In the fall of 1977, a palpable sense of fear gripped the hillsides of Los Angeles as a string of brutal murders terrorized the city. Among the innocent lives tragically cut short was that of Evelyn Jane King, a 28-year-old aspiring actress. A woman with dreams of making her mark in Hollywood, Evelyn was navigating the competitive world of acting, taking classes and working to build her career.
Her life, full of promise, came to a horrific end when she crossed paths with two of the most infamous serial killers in American history.
On the evening of November 9, 1977, Evelyn attended an actor's workshop in Hollywood. After the class, she disappeared. For two weeks, her whereabouts remained a mystery. The search for her concluded in the most devastating way on November 23, when her body was discovered in the bushes near the Los Feliz Boulevard off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, medical examiners were unable to determine the full extent of the trauma she had endured, but they could confirm she had been strangled.
Evelyn’s murder was quickly linked to a series of other killings that had been plaguing the area. The media had dubbed the perpetrator the "Hillside Strangler." The discovery of Evelyn’s body, the seventh victim found in a matter of weeks, intensified the investigation and led to the formation of a dedicated task force to hunt down the killer or killers responsible. The victims were all young women and girls, their bodies left discarded on hillsides around the city.
The reign of terror was the work of cousins Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi. Posing as police officers, the pair would lure their victims into their car, often flashing fake badges to gain their trust. They would then take the women to Buono's car upholstery shop in Glendale, which became a house of horrors where they were raped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by ligature strangulation. Their victims ranged in age from 12 to 28 and came from all walks of life, a cross-section of Los Angeles that included students, a waitress, a dancer, and an aspiring actress like Evelyn.
The break in the case came in 1979 when Kenneth Bianchi was arrested in Washington state for two other murders. To avoid the death penalty, Bianchi implicated his cousin, Angelo Buono Jr., in the ten Los Angeles killings. He agreed to testify against Buono, providing a firsthand account of their brutal crimes. Buono was arrested at his shop in October 1979.
Angelo Buono Jr.'s subsequent trial became one of the longest in California's history, lasting two years. With Bianchi as the star witness, the prosecution detailed the cousins' horrific crime spree. In November 1983, Buono was convicted of nine of the ten murders, including that of Evelyn Jane King. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Buono maintained his innocence and never expressed remorse for his crimes. He died in his cell at Calipatria State Prison from a heart attack on September 21, 2002. Kenneth Bianchi was also sentenced to life in prison.
