You Never Know: What a Guy Does at Night

By Roger Boren

Compiled from police records, reports, and court transcripts, ths book tells the complete and complex story of how the identities of the Hillside Strangler Murderers were revealed. This book also describes how justice was almost defeated, and why the trial was the longest murder trial in history at the time (November 1981-November 1983). This book was written by Roger Boren, who was a California deputy attorney general, and the chief prosecutor of People v. Angelo Buono Jr. in a trial that took over 2 years. Kenneth Bianchi, who was purported to have multiple personalities was the key witness, but Bianchi's craziness almost torpedoed the prosecution.

 

After the Buono trial, Roger Boren became a California judge, who presided over several notorious trials, including the Twilight Zone Movie Manslaughter trial. He was elevated to the California Court of Appeal, where he was a presiding justice for three decades, and is now retired.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Boren
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223480655

Book preview

PART ONE: The Murders and Murderers

Chapter 1

The Media’s Hillside Strangler

Despite common belief, not every serial killer receives news media attention.  The media may not even be aware that there is a string of linked murders.  Some of it depends on the nature of the killer and the locations of the murders.  It may also depend on the sort of victim the killer selects.  If the killer does not have a recognizable pattern or M.O. (modus operandi) or commits each killing in a different jurisdiction or state, even the police, let alone the media, may have difficulty recognizing that a particular murder was committed by a serial killer.  And if the victims are non-descript or disreputable people, the links as well as the publicity may be even less apparent.

The Hillside Strangler murders, occurring in late 1977 and early 1978, began receiving substantial media attention only after more than a half dozen young women had been murdered.  Anxiety and fear quickly rose when the bodies of four victims were discovered over a single weekend just before Thanksgiving 1977.  Then another Hillside murder was committed right after Thanksgiving, and the young female victim was from the San Fernando Valley, unconnected to Hollywood, Glendale, or prostitution.  Moreover, the circumstances suggested that the crime was committed by two men, who were either rogue cops or imposters using a police ruse to abduct their victim.

Autumn of 1977 was typical for Los Angeles, with nights that qere warm but not hot, with no significant rain.  In October of 1977, the nude bodies of two young Hollywood prostitutes were found discarded beside roads in Los Angeles County, each in a different law enforcement jurisdiction.  The two prostitute victims were Yolanda Washington, a 19-year old African-American woman, and Judy Miller, a 15-year-old Caucasian runaway.

A man, driving a dump truck to a granite quarry, where he worked, saw a body on the afternoon of October 18, lying in some weeds near a cemetery.  Because North Hollywood lies within the City of Los Angeles, LAPD was called to the scene.  A two-sentence blurb appeared in the Los Angeles Times (the Times) the next morning and stated simply that the nude body of an unidentified young woman had been found near Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills.  On October 20, 1977, another short Times blurb identified the victim as Yolanda Washington, 19, whose family lived in Pomona.  Yolanda had been raped and strangled.

About two weeks later, on Halloween morning, October 31, a man returning to his home on Alta Terrace Drive in La Crescenta, saw the nude body of a young woman lying beside a wall in front of his house.  The house was on Alta Terrace Drive on the upper outskirts of La Crescenta, at the edge of the Angeles National Forest, some 25 miles from Hollywood.  The Verdugo mountains separate the Crescenta Valley from Glendale and Burbank to the Southwest.  Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies responded to Alta Terrace, because La Crescenta is an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, outside the city limits of the City of Los Angeles.  The body was that of Judy Miller, age 15.  She had been raped and strangled to death.

A few days later, on November 6, the nude body of another young woman was found on a curvy, wooded stretch of East Chevy Chase Drive in the City of Glendale, lying among leaves of some eucalyptus tree and down an incline beside the road in Scholl Canyon and next to a golf course.  Elissa (Lissa) Kastin, 21, had also been raped, sodomized, and strangled to death.  The Glendale Police Department responded to the scene.  Lissa Kastin had just begun working a couple of weeks earlier at a restaurant in Hollywood and lived in an apartment building adjacent to the Hollywood Freeway.

Murders in a city as large as Los Angeles are not unusual, and the news media paid scant attention to these crimes.  So the public was generally ignorant of the three  murders.

In mid-November 1977, during a three-day period, LAPD handled three more crime scenes at which the bodies of four more strangled young women were found.  An L.A. Times feature story was published on November 22, 1977, and announced the discovery of the bodies of two girls, last seen alive on November 13, 1977.  The news piece stated that the bodies were found in a remote ravine west of Elysian Park on November 21, 1977, by young boys playing in the area.  The girls were identified as Sonja Johnson and Dolores Cepeda.  (Delores was known as Dollie.)  The location is not really a remote ravine but rather a steep hillside above busy Interstate Highway  5, the Golden State Freeway.

The newspaper also identified six other murder victims: (1) Judith Lynn Miller, 15, of Hollywood, (2) Theresa Berry, 19, whose body was found November 4, 1977, partly clothed near Valley Boulevard in Walnut,  (3) Lissa Kastin, 21, (4) Jill Barcomb, (5) an unidentified woman in her early 20s, fully clothed, found November 17, 1977, near Pickford Street in the Wilshire District, (later identified as Kathleen Robinson) and (6) the nude body of an unidentified woman (Kristina Weckler) found November 20, 1977, on Ranons Way near Glendale..  The article specified: Glendale investigators have previously said the murders of Miss Kastin and Miss Miller may have been committed by the same person, but have withheld the identical method of strangulation . . . in order to protect their investigation.

Missing from this list were Yolanda Washington and a victim named Jane King.  Jane King’s body was discovered the same day that this Times story of possible linkage of serial murders was published.  However, Jane King was last seen on November 9, 1977, and had been missing even longer than Dollie Cepeda and Sonja Johnson, who were reported to police as missing on November 13, 1977.  The longer time periods during which these three victims were missing handicapped the investigation and prosecution, as fragile memories played tricks on the minds of witnesses.

The names of Theresa Berry, Jill Barcomb, and Kathleen Robinson were later dropped from the victims list because the manner of their deaths did not match that of the other victims.  All the victims listed by the Times had been strangled, but not all were known to have been sexually assaulted.

The body of Kristina Weckler, a student at the Pasadena School of Art and Design, had been found by a person walking in the early morning on November 20, 1977, in a hilly neighborhood of Los Angeles near the southern boundary of Glendale.  LAPD was called to the scene where Kristina Weckler’s body was discovered.

