petered out.

  Then, on 1 August 1969, almost two months after the shooting of Ferrin and Mageau, three local papers received handwritten letters. These began: “DEAR EDITOR, THIS IS THE MURDERER OF THE 2 TEENAGERS LAST CHRISTMAS AT LAKE HERMAN & THE GIRL ON THE 4TH OF JULY . . .” Like the “Son of Sam” letters written by David Berkowitz, they were printed and contained basic errors in spelling and syntax. But the author gave details of the ammunition used and left no doubt that he was the gunman. Each letter also contained a third of a sheet of paper covered with a strange code. The killer demanded that the papers print this on the front page otherwise, the writer said, he would go on “killing lone people in the night”. The letter was signed with another cipher – a circle with a cross inside it which looked ominously like a gunsight. All three newspapers complied and the full text of the coded message was sent to Mare Island Naval Yard where cryptographers tried to crack it. Although it was a simple substitution code, the US Navy’s experts could not break it. But Dale Harden, a teacher at Alisal High School, Salinas, could. He had the simple idea of looking for a group of ciphers that might spell the word “kill”. He found them and, after ten hours’ intense work, he and his wife decoded the whole of the message.

  It read: “I like killing people because it is so much more fun than killing wild game in the forrest [sic] because man is the most dangerous of all to kill . . .” The killer went on to boast that he had already murdered five people in the San Francisco Bay area. He said that when he was born again in paradise, his victims would be his slaves.


  The killer’s cryptic message brought with it a tidal wave of information from the public. Over a thousand calls were received by the police. None of them led anywhere. So the killer volunteered more help. This time he gave them a name – or, at least, a nickname that would attract the attention of the headline writers. He wrote again to the newspapers, beginning: “DEAR EDITOR, THIS IS ZODIAC SPEAKING . . .” Again he gave details of the slaying of Darlene Ferrin that only the killer could have known. But although this increased the killer’s publicity profile, the police were no nearer to catching him.

  On 27 September 1969, 20-year-old Bryan Hartnell and 22-year-old Cecelia Ann Shepard – both students at the Seventh Day Adventist’s Pacific Union College nearby – went for a picnic on the shores of Lake Berryessa, some 13 miles north of Vallejo. It was a warm day. They had finished eating and were lying on a blanket kissing at around 4.30 p.m. when they noticed a man coming across the clearing towards them. He was stocky and had brown hair. He disappeared for a moment into a copse. When he emerged he was wearing a mask and carrying a gun. As he came closer, Bryan Hartnell saw that the mask had a symbol on it. It was a circle with a white cross in it. The man was not particularly threatening in his manner. His voice was soft.

  “I want your money and your car keys,” he said.

  Bryan Hartnell explained that he only had 76 cents, but the hooded man was welcome to that. The gunman then began to chat. He explained that he was an escaped convict and that he was going to have to tie them up. He had some clothes-line with him and got Cecelia to tie up Bryan. Then he tied Cecelia up himself.

  The gunman talked some more then calmly announced: “I am going to have to stab you people.”

  Bryan Hartnell begged to be stabbed first.

  “I couldn’t bear to see her stabbed,” he said.

  The gunman calmly agreed, sank to his knees and stabbed Hartnell in the back repeatedly with a hunting knife. Hartnell was dizzy and sick, but still conscious when the masked man turned his attention to Cecelia. He was calm at first, but after the first stab he seemed to go berserk. He plunged the hunting knife into her defenceless body again and again, while she twisted and turned frantically under him in a futile attempt to escape the blows. When she finally lay still, the man grew calm again. He got up and walked over to their car. He pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and drew something on the door. Then he walked away.