Kenneth Bianchi

Bianchi is serving his sentence at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. He was denied parole on August 18, 2010 by a state board in Sacramento. He will be eligible to apply for parole again in 2025.

In 1992, Bianchi sued Catherine Yronwode for US$8.5 million for having an image of his face depicted on a trading card; he claimed his face was his trademark. The judge dismissed the case after ruling that, if Bianchi had been using his face as a trademark when he was killing women, he would not have tried to hide it from the police.

In 1980, Bianchi began a relationship with Veronica Compton, a woman he had met while in prison. During his trial, she testified for the defense, telling the jury a false, vague tale about the crimes in an attempt to exculpate Bianchi. She also admitted to wanting to buy a mortuary with another convicted murderer for the purpose of necrophilia. She was later convicted and imprisoned for attempting to strangle a woman she had lured to a motel in an attempt to convince authorities that the Hillside Strangler was still on the loose. Bianchi allegedly had given her some semen during a prison visit for her to use in order to make it look like a rape/murder committed by the Strangler.

On January 11, 1979, working as a security guard, Bianchi lured two female students into a house he was guarding. The women were 22-year-old Karen Mandic and 27-year-old Diane Wilder, both students at Western Washington University. Bianchi forced the first student down the stairs in front of him and then strangled her. He murdered the second woman in a similar fashion. Without help from his partner, Bianchi left many clues, and police apprehended him the next day. A California driver's license and a routine background check linked him to the addresses of two Strangler victims.

One night, shortly after they botched their would-be eleventh murder, Bianchi revealed to Buono he had participated in LAPD police ride-alongs, and that he was currently being questioned about the Strangler case. Buono flew into a rage and threatened to kill Bianchi if he did not move to Bellingham, Washington, which he did in May 1978.

Bianchi moved to Los Angeles, California in 1977 and started spending time with his older cousin, Angelo Buono, who impressed Bianchi with his fancy clothes, jewelry, and talent for getting any woman he wanted and "putting them in their place". Before long, they worked together as pimps, and, by late 1977, had escalated to what would become known as the "Hillside Strangler" murders. They had raped and murdered ten women by the time they were arrested in early 1979.

Following his arrest, Bianchi admitted that in 1977 he and Buono, while posing as police officers, stopped a young woman called Catharine Lorre with the intention of abducting and killing her. But after learning she was the daughter of actor Peter Lorre, they let her go. Only after the men were arrested did Catharine learn of their identities.

He is also a suspect in the alphabet murders, three unsolved murders in his home city of Rochester, New York from 1971 to 1973.

The Alphabet murders occurred in and around Rochester from 1971 to 1973. Three young girls (Carmen Colón, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza) were kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered. Bianchi was never formally charged in these crimes, but he was a suspect in the murders due to his working as an ice cream vendor near two of the murder scenes and his driving a car similar to a suspicious vehicle spotted near one of the abduction sites. Bianchi has denied any responsibility for these murders.

After Bianchi's adoptive father died suddenly from pneumonia in 1964, the teenaged Bianchi refused to cry or show any other signs of grief. Due to her husband's death, Frances had to work while her son attended high school and was known for keeping Bianchi home from school for long periods of time. Shortly after Bianchi graduated from Gates-Chili High School in 1970, he married his high school sweetheart. The union ended after eight months. Supposedly, she left him without an explanation.

Kenneth Alessio Bianchi (born May 22, 1951) is an American serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist. He is also known for the 1977-79 Hillside Strangler murders along with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr., as well as having murdered two more women in Washington by himself. He is currently serving a sentence of life imprisonment in Washington State Penitentiary for these crimes.

Kenneth Alessio Bianchi was born on May 22, 1951, in Rochester, New York, to an alcoholic prostitute who gave him up for adoption two weeks after he was born. He was adopted in August 1951 by Nicholas Bianchi and his wife Frances Scioliono-Bianchi (Angelo Buono's aunt), and was their only child.