LAPD also responded the next day to Landa Street, a narrow, almost rural, road on a steep hillside above the busy Golden State Freeway, Interstate Highway 5.  The road begins at the off-ramp from the southbound freeway to Stadium Way, which leads to nearby Dodger Stadium in Elysian Park.  Two young boys saw the two bodies lying among the weeds, junk and trash strewn down the hillside.  Sonja Johnson and Dollie Cepeda, ages 14 and 12 respectively, had been shopping at the Eagle Rock Shopping Plaza and had taken a bus toward their homes in Eagle Rock, but never arrived there.  The local Catholic parish had launched fruitless searches for them.

The day after the discovery of the bodies of Dollie Cepeda and Sonja Johnson, November 22, 1977, a transit worker was cleaning the heavily wooded Los Feliz Boulevard off-ramp from the southbound Golden State Freeway.  Los Feliz Boulevard leads to Hollywood through the ritzy Los Feliz residential area next to Griffith Park and the famous Griffith Park Observatory.  The transit worker spotted the partially decomposed body of Jane King, an aspiring model and actress, lying among the bushes.  LAPD was again called to the scene.  Jane King was missing longer than any other of these victims and her body was more decomposed.  Because of the degree of decomposition, the similarity of her death to the deaths of Judy Miller, Lissa Kastin, and Kristina Weckler was not readily apparent.

The Times ran a story headlined: Nude Body Discovered by Freeway.  The article read, The nude body of a 10th young woman was found in heavy brush and trees alongside the Los Feliz off-ramp from the southbound Golden State Freeway near Griffith Park.  The body appeared to have been there for some time.  The mode of death had not been immediately determined.  The possible connection to the recent murders of other young women was mentioned, and the following victims were listed: Lissa Kastin, Margaret Madrid (age 7, whose body was found in the city of Industry on November 6,) Kristina Weckler, Dolores Cepeda, Sonja Johnson, Judith Lynn Miller, Theresa Berry, Jill Terry Barcomb, and an unidentified fully clothed young woman (Kathleen Robinson.)  The seven year-old victim, Margaret Madrid, was an addition to the list but was soon dropped.

The day after the Times story of the discovery of an unidentified body on the Los Feliz off-ramp from the southbound Golden State Freeway, the Times published another article giving the victim’s name as Jane Evelyn King and stating that she was identified by fingerprints and dental charts.  The Times declared that a special squad of detectives sought possible links between 10 similar murders and also referred to the squad as a task force of some 30 officers headed by Ed Henderson.  The article reported that the precise method of strangulation was intentionally withheld from disclosure.  The list of possible victims was as before.

The Times ran a third story on November 25,1977 – three stories three days in a row –  with the headline of Links Seen in 4 of 11 Slaying of Females, Method of Strangulation of Bodies Near Roadsides Found Similar.  The article explored as well as it could the analytic processes of the investigating officers regarding a serial killer.  The story stated explicitly that four murders were considered linked – those of Yolanda Washington, Judith Miller, Lissa Kastin, and Kristina Weckler.  The police spokesperson declined to say that Jane King’s death was related to those of the other four.  The reason given for the linkage of the murders was the almost identical method of strangulation, according to authorities, who have declined to elaborate.  The police stated that the other victims previously listed were still under consideration for possible linkage.

Four days later, LAPD officers were again dispatched to a homicide scene.  This time to Cliff Drive near Mount Washington and Highland Park.  The location is easily visible to the Northeast from the Landa hillside across the Golden State Freeway, the Los Angeles River (which is usually dry), and the large Southern Pacific Railroad yard.  (Currently the yard for Metrolink commuter trains.)  The body was that of a community college student from the Northern part of the San Fernando Valley, an 18-year old young woman, named Lauren Wagner.  She was abducted from her car only about 100 yards from her home on Lemona Avenue, where she lived with her parents and family.  Late the previous night, neighbors heard a ruckus, with dogs barking loudly, and saw what looked like a police arrest of the young woman.

In the most detailed story yet, a Times article headlined: Another Girl Strangled, Found Nude at Side of Road; Body, Discovered in Same Area as 7 Others in Last 6 Weeks; Victim Reportedly Taken in Car by 2 Men.  The article stated  that the body of Lauren Rae Wagner, 18, was discovered Tuesday morning at the side of a twisting Mt. Washington area street [near] where at least seven other women have been found strangled within six weeks.  Police had learned that Wagner, a business school student, had been dragged to a car and abducted by two men, as she returned to her [nearby] home. . . .  Because of the nature of the abduction and murder and the rash of similar killings in the Glendale-Highland Park area, officers of a special task force hurried to the scene.  Police were going over the victim’s rust-colored Ford Mustang, parked just across the street and a few houses south of the home, where she had lived with her parents.

The article hinted that the investigators were trying to establish which murders were linked by a common killer – or killers, now that it appeared that the deaths might be the work of two men.  It did not bode well that it was possible that rogue police officers were involved or that a police ruse was used by the abductors.

The series of murders became the television nightly news lead story in Los Angeles, especially because the latest victim had nothing to do with the Hollywood scene or with prostitution and rogue cops might be involved.  Now it was clear that prostitutes were not the only young women at risk.  As December with its holiday cheer appeared , gloom and fear crept over Los Angeles.

On December 1, 1977, the Times headlined: 10 of 13 Murders May Be Connected, Police Believe – As the head of a special task force investigating the deaths of 13 young girls and women, Ed Henderson, the task force leader, stated that investigators now believe at least 10 of them were committed by the same person or persons."  Some of the details of the Lauren Wagner abduction and murder explained why investigators were uncertain whether one or two men were perpetrating the crimes.

The task force of officers formed from LAPD, the County Sheriff’s Department, and the Glendale police was beefed up from 29 to 40 men.  LAPD psychologist Martin Reiser was preparing a psychological profile of the killer or killers.  Police were reviewing the usual suspects with criminal records and hypnotizing some eyewitnesses, hoping to glean significant clues.

Lauren Wagner’s father explained that he was certain his daughter had been forcibly abducted.  He pointed out that Lauren’s car keys were  left in the Mustang and the car door was not completelyly shut, causing the dome light to remain on.  The neighbor’s dog started barking loudly during the abduction, and two neighbors had witnessed it, but had not reported it, believing it to be a police arrest.

