Was the Hillside Strangler a Jekyll and Hyde?
He hated and despised Kenneth Bianchi, 27, a security guard in Bellingham, Wash. "Ken doesn't know how to handle women," he snarled. "You gotta treat 'em rough." He spoke crudely of his sexual exploits with women and then said of Bianchi: "Boy, did I fix that turkey. I got him in so much trouble, he'll never get out."
The voice, according to Psychologist John Watkins of the University of Montana, came from a sort of Doppelganger, a second and hidden personality of the same Kenneth Bianchi, "a very pure psychopath." It expressed the personality's "general underlying hatred of women" and from time to time seized complete control of the normally mild-mannered Bianchi. It did indeed get him into serious trouble. In January, Bianchi was arrested and charged with strangling two young women, whose bodies were found that month stuffed into the rear of a car in Bellingham. Last week Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates announced that he had enough "hard physical evidence" to seek murder charges against Bianchi for ten of the 13 murders ascribed to the notorious "Hillside Strangler."
The brutal murders took place between September 1977 and February 1978 and brought a reign of terror to Los Angeles. Women were afraid to walk alone at night, even in residential areas. The strangler's victims included a prostitute and a runaway, whose nude bodies were found tossed into wooded areas. His eighth and ninth victims, however, were twelve-year-old girls, school chums at a Catholic elementary school who disappeared while out shopping. The killer dumped their bodies near Dodger Stadium.
When Bianchi stands trial in Los Angeles and Washington he is expected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity because of a dual personality. At first even Bianchi's defense attorney, Dean Brett, rejected the plea. "That's the stuff of novels," he told an associate. But when Brett had trouble communicating with Bianchi, tie called in a team of psychologists and psychiatrists. One of them, Watkins, hypnotized Bianchi and discovered the second personality. Watkins told TIME Correspondent Edward J. Boyer that while hypnotized, Bianchi identified ten of the 13 Hillside victims and admitted killing them. In subsequent sessions with Watkins, Bianchi's second personality merged without hypnosis. Says Watkins:
"The underlying personality would threaten me a good deal. He would get up and stride around. I was never quite sure but that he would attack me."
Bianchi's case, reminiscent of the bestselling book and hit movie The Three Faces of Eve, is similar to that of William Milligan, who was accused of raping four women students at Ohio State University two years ago. Defense psychiatrists reported that Milligan had ten personalities and that only one of them was responsible for the crimes. A judge found Milligan not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was committed to a mental hospital.