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The First Degree

Episode 372: The Hillside Stranglers, Part 2

The First Degree

Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.510K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The call from Washington changed everything. When Los Angeles detectives learned Kenneth Bianchi had been arrested for a double murder hundreds of miles away, the truth about the Hillside Strangler finally began to surface. But uncovering the killers was only the beginning. In episode 372, Jac and Lex take you inside the longest murder trial in American history.  A case marked by manipulations, bizarre side shows, and near-collapse,  as Bianchi turned on his cousin Angelo Buono, and prosecutors fought to hold the case together. This is the story of how the Hillside Strangler murders ended in conviction, and how Los Angeles was forever changed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The first degree.

0:02.0

First degree.

0:03.0

First degree.

0:04.0

First degree.

0:05.0

First degree.

0:06.0

First degree.

0:07.0

The first degree.

0:08.0

You see it on the news.

0:10.0

You see it on the paper.

0:11.0

You see it on Facebook.

0:13.0

These things are supposed to happen in movies, not in real life.

0:16.0

And one thing she mentioned was that she always noticed, well, she knew that there was drugs that he had access to drugs and he was, you know, partaking and all that.

0:31.0

But it was that my mom, I want to say she was with our aunt, her sister, and they were driving around, you know, this is the neighborhood.

0:39.6

And they either stopped by the upholstery shop or saw them.

0:46.9

And she just noticed it was weird.

0:48.5

Like, why are all these pretty girls hanging out with me?

0:52.4

Like, why are they all there?

0:53.3

And she also commented that they seemed like a little too young. Like, why are, you know, it just didn't make sense. But also this is a different time, like, where today of a grown adult says, like, that's a little too young to be hanging out with this guy and there's drug use going on. Welcome to the first degree, the true crime podcast that you might end up on.

1:11.5

My name is Jack Fannick. I'm sitting here with Alexis Link Letter. And today is part two of our two-part series on the Hillside Stranglers. If you haven't listened to part one, you're going to be really confused. So go back and listen to it. And of course, you know you can binge all of our multi-part episodes on the

1:29.0

underground or in the underground. You can do that by joining us on Apple subscriptions or through

1:33.8

Patreon. It's where we have all of our premium content, one extra episode every single week,

1:40.3

and all of our multi-parters ready to binge. Oh, yeah.

...

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