Investigators identified 10 victims whom they considered murdered by the same killer or killers; they were: Yolanda Washington, Judith Ann Miller, Lissa Teresa Kastin, Jill Barcomb, Kathleen Robinson (the victim whose body was found in the Wilshire district,) Kristina Weckler, Sonja Johnson, Dolores Cepeda, Jane King, and Lauren Wagner.  They also expressed the belief that the murders of Laura Collins, Theresa Berry, and Margaret Madrid had not been the work of these same killers.  A Los Angeles City Council person expected that a reward would be offered.

The next day (December 2, 1977) another Times article announced that $115,000 in rewards were being offered by Los Angeles County and others, with the City of Los Angeles expected to approve an additional $25,000.  That amount of money in the mid-1970s could purchase a nice house in a decent neighborhood.  The article also discussed the fact that, if the witnesses earning the reward became necessary witnesses for a trial, a defense attorney could make them look bad to the jury.  Such an attorney would invite jurors to question the motives and the veracity of a person who received a reward.  The police also announced a change in policy; they would begin investigations immediately upon receiving missing person reports where the suspected victim was a female over the age of 11.

Then the serial killer or killers acquired a name.  Yet another Times article (December 3, 1977), gave birth to the name Hillside Strangler.  The headline to the article read: Special Metro Squad Joins Hunt for ‘Hillside Strangler’ 30 Officers Assigned to Highland Park; Police Also Considering Use of Decoys in Effort to Trap Killer.  The article related that calls from the public were jamming the telephone lines into the offices of the Police Department’s special Hillside Strangler task force.

Within two weeks an even more brazen strangulation murder occurred.  On the evening of December 13, a strawberry blonde prostitute named Kimberly Martin, who worked through an outcall, service, was lured by a telephone call from a pay telephone in the Hollywood Public Library to a vacant apartment in a complex on Tamarind Avenue in Hollywood.  (An outcall agency is a telephone service that advertises in sleazy tabloid papers that a person can call in for a female model and have her sent out to his home or hotel room.)  Kimberly Martin responded to such a call, and her dead body was discovered the next morning, nude, spread-eagled, face-up, on a steep vacant lot on North Alvarado Street.  Helicopter shots of the lot and the body were shown on TV channel that evening.

The Times story on December 15, 1977, began with this headline: Slain Girl, 17, Believed 11th in ‘Strangler’ Series Found on Slope in Area of Homes Near Silver Lake; Victim Had Hollywood Prostitution Background.  The article related that the nude and strangled body of 17 year-old Kimberly Diane Martin was found lying on a steep slope of a vacant lot facing downtown Los Angeles.  A spokesman for LAPD said, It appears to be the work of the so-called Hillside Strangler.  The news article described the new and unusual details – that a call had been placed from the Hollywood Public Library to Martin’s outcall service, requesting a young, blonde, attractive, modelish, cute looking girl.  The article described Kimberly Martin as an attractive dark-haired girl.

At about 10:00 P.M. the preceding night, realizing that the telephone call had not originated from the Tamarind apartments as represented but from a pay phone at the library, Kimberly Martin’s pimp had gone to the apartment building looking for Martin.  He found that the specified apartment was vacant and that Martin was missing.  Her car was parked across the street from the apartment complex.

The outcall agency had contacted Dr. Lois Lee, a sociologist and founder of an organization working to assist young prostitutes.  On the night of Kimberly Martin’s murder, Dr. Lee, acting as a buffer, called police and then went to the West Hollywood station of the Sheriff’s Department, arriving at 11:15 P.M.  The deputies there tried to call the Hillside Strangler Task Force at LAPD, but unfortunately that occurred at the time of a shift change, and there was no timely response.

The Times article described the escalation of community fear.  It also noted the nearness of the location where Martin’s body had been dumped to the hillside where the Cepeda and Johnson bodies had been found.

The next day the Times’ article described LAPD’s interest in finding eyewitnesses to the pay phone call.  But the article mainly focused on the political and community criticism of LAPD’s slow response to the report that a prostitute was missing.  Picketing of LAPD followed, protesting that slow response.

The following day, the Times article was not kind to the tenants of the Tamarind Apartments.  The December 17, 1977, article bore the headline: Last Strangler Victim’s Screams Went Unreported.  The news article related that screams and running in the hallway were heard on the night Kimberly Martin was abducted from a unit in the Tamarind Apartments.  One person reported that a girl screamed Don’t kill me!  But no one reported to police the screams the night of the abduction and slaying.  Another tenant stated, I hear screaming and hollering every night.  The manager stated that through the curtains of apartment 114 a tenant had seen a man and woman struggling.  Police had asked the apartment manager whether she had heard the name Mike Ryan, as that was the name used in the call from the public library to the outcall service.  Police would not reveal publicly if they had obtained any fingerprints, but they had – both from the phone booth and from the vacant apartment.

Two days later on December 19,1977, a Newsweek magazine article recounted the murder of Lauren Wagner (complete with a crime scene photograph in which her body is partially visible.)  She had been strangled –the latest victim apparently of the baffling killer known as the Hillside Strangler.  The article further read, over the last two months, ten women between 12 and 28 have been strangled and seven of them were also raped.  Eight of the bodies were found within a 6-mile radius of Glendale, and all them had been casually dumped by the roadside.  The article emphasized the rampant fear of the populace, the massive manhunt of the 110-member Hillside Strangler Task Force, and the monetary rewards offered – all triggered by the killing spree.  The article acknowledged that police had little to go on, no firm evidence that the crimes were even committed by the same person.

The victims connected with Hollywood were listed as Yolanda Washington,19, Judith Lynn Miller, 15, Lissa Kastin, 21, Jill Barcomb, 18, (noting that she had been convicted of prostitution in Syracuse, New York,) Kathleen Robinson, 17, and Jane King, 28.  The article then stated, But the four other victims, including the two girls, 12 and 14, had no connection with the Hollywood street life, a fact that made the killings seem all the more random – and chilling.

