Kimberly Diane Martin had a difficult start in her young life. A 17-year-old female, she was born in Texas on September 9, 1960, but grew up navigating the challenging world of foster homes and juvenile facilities in California. Her father reportedly abandoned the family when she was just three years old and was shot to death when she was nine. Despite these hardships, Kimberly was a teenager trying to survive and make her way in the world.
By late 1977, she was living in Los Angeles, a city gripped by a palpable fear as a serial killer, dubbed the "Hillside Strangler," terrorized the community.
On the night of December 13, 1977, Kimberly became the ninth victim of a killing spree that had started that October. Working for an escort service, she was lured to a Hollywood apartment by a fake service call. The men who abducted her were cousins Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi. They had been posing as undercover police officers to gain the trust of their victims before kidnapping, raping, and murdering them. Kimberly was taken to Buono's home, where she was assaulted and ultimately killed by ligature strangulation.
The following day, December 14, 1977, Kimberly's nude body was discovered in a deserted, weed-strewn lot on a steep hillside near 2006 N. Alvarado Street in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The discovery sent another shockwave of fear through the city, which was already on edge. The constant news of young women being found discarded on hillsides had created a level of public panic that law enforcement officials had not seen in decades. Police switchboards were inundated with calls from frightened residents, and sales of weapons and enrollment in self-defense classes surged.
The investigation into the string of murders was one of the largest in Los Angeles history. Kimberly's case provided a crucial lead when phone records traced the dispatch call that lured her to her death to a specific payphone, helping to narrow the geographic footprint of the killers. The reign of terror finally ended after Kenneth Bianchi was arrested in January 1979 for two similar murders in Washington state. To avoid a potential death sentence, Bianchi began to cooperate with investigators, implicating his cousin, Angelo Buono Jr., as his partner in the California killings.
Angelo Buono Jr. was arrested in October 1979. His trial became the longest in American legal history at the time, stretching from November 1981 to November 1983. Bianchi testified against Buono, providing details that only a perpetrator would know. In November 1983, a jury found Buono guilty of nine of the ten murders, including the first-degree murder of Kimberly Diane Martin. He was also convicted on a host of other charges, including rape and assault.
The judge sentenced Angelo Buono Jr. to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He died of a heart attack in California's Calipatria State Prison on September 21, 2002. Kimberly Diane Martin, a young woman who faced immense challenges in her short life, was laid to rest at Memory Gardens Cemetery in Concord, California. She is remembered not for the cruelty she endured, but as a teenager whose life was tragically cut short.