The holidays passed without further incident, and on January 6, 1978, a Times article reported that police had released drawings of two suspects.  The drawing of suspect number 1 was based on the appearance of a man who had gained access to the vacant Tamarind apartment the day before the night of the killing.  The drawing of suspect number 2 was based on the appearance of a man seen using the pay phone at the Hollywood Public Library

Another Times article on January 15, 1978, had the headline: Strangler Case: Several Killers or One? – The article discussed not only this lead question but also the uncertainty about which of the killings, if any, were connected to any of the other murders.  (A newspaper weather blurb also forecasted heavy rain, a natural circumstance that affected the investigation.)  Some news reporters had fabricated stories about a bizarre mode of strangulation and electrical burns on the victims’ genitals, making life more difficult for the detectives.  The number of individuals posing as police officers may have also increased.

The next and final Hillside Strangler murder did not occur until February 16, 1978.  Cindy Hudspeth left her Glendale apartment to drive to her evening work at Glendale High School.  She never arrived.  The next morning a helicopter pilot working for the Forest Service spotted an orange car at the bottom of a cliff near the Angeles Crest Highway (California State Route 2.)  That highway leads from the La Cañada-La Crescenta area near Glendale over the top of the mountains to Palmdale and Lancaster in the Antelope Valley, approximately 70 miles from the City of Los Angeles.  It is a scenic but curvy highway, frequently seen in TV automobile commercials.  A forest service crew was sent to the scene of the apparent solo car crash, about four miles up the highway from Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada.  The nude dead body of Cindy Hudspeth was in the trunk of her orange Datsun.  Sheriff’s Homicide was summoned to the scene.

The Los Angeles Times headline announced: 13th Victim of L.A. Strangler Believed Found.  The article read: The nude body of a strangled young woman, believed to be the 13th victim of the so-called Hillside Strangler, was found in the trunk of her automobile 50 feet down an embankment off Angeles Crest Highway north of La Cañada.  The body was identified as that of Cindy Lee Hudspeth, 20.  Her body bore ‘marks on her upper torso and neck.  She was reported to have lived with a roommate in an apartment on Garfield avenue in Glendale.

The fact Cindy Hudspeth had resided on Garfield Avenue in Glendale immediately became an important fact, as an earlier Hillside Strangler victim, Kristina Weckler, had lived across the street from Cindy Hudspeth’s apartment building on Garfield.  A Times article authored by Bella Stumbo headlined: Strangler Returns to a Quiet Street.  She wrote that the two victims lived across the street from one another and noted that a lot of elderly people lived in that neighborhood.  She reported that some Garfield residents were acquainted with both girls.

Then, just as suddenly as the murder spree began, it ended.  A period of quiet developed during which no more murders occurred that could be connected to the Hillside Strangler.  No more news stories about the Hillside Strangler were printed.  There was the occasional query about what might have happened with the Strangler.  Perhaps he was in prison or had died.  No one knew, but the mystery of the case lingered.

In June 1978, the Sheriff investigators exhumed the body of Cindy Hudspeth because a latent print on the trunk of the orange Datsun was unidentified.  The investigators took print exemplars from the feet of Cindy Hudspeth.  The print remained unidentified.

The news media was not told the exact manner of death, merely that the victims were strangled.  The law enforcement agencies did not disclose the nature of the strangulation.  Pathologists and homicide investigators are familiar with more than one mode of strangulation: manual (strangulation by use human hands) and ligature (strangulation by use of soft cloth, cord, rope, belt, wire, etc.)  One facet of murder by strangulation is that there is usually very little blood evidence.  In any event. DNA forensic analysis had not imerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

Although there was some speculation in the news about torture and the police had indicated that victims had been tortured, police disclosed no mode of torture.  Similarly, the police did not reveal particular marks on the limbs of most of the victims.

Not much else happened for almost a year – at least in the investigation of the Hillside Strangler.  George Deukmejian, a conservative state senator from Long Beach, had been trying to bolster the effectiveness of the California criminal justice system.  He did well enough to be elected the new Attorney General, and thus became my boss.

Chapter 2

Marks of the Murderers

In the perennial holiday movie Home Alone, a young boy, Kevin McCallister (played by Macaulay Culkin,) initially helpless and vulnerable, is accidentally left home alone by his parents, who have flown to Paris, France, without him.  The boy, however, rises to the occasion and matches wits and battle tactics with two burglars, Harry and Marv, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern.  The movie depicts the two burglars breaking into a neighbor’s house, plundering all the gifts under the Christmas tree, and generally trashing the house.  Before leaving the ransacked house, Marv plugs up the kitchen sink and leaves the water running, causing greater damage as water cascades through the vacant home for days.  As they leave the burgled house, Harry sees the grin on Marv’s face and says in a disgusted tone of voice, You did it again, didn’t ya?  Marv answers, It’s our calling card.  All the great ones leave their mark.  We’re the Wet Bandits.

In reality, only inept crooks leave behind identifying marks, and those criminals are more easily apprehended.  Professional criminals try to leave as little a trail as possible.  But many crimes are impulse-driven, and the criminals not only do not plan but also do not consider the consequences of their actions.  On the other hand, serial killers are almost always sociopaths, impelled by the power, thrill, or rush they feel from killing.  But they become serial killers, only if they have a modus operandi (M.O.) that keeps them from being trailed or identified.  If their M.O. is a successful one, they continue to employ it and are difficult to identify and catch despite the M.O. being  recognizable.  Usually it is a slip up or an unforeseen intervening act that ends their string of murders.  But if a serial killer is identified, the M.O. is often distinctive and unique, sometimes ritualistic.  It does act as a signature, which may eventually unveil the serial murderer.

The M.O. of the Hillside Strangler became well-known to Los Angeles detectives.  There was no obvious pre-existing connection between the killers and the victims.  Although the police could ascertain the general location from which the victim was abducted (mainly Hollywood or Glendale), and the police responded to the location where the body had been discarded, the police could identify no location where the victim had actually been killed.  And since the bodies were naked, no clothing, jewelry, or documents identified the victims.  A Jane Doe victim had to be matched to a missing person, and that usually meant some delay in identifying possible witnesses and where the victims were last seen.

Delay is an enemy to investigations, as memories of witnesses fade or become blurred.  But physical marks on the bodies of the victims acted as a signature of the Hillside Strangler.  They signaled not so much the killers’ desire for publicity as the killers’ sadistic and inhuman thrill and feeling of power in capturing, restraining, violating, and torturing a defenseless young woman and then strangling her to death.  Strangling the victim also left no blood stains.  And, of course, no witnesses.

The most carefully guarded information about the Hillside Strangler murders was this: that each victim had been strangled by a ligature, a narrow one.  That was true of nine murders.  But in the case of Yolanda Washington, it appeared that she had been manually strangled or possibly strangled with a soft cloth.  The necks of all nine other Hillside Strangler victims, all white women, bore marks indicating strangulation by a smooth ligature (cord, twine, or rope) of approximately ¼ inch in diameter.  The wrists and ankles of most of the victims also bore ligature marks that looked made either by rope (also small in diameter) or by handcuffs.  Detectives referred to these signature ligature marks as the five-point ligature marks.  The five points were (1) ligature strangulation marks on the neck, (2 & 3) restraint marks on the two wrists, and (4 & 5) restraint marks on the two ankles of the Hillside Strangler victims.

A curious anomaly in the case of the Hillside Strangler, that also remained confidential, concerned the rape and/or sodomizing of the victims.  Acts of rape and sodomy usually leave identifying serological markers tied to the blood systems of both the victim and the assailant.  The type of scientific sleuthing that was standard in the 1970s is now obsolete and has been eclipsed by identification through DNA evidence.

Blood systems contain antigens that the majority of human beings and animals secrete in other body substances such as saliva, perspiration, and semen.  These antigens can be analyzed to determine the blood types of the donors.  In the ABO blood categorization system a person has type O, A, B, or AB blood.  Type O is the most prevalent in human beings, type AB the least prevalent.  Regarding the ABO blood type, the presence or absence of the Rh factor (the Rhesus factor, whether the blood of an individual has an inherited protein), is designated by positive or negative.  Being positive is more prevalent in human beings than negative.  The various types of the PGM enzyme are also an identifying marker in forensic analyses.  Before DNA forensics came on the scene, a person could be eliminated as a suspect or included as a suspect, depending upon whether his ABO and PGM blood types matched the blood types found at the crime scene or on or in the victim.

A complicating circumstance is that a minority of persons do not secrete the blood marker antigens in their other bodily fluids.  In the parlance of criminalistics, a person who secretes blood markers is called a secretor.  The rare person, who does not secrete them, is referred to as a non-secretor.

The body of each victim in the Hillside Strangler case was processed by crime lab personnel of LAPD or of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.  Any fibers or fingernail clippings obtained were microscopically or chemically examined.  Samples of any human substances found on or in the body (e.g., in the murder victim’s vagina or rectum) was examined for semen and spermatozoa and analyzed for blood marker antigens.  Substances from a rape victim’s vaginal vault are usually a mixture of the victim’s and rapist’s body fluids.  Analysis of the substances taken from Hillside Strangler victims revealed only antigens of the victims’ blood types.  This fact led to the iconclusion that the murderer/rapist was a non-secretor.  None of this has much relevance now that the science of DNA has become the chief means of forensic biological identification.

The 10 Hillside Strangler murders were committed in Los Angeles between October 17, 1977, and February 16, 1978.  Four of the victims were prostitutes.  Two victims were young co-eds, two were teen-age school girls, and two were young women recently employed at restaurants.  Except for the mode of the deaths and the signature marks left on the bodies, the evidence was meager.

The 19-year old Yolanda Washington was a striking young African-American woman living with her pimp Craig Pitchford in Hawthorne on the west side of Los Angeles.  Yolanda’s family was mostly unaware that she was working as a prostitute, although her sister and a childhood girlfriend knew Yolanda used drugs including marijuana and cocaine.  They were also acquainted with her pimp, but thought he was mainly a drug dealer and that Yolanda may have sold drugs for him.  Yolanda had a young daughter.

Yolanda had a flashy taste in clothing and jewelry, including hoop earrings, a pendant necklace and a distinctive turquoise ring bearing grooves on its sides and a leaf.  Sometimes she wore a wig when working on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where evenings she she street walked..  Generally, her pimp dropped Yolanda off at a Denny’s restaurant not far from the intersection of La Brea Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.  She would then join the promenade along Sunset from La Brea to Fairfax Avenue, a stretch of a about 15 blocks.

Craig Pitchford, Yolanda’s pimp, dropped Yolanda off as usual on Monday, October 17, 1977, at the Denny’s, and she began walking on Sunset.  Yolanda asked Pitchford to pick her up at 2:00 A.M. in the same area.  When Pitchford last saw her, Yolanda had begun walking eastbound on Sunset Boulevard toward La Brea.

Yolanda was strangled to death that night.  Her body was found the next day near Forest Lawn Memorial Park – North Hollywood, a well-known cemetery.  It lies a few miles over the Hollywood Hills from Hollywood and near the main lots of Universal Studios and the th old Warner Brothers Studios, renamed the Burbank Studios.  At about 1:45 P.M. on October 18, the driver of a dump truck saw the naked body of Yolanda Washington lying face down in the weeds about 75 feet from the road and near the gate of the driver’s work site at Mid-City Granite, a quarry that was adjacent to the cemetery.  The driver contacted his dispatcher and requested the police be contacted.  LAPD officers and coroner’s staff arrived and processed the crime scene.  The body was removed by 6:00 P.M.

Judy Miller, 15 years old, had run away from her family in Pasadena and was one of the numerous street people who had merged into the sub-culture along Hollywood Boulevard.  To subsist she engaged at times in acts of prostitution, through street walking.  Some of the more experienced members of that community, older prostitutes, some pimps, some Damon Runyon-like characters, took her under their protective wings at times.  She disappeared from Hollywood the night before Halloween.

An electrician, returned home for breakfast at about 6:00 A.M. on Halloween morning,  It was a neighborhood of comfortable custom homes on a cul-de-sac in the upper part of La Crescenta at 2884 Alta Terrace.  The homes sit just below a flood control basin at the edge of of the Angeles National Forest.  Alta Terrace had no street lighting, and it was still completely dark out.  As the electrician alighted from his vehicle and walked toward his house, he saw a naked female body on the ice plant parkway in front of his home. His wife called the Sheriff’s Department.

Personnel from the Sheriff’s Department showed up to find Judy Miller’s naked dead body lying face up with her hands beneath her back.  There was no jewelry or other belongings on Judy Miller’s body or near her body

La Crescenta is some 25 miles away from Hollywood.  Several days later, homicide detectives, suspecting their Jane Doe might be from Hollywood, canvassed the street people along Hollywood Boulevard, trying to establish who the Jane Doe was and when and how she had disappeared.  One of the street people they spoke to was Markhust Camden, also known as Youngblood.  He was among the street peoplewho knew Judy Miller.

The parents of Lissa Kastin were divorced.  Her father, Bernard Kastin, was in real estate investments, and his office was in Hawthorne.  Lissa had moved to Hollywood, possibly hoping that she would become involved in the entertainment industry.  She was a spunky  21 year old Brunette and a dancer in good health and physical shape.  She rented a nice apartment at 1938 Argyle Avenue, a half a block from the Hollywood Freeway.  Two weeks before her violent death, Lissa began working as a waitress at a Hollywood restaurant called Health Faire International.  This coffee shop restaurant, located on Vine Street, was only about five blocks south of her apartment.  Bernard Kastin last saw his daughter alive on Friday, November 4, 1977, at his office in Hawthorne, where Lissa occasionally worked part time.

Lissa drove a lime green Volkswagen.  (Some described the color as yellowish or as a funny yellow.)  The car had a black convertible top.  She usually parked the VW on Argyle street, when she was at home in her apartment.

Lissa stayed overnight on Friday, November 4, 1977, at the Mar Vista home of her mother, Maria Le Blanc.  The next morning as she was about to leave, Lissa said she was going to work out at her spa and then go to her waitress job at the Health Faire restaurant.  She was dressed in her customary way, with a leotard top, knee socks and white nurse’s shoes.

At about 9:30 that night on Saturday, November 5, 1977, Lissa left the restaurant after changing out of her uniform and cashing her paycheck.  Paula Heller, one of the cashiers (also an aspiring actress), accompanied her to the parking lot, where they each got into their vehicles and drove away.  Lissa was not seen alive again by her family or acquaintances.

The next day, Sunday, November 6, 1977, a teenage girl was walking to her grandfather’s house on East Chevy Chase Drive in Scholl Canyon in Glendale.  She had just passed a gasoline station near the intersection of Chevy Chase and Linda Vista Drive, when out the corner of her eye she saw what appeared to be a nude dead body or a mannequin lying down off the roadway.  She ran home, called the police, and reported what she had seen.  The police officers looked in the area but could not find what the girl had described.  They went to the girl’s house, and she came with them and pointed out the location of the dead body.

A Glendale police sergeant responded to the scene where the officers had located Lissa Kastin’s body on East Chevy Chase Drive.  The sergeant saw contusions on the back of Lissa’s neck and ligature marks on both ankles and wrists.  The body had obviously rolled down the embankment about 10 to 15 feet from the roadway, coming to rest near a utility pole guy wire.  The body was partially covered with leaves fallen from the nearby eucalyptus trees and also covered with some soil debris.  The sergeant saw no footprints near the body.

When he learned that his daughter might be missing, Bernard Kastin went to her apartment on Argyle Avenue in Hollywood and found nothing amiss.  He looked around the apartment building but could not find Lissa’s VW.  He called police.

After Lissa’s body was found, two Glendale police officers also examined Lissa’s apartment.  They found her VW, parked, unlocked, about a half a block south of the apartment and around the corner on the south side of Dix Street by a gasoline station.

About two weeks before Lissa’s death, her mother, Mrs. LeBlanc, had an unusual conversation with her.  Just before leaving the mother’s home in Mar Vista, Lissa mentioned that she needed money and that she would be open to the idea of turning tricks.  When Lissa mentioned prostitution, her mother replied that it was dangerous, and Lissa just shrugged her shoulders.  At the time her mother did not take it  seriously and thought Lissa’s  was making a joking remark.

Jane King was a slender attractive blonde, whose mother lived in Alhambra, a city in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Pasadena.  After an unstable life in high school – she ran away from home on more than one occasion – Jane ended up in Hollywood, hoping to break into show business either as a film actress or as a singer.  For someone who wanted to work in the entertainment industry, she was introverted and rather quiet and shy.  And for a while she had worked in a massage parlor.  She began attending acting classes sponsored by the Scientology organization, classes that were held on the premises of what was called by the Scientologists The Manor.  Jane also became an adherent of Scientology, turning away from sex, drinking, and drugs.  Scientology had been gaining cachet among some Hollywood circles.

The Manor prominently occupied a whole city block, located on busy Franklin Avenue between Bronson and Tamarind Avenues and adjacent to the Hollywood Freeway.  That location is seven blocks east of Argyle.  Lissa Kastin’s apartment on Argyle was about one block north of Franklin Avenue.

The Manor was a large, stately, multistoried building resembling a large French chateau.  It was a hotel for Scientologists.  At that location social functions included a theater group, The surrounding grounds consisted of trees, gardens, and a brook, giving The Manor a very inviting and peaceful appearance.

Jane lived in an apartment on Holloway Drive in West Hollywood near La Cienega Boulevard, an apartment she shared with Steve Moskowitz.  Moskowitz worked in downtown Los Angeles and was employed by the Atlantic-Richfield Corporation.  The relationship between Jane and Moskowitz was purely an economic one, as he had used a service to find a rent-sharing roommate.  They each paid half of the rent and their own share of food and other expenses.  They had separate bed rooms.

The Manor was about nine miles to the east of her apartment, but Jane King did not drive.  To get around, she generally either rode Los Angeles buses or got rides from her boyfriend.  She was said to be afraid of hitchhiking.

Jane’s boyfriend, Stephen Rockne, occasionally spent the night with her in her apartment bedroom.  They had known each other about three years and had begun going together earlier that year.  Rockne was a limousine driver, usually wearing the customary black suit.

On Friday, November 4, 1977, Rockne went out to dinner with Jane.  They spent the rest of the night, the following day, and that evening together.  He observed that she had shaved her pubic hair.

About three days later, Rockne visited Jane for no more than two hours, and they had a disagreement when Rockne would not agree to live with her.  She became further upset when he left.  Following this occasion, he never saw her again.  On Wednesday, November 9, 1977, he called her, but her roommate Steve Moskowitz answered.  Moskowitz told him that Jane had gone to a Scientology meeting and that he would tell her to call Rockne  when she came home.  Jane never called Rockne.  He tried to contact her several times over the next two weeks but was never able to reach anyone at the phone where she lived.

Moskowitz last saw Jane King that Wednesday evening, November 9, 1977.  She took a bus to her acting class.  When she did not return that night, he became worried about her but waited until Saturday morning, November 12, 1977, to report to the sheriff’s station that she was missing.

The Wednesday night of Jane King’s disappearance, Jane had attended her weekly acting class at the Scientology Manor and socialized with some of her friends and classmates.  She was likely dressed in her usual attire: jeans with a top, although once in a while she wore a dress.  Sometimes she wore boots, sometimes high heels.  A friend seemed to remember that on the last night Jane was seen, she was wearing high heels.  The class hours were approximately from 7:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M.

After the acting class, Jane waited for a westbound bus at the bus stop diagonally across the street at the corner of Franklin and Bronson Avenues.  At that time that block was the location of a Mayfair Supermarket.  (Now it is a Gelson’s Market.)  About five miles east on Los Feliz brings one to Interstate Highway Five (I-5), the Golden State Freeway.  It was on the off ramp from the southbound I-5 to Los Feliz Boulevard westbound that Jane King’s decomposing body was discovered two weeks after her disappearance.

A CalTrans worker assigned to maintain state highways and related landscaping was doing so on that off-ramp on Wednesday, November 23, 1977, when he saw a dead body lying face up in a heavily wooded area.  The view from the ramp was partially obscured by branches and leaves.  The off-ramp is an unusual one, a curving half mile long, bordered on both sides by thick stands of bushes and tall maple trees.  (There are two off-ramps from southbound I-5, one  for eastbound traffic on Los Feliz Boulevard and one for westbound Los Feliz traffice.)  The decomposing nude body lay among these trees and bushes and in leaves about six inches deep, about 10 feet from the roadway (the off-ramp to westbound Loas Feliz.)

Despite the state of decomposition, detectives could see ligature marks, which were becoming familiar.  Jane King’s pubic area had been shaved, although hair had begun to grow back and was about an eighth of an inch long at the time of death.  That information as well as the information about the ligature marks were again withheld from the media and public.

Delores Cepeda, age 12, and Sonja Johnson, age 14, were friends, who attended a parochial school together.  Delores, known asDollie, lived on Benner Street in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, near the Pasadena Freeway (officially the Arroyo Seco Parkway.)  Sonja, though older than Dollie, was smaller and less physically developed.  Sonja also wore braces on her teeth.

Dollie was visiting Sonja on Sunday, November 13, 1977, at Sonja’s home at 1622 North Avenue 46 in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles.  That home was about a block west of Occidental College and 2 blocks east of Eagle Rock Boulevard.

That afternoon they decided to do some mall shopping and took a bus to the Eagle Rock Shopping Plaza, which borders on the City of Glendale just where Colorado Street becomes Colorado Boulevard.  (Colorado Boulevard runs up to Pasadena, where it is the stage for the annual New Year’s Rose Tournament Parade.)  The girls promised to be back at Sonja’s by 6:00 P.M.

The two teen-agers were seen in Spencer’s Gift Shop at the mall, where they purchased some inexpensive costume jewelry, while shoplifting some additional jewelry.  Their purchases and their loot were placed in sacks bearing the logo of Spencer’s Gifts.

When their shopping was finished, Dollie and Sonja waited on Colorado Boulevard with some school friends for their bus.  The girls and their friends took the same bus route home as had brought them to the mall.  They had to transfer to a second bus, a No. 6 bus.

When the bus arrived at their stop at the intersection of Avenue 46 and York Boulevard, the girls used the rear bus exit and got off, but their friends did not see in which direction the girls went.  It was just after dark, somewhere around 6:30 P.M.  They never reached their homes.

Dollie sometimes stayed overnight at her friends’ homes but always notified her parents when that was the case.  Calls between the two families soon established there was no sleep-over that night.  The fathers of Dollie and Sonja went out together that night looking for the girls, without success.

The next morning the families tried to report them as missing persons.  No report was actually accepted as the girls had not yet been missing for 24 hours.  Soon after Dollie and Sonja disappeared, the local Catholic parish, Saint Ignatius Church in Highland Park where the two girls attended parochial  school, organized searches for the girls and posted Missing flyers.  The search for the missing girls was ended one week later, on November 20, 1977, when the decomposing bodies of Dollie and Sonja were discovered on Landa Street overlooking I-5.

Two boys about nine years old were riding their bikes on a remote, one lane road, Landa Street, and looked down at the trash strewn the hillside below the road.  They saw amidst the trash what looked like two mannequins, about 50 feet away.  They rode away and told an older brother, who with a friend, accompanied them back to Landa.  It was about dusk as they peered down the steep  trash-covered hillside and spotted the possible mannequins.  The two older boys d took a closer look and went partway down the incline, close enough to see that the mannequins were actually the dead bodies of two girls.  About a week earlier, one of older youths had seen a missing persons reward poster relating to Dollie and Sonja.  They called the police department.  Shortly a police helicopter arrived and then police cars.  The boys took the police to the bodies.

Landa Street begins at the Stadium Way off-ramp from the busy southbound I-5 freewym about a quarter mile from where the bodies ay.  Stadium Way is a multi-laned boulevard winding south into Elysian Park and leading to Dodger Stadium, a mile or so away.  During the preceding week, thousands of cars on the freeway had passed within a 100 meters of the open hillside where the twobodies were  discarded.

Detectives examined the bodies and the crime scene until late that night using portable lights and generators.  Despite the nighttime conditions, the investigators could see the ligature marks on each of the victims’ necks.  Dollie’s wrists each bore ligature marks too.  Blood and trauma was visible on the outer portion of Dollie’s vagina, indicating she had been sexually penetrated.

By morning another unidentified, naked body, a Jane Doe (later identified as Kristina Weckler), clearly another victim of the Hillside Strangler, had been found in Glendale, and of course Jane King’s body was found on Wednesday that week.

Kristina Weckler was born April 6, 1957.  The shy, 20-year old college student lived alone in apartment 809E on East Garfield Avenue in Glendale and had lived there since September 1976.  Kristina’s apartment had a back door through which one could enter more covertly.  She drove a beat-up, light blue Volkswagen with a long 2 by 4 board as a rear bumper.  She usually parked the VW at the rear of the apartment building.

Kristina was athletic and healthy and did not use drugs.  In high school, she had been a gymnast and a swimmer.  She also liked to dance and hike.  Kristina attended the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.  She was a good student and had  a number of friends at the school.  She usually wore a gray hooded athletic type jacket.

After shopping with her best friend from college, Alyce Barker, on November 19, 1977, Kristina went home.  Sometime around 6:00 P.M. Kristina and Alyce spoke on the telephone.  Kristina told Alyce that she was tired and that she was going to get something to eat and go to bed.  During the half-hour conversation, Kristina indicated that she was upset because she had not been invited to a party that night at Benson Smith’s.  Smith was Kristina’s former boyfriend.

Kristina was the daughter of Charles Weckler, a successful photographer, who lived then in San Francisco.  At approximately 9:15 P.M., the evening of November 19, 1977, Kristina called her father.  Their conversation lasted about 15 minutes.  During the conversation, they discussed her pending trip to San Francisco for Thanksgiving.  She recounted that she had been to a party the night before with some school friends and had been doing work for school that day.  She was tired from the strenuous activity and said she was going to bed.

Near Adam’s Hill in Glendale is a Los Angeles residential neighborhood of hilly, narrow, and winding streets.  The intersection of Ranons Avenue and Wawona Street is about a block south of the Glendale city limits.  Sunday morning, November 20, 1977, at approximately 10:30 A.M., a women with her two children was walking her dog on Ranons.  The dog stumbled over the legs of a dead human body under an elm tree with low hanging branches.  The woman went to a neighbor and asked him to call police.

An LAPD patrol officer arrived on the scene at 11:45 A.M.  About 200 feet south of the intersection of Ranons and Wawona lay the unclothed body of a female face up under a bush, partly concealed by the branches of the elm tree.

The assigned homicide detective saw double ligature marks on the neck and also a bruise on the body’s neck.  There were puncture marks on the inner parts of both elbows.  He did not notice the needle mark on the neck.  There were also ligature marks on her wrists and ankles.

The place where her body was found is inside the Los Angeles city limits and near the Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery.  There are two Forest Lawn Cemeteries in Los Angeles County, one in North Hollywood (within the City of Los Angeles) near where Yolanda Washington’s body was found and another in Glendale, near where Kristina Weckler’s body was found.

When Kristina did not show up at college on Monday, November 21, 1977, a worried Alyce Barker and another friend of Kristina went during the lunch hour to Kristina’s apartment to see if Kristina was sick.  The landlady let them in.  Kristina, of course, was not in the apartment, and they noticed nothing unusual inside.  There was no indication of a forced entry or other disturbance.  No tenants had heard any ruckus or anything that was unusual.

Alyce Barker tried to make a missing person’s report to police.  Later that day police showed her a photograph, and she identified Kristina Weckler’s body.  That Monday, Kristina’s father, Charles Weckler, went to his daughter’s apartment to remove her belongings.  He never found Kristina’s driver’s license nor any keys to her car, which Weckler had to break into.

Lauren Wagner, 18 years old, was a vivacious young woman with striking red hair, who lived in the northern portion of the San Fernando Valley, an area called Sepulveda.  She had graduated from high school and had enrolled in a business college in Van Nuys.  She worked part time at a Taco Bell. and also at a five and dime store.  She had been robbed at gun point while working at the Taco Bell.  The robber had pointed a gun right at Lauren.

Lauren spent Thanksgiving, November 24, 1977, with her family at their home  at 9545 Lemona Avenue.  Lemona is a north-south running street.  The Wagner home was on the west side of Lemona, a little more than 100 yards north of Lemona’s intersection with Plummer Street.

Following the long Thanksgiving week-end, Lauren and her friend Jessica Ralls went shopping on Monday afternoon, November 28, 1977.  After shopping, Lauren spent the evening with her boyfriend Bill Weekly at his home in Van Nuys.  Lauren left Weekly’s residence between 9:30 and 10:00 P.M. to drive home.  She was driving her rust red Mustang

Beulah Mae Stofer lived with her husband and her Doberman Pincer dog at 9536 Lemona Avenue, about 60 yards north of Plummer on the east side of Lemona.  Her next-door neighbors to the south were the Walls.  Across the street and a few doors north lived the Wagner family.  Mrs. Stofer was awakened in her bedroom on the evening of November 28, 1977, between 10:00 and 10:45 P.M. by her dog barking behind the chain-link fence in the southwest corner of her front yard.

Mrs. Stofer looked out the window of her bedroom, which was at the front of her house and faced south.  Two cars, side by side, were stopping in front of the Walls’ house.  She watched as the passenger of the larger of the two cars got out and escorted the young woman from her smaller car to the larger car.  A second man was at the wheel of the larger car, which seemed light on the top and dark on the bottom.

As the girl was being put into the larger car, Mrs. Stofer heard the girl say, You won’t get away with this.  The man, pushing her into the larger car, stated in a businesslike manner something like Come along quietly.  Throughout this time Mrs. Stofer’s dog was barking.  After the people got into the larger car, it drove off northbound at a regular speed.  The dome light in the smaller car was left on.  The girl’s red car was still there in the morning.

Mrs. Stofer’s’ next door neighbor, Mrs. Evelyn Wall, also saw and heard much the same thing as Mrs. Stofer.  Both women thought with some uncertainty that the incident was police activity.  They also thought it might be teenagers fooling around.

Joseph Wagner, Lauren’s father, went to bed around 11:00 P.M. and left the porch light on for his daughter, who had a 12 midnight curfew.  He awoke the next morning about 7:30 A.M. and saw that his daughter’s bed had not been slept in.  He woke his wife and told her that Lauren had not come home.

Mr. Wagner and his wife began calling Lauren’s friends to find out where she was.  Going out to pick up the newspaper, he saw his daughter’s car down the street from the Wagner house.  He went to the Mustang and saw Lauren’s keys were still in it and the dome light was lit.  Mr. Wagner called the police, who said they could not do anything for 24 hours.  He responded that his daughter had been kidnapped and related the circumstances of finding her car near her home.  A police unit responded immediately.

In the Mount Washington area of Los Angeles, a man was driving up the hill on Cliff Drive toward his house on Roseview Avenue.  At the same time, another man was driving down Roseview toward its intersection with Cliff Drive.  When the two cars met near the intersection, the man going up the hill flagged down the man driving down the hill.  Together they used their cars to barricade off Cliff and walked to the nearby spot where the first man thought he had seen a body beside the road.  They asked a resident of the neighborhood to call the police.

An LAPD officer arrived soon after that and secured the area.  The nude body of a young red-haired woman lay face up on the edge of the narrow road with her legs protruding almost